The car came to a halt and as she untangled herself from her bike Lauren noticed it was a Smiths Hollow police car.
Please don’t let it be Officer Hendricks, she thought, but of course the voice that had called her through the window had been his and a moment later he was leaning over her, his eyes concerned, offering his hand to help her up.
“I’m so sorry, Lauren, I thought you realized I was there. I just wanted to say hello and see how you were doing.”
I did realize you were there, but I was being stupid. And he usually did say hello when he saw her, even if he had to drive out of his way—as he’d clearly done now. She said, “It’s okay, I was thinking about something else.”
She didn’t want to take his hand even though part of her had always wanted this very thing, but in her imagination when this happened she would not be sweaty and embarrassed. Then she decided it was better just to get it over with. His hand was big—he was a very tall man—and it swallowed up her much smaller one. He lifted her with ease.
“Where are you off to? Your grandmother’s house?”
Lauren lifted up her right arm to examine the underside. There was a scrape there, not serious enough to warrant a Band-Aid, but it looked raw and angry.
“I have a first-aid kit in the car,” Officer Hendricks said. “We should clean that off.”
“Oh. Um. I think it’s fine,” Lauren said. Normally she would want to stay and talk to him forever, but she didn’t want to linger while she was in this state. If she was clean and wearing nice clothes that would be different.
Not that he would look at you anyway, you stupid dork. You’re almost fifteen but he’s like twenty-three or something. He’s definitely too old for you.
“The least I can do is help you clean up after causing your accident,” he said, and smiled in that way he had, that way that made his eyes crinkle at the corners.
“Okay,” Lauren said. Gosh, your conversation is just scintillating. You’re really going to make him think you’re mature for your age.
She left the bike where it was and followed Officer Hendricks to the passenger side of the car. She wondered where his partner was—he was almost always with Officer Pantaleo.
He took the first-aid kit out of the glove box while she hovered nervously behind him. First she’d run into Jake Hanson and now this happened. She felt off-balance, not like herself.
Get it together, Lauren. Just talk to him like a normal person.
“Let me see that arm,” he said, opening the kit and placing it on the roof of the car.
He pulled out a small bottle of iodine and a gauze pad wrapped in paper. Lauren held up her arm obediently as he tore open the gauze pad and poured some iodine on it.
“This will sting,” he warned.
“I know,” she said, wincing as he gently swabbed the scrape.
“So you’re going to your grandmother’s house?” he asked.
She realized she’d never answered him earlier. “Yeah, just for a bit. Then I’m going to meet Miranda.”
This was a lie. She had no intention of going to meet Miranda afterward, but she didn’t want Officer Hendricks to think she was some lame kid who spent her summer afternoons hanging out with her grandma.
Even if Nana is a really cool grandma, she thought with a pang of guilt.
“And what are you two girls up to today? Nothing illegal, I hope?” he asked with a twinkle in his eye.
“No, we’re just hanging out in the woods,” Lauren said, flushing again. She wouldn’t even know where to begin to do something illegal. She knew he was just teasing her, but she didn’t have the wherewithal at the moment to play it cool, to banter back.
“The two of you like to hang out at that big tree, don’t you? The one that looks like it was struck by lightning?” he asked.
“Yeah, we always have,” she said. “Ever since we were little.”
He pushed the used gauze back inside the torn packet and then put the trash inside an empty coffee cup in the car. Lauren stood there for a moment, watching him put away the first-aid kit.
“Can I give you a ride the rest of the way?” he offered, turning back to her. “We can put your bike in the trunk.”
The thought of sitting in an enclosed car with Officer Hendricks while he smiled at her and made conversation was too much. She raised her hands in a warding-off gesture, backing away.
“Oh, no, no, that’s totally fine. It’s not that much farther and I don’t want you to go out of your way.”
“It’s no trouble,” he said.
“No, it’s fine.” Jesus, Lauren, how many times are you going to say “fine”? “Thank you. Thanks for cleaning my arm.”
“If you’re sure?”
“I am,” she said, giving him a little wave. She hoped that the wave looked confident and friendly.
“See you around, then, Lauren,” Officer Hendricks said. He got in his car, made a U-turn, and headed down the hill.
As soon as he was out of sight she felt her shoulders slump. The only way that could have gone any worse was if she’d puked in front of him.
Well, you did that yesterday in front of Jake Hanson and suddenly he seems to think you’re the most interesting person in the world.
She shook her head. Jake had only wanted to see if she was okay from yesterday. And Officer Hendricks had only wanted to see how she was doing, the way he always did ever since her dad had died.
Lauren dusted the gravel off her legs and picked up her bike. It was going to be a huge pain to start climbing the hill from here, with no momentum to help. She sighed, swung her leg over the bike, and dug into the pedals again.
Lauren thought her grandmother’s home looked like a crumbling castle, a place full of secrets and wonder. The windows were large, like staring eyes, and there was a wraparound porch and even a turret. The guest bedroom was in that little tower, and Lauren always felt the vast permutations of possibility when she stayed there, like the wardrobe might open up and lead her to another world, or maybe a prince would stand outside asking her to let down her hair.
Other kids—including Miranda—thought that it looked like a haunted house. Lauren knew that some of them would dare others to run up and touch the porch, or would climb the hill with the intention of egging the windows on Halloween.
Nana didn’t mind the kids looking to prove their courage by touching the building, but every Halloween night Nana sat on her porch all night with a hunting rifle leaning next to her and stared down anyone foolish enough to approach her home with ill intent. She also had a bucket of candy for anyone with enough guts to trick-or-treat from her. Since so few children were brave enough (and so few parents wanted to make the climb) they were usually richly rewarded in the form of handfuls of candy instead of one measly piece.
Nana was waiting for Lauren on the porch, sitting in her rocker reading an Isabel Allende novel. She wore a pair of faded blue jeans and a loose-fitting plaid blouse. Her long white hair was bound in a single braid at the back of her head.
A can of Tab was open on the small wooden table next to her, and Lauren knew she’d probably had a half-dozen cans already. She didn’t think a seventy-year-old woman should be drinking so much caffeine and chemicals, but Nana—her real name was Joanne Gehlinger, but she always went by Jo—did what she wanted no matter what other people said.
Lauren leaned her bike up against the porch and went up the stairs to kiss her grandmother’s cheek. Nana and Lauren were about the same height—just a bit over five feet—but Lauren had the advantage over her grandmother at the moment because she was wearing sneakers and Nana was barefoot.
“Hi, Nana,” she said.
“You probably thought my call was strange,” Nana said, collecting her book and pop and pulling open the screen door.
“A little,” Lauren said.
Inside it was cool a
nd dark, because Nana had the shades on the windows pulled down. She didn’t have any air conditioners in the house (“the electricity would go haywire if I put them in, I bet”), but keeping the sun out of the rooms during the long summer days went a long way toward keeping the house comfortable.
“Do you want a Yoo-hoo?” Nana asked, and Lauren followed her into the kitchen.
Lauren would rather have a cold Coke, but she knew Nana didn’t have any, only cases of diet soda. “Sure.”
She could have asked what Nana had called about, but Nana would tell her in her own time and her own way. Lauren was always willing to let her do that, though her mother would have demanded to know as soon as she arrived.
Once Lauren had her drink they went into the living room. Nana’s furniture wasn’t preserved in plastic or covered in tapestried roses like so many of the older people Lauren knew. She had a comfortable rust-colored corduroy couch and two big blue armchairs and everywhere there were hand-crocheted blankets and pillows that invited you to curl up and stay awhile.
Nana’s bookshelves had actual books on them, not knickknacks, and her walls had real paintings instead of prints and the tables had sculptures. The paintings and sculptures were purchases from art galleries that Nana visited on monthly trips into Chicago.
Lauren considered pretty much everything about Nana to be awesome, and she hoped that when she was old she could be just like her. In the meantime she wished she could come and live with her grandmother instead of staying at her own house.
Although that would mean abandoning David.
Well, things weren’t as bad for David, were they? Mom doted on David, never yelled at him about anything. If Lauren left, then Mom would have what she wanted—a perfect child—and Lauren would have what she wanted—a home where she wasn’t criticized just for being alive.
Lauren sipped her drink and waited for Nana. Her grandmother seemed uncharacteristically hesitant, especially since she’d basically demanded Lauren drop all her afternoon plans to come over.
Not that my plans were so great, Lauren thought. More listening to Miranda about some guy.
Maybe I should just tell Miranda . . .
Tell Miranda what? That they shouldn’t be friends anymore? Or if they were going to stay friends, then Lauren wanted to have an actual say in their plans?
It hadn’t always been like this. When they were small they were two peas in a pod, and whatever one wanted the other wanted, too. They’d always been in perfect sync until last year.
Then Miranda had gotten her period and gotten breasts in quick succession. After that she only cared about makeup and clothes and boys.
Lauren knew she might care about those things some time in the future, too. It was part of growing up, becoming a woman, all of that. But Lauren wasn’t ready to grow up yet, and Miranda was in such a hurry.
“Lauren, do you know the story about the witches?” Nana asked. It was typical Nana, no small talk to ease you into the conversation, no segue from something innocuous.
“You mean the witches who were supposed to live here?” Lauren asked.
“Yes.”
Lauren shrugged. “Just that there were three witches and one of them fell in love and because of that she died. She was the youngest one and after that there were no more witches.”
“Do you think they were real witches?” Nana asked.
“There’s no such thing as real witches,” Lauren said, though Nana’s piercing stare gave her tone much less conviction than it should have had.
“Yes, there are,” Nana said. “And they have real power.”
“What, like magic?” Lauren said with a little laugh. “They do spells and fly around on broomsticks?”
Nana ignored this. “I want to tell you a story, Lauren. A real story, a story that my mother told to me. I want you to listen to me, really listen. You don’t have to believe, although things will be better for you if do. But listen.”
“Okay, Nana,” Lauren said, struck by the absolute solemnity of her grandmother’s face. Lauren didn’t know what any of this was about or why Nana suddenly seemed so serious. “I’ll listen.”
There was a hill just off the center of town, a lonely and inexplicable hill: a hill that should not be, for it blighted an otherwise perfectly flat and reasonable landscape.
The hill—and the house that sat upon it—watched over the people and buildings below, though it was the kind of gaze that left the back of one’s neck prickly and uncomfortable.
Without this hill it was just an ordinary Midwestern burg, a town that appeared almost magically when coal was discovered nearby and the rich barons from Chicago needed men to dig it up.
But the vein ran dry faster than in other parts of Illinois, and many of the men who came to dig went elsewhere to do their work, and the town became nothing but a dirt strip in between empty storefronts. The few people that remained spoke hopefully of one of those barons bringing a factory for folks to work in, and perhaps bringing some folks to fill up the empty space, while he was at it.
On the western side of town, the land was split open, ugly seams dug into the prairie. On the eastern side, a manic tangle of trees bumped insistently up against the geographical edge of civilization. If one walked through these woods, one might find oneself starting at the way the shadows seemed to breathe and curl around a neck, an ear, a wrist. The trees there kept the same time as the hill.
There was one particular tree, too—a lightning-struck tree that arced up toward the sky that carved it, impossibly huge next to its neighbors. A tree with branches that curled like sharp claws looking for skin to scrape.
All the townsfolk (when there had been townsfolk to speak of) had avoided that tree, for it wasn’t right that a tree seemed to whisper and stare and reach out when a person passed by.
And all the while, the hill and the house upon it watched.
And all the while, the tree waited for the signal from the hill.
Atop this hill lived three women, and of course these women were witches. “Of course” because what else could they be, as they were three women living together without men’s company—always a suspicious action. Men must have lived there once, though no one could remember their names, for these women were grandmother and mother and daughter.
There were always a grandmother and mother and daughter, no matter how much time passed, always three but not always the same three. The daughter never seemed to be a child, though of course she must have been once.
The daughter was a spinster, a word so sharp it bleeds when touched. Spinsters are not bachelors, carefree and elegant. Spinsters are thin at the edges, full of dust and longing.
Or so the townspeople thought, even though somehow there was always another mother, and another daughter.
Spinsters are witches, and old women are witches, and single women are witches because they simply must be. Women without men must be up to no good.
So the house on the hill was the home of witches, from the beginning and until the end. There were always witches there.
But we do not believe such things. We do not really believe in witches, believe in the eye of newt nor the bubbling cauldron. We frighten each other with the tales of women on the hill, spinning dark magic, but in our hearts we know they are only ancient husks rustling in mothballs. They could not really bring harm to us.
We do not believe such things.
Until they do bring harm.
Until we wrong them, and they curse us.
* * *
* * *
He was a princeling, a dark-eyed son of the town savior—the man with money who brought the longed-for industry to a place choking on scraps of coal dust. When he walked about town all the young girls sighed (and some women who should know better, too—he was that sort of man).
His father had built a factory, a factory where people would put
meat shipped from Chicago into cans. Those cans would reboard the train and travel all over the country, and though the work was hard and sometimes dangerous, everyone was grateful for the work in the first place. Anyhow, it was less dangerous than coal.
The arrival of the train and the factory meant the empty town was suddenly full, and more houses were built and more streets were laid and named, although no one ever thought it a good idea to cut down the trees on the eastern edge. No, they would just smooth out the land where the coal used to be and leave those trees alone.
So the hill and the trees kept their time, and watched, and waited.
And the man who’d brought the town back to life built a large house on the north end, a house that almost defied logic, huge and white and towering. Its upper windows glared at the hill but gazed benevolently down upon the creation of its owner—a productive, bustling paradise of workers.
And from the hill, the daughter of three looked down at the dark-eyed princeling as he strolled about with sighs in his wake. She saw him, and she wanted him for her own.
They called her a spinster but she was not so old for all that—just past twenty, and young enough to make a fool of herself over a handsome man.
She had charms aplenty, charms that spent years hidden by the fading dresses passed from mother to daughter, but she spent enough time watching from the windows to know how to make those charms sparkle.
Her mother and grandmother watched too, watched the daughter of three perform the same rituals that they had once performed. This was the way of things, for of course another daughter must come soon so the line would remain unbroken.
And so the daughter of three went out into the world.
When the dark-eyed princeling saw her red hair shining in the sunlight and her charms out on display in a fashionable new dress, he had to have her for his own. She saw his look and knew what it meant and so did all the sighing girls that followed him.
They looked at the daughter’s red hair and blue eyes and ample curves and decided all those things were very common and that the only reason the princeling offered her his arm was that she was a witch. Their faces were green and so were their tongues and they whispered behind their hands (as the princeling stared enchanted at the daughter of three) that everyone knew those women at the top of the hill were witches.
The Ghost Tree Page 11