The Gate in the Hedge

The summer I turned thirty, I inherited my great-aunt’s cottage in the hills of western Virginia. It was a ramshackle place, all peeling paint and crooked shutters, set at the end of a dirt road that snaked through a thicket of rhododendrons. I’d never been particularly close to Aunt Elspeth, but she’d left me the property in a letter that arrived a week after her funeral, along with a key that was heavy and cold in my palm. I’d just broken up with my partner of five years and was renting a cramped studio in the city; the cottage promised solitude, which I craved more than anything.

On my first night, after the movers had gone and the silence settled, I stood on the back porch and looked at the overgrown garden. The moon was full and bright, illuminating a crooked stone path that led to a wrought-iron gate nestled in the hedgerow. Rust had eaten most of the scrollwork, but the gate stood perfectly straight, as if it had been hung yesterday. I hadn’t noticed it during the day, hidden as it was. There was something about it that made me uneasy, but I chalked it up to the strange newness of the place. I went inside, ate a can of soup, and fell asleep on a mattress in the living room, the windows open to the hum of cicadas.

That night, I dreamt of a whistle. Not a tuneful whistle, but a single, wavering note, like someone trying to call a dog. It came from the direction of the gate, and in the dream, I walked through wet grass to it, my bare feet squelching in the mud. I reached for the handle, but my hand passed through as if the gate were made of smoke. I woke with a start, my heart hammering. The moon was still high, but the cicadas had stopped. Around me, the cottage was quiet, save for the creak of settling wood. I lay there, listening for the whistle, but I only heard the thump of my own pulse.

The next week, I settled into a routine. I spent my days clearing out the cottage, throwing away decades of dust and musty furniture, and my afternoons reading on the porch. The gate bothered me, though. It was an eyesore, and it bothered me that I couldn’t open it. The latch was frozen with rust, and no amount of oil or force would budge it. I even tried cutting through the hinges with a hacksaw, but the metal was impossibly hard. I began to notice that the hedges around the gate were unnaturally thick and healthy, while the rest of the garden was dying. They were dotted with white flowers, night-blooming jasmine that filled the air with a sweet, cloying scent after dusk.

One evening, I decided to have a bonfire to burn some of the junk I’d pulled out of the attic. I piled up old newspapers and broken chairs and set it ablaze in the fire pit behind the cottage. As the flames licked the sky, I saw her for the first time. She was standing on the other side of the gate, a woman in a pale dress that seemed to glow in the firelight. Her hair was long and dark, and her face was indistinct, like a photograph left in the rain. I froze, my drink halfway to my lips. She raised a hand and waved, slow and deliberate, then turned and walked away, disappearing into the darkness beyond. I told myself it was a neighbor, a trespasser, anything but what it might be. But the next morning, I walked to the gate and saw that the jasmine flowers had all fallen, forming a white ring around the base.

I asked the nearest neighbor, an old man who lived up the hill, about the property behind the hedge. He grew pale and said, ‘That’s the old Harrow land. No one’s lived there for fifty years, not since the fire. The family, they say they never left.’ He made the sign of the cross and spat into the dirt. When I pressed him, he told me that the Harrows had been a prosperous family, but one night in 1952, the house burned to the ground. They never found the bodies, but the land was cursed. ‘Some gates are meant to stay shut, son,’ he said, and refused to speak further.

That night, I couldn’t sleep. The whistle came again, more insistent, and I found myself walking to the gate in a daze. This time, the latch gave way with a soft click, and the gate swung open of its own accord, its hinges groaning. Beyond it, the jasmine-scented darkness seemed to pulse with a heartbeat. I stepped through, my bare feet sinking into grass that was cool and damp, and followed the path that wound into a grove of gnarled oaks. The trees formed a natural archway, and at the end, I saw a clearing where a stone well stood, its mouth ringed with candles that burned with a blue flame. A woman sat on the well’s edge, weaving a garland of white flowers. She looked up at me, and her face was my own.

I gasped and stumbled backward, but my reflection in the well was not my reflection. The woman in the mirror smiled, and my voice said, ‘You’re home.’ I felt a hand on my shoulder, and I turned to see a crowd of people emerging from the trees, all of them wearing the same pale dress, all of them with my face. They closed in, their fingers brushing my arms, and I screamed, but no sound came out. I ran, but the gate was gone. The path twisted and turned, leading me deeper into the grove, past more wells and more candles, until I burst through a wall of thorns and found myself back in my own garden, the gate behind me, shut and still.

I never went through the gate again, but I didn’t leave the cottage. I couldn’t. Every night, the whistle calls, and I stand on the porch, watching the gate, my hands gripping the railing until my knuckles are white. The jasmine has bloomed all over the garden now, and I must keep the windows closed at night to keep out the scent. My neighbor’s dog, which I sometimes walk, refuses to get within ten feet of the gate, whimpering and dragging me back. But the worst part is the dreams, where I step through the gate and see the woman with my face, weaving her garland. She’s always humming, and sometimes, in the quiet of the evening, I catch myself humming along. I know that someday, when the hedge grows too thick and the gate rusts fully shut, she’ll be waiting on the other side, and I won’t have the strength to run.