You can be braver than Captain America.
Christopher closed his eyes and imagined himself beginning to run. His feet hitting the treetops, throwing down leaves. He had never moved this fast in his life. Not even on the highway. He saw himself race toward the giant tree. The deer and mailbox people standing guard around it. He couldn’t make a sound, or they would see him. If he jumped with all of his strength, he might be able to reach the tree. If he missed and landed in the clearing, they would tear him to pieces. He moved faster and faster. The clearing was right ahead of him. One step. Two steps. Three steps.
Jump.
In his mind’s eye, Christopher sailed over the clearing like a slingshot. He stretched his body as far as he could. He saw a low-hanging branch ahead of him on the giant tree. He reached his fingers out. He could feel his knuckles click click click.
Christopher grabbed the branch with his outstretched fingers and opened his eyes.
One of his knuckles popped out. He wanted to scream, but he swallowed the pain. He reached up with his other hand and pulled his body safely on the branch. He popped his finger back into the socket.
Christopher looked down. The hissing lady was on the ground below. She saw the pine needles fall around her. She looked up, smiled to Christopher, then turned to the little children behind her. Their heads bowed.
“There he is. Climb,” she whispered.
The children began to climb.
Christopher had to get to the nice man. He climbed as quickly as he could, his fingers aching. He pulled himself to the next branch. He heard screams coming from the tree house next to him. Christopher looked through the little window in the green door and saw a woman putting a noose around her own neck. The woman locked eyes with Christopher. She ran straight at him. “Help me!” she shrieked just as the noose snapped her neck back. Within seconds, she was putting the noose back on her neck to do it all over again.
Christopher looked down. He saw the children giggle and climb. They were thirty branches below him. Spreading out through the tree like baby spiders hatching. Christopher forced his aching fingers to climb. Branch after branch. Tree house after tree house. He saw one man through a peephole. The man stabbed himself over and over again. “Who’s laughing now, bitch?!” he screamed at himself. In the next house, he saw another man eat a large piece of cake. The man couldn’t stop. He just kept chewing and chewing until his jaw broke and there were no teeth left in his mouth. But the cake wouldn’t get smaller. “Make it stop! Please!”
Do you know where you are?
His mind raced. There was something familiar about all of this. What was this place? The hissing lady’s home? Her prison? Her zoo?
Christopher reached the tree house with the red door. The nice man was unconscious on the floor. Christopher tried to open the door, but it was locked. He scurried to the side window. Covered in prison bars.
“Sir! Wake up!”
The children were twenty-five branches below.
The nice man stirred. Christopher reached through the prison bars and touched the nice man’s hand. The heat began to warm up in his mind, and he gave the nice man all the energy he had in a single burst. The shock was electric.
The pain was instant.
It coursed through Christopher as he kept his hands on the nice man’s hand, trying to revive him.
Sir! Please wake up!
Christopher pushed his thoughts deep into the nice man’s mind. Trying to jump-start him like an old car.
We have to kill the hissing lady!
He felt the nice man’s heart. Slowly beating. Then, faster. And faster.
I can’t kill her alone! Please!
Suddenly the nice man’s eyelids stirred. He forced his eyes open and bolted upright.
“It’s a trap, Christopher. Run!”
“No! I’m not leaving you!”
“You have to! You have to kill her before midnight!”
Christopher looked down. The children were fifteen branches below.
“Can you get free?” Christopher whispered breathlessly.
The nice man rushed to the door. It was bolted shut.
“No. You have to kill her without me! Get the key!” the nice man said, pushing him away. “You can’t let them take you! Go!”
Christopher looked down. The children scurried up the tree like rats. He had no choice. He had to escape. He left the nice man and climbed. All the way to the top of the tree. Until there was nowhere left to go.
Except his own tree house.
It was there above the others. Right at the very top. Like the angel on a Christmas tree. How did it move? Did it move? What was this terrible place?
Do you know where you are?
The children clambered up. Pulling at his feet. He grabbed the doorknob to the tree house. He threw the door open and looked inside. But the tree house didn’t look like itself anymore.
It looked like Christopher’s old bathroom.
Slowly filling with steam.
A figure sat in the bathtub, lost in the cloud.
“Hi, Christopher,” the voice said.
It sounded just like his father.
Chapter 92
DEAR AMBROSE,
I HOPE YOU CAN SEE THIS. I HAVE TO HIDE THIS MESSAGE BECAUSE I AM BEING WATCHED ALL THE TIME. SO ARE YOU. SO IS EVERYONE. BUT IT’S NOT WHAT YOU THINK IT IS. IT’S SO MUCH WORSE. I CAN’T SAY WHAT WE FIGURED OUT IS HAPPENING HERE OR ELSE I WILL BE DISCOVERED AND YOU WILL BE TORTURED FOREVER. I TOLD YOU WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW IN THE ONLY PLACE I KNOW THAT’S NOT BEING WATCHED. ONLY YOU KNOW WHERE THAT IS. YOU USED TO HIDE MAGAZINES THERE. PLEASE GO TO IT NOW, AMBROSE. BECAUSE IF YOU ARE SEEING THIS, IT MEANS THE WORLD IS GOING TO END. AND IF THIS IS NOT AMBROSE OLSON, PLEASE TELL HIM YOU FOUND HIS LITTLE BROTHER DAVID. TELL AMBROSE IT’S A TRAP. BUT THE NEXT CHILD DOESN’T HAVE TO DIE. THE WHOLE WORLD DOESN’T HAVE TO END. SO RUN NOW. PLEASE. YOU DON’T HAVE ANY MORE TIME.
DAVID
Christopher’s mother held the deciphered diary in her shaking hand. She turned to Ambrose and lowered her voice to a desperate whisper.
“Mr. Olson, where did—”
But the old soldier was way ahead of her.
“I hid magazines under David’s bookshelf,” he said.
“Where is the bookshelf now?”
His brow furrowed. Thinking. She looked into the hallway. The orderlies were watching them with a suspicious eye. They moved into Christopher’s room to discuss something with the doctor.
106.6 degrees
beEp.
“Please, Mr. Olson. Where is the bookshelf?”
“I don’t know anymore. I sold it.”
“Where?!”
When the orderlies were finished speaking, the doctor turned to Christopher’s mother. He whispered something to the security guards. The lighting made them all look like ghosts. Pale sick and green. Staring at her. She felt as paranoid in that moment as her husband the night before he died.
I can hear voices, Kate! Make them stop!
The security guards nodded to the doctor and left Christopher’s room to approach her.
“Antiques shop,” Ambrose said like a lightbulb. “David ruined the bookshelf, but the lady who owned the shop knew my mother years ago. She took it out of sympathy.”
“Why? How did he ruin it?”
“He covered it with duck wallpaper.”
Christopher’s mother was struck silent. The only sound in the room was the sheriff’s morphine trickling into the IV bag with a drip drip drip.
“Mr. Olson,” she said in a whisper. “Will you stay with Christopher for me?”
“Of course,” he said, confused. “Why?”
“I know where the bookshelf is,” she said.
Christopher’s mother looked across the hallway at her son. His broken little body. His poor feverish mind. At the rate he was going, his brain would hit 107 degrees and begin to cook by midnight. And the answer was on the other side of town.
“You can have an
y bookshelf you want. Why do you want that one, honey?”
“Because it smells like baseball gloves.”
That bookshelf was in her son’s bedroom.
Chapter 93
The figure sat up in the bathtub. Hidden in clouds of steam.
Christopher stood, frozen. He looked around the bathroom. It was exactly as he remembered it. The foggy mirror. The Noxzema smell on his skin. His father’s shirt resting on the sink. Sweet with tobacco.
“Do you know where you are?” the voice asked.
Christopher couldn’t speak. He shook his head. No.
“Would you like to know?”
Christopher nodded. Yes.
“Okay, but it’s a secret. I could get in trouble. So, come here. I’ll whisper it to you.”
Christopher didn’t move.
“Don’t be afraid, honey. I would never hurt you. Come here.”
The figure patted the tub. Little trickles of blood ran from his wrists down the porcelain in tiny red rivers. Christopher wanted to run away, but his feet moved without him. He began to walk. Through the steam. Through the clouds.
“That’s it, honey. Walk to your daddy. It’ll all make sense soon.”
Christopher took a baby step. A second. A third. The figure reached out for him. The hand was warm and smooth with tobacco stains between the fingers.
“That’s it, Christopher. Come and give me a hug.”
Christopher felt a hand on his shoulder. The figure wrapped him up like a blanket.
“Where am I, Daddy?” Christopher asked.
Christopher was so close, he could smell the tobacco on his breath.
“You’re off the street.”
Christopher looked back into the tub as the clouds cleared to reveal the smiling figure.
It was the hissing lady.
Chapter 94
106.8 degrees
beEp.
Christopher’s mother looked through the window at her son, struggling for life across the hall. She had to help him. She had to save him. She had to get the message David Olson left on his old bookshelf back at home.
But Mary Katherine had destroyed her car.
The two security guards raced across the hallway and opened the door to the sheriff’s hospital room. They scratched their red faces. Bloated and sweaty. Blocking the door. A nurse Christopher’s mother had never seen before entered the room behind them.
“Mrs. Reese, is everything okay?” the nurse asked.
“Yes. Fine,” Christopher’s mother lied.
The nurse smiled and coughed with the flu that wasn’t the flu. She looked at Christopher’s mother a little too long.
“What’s that you’re reading?” she asked.
The question hung in the air for a tense second. The nurse scratched her arm.
“This is a little embarrassing,” Ambrose said. “She’s reading a scrapbook of letters from my late wife. Some of them are a little racy. You can read them out loud to me next if you want. Mrs. Reese was just about to get me something from my car.”
Then, Ambrose dug into his pocket and held the key up.
“You remember where I usually park it, right? The old beat-up Cadillac in the corner? Scraped and dented, just like me.”
“Yes, Mr. Olson,” Christopher’s mother said.
“Good. I’ll sit right by Christopher’s bedside while you’re gone.”
He handed her the key in exchange for his brother’s diary.
“Thank you, Mr. Olson,” she said.
“No. Thank you, ma’am,” the old soldier replied.
Christopher’s mother took the car key and left the room, squeezing past the dubious security guards. She went straight to the ICU door, waiting to be buzzed out. She winced from the pain in her ribs. Her medication was wearing off, but there was no time to stop now.
Come on. Open up, God dammit.
She turned to see the nurse wheel Ambrose back into Christopher’s room. Her son lay in the bed.
106.9 degrees
beEp.
The door buzzed like a swarm of locusts. Christopher’s mother ran out of the ICU.
Chapter 95
Mrs. Henderson felt something shudder through her. A horrible cold breeze that ran from the inside out. Like a toothache. She knew she was behind schedule. That was unacceptable. The voice told her.
Unacceptable.
Mrs. Henderson quickened her pace. She passed the Collins Construction bulldozers and cranes, lying still like her husband back in the hospital. Big useless hunks of metal like the ones keeping that bastard alive. The doctors had no idea why he hadn’t died, but she did. She knew what all of this meant. She knew what was coming next. For everyone. Especially Christopher.
Mrs. Henderson parked the sheriff’s car and entered the Mission Street Woods.
She had never been there before, but she knew exactly where to go. The voice told her where. Left at the tree. Right at the boulder.
Right down the path, Mrs. Henderson.
Mrs. Henderson looked down at the dirt. She saw footprints of all sizes. All of them heading to one place. The same place Mrs. Henderson was going.
Hurry. You have to hurry.
Mrs. Henderson picked up her tired legs and started running. It was slightly uncomfortable because each step ripped the wound in her side back open. But no pain, no gain, as the kids liked to say. Her pair of hiking boots cut through the snow and mud. She ran through the coal mine tunnel, passing a dozen deer who bounced behind her like puppies. The voice rang louder and louder in her mind.
Hurry now. You don’t have much time.
Mrs. Henderson reached the clearing and stopped.
It was so beautiful. It was more beautiful than her husband standing at the altar. More beautiful than her vows. Or their wedding night. Mrs. Henderson had never seen anything so beautiful in all her life. There was a magnificent old tree and the most beautiful little tree house resting on its branches.
There were hundreds of people around the tree.
As silent as church.
She knew some of the people from school, like Ms. Lasko and Brady Collins and Jenny Hertzog. Some students from the past who went from adorable little boys to bald middle-aged men in the blink of an eye. But there were other people she didn’t know. Random faces she might have seen once at the grocery store or gas station or during her brief time in jail. But she may as well have known them all. That’s how comfortable she felt.
That’s how comfortable they all felt.
She walked through the clearing, and the crowd parted for her like the Red Sea. All faces turned to her. All faces smiled. They were all so happy to see each other. This was a glorious day. There was no more pain. No suffering. In all of her life, Mrs. Henderson had never seen the Christmas spirit this beautiful.
Mrs. Henderson walked up to Ms. Lasko. The two women smiled at each other and nodded their greetings before laughing at their own silly formality. Then, they hugged as if they were long-lost sisters. And really…weren’t they? Weren’t they all? Mrs. Henderson held Ms. Lasko in her arms. Then, they each put a maternal hand on the shoulders of the young ones—Brady Collins and Jenny Hertzog. They all felt so much better. In one moment, they all had the same thought.
Someone finally understands me.
Ms. Lasko knew she didn’t need to feel sober anymore just like Brady Collins knew he didn’t need to sleep in the doghouse just like Jenny Hertzog knew she didn’t need to strip for her stepbrother. And if anyone said otherwise, well, the community could put their foot down, couldn’t they? If some awful people like Christopher’s mother or his friends or the sheriff or Ambrose Olson got in the way, they could be stabbed again and again. The group would rid itself of anyone who didn’t understand. And when the war came, they would win.
Because good guys always win wars.
They all knelt down and put their hands on the tree together. The tree was warm like a baby’s bottom. The serenity they felt was unlike anything they’d ever known
. The cold side of the pillow mixed with a hot bath. In one moment, all of their fevers broke. All of their arms stopped itching. They were finally at peace. The calm before the storm.
The peace before the war.
“It’s time,” Mrs. Henderson said.
Mrs. Henderson picked up her weekend bag. She felt the soft leather in her hands. The cold zipper gave way like vertebrae snapping. She opened the bag and pulled out the sharp butcher knife.
“Can I help?” Brady Collins asked.
“Of course, Brady. Thank you. You’re very polite. Your grandma would be very proud,” she said. “Why don’t you stand guard?”
Brady Collins smiled and pulled out his gun. He began walking back and forth to protect them from Special Ed, who he knew was hiding somewhere in the woods.
“Me, too?” Jenny Hertzog asked eagerly.
“Of course, Jenny. That’s why you’re here, sweetie.”
Jenny smiled proudly and reached into the bag. She pulled out a dozen sewing needles and as much black yarn as her little arms could hold. Then, Mrs. Henderson turned to the gathered congregation and surveyed the eager faces.
“Can my stepbrother go first?” Jenny Hertzog asked quietly.
“Are you sure you don’t want to save him for last?” Mrs. Henderson asked.
“No, ma’am,” Jenny said.
“Very well. Scott…Front and center.”
Jenny’s stepbrother stepped up and smiled.
“Yes, ma’am?” he said eagerly. “What can I do?”
“You can fucking feel everything you’ve ever done to Jenny for eternity and no one will ever stop it. How does that sound?”
“Super,” he said.
Scott nodded in his trance as his little stepsister looped a strand of black yarn through the needle and handed it to Mrs. Henderson. The old woman kindly patted her on the head and moved to Scott. She clamped his lips together with her left hand, and she began stitching his mouth shut with a practiced right hand that she’d learned in home economics.
As she sewed Scott’s lips together, she couldn’t even hear his bloodcurdling screams through the white noise of her own mind. Mrs. Henderson smiled, waltzing with a memory. It was a simpler time back then. Back when girls took home ec and boys took shop. Back when men were loyal to their wives and never thought about divorce. Back when the good old days were the good new days. It was better then. Things would be that way again. The little voice promised her they would. This time, her husband would respect her. This time, her husband would appreciate her.
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