Ivy of Our Hearts

Twelve

Someone else was in the house.

That was what I woke telling myself. I sat up, throwing off the covers, much like I did that first morning when I heard Margaret say his name.

I went to the door on the tips of my toes, careful to not wake Margaret who was sprawled out on her belly. I wanted him to think we were still asleep. I pressed my ear against the door and listened for his voice. Soon after, he said a name.

"Manderley," he said. "You've been gone a long time, friend. I thought I'd never see you again."

"Manderley?" I repeated. What an odd name for a person. In my sixteen, nearly seventeen years, I'd never met anyone named Manderley.

But whoever the other person was, they were as silent as a whisper.

"Don't give me that look," Phillip said. He walked across the room, or at least that's what it sounded like. "The girls are in their bed," he said, as if this voiceless person—Manderley—had asked for us.

The way he said "their bed" made a shiver crawl along my spine. I started to scratch it away, but instead, at the sound of the front door opening, pressed myself closer to the door. Where could he be going so early in the morning? There was nothing around here for miles, but of course he would have known a way out of Roving Woods.

Casting a glance at Margaret, I inched the door open. I'd lost enough weight to slip through the crack. As I pulled the door closed, Margaret shifted. I waited for her to call to me. When she didn't, I turned away.

The rain had stopped sometime during the night. A breeze wafted in through the front door, a warm breeze, but I rubbed my arms against it. The room held no sign that someone else had been there. Phillip had slept on the couch, underneath a blanket similar to the one he'd given me, although this one had a pattern stitched all over the red fabric, which at a closer distance, turned out to be tiny white moths, similar to the one Margaret and I had found.

A large bag sat at the bottom of the couch. He'd left it open. I shoved my hand inside and felt around, my cheeks warming as I pulled out a pair of men's underwear. Shoving the underwear back into the bag, I glanced around the room.

Everything was how it had been the night before. I had no clue what I hoped to find, but strange boys like him kept strange things. Didn't they? I felt around underneath the couch's cushions. Nothing. I slipped my hand into his pillowcase. Still nothing.

As the clock on the wall behind the couch struck eight, I stood. He'd be back soon enough, and I didn't want him to catch me going through his things. I moved to go back to the bedroom to wake Margaret, to tell her the time had come for us to leave this place, but his voice, once again, made me reconsider. He hadn't gone far. He hadn't even left the cabin. I went to the front door, where I stood for at least a minute to make sure he wouldn't appear. He didn't, but his voice came from around the side of the cabin.

"I should just get it over with," he said.

And my heart behind my rib-cage raged like a storm. I pressed my hand against my chest, as if that would quiet its wild and ragged beating, as if Phillip would hear it before he ever saw me. I shushed it. "I should just get it over with" could have meant anything. To me it meant what I'd feared all along that his plans weren't to take us home at all.

A breeze swept over the cabin again, pushing my hair away from my face. When it tickled my ears, I thought it had something to tell me. A secret, maybe. One like it had whispered before. A warning of what lay on the other side of these walls, but it swept right past me into the house, creaking the bathroom door. I tucked my hair behind my ears. My only advantage was that I'd heard it from his mouth, as clear as the rain that had fallen.

Phillip had something to hide, and I had to find out what it was because if I didn't, we might end up like the white moth, trapped here until our last breaths.

I couldn't let that happen. I wouldn't.

I slipped out of the cabin, my back pressed against the wall, toes curled around damp grass. Although the other person had been so silent, I couldn't tell whether they had been my own imagination or if Phillip, in all his time spent alone in the woods, had gone mad. I needed to know. I crept sideways until I ran out of wall. I peeked around the bend.

Phillip stood in front of the shack. No one stood beside him, but on his shoulder sat a fat mass of silken black. A bird from what I could tell. Phillip had something in his left hand. I knew because, at one point, he lifted it up to his eyes. It glinted, silver, in the morning sun. And he stood there, so I stayed where I was, spying on him and the feathered thing on his shoulder. I leaned even farther away from the wall.

"What are you doing?" I whispered. "What's behind that door?"

Seconds turned into minutes. I couldn't get any closer, but it wasn't like there'd been much to witness anyway. It wasn't so much Phillip I watched but that bird. I'd never seen one sit so still. Whatever rested behind that door, you'd have thought it wanted to know as much as Phillip. My gaze switched back and forth between the two. Phillip would lift the key up to his eyes, maybe he'd bounce it in his palm, and the bird never moved.

I hadn't forgotten the crow that had followed me into these woods. It couldn't have been a coincidence that now here one was perched on Phillip's shoulder, so comfortably as if it belonged there and not among the trees as was accustomed for a bird.

Could they sense my presence the way you sensed the presence of a ghost? I stood there, almost hidden in the shadows of the cabin, wondering if they knew someone spied on them. I challenged them to turn my way, to see me before I ducked out of sight so fast, they'd think their eyes had fooled them.

Then the bird turned its head, not towards me, but to Phillip's ear. Was I seeing things? Had it opened its mouth and whispered to him? No. It must not have because birds couldn't whisper. Phillip turned, but not like someone would when they'd realized they'd been spied on. He turned, facing the side of the cabin, so I thought maybe he was spying on Margaret through the bedroom window. Yet another reason for me to not like him.

His gaze lingered there for a moment, and I let out a breath. I should have ducked away then. I should have run back into the cabin and into the bedroom so I could wake Margaret. So we could get away. I didn't.

"You won't see me."

And like that he turned to the shack. I couldn't help it. I smiled a little, thinking I'd fooled him. I didn't have time to duck away when he turned again, this time like someone who knew he'd been spied on. In that moment where our eyes met, something happened. Not a jolt, like I'd been hit hard below the ribs. There was no shiver down my spine. I didn't see myself drowning in those inky pools. What I felt was more like understanding. Like he'd taken my hand and held it against his heart, like he'd made me feel it beat.

The bird lifted itself into the air. Its wings were so wide they shielded the sun, casting a monstrous shadow over us. When it spoke, it wasn't a whisper, or anything human ears could understand. It spoke like a crow. I tore my eyes away from Phillip's and disappeared from his view, back into the cabin, back to the bedroom.

His heart had told me the truth. Margaret and I were never going home.