It has a load, that phrase, a kind of joke inherent in its syllables, evoking crazy people who erroneously predict the apocalypse, who have gone mad because they shed all the things we hold to. But there are all kind of madness. And my father could be forgiven for thinking that the modern world was failing.
“He called himself a ‘collapsist.’”
“A collapsist?”
“He wasn’t preparing for some distant event. He believed the world was already in decline. He said that he joined the army as an idealist and returned as a realist. War, famine, disaster, pestilence—the four horsemen of the apocalypse. According to my father, they’d already arrived.”
Bailey nods, rubs at his chin. “That must have been frightening for a kid, to be waiting for the end of the world.”
“Lots of things are frightening when you’re a kid. My dad—he was a scary guy when he drank. I think I was more afraid of him than I was of the end of the world.”
“So how did you cope?”
I tell him about “Robin,” the girl who came to me in the woods and taught me everything I needed to survive, to become the daughter my father wanted me to be. What was she? An imaginary friend, I suppose. Dr. Cooper says that in the case of childhood trauma, it’s not uncommon for a young person to create a presence, something or someone who comforts and soothes, who eases loneliness, who protects. As we grow older, stronger, we need that presence less and it fades.
“But really it was just the books in the study,” I admit. “And him, my father. He taught me a lot about survival. And I was a decent student. I learned the things he wanted me to know, how to be in on that land. I even wanted to learn it.”
“And what about your mother?”
I close my eyes and conjure her. Her golden hair and kind smile, her indulgence of my imaginary friend who she knew was real to me and an important feature of my adjustment to our new life, her laughter, her warmth.
“She loved him. She thought that the house, nature, the retreat from the madness of modern life would heal him. That he would become again the man she used to love.”
“And did it heal him?”
“It might have,” I say, though I’m not sure I believe it. “If not for the raid.”
“There were other families up there, right?” says Bailey. “Do you remember any of them?”
“Not really,” I say. “In the article, I recognized the names—Stone, Wilson. But some of those folks had been up there all their lives. Many of them wouldn’t have reported the birth of their children at all, or the deaths in the family.”
“I’m getting that,” he says. “This place. It keeps its secrets, doesn’t it?”
I find myself smiling. It does.
“Did you go to The Hollows Historical Society?” I ask.
“Every time I go there, the door is locked. The woman who apparently runs the show there, Joy, she hasn’t returned my calls.”
That makes sense. Bailey Kirk is an outsider, an interloper. He’s been snooping around, and the folks up here have noticed. She won’t open the doors to the past for him unless she’s sure of his intentions. That those intentions are in line with what The Hollows wants.
“That was going to be my next stop. I know Joy,” I say.
She was Miss Lovely’s oldest friend. She came to the house every Thursday afternoon for coffee and cake, always had a story about this place, a memory, an anecdote. One of the few people who knew my secret, she was always talking about the property that my father’s family owned. Take care of it. You don’t want to go back there now. But someday you will. It belongs to you and you to it.
Honestly, I thought Joy’s obsession with this town and its history was a bit much. And I had no plans to go back to my father’s house, not ever. But it turns out she was right; I do have a sense of ownership. And I haven’t been able to let it go.
Bailey gets up from his perch and walks to the window, looks outside. The fading light washes his face. Maybe that’s a PI thing, always wanting to know who’s coming and going. I want to ask him: Were you always a curious kid, the kind who asks too many questions? I like to know what makes people tick. And Bailey, aloof, cool, is a bit of a mystery to me.
“What do you think you’ll find at The Hollows Historical Society that you don’t already know?” he asks. “I mean you were there. Who knows better than you? And what does this have to do with the ghost?”
“The ghost?”