Chapter 17 #3
Hadrian lurked in the living room since I’d turned the lights off while there was still daylight left.
He jerked when my phone buzzed across the table. Even from where I sat, I saw his pupils contract, then dilate in what I knew was irritation.
“Why does it make such a noise?”
I checked the caller ID. An unknown number, but it wasn’t listed as spam. “It means someone is calling me.”
“Such tedious things.” He turned away. His shoulders bunched closer to his neck, his top lip curled.
Emma or Sayer were the only ones that would call after five—clients usually emailed, but not always. I swiped to answer, just in case.
“Hello?”
“Landry?”
“This is she.” I closed my laptop and straightened. Hadrian’s head tilted just so, enough to tell me he could probably hear the person on the other end.
“It’s Irene. I’m sorry I didn’t contact you sooner—I just—there were a lot of things I wanted to get together for you. Do you have a minute?”
My eyes widened. I waved Hadrian closer, mouthing, Come here. She’d gotten my email—she hadn’t ghosted me. I wiggled closer to the edge of my seat and pulled a second chair up against my own, then pointed for him to sit down.
He eyed the chair. Wrinkled his nose.
“Sit!” I whispered. Then, to the phone, “Yes, of course I’ve got time. I’m so glad you called, I was worried it would seem too—forward.” Or creepy, I thought.
A rumble, close to a growl, came from his chest as he glared at the phone, similar to the disgust I’d seen when he mentioned the lightbulbs in the living room.
All right. Maybe he hated technology completely.
Still, I put the phone on speaker so he could listen, laid it flat on the table, and grabbed a notepad and pen from my purse. Writing by hand always felt faster than typing, and the last thing I needed to do was forget anything.
“If anyone has to apologize, it’s me,” she started.
Her voice crackled, sharp, on the line, making it echo through the first floor.
Hadrian’s lips curled back, so I turned the volume down.
“I didn’t mean to leave you that note. I thought Cadence wasn’t good with texting, so I left her a note one morning when I was couriering books from the Stetson library to the Hemlock branch.
I didn’t mean to scare you. I’m assuming you saw it? ”
My mind whirred, trying to catch up, as I sat back down. Hadrian’s arm brushed mine. We sat close, his thigh to my knee, my elbow near his. “What note?”
A nervous sigh. “I actually found something three months ago. On those symbols she’d asked me about.”
My eyes brightened. Then—a sinking in my stomach. She’d found something. I should be happy. This was what Hadrian wanted, what I’d agreed to.
“You did?”
I replayed my memories—over and over. A note.
It hit me like a far, distant wave breaking before shore.
One of the women dropping off a casserole had found it on the porch and gave it to me the morning of the funeral.
I hadn’t even stayed a night in Harthwait yet.
The house had been empty from Aunt Cadence’s death until Sayer helped me move in after the funeral.
Of course no one would have seen the note—and there was no telling how long Irene waited for my aunt to respond, only to later find out she’d died.
“I did,” Irene assured me. “I’d been digging in my free time after Cadence asked me about it, but she hadn’t responded to my calls, so I left a note one morning, and—anyway, I think I found something, but it might not mean much.
” A hesitant sigh. “Or be what you’re looking for. I just texted you the file.”
Right on cue, my phone vibrated. Hadrian leaned away, unsure.
My finger shook as I tapped the file.
“A woman brought a boxes of journals she’d found from her adopted grandmother. These were in there. They almost match what you sent me.”
I zoomed in.
A scanned copy of a thickened journal page stared back at me. The symbols weren’t exactly the same as the ones on the doorframe, but they were close.
I shot Hadrian a look. The chair creaked as he leaned in.
“Do you think the woman that brought these in would know anything?”
“I doubt it. Her grandmother long since passed and she was the only surviving grandchild,” she said, with a sad huff.
“I asked, but she didn’t know much else.
Anyway, I thought I’d seen them before, so I started searching through some old folklore forums. Someone had that top symbol, there on the scanned sheet? As their banner.”
“Really?”
I could almost hear her nod. “Yep, so I messaged the guy. He said his family was from Appalachia. Old Appalachia. And his grandparents used to talk about this old man up the street that was tried for blasphemy when they were children, but something happened when they went to retrieve him for Court Day.”
Without thinking, I grabbed Hadrian’s wrist with a gasp. “This must have been—” The dates raced through my mind.
“Mid to late 1800s,” Irene said.
My other hand covered my mouth. I shook Hadrian’s arm. I didn’t realize how close he sat, how near he was, until I heard the flutter of his heart and looked up to those yellow eyes locked on me. That was when Hadrian was born. It had to be related somehow.
“Right,” I said, breathy. I remembered Court Days from researching aesthetic inspirations.
I’d somehow landed on a homestead in North Carolina, and my research had told me that Court Days would take place once or twice a month in older towns.
Most were open to the public, and citizens could line up to give grievances to the judge—or cases were open for public observation.
“Anyway, the man had vanished. But he had these symbols all over his cabin.”
My mouth formed an O. My palm, I noticed, burned with anticipation against Hadrian’s skin. Hadrian had supposedly vanished—just like the man. Had his obituary listed him as having died from natural causes, too?
“The guy who ran the forum was looking up the symbols for a separate disappearance, but he’d found a few translations over the years.” Irene’s words turned a little breathless with excitement. Another buzz. Screenshots of text messages filled my screen. “This is what he said.”
The phone went quiet as she let me read.
ZACH: Hey, sorry it took so long. I think I figured out some of it. Some of the symbols aren’t in the artifacts recovered from the cabin but I got enough for you to maybe fill in the blanks. Looks like a sort of loop lmk if that sounds right to you
I got:
The first symbol is for attach, or bound/tied (maybe something similar)
The next two look like the phrase “to be meaningful” the best I could come up with
Don’t know the next three, they look scratchy tbh they look like drawings, not symbols
Last one means “circle”
An echoing sort of disappointment filled me. It wasn’t specific enough to tell us what it did, and with the missing symbols, there was no telling what it really meant. How were we supposed to untie a knot when we didn’t know how it’d been tied in the first place?
Then, the next text:
ZACH: Don’t know if that helps much but if it’s on a door I would think it’s keeping something in or out. As long as the door is closed you should be good.
I snorted at that last part. Too late for that.
IRENE: What about the seven symbols on the floor in front of the door?
ZACH: Let me check.
ZACH: Not sure, sorry. Looks like “latch.” I know this sounds like a classic haunting, but sentimental items can hold stuff.
Or are you sure there aren’t any remains in the house?
They could be holding anything to it until it’s destroyed.
I’ve only seen these symbols used as a way of channeling things, not creating them.
So whatever is in the house already existed, it wasn’t created from them, if that makes sense.
Basically it was either put there on purpose or accidently brought in.
I gave Hadrian a look. Well, at least I could confidently say that there was, in fact, an entity in the house. And it was a full-grown man with horns.
“He’s saying the symbols are there to contain whatever was inside,” I said.
I couldn’t keep the defeat from leaking into my words.
It might help explain the echoes of memories in the room, but it didn’t explain the things happening outside of Hadrian’s presence.
Or why he was changing, and not at will.
“I’m sorry. I know it’s not much help, but—was there anything that might have been left in the house from before?”
From the 1800s? I doubted it. Still, I thought of the few boxes left in the attic.
“Maybe.” I released Hadrian’s wrist and pinched the bridge of my nose. “I’ll think on it for a bit and see if I can find anything.”
“It’s just—if it’s haunted, there have been reports of energy festering. You know? Like something is left behind with a heavy pull and then other malicious things follow. Maybe that’s what’s in the room.”
My thumb pressed flat between my brows. “Did she ever mention cleansing the house?”
“All the time, but it never did much. But, if there’s something in the house, the cleansing wouldn’t work.”
It made sense. I’d heard stories like that before, too, but it didn’t tell us what we were looking for.
The phone was silent for a few seconds. “I’m sorry, I know it’s not much.”
“It’s okay—I appreciate your help.”
Hadrian stood, quiet as a whisper, from the chair and padded to the open window in the living room. The sun had ducked completely out of sight, taking the oranges and reds with it, leaving us in almost complete darkness.
As Irene and I said our goodbyes, the slightest urge to ask her about Ivan emerged. But I clutched it, squeezed it until it vanished, and ended the call.
“Well,” I sighed, “that wasn’t as helpful as I’d hoped.”
Hadrian kept his profile to me. The lonesome call of a mourning dove answered for him. I couldn’t tell if it was because my hopes had risen too high, which had me at a loss for words, or if it was a soft sense of hurt.
Hurt that we didn’t get any closer, but also because the air was strained, Hadrian’s posture remained rigid, and I had an overwhelming fear that he was disappointed he was here a while longer with me.
“Are you upset?” I whispered.
“No, dearest.” But his words were so, so tight.
My lips flattened. “Promise?”
He rubbed a clawed hand over his jaw. Then he shook his head. Not as an answer, but more to himself.
“Do you remember anything that Bunny might have used? Or kept? Something that maybe you had, of importance, back then before anything happened?”
The air grew heavy. His eyes danced between the floor, the table, and back. I could almost see the curtain pulling down over his expression, the hesitancy.
My lips parted, but a distant pounding on the front door stopped me.
I looked toward the foyer. Emma and Sayer wouldn’t knock, and the only other person I could think of was Ivan. Surely, he wouldn’t be persistent enough to come back and try and persuade me. Then again—
I cursed under my breath. The chair scratched the floor as I stood. I situated my sweatshirt then stalked through the living room.
“I swear on my life, if he came back, I’m going to bury him in the backyard under the shed,” I hissed.
Hadrian’s answering snarl followed me. “Wait—”
I didn’t. I yanked the front door open. “I told you—”
The words shriveled on my lips, floated away on the breeze.
The sick press of dread sunk into my shoulders, like teeth cutting through muscle, straight to the bone—I wanted to turn back, to see if Hadrian was still in the living room, to rewind time just thirty seconds and get him to look out the window for me before I’d unlocked the door.
The porch light haloed her hair like she might have been from the heavens.
“Well?” my mother snapped. “Aren’t you going to let me in?”