The White Oak

by Kim White

  The White Oak

  Imperfect Darkness, Book One

  Kim White

  For Mike, who gets me across the river.

  Contents

  1. The Descent

  2. Digging Father’s Grave

  3. Crossing Asphodel

  4. Making a Deal with Minotaur

  5. Destroying My Book of Life

  6. Writing My Own Destiny

  7. Minotaur Reports to Minos

  8. Intercepting the Ship of the Dead

  9. Getting Past the Ferryman

  10. Waiting for Cora

  11. Crossing the River Tartarus

  12. Trespassing at the Gates

  13. Taken Prisoner

  14. Minotaur Reports to Minos

  15. The City of Glass

  16. Running from the Keres

  17. Writing the Game

  18. The Red Fruit

  19. On Trial for My Life

  20. The Verdict

  21. Rescuing Cora

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  About the Series

  Copyright

  Sure as the stars return again after they merge in the light, death is great as life.

  —Walt Whitman

  The Descent

  The last thing I see before the sinkhole buries me alive is the pattern the branches of the White Oak make against the cloudless Midwestern sky. A web, I would remember later and realize what it meant—but now I lie faceup in my father’s grave as soil rains down on me. My hands cover the seeds embroidered into my dress, although it doesn’t make much sense, trying to protect seeds from burial. They will live after I die, their shells cracking open as the stems and roots emerge.

  As the dirt piles on top of me, I curse my grandmother for not stopping the funeral, for slapping me when I warned her to step back, and for pushing my twin brother, Lucas, forward to toss the first handful of dirt on our father’s coffin. “That’s the minister’s job,” I whispered, and she pinched my arm so hard a blood blister rose up. Lucas was standing near the edge when the ground imploded. I jumped toward him to pull him back, but I slipped and fell in, landing on top of the casket. I heard shouts as the hole widened and the rest of the funeral party was pulled in. I think Lucas slid in after me, but it all happened too fast for me to be sure.

  Now I’m suffocating—buried alive—and as I die, all I can feel is rage. Lucas and I were about to graduate from high school. Just one more year and we could leave this place. We survived my father’s attacks only to be buried with him. Anger flows in my blood like cold water. Even after his death, Redd has found a way to get to us. My body tenses as I remember my father’s cruelty—inherited from a long line of rogue ancestors. My mind cycles through their crimes, going back to the first one, committed on the ground I am now sinking into.

  According to family legend, one of my ancestors was the daughter of an Indian chief. Some say she fell in love with a French soldier. Others say the chief married her off to keep peace with the settlers, but it didn’t work. His son-in-law, under this very oak, murdered him, and that’s how our curse began. My relatives have been destroying each other ever since. On the day of my father’s funeral, it’s as though the earth has had enough of us. Rather than endure another generation, it’s putting an end to the Alexander family once and for all, swallowing us up in my father’s grave.

  If I had control over myself now, I’d go along with it, because the world might indeed be better off without us. But my father’s anger and arrogance have taken over, and all I can do is fight. My mouth fills with dirt as I try to scream. My fists clench, muscles tighten, breath is extinguished. I’m pinned in place by the soil, and there’s no point in struggling, but I do anyway. It’s the way my father always was. As I squander my last moments, fighting against inevitable death, I hear a voice. It’s the voice. I hear it when I’m in the caves. “Relax,” it says. “This is what you were meant for.” Its amber tones fill my head, and a channel opens underneath the coffin. I sink rapidly, part of me still hoping that Lucas got out safely, another part of me knowing that he didn’t.

  A network of caves lies under our family’s farm. Lucas discovered them when we were twelve. They converge on the abandoned well; that’s where we enter. We’ve been exploring them for years, climbing the slippery rocks, reaching one tunnel’s end, then chiseling for weeks to break through a wall and get to the next chamber. It was our way of staying out of the house and safe from our father. But it was more than just an escape. Lucas was obsessed with figuring out where the caves led, and I kept going back because of the voice.

  It began speaking to me when we reached the first dead end. “Keep going,” it said. It was a handsome voice, strong and clear. I trusted it immediately, and over the years my feelings for it grew deeper and more complicated. All the while, I wondered if I was crazy. If I had fallen in love with something that only existed in my imagination. “Don’t stop until you find me,” it said. I didn’t stop looking, but I never found him. Lucas hadn’t heard it—I was sure of that. He’d been searching the walls for a crack that we could hammer to create an opening. At the time, I almost told him, but something stopped me. It wasn’t because I was worried that Lucas would think I was crazy. Even if I were stark raving mad, he would still love me. That’s how amazing my brother is. I kept the voice to myself because of the strange way it made me feel—safe, but also uncomfortable. To be honest, I wasn’t always sure how it made me feel. There was something familiar about it, but I couldn’t tell if it reminded me of someone from my past or someone from my future. I decided not to talk about it until I figured it out.

  My father’s silver casket plummets through the ground, moving so quickly it feels as if I’m in free fall. I break through a cavern ceiling and splash down into an icy river. The water is so cold and unexpected I almost suck in my breath, but I remember the mouthful of dirt and manage to spit it out first. The current is strong, and the floating casket becomes my means of survival. My hands slide along the top and sides, finding the pallbearer’s handles. I climb on top and cling to the coffin as it bobs above the water. My first thought is for Lucas. Did he fall into the sinkhole? Did he make it through as I did, or is he buried and dying?

  My second thought is that I’m still alive and my father hasn’t beaten me yet. What’s more, his coffin has become my life raft. I almost smile at the irony.

  “Lucas!” I yell, but no one answers. The sound of rushing water echoes against the walls of the cavern. I try to see into the darkness, searching the water for Lucas. If he’s in the river, he’s going to need help. He won’t last in the cold water for long.

  The coffin bobs and tilts in the current. I lie on my stomach, riding it like a surfer paddling toward the waves, shifting my weight to maneuver and keep it from overturning. “Cora,” the voice calls my name. I look out across the water, half hoping I’ll see him here, but of course I don’t—there’s nothing but darkness. “Cora, there is a sharp turn ahead,” it warns. I grip the coffin more firmly to prepare for the turn, but in spite of my efforts it capsizes, and I fall into the river. The shock of another immersion in the freezing water takes my breath away. When I resurface, the coffin is gone. It’s a struggle to keep my head above the water as the current pulls me forward. I try to keep swimming, but my limbs are stiffening and my fingers are going numb. As far as I can see, there is nothing but black water, no shore. My arms and legs are heavy from the cold. It’s an effort to move. My head goes under for a moment, and I come back up spitting cold water. I feel something hit my shoulder and push me all the way under. I realize too late that it’s the casket. As it passes I try to grab it, but I’m too slow. The current carries it away. My hopes of surviving go with it.

  I try to get a
ngry again, thinking it might give me the energy to keep swimming. But my emotions are shutting down along with my body and I can’t feel anything. Taking a deep breath, I wait for my heart to stop or my limbs to freeze. Then I see a glint of silver up ahead; the coffin is caught against a rock. I crash into it and make a grab for the handles as the force of my collision breaks it free. I hold on tight as we sail over a rapids. The possibility of survival gives me a jolt of adrenaline. I pull myself back on top of the casket.

  As I scan the water for my brother, the cavern seems to get brighter. It’s so subtle that I can’t be sure it’s really happening. It could be that my eyes are becoming accustomed to the dark, or it could be a trick of the mind, but I think I see the shadowy outline of a riverbank on my left.

  The current’s pull gets stronger and I hear the roar of a waterfall. I have to do something quickly, or I’ll go over the falls. I try to steer the coffin toward the shore, which I can see distinctly now. I can also see how low the cavern’s ceiling is. If I stood up on the coffin, I could touch it. The air is musty and stiflingly humid. It’s like being in a cold basement. I’m shivering as I nudge the coffin to the left. Just ahead, the rocky ceiling angles sharply downward. It almost looks like a wall. The river splashes against it and slides underneath it. The edge of the falls must be right there, where the rock meets the water. I can see the riverbank. It’s only twenty or thirty feet away, but there’s no way to reach it before I’ll collide with the rocky wall at the edge of the falls.

  I anticipate the crash, balancing my body and moving my arm out of the way as the coffin slams against the rock. I hold one of the pallbearer’s handles and grab the wall with my other hand, attempting to drag the coffin toward the shoreline. But the current presses the casket against the rock with so much force that I can’t budge it. I have to abandon it and climb along the slippery wall to get to the shore.

  On my caving adventures with Lucas, I learned how to rock climb, so I know what to do. I feel along the ledge, secure a handhold, then a foothold. As I push against the casket to pull myself up, the current sucks it under. I can see by the way the water curves that this is indeed the edge of the falls. As I watch the casket slip beneath the rock, my emotions are mixed. On the one hand, I’m relieved. My mean-spirited father, the worst part of my life, is finally gone. But as I imagine his body falling over the cascade in its silver barrel, I’m unexpectedly sad. At the funeral, before the sinkhole opened, I looked into my father’s grave and felt the heavy, bottomless sorrow that accompanies a profound, irreversible defeat—the failure to gain my father’s love.

  I feel it coming back to me now as I cling to the wall, barefoot and shivering. A lump rises in my throat, but I swallow it back down. If I start to cry now, I will never stop, and this is hardly the place to have a breakdown.

  As the river takes my father’s remains farther from me, I start to feel like myself again. Some of the anger and sorrow dissipates, but the extra energy goes too. I have to concentrate and muster all my strength to negotiate the slick wall. I move slowly and deliberately from crevice to handhold, clawing at the surface.

  Within feet of safety, I make a fatal mistake. I don’t secure a deep enough foothold. One of my legs slips into the water and the current catches it. The pull twists me sideways and my other foot slips too. My whole lower body is in the water again. I hang on and try to pull myself back up, but the river is stronger than I am. I lose my grip. My head hits the rock and I’m knocked unconscious. I slide under the wall and over the falls.

  Digging Father’s Grave

  It was a mistake to bury him under the tree. My mistake. I knew better than anyone else how close the caves were to the White Oak. I tried to talk them out of it. Cora had seen the sinkholes and had been in the caverns with me. She knew how unstable the ground was. But there was no way to convince her, or my grandmother. They loved that tree.

  It had been dead as long as anyone could remember. I’d never seen a leaf on it. The bark had fallen off long ago and the trunk and branches were white, like driftwood. I called it the ghost tree, but Cora insisted that it wasn’t dead, and that with the right methods she could bring it back to life.

  I dug the grave myself. It was my way of trying to keep them safe, but I didn’t anticipate the feelings it would stir up: anger, frustration, guilt—because I’d wished him dead so many times. Cora must have sensed how I was feeling. She insisted on digging with me, silently. Cora isn’t chatty. That’s one of the things I love about her.

  My shovel hit what I thought was a rock, but when I tried to pry it out of the ground, I realized I’d hit a tree root. The shovel had made a deep cut and sap was oozing out. Cora rushed over to inspect it. She crouched next to it, her hand on the wound, her white dress reflecting the moonlight like the tree’s pale trunk. There was life in that ancient oak, just as Cora had always insisted.

  Just then, the ground creaked and shifted slightly. “We should get out of here,” I said, climbing out of the grave, but Cora wasn’t listening. She was staring at the bleeding root with a ferocious intensity that made me shiver. “He doesn’t deserve this, Cora,” I said, thinking of what we were doing for my father, burying him under this tree and putting ourselves at risk.

  “Can you hear that?” she whispered. A moan was rising from the damp earth.

  “What is it?” I asked, with a sense of foreboding. Local legend had it that the White Oak was enchanted, that it was a doorway to the underworld. Cora and I were the only ones in the family who believed it.

  She climbed out of the grave and sat down next to me. “Spirits,” she whispered, as we both listened intently. The sound was low and hollow, like breath blown across the rim of a glass bottle.

  “Is it Redd?” I asked.

  Cora shook her head. “It’s not Dad,” she said, lost in thought. The wind lifted her long black hair. As she gazed into the earth her dark eyes glittered. “I think it’s the ghosts Dad has to reckon with. I think the tree is bringing them up,” Cora said. “Grandfather is probably one of them.”

  “And Mom,” I added, staring into the grave. When mother disappeared three years ago, no one in the family did anything. Grandmother, Grandfather, Cora, and Redd acted as if nothing was wrong, as if she’d never existed. I was the one who called the police to report her missing. The cops investigated for a few months but couldn’t turn up any leads.

  “She must have run away,” I heard one of them say to another. The cop nodded as though the whole thing was obvious.

  “She didn’t,” I said, and the officer turned to me.

  “What do you know about it, kid? What happened to her?” At that moment, I wanted to tell them about all the times my dad had hit her, and me, but my dad would deny it and I had no way to prove it. Even if I could get the cops to believe me, what were they going to do about it? They needed evidence and I didn’t have it.

  “Did you check the basement and the barn?” I said, hoping they might have found something I’d missed.

  “We checked everything,” the cop said. “No sign of her.” They concluded that Blanche had left of her own free will and closed the case, but I still think Redd might have killed her.

  “Mom quit on us,” Cora said bitterly, her shoulders hunched and her hands clenched into fists. I instantly regretted mentioning our mother. Cora didn’t get along with her. “She abandoned us long before she left,” Cora continued. This was true. Mom had a way of zoning out or sneaking away during Redd’s rampages, leaving us to deal with them ourselves. Once or twice she intervened on my behalf, but never for Cora.

  Cora’s whole body had gone stiff with anger. Just the thought of our mother sent her to another place. “I don’t understand how she could be so cowardly. How could she not care about her own kids?” I knew what Cora meant, but I wondered why she focused so much on Blanche’s failings and not Redd’s. When I asked her once she said, “You just can’t expect anything of him. He’s like an animal, but Mom could be different.” I held out the same
hope for our mother, and I tried to protect her, hoping that if she felt safe, she’d be different.

  I watched Cora’s face as she struggled with motherlessness, ameliorating her sadness with rage. I put my arm around her tense shoulders and picked leaves out of her tangled hair. She leaned against me and heaved a sigh.

  “We’re orphans now,” she said, as the music of the ghosts surrounded us.

  “We’ve been orphans since mother left,” I said. “But now it’s official.”

  Cora stared intently into the grave. “It feels like we’ve always been on our own,” she said. I squeezed her shoulder and wondered why I wasn’t sad, or angry, or scared—shouldn’t I be? The lonely song of the spirits drifted through the air, but instead of loss I felt a sense of anticipation.

  Crossing Asphodel

  When I come to, I’m lying on a black gravel beach. Water pools next to my cheek. I wonder if I can move. Maybe my neck has snapped and I’m paralyzed, or maybe I’m dead. I stare, unblinking, across the sharp gravel. How did I get here? When my head hit the rock, I lost consciousness, so how did I survive the waterfall? How did I make it to the shore? I’m barefoot, soaked to the skin, cut, bruised, and dazed from the impact, but miraculously I’m still alive. I flex my cold, stiff fingers, relieved that I can move.

  This is the underground river Lucas and I heard but never found when we explored the caves. I think back on our adventures; in each cavern we heard rushing water. At times it sounded so loud and so near that we were sure the tunnel would flood at any moment, but we never found the river. It was as though we were crawling through the ever-narrowing twists of a nautilus shell in which the memory of the ocean echoes through the empty chambers.

  “Cora, get up,” I hear the voice whisper. “You must move to higher ground.” I lift my head and try to sit up; pain shoots through my battered, half-frozen body. Groggy and shaken, I try to stand as the voice continues to encourage me. “Cora, stand up,” it whispers. I close my eyes to feel its soothing effect, but the image that appears is Lucas buried alive in the sinkhole. I squeeze my eyes shut tighter as if to banish the sight. He can’t be dead, I tell myself.