“Or where you came from?” Eric asked.
Iris shook her head, the shaggy, mousy-brown hair that stuck out from under her orange hat falling over her eyes. “My head hurts if I try to remember more.”
She shook her head again. Her whisper was so soft that Vi leaned in close to hear: “All I remember is waking up in a room with Dr. Hildreth standing over me, asking me if I could open my eyes.” Iris’s eyes were glassy with tears. “I’m no one,” she said.
Vi reached out, then pulled her hand back, sitting on it to keep herself from touching Iris. “Everyone is someone,” Vi said. She thought that sounded like a song, like a song Neil Diamond might sing, even. The beginning of a love song, maybe.
Iris nodded.
Vi thought of all the things she couldn’t remember: her mother’s face, her father’s voice, what color eyes her parents had. She didn’t even remember where they had lived. In a little blue house in the country, Gran said, but Vi couldn’t remember.
“We can ask Gran who you are,” Eric said. “She must know something.”
Vi shook her head. “No way. She won’t tell us. You know how she is about people who come from the Inn. Super secretive.”
“There’s gotta be something we can do,” Eric said.
Vi looked at Iris. “We can help you,” Vi said. “We can help figure out who you are, where you came from.”
“How are we gonna do that?” Eric asked.
“Well, we know Iris came here from the Inn, right? There must be records. A file. Something.”
Iris bit her lip. “I don’t know.”
“I do. I know. I know for a fact that if you’re a patient of my grandmother’s, there are notes somewhere about you. Saying where you came from, at least. What happened to you. Some part of your story.”
“Gran takes lots of notes,” Eric agreed.
Iris nodded, looked down at the puppet, limp and still now.
Vi let her hand slip out from under her leg and lightly stroked the bunny’s ears. “We’ll help you,” she said again.
It’d be against every rule Gran had ever laid out. Vi and Eric were not allowed at the Inn. And they were never, ever to touch any of Gran’s papers, notes, or journals. Vi turned to Eric. “And you have to promise not to say a word about any of this to Gran,” she said. “It’s got to be top secret.”
He nodded.
“I mean it, Eric. If you tell Gran, I’ll tell her that it was you who freed Big White Rat.”
“You can’t,” he gasped, his eyes getting glassy with tears.
“I won’t. As long as you keep all of this a secret. I don’t even want you to tell Gran that Iris spoke. Not yet.”
He nodded again, face serious.
“We’ll find out who you are, Iris,” she said. “I promise.”
The bunny puppet moved. Its paws opened and embraced Vi’s hand, holding tight.
Vi closed her eyes, said a silent thank-you to the God of Puppets and the God of Promises, sure her heart might just explode.
The Helping Hand of God: The True Story of the Hillside Inn By Julia Tetreault, Dark Passages Press, 1980
The most tragic piece of this tale is, of course, the children.
According to my interviews, they were quite happy. They loved their grandmother very much and felt loved by her in return. They had a good, if isolated, life there on the hill. They had many pets—guinea pigs, mice, a turtle, a tamed wild rabbit—and spent hours outdoors exploring nature and enjoying the fresh Vermont air. They were homeschooled and excelled in their studies. They had access to Dr. Hildreth’s immense library and were encouraged by her to engage their curious minds on a daily basis.
Frieda Carmichael, the head librarian at the Fayeville Public Library, a tiny stone building in the center of town, remembers the children coming in often. “Their grandmother would give them assignments and they’d come in to research all sorts of things: weather, current events, world history, astronomy. They’d take notes and write reports with footnotes and bibliographies. It was quite impressive—they were doing very advanced work for their ages. And they loved to read! Especially Violet. There was nothing that girl didn’t read. She’d sit for hours devouring books on science, medicine, history, and horror. She loved horror novels—Stephen King, Thomas Tryon, Anne Rice. Whenever I got a new one in, I’d put it aside for her. If I read those, I’d have nightmares for weeks, but that girl ate them up.”
Donny Marsden, owner of the Fayeville General Store, remembers the children too. “Polite kids, just a little strange,” he says. “They didn’t go to school, didn’t seem to have friends. I never saw them with any of the kids in town, anyway. They’d come in, load up on candy and soda, then head back up the hill on their bikes. The boy would buy comic books. And sometimes they’d play the video games I’ve got set up in the corner: Sea Wolf and Night Driver. But they’d never play if other kids were around. They had a funny way of talking too. Always using big words. My wife called them the Little Professors. The girl, one time I remember she said, ‘I hope your day is sublime,’ as she was leaving. What kind of kid talks like that?” He shakes his head. “I kinda worried about them up there on the hill all alone. Surrounded by lunatics is no place to raise kids.”
Irene Marsden, Donny’s wife, chimes in with her own story: “Our nephew Billy was about the age of the Hildreth boy. He saw them on their bikes one time and asked if they wanted to play. The girl shakes her head and says they can’t. ‘We’re not allowed,’ the boy says. ‘Why not?’ Billy asks. ‘Because,’ the girl says, ‘we’re vampires, and if we played with you, we’d have to bite your neck and drink all your blood.’ She bared her teeth and snarled. Poor Billy was spooked. He never asked them to play again.”
Lizzy
August 20, 2019
BILLBOARDS WERE ILLEGAL in Vermont, but quirky hand-painted signs were everywhere. The one greeting visitors to the island looked as if the local elementary school had helped with the design: The backdrop to Welcome to Chickering Island was a bright blue lake with boats and a cheerful smiling sunrise. Above it all soared a giant, disproportionate crane that looked more like a pterodactyl.
I’d pulled out my laptop and done some quick research on Chickering Island when I’d stopped somewhere in Pennsylvania to refuel and get a cup of crappy gas station coffee and a questionable burrito kept warm under a heat lamp. It turned out it wasn’t an island at all, but a peninsula on Crane Lake, the fourth-largest lake in Vermont. And despite the name, there were no cranes this far north in Vermont. The whole thing felt like a lie: not an island, and not a single crane anywhere near the lake. Chickering Island had just over five hundred year-round residents, and the population jumped up to a couple thousand during the summer. There were lots of rental properties. A few farms. A protected wildlife sanctuary. Two campgrounds (at one of which I’d made a reservation for four nights). An artsy downtown full of seasonal shops. Spotty cell reception. It was a place where people vacationed, renting rustic little summer homes along the shoreline of the lake in an attempt to truly get away from it all.
And the perfect place for a monster to hide.
* * *
I HAD TRAVELED all over the country, been to nearly every state and up to Canada and Alaska—even down to Mexico—hunting monsters. But I’d avoided Vermont. Hadn’t been back there since I was a kid. Whenever I got a tip about a strange creature in the Green Mountain State, I pushed it aside, made excuses.
Vermont meant Fayeville and the Hillside Inn.
Nothing, I’d told myself again and again, could make me go anywhere near it ever again.
The most terrifying, unfaceable monster of all dwelled in those hills and mountains: the dark, shadowy form of my own past.
But now here I was.
I rolled down the window and inhaled the air.