The Edge of Over There

by Shawn Smucker

  The screen door had fallen off completely at some point and lay on the narrow walkway. The inside door still had loose hinges and a slightly rotten door frame. If someone had ever tried to sell this house, they certainly hadn’t given it a very good effort. He looked around one more time, grabbed on to the doorknob, and tried to turn it.

  It was locked.

  He reached into his pocket and pulled out something that looked like a pocketknife, but if you looked closer you’d realize that instead of blades it held a series of lock picks. It was a lock-picking set, much more sophisticated than the one he had when he was ten years old. He had never lost his obsession with locks, his deep desire to open all the doors. He extended one of the picks from the set and tried to fit it into the lock, but it was too wide. He tried another, and it slipped inside. He felt around for a moment, closing his eyes, envisioning the edges, the tumblers of the lock, the teeth of the pick probing and fitting. He tried the knob again.

  The door opened. He walked inside.

  To say that Leo’s old house was completely still would be like saying the bottom of the sea is dark. It unnerved him when he entered. That stillness was the primary reason he didn’t close the side door behind him. If you’ve ever been in an empty house, you might understand a little bit about stillness, but even an empty house that’s currently being lived in has small signs of life. The ticking of a clock. The small gust of air moving when the air conditioner turns on. The occasional hum of the refrigerator. The smell of being.

  Not Leo’s old house. It was beyond still. There were no vital signs. The clocks’ batteries had all died years ago, so they simply sat there staring down at him, their hands frozen at random times. The air ducts and vents were covered in dust. The appliances were lifeless, their displays blank. He wandered through the first floor, smelling only humidity and dust and the musty odor of disuse.

  He went all the way up to the third floor and peeked into Ruby’s room, but he didn’t have the heart to stay there very long. Her bed was still there, the furniture all in its place, a time capsule from eight years before, another life. He reached up and touched the door frame, still remembering how his mother had leaned against it when he told her that Ruby was gone.

  Leo, where did he take her?

  I don’t know.

  He had thought over that question and answer a million times since, his mother asking, him answering. Her question genuine. His answer clouded in dishonesty. He did know where his father had taken her, but no one would have believed him, so he had kept it all to himself. The woman, Marie, standing by the small fire. The sound of rock moving against rock. The darkness that followed.

  He walked down the stairs, his footsteps loud and out of place. As he turned the corner at the bottom and walked past the closet, he remembered the trapdoor in the guest room closet. It was the first time he’d thought of that door for years, and he walked slowly through the house, attracted to it the way a small sliver of metal trembles on its way to the magnet. The side door was still open, and as he walked past it, shadows drifted down with the summer leaves that fell, spinning from the sycamore trees.

  The guest room door was locked, which seemed strange. He didn’t remember that his father had kept that room locked. He pulled out his lock-picking set and made short work of the flimsy indoor lock. The door popped open as if it had been held there by a spring and only needed someone to nudge it. The door whined as it opened, and he walked straight to the closet door.

  That door also whined, but when it stopped he could still hear something. Strange sounds coming from . . . where? Far away? Nearby? He held his breath and listened, and he realized the sounds grew closer, louder. He ran to the window and opened it to see if the sounds were coming from outside. The summer breeze blew in, warmer now, and he looked into the backyard, the space that had turned into a jungle. The azaleas were still there with their spots of color, but they had grown untrimmed and were sparse and thin the way uncared-for things will sometimes deteriorate. A snake slid through the undergrowth, its belly hissing on the leaves. Tiny lizards flicked here and there, running from their own shadows. A squirrel danced two or three steps, stopped, lifted something to its face with its two tiny hands. The whole backyard was alive and moving—everything there went on precisely as if nothing had ever happened in that house, as if that house wasn’t even there.

  But the sound—Leo could still hear a sound coming from somewhere.

  He turned back to face the room and looked down the hallway, the way he had come, but the noise was not coming from the main part of the house. He listened to the walls—that’s where the noise seemed to be coming from. Somewhere deep, somewhere close to where he had always imagined the words had gone, where all the words lay hidden. He walked back over to the trapdoor, and that’s when he knew it.

  The sounds were coming from the other side of that door.

  He got down on his hands and knees and listened. It was a slow, steady pounding sound. A tap, tap, tap. But also voices? Yes, he thought he heard voices too.

  Suddenly, pounding on the trapdoor. He jumped back.

  “Help!” a voice shouted. “Is anyone there? Let us out!”

  Leo sat there for a moment, stunned. He thought he must be dreaming. He stared at the door, waiting to see what would happen.

  “Please! Is anyone there? Help!”

  “Who are you?” Leo blurted out, still staring at the trapdoor, still on his hands and knees on the floor of the guest room.

  The banging stopped. The person stopped shouting.

  “Who are you?” the voice asked in return, a little hesitant, a little timid.

  “What are you doing in my house?” Leo asked, and it felt a little bit like a lie, that question, but also like the truth.

  Silence again.

  “Please let us in. I can explain.”

  “Well, I have a gun,” Leo said. “So you’d better not try anything.”

  He didn’t have a gun. He didn’t have anything of the sort.

  “Please don’t shoot us,” a different voice said, followed quickly by a loud shushing noise.

  Leo leaned forward and tried to lift the metal ring that would open the trapdoor, but it was too heavy. He stood up and grabbed on to it with two hands, lifted with all of his might. It still didn’t budge. That’s when he saw the lock, a tiny round thing that had been painted over. He scraped away some of the paint and pulled the lock picks from his pocket again. He chose the thinnest one and worked the inside of the lock.

  “What are you doing? Please open the door!”

  “Be patient!” Leo shouted. “It’s locked.”

  “Do you have the key?”

  “No,” he said.

  “We’ll be stuck here forever!” the second voice whined, followed again by the shushing sound.

  “One second,” Leo shouted back, biting his lip as he tried to pick the lock. Something budged, the lock turned. He put the set back in his pocket and grabbed on to the ring and pulled. The door came open easily, like peeling the skin off a banana.

  “Thank you,” the first person said, climbing up out of the hole. The second person came close behind and collapsed onto the floor.

  Leo looked down the hole. It was round, maybe three feet across, and went down through nothing more than rocks and brown earth. A wooden ladder came up one side, a few of its rickety rungs broken or missing. No matter how hard Leo peered down into the hole, he couldn’t see the bottom.

  He looked at the two people who had come up through the trapdoor, and he was completely surprised: two teenage girls. The second one who had come up looked terrified. She sat on the floor, her back against the wall under the open window, and she looked around like a bird in a cage.

  The first one, on the other hand, was already standing, and she held a short dagger in her hand. She looked strong and determined and pushed her long blonde hair out of her eyes. Leo thought she was probably a few years younger than him, but she was very pretty.

  �
�Who are you?” Leo stammered, his eyes not leaving the blonde-haired girl.

  “Who are you?” hissed the terrified girl still sitting on the floor.

  “I’m Leo,” he said, still staring at the blonde girl.

  She leaned the blade against the wall and took a deep breath, as if she had crossed an immeasurable distance. She looked out the window, then back at Leo.

  “Is this New Orleans?” she asked, and there was something bashful in her voice, something that didn’t match the assertive way she carried herself.

  He nodded. “Yeah, of course it is. So, who are you?” he asked again. “And how’d you get into my house?”

  The girl smiled, and there was confidence there, the face of a person who embraced adventure. Her bashfulness fled, and Leo liked her even more. There was a strength about her: she seemed determined, and kind, and unwavering.

  “I’m Abra,” she said. “I need you to help me find a tree.”

  17

  ABRA’S MIND COULDN’T COMPREHEND exactly what had happened. There had been the flash of light, the heavy sensation of Beatrice dragging her down, her ice-cold hands holding tight. Out of nowhere the ladder’s rungs had appeared in her hands as if they had always been there. She started climbing. She heard Beatrice below her, felt her movements tremble through the wooden ladder. She had banged her head on what she thought was a ceiling. It turned out to be a floor, a floor that opened. Now she was standing there, staring at the young man.

  “What are you doing here? How’d you get in there?” Leo asked.

  Abra didn’t want to sit around answering questions, and what did she have to tell him? She didn’t know how she had gotten in there, not really, and she was on the path of something big. She had to be close. In her mind, she was thinking this would take a few hours. Maybe she could even find the Tree, destroy it, and be home in time for supper. She tried not to think about the fact that her mother didn’t know who she was. She’d deal with that later.

  “Like I said, I’m Abra.”

  She looked over her shoulder at Beatrice. Abra was becoming less and less sure about what to do with her.

  “That’s B,” she said.

  “Where did you come from? How did you get in there?” Leo kept asking.

  Abra sighed, glanced out the window, then looked back at Leo. “I’ll tell you more later. But we’re looking for a tree.”

  “A tree?” Leo asked, staring at her.

  She blushed and nodded. “Yeah, a tree. Something . . . fantastic. Something old.”

  “This is New Orleans,” Leo said. “Everything’s fantastic. Everything’s old.”

  “Something huge,” Abra insisted. “It’s a tree . . . like . . . I don’t know.”

  Abra paced around the room in frustration, thinking hard. She wished she had the atlas. She wondered if the dot had been in someplace specific—north of the city? Right in the middle? She tried to picture it, but all she saw was the red dot with the number beside it.

  “There’s only one special tree I know about,” Leo said quietly. “My mom used to take me and my sister there on the weekends. We’d pack sandwiches and something fun to do. It was in Audubon Park. It was called the Tree of Life.”

  Abra’s head snapped up out of her discouragement. “Are you kidding me?” she practically shouted.

  He nodded.

  “Can you take me there?”

  Leo drove them ten or fifteen minutes from his father’s house to Audubon Park. Maybe it took longer—Abra lost track. Neither he nor Abra nor Beatrice said much during the trip.

  In fact, Abra had spent most of the drive stealing glances at Beatrice. If, as Abra suspected, Beatrice had been at least partially responsible for her mother forgetting about her, she couldn’t figure out why. And if Beatrice was somehow working with or for Koli Naal, it made Abra shiver to have her so close while she searched for the Tree. But she didn’t know what else to do. Until Beatrice confirmed Abra’s worries, Abra decided to let her come along for the ride. But she knew she had to keep a close eye on her.

  “There it is,” Leo said, pointing across a green expanse of grass at a gnarled old tree.

  Abra ran to the tree, and Leo and Beatrice followed. It had a massive trunk, and its lower branches were each the size of large trees themselves, sticking straight out, so long and heavy that Abra couldn’t understand how they didn’t snap off. She stood in the shadows of the tree, and they were deeper than normal shadows, and darker. She didn’t see any fruit, but she pulled out the sword anyway and tried to plunge it into the tree.

  It didn’t go in. The point barely stuck into the wood.

  “Hey!” Leo hissed. “You can’t do that! The park rangers will be all over us! That’s a protected tree. What is wrong with you?”

  Abra glanced over at Beatrice to see if she, too, thought Abra’s actions were strange, but Beatrice wasn’t looking at her. She was looking at the sword, and there was a strange hunger in her eyes. The sun went behind a cloud and the day dimmed. Abra slid the blade back inside her waistband, where it nearly vanished.

  Abra looked back at the bark of the tree and ran her hands along it. The bark was old, but not the same old that the Tree of Life had been in the woods close to her house. That Tree had felt like something edible. This tree felt . . . normal.

  “This isn’t it,” she said, disappointment in her voice. “This isn’t the Tree of Life.”

  “I don’t know what you mean,” Leo said. “This is definitely the Tree of Life. Everybody calls it that. Look—read the plaque.”

  Abra stared at the small plaque mounted beside the trunk. He was right. That’s what the tree was called.

  The three of them sat down in the shade.

  “I don’t know why you helped us,” Abra said suddenly, glancing up at Leo. “But thanks. I’m going to have to think about this a little more. This isn’t the right tree. If you need to go, you can go.”

  A voice like rumbling stones startled them.

  “You’re right, girl,” a man said. “You’re right. The Tree you’re looking for? It won’t be so easy to find. Certainly not in your backyard. Not like the last one.”

  Abra turned around and saw one of the strangest-looking people she had ever seen.

  “I knew it,” he said, his eyes wide with the happiness of being right. He chuckled. “I knew you’d come here. You’re a smart one.” He pointed at her with a long finger and laughed to himself again. “‘This is where we’ll find her,’ I said. That’s what I told them. ‘This is where we’ll find her, at the tree.’”

  “Who?” Abra asked. “Who’d you tell that to? And who are you?”

  “Don’t worry about a thing, Abra. We’ll get you pointed in the right direction.”

  “Who are you?” she asked the man again, emphasizing each word as if talking to someone who didn’t completely understand the language, and this time he smiled with a sort of kindness that she recognized. It was a sad, melancholy affection, and her heart jumped inside of her.

  “Mr. Tennin?” she whispered.

  The melancholy part of his kindness swelled until it was only sadness. Feelings can do that. Anger can swell up until you realize it has transformed into a fierce kind of love. Happiness can slowly inflate so that tears fall from your eyes. This transformation of emotions is one of the most amazing things in the universe, like exploding stars or a baby being born.

  “No, I’m sorry, Abra,” he said, and his voice trembled so that he had to clear his throat to continue. “I’m so sorry. I wish! I wish Mr. Tennin was here. But he is . . . gone now. Long gone, across the water.”

  “How do you know this guy?” Leo asked, but Abra held up her hand, telling him to wait.

  “Where?” she asked the man. “Where did Tennin go?”

  The man stared at her for a moment. “My name is Mr. Henry, and we need to talk,” he said. “Somewhere in private. Come.”

  He turned and walked away, and for the first time Abra realized he was an old man. He walked in
that hesitant fashion of someone who is expecting to be tripped up. While motionless he stood up straight, but when he walked he bent forward, slightly hunched. The shaved head and piercings hid his age, or tried to.

  The three followed him into a shadowy grove of trees. He leaned against a trunk and crossed his arms, and he was suddenly young again.

  “Go ahead, sit down, sit down. First, tell me who you all are. I was only expecting one of you.”

  Leo and Beatrice looked at each other.

  “You can call me B,” Beatrice said, and for once her smile failed to rise. She looked like a fairy whose wings had been clipped. The man stared at her, squinting. She shuddered. He took a deep breath.

  “I think I know who you are,” he said to Beatrice in a voice that wasn’t very kind. “And furthermore, I forbid you to speak in our presence.”

  Beatrice glared wide-eyed at Mr. Henry but made no move to contradict him. Abra stared hard at her, but B wouldn’t make eye contact. Abra took a few steps away from her. Mr. Henry’s comments confirmed her concerns all along, that B was not who she said she was. It made Abra feel nervous and angry and even more certain than before that Beatrice had something to do with her mother not recognizing her.

  Mr. Henry turned, looked at Leo, and raised his ring-laden eyebrows. “You?”

  “I’m Leo. Leo Jardine.”

  The man straightened up. “Leo Jardine?”

  Leo nodded. “Yeah.”

  “Your father, was he Amos Jardine?”

  Leo nodded again, looking confused.

  “And you had a sister, Ruby Jardine?”

  “How do you know all this stuff? And how did you know Abra’s name? Who are you, anyway?”

  The man took a deep breath and held it for what seemed an uncomfortably long period of time. When he finally exhaled, the air came bursting out through puffed-up cheeks, and Abra felt herself exhale with relief.

  “Who am I, who am I . . .” he muttered to himself, rubbing his chin with his hand and then rubbing his eyes as if he was very tired.

  Abra spoke quietly in the silence. “I know what you are,” she said. “But I don’t know who.”