Page 14 of Holly & Hemlock
I shiver, but not from the cold.
“Is that what happened to you?” I ask.
He looks at me, really looks, and I see something flicker behind his eyes—a memory, a pain, a confessionunsaid.
He doesn’t answer, but he doesn’t deny it, either.
For a long moment, neither of us moves. The wind slams a branch against the gate, and Lane catches it before it can hit me, his gloved hand wrapping around my arm with more force than necessary.
“Careful,” he says, voice pitched low. “Wouldn’t want you hurt.”
The touch is brief, but it lingers, burning through the fabric of my sleeve.
He lets go, steps back, gestures at the house. “You should go inside. It gets worse from here.”
I don’t move, not right away. I want to say something clever, something that will break the tension, but my mouth is dry and the words won’t come.
Lane turns, picking up his axe, and heads into the orchard, boots sinking into the snow with every step. I watch him go, his figure shrinking between the rows of trees, until all that’s left is the echo of his warning, and the certainty that I have no idea what I’ve gotten myself into.
Back inside, I strip off my boots and coat, stand by the radiator until the feeling returns to my hands. I stare out at the garden, the orchard, the blank horizon beyond.
The storm erases everything, wipes the slate clean.
I wish it worked the same way inside.
The snow stops,eventually, but only after the wind has scoured every inch of the estate into a blank, shuddering silence. By midafternoon, the sun makes a cameo, and the Blue Room fills with a fractured glow, cold as moonlight. I drink coffee on the sill and stare down at the formal garden, now a series of white scars and shadow trenches. The driftshave rendered the footpaths impassable; the hedge maze is nothing but an embossed print on a bedsheet. The air inside is syrupy with heat, too thick for breathing. I close the radiator vent and still sweat in the thinnest blouse I own.
By three o’clock, the restlessness becomes unbearable. I decide, with the fatalism of the recently paroled, to explore the parts of Hemlock House I’ve so far avoided. The East Wing, for instance, has been studiously ignored by both Mrs. Whitby and Larkin. Even Lane, in his gruff way, implied that the wing was best left to itself.
The corridor leading there is narrow, a tunnel of wallpaper and stale air. The paper itself is a faded fleur-de-lis pattern, punctuated by long, vertical tears. At regular intervals, the old house has puckered and split, exposing the lath beneath like a wound gone septic. The floorboards are uneven, swelling with each step, and the dust is fine as cornstarch. My boots leave prints behind me.
There’s a feeling, not quite fear but its caffeine-addled cousin anxiety, that builds as I walk. Maybe it’s the cold coming through the windowpanes—older glass, thinner, trembling in the wind—or maybe it’s the certainty that I’m somewhere I shouldn’t be. But why shouldn’t I be? Ever since my arrival, I’ve accepted the rules here as if they’re gospel, but I own this place now. When will it start to feel like it?
The further I go, the more the house seems to close in, the ceilings lowering, the walls bowing just so. Here and there, I see patches of the original wallpaper, the color preserved beneath an abandoned painting or the outline of a vanished cabinet. Some spots are almost pristine, others colonized by a fine haze of mildew. There are stains on the ceiling, too, old watermarks that have bloomed into nebulae of ochre and brown.
Halfway down the corridor, the carpet runner gives outand the wood beneath is so warped it feels like walking the spine of some giant fossil. I pass a door that looks as if it hasn’t been opened in a century—no knob, just a black keyhole. I kneel, out of some compulsion I can’t name, and peer through the hole. All I see is darkness and a single, pale strand of cobweb glinting in the shaft of light from behind me. I touch the door and the dust sticks to my palm, gritty and cold.
Further on, the air changes. It smells less like dust and more like something chemical—paint stripper, maybe, or the ghost of some ancient cleaning fluid. They used all sorts of unsavory things back in the day, and if anywhere has an overstock of Victorian chemicals, it would be Hemlock House.
There’s a window at the end of the hall to the left, crusted with frost, and the light that comes through it is blue and trembling. I catch my reflection in the glass—hair wild, lips cracked, dark circles under my eyes that haven’t gone away since I got here. The scar in my brow is more visible than usual.
I haven’t bothered with makeup since arriving and I think I look like a before photo in an ad for vitamins.
The corridor stops at a door unlike any other in the house. It’s taller, maybe a foot above the others, and black—not painted, but stained so deep that the wood grain is nearly invisible. The surface is carved with what looks like a repeating pattern, but the closer I look, the more the pattern shifts, splitting and recombining.
The handle is old brass, shaped like a woman’s hand, of all things. I hesitate, flexing my own fingers as if comparing them for size. The air around the door is colder, though the source isn’t clear; maybe it’s the draft from the stairwell, or maybe just the way some spaces hoard their own weather.
I touch the knob. It’s slick, almost greasy, and a shuddertravels up my arm to the root of my neck. I tell myself it’s just the chill, but the sensation lingers, spreading under my skin like dye in water. There’s a whisper, faint as dust settling, from behind the door.
I jerk my hand back and press it to my chest, waiting for the house to explain itself. Nothing. Just the sound of my own breathing, too loud in the close space.
Am I going crazy?
I bend forward, listening. The whisper doesn’t repeat, but something else does—a slow, rhythmic creak, as if a chair is being rocked on bare floorboards. I reach for the handle again, this time with deliberate slowness, and the sensation returns—a prickle, then a seeping cold, then the suggestion of a voice at the edge of hearing.
I step away, stumbling back against the right wall, and stare at the door. My scalp tingles. I try to recall if Mrs. Whitby mentioned this part of the house, but there was too much to take in.
I turn on my heel, pulse thrumming in my jaw, and walk quickly back down the corridor. The dust is disturbed where I passed, my prints already beginning to fill and blur.
