Chapter 5
Thora excused herself to the Bird Room early, not because she was sleepy but because she didn’t want to talk to Lee any more
than she absolutely had to, even if she was curious to study his face in this new light. Ugh, especially because she was newly
curious about his face.
She thought about the book she was going to start writing tomorrow. She had to come up with a name for the cabin, but she
might simply call it Juniper to get herself going. Like any good children’s book, the parents would be way offstage. Not dead
but useless. They would be bumbling and foolish against the kids’ wits and talents. Her kids would share similar adventures
to the ones she had, but with higher stakes. Instead of diving to the bottom of the swimming hole to prove it was possible,
her kids would be searching for lost treasure.
The point was to draw on the magic of Juniper and put it on the page. So few people had access to places like this. She wanted to share her world with kids who wanted to run free in the woods, even if it could only be on the pages of a book.
The day’s events had tired her out more than she realized, because she had barely conceived of her four main characters before
she fell asleep with the bedside lamp, whose glass base enclosed a regrettably adorable taxidermied quail, still lit.
A ringing phone jolted her from sleep. She clapped her hand onto the bedside table before realizing her cell phone was powered
off and in a drawer. This was the shrill ringing of an old school landline telephone.
She threw a robe over her pajamas, scuffed her feet into slippers—bare feet were prone to gruesome splinters on these floors—and
dashed out to the kitchen.
Lee was already in the kitchen, holding the dead phone to his ear with a look of terror on his face.
Thora froze, not sure whether to run toward him or run away. This was her house, her phone. Foolish as it might be, she crossed
the kitchen to him and took the phone from his hand.
Holding it to her ear, she heard distant whispers. Chills raced down her spine. She pressed a finger to her other ear in an
effort to hear the faint voice better. It seemed to only get quieter. She looked up at Lee. He shook his head and shrugged.
She carefully mouthed the words “What did they say?” and received another shrug.
She closed her eyes to focus on the sound. It was definitely a human voice, not static on the line. Whatever they were saying
was fast and rhythmic, like a devout Catholic murmuring the rosary. Yet she couldn’t make out a single word. She wasn’t even
sure it was English.
She sat down and listened while Lee paced the floor in front of her.
Eventually he sat. Every time she thought she could catch a word, it wriggled away from her, slippery as an eel.
She’d had dreams like this, where she desperately needed to read a text, but the words were garbled.
But this wasn’t a dream. She knew she could crack this if she kept listening.
The whispers didn’t sound angry or threatening.
Maybe a little imploring? But they were distressingly faint.
She felt herself lulled by their rhythmic quality until Lee finally spoke.
“Thora,” he said firmly.
Successfully coaxed out of her haze, she opened her eyes, which felt fuzzy, and pulled the phone away from her ear.
“It’s been two hours,” he said gently.
That was impossible. She’d only sat down a couple of minutes ago. Someone was trying to communicate with her, and she was
determined to receive the message. She waved him away and returned to the call. So many susurrous syllables, like sledding
down a long, gentle slope.
“Thora,” Lee said again, snapping her out of the vision she was having, of careening through an evergreen forest, blobs of
snow dropping from boughs onto her, biting cold.
He held up his cell phone. “Let me try to record it,” he said.
She reluctantly handed the phone to him, and he held it to his ear again, ready to hit the record button on his phone.
“It stopped,” he said.
She took the phone back. Indeed, the line was completely dead. No whispers, no static. Total silence.
The silence was somehow more frightening.
“It wasn’t literally two hours, was it?” she asked.
He showed her the lock screen of his phone.
She instantly recognized the background image.
It was the view from the dock at Woodhill House, where Mack lived.
The lake in the photo was nestled into the surrounding mountains, which were in full autumnal regalia.
It was a view she’d seen hundreds of times, but she didn’t recall taking Lee there.
The time on the phone read 4:07 a.m.
“I don’t know when the phone rang.”
Lee unlocked his phone to show her a video. “I do. I took this before I answered. In case we needed it for evidence of some
kind.” The time stamp said 1:37 a.m.
“How is that possible?” she asked.
“I don’t know,” Lee said. “You were in some kind of trance. I think I was, too. The sound of a branch snapping outside pulled
me out of it.”
“Holy shit, was there someone out there?”
“No, I went and checked before I talked to you. It was a big old raccoon moseying by, nothing to worry about.”
She wouldn’t worry about a raccoon. But she would certainly worry about whatever that phone call was about. The tiny whispering
at the other end didn’t feel unsettling while she listened, but she was certainly unsettled by the fact that she’d listened
for two hours, thinking only a couple minutes had passed. Unless she could find another explanation, whoever—or whatever—had
made a connection on a dead phone line was not calling from this earthly plane.
“Come on, we should try to get some sleep. I’m going to unplug the phone, obviously,” Lee said.
He pulled the cord out of the wall. The two of them stood by the phone for a moment, perhaps expecting it to ring again of
its own volition. It sat inert. Almost mocking in its utter normality. Just a phone. The most regular-looking phone imaginable.
“You’re not scared?” she asked.
“Weirded out, but not scared.”
That was a perfect encapsulation of what Juniper could be like.
All of its hijinks made you feel weird, but weird and scary were different.
Weird could be fun. The phone call wasn’t fun, but she could put it in the weird bucket instead of the scary one.
She was thankful Lee had helped her make that distinction.
“I’ll call the phone company the next time I’m at Woodhill House. Maybe there’s some kind of service glitch.”
“Yeah,” Lee agreed. “Probably some crossed lines or something. I’m sure there’s a reasonable explanation.”
Doubt was growing. “A reasonable explanation for why I sat on the phone for two hours, not realizing time was passing?”
“You probably fell back asleep,” Lee offered. “Isn’t that possible?”
Thora hoped so. Sleep was weird, too; people did unexpected things in their sleep. The phone call had roused her from a deep
slumber. Maybe it was just a waking dream that she conveniently shared with her ex-husband’s uncomfortably attractive best
friend. She could accept that for now.
“Sleep well,” Lee said sheepishly as he left the kitchen for the Blue Room.
“You, too,” Thora said.
She followed him down the hall, grateful he’d been the one to record the ringing, to investigate the noise outside. She didn’t
doubt her own bravery, but it was comforting that she wasn’t alone.
“Lee?” she asked.
He turned. His brown hair, curly on top and short on the sides and back, had the faintest copper hue, like he’d probably been a redhead as a child.
Now it had some patina of age. The strands catching the light from the hallway shone like a halo around him, still bed-mussed.
He had been sleeping in a soft-looking waffle-knit shirt and plaid flannel pants.
It suddenly struck her as too intimate, standing here together in the dark, like reading the letters between him and George.
It was a little hard to hate someone when their bedhead was this cute.
She was thankful for having the presence of mind to put her big fuzzy robe over her own pajamas, a little matching set of
a camisole and shorts. Now that would be far too intimate a view.
Lee was also wearing slippers, fleece-lined moccasins. He’d come for a visit knowing slippers were a must on these old, rough
floors. His preparedness, his knowledge about life at Juniper, softened her. She hated to admit it, but Lee clearly understood
just how special this place was.
“If you want to stay a couple of days, say your goodbyes to George and Juniper, that’s okay with me. We can stay out of each
other’s way.”
“Really?”
She nodded.
“I think I will, then,” he said, spinning back around and going into the Blue Room.
Thora was expecting her mind to be buzzing when she shut herself back in the Bird Room. All the birds looked at her skeptically,
like her invitation to Lee was unwise, and maybe it was.
But as soon as she turned off the quail lamp and laid her head on the pillow, she dropped back into sleep. She dreamed of
swooshing through snowy woods, icy cold, bracing. Nothing dead, but everything dormant, waiting to return to life.