The Ghost Tree

by Christina Henry

  The old woman did fall down then, flat backward like a tree felled by a lumberjack. She lay on the ground, writhing, her face twisted up with weeping.

  “I only wanted it all to stop,” she cried. “I only wanted it all to go back to the way it was.”

  “It won’t,” David said, and held up his arms for his mother.

  Karen lifted him up, and Alex saw that her face was filled with the same bewilderment he felt.

  Sofia dropped the spade to the earth and began to cry loud, noisy tears.

  Bea and Daniel and Val and Camila rushed out of the house. Alex heard Bea and Daniel exclaiming over Ed while Camila ran to her mother and Val threw her arms around his waist.

  They were safe. Whatever David had done, whatever he had wrought, they were safe.

  David whispered something in his mother’s ear and Karen gave him a startled look. The little boy looked at Alex.

  “I’m sorry,” he said.

  “Don’t be sorry,” Alex said. His voice felt like it had never been used before. “I think you just saved us all.”

  David shook his head. “No. That’s not why I’m sorry. I’m sorry because you have to go now.”

  “Go where?”

  “You have to go to the ghost tree,” he said. “You have to help Lauren before he eats her.”

  33

  Lauren felt the car stop, felt the air rush in as Touhy climbed out.

  I have to do something.

  It was really hard to do anything when her brain felt like it had been mashed in. The cut on her head had stopped running, but her eyes were stuck together by dried blood. She tried to rub at her eyelashes but her hand wouldn’t do what she wanted it to do.

  The passenger door opened and she rolled out onto the ground, her body made of water instead of bone and muscle.

  Touhy hoisted her over his shoulder as easily as if she were nothing but air. Her head and arms hung down over his back and slammed against him as he walked, but he didn’t seem to notice.

  He killed Nana. He killed my grandmother. She wanted to wriggle away, to force him to put her down. She didn’t want him to touch her with the same hands that had killed her nana.

  “Whhhh—” she said.

  “What was that?” He sounded very alert, almost cheerful.

  Her mouth didn’t want to make the shapes she wanted it to make. She focused all her energy on the words that were stopped up in her throat.

  “W-w-why k-kill . . . ?”

  “Why kill your grandmother? Well, in retrospect I do regret that. She certainly didn’t have to die, although she was being very unhelpful to me. All I wanted was to restart the curse and she wouldn’t do anything about it, and that did make me lose my temper. Though I suppose in the end she told me what I needed to know.”

  They were nearing the ghost tree. Lauren knew, not because she could see it, but because she could feel it. The tree loomed in her mind, a thing made of darkness and eyes, in a way that it never had before. She could sense the Thing that lived inside it, sense it waiting for her.

  It killed Miranda and now it’s going to kill me.

  (Maybe I ought to let it. Maybe then all of this will end, all of this pain.)

  No, you can’t do that. You can’t just give up. You can’t do that to Mom and David.

  The ring that David had given her from the fair pulsed on her finger. But she didn’t think it was a fair prize anymore. She thought—no, she knew, that it really was the ring Charlie had given Elizabeth. She didn’t know how it was or why it was but somehow it had come to her.

  It can feel the tree, too, and the Thing there.

  Her mouth was dry but her head seemed less muzzy than it had a moment ago. Her body didn’t feel quite as heavy or helpless.

  And then she felt something, a kind of energy that felt like a memory, and knew that everyone in Smiths Hollow remembered their dead girls.

  It burst across her like starlight, all of their shock and sorrow, and it was a terrible burden. But who else had the responsibility to bear that burden? She was one of the last of the witches, after all. It was her people that had done this, had loosed the monster because their grief had been too huge for them to carry.

  Lauren let it wash over her. She didn’t want to dismiss it, but it wasn’t the time for it to weigh on her, either. She needed to get away. She needed to survive.

  Mayor Touhy, though, didn’t seem to experience the surge of memory. And that is because Mayor Touhy has known all along.

  He’d known, and done nothing about it.

  Or rather, he’d facilitated it. That came to her, too, the knowledge that every November he drew the name of a girl from Smiths Hollow, and let her go out into the night to be sacrificed.

  And for what? The town’s prosperity? No amount of safety and comfort was worth all those lives.

  Her head was getting clearer every moment, and she thought it might have something to do with the ring, and maybe the tree, and maybe the magic that pulsed deep in her blood. But it didn’t matter anymore. There was no time to escape.

  They were at the tree.

  He threw her to the ground and though she felt achy all over she was able to move again. She scrambled to her feet and he narrowed his eyes at her.

  “Don’t even think of trying to run away,” he said. “If I have to chase you it won’t be pleasant.”

  Lauren wasn’t thinking about running away. The Thing in the tree would never let her get that far.

  Touhy’s eyes shifted over her shoulder and she saw them widen in surprise. “What are you doing here?”

  She turned, expecting to see the monster she’d seen in her vision. A figure was leaning against the ghost tree, arms crossed, body relaxed like he hadn’t a care in the world.

  “Officer Hendricks?” she said.

  He smiled, and his eyes crinkled up the way she liked.

  Then she saw that his smile was not his smile at all. It was like a split opened in his face and inside there was shadow and screams.

  She stumbled back and away. “You? You killed Miranda? You killed those girls?”

  How could it be him? How could it be the man who’d so gently cleaned her scraped elbow, who asked after her every time he passed? Part of her knew, knew deep down that it wasn’t him. The Thing was inside him, was working through him, was making him do this.

  But another part of her knew with just as much certainty that the Thing could only enter where there was an opening. There had to be darkness inside to begin with or else the Thing would never have found him in the first place.

  “I had to,” he said.

  His arms uncoiled and his hands reached out for her but they weren’t his hands. They weren’t the knives she’d thought they were, either. They were claws, long and silver and spiked.

  She backed into Touhy, who grabbed her shoulders and held her in place.

  “Why did you have to?” she asked. Her brain was screaming at her to Do something, do something now! but she couldn’t think. Where was all the magic power she was supposed to have? Couldn’t she shoot laser beams at him or something? Make a tree branch fall on his head? Lift rocks with her mind? What the hell good was it to be a witch if she didn’t know what to do with her power?

  His smile widened, and it was such a terrible parody of Officer Hendricks’s smile that she felt sick to her stomach.

  “So you would know you’re the only one for me, Lauren,” he said. “I was only playing with Miranda for a while. She was my mistress, but you’ll be my bride.”

  Bride? Bride of the monster? No. No no no no no. She struggled in Touhy’s grasp, but he held her tight, so close she felt his breath against her hair.

  “I’ve brought her to you,” Touhy said then. “And once you have her you’ll stop terrorizing the town, won’t you? The lottery will return and you’ll only come o
ut once a year.”

  Hendricks—or the Thing inside Hendricks—turned its gaze from Lauren to Touhy.

  “What makes you think you can dictate to me?”

  Touhy shook Lauren, thrusting her in front of him like a gift.

  “Those were the terms,” Touhy said. “The terms set down from the beginning. Once a year, on the anniversary of the first one’s death. You didn’t get Lauren last year but I’m bringing her to you now.”

  You didn’t get Lauren last year. She remembered then, remembered standing by her back door trying to get out—her mother standing in front of her, her father disappearing out the door.

  Dad, she thought, and it was like he’d died all over again, the wound just as fresh as it had been the first time.

  He’d gone out in her place, just as Nana said he had.

  “The terms no longer apply,” Hendricks said.

  It happened so fast she barely saw it. Hendricks’s arm—no, not his arm, the Thing’s arm—shot out from his body, silver claws outstretched. She shrieked but the claws didn’t touch her. They swiped past her, then behind her in a casual, almost lazy way, and Touhy’s hands were no longer on her shoulders.

  Lauren half turned in time to see Touhy’s head roll from his body.

  “Now, Lauren,” the Thing said. “We can be alone.”

  It walked toward her with Hendricks’s body and Hendricks’s face and she stepped back. Her heels ground into Touhy’s arm.

  “Don’t be afraid,” he said. “I would never hurt you. You’re my one and only love. I’ve watched you ever since you were a child in these woods. I’ve seen you grow from a tiny girl into a lovely young woman. And I can feel your magic.”

  That’s why you were never scared when everyone else was, she thought bitterly. Because the monster was looking on you with love—its idea of love—while it wanted to devour everyone else.

  “Your magic will join with mine and we will be one. We will live together forever,” he said.

  “That doesn’t sound like love,” Lauren said. Do something, do something! But she couldn’t think because it kept looking at her with those familiar eyes, the eyes that she’d sighed about in silly daydreams. She knew it wasn’t Officer Hendricks, but her brain wouldn’t let go. “That sounds like you want to . . . I don’t know. Consume me.”

  The Thing’s eyes lit with a dark fire. “Yes. It is something like that. But don’t worry, my precious one. It will be painless.”

  His hands—his terrible clawed hands—reached for her and she closed her fingers into fists and thought, I must do something. Magic, do something!

  Four shots rang out.

  Hendricks’s face froze. His mouth opened and blood spilled over his chin and then he crumpled to the ground.

  “Lauren!”

  Officer Lopez ran to her side.

  “Lauren, are you all right?” he asked, putting his gun away.

  “How did you know I was here?” she said. She stared at the body of Officer Hendricks on the ground with four bullet wounds.

  I guess I didn’t need my magic. Because no matter what was inside him he was only a human monster, after all.

  She touched his body with the toe of her sneaker, wondering if he would jump up and try to drag her inside the tree again. That was what always happened in Miranda’s horror movies. The killer was never really dead. He always came back in the last reel, knife raised. But there was nothing. Hendricks was just a shell, an empty husk that used to smile at her.

  And one that had killed her best friend, and tried to kill her, too.

  “David told me,” he said, looking from Hendricks to Touhy.

  Lauren let out a short, slightly crazy-sounding laugh. “Of course David told you. David knows every damned thing that happens in this town.”

  Lopez looked at Lauren, then frowned down at the body of his fellow officer.

  “And now maybe you’ll tell me just what’s been going on.”

  She shook her head slowly. She couldn’t take her eyes off Hendricks. He wasn’t moving. He was definitely dead. But there was something . . .

  “No, I can’t do that. Not yet.”

  “Why not?”

  The Thing burst from Hendricks’s body then, a great shadow that emerged in a rush of wind and swirled into the ghost tree.

  “Lauren!” it said. Its voice promised, demanded, threatened all in one word.

  Its eyes glowed within the tree and its mouth was a giant hole made of starless night. The branches of the tree cracked, unfurling like fingers. They seemed fluid in a way that tree branches should not be, flowing down toward her. The trunk seemed to twist and bend so that those glowing eyes—red eyes, red eyes like a vampire in a movie, red eyes like the monster under your bed—drew closer and closer to her face. It seemed to fill up the whole world.

  “Lauren!” That wasn’t the tree. That was Officer Lopez, tugging at her arm, trying to pull her away. But she was mesmerized, held in place like a cobra to a charmer.

  But the cobra can kill the snake charmer if it wants. It’s not helpless.

  I’m not helpless.

  I won’t become the bride of the monster that lives in the ghost tree. I want to live. I want to kiss Jake. I want to grow up. I want to do all the things that Elizabeth never had a chance to do.

  Elizabeth!

  She knew then what she had to do, and it was so simple that she almost laughed. She didn’t need to spin a spell or cast a curse. She only needed to undo what had been done, and Elizabeth had sent her the way.

  Lauren twisted the silver ring from her finger. In fairy tales, magic beings could never abide the touch of silver. And this silver ring had tasted the last drop of Elizabeth’s life.

  Elizabeth’s death had sparked the curse, and Elizabeth’s death was the only thing that could end it.

  Lauren threw the ring into the gaping mouth of the ghost tree.

  If Officer Lopez hadn’t been there she surely would have died, she realized later. There was a howl of rage and pain and betrayal as the ring was swallowed up by the Thing in the tree.

  Then the tree split fully down the middle, starting from the place where the lightning had struck it at the top. One half fell forward and the other backward. Lauren was still staring at the place where the mouth had been when Officer Lopez pushed her out of the path of the falling tree.

  The ground opened up, starting at the base of the tree. Loose soil rolled into empty space and fell away. Rocks and grass and flowers dropped into the widening hole. Lauren saw the roots of the tree extending down, down, down, farther into the earth than she could have thought possible. Officer Lopez and Lauren stumbled backward, their heels barely clinging to solid footing.

  The stump of the tree was sucked into the ground, its protruding roots rolling up like the coil of a party horn. The broken halves of the trunk were pulled inside, and the branches that clawed at the sky grabbed Hendricks’s and Touhy’s bodies as they disappeared beneath the dirt.

  After a few moments the hole sealed up, smooth and neat and even, and Lauren saw with amazement that green shoots were sprouting in the place where it had been.

  Officer Lopez blew out a breath next to her.

  “Now will you tell me just what’s been going on in this town?”

  Lauren couldn’t help it. She laughed.

  34

  Van Christie stood in Jo Gehlinger’s living room, listening to the sound of Miller getting sick outside on the front porch.

  Miller always gets sick at murder scenes.

  The day before, Christie would have said there were hardly ever murder scenes in Smiths Hollow, and that was why Miller had so much trouble dealing with them. But last night he’d remembered.

  He’d remembered all the bodies. He’d remembered all the girls.

  And he’d remembered that he had covered it up,
pretended it didn’t happen, taken their families’ sorrow and stuffed it in a file in the basement, never to be seen again.

  It didn’t matter that it wasn’t his fault. It didn’t matter that he wasn’t the only one who’d forgotten those girls.

  He’d been responsible. He was the chief of police.

  It was, he thought, time for somebody else to become chief of police.

  But before that could happen he still had a job to do.

  He sighed, and went out to fetch Miller to help him with Jo Gehlinger’s body.

  35

  Sunday

  The fair was supposed to open at ten a.m., just like the last two days. But Alejandro Lopez had no intention of patrolling the fairgrounds. Mayor Touhy was dead and therefore so was his directive to protect the fair, as far as Alex was concerned. He didn’t know if there would be very much business today, anyway. Sofia had sent him out for eggs and milk. (“I know it’s absurd,” she said, “especially after what happened last night. But we’re out and no matter what’s happened the kids will still be hungry.”)

  He’d run over to the grocery store early, his eyes gritty from lack of sleep but his body wired. Alex drove the squad car, even though he was only supposed to use it for official business. He’d put his uniform on, too. It felt like armor, protecting him from the people who’d tried to kill him and his family the night before.

  As he walked the aisles of the grocery store he saw a lot of people looking dazed, like they’d been knocked on the head and were partially concussed. Several of them would stop in front of a display of soup or diapers or oranges and just stand there, holding an item in their hand and staring at it like they weren’t certain how they got there.

  It was pretty clear that whatever spell the town had been under was broken now.

  Could the Lopez family stay in Smiths Hollow after what had happened? Alex wasn’t sure. Lauren had tried to explain some of what had happened last night, but a lot of it had come out garbled. There was something about a curse and some witches and a monster that lived in the woods. But she’d been tired and a little hysterical, and then she’d said that Jake Hanson was run over by Mayor Touhy and that he needed to call the chief on his radio and send someone to get Jake to the hospital—if he was still alive.