“I heard that noise again last night,” Nora announced that evening after supper.
Peggy froze for a second. Her hand hovered over her plate, as if afraid she would drop it if she got hold of it now. She was aware of Nora staring at her from across the table, with that piercing look that never missed anything. Back at university, Nora’s friends used to joke that she could read minds. Peggy had always wondered,in spite of herself, if there was not some truth in that statement.
“It was only the wind,” Peggy said at last. “It gets windy out here.”
“I was sure there was someone knocking at the front door,” Nora went on, as if she had not heard Peggy speak at all.
Peggy pictured the outside of their house, right on the shore of the lake, with dark woods surrounding it from all sides. Who would come there at night? Their closest neighbour was on the other side of the water, far beyond the forest.
“The wind,” she repeated. “Rattling against the door. It needs fixing, you know. You should tell your brother that, the next time he comes.”
Keep things normal. That was Peggy’s forte. Pretend you did not notice the shadows in the corner of your eye. Act as if you did not know there was something in the forest, waiting for them. Peggy could always do that. Nora was not that good at pretending.
“Maybe the next time I should go check who it is. Maybe they want to be let in.”
Peggy stiffened. Her heart jolted in her chest, as if trying to escape, trying to warn her they were going to a place from which there would be no return. Countless of scenarios played in her head, all the stories she had feared as a child converging to form one unescapable monster. And it waited for them outside the door Nora was thinking of opening.
“It was just the wind,” she repeated stubbornly.
Her eyes met that of the black cat lounging in one of the armchairs. It was not their cat. He had been at the house when they had moved in and had refused to be driven away. At times, Peggy was sure he was the true master of the house. Looking at him now, she could see a glint of mockery in the green eyes. For a moment Peggy felt the cat knew what their nightly noise was – and it wasn’t the wind.
***
It was supposed to be an art experiment. An attempt to make a point about the artist’s condition and isolation, and how that enhances creativity. Nora often got those edgy ideas and the people who knew her usually humoured her. Her publishers were more than ready to accommodate her, because her experiments often came accompanied with pages of well-written poetry that won every prize and sold better than poetry usually did. Peggy became part of it, as Nora insisted on having an illustrator with her during her “creative retreats”. Peggy did not have the heart to tell Nora that she had never needed isolation for the pictures to come to her.
Now Peggy wished she had refused. At first, she had been sure their jaunt into the woods would be fun. A pretence at a life that was not really theirs. Some time away from the cares of the world. The quiet of the forest and the chance to stop and breathe. The fact that Nora would be there for it made it even better. It promised endless discussions about art until late in the evening. Peggy had always enjoyed Nora’s outlook on everything. After all, she had never been one to hold back on her opinions.
But that had been before they had actually got to the cottage they were supposed to stay in. Before Peggy had glanced out the window and saw the shadows of endless rows of trees and the darkness of the lake. Before she realisedthey would be completely alone, isolated from everyone they knew, just them and their thoughts – and the darkness beneath the trees.
And then, the knocking came. Every night, without fail, Peggy woke up with the distinct feeling that someone was outside their house, waiting to be let in.
***
Nora’s poems were full of death.
Peggy read the shaky lines – Nora insisted on hand-written first drafts. They painted a dark picture, blacker than the autumn woods outside. They talked about drowning in a lake, about losing yourself and searching for your lost life, about a spirit that came to a lonely cottage night after night, envious of the world of the living. The critics would take one look at the verses and call them metaphor. An allegory for the modern world, where the meaning of life was lost, and existence was so shallow, you could call it death. That was what the drowning was meant to represent. As for the spirit’s nightly visits – they symbolized modern man’s futile struggle of getting in touch with his soul.
Only it wasn’t that, was it? Nora's words were not just metaphors and symbols this time. They were echoes of her dreams. Proof of the shadows that surrounded the isolated cottage. Besides, Nora had never written about death before. Not until she got to the house in the woods.
Peggy looked at her canvas. There was a lot of darkness in her paintings, too. Far too much. She had once been known as “the last artist of the sun”. She used to be bright and hopeful. But now she felt as if she had lost her brightness. It had been drowned in the lake, just like the character in Nora’s poem.
She glanced at her sketches. There was a doorway, and a shadow standingon the threshold. Dark and menacing, its hand outstretched, ready to knock. Peggy was sure she had not drawn it. She did not remember anything about it. But the shadow was there, and Peggy could not erase it, now.
Furious, she tore at the paper and cast it into the fireplace. She watched it burn, reduced to flakes of ash and red embers. She sighed, feeling her knees weak with relief. It was a blessing that Nora was still asleep. Peggy had been afraid she was going to come down and catch her in the act of burning her sketches – or worse, that she would see the shadow in Peggy’s pictures. She already suspected that Peggy was more aware of their nightly visitor than she was letting on.
“He’s not real,” Peggy would say to Nora sharply, every evening. “It’s just the wind. There are strong winds here. They make a lot of noise.”
He’s real, her thoughts taunted her. He's real and he’s trying to get in. And one of these days, one of you will let him in. One of these days, you’ll find yourselves face to face with him.
Peggy wished she had the guts to tell Nora they should pack up and leave. Return to civilization and give up these silly, clichéd nonsense of the artist’s need for isolation. But she knew she would never say it. The truth was, she did not want to leave the woods. In some way she could not explain, she was actually looking forward to the nightwhen they let their visitor in. A part of her wanted to meet him.
***
It was raining that night. Peggy was sure it was the first time it had rained since their arrival. The black cat had known. Unlike the previous evenings, when he would slink away to some unknown hunt in the woods, he had remained inside all night. Peggy found him in her room, staring at her defiantly from her favourite armchair. She briefly thought about sending him away. Then, she decided that she did not want to be alone that night. Even the black cat’s company would do.
Nora had retired early. She did not want to sleep, though. She claimed that she wanted to write – and would probably work on her poems until the early hours of morning. Peggy refrained from asking if there would be more poems about drowning and forlorn shadows begging to be let in. What else could one write about in that place?
Peggy did not feel like painting. It was strange, but whatever fuelled Nora’s creativity seeped away her own. All her sketches came out wrong. Emotionless and unfinished. They could no longer reach the passion of Nora’s poems. They could no longer bring her thoughts to life. The pictures were only pale attempts that could not become what they were meant to be. Whenever Peggy looked at them, she felt something was missing.
In truth, Peggy knew what that was, even if she did not want to admit it out loud. Ever since that morning, when she had burned her sketches, she had gone out of her way not to paint the shadow looming in the doorway. She was afraid that if she did, if the picture was finished and the shadow was there, it would somehow come to life. It would disentangle itself from the painting and reach out to her. Peggy did not want that. But, without the shadow, the picture had no substance.
Shaking her head, Peggy got ready for sleep. She usually read a chapter or two before bed, but she did not feel like readingthat night. The hypnotic patter of the rain against the roof beckoned to her. It promised her a land without fears, without the strain that haunted the woods, without Nora’s constant reminder that they were not alone. She hesitated before putting out the light, but in the end decided she was being ridiculous. Contrary to what people thought, light did not save you. If something was to happen to you, it would, regardless of you having the light on, or lying in total darkness.
***
Peggy woke up abruptly. It was dark outside. The wind moaned amid the trees. There were footsteps on the staircase.
She jolted up, struggling to breathe. It was not her imagination. Someone was really outside her room. For a moment she stood there, her heart beating wildly, imagining the shadow from her sketches lurking in the corridor. Then the fog of some distant dream moved away from her mind. She remembered she was not alone in the house. If someone was outside her room, it had to be Nora. She was probably going downstairs.
The relief was short lived. There was only one reason for Nora to be out and about in the middle of the night.
Maybe next time I should check who it is. Maybe they want to be let in.
The memory of Nora’s words brought Peggy out of her shock. She sprang up and wrenched her door open. She pounded down the stairs, nearly losing her footing a few times. Nora was standing in front of the doorway. Peggy could not see the expression on her face, but her back was rigid. She wondered if Nora was not actually sleepwalking. Whatever it was, her hand was on the doorknob. And from outside there came a faint continuous rap.
“Nora!”
Peggy's warning came too late. Nora had already opened the door. Just as she did, the moon broke free of the clouds, sending one lonely beam towards the ground.
He looked like something from another world. He looked like a creature of the forest, a spirit who had crawled its way from the lake, smelling of water plants and something else, something dark and menacing. Darkness cloaked him, but his face was pale in the moonlight. His eyes were black, and in them Peggy could glimpse years of wilderness.
The image was brief. It vanished once the moon was hidden again by clouds. Peggy blinked and wondered why she was trembling so hard. There was no one in the doorway. She cleared her throat.
“Nora,” she said, more composed this time. “What are you doing? Close the door. It's cold outside.”
Nora closed the door slowly, as if she was still under the spell of some dream. She turned around. Peggy noticed that her face was pale, but her eyes were overly bright. She hoped Nora was not getting sick.
“I thought I heard him,” Nora whispered. “I was sure he was here. But there was no one outside.”
Peggy walked to her and grabbed her hand, ready to stir her back into the house.
“No,” she confirmed. “There never was.”
She tried to ignore the disappointment that came with those words.
***
In the next few days, Peggy would discover that they had actuallybeen wrong. It was through little things at first. After that night when Nora had finally opened the door, the black cat would leave every evening. Peggy had no idea where he was going, only that he was suddenly reluctant to spend the hours of darkness inside the house. Even when he came back in the morning, the beast appeared skittish and cranky, as if there was something out of place. Peggy took little notice of him. She was not that well acquainted with cats. She had no idea what they wanted.
The next thing that changed were Nora’s poems. They were no longer about death, but they had not gotten back their light, either. Instead, they were full of sadness, of the idea of being trapped in a world that was not your own, of a cloying blackness that took your breath away.
“Are you sure you’re alright?” Peggy asked during the evening reading. “This isn’t like you. All this darkness. Where does it come from?”
Nora shrugged.
“From outside. From the forest. From the lake. It's all dark, Peggy. All frightening. There are shadows around every corner. This place has opened my eyes to them.”
Peggy said no more about the poems. She listened to them and tried to work on illustrations for them. She did not try to think of how she was being covered in Nora’s darkness.
There were other things as well. Although the nightly noises outside the door had stopped, Peggy would often wake up certain someone was moving around the house. When she confronted Nora, she acted as if she had no idea what Peggy was talking about. Peggy wondered if it wasn’t payback for the frequent times she had denied their nightly visitor.
It all came to a head one night.
***
It was three o’clock - of course it was. There was no better time for the world to change. That was usually the hour when everything stood tense and still, waiting for the blow that would have the darkness outside become eternal. Nothing was certain at three o’clock. Not the world outside. Not the moonbeams caressing the window. Not even your own existence. (Years later, Peggy would put together a string of paintings in an exhibition entitled simply At three. They would bring her more success than any of her previous works. She would never be able to bear looking at them too long).
When Peggy woke up, she had no idea where she was. The bed felt unfamiliar, hard and unyielding, like a slab of marble. The room was too small. The window was not where it should have been, and she had no idea where the door was. Thoughts chased each other in her mind, one more frantic than the other. She had been kidnapped. Taken to another world. Ten thousand years had passed since she had fallen asleep, and now she had woken in a foreign world, with everyone she knew and loved gone.
Gradually, reality came to her. She remembered who she was, and what she was doing there. The cabin, Nora, their project, she remembered it all. And the knocking. She remembered the knocking, even though she had not heard it for almost a week – ever since Nora had opened the door.
And then it dawned on her. There was a reason, she knew now, why the knocking had stopped after the night Nora had opened the door. There was no more need for knocking. Because whoever had been out in the forest had been let in.
The little troubling things of the past week began to have an explanation. The cat that no longer wanted to spend the night with them. The sounds that seemed to have no source. Nora's darkness. Peggy's own until then unacknowledged restlessness. They all pointed to one thing. She and Nora were no longer alone in the cottage.
Peggy sprang up. She did not know what she wanted to do. Her instincts were screaming at her to get out of the house. To run and not look back, abandon Nora there and find her way back to civilization. To reach a place as far from the cottage, and the lake, and the forests that surrounded her. To reclaim herself and the world she used to live in and leave that place of shadows behind.
At the same time, there was a strange reluctance in her. An attraction to the very shadows that frightened her. She had felt it ever since shegot there, ever since she heard that knocking. She too had wanted to open the door. She was probably just as steeped in darkness as Nora herself was. She did not want to go. She wanted to stay there. She wanted to give herself fully to that presence, that stranger from the forest, that was now prowling the house unseen.
Peggy shivered. She was torn between the two urges. Two separate forces had taken control of her mind, pulling her this way and that. She fought her way out of their influence, trying to come up with a decision that was entirely hers. She tried to remember who she was, that, unlike Nora, she had never longed for shadows. Unlike Nora, she had been content with what she had in the tangible world.
As she stood there, frozen in that terrible moment of indecision, her door began to open. Her shoulders slumped. It did not matter now what she wanted to do. The choice had been taken from her.
***
Peggy sat there in the bed of that foreign room watching as the door moved slowly. She knew the next few moments would change her. There would be nothing left of who she used to be when the door was finally opened. Her doom awaited on the other side – the shadow on the edge of her painting, coming to take revenge on the many times Peggy had burned it. The many times she had denied it.
There was no stranger on the threshold. No lonely spirit of the deep lake lost somehow in the house. No image veiled in shadows and the sorrow of the ancient woods. There was only Nora, and for an instant Peggy was relieved. Then, she caught a better look at Nora’s face, and her heart faltered.
Nora was wearing black. Nora never wore black. She had always insisted it was bad luck. Once, she confessed to Peggy that a fortune-teller had told her the day she wore black would be the day she died. She had always remembered those words, and even though she had not really believed them, she had always avoided black clothes. Peggy had no idea where she had gotten the long dress and dark cape. They were unlike Nora. At the same time, they suited the changes Peggy had seen in Nora ever since they moved into the cottage.
“Nora...” she began hesitantly.
“I was wondering if you’d care to join us.”
The words were calm and polite. They sent a shiver down Peggy’s back.
“What do you mean join you? Join you where? It's dark outside, Nora. And what’s this about us? There's only you here.”
Nora smiled, glancing behind her.
“Is there? Do you really think so? Or don’t you know?”
You know he’s there too, a voice whispered in Peggy’s eyes. You know she let him in that night.
If Peggy paid attention, she could sense that third presence. It was always there, always teasing on the edges of their minds. Peggy strove to keep him out. She did not want to become like Nora.
“It’s late, Nora,” Peggy said gently. “It’s dark outside. We'll take all the strolls you want in the morning.”
Nora lowered her head. For an instant, Peggy was ready to reach out to her. She looked so sad. Then she remembered who else was with her.
“It’s too bright in the morning,” Nora said. “And the lake doesn’t look so deep now.”
Peggy stared at Nora in horror.
“What are you going to do?” she gasped.
Why couldn’t she move? Why couldn’t she spring up and grab Nora, shake her by the shoulders until she drew her away from whatever spell consumed her? Why could she only watch, paralysed to interfere with the outcome of the dreadful story unfolding before her eyes?
“Don’t worry, Peggy,” Nora said softly. “We are not going to do anything terrible. We’re just going to cross the lake – move deeper into the forest.”
Peggy shook her head.
“You don’t have a boat.”
Nora smiled.
“We won’t need one.”
She raised her hand. Peggy recoiled at the gesture. Nora's face fell. She let her hand drop.
“You won’t come with me, then.”
Peggy hesitated. Something had called to her just as much as it had called to Nora. She longed to cross the lake without a boat, to find herself in the depths of the dark forest, where the ancients still dwelt and where the upside-down rules of a twisted fairy world would change her completely. She yearned to be like Nora, ready to give up everything she was, ready to turn her back on her life as Peggy, and begin a different life, one that would go on and on, as long as there was night on earth.
But Peggy was not Nora. And, as much as she desired the forests and the shadows, she feared them just as hard.
“Won’t you stay?” she asked instead. “Please stay, Nora.”
But she had known, hadn’t she? Ever since she saw Nora dressed in black, she had known Nora would be lost to the world of light forever.
“No,” Nora said flatly. “I don’t think I’ll stay. I just came to say goodbye.”
An owl shrieked outside. Peggy flinched and turned to look at the darkened window. There was nothing there, no red eyes watching her. When she turned away, Nora was no longer there, and her door was shut. But Peggy had not heard it close. She had not heard Nora leave.
***
The next morning, the first thing Peggy noticed was the emptiness. She knew she was the only one in the cottage. They were all gone – Nora, the shadow she had let in, even the black cat. They had left the house for good. Peggy would never see them again.
No one knew what hadhappened to Nora. People speculated, of course, and Peggy was quick to shut down those speculations. She did not want Nora to be remembered as yet another tragic artist who could not face the world any longer. Besides, Peggy was convinced Nora had not thrown herself in the lake. She had crossed it and reached the other side, where the forests were darker and the trees denser. That was where Nora was right now. Peggy was convinced that she would find her there if she went looking.
But she never did. Instead, she left the cottage and the woods, and returned to her apartment and her paintings. She had Nora’s last poems with her and did her best to get them published – she did not call it a posthumous collection, though, and never allowed anyone else to use that word, either.
“Then where is she?” people would ask. “If she is not dead, where is she?”
Somewhere she always longed for. Under the dark trees where there is no pretence. Where the world is wilder. She’s dancing with the wood spirits now. She’s become the shadow in the corner of our dreams, beckoning us to join her. She’s the knock we hear at our door every night.
Peggy could have told them that. She never did, though. Just as she never told anyone that every night, she would hear a knock at her door. She knew who it was. She longed to run to the door and open it wide. She always thought, Tonight, I will. Tonight, I’ll let them in.
END
First published in Dark Fire Fiction, 2020.
Copyright Simina Lungu 2023