The Ghost Tree

by Christina Henry

  “Okay, boss,” Miller said.

  Alex hoped like hell that Miller was awake enough to follow his instructions. There was nothing for it. He was going to have to pull the crying woman off Vinnie.

  He bent over and touched her shoulder, hoping that would be enough to prompt her. It was, but not in the way he expected.

  She jerked backward, spinning around in the dirt and screaming in his face.

  “Don’t fucking touch me, you fucking dirty spic!”

  That’s it. I have had enough.

  He wrapped his hand around her upper arm and pulled her away from Vinnie. She screamed like his fingers were emitting acid.

  “Don’t touch me, don’t touch me, don’t you dare touch me!”

  A ripple of energy seemed to roll over the crowd, something mean and dangerous.

  “Hey, get your hands off her!” an onlooker said.

  “It’s not right for him to touch a white woman like that,” another said.

  What is going on? Is there a meeting of the local chapter of racist assholes at the fair today?

  He felt a sudden very strong urge to take his gun out of its holster and demonstrate to the shitty crowd of shitty racists just who was in charge. His fingers were on the grip before he even knew what he was doing.

  Alex never drew his gun unless he felt he absolutely had to do it. He knew too many officers in Chicago who shot first and asked questions later, and he’d always sworn to himself that he wouldn’t be one of them.

  He didn’t know what was happening now, why he was taking his gun out and pointing it in the direction of the crowd—the crowd that seemed to be swelling like a wound, the crowd that seemed strangely nonplussed by the presence of the gun. They moved toward him in a kind of slow-motion creep, like the inexorable movement of the tide.

  “Back away!” he shouted.

  But they didn’t back away. They pushed toward him, their eyes fixed only on him. The bottled blonde pointed her finger at him.

  “You’re an outsider,” she intoned. “You don’t belong here.”

  The term was repeated over and over by every voice. It rolled through like dominoes falling.

  “Outsider, outsider, outsider.”

  Alex couldn’t see over the crowd. Anyone who came within its orbit seemed to be pulled into its gravity, and nobody was protesting. Nobody was going to help him.

  Whatever is happening is only happening right here, he thought as his sweaty hand struggled to keep the gun from slipping to the ground. He could hear the sounds of the rides running, bells ringing from the game booths, shouts and screams and laughter. The Zipper was only a few feet away, but it continued to load and run normally. Nobody seemed to notice that there was something wrong here.

  Alex didn’t know what would happen when the crowd reached him, but he had a horrible sense that they would rend and tear, that there would be nothing left of him but his head.

  Just like those girls in the woods.

  Was this what happened to them? Were they set upon by a mad crowd of people who forgot what they’d done afterward?

  Now is not the time to try to solve the mystery, Alejandro. They’re going to eat you in a minute.

  Yes, that was what would happen. They would tear him and eat him just like that black-and-white movie with the living dead. He’d seen it on the Svengoolie show once, and Sofia had buried her head in his shoulder whenever the screen showed the living dead people eating body parts.

  And in that movie the only way to defeat the living dead was to shoot them in the head. Could he do that? Could he shoot people he’d thought were his friends and neighbors? Could he kill someone who didn’t appear to be in his right mind?

  Why not? I bet some of them are in their right mind. Some of them probably think I’m a dirty wetback, think my kind shouldn’t mix with their kind. They’re just too polite to say it where I can hear.

  In that way, he supposed, Mrs. Schneider was at least honest. You knew where you stood with her.

  His finger flexed on the trigger. Directly in front of him was Sam Carpenter, a teenager who worked at the Sweet Shoppe. He also played football for the high school and his hands were the size of dinner plates. Those hands were curled now into gigantic fists, fists that would pound Alex into ground beef in a minute.

  But he also snuck bubble gum to Val whenever the Lopez family went into the shop to buy ice cream because, he said, “You might need it for your experiments.” And Camila and Daniel never left without their pockets loaded with lollipops.

  How could that boy, that sweet-natured boy who bought Alex’s kids lollipops with his own money, be standing in front of Alex with murder in his eyes?

  And how could Alex live with himself if he shot that boy?

  “Hey, what’s going on here?”

  It was not, as Alex had hoped and expected, Miller’s voice. It was a girl’s voice, high and angry.

  A ripple went through the crowd again, and all of them turned, their heads moving in eerie synchronicity.

  “Get out of the way!” the girl said.

  Alex felt a strange reverberation in his chest when she shouted, a sense that if she spoke he would have to listen.

  The crowd parted. Alex saw, as if at the end of a long tunnel, Lauren diMucci standing there with her brother, David.

  For a moment he thought, too, that he saw something else. Something like electricity arcing away from the two of them.

  Lauren hurried toward him, her face twisted up. David appeared very calm.

  “Are you all right?” she said breathlessly.

  Alex realized he still had the gun raised, though Lauren didn’t appear to notice it at all. He hurriedly put it in his holster.

  “Yes,” he said, then pointed at Vinnie lying very still on the ground behind him. “But he’s not.”

  “Don’t worry, we saw Officer Miller and he’s waiting for the EMTs at the front of the fair.” Lauren said this all in a rush, like she was embarrassed that she had this information.

  Then she turned on the crowd, who were now standing like idling cars, their engines ready to rev again at a moment’s notice.

  “Get out of here,” Lauren said. “Go back to what you were doing before.”

  Alex watched in amazement as the crowd dissolved. None of them appeared to realize what they’d been doing before Lauren told them to leave.

  The bottled blonde ran to Vinnie’s side again, her floods of tears washing over his face. Alex heard, very faintly, the sweet music of the ambulance siren.

  Thank Christ, he thought.

  Larry Franco stood off to the side, exactly where Alex had left him before everyone else went crazy.

  David tugged on Lauren’s shorts. “Can we have cotton candy now? We haven’t had cotton candy yet.”

  “Sure, bud,” Lauren said.

  She took his hand and they started to move away.

  “Wait!” Alex shouted.

  They both turned back, identical quizzical expressions on their faces.

  “How did you know I was in trouble?” he asked. This seemed the least of the things he wanted to know. He wanted to know why the crowd acted that way and why Lauren had been immune to it and why they had all listened when she told them to leave.

  “Oh, David knew,” Lauren said, and David grinned at him.

  David knew? How did David know? The same way you knew where the girls’ packs were in the woods? What else do the two of you know?

  “Wait, I want to—” Alex started, but just then Miller and the two EMTs came running up.

  Alex directed the EMTs toward the man on the ground, quickly explaining the circumstances. They got to work on the man while Alex directed Miller to call Hendricks and Pantaleo to pick up Larry Franco. They would have to process him at the station so that there would be a record in the event Vinnie pres
sed charges.

  By the time all of this was finished, the diMucci siblings were long gone, of course. He’d expected they would be. Lauren had a guilty look on her face, like she’d done something wrong when she ordered the crowd away from him.

  “But I wanted to say thank you,” Alex murmured.

  The only reason he could go home and hug his children that night was because of those two strange kids.

  He wanted to thank them. And he wanted to know a few other things, too.

  He looked at his watch and sighed. Whatever he wanted to know was going to have to wait until his shift was over.

  A few minutes later Miller jogged up—or at least, what passed for jogging with Miller, who never seemed to exert very much energy.

  “All taken care of,” he said. “I’m starving.”

  Alex laughed. He couldn’t help it. It was so normal to hear Miller say he was hungry.

  “Let’s get French fries,” Alex said, and Miller grinned.

  18

  Miranda stood on her front porch at seven p.m., tapping her foot impatiently as she waited for Tad to pull up. She didn’t want Tad to come to the door. There was the smallest possibility that Janice might decide to stumble into the hallway and pretend to be a mother. Miranda thought she would die of shame if Tad saw Janice in her bathrobe.

  The sun still shone, though it wasn’t as hot as it had been earlier in the day. It wouldn’t get dark for another hour or so, which meant Tad had plenty of time to admire how pretty she was in the slanting sunlight.

  She heard the roar of the Camaro a minute before she saw it pull down her street. Miranda hastily reapplied her lip gloss and smoothed down her yellow dress. She thought she looked exceptionally good, and that was saying something. Her hair was curled and sprayed into place so it would stay put if they went on the Tilt-A-Whirl or the Ferris wheel.

  The sundress had string ties to hold it up at the shoulders, and that meant that she couldn’t wear a bra underneath without showing the straps. She was sure that Tad would notice. It had been a job getting out without her father seeing her, though. He certainly would have noticed and sent her back upstairs to put something else on.

  The dress wasn’t that short when she was standing, but she knew that when she sat down it would roll back to just above her knee. She had on white leather sandals that showed off pink polished toenails. Tad might not appreciate those as much as her lack of bra, but at least she knew she’d put in the correct amount of effort. Her white leather purse even matched her shoes.

  She ran down the path toward the car as it pulled up. Tad didn’t get out to open the door for her, which irritated her, and then she got even more annoyed when the passenger-side door opened and Billy climbed out, grinning. He pushed the front seat out of the way so he could climb in the back.

  What is Billy doing here? I thought this was a date. She wouldn’t have put in half the amount of effort she had if she’d known the Third Wheel was going to tag along.

  “Hey, babe,” Tad said, leering at her legs when she climbed in the front seat.

  “Hello,” she said primly, arranging her skirt so that it would be as modest as possible. He wasn’t getting so much as a glimpse of her underwear tonight. What kind of jerk asked a girl out and then brought his friend along?

  Well, what did you expect? Tad is a child.

  Not like Him.

  She felt a warm flush of pleasure at the thought of Him. Maybe she would see Him at the fair.

  Maybe she could sneak away with Him in the dark.

  Tad immediately turned up the car radio, blasting Iron Maiden. Miranda hated heavy metal. Def Leppard was one thing—they weren’t super heavy. But Iron Maiden, Black Sabbath, that kind of thing was a definite no in her book. She stared out the window as Tad and Billy banged their heads and sang along. She didn’t think Tad even noticed that she wasn’t paying attention to him.

  I might have to find someone else to give me a ride to school next year. Miranda suddenly realized she was sick of Tad, sick of the way he never really paid attention to her unless she was sitting in his lap.

  She did not want to spend every morning of freshman year being forced to listen to Iron Maiden. But who else in the junior or senior classes had a really good car and no girlfriend? Miranda would have to think on it.

  In the meantime she just needed to get through the next couple of hours. Let Tad pay for her ticket and take her on a couple of rides. If she saw someone else more interesting she could catch a ride home with that person.

  And if I don’t see someone more interesting I’m calling Dad to come and get me, she decided as they arrived at the fairgrounds parking area. It was just an open part of the field next to the fair itself and there were no actual lines for the cars. Tad parked the Camaro diagonally so it took up as much space as possible.

  Obnoxious jerk, Miranda thought, and then No wonder Lauren ditched all of us the other day.

  No, she wasn’t going to think about Lauren at all. That would put her in a really bad mood.

  She let Tad sling his arm around her shoulders and they walked toward the bright lights of the fair.

  19

  Lauren smiled at Jake as they entered the fairgrounds together. He was wearing clean jeans and another one of what Lauren thought of as his Interesting Band shirts. This time there was a woman with dark eyeliner and wild hair staring out from a white background. Underneath her face it read Siouxsie and the Banshees. Lauren wanted to know what all of these bands sounded like. She wondered when Jake would make her the promised mix tape with the Clash and the Smiths and Siouxsie and the Banshees and all the other cool things he liked.

  She wanted to know about the music he listened to, and the books he read, and how he felt about college. All she really knew about Jake Hanson was that he’d helped her play baseball when they were younger and that he had beautiful blue eyes.

  That was not, she decided, the proper basis for any kind of relationship. Even if this date turned out to be a mistake they could still be friends, and friends knew things about each other, and shared those things that they enjoyed.

  The way you and Miranda used to do.

  No, she was not going to think about Miranda now. She was going to enjoy her first date.

  Lauren had dressed carefully in her best jeans and her turquoise high tops and her favorite Prince T-shirt. It felt like good luck to wear it, because David had drawn the picture of her standing next to Jake and her shirt had said prpel ran.

  “What do you want to do first?” Jake asked. “Get something to eat?”

  Lauren laughed and shook her head. “Me and David ate half the fair today. I’m pretty sure I can go the rest of my life without ever having another thing fried in oil. But I’ll get a Coke if you’re hungry.”

  “I am,” he admitted. “I didn’t have a big lunch at work today.”

  “What do you want? Pizza? A corn dog? A burger? I know where everything is,” Lauren said. “I could lead a tour of food booths.”

  “Burger and fries,” he said. He didn’t even take a minute to think about it.

  “That’s over by the Zipper,” Lauren said, pointing in the direction they needed to walk.

  Over by the Zipper. Officer Lopez needs your help. He’s over by the Zipper.

  No, she wasn’t going to think about that right now, either—that strange moment when David had seemed to go into a trance. And what happened after—how they’d come upon a crowd of people who were acting . . . well, she didn’t know how to think about it except that they were acting wrong. As she and David approached the group she’d felt something, something like an aura or a miasma, something that bound all of those present together.

  Something a lot like magic.

  And the thing she’d done—Lauren hadn’t even considered what she would do or how she would do it. She’d simply known that if she spoke, the people
caught in the grip of the (spell? curse?) would stop.

  David had quickly tugged her away when Officer Lopez was distracted, and she’d been relieved. She didn’t want to answer any difficult questions.

  She sighed, because all of a sudden there seemed to be a lot of weird stuff going on.

  According to Nana weird stuff had been a part of the fabric of Smiths Hollow since the beginning. But it seemed that all the weirdness was bubbling to the surface now, that there was an open seam of weird and it was spreading like lava all around the town.

  “You went away somewhere again,” Jake said.

  Lauren started. “Sorry.”

  “Where do you go when you’re thinking those really deep thoughts?”

  There was no way she could possibly explain about the dead girls, about the floating book, about seeing the blood on her bike seat and the vision in her head, about how she’d made a whole crowd of murderous adults go away just by telling them to do so.

  There was no way she could explain the strange feeling she got from David before she left the house for her date, either.

  “Be careful, Lauren.”

  That was all he’d said. “Be careful, Lauren.” But it had seemed like he knew something she didn’t when he said it.

  It felt like a lot of weight all of a sudden—the burden of strangeness, of knowledge that nobody else seemed to have.

  Well, except David and Nana. And David wasn’t the ideal person to discuss it with. He was only four.

  She’d like to tell Jake about it—Jake with his very sympathetic eyes and his sincere interest.

  No, I can’t tell him about all of this insanity. But maybe I can tell him about the legend.

  “I was just thinking about a story my nana told me,” Lauren said. “A kind of legend about Smiths Hollow.”

  “What, the legend of the man who saved the town by opening a meat-processing plant?” Jake said.

  They’d reached the hamburger booth by then, and Jake ordered two cheeseburgers, a large fry, and two Cokes.

  “Are you going to eat both of those burgers? They’re really big,” Lauren said. “Me and David split one earlier. Of course, we’d already had a funnel cake and cotton candy by then.”