Chapter 41
CASSETTE TAPES
The first three tapes tell the story of a very lonely girl from a very wealthy family who doesn’t like her parents.
At times, she seems to loathe her parents.
She has a volatile relationship with her father and a strained, passive-aggressive relationship with her mother.
She certainly doesn’t want to be anything like her when she is older, trapped in what Lily calls a loveless marriage to a controlling, narcissistic, unfaithful man who cares only about his image.
And possibly, Simon—the one person Lily doesn’t hate.
From what I can glean, Lily is high-spirited, capricious, and perpetually bored.
She presents herself as invulnerable and rebellious and impervious to her father’s constant disapproval.
She tries to maintain the facade, even when it’s just her and her boombox.
But the tough exterior slips enough to reveal a sensitive soul, a girl who feels things more deeply than others, and uses drugs and alcohol to dull that intensity.
She drinks like a fish.
Smokes like a chimney.
And Simon disapproves. Not of the behavior—he drinks and smokes, too—but of the way she goes about engaging in such behavior, like she’s trying to get caught.
Despite this particular source of contention, the two seem to share a strong bond.
There are definite notes of jealousy and the occasional chord of bitterness, but overall, Lily carries an affection for her brother that is endearing.
It is them against the world. Until my mother comes along and changes the dynamic.
According to Lily, Simon is obsessed with Clara and Clara is obsessed with Simon.
Lily doesn’t resent them for it, though.
She seems as fond of my mother as she is of her brother.
Not until the fourth tape, which runs from mid March of 1995 to Lily’s last recording two days before she and her family would vanish, do things go from fascinating to paranormal.
On an unusually warm Sunday in early spring, Lily convinces Simon and my mom to go with her to Talenwah Run, where they might catch a glimpse of the mountain witch who lives in the woods with her grown daughter, Coraline.
“Wait a minute,” Harper interrupts. “Isn’t Coraline…?”
“Mistress Bramble,” I say, hitting the stop button.
Twig, Kate, Naomi, Harper and I are sitting on the carpet in Twig’s basement, gathered in a circle around the Sony Mega Bass, pretending to have a game night.
We even got out Twister in case Mrs. Calloway comes downstairs with more snacks.
She’s very relieved that both her children and her son’s closest friends are safely tucked away in the den, where a serial kidnapper cannot get us.
But we have no interest in games.
Instead, I’m sharing the recordings I’ve curated, my finger hovering over the pause button in case we’re interrupted.
“So,” Harper continues, “the mountain witch would be…?”
“Mistress Bramble’s mom, Enola. Otherwise known as Mother Bramble.” I look around in case anyone else has a question. When nobody speaks, I hit play.
Lily resumes her story.
“We didn’t just catch a glimpse,” she says.
“We straight-up ran into her. She was in the woods with a huge basket hanging over her arm, gathering wild leeks and dandelion greens and some other stuff I didn’t recognize.
I think she called it Chickweed? Anyway, she was wearing a black cloak, which is exactly the kind of thing a witch would wear.
But honestly, she didn’t look that scary.
She was actually really friendly and happy to introduce herself, like we were invited guests instead of trespassers.
At the time, I remember thinking, wow, people have seriously blown these rumors way out of proportion.
“But then she shook my hand and she didn’t let go. She clamped on so tight I could feel her nails digging into my skin, and I swear, her eyes got all dark and creepy. I tried to pull away, but she was weirdly strong for an old woman.
“Then in this super raspy voice, she goes, ‘You are a receiver, my child.’ I told her I don’t play football, which made Simon and Clara laugh.
But this Bramble witch wouldn’t stop. She called me a temporal conduit, whatever that means, and then she pulled my hand up under her chin, closed her eyes, and said, ‘The sight will plague you.’”
Lily takes a breath.
The beat of quiet lets Mother Bramble’s curious proclamation breathe.
“I don’t know,” she continues, in a quieter, more subdued tone. “In hindsight, she was probably messing with me. I mean, we’re definitely not the first teenagers to wander onto her land hoping to see the ‘mountain witch.’ She probably has a whole routine. Still, it was creepy.”
I push stop and look around, gauging everyone’s reactions. Twig is intensely focused. Kate looks disturbed. Naomi, wary. And Harper, completely enthralled.
“What is a temporal conduit?” she asks.
“Temporal relates to time,” Naomi answers. “And a conduit is like a channel or a bridge.”
“It’s a wormhole,” Twig says, picking up the sketchbook. “A temporal conduit connects two different points in the space-time continuum.”
Harper’s brow furrows. “Lily Vandenberg was a wormhole?”
“She could see the future,” I say, hitting the fast-forward button. The next recording I want them to listen to takes place almost two weeks later.
I go a bit too far.
Hit rewind.
Stop.
Play.
And there it is.
Thursday, April sixth.
One week before the curse would strike.
“The weirdest thing happened today during my French lesson. I was super sleepy, and the lesson was mind numbingly dull. I may have nodded off for a second, and while I was dozing, it felt like my brain got electrocuted. I don’t even know how else to describe it.
“There was this blinding flash of light. I saw a lightning bolt, but everything was backwards. Instead of striking down, it was forking up, from this black swirling cloud into white nothingness. I could actually feel it hit me—like a sharp zap shooting through my whole body. I jerked awake and scared the crap out of my tutor. Simon thinks I had a seizure and now I’m all paranoid about epilepsy. ”
I hit stop.
Fast-forward through two more days.
Then push play again.
“That witchy woman did something to my head,” Lily says, her voice noticeably strained. “Or maybe it was the seizure.
“I keep having these visions. Not dreams or nightmares. These are happening while I’m awake, like flashes in my brain that I cannot control.
They just come. Only they’re not flashes.
They’re dark and twisted and I don’t understand them.
So, I just keep drawing them. Like maybe if I can look at them on paper, they’ll start to make sense?
Simon wants to know what’s wrong. He keeps asking what’s bothering me.
He wants to know what I’ve been drawing, but I can’t tell him. I certainly can’t show him.”
I fast-forward some more, to the last recording on the tape.
Lily is spiraling.
Her visions get so bad, she tries to find Mother Bramble again, but Enola isn’t in the woods foraging for herbs. And when Lily pounds on her cabin door, nobody answers.
“I can’t stop thinking about what she said to me. ‘The sight will plague you.’ We thought it was a joke. She was just messing with me. But I don’t think so anymore. I think, somehow, I can actually see the future. And if it’s real, it’s bad. Really, really bad.”
The cassette stops.
The tape has reached its end.
The five of us stare at one another.
Then a knock sounds on the door and Mrs. Calloway peaks her head inside with a smile and a big bowl of Muddy Buddies.
I wake the next morning with a Lily-sized hangover. I listened to the tapes late into the night. I couldn’t stop. As soon as I crawl out of bed, the urge to start again is so strong I have to physically hide the boombox.
I need to cut myself off.
So I dress warm, lace up my shoes, and go for a run.
It’s a good decision.
The cold air is invigorating. It fills my lungs and clears my head and nips at my nose. Dad has cleared several trails for me, a perk of knowing the groundskeeper. All around, icicles glitter on the trees. A cardinal flits from one branch to the next.
I jog toward the back of the estate with every intention of circling around the stables and returning the way I came. But when the paddock comes into view, I stop quite suddenly.
Jude is there, standing in a flattened patch of snow, his dark clothes stark against the white, a quiver strapped between his shoulders. He faces the far fence line where a target has been set. I stand very still and watch as he draws back his bow, aims, and releases.
The string snaps.
The arrow flies through the air and hits the center of the bulls-eye with a dull thunk.
He’s not wearing a coat. It’s been discarded on the ground beside him. His fitted sleeves are tight against his arms. His lean body, taut and controlled as he shoots twice more, hitting the bulls-eye both times. He strides toward the target, and I step behind a tree.
Tonight, we will be together at Isabel’s Christmas Eve soiree.
Dad and I will walk up the front lawn to the Vandenberg manor.
Like every other holiday, neither of us will mention Mom, but both of us will be thinking of her.
And I will spend the evening in Jude’s presence, counting sheep as best I can.
I glance at the stables, where Mom carved initials inside a heart with Simon. DG + DB. Something niggles in the back of my mind, only I can’t pin it down. I look toward the Water Garden, where Lily died. She sketched her own death—claw marks slashing down the paper.
Jude retrieves his arrows, and when he turns around, he stops and peers into the trees, like he knows someone is watching him.
I shift deeper into shadow.
He puts his head down and resumes his place in the clearing.
I run home.
Up in my bedroom, I pull off my beanie and lay several items on my bed—Simon’s journal, Lily’s sketchpads, the shoebox of my mother’s things, and Enoch’s copy of The Great Gatsby, the same novel my mom had been reading when she and Simon first met.
He’d been reading A Picture of Dorian Gray, which is why they called one another Daisy and Dorian.
DG + DB.
Daisy Buchanan.
Dorian Gray.
I sit on my bed and remove the letters from the shoebox. They crinkle as I unfold them. My mother shared more of her heart in these tear-stained words than she ever did in person. She was good at writing letters.
When I was seven, our neighbor’s dog died—a slightly overweight Labrador retriever named Honey, who’d been keeping me company from the other side of our fence for as long as I could remember. I loved that dog. I was heartbroken when she died.
“Maybe you could write Honey a letter,” Mom had suggested one evening, when she caught me crying in bed.
So I did.
I wrote Honey a goodbye.
And when I was finished, we stuck it in the fence.
The niggling thing sticks like spider silk.
I run my hand down the cover of The Great Gatsby. Five years ago, Mom returned to Foggy Hollow. For closure, Mr. Tulane had said. She wanted to say goodbye. And in so doing, she spent a long time alone in the library.