The Crossroads

by Chris Grabenstein

The girl in white was a teenager. Sixteen, maybe seventeen. Her soft blond hair was tied back in a ponytail by a white chiffon scarf. She wore a stiff white dress that was snug around her slender waist. She had on long white gloves. A white shawl was draped over her bare shoulders. She was white on white on white.

  She’d also get creamed if she kept standing in the middle of the road.

  “Hop in,” said Sharon.

  The girl in white waited outside.

  “Could you open the door, please?”

  “What?”

  “It’s these silly white gloves. I’d sure hate to sully them.”

  Reluctantly, Sharon leaned across the seat and opened the door.

  “Thanks! You’re the most!” Her gown rustled as she slid into the car.

  “Um,” said Sharon, “we really can’t go anywhere until you close your door.”

  “Do you mind doing it for me?”

  “What?”

  The seated girl showed Sharon her white gloves again.

  “Right,” Sharon mumbled. “Wouldn’t want you to ‘sully’ them, would we?”

  As Sharon leaned across the teenager’s lap to grab the door handle, she felt a strange chill. Goose bumps exploded on her arm.

  The girl in white just giggled. “Come on! Let’s lay a patch and wail!”

  The little car hummed along for about a mile. The girl in white sat silently and stared straight ahead. More moths threw themselves at Sharon’s high beams. Others went for her windshield.

  “So, where are you headed?” Sharon finally asked.

  “Down the road.”

  “I know. But where? North Chester? Monroe?”

  “Down the road.”

  “This road’s awfully long.”

  “I’m going to the dance. At Chumley Prep.”

  Sharon felt her stomach twist into knots. “Chumley?”

  “Yes. My boyfriend invited me down for their summer social.”

  “Chumley?”

  “Yes.” The girl looked at her delicate wristwatch. “We should just make it. The dance won’t start until eight.”

  Sharon tasted something sour rising up into her throat. “Uh, you know, it’s already after midnight.”

  “Oh, dear. Midnight?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Why didn’t you come along sooner?”

  The girl in white wasn’t smiling anymore. In fact, she looked ready to snarl. So Sharon decided it was her turn to stare straight ahead.

  “Maybe you made a mistake,” Sharon said to the windshield, hoping to calm her passenger’s quick-trigger temper. “You know that school? Chumley Prep? They closed that down years ago. Back before I was even born.”

  She dared to look over at the girl in white.

  But she wasn’t there.

  The passenger seat was empty.

  On Tuesday, the day after Memorial Day, a tanker truck traveled down County Route 13, hauling its load of fresh milk to the dairy-processing plant on the far side of North Chester.

  It hissed and clicked its air brakes as it came to a stop at the crossroads. The driver looked up at the blinking red stoplight, glanced out both side windows, and checked for traffic coming in either direction on Highway 31.

  Then his windshield exploded.

  A tree limb slammed through the glass and pinned him to his seat like a prized trophy in a butterfly collection.

  The branch had come from a gigantic oak tree that towered over the intersection.

  An oak tree with a white wooden cross nailed into its trunk.

  “This, of course, is Main Street,” Zack’s father said as they drove through North Chester.

  It was Monday, a week after Memorial Day. After their vacation in Florida, the Jennings family was ready to move into their new Connecticut home. They drove up Main Street, which had so many old-fashioned-looking storefronts and cast-iron lampposts, it reminded Zack of that other Main Street—the fake one down in Disney World.

  “There’s the town clock!” Zack called from the backseat. “See it?”

  Because Zack and his father sometimes came up to North Chester to visit his grandpa, Zack knew all the tourist sites worth pointing out.

  “Wow! That’s neat,” said Judy.

  Zack and Judy and Zack’s father had had a blast down in Mouse Land. Riding rides, telling stories, laughing. His dad was loosening up, so Zack did, too. He let silly stuff tumble out of his mouth without being afraid that his mother might scream at him for being such an immature baby. His stepmother, Judy, seemed to enjoy his “flights of fancy”—that’s what she called it when Zack made stuff up.

  “I’ve never seen a clock so big,” Judy remarked. “How do they wind it?”

  “They don’t,” said Zack’s father. “It rusted out years ago. So no matter what train you take, it’s always the 9:52.”

  “Yeah, but in the old days,” said Zack, “they used to have these monkeys and squirrels inside to wind it.”

  Judy laughed. “Monkeys?”

  “And squirrels,” Zack added. “Grandpa told me.”

  “My father, like so many Jennings men, was prone to exaggeration,” said George.

  “Well, be that as it may, I’d like to hear about these furry little timekeepers.”

  “Okay,” said Zack. “The guys in charge of the clock—”

  “The clockmeisters,” his father added.

  “Right, the clockmeisters would put bananas and walnuts up in the top of the tower, up above all the gears and pulleys and stuff. Then they’d open the cages and the monkeys and squirrels would climb up the gear teeth to get at the food.”

  “Gears have teeth?” Judy asked.

  “Grandpa said that’s why they needed a dentist to live inside the clock.”

  “I see….”

  “Anyway, they’d climb up the teeth and that made the gears turn and that wound the clock.”

  “Fascinating.”

  “Grandpa knew the dentist. They played poker on Tuesdays.”

  Zack’s father pulled the car into a parking lot fronting what looked like a fairy-tale cottage made of weathered brick and topped by a steeply sloped slate roof.

  “And this is where my dad used to work,” he said.

  “This was the police station?” Judy marveled. “It’s beautiful.”

  “True. It’s also old. And drafty, especially in the winter. So the town built the guys a brand-new municipal building a little ways up the road.”

  “But, ma’am,” Zack said to Judy with a thick cowboy twang, “when my grandpa rode the range, this here was the hoosegow where he locked up all them cattle rustlers and train robbers.”

  “He wrote a lot of traffic tickets,” Zack’s father gently corrected him. “Rescued cats out of trees. Come on, Zack—we don’t need to embellish everything.”

  Zack sank back into his seat. “Yes, sir.”

  They picked up a few sacks of groceries at the market on Main Street, then headed out to see their new house.

  “Wow,” said Judy.

  She was admiring the scenery. Rolling hills. Stone fences. The whole state of Connecticut looked like the cover of a Christmas card, only it was summer now, so there wasn’t any sparkle-flake snow on the ground.

  “That’s the entrance to Spratling Manor,” Zack’s father said when they neared a pockmarked driveway leading to a wrought iron gate.

  “It’s a haunted castle,” said Zack. “Lots of evil lurks behind those walls.”

  “Really?” said Judy. “Evil? And it’s lurking?”

  “Yep. Grandpa said so, anyway.” Zack pressed his nose against the window. “Coming up next is the field where the Rowdy Army Men roam. Late at night, you can see them marching out of the forest.”

  “Okay,” said Judy. “Just exactly who are these Rowdy Army Men?”

  “Dead soldiers from the Korean War,” said Zack. “They got drunk and shot each other.”

  “Oh-kay. Any ghosts at our house?”

  Probably just my dead mother, Zack
wanted to say, but instead he mumbled, “I hope not.”

  Judy turned around. “Are you okay, hon?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Here we are.” His father eased to a stop at the red blinking light. “Home sweet home!”

  Judy looked around. “We live in the middle of a highway?”

  “No. We’re right over there.” Zack’s father pointed to the far side of the intersection. “See?”

  “No. Sorry. I see trees and a squirrel. Maybe he ran away from that clock tower.”

  Zack leaned forward. Good. No more ghost talk. They had jumped back to squirrels and monkeys.

  “If you squint,” he said, “you can kind of sort of see our chimney between all the trees.”

  Zack knew where the house was situated because he and his father had come up to watch the men building it one Saturday back in April while Judy was off on her Curiosity Cat’s Furball book tour. This would be her first time seeing the house.

  “It’s right up there,” he said. “See?”

  “Yes. No. I’m lying. I don’t see anything except trees. Wildflowers.”

  “Wait. How about that giant oak tree?” Zack’s father pointed to a huge black tree. “The one with the white cross nailed to it.”

  “Okay. I can see the tree with the cross.”

  “That’s us. That tree is in our backyard.”

  “Not another word!”

  “But, Momma…”

  “You’ll get us both fired!”

  Early that same Monday, Sharon was down at the Spratling Manor carriage house visiting her mother and son.

  “I swear I saw her, Momma. Last week. The woman in white. The one folks talk about…right in the crossroads!”

  “Do you want Miss Spratling to think you’ve gone mad?”

  “I know what I saw, Momma.”

  The baby began to wail and kick.

  “Now look what you’ve done. You woke up Aidan.”

  “I’m sorry, Momma.”

  “Sharon, you listen to me, girl: You are not to say another word about this. Not to anyone!”

  “Yes, Momma.”

  An old intercom box mounted on the wall buzzed. Sharon’s mother depressed the talk-back button.

  “Yes, Miss Spratling?”

  “Send Sharon up to the main house immediately!”

  “Yes, Miss Spratling.”

  Sharon’s mother took her finger off the button. “Hurry! Go!”

  Sharon kissed Aidan goodbye and raced out the carriage house door.

  It was another Monday.

  Time to visit the roadside memorial.

  Zack’s father turned into the entrance of the Rocky Hill Farms subdivision.

  The housing tract used to be a real farm until the farmer’s family realized they could make more money selling the land than they could selling corn.

  Most of the homes weren’t quite finished. Tyvek-wrapped walls waited for vinyl siding. Two-by-fours and cinder blocks were stacked in the craggy dirt that one day would become front lawns.

  They rounded a final curve and approached a huge house. A grand Victorian with five bedrooms and five baths. Even though it was brand-new, it looked like an old-fashioned gingerbread house.

  “It’s gorgeous,” said Judy. “And huge!”

  “Wait till you see the inside!” exclaimed Zack.

  “Do we have a backyard?”

  “Yep.”

  “I always wanted a backyard!” Judy hopped out of the car and ran off to find it. Halfway around the house, she stopped. “Guys? We have company.”

  Zack and his father hurried over to where they could see what Judy saw: a police officer and two men in coveralls strolling through the wooded area bounding the edge of their backyard.

  “Ben?” Zack’s father called out to the police officer, a tall, thin man in a khaki uniform and Smokey the Bear hat.

  “George?” the cop hollered back.

  “Friend of yours?” Judy whispered.

  “Yep,” said Zack’s father. “Sheriff Ben Hargrove. He was a rookie cop back when my dad was sheriff.”

  Hargrove came into the yard. The two men in coveralls followed.

  “By golly, it’s good to see you, George,” Hargrove said. “I heard you might be coming home.”

  “Moving in today. So, what’s up? What brings you out this way?”

  “We’re checking all the trees up and down Route 13. Looking for dead limbs. This your new house?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Nice one. This your wife and son?”

  “I’m sorry. Yes. Judy, Zack—this is Sheriff Ben Hargrove.”

  “Hi!” Judy held out her hand. Hargrove shook it. Zack slid behind his father’s leg to hide.

  “Shy guy, hunh?” Hargrove said.

  “I think he’s just a little overwhelmed. Been a busy couple weeks. Right, Zack?”

  Zack nodded.

  “So, what’s up with the trees?” George asked.

  “They’re killing people,” said the younger of the two men in coveralls as he ran his hand through his shaggy hair.

  Zack peeked around his father’s leg. He could see that Mr. Coveralls hadn’t shaved in a couple of days. Probably hadn’t showered, either. He sort of looked like a pirate or a mechanic.

  “Of course, there’s no way of knowin’ which tree’s doin’ the killing. None of ’em will confess! Like talkin’ to a stump!” He cracked himself up.

  The other man in coveralls, the older one, said nothing.

  “George, do you know Tony Mandica?” Sheriff Hargrove gestured toward the younger of the two men.

  “No, I don’t think we’ve ever met.”

  Mr. Coveralls stuck out his hand. “Well, I’m Tony. And this is my pop, Anthony.”

  The old man said nothing.

  “We’re Mandica and Son Tree Service. He’s Mandica. I’m the son. Give us a call and we’ll give you a quote on trimming up your trees.” Mandica pulled a dirty business card out of his top pocket. It was coated with sawdust, stained with oil, and probably smelled like gasoline.

  “I see,” said Zack’s father skeptically. “And how much might that cost?”

  Mandica shrugged. “Depends on what we find.”

  “Should I hire lawyers? Or does the court assign each offending oak its own public defender?”

  Sheriff Hargrove wasn’t laughing. “We recently had two tree-related accidents out this way, George. Hate to have any more.”

  “Was there a storm?” Judy asked.

  “No, Mrs. Jennings. No storm. On the Friday night before Memorial Day a tree limb broke off someplace high and tore down the blinker light out over the crossroads. Lucky for us, nobody was hurt before we got her fixed. Four days later, another branch in the same general vicinity busted through a milk-truck driver’s windshield. Killed him.”

  “One of our trees?” Zack’s father asked, suddenly as serious as the sheriff.

  “No way to know for certain. All we know is that it was an oak. Plenty of those on both sides of the road.”

  “Okay. We’ll trim whatever you think needs trimming.”

  “Give me a call,” said the younger Mandica, “and we’ll set up an inspection.”

  “It won’t come down,” the old man suddenly said.

  His son laughed. “What, Pop?”

  “The tree. No man nor ax can pierce its bark.”

  “Oh-kay, Pop. Don’t worry, folks. No matter what he says, six of my guys with chain saws can handle any tree you got. Come on, Pop. Let’s go home and have a nice nap.”

  The two Mandicas disappeared into the trees edging the yard.

  Zack remembered the tree near the museum in New York City. It was an oak, too. He wondered if the oak trees killing people up here were that tree’s country cousins.

  “We should go inside,” Zack’s father announced.

  “Good to have you back in town, George,” said Sheriff Hargrove.

  “Thanks, Ben. Good to be home.”

  Hargrove waved
goodbye and followed the Mandicas.

  Zack’s father went back to the car to grab the groceries.

  Zack stared up at the canopy of tangled branches overhead.

  “Woo-woo! Killer trees,” said Judy in a funny, spooky voice. “Hey, Zack—do you think they’re related to the killer bees?”

  She was trying to make a joke.

  Zack wasn’t laughing.

  The scruffy little dog heard the back door open and scampered into the kitchen.

  “Who’s this?” Zack asked when the dog sat down at his feet and raised a paw.

  “Zack,” said his dad, “meet Zipper!”

  “Uh, hello,” Zack said as he bent down to shake hands with Zipper.

  Judy rubbed behind the dog’s ears. Zipper rolled over on the floor to let her know he really needed his belly scratched right now, not his ears.

  “Does he belong to a neighbor?” asked Zack.

  “Nope,” said his father. “He’s your new dog!”

  Zipper started yapping.

  “Surprise!” said Judy.

  “We figured you’d want a dog!” said his father.

  “No, I don’t.”

  “Sure you do!” his father insisted. “Out here in the country, every boy has a dog. In fact, I think it’s a Connecticut state law. And just so you wouldn’t get arrested, Dr. Freed, my old vet up here, let us have this great Jack Russell. He was the runt of the litter, so nobody wanted to adopt him. I asked Dr. Freed to drop him off this morning.”

  “Well, I think he’s perfect,” said Judy.

  Zipper stood up on his hind legs.

  “Did he do that on purpose?” Zack wondered out loud.

  “I dunno,” said Judy. “Let’s see if he’ll do it again. Up, Zipper! Up!”

  The dog stood up again. This time, he twirled.

  “You know what?” said Zack. “I think we should probably keep him. Especially if it’s a state law and all.”

  About ten seconds after they’d gone into the house and done the whole welcome-to-Connecticut-here’s-yournew-dog deal, Zack’s father’s high-tech DingleBerry (that was what Zack called it) cell phone started beeping on his belt, so he disappeared into the room already set up by the moving company to be his home office—the one with the bookshelves crammed with law books.