The Ghost Tree

by Christina Henry

  Yes, he dismissed her. It seemed a little bit like a betrayal to admit that, because she’d held firm to the idea that her mother was a monster who made her father miserable for so long.

  But maybe it was the other way around. Maybe her father hadn’t taken her mother seriously, had ignored her wants and needs. And the more he did that the more angry and frustrated and nagging her mother became.

  It was strange that this prism of insight should occur to her now. Maybe it never would have happened if her father were still alive. Lauren had always loved him best. It was hard to see a person’s flaws when your heart was so full of love for him.

  Poor Mom—and there was a lot of regret in that thought. She would be a better kid. She would love her mom just as much as she’d loved her dad.

  “Lauren!”

  Lauren had paused at the end of the driveway, not wanting to be the one who took that look off her mother’s face. But at the sound of Miranda’s voice Officer Hendricks and her mother stopped talking to look and the spell was broken.

  Miranda was coming down the road from the cul-de-sac, the same way Lauren had walked. She was carrying a little backpack. Had Miranda been in the woods, too? What was she doing out there if she was? Had she been looking for Lauren? Whatever she’d been up to hadn’t been very strenuous. Her hair appeared to be freshly brushed and her lip gloss had that just-applied look. Miranda was scowling at Lauren as she approached.

  Lauren felt another spurt of guilt. She hadn’t been a very good friend to Miranda, especially these last few days. Even if they were drifting apart, she should have at least called when she missed their meeting the day before.

  “Miranda,” Lauren said awkwardly as her friend marched up. Lauren noticed that Miranda’s normally pristine white sneakers had fresh dirt on them. “Hi.”

  “Can we talk somewhere private?” Miranda asked.

  Oh, damn. They were going to have a fight. Lauren felt it. It had been coming down to this for a long time, but she’d still hoped to avoid it.

  “Sure,” she said, although she really wanted to say, No, I really don’t want to talk to you right now.

  Her mother and Officer Hendricks waved to Lauren and Miranda as they walked up the drive.

  “Hello, Miranda,” her mom said. “Going upstairs, Lauren?”

  “Yeah,” Lauren said. It was hard to work up enthusiasm for the coming confrontation.

  “Hi, Mrs. diMucci,” Miranda said. Her voice was bright and cheerful. Miranda was much better at pretending than Lauren was.

  “Hello, you two,” Officer Hendricks said, and smiled.

  Lauren felt a little pang in her chest at that smile. She’d always loved the way his eyes crinkled up when he smiled.

  I guess it’s harder to let go of puppy love than I thought. It didn’t hurt, though. It was more like a memory, a kind of bittersweet echo of a feeling she used to have.

  I acted so silly in front of him yesterday, and he was so nice when I fell off my bike.

  Lauren gave him a shy little wave, but Miranda frowned at him.

  “Come on, Lauren,” Miranda said, grabbing her arm.

  Lauren caught a glimpse of the startled faces of the adults as Miranda dragged her up the drive and around to the backyard.

  “Hey, what was that all about? That was rude.”

  “I want to talk to you and every time you’re around Officer Hendricks you never want to leave,” Miranda said.

  She headed right up the back porch like it was her house and yanked off her dirty shoes before entering the kitchen. The soles were coated with thick black dirt, the kind that was only deep in the woods.

  The kind that was also on the soles of Lauren’s shoes.

  Miranda opened the screen door and said impatiently, “Don’t just stand there, come on.”

  She went into the kitchen and Lauren ran up the porch steps after her. She paused long enough to unlace her sneakers and heard David’s little voice say, “Hello, Miranda.”

  Miranda didn’t say anything in reply. Lauren peered through the screen door while struggling to get her second sneaker off and saw Miranda rush straight past David and down the hall to the stairs.

  Now Lauren was really irritated. There was no need to be rude to David. He was only four years old, after all, and didn’t deserve to be the recipient of Miranda’s bad mood.

  David was on the kitchen floor drawing on a large sheet of paper. Their mom had gotten a big roll of butcher paper from Frank at the deli, and David liked to roll out a long sheet and make cartoons.

  “Hi, Lauren,” David said as she entered the kitchen.

  “Whatcha drawing, bud?” she asked, crouching next to him.

  “A story,” he said, not looking up at her. He seemed very intent on his work. “Like a comic book.”

  Miranda could wait a minute. Lauren wasn’t going to rush upstairs just because she was having a fit. And Lauren felt bad that David was alone in the kitchen, even though it never really bothered him to be by himself.

  Usually he drew scenes from He-Man, which was his favorite cartoon, and Lauren expected to see several childish renditions of He-Man battling Skeletor. But that wasn’t what he was drawing today.

  There was a picture of two girls—rendered crudely in crayon, but still identifiable as girls. One of them had short blond hair and the other had long brown braids. Their hands were on their faces and their mouths open in screams. David had drawn these as big black circles.

  A huge black shadow hovered before them, a shapeless body with red eyes and clearly defined hands. The hands looked like long silver knives.

  There were many drawings before this one. Lauren wondered how long David had been at it.

  Mom must have been outside with Officer Hendricks for a long time. She would flip if she saw these.

  Lauren scooted around David on the floor so that she was at the beginning of the scroll. David had started from the cut end of the paper and was rolling out more as he progressed.

  The very first picture was a tree—the ghost tree, Lauren realized. It couldn’t be any other tree because it was the only one in the woods with the split from the lightning bolt. David had never been in the woods, though. He’d never seen the tree.

  The next picture was of three women—an old one, a middle-aged one, and one with red hair—standing on the porch of a house on a hill.

  This was followed by a drawing of the red-haired woman walking arm-in-arm with a man. Then one of the red-haired woman with a rounded belly, holding hands with the man. The woman had a silver ring on her finger, a ring made up of woven braids. They were both smiling.

  The man went into the woods, and in this drawing the ghost tree had red eyes. It watched the man go.

  It watched the red-haired woman follow him, and then the man with the knife follow her.

  Then the red-haired woman lay in a pool of blood.

  It was Nana’s story, exactly. The story about the three witches on the hill. Every detail was there, down to the rich man’s house burning and the witches’ ritual.

  Lauren didn’t wonder at all how David knew all these things anymore. He knew them because he was a witch. And Lauren was a witch, too.

  David was drawing another picture now. Lauren saw a Ferris wheel, small and out of proportion to the figures in front of it. One of those figures was clearly herself—the hair was dark and curly and David had written prpel ran on the T-shirt. She held a box of popcorn in one hand.

  One of the figures, she thought, was Jake Hanson. He had dark hair and blue eyes and was a lot taller than the Lauren figure.

  She didn’t wonder how he knew that Jake had asked her out, either.

  He’d started on a third person, in the foreground. So far there was just a round head with no expression.

  “Lauren! What are you doing down there?” Miranda yelled.


  Lauren started. She’d completely forgotten about Miranda. Again.

  She patted David’s shoulder and stood up, wondering if she should tell him to put the drawing away before their mother saw it. He appeared so focused that she decided it was better not to interrupt. Their mother didn’t notice what David did, generally, as long as he was quiet.

  Is he going to be messed up because he keeps seeing these weird scary things? Lauren thought of the dead redhead in the pool of blood.

  “But it’s almost like he forgets them right after he learns them,” Lauren murmured as she walked slowly down the hall. “So maybe he’ll be okay.”

  Lauren reached the bottom of the stairs. Miranda stood at the top with her arms crossed, glaring.

  “I’m coming, I’m coming,” Lauren said. Her stomach did a little backflip. She hated yelling, and Miranda was definitely going to yell.

  Miranda marched into Lauren’s room ahead of her. Lauren followed, her feet dragging. She didn’t want this.

  “Shut the door,” Miranda said. She’d gone to the window and pulled it shut. The lack of fresh air made the room immediately stuffy.

  “It’s my room, not yours,” Lauren said, but she shut the door anyway. She didn’t want her mom to hear them if she came back in the house.

  Miranda whirled around. “Just what do you think you were doing out in the woods with Jake Hanson?”

  This wasn’t what Lauren had expected. She thought Miranda would be angry about their missed meeting, or Lauren leaving her at the arcade two days before without a word.

  “How did you know?” Lauren asked.

  “I saw you,” Miranda said. “I saw the two of you together.”

  Miranda had seen them? She’d seen the place where the girls were killed and she hadn’t said anything?

  “What did you see us doing?” Lauren asked carefully.

  “Walking together. And you seemed like you were feeling very close.”

  Miranda put a lewd emphasis on the very. It was clear what she thought Lauren and Jake had been up to in the woods. Lauren felt her cheeks heat and wished for the millionth time that she didn’t blush so easily. Miranda was going to think her suppositions were true.

  “Why didn’t you say anything? Why didn’t you say hello, or walk with us?” Lauren said, feeling a tiny seed of irritation sprouting inside her. She didn’t have to defend her behavior to Miranda. “What were you doing in the woods anyway?”

  Miranda’s face immediately closed off, her eyes brimming with some sly secret. “None of your business.”

  Oh, I think I can guess, Lauren thought, and she remembered what Jake had said about Miranda being easy. Well, it was her business if she wanted to give it up to a loser like Tad. Lauren wasn’t going to give her the satisfaction of asking about it.

  “Well, what I was doing was none of your business, either,” Lauren said. She was relieved that Miranda hadn’t seen Lauren and Jake getting the backpacks—and she was glad, too, that Miranda hadn’t had to see the terrible remains of the girls in the woods.

  Nobody should have to see that.

  “So you’re too good for me now?” Miranda said. “You’ve got a college boyfriend and you don’t need to return my calls or meet me when you say you’re going to?”

  “He’s not—”

  “You know he’s only interested in one thing. A college guy hanging around a high school freshman? He wants to get in your pants and he knows you’re too young and stupid to say no.”

  “Hey,” Lauren said. “I’m not stupid. And Jake’s not like that.”

  Lauren didn’t think he was like that, anyway. He might be. But she wasn’t going to sleep with him just because he was older. Even if he tried to pressure her—but she didn’t think he would, really.

  “You’re very naïve about men, Lauren,” Miranda said. “I’m trying to give you good advice here.”

  “What do you know about men?” Lauren snapped. “Just because you let Tad put his hands down your pants doesn’t mean you know everything. He’s not a man, anyway, just a boy.”

  “How do you know Tad put his hands in my pants?” Miranda said coolly. “How do you know it wasn’t someone else?”

  Miranda had an air of barely suppressed excitement, like she was full to bursting with a secret she wanted to tell.

  Lauren didn’t care about her secrets, she realized. She didn’t have to stand here and listen to Miranda anymore. She didn’t have to do what Miranda said or come when Miranda called. It had been a long time since they were really friends, and she wasn’t mousy little Lauren following Miranda around like a tail anymore.

  “Who cares who you were with?” Lauren said. “If you want to have sex with everyone in Smiths Hollow, I don’t care.”

  Miranda narrowed her eyes. “Oh, I think you would care if you knew.”

  “I don’t,” Lauren said. “And I don’t want you to call me anymore. We’re not friends and you need to stop pretending we are.”

  It was out now, out in the open. Lauren’s words seemed to lie on the carpet between them, red and bleeding.

  Miranda’s face whitened. When she spoke her voice was shaky. “Really? We’re not friends?”

  The look on Miranda’s face made Lauren feel terrible, but she soldiered on.

  “No, we’re not,” Lauren said. “You just want me to walk next to you and do what you want and tell you how great you are. You don’t want to do things together. You don’t want me to be a person, just Miranda’s appendage.”

  “Is this about the arcade the other day?” Some of the color had returned to Miranda’s face as Lauren spoke. She tossed her hair over her shoulder and glared.

  Lauren gritted her teeth. “It’s about the arcade, yes. It’s about a lot of things. It’s about all the times you decided what we were going to do and how to do it. It’s about the fact that you’re more interested in getting in the back seat of someone’s car than anything else.”

  “Hasn’t Jake gotten you in the back seat of his car yet?” Miranda said snidely. “Or does he only grope you in the woods?”

  “He hasn’t groped me at all!” Lauren yelled. “I’m not a slut like you.”

  She clapped her hands over her mouth. She hadn’t meant to say that. She didn’t mean it. And she didn’t really believe it, either.

  “A slut?” Miranda said, her voice very quiet as she looked at the floor. “That’s what you think I am, huh?”

  “No,” Lauren said, tears filling her eyes as she sank to her knees. “No, I don’t really.”

  And she didn’t really. She’d just been angry and hurt and she’d said something she didn’t mean.

  Miranda picked her head up and looked Lauren in the eyes. “I don’t care what you think of me, you stupid little bitch. Why would I want to hang around with a loser like you?”

  She swept past Lauren and out the bedroom door. Lauren reached out as she passed, but her former friend ignored her.

  “Miranda, I—”

  But it was too late. Miranda was already on the stairs, disappearing from sight.

  Lauren wanted to follow her, wanted to fix it. But her legs wouldn’t listen. They felt like they were made of water, water that wouldn’t press into the ground but kept flowing away beneath her. Her chest felt huge and aching, her face hot and swollen.

  It was over now. It was really over. They’d said things that couldn’t be mended.

  She should be happy. They hadn’t been real friends for a long time.

  Lauren bent over her legs and sobbed until her eyes ran dry.

  12

  Karen waved good-bye to Officer Hendricks—Aaron, he told me to call him Aaron—as he climbed into his patrol car and drove away. She’d been out front watering the flowers when he pulled up at the end of the driveway.

  It had been a surprise when he stopped, and even more of a s
urprise when she realized he didn’t have Luke Pantaleo with him. The two of them were always together.

  At first she thought he might deliver more information about Joe’s death—a witness that had come forward, a suspect in custody. But he said he’d just come by to see “how all of you are doing.”

  Somehow a simple check-in had turned into almost an hour of conversation. They’d started chatting about books and movies and travel. Karen had never realized before how much they had in common.

  She’d also not realized how long it had been since she’d talked to an adult like that. Or how long it had been since she’d laughed.

  A little ember of warmth burned inside her as she watched him drive away. She hoped he’d stop by again sometime.

  He’s a little young for you, isn’t he?

  Aaron had to be in his late twenties, at least. And Karen wasn’t that old for a woman who had two kids, one of them a teenager. She was only thirty-five.

  Their life experiences were very different, to be sure. He was a freewheeling bachelor and she was a single, struggling widow with two children.

  But he said you were pretty, and she blushed when she remembered it.

  She’d laughed at an anecdote he’d told about dealing with drunks on the weekend, and he’d reached out to tuck a strand of her hair behind her ear and said, “You should laugh more often. You’re pretty when you smile.”

  That was what Joe had said, too, so long ago.

  You’re pretty when you smile. And she’d fallen in love with him and gotten pregnant, and she’d never gone away to study art in Italy like she always thought she would.

  Of course she loved Lauren and David. She would never give them up for anything in the world. But sometimes it was hard not to look at the life she’d had and the life she’d wanted and wish she could go back and undo some of her choices.

  Karen started around the side of the house so she could re-enter through the kitchen. She felt a little spasm of guilt about leaving David there alone for so long.