13. Empty Houses
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
EMPTY HOUSES
I stand in the center of what feels like a very familiar space. It is the house that Henry built for me as if Fallow has plucked the memory clean out of my head and made it real. Before he did so, I wouldn’t have been able to imagine the place. It is like I’ve been on a trip just long enough to have forgotten the way home smells, and now rich soil, cedar wood, and coffee mingle together into something so familiar I never paid them any attention before now.
Like the house knows my needs, a pitcher of clean water rests on the table and I pour some into the cup resting beside it. Suspicion over the water battles with desperation until the sandpit of my parched throat can be denied no longer. The water is cool and fresh as it fills my mouth and glides down my burning throat. Even though I have poured glass after glass, the pitcher never runs low. What was a debate to begin drinking becomes a battle to stop as I worry my stomach will ache if I drink too much too fast. Thirst quenched at last, I can better focus on the details around me.
Even the furniture is the same. There are a few strange things about it, though. The pattern on the blankets is skewed. The handles on the pots that hang by the hearth are not the lengths or widths I remember, though they are in their places. The boards beneath my feet are of a different cut than those Henry created, but they are a near likeness.
It is like someone described my home to Fallow and he recreated it. It is a dream of a place, close enough to be convincing to a tired mind. I can almost picture my daughter here. She would be getting ready to peacefully sleep if she were not trapped in a walnut tree somewhere in the rift. Scanning the room, I try to imagine how her footsteps would sound on the floor or how her voice would bounce off the walls. It’s impossible. Even her name eludes me.
At least the place is familiar. It helps ease some of my frustration that I haven’t lost everything about myself yet. “Why does this place exist?”
Fallow’s body drops into nothing again, all the bits that made him up falling to the wood floor with a clatter of debris and dead insects. The single cricket hops away, vanishing beneath a cabinet. Fallow reappears in the hearth where embers bloom with light. Approaching, I put a log on the fire and he comes to life in the flames. In the shifting colors of red, orange, and black, he paints his face with light and shadow.
Glancing around myself again, I take in the details of the house and a profound sense of loss and hopelessness crests over the wall in my mind that I have been trying to build since arriving here. No matter how fast I stack bricks, the grim reality is always too strong a foe.
Tears poke at the back of my eyes and I do not know if I am strong enough to stop them from falling. Only the reminder that I have no idea how to put into words why I am crying comes close to stopping them.
“You are full of questions tonight, Odell.” His voice is wind blowing through high flames mixed with the popping of pine sap sizzling off the wood.
Releasing a long-held sigh, I manage to hold my warring emotions at bay, but only just. This house appearing around me might be the only thing dizzying enough to chase away the terror over what I met in the dark. “Will you answer any of them?”
His ember eyes dart around the room and then soften when they land on me, maybe able to see my internal struggle. “What was the question?”
“Why does this place exist?”
“The day before I collected you at the edge of the woods, I was pacing all night, thinking about you and how I would lure you into the woods when I knew the sight of me would frighten you so. Also, how I had your permission despite having never seen you before, so far as I can remember. This house appeared around me. I don’t need a house and I don’t have anything to put into it. But I like it and keep coming back.”
“It is my house. Well, it is just like my house.”
“Maybe The Thicket knew you were coming. The magic of The Thicket is not all dark and terrifying.”
I will not tell Fallow how I still think it is plenty grim and frightening for The Thicket to be able to conjure my house before my arrival.
“It is a home for bodies. I sometimes come here, but it only makes me feel lonesome.” Fallow draws my attention back to him, but he does not want me to see him. He gives it away by how the fire that makes up his face dips beneath a log and reappears behind it, deeper in the hearth.
I stare at the fire, holding the gaze of the creature inside for a long time, trying to sort out what to say to such a doleful answer. Fallow does not know where he comes from or what his home before he grew lost was like. He could have a wife and children. They could be struggling in the world without Fallow, whoever he once was, in the same way Anne and I have been struggling without Henry.
Anne. My daughter’s name is Anne. I found it again.
“Do you remember anything from before you came to The Thicket?”
His eyes shift about the familiar room. “Sometimes.”
The way the fire hisses the words as if water has been poured onto the burning log makes it clear to me that he does not wish to discuss what little he does remember. I do not blame him for that. I imagine it is painful in a similar way that sitting here, every moment losing more of my reasons to escape The Thicket, is for me. “Do you know how long you have been lost in The Thicket?”
“Do you?”
I have no idea and the realization has left me feeling as though everything is upside down. My memory has become so vague that only horrors stand out. Was I shrunk to the size of a shrew yesterday? Or was it a week ago? For all I know, I have been asleep in the caves beneath The Thicket for years only to wake in the road when it suited the powers of this place. “You’ve been in The Thicket two days.” Fallow’s voice is as calm and even as he can manage, speaking like I am a spooked horse. “Three, if you count the space between where you left Anne.”
His assurance is all I have to go on and it is such a help I choose to believe it. “And you have no idea about yourself?”
Fallow shakes his head, the coals shifting and sparking as he does. “Everyone I am trying to return to could be dust by now. I can only hope it is not the case. I have only been able to keep time since you arrived, as it is easy to keep your time but not my own.”
The implications of such magic run too deep for me to risk contemplating. It would not matter anyway. “Can you make this house appear anywhere?”
“No.” Oftentimes, Fallow keeps his answers clipped short for the difficulty of forming words through whatever means he has to him. The fire must be easy, as he finds more to say. “We just happened to be near it. I can move through the pieces of The Thicket, but this house can’t.”
At the topic returning to the house all around, I am reminded of a story I once heard of a people far away from where I grew up in New York who believe that souls get stuck in dark corners. Someone told me once that there are places in the world where people build their houses in the shape of circles, so no ghosts get stuck inside their homes. Peering into the corners of this house that feels so like mine, I find nothing to fear outright. That there is darkness at all is enough to keep me on edge, regardless of seeing the destroyed women fleeing into the woods today.
I reach for the oil lamp on the table in the same place mine always lives. Something feels wrong in my gut about the color of the glass chimney. Maybe it is a different color than it would be in truth, but I can only guess at such details. Maybe such losses of detail are why the house is like living in a painting I described to someone rather than the reality.
Using a twig sticking out from the fire, I light the wick and set the lamp on the other side of the space so there are fewer shadows where the lost can dwell.
Returning to my seat by the fire, I toss the stick back into the flames and Fallow wobbles before rising anew. “I am accustomed to always having something to do. Here, I am aimless. My mind wanders just as I wander. It never goes anywhere pleasant anymore.”
I suppose that had been true even before The Thicket. My mind has been awash with nightmares since Henry disappeared.
“You are the least aimless person in this forest.” At my raised brow, he goes on. “So long as you remain determined to conquer this place and escape it, The Thicket will keep allowing you to try. You have a mother’s soul. It is harder to break than any other. It strengthens everyone and everything around it. That is why The Keeper wants it so badly. ”
It is as the lady shrew said. It is a powerful thing that no one can take without my consent. The words still feel like lies considering the circumstances in which I have found myself.
Fallow climbs closer to the front of the hearth where I sit with my knees pulled close to my chest. His gaze is not so loving as Henry’s had been, but it holds something. A familiarity and maybe even a desire to keep me safe from catastrophe both real and imagined.
“I do not remember why I became a digger in this place. Different arrivals become different things in the woods of The Thicket. Every digger’s task is the same, though. To bring The Keeper a mother’s soul. I wish it were not my task to bring him yours. It is a soul I do not wish to part with.”
It’s a kind thing to say. Before he led me into that dark cavern to be chased by another monster, I might’ve agreed with him, though I am sure he wouldn’t have led me down there unless he knew I’d get out. He has a vested interest in keeping me alive until I find the right butcher.
For the second time today, I think of the battlefield where Henry once wept over the tattered remains of a uniform of an enemy soldier. It is a terrible thing, to be at odds with people when you know that, at their core, almost everyone wants the same things. We all want to be loved and kept safe. We all want a comfortable place to sleep at night and a full belly. We wish the world to be a more peaceful place.
Fallow and I both want to escape The Thicket and return to our lives as they were before. Like it or not, we are circling like wolves. There is only one prize to be had and we cannot share it .
The tragedy of it brings tears to my eyes, as does the press of what might be inevitability. He need not rush or manipulate me toward a decision. He knows I will be met with The Keeper at some point. Fallow does not want to lead me to slaughter, but in bringing me here, he probably has. I do not want to forsake him to remaining forever lost, but to escape I must.
We are dancing the same waltz.
To distract from how I wish to fix our circumstances and save him, as my desire to save everyone has always been at my core, I shift the subject. “Why did you lead me into that cave? How did you know I would come out of it?”
“There are beings that dwell in the Beneath who possess power enough to rival The Keeper Himself. They want you to get to Him in time.”
“The Beneath?”
“Questions. Questions.” I think he chuckles and my empathy for him wears thin.
“And you will answer none of them?”
His laughter stops and he shifts his head back and forth in the flames. “No matter how I might wish to answer and help you on your path, I need you to fail.”
Right. For a moment I almost forgot. We are still circling one another, though I think he sees me more prey than adversary.
“You should sleep if you can, Odell. It is a safe house, but you cannot hide in it too long or you will be found by the monsters that seek you.” The fire dies back to only embers and Fallow’s face disappears from view beneath the blackened logs.
“Right.” Useless tears threaten me. This is the first place I’ve come to where it might be safe enough to allow them to swallow me whole. Though I would like to needle Fallowlate into the night for information on creatures that might help me, he would never allow it, and I’d be better for the rest. “Thank you, Fallow.”
He does not answer and I climb into the bed. A doll rests beneath the quilt, made of rags. The toy’s button eyes no longer seem so innocent after the day I’ve faced, but I hold the toy close, feeling it belonged to my child, though memory betrays me.
Tears fall from my eyes at last when I press my face into the pillow and it smells of home.