Chapter 23 Isobel
Isobel
The instant they pulled up the drive to the cottage, Isobel knew something was wrong. Dane sucked in a breath and leaned forward. “Holy shit,” he breathed.
All her work in the yard that afternoon had been undone, leaving a mess of flowers, vines, and tree roots upended from the earth. The abandoned patrol car, now entirely smothered in grasping flora, had sunk so deep the front bumper and tires were entrenched in the soil.
Isobel blinked several times, trying to make sense of the scene with only the moonlight to illuminate it. The ocean of greenery almost looked to be swallowing her home in the same way it was devouring the car, wrapping the cottage in a summered maw of greenbrier, moss, and rose vines.
“The porch,” Dane said. “It’s too low.”
Isobel followed his finger, a stone dropping in her belly as she realized he was right. The wooden steps had splintered, and the sloping deck now stood nearly level with the ground.
Her house was sinking.
The ground beneath them seemed to groan, forcing Isobel to grab the dashboard.
Outside, the trees shook, their branches swaying.
A loud ripping sounded from their left, where the old aspen stood.
Only when the dirt cracked and large, fibrous arms rolled out from its base did Isobel realize the ripping sound was roots.
She kicked the car door open.
“Wait!” Dane shouted. But Isobel didn’t wait, stumbling out. Her vision swam, but adrenaline cleared her thoughts to a pinpoint, and she dodged one of the swaying roots, dirt spraying her square in the face. She spat, and the wind blew it back onto her cheek.
Disgusting. She wiped her face and stumbled forward.
“Isobel, stop—” Dane caught up to her and grabbed her by the arm. He looked panicked. “You can’t go in there!”
The dark made everything far more disorienting. The aspen groaned behind Isobel, and she pushed against Dane’s chest, panic collecting inside her. “My dad is inside!”
Dane’s face paled. He looked from her to the cottage. Isobel pushed past him. The door didn’t open at first, as though the shifting ground had thrown the frame out of alignment. Isobel threw her weight against it, her feet slipping over the ruined porch, until at last the door popped free.
She spilled inside and fell against a wall ribbed once more in turkey tail mushrooms. The spongy give of the fruiting bodies under her palm made her shudder, and she righted herself.
The darkness felt thicker here without the moon, the ruptures in the ground seeming to have cut off the house’s electricity.
Where are you, Dad?
Fighting a dizzy spell, Isobel lumbered to the kitchen, which appeared to be empty. Beneath her, the rust-orange tiles had cracked, and dark, loamy earth spilled from the fissures.
This wasn’t like Eva’s magic. Instead of sprouting flowers, there was only soil and the muscle of roots pulling down the bones of their home.
“Dad?” Isobel called out, her voice rough. The alcohol still swimming in her veins made everything about this strange and frightening scene a little harder to sort through. At the sound of a cough, her gaze snapped to the stairs leading up to the little attic.
He was in Eva’s room.
Isobel hurried up the narrow staircase, her foot slipping once on the trick step. Dane caught her before her knee could slam down onto the wood and hoisted her back up just as her father’s silhouette filled the doorframe.
“Dad!” A shock of relief went through her. “What are you doing up here?”
“Eva should’ve come home by now.” Worry was evident in his voice. “Where is she?”
Isobel’s mouth went chalky.
“She’s gone, Jack,” Dane cut in, urging her father back into the cramped little room at the top of the stairs.
“Gone? What—”
The whine of strained glass rang from downstairs, and Isobel looked back just in time to see a kitchen window burst in, spilling soil into the sink.
They were trapped up here.
“No time to explain,” Dane grunted as the house shuddered, the whole stone entity sinking another foot into the ground. “We have to get out, now!” He made straight for the casement window, their only exit still available.
In the dark, Isobel could barely see the swirls of greenery Eva had painted on the wall, to match her view of the gardens outside.
“The lower level is too sunk to get out safely. We’ll have to jump,” Dane said.
“Jack, you first.” He guided her father to the window. Dad looked more than a little disheveled with his hair mussed and his glasses askew.
When the house shook again, Isobel’s vision swam, and the rime of fungi coating the walls seemed to swirl around them. This was the absolute worst time to be a little bit drunk.
Dane gritted his teeth, bracing his weight to help balance her father as the floor began to tilt.
Isobel slid against the wall with a grunt.
Her stomach didn’t like this. A sharp pang of nausea rolled up her gullet, and she grasped the nearby windowsill, retching out onto the lawn.
Her whole body shuddered, and a wave of fresh shame rolled over her.
She hated feeling so out of control.
When she pulled back, Dane touched her elbow in support. His eyes were as firm as his comforting grip. Isobel squinted at his shirtsleeve, where a bit of blood had seeped through from the nick in his arm. She must be seeing things, because in the light of the moon, it looked almost… green.
“Dad. You go first.”
The ground was still a good way down, but Izzy didn’t dare risk waiting any longer. What if the roof collapsed next?
But when they positioned him in front of the glass, a new problem presented itself.
“I don’t fit,” her father gruffed.
The buzz of alarm inside Isobel spun into panic. “You have to!”
The grass split open, torn by the roots as the front of the house lifted.
He gripped a primary branch from his sapling and snapped. His howl of pain chilled her to the bone.
“Dad!”
Her father caught his breath, and then, through gritted teeth, he chose another and snapped that one too.
“Jack, that’s enough.” Dane caught her father’s hands. He looked pale. “Let’s get you down.”
Even with the tree pruned down nearly to its base, it would be a tight fit to get her father through the window.
“I’ll go down first and help catch you both,” Dane said.
They didn’t have time to argue the point.
The house groaned as the once-stable foundation sank a little lower into the too-soft dirt beneath it.
Isobel’s stomach swooped as she caught her father by the elbow.
He braced against the wall with a nod and a grimace.
Dane hopped down, the mound of ruptured loam and topsoil catching his fall. “Jack, you next.”
They puzzle-pieced him through the window in the world’s worst game of Tetris. Dad’s breaths came in short, hard bursts of barely concealed agony.
Isobel’s throat tightened as she steadied him, then let him drop below. Dad landed with a solid thud.
“All right, love. Your turn.”
She had one shaky leg up on the windowsill when her eyes, having adjusted somewhat to the darkness of the room, snagged on a small wooden box on Eva’s bedside table.
The ashes.
How had they gotten there? She hesitated, then swung her leg back over just as the house gave its mightiest groan yet.
“Isobel!”
The cottage’s whole frame shook, knocking Eva’s bookshelf onto the bed. Izzy gasped when a heavy stack of books struck her shoulder, knocking her down. The floorboards splintered with the impact of her body.
She pushed herself to her knees, moving as carefully as she would on thinning ice as she dug through the toppled pile of books, looking for the box. Moments later, Dane reappeared in the window. He took in the scene, then, without a word, scooped her up and bolted back to the window.
“No, wait!” Isobel protested.
“No time,” Dane grunted.
A horrible popping sound came from somewhere deep in the bowels of the house as the two of them clambered over the sill. The ground was only a few feet below now, but Isobel landed wrong on her bruised shoulder and let out a groan.
Dane was over her in an instant, his eyes panicked. “Are you hurt?!”
“Just a bruise,” she gasped.
The sight of his fear melting away was a physical thing. Dane gathered her against him and placed a desperate kiss to her cheek, then her temple. “Don’t do that again.” His voice was ragged.
Isobel’s bottom lip trembled. “I’m sorry.” She hadn’t even gotten the ashes. They were still in there somewhere, trapped beneath the rubble. A sob bubbled up her throat. Dane cupped her cheek and kissed her again, his relief palpable.
Her father had moved closer to the fence that shouldered the Walkers’ land.
He was on his hands and knees, his spine curved in a question mark.
As Isobel approached, she caught the acrid scent of stomach bile.
Dad, breathing heavily, wiped a bit of sick off his chin.
His branches wept a bloody sap into the soil below.
She fell to her knees beside him and took his trembling hand in both of her own.
Behind him, the earth gave an almost animal groan as it swallowed down another foot of her home.
Then it stopped. The settling silence echoed like a bell in the space between Isobel’s ears.
Not even the birds sang, the yard rendered in total silence, as though the land itself was shocked by what it had done.
Isobel’s eyes drifted up to the lonesome chimney and the weathervane rooster sitting crooked on its arrow.
“Isobel.” Her name came out rough as sandpaper, the look in her father’s eyes pleading—no, terrified—as he seized her arm and held her close. “Where is your sister?”