Chapter One Lee #3
Most of the rooms in the house had yellowed tatami mats that stuck to Lee’s shoes like the fibers of a Venus fly trap. As
he walked down the hallway toward his room, he despised how every step clung to his feet, as if he wasn’t allowed to leave.
He didn’t know why his father had picked this place.
The house sat at the bottom of an incline, almost completely hidden by the veil of sword ferns and wild ginger. From the gate
at the top of the hill, the house looked like a little white jewelry box forgotten in the woods. The exterior walls were somehow
bright white despite the century of disrepair, caged in by dark cypress frames. A narrow porch lined the right side, and the
black tiled roof cast darkness over the yard, leaving the uncut grass in a murky swamp of shadows.
Somehow, despite its state of abandonment, flowers bloomed tall and healthy on all sides of the house.
Marigolds and summer lavender lined the southern yard, where the sun glared brightest. In the shadier western yard, the hues of the flowers deepened into auburn and vermillion.
In the north yard, near the well, white buttercups emerged from the cracked dirt and the trees grew sparsely enough that you could just make out the sea.
And in the front yard, bright pink tulips tangled with the sword ferns.
Hina said that all those flowers were supposed to grow at different times of the year, that it didn’t make sense to have every season all at once, but Lee had seen far stranger things than stubborn flowers.
His father had only gotten as far as furnishing the kitchen, so the rest of the house was mostly empty. When they opened all
the sliding doors because there was no air-conditioning, the wind blew straight through the hollow rooms from front to back,
the whole world passing through the house like it wasn’t there at all.
Lee’s father had assigned him a room at the back of the house with sliding doors that opened to an overgrown clearing and
the edge of a forest. Sunlight sparkled through a small window, casting a golden square on the tatami mats.
When Lee had arrived less than an hour ago, he’d only paused long enough to shove his suitcase in the corner and drop his
backpack on the floor before making coffee for his father. His father thought the rest of his things were in storage for next
semester. His father also thought he’d formally requested a semester off due to stress. His father thought a lot of things
that weren’t true.
It helped that next week was the eight-year anniversary of his mother’s disappearance, and she’d officially been declared
dead last week. That made a good excuse for the stress, one that made sense to his father. It should have been official after
seven years, but because she’d vanished in Cambodia, there was a lot of paperwork that had to be translated and submitted
and processed. Even eight years later, his mother was still helping him out.
They’d never found a body, and for a while, Lee thought that meant she might be alive. After all, the leading theory was that
she’d been knocked out and crammed into a suitcase, then dragged off to a van in the parking lot.
But ever since Lee had started hearing her voice, he knew she had to be gone. After all, she couldn’t haunt Lee if she was still alive.
Let me out, Lee.
Lee rolled his suitcase over to the closet and slid the door open to shove it inside, but came face-to-face with a cement
wall. He pressed his hand to it, let the coolness spread from his palm into his bones. He knocked once against the wall, tried
to ascertain its thickness, but the sound came out muted and an ache bloomed in his knuckles, the grit tearing at his skin,
like the wall was biting back.
He shoved his suitcase into the darkest corner of the room, then dragged his backpack into the square of sunlight and pulled
out his cell phone. Lee was torn between leaving it off forever and getting a burner phone, or just getting a SIM card so
he could use his phone as usual and act innocent.
He gnawed his bottom lip, squinting in the sunlight as he contemplated. It was probably better to act innocent. If the police
actually had enough evidence to come after him, it wasn’t like he had anywhere else to run.
A SIM card, then.
He opened the side door to his room and stepped onto the porch, sliding the door shut to keep the mosquitos out. He hopped
off the porch and into the yard, where his shoes sank into wet soil that clung to him with every step, like it wanted to pull
him under.
Let me out, Lee.
The wind carried the words across the yard, scattered them like sparks of pollen, tickling the bare skin of his neck. Despite
his better judgment, Lee turned around.
From where he stood, the house looked gray rather than white, dimmed by the looming shadow of the forest to the west. The sword ferns clung to the foundation like a bear trap with its teeth clenched around the house.
A thin blade of sunlight tore through the branches, a bright scar across the western wall.
Then the trees shuddered and the sunlight vanished, and Lee realized why he hadn’t been able to look away, why his skin itched
and his feet stayed rooted in the mud.
There was no window on this wall.
Lee was certain there had been a window in his room. He remembered the square of sunlight he’d used to find his phone in the
dark abyss of his backpack. Yet, somehow, there was nothing here but an unbroken wall of wood.
Lee closed his eyes and took a deep breath. That was what his father always told him to do before getting upset. Lee let out
a long, slow exhale that the wind stole from his lips and carried into the dark woods.
When he opened his eyes, the window had appeared, glowing white from reflected sunlight. He blinked a few more times, but
the window remained in the same place, mockingly bright.
I am tired, and stressed, and maybe dehydrated from the heat , Lee thought as he turned and headed away from the house, even though his legs felt stiff.
Not to mention the second Benadryl I took, which probably has me sleepwalking.
He repeated these reasons, determined to fit them into the puzzle of his mind, to pound his fists on top of the pieces until
they all lay flat together.
He walked up the long ribbon of driveway, past his father’s black rental car, which was already gathering pollen, brushing
ferns out of his face as he headed for the front gate. His father had said the town center was a straight shot down the road,
ten minutes away.
He swung the gate open with one hand and began to step through.
“Lee?” called a voice from the house.
Lee turned. There was Hina, standing on the porch.
She squinted in the sunlight and smiled at Lee as the wind shuddered across her linen skirt.
Hina looked timeless, like she could have been twenty-five or forty-five or anything in between.
She’d always looked a bit on edge in New Jersey, but now she fit perfectly into the scenery, another one of the colorful flowers around the house, angled toward the sunlight, sparkling with dew.
“Will you help me make dinner?” Hina said.
Lee looked back at the gate. He needed a SIM card, but he supposed that could wait.
“Sure,” he said, heading back up the lawn, stepping up onto the porch. Hina smiled and opened the door to let him inside.
The gate at the edge of the property swung slowly in the wind until a strong breeze gave it one last push, latching it shut
with a definitive click .