The Beastly Trees

by Sam Logue

  Sam pulled over and rang Katie and the island police.

  ****

  Victoria had parked the car half-hidden in the woods behind thick pines.

  Far away, in front of her, was a craggy rock ledge overhanging a large recess that seemed deep enough to be a shelter. Each time she stepped closer to the recess, a white mist rippled in front of the cave, like wind blowing gently on ocean water, hiding the entrance, as if to tease her. Something on her ripped as she passed a tangle of wide, thorny bushes. She felt her torn shirtsleeve and touched her skin.

  Victoria looked up and the mist lifted. She ran toward the recess. With each stride, her legs threatened to give out and it felt as though she were treading water. The dark sky closed in on her and she wished for a penlight. She fell. Her knees stung and felt wet. There was a sharp tug at her ankle. Someone was holding on to her, pulling her back. Twice more, they yanked at her leg. Victoria turned to stare. She didn’t believe in monsters, and she didn’t believe in tree beasts. But there, right in front of her, was a half boy, half small tree, gripping her ankle. It looked like the tree she had seen earlier when she was following the rag man, the tree whose arm she’d broken – or at least it had seemed that way.

  The moving tree at her feet, with the outline of a boy’s snarling face in its bark, was using his remaining branch arm with shoots for clawlike fingers to pull her legs out from under her. She fell down onto a deer’s old bed of grass and leaves, which was flat but soft as she landed.

  Someone poked Victoria. She felt around and there were leaves under her. She peered up. A policewoman stood above her.

  “Mrs Gold?” the cop said, pulling her up from the deer’s bed.

  “Yeah,” Victoria mumbled.

  The cop wore her long red hair in a tightly pulled back ponytail. Donovan’s hair now had tinges of grey, but it was still the same carroty red. Her partner was a burly young guy with black sunglasses in his shirt pocket.

  “Officer Donovan? You searched for my son.” Victoria remembered the name of the other cop from that day. “What happened to Officer Adams?”

  “He retired. We’ve been searching for you tonight, Mrs Gold.”

  “How did you know to find me here?”

  “Your husband called us over four hours ago. We were driving past and saw your car sticking out of the bushes. And we found this caught in a thorn bush once we were in the woods.” Officer Donovan held out a strip of Victoria’s shirtsleeve.

  Victoria took it from her and put it in her pocket. Donovan’s partner walked back to their squad car, took a grey blanket from the front seat and gave it to Victoria.

  “We’ve been separated – Sam and me – for four years,” she said, draping the warm blanket around her shoulders. “How did he know?”

  “You can ask him yourself, ma’am. He’s waiting at your daughter’s house.”

  Victoria’s heart did a somersault. Sam was waiting for her.

  Donovan’s partner looked at Victoria’s knees. “Would you like a paramedic to examine you?”

  “No, I’m fine.”

  Officer Donovan and her partner led Victoria to their white and black squad car. Donovan’s partner opened the back door for her and the inside of the car brightened when the small light on the cloth ceiling turned on. Victoria lowered herself into the back seat. The door closed and the car darkened.

  The cops got into the front seats. A wall of wire divided Victoria from them. “What about my car?” she said. “I left it back there.”

  Donovan was driving. “We’ll call a towing service to bring it to your house, Mrs Gold,” she said.

  ****

  Sam stared out the living room window as a squad car parked next to Katie and Julian’s front lawn. Nat stood next to Sam, peering over his shoulder. A red-haired policewoman helped Victoria out onto the flagstone path and led her up the steps to the porch, where Katie had left a light on. A blanket partly covered Victoria and her hair drooped around her face. She seemed more tired than when the twins, as babies, cried nonstop in the night, and Sam and Victoria had to get up and check on them constantly.

  Behind Sam, Molly stood at the stair landing and whispered to Katie, “Can I come downstairs?”

  “Not now, sweetie. Stay in your room, okay?” Katie called up to her.

  Julian opened the front door to let Victoria and the police inside. The female officer said her name was Donovan, and Sam remembered he had spoken to her at the playground the day Paul went missing.

  Her partner was a serious-looking young guy. He turned away from Victoria and spoke to Katie. “If this keeps happening, I suggest you seek help for her.”

  Victoria palmed her limp hair but didn’t say anything. She didn’t seem interested in her own fate. She was in trouble. Victoria had always been the kind of person who wanted a say in her life.

  “Do you mean this has happened before?” Nat asked the cops.

  “You weren’t aware?” Officer Donovan said.

  “No one told us,” Sam said.

  “Another officer at our station responded to a call from one of your wife’s neighbours about a week ago. The woman had seen your wife climbing out of a window in your – her – house. She was concerned your wife could harm herself. The officer who responded was required to make a report of the incident.”

  Sam glanced back at Victoria. There was a little blood on her shirt. “Are you okay?” he asked, and she looked away.

  Julian stood near her and tried to put his arm around her, as though to ease her, but she inched away from him. “That’s not all. One day I threw your rocking chair at the picture window,” she said to Sam.

  “Is the window still damaged?” Katie asked.

  “A repairman fixed it.”

  “Why didn’t you call one of us to talk if you weren’t all right?” Sam said. “You should have called me.”

  Victoria didn’t reply.

  Officer Donovan’s partner cleared his throat. “Can one of you let her stay with you for tonight?”

  “She can stay with us for as long as she needs to,” Katie said.

  Julian nodded in agreement.

  “She? I’m standing right here. Don’t I get a say in this?” Victoria said.

  Katie and Julian glanced at each other.

  “We’ll call to have your car towed to your house,” Officer Donovan assured Victoria before leaving with her partner.

  “I’d like to go home,” Victoria said after they were gone.

  “No. You’re staying with Katie,” Nat told her.

  “You can’t talk to me that way. I’m your mother.”

  “That doesn’t mean you’re always right. You have a family who cares about you.”

  “He’s right,” Sam said.

  Victoria looked to the floor then shut her eyelids.

  “If you’re going to refuse to even look at me, then I’m going,” Sam said.

  She opened her eyes and looked at Nat. “I’ll stay with Katie.”

  Katie began tending to Victoria’s knees, and Sam left.

  ****

  Sam worried about Victoria all week. She had seemed so tired, and what was that speck of blood on her shirt? He told himself he would ring Nat early next week but couldn’t wait.

  “I figured out how we can make it work,” Sam said, without saying hello.

  “What’s going on?” Nat asked.

  “I’m calling about your mother. She can’t stay at Katie’s forever. She’s sharing a bed with Katie, and Julian’s stuck in the living room. Katie told me she thinks your mother feels awful about it.”

  “Are you sure mum even wants your help?”

  “I know she’s mad at me—”

  “She hates you,” Nat said. “She really does. Wouldn’t you if you were her?”

  “Yeah, I would,” Sam said after a moment. “But you heard what those cops said when they dropped her off at Katie’s place. She’s a danger to herself. They talk like she’ll be committed to somewhere, a mental health faci
lity, if they have to deal with her again. I don’t want that happening to her. She doesn’t take defeat well. She would be devastated. I’ll move back in.”

  “A mental health centre might be good for her. Wait, you’re going to move into where?” Nat sounded like Sam had told him he would run for president.

  “Into our old house,” Sam said.

  “After all this time? Mum wouldn’t want you to. She wouldn’t like it.”

  “I need to make it up to her somehow, and I think this is the way.”

  “Where would you sleep? But I don’t want you to think I’m agreeing with your idea.”

  “The basement’s finished. It’s probably still got the futon. I’ll sleep down there. I won’t bother her. She won’t even know I’m downstairs, but I can keep an eye on her from there.”

  “She’ll know you’re there when you’re using the bathroom or the kitchen.”

  “I never said it was a perfect plan.”

  “She’s not going to go along with this.”

  “You can convince her. She’ll listen to you.”

  Nat breathed out and was quiet for a moment. “I’ll try. That’s all I can promise.”

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  When Sam returned to live with Victoria, he didn’t arrive with boxes of his belongings, only his blue pickup truck and a suitcase.

  She couldn’t believe she had let Nat talk her into allowing Sam to move back in. Temporarily, she assured herself. At the very least, she should have been grateful he cared enough to put up with her coldness toward him every day now that he was back in the house. They lived together, but they weren’t really living together. They had decided on a roommate-like arrangement, sharing the house’s general living quarters but maintaining separate sleeping areas.

  As promised by Officer Donovan, the car was back in the driveway. Sam filled it with gas and drove Victoria to work the first couple of days he was home. She was feeling better enough to drive. Still, it felt good having someone help out.

  Tonight Sam must have heard her crying. He came into her room with the soft footfall of an intruder, sat on her bed and held her hand. “Why are you upset?”

  Victoria sat up, flicked on the table lamp and dried her eyes with the backs of her hands. “Everything.” After a few moments of silence, she said, “You know, I never thought you would take care of me.”

  “I like taking care of you. Can you stand me being here?” Sam gave her a warm smile.

  “At first I didn’t know what to think.”

  He squeezed her hand. She reached for the lamp on the bedside table and was about to turn it off. Sam kept his hand on hers so that she couldn’t. “Why are you letting me take care of you?”

  “There’s no one else.”

  “That can’t be the sole reason.”

  “What I was going to say was, most of the time I think that it’s kind of nice having you here, actually.” Victoria slipped her hand out from under his and switched the light off. “Thanks for stopping by.”

  Sam got up. “I guess I better be getting back to the basement.”

  “You don’t have to stay down there.”

  He paused by the doorway.

  “I don’t mean that you can sleep in here with me, and this doesn’t mean we’re getting back together. But why don’t you sleep in Nat’s old bedroom? You’ll be more comfortable,” Victoria said.

  The room was dark. Sam was silent for a moment then said, “Thanks.”

  “Sam?”

  “I’m still here.”

  “I’m sorry about your rocking chair.”

  A day afterward, Victoria leaned against the dishwasher she had just finished unloading and reached for a hand towel to stanch the tears that kept coming. She remembered Sam’s hand on hers, the way that just having it there reassured her. She realised that while he had let her down once, he was the only person left who knew all the good – and bad – things about her. It struck her then that Sam was her closest friend.

  He came into the kitchen. “Everything okay?”

  Victoria glanced at his boots on the linoleum floor. They were clean. He had remembered to wipe his feet on the woven mat in front of the side door that led from the kitchen into the garden. His hands were dusty from the dirt he had been kneading outside. He had been helping out with everything now that he was there, and he took her care seriously. He stood at the double sink, lathered up his hands and rinsed them.

  “What are you planting for us? Or are you tending what I already planted?” Victoria asked, glancing at his clean hands. The “for us” struck her as an improvement in their situation. Maybe she could get used to thinking in terms of both Sam and her again.

  He leaned against the countertop, and right away she knew he wanted to talk. “I was doing some weeding.” Sam motioned to her face. “Want to talk about it?”

  Victoria wiped her damp eyes with her arm. “Not really.”

  “You’re going through something really tough, and I want to understand,” Sam said. “It doesn’t have to be this way. It doesn’t have to be so empty around us all of the time. It hasn’t been the same for either of us since he was taken.”

  “We don’t know if he was taken.”

  “Something had to have happened to him.”

  Victoria struggled to talk without crying. “I don’t want to hear your … your opinion.”

  “There must’ve been some reason we married each other.” Sam’s lips straightened then raised into somewhat of a smile.

  “We were in love,” Victoria said, unable to return his goodwill.

  “I still am.”

  It hit her like a rogue wave. “It’s hard to forgive you.”

  “I don’t expect you to do that.”

  “I’m not a martyr.”

  “I know, and I respect you for that,” Sam said. “Can we at least see how things go?”

  “It’s possible. Let’s leave it at that.”

  The last intense rays of sundown wove into the kitchen through the window and surrounded Sam with light. A rush of cool air hit Victoria, like someone had opened a skylight above her. She felt Sam watching her back as she turned and left.

  Sam’s voice sounded hesitant, fragile, the way Nat had spoken when he was very small and still vulnerable, the way Paul sounded too. “I started the whole thing with her in the first place because I was confused.”

  Victoria stopped walking, paused and faced him again. “Oldest story in the book, Sam. Try again.”

  “My intentions were never to hurt us. With her, it was different than with us. It wasn’t about love. But I could talk to her about Paul in a way you didn’t want to.”

  “You talked about him with her? You trusted her more than me?”

  Sam’s gaze focused on her. “There’s no one I trust more than you. When she and I talked about him, I always talked like he had died. I’m afraid to talk that way to you.”

  “You’re saying I can’t accept that you think he’s dead?” Victoria said, her voice sounding distant and tinny. “We never found a body—”

  He cut her short. “So many years have gone by. He’s not coming back to us.”

  “We don’t know that. All the time people are reunited with family members who have been lost for more years than he has been.”

  “Don’t,” Sam said. It sounded less like a threat and more like a plea, as though if she continued speaking he would fall to his knees and weep.

  “I won’t believe he’s dead,” Victoria said. Sam came close and reached for her, but she pulled away before he could hold her. “You almost killed me. I went through everything with Paul, too, and I didn’t run off and mess around with the first guy who was not my husband and who showed interest in me. Let’s be honest with each other. If nothing had happened to him, you might still have found someone else.”

  Sam wiped his eyes then smacked his hand on the kitchen table. “That’s just not true. I never wanted to betray you, and I’m so sorry I did. It’s you I want, and it alway
s has been you.” He recoiled as though he was too caught up to have remembered that the tabletop was hard, and he was in pain.

  Victoria dried her eyes. “Look at the two of us crying.” She smiled slightly. “Is your palm okay?”

  “Yeah.” His shoulders slumped as though he were an unsure boy, and there was that reflection of Nat and Paul in him again. “The real question is, are you okay?”

  “I think I’m going to be someday. But I’m not sure we’re going to be.”

  Sam nodded, and it appeared as though he was taking it all in. “There’s one thing I’ve wanted to ask you ever since I came back,” he said.

  Victoria looked at him to continue.

  “Why did you wait until now to, to lose it?” he asked.

  Victoria’s neck tensed then she almost laughed out loud at his choice of words. “I did lose it for a while there, didn’t I?” She paused for a moment. “Paul was gone, but we still had Nat and Katie. I didn’t want to add to their pain.”

  “You’re a good mother. Always were.”

  “I lost him.”

  “You didn’t.”

  She released herself into Sam’s arms and finally felt a little more whole again.

  ****

  That night Victoria invited Sam to watch television with her in the living room. During a commercial break, he picked up the remote and flicked to the news channel, where an attractive reporter said the station had just received a breaking story. Sam put down his needlepoint and Victoria reached for his hand, as though they both knew what the reporter was about to say, and Victoria’s nerves lessened through his touch.

  The pretty reporter brushed her dark hair out of her eyes, and the TV screen showed an enlarged photo of Mr Hollingsworth’s grimacing face. He had been arrested for attempting to meet in person with an undercover FBI agent who had posed as a child in an online game forum. When searching through Mr Hollingsworth’s hard drive, the authorities had also found incriminating evidence possibly linking him to the murder of a local schoolteacher.

  Victoria pointed to the TV. “They’re talking about Miss O’Malley.”

  Sam and Victoria stared at each other across the couch, and she knew they were thinking the same thing. Everyone would believe Mr Hollingsworth took Paul.