Chapter 11 — The History

Janet Pryor, it turned out, knew more than she had said.She did not say this on the phone — she said, carefully, that she would like to meet in person, which told Nora everything. They met at a coffee shop in a neutral town halfway between Ashford Lane and Bellhaven, and Janet arrived twenty minutes late with the look of someone who had spent those twenty minutes deciding how honest to be.She was honest."The house has a history that predates the Hargroves and the Vances and the Beaumonts," she said, hands around her coffee cup. "It goes back to the original owner, a man named Aldous Marsh, who built the house in 1887 on land that had no prior title and no prior survey. There's a reason for that.""What reason?""The land wasn't purchased. It was — claimed. Marsh was an eccentric, to use the polite word. He had particular beliefs about certain places. Certain ground. He believed there were points in a landscape where the — membrane, he called it — was thinner." Janet delivered this with the tone of someone reciting facts, not endorsing them. "He built the house on one such point intentionally. The attic was designed as a kind of — interface. His word.""An interface.""He believed he could communicate with what was on the other side. He spent twenty years trying." Janet paused. "The records from that period are in the county archive. I looked at them after the Hargroves left. Marsh's journals. They're not — pleasant reading.""What's on the other side?""Marsh didn't know. He had theories. None of them were reassuring." Janet looked at the table. "What I can tell you is that in 1909, Marsh died in the attic. He was seventy-one, and the official cause was heart failure, which it may well have been. What the journals suggest is that he had spent six months trying to close the interface and had been unable to, and the last entry — written two days before his death — reads only: it will not go back. It was never entirely on the other side. It was always partly here."Nora sat with that."Did Marsh open the door?" she asked."He built the door. He designed the attic specifically. He opened what it is to open and then spent twenty years trying to close it and died without succeeding." Janet's voice was very flat. "Every family since has inherited the situation. Most have kept the rule and managed. Two have not.""Three," Nora said. "Three, now."Janet looked at her with an expression that had moved beyond professional composure into something more like guilt. "Your husband—""He came down. He's okay. For now."A silence."I should have told you," Janet said."Yes.""I'm sorry.""I know." Nora picked up her coffee. "I need to know one thing. The others who opened the door — both of them. The Beaumont father, Eleanor's husband. Did they — is there a way to—""Eleanor's husband recovered.""You said two families. The third—""The Beaumont father did not recover." Janet said it carefully. "He lived for another twelve years. But he was — diminished. Substantially. They had to care for him." She paused. "His family said that whatever had been taken, it was the parts of him that were most himself. His — specificity. He was still there. Just — less particular."Nora thought about David at her mother's kitchen table, saying: there was a moment at the top of the stairs. Very close, which one I listened to.She thought about his voice coming down through the dark, flat and strange as water.She thought: two minutes. He was up there two minutes and came back the same.She thought: I called his name.She put down her coffee and looked at Janet Pryor."How do we close it?" she said.