The Hazel Wood

Alice recalls moving again suddenly when she was 10 and woke to discover that someone had braided and coiled her hair into a crown style while she slept in a trundle next to Ella. When Ella saw Alice’s hair, she immediately packed their things, and they left. Alice was angry to miss the candy promised by her reading teacher that day at school and retaliated by chopping the legs off of Ella’s jeans. Leaving town, Ella told Alice she would not have even liked the candy, and Alice accused her of lying; Ella stopped the car to emphasize that they do not lie to one another. The event compounded Alice’s fear that the bad luck they experienced consistently was her fault: “If one of us was the bad luck magnet, I was” (117).

After Alice gets ready in the daughter’s attached bath, Finch is awake with news. He found a copy of Tales from the Hinterland at a rare book dealer who will sell it to them. In the kitchen, Alice drinks coffee and tries not to think how the book find might be a trap. When she goes to the sink, a blackbird slams itself against the glass. It falls out of sight, leaving behind a note that was in its beak. Alice opens the window to grab the note stuck in the corner. It’s a sheet in an envelope with her name on it. Three titles appear on the page: “The Door That Wasn’t There,” “Hansa the Traveler,” and “The Clockwork Bride.”

Alice and Finch go to see the rare book dealer, who is named William Perks. He tells Alice and Finch that he just received the book that morning from an estate sale by a young man matching the description of the cab driver. Just as he is about to sell them the book, a Polaroid photo falls out. The book dealer is confused and suspicious to see that the photo is of Alice and Finch asleep in the daughter’s bedroom early that same morning. The book dealer refuses to sell them the book, convinced they and the seller are in some kind of “cahoots,” and kicks them out of the shop. Outside, Alice and Finch both regret not grabbing the book and running. Alice sees a man with a camera and a woman with a leashed pig and thinks, “They were the Hinterland. They were all, all the Hinterland” (126), before blacking out with a sudden migraine.

Alice thinks vaguely of the many places she and Ella stayed over the years, the in-between places getting to new destinations, and the books she read in association with certain locations. When she comes around, Finch looks “wonderstruck” and tells her he didn’t see the people she did; Alice worries that her paranoia alone brought on the migraine and passing out. Alice gets the idea to call Audrey, who miraculously picks up. She says she and Harold are on the way to their place in the Hamptons; she is currently in the ladies’ room where they stopped for lunch. In a halting, spastic description, Audrey tells Alice that she went home the day before to find Harold and Ella along with two other people in their apartment bedroom. The man had face tattoos and bare and dirty feet; he stank terribly. The woman had strange eyes, but Audrey doesn’t elaborate further. She tells Alice Ella seemed to know them and that they told Harold something about Ella “made him hate her” (133). Harold wouldn’t reveal what. They took them all in a nice car but let out Harold and Audrey in the Bronx. Ella gave Audrey a message: “Tell Alice to stay the hell away from the Hazel Wood” (134).

Alice relays Audrey’s information to Finch, then tells Finch she has to go to the Hazel Wood. He wants to come and offers a blog by a fan named Ness as help to find the place. Alice thinks Ness is a fan who tried to bully Ella for information “a while back” (136). Her blog tells the longish story of driving to upstate New York with a fellow graduate student named Martin and thinking they had found the Hazel Wood. On the first day, they find no way in, but they determine to return the next day and get onto the ground, “by hook or by crook” (140). The blog entry ends, and there are no others. Alice posts a comment telling Ness she is someone ready to speak about Althea. Ness briefly posts her address in a reply; then it disappears.

Ness will allow only Alice inside her messy, hoarder-like apartment. She appears to be much older than her stated age of 26. When she makes a cup of tea for Alice, Alice rips out and takes a news article about a small town upstate called Birch where three unsolved murders recently took place. Ness tells Alice she and Martin got into the Hazel Wood only because “they let us in” (147), that they killed Martin, that she aged seven years in a night, and that she won’t help Alice find the place despite Ella being kidnapped. Ness speaks a strange nursery rhyme: “Look until the leaves turn red, sew the worlds up with thread. If your journey’s left undone, fear the rising of the sun” (148). Ness claims she only invited Alice over because she thought it might make Ness care about or feel things again: “Half of me is trapped there, trapped in that hell. While the rest of me is here, trapped in this room” (149). Seeing Alice, however, does nothing for Ness, and she ends the conversation by saying that Alice will find the Hazel Wood if the Hinterland wants her to.

Alice updates Finch once she leaves Ness’s apartment. Finch asks if they are still going to try to find the Hazel Wood and tells Alice it’s her decision. Alice is content with his deference to her. Finch rents a car, and they buy snacks and supplies; Alice also gets a change of clothes and throws out her Whitechapel uniform. They begin to drive “up north, five hours away, somewhere near a lake and a tiny town” (154), deriving the plan from Ness’s last entry. They begin to play a car game, Memory Palace, but Finch presses Alice to share personal memories, and she becomes irritated and quits playing. Drifting off, Alice thinks she sees a woman put her mouth to a jogger’s throat on the side of the road. They go back but see nothing. Alice determines they should get to Birch, where the unsolved murders of joggers occurred. Finch briefs her on the premise of “Jenny and the Night Women,” in which, he suggests, the Night Women are somewhat akin to vampires. Alice asks to hear the story of “The Door That Wasn’t There.”