I snorted through the sobrasada and bread and Nori rolled around laughing soundlessly.
Not for the first time in my life, I wished I could hear what that would sound like.
The fire was burning low now, and we sat around it on the sheepskin rugs, curled up in fleece blankets while it stormed outside. The skylight above us was the deep black of nothing, but now and again a flash of lightning revealed the raging rains and whiplash winds.
Nori, wrapped up in Cath’s lap, sat staring at the night sky, flinching with every rumble of thunder.
“It’s just God up there,” Cath said. “He’s moving his furniture around. Nothing to be scared of. It just sounds loud because we live underneath him.”
Nori’s eyes widened, and she looked up again.
A flash of lightning.
“He’s taking photos of you!” Cath cried. “How wonderful! He must think you’re beautiful.”
Nori grinned. She fumbled to get out of the blanket and then ran to stand beneath the skylight, posing and smiling and spinning as “God” took “photos” of her.
I grinned at Cath, embracing the warmth in my chest and wondering if this was what love felt like.
“Time for a story,” Cath said later, when we were all snuggled close and sleepy. I had retreated to the armchair closest to the fire, my legs dangling over the arm.
“I want to tell you a story about those woods out there. A true story.”
I glanced up from my sleepy haze.
“You must never, never go into Python Wood,” she whispered, making sure she had Nori’s full attention. “Python Wood is a bad, bad place. Long ago, something bad came out of it. A man, of sorts.”
I frowned. This wasn’t exactly my idea of a soothing bedtime fable.
“He was more of a… monster.”
“Auntie Cath—I don’t think—”
“Ssh!” Her head snapped in my direction. “Let me finish. You need to hear this as well, Silla. A monster of sorts. He did terrible things. And then he returned to the woods. He’s still in there, waiting for young girls to go wandering so he can capture them. So he can tear them up and eat their flesh from their—”
“Cath!”
She looked at me with dagger eyes. And then she relaxed and smiled, turning back to Nori. “Well”—she tapped Nori’s nose gently—“the Creeper Man won’t get you if you just stay away from the woods.”
Nori was staring up at Cath’s chin. Then she looked at me. But we came through the woods.
Cath sensed the movement. “No need to be afraid.”
“We came in through the woods,” I said, winking at Nori.
“Oh yes,” Cath said, smiling. “Of course you did. Well, he wanted you here, didn’t he? But now… now that you are…”
“He won’t let us leave?” I offered, remembering her words.
Cath stared at me. “Exactly.”
I was relieved. Boogeymen I could handle. My father coming after us, I couldn’t.
Beneath Cath, Nori’s eyes had filled with tears and she was sniffling quietly.
“Oh, bug, come here. It’s all right.” I held out my arms for her and she crawled over to the foot of my chair, where I lifted her into my lap and wrapped my own blanket tightly around her. “It’s only a story,” I said. “Isn’t it, Cath?”
Cath smiled, a little too long. “Oh. Oh, yes. It’s just a story, Eleanor, nothing to be scared of.”
“See?” I said, and kissed her head.
“So long as you stay away from the woods,” Cath added quietly.
I kept kissing Nori’s head and staring into the fire.
Just a story.
Just a freaking weird story.
I like it here.
Sometimes I see Silla looking out the window feeling bad.
But she shouldn’t feel bad because I like it here.
It’s nice.
Auntie Catherine is nice.
I like the food.
Silla shouldn’t feel bad.
She really, really shouldn’t.
I miss them, too, but I like not being scared and I’m not sore anymore.
And the bad man is locked in the woods.
So that’s why Silla shouldn’t feel bad.
3
birthday cake
Things can stay safe for long
they can pretend to fit
but then you hear Discord’s song
and things crack bit by bit.
“Nori!”
By the time Cath screamed, Nori was almost at the boundary to the woods. I startled and looked back at my aunt. She was standing in the kitchen doorway, staring out at Nori with wide eyes, her mouth twisted into an almost-cavern, flashing with teeth and tongue.
She screamed again. “NORI!”
“What is it?” I yelled, my heart thudding like it hadn’t in months.
“Get her away from the woods! Get her away! Get her, Silla, get her!”
But she was already running. I followed on her heels, wincing every time Cath screamed Nori’s name. Nori was already standing in front of the trees.
I overtook Cath and when I reached Nori, I yanked her behind me and turned to face Cath.
Cath was there a moment later. “Did she cross? Is she okay?”
“Calm down—”
“DID SHE CROSS?”
“What do you—”
“The woods!” Cath screamed, and bent down to grab Nori by her small arms. “Did you go into the woods?” she yelled, the force of her shake bringing Nori to tears.
I shoved Cath away, and she fell onto her back, sliding a little down the hill. “Don’t touch her!” I yelled, old rage and old memories rising like a tsunami. “Don’t you touch her!”
Nori clung to my dress, looking up at me for guidance. “It’s okay,” I said, the anger draining from my body like sickness out of my veins.
I couldn’t bring myself to turn around, to look at Aunt Cath lying in the grass, her dress ridden up to her hips, to hear her soft sobbing.
“We… we should go back,” I said meekly, and glanced behind me.
Cath’s shoulders shook, and I noticed how thin her legs were, covered with varicose veins. I turned away, a horror at myself—and at her—rising within me.
“We could tend to the garden.”
She raised her head and, after a brief glance at the woods, nodded. I helped her to her feet and we walked to the house, Cath leaning on my arm all the way. Nori took Aunt Cath’s hand before we were halfway back to La Baume, and I hung back. The sun was setting, and they looked quite beautiful in the red light.
I couldn’t believe my reaction. Why had I shoved Cath away? Why had Cath acted so fiercely about keeping Nori from the woods? The story about the Creeper Man was just that. A story. A stupid child’s warning.
By the time we got back into the house, Cath was laughing, waving me inside, and Nori was smiling. Nori’s tears had stopped, as had Cath’s, and the oncoming night had dissolved my rage.
Something in the house had changed, though, before the night was over.
The garden sparkled in orange hues of sunset, the old wooden table draped with a pale cloth and sprinkled with bundles of dusty-pink roses from the garden. I smiled at them, even though I wished Cath had just left them on the plant.
So pretty.
Cath made a cake. I took a slice from her offering hand, noting that her nail polish matched the roses. Her smile was so wide that a jolt of pleasure jumped through me.
Until I saw that it didn’t reach her eyes. And that the nail polish was actually textured and lumpy, slopped on over her cuticles. There was a drop of it in her hair.
And then I noticed something else. She was still smiling, but she wasn’t looking at me. Not directly. She was staring at the tip of my left ear. Or something over my shoulder.
“Enjoy!” she proclaimed, wiping her hands on the floral apron.
I took my plate into the garden, away from the light of the kitchen, which licked the gr
ass with a paraffin tongue, and sat by the hedges, alone. It was moist cake, and I had three pieces.
The breeze brushed my cheek, and I laughed.
I was happy, I realized. I’d never felt so happy, despite Cath’s strange smile. Amazing that a cake could do that. Or maybe it was more about the acknowledgment. Acknowledgment that I was born fifteen years ago, and that I was here and it was worth celebrating. Maybe.
Nori skipped over, carrying a paper plate. She put it down and showed me what she was holding. Something dangled from her fist, the one attached to the bad arm, so it shook a little with the strain of lifting it up to show me. Her mouth was covered in pink icing. More pink.
Look, she signed, one-handed. Look!
The thing swung like a fatty bit of raw bacon covered in cake.
Worms! She laughed, digging into the piece of cake to find more.
Everything s l o w e d down around me.
Wrong. This is wrong.
Cath stood in the kitchen doorway, the light pooling around her. She was laughing, tears running down her cheek.
I felt cold bite my hands.
The next day Cathy went up to the attic.
And never came down.
Fifteen passed.
Sixteen, too.
Seventeen arrived, and so did he.
BOOK 2:
Earthen Sky
The man in the trees
came in the night
to steal the girl
and give her a fright.
the little girl blocked
her ears and eyes
but the Creeper Man wears
many a disguise.
OLD MAN IN HIS CHAIR
In a faraway place, an old man sits in his armchair.
Next to him, on the table, there is tea.
It went cold a while ago.
He’s been staring at the picture in the frame—it also sits on the table. Beside the cup of tea.
He ponders it, unblinking.
Thinking of all the things that were, that are, that will not be.
The picture is old now. The face no longer real. Only to him.
The days have grown long, and longer. The dusk droops languidly over gray skies that seem as aged as he is. As wrinkled, too.
And the nights: endless, as they have always been. Too many memories. Too many nightmares.
Too many nights.
He is tired.
A life, too long, has made him so.
He reaches for his tea at last, but it seems his wait is over.
His eyes are closed now, his jaw slack.
His nightmares are done. And so are his nights.
1
beautiful disposition
A silly girl did silly play
with dolls and mud and thread
the tall blind man who watched her game
did send her round the bend.
BROKEN BOOK ENTRY
I was born on a moldy mattress in a bad part of London. Sometimes I think that’s why I’m crazy. But (crazy) Aunt Cath doesn’t like to talk about all that. She doesn’t want to think about the grimy windowsills or the dirty ceiling, or the fact that her sister, Pamela, had to live that life. She hates it when I talk about how all Mam had to wear was a blue nightdress—silk and faded. I didn’t even have shoes. It was an emergency—a real emergency—that forced my father to buy clothes. No less. He thought all humans should remain beautiful and naked, which he was most of the time. I don’t know if he was a nudist or just extreme. It was simply his strange and sometimes sinister disposition. Auntie Cath thought he was trash. By the end, I thought so, too.
There was fear in Mam’s eyes when she held Nori sometimes. I know she felt it. Everyone thought she was weak, but I thought she was strong. Until the end. Nori would think her weak, too, if she’d been old enough. It was no secret that we were all afraid.
She didn’t have many words to use by the end. He beat them out of her, with his words, with his hands. They were knocked clean out or crooked, like some of Nori’s teeth. But, see, Mam wasn’t crazy. Or maybe she was. We were all a bit gone living with him.
We snuck onto the train at 10:03, me and Nori alone, and we watched the gray of London fading away into green and yellow fields, and then into gray mountains. It was a long trip, and a big woman served food from a trolley in each compartment. But we had nothing to spend. People get precious about money, funny thing that, it being paper and ink. Nori tugged on my hand and pointed to her belly and I shrugged because what could I do? But there were tears on her cheeks, smudging the dirt, so I pulled off my button–the only one left–and gave it to her to suck, and she fell asleep, wrapped up in the good blanket.
When the train stopped it was dark; I couldn’t see anything, and I could feel that something was different. There were tall trees outside, black in the throes of midnight, and I felt the absence of the London smog and buildings fiercely. Then came the storm and a walk longer than I have ever done and I nearly lost my foot skin. What a joke, all that effort to end up here.
La Baume is a big, sprawling manor. I could tell that even in the dark. I felt it. A big, empty place, half falling down, and it was all for Cath. It must have been lonely all by herself in that house the color of blood. She must have been afraid to be alone.
But we’ve come to her now, to the place where there’s space and food and joy and light. The place where Mam grew up, too. Only nothing lasts forever, does it? Which is the only perfect truth.
We liked it at first, but then the thing in the woods came, the people left, and now we are alone in a ghost town.
Nori sees him first.
By the time I look up from the ashy soil, she’s almost at the boundary with Python Wood.
“NORI!”
My screams should echo across the field, but they don’t. Nothing has buoyancy anymore, not even my terror.
“Nori, stop! STOP!”
Her hand signs reach across the distance. I’m playing!
“Come back here right now!”
But she’s already turned away, skipping toward trees that loom before her like sentinels.
Nonononononono. I don’t know if Cath is right about the thing in the woods or not, but I remember her terror before she went mad, and I have felt… something about Python. And I can’t risk losing Nori, too.
“Nori, damn it, stop right now, I mean it!”
She doesn’t stop, and I run. I’m faster, but not by much, and when I reach across the distance that separates us to grab at her shoulder, her dress, her hair—anything to get her to stop—we are right at the boundary. I feel the coldness of the wood like a fridge door just opened. A breath. A puff. So eerie.
I shake her roughly, and the crooked bone of her right arm shocks me, even now. It’s so weak, thin, warped. Her mouth opens in an O that should have sound, but never has.
“You stop when I call you, do you understand me?”
She begins to cry. It occurs to me that I’m still holding her arms tightly, so I force my grip to soften, and then let go completely.
She signs: But the boy is hiding and I have to find him.
“What boy?”
He’s going to win!
I should ignore her. Take her hand and march her back inside. But something stops me. It’s always the same, so close to the wood. A feeling of being seen. Not just watched, but really looked at. I still remember, three years ago, when Cath screamed like that… her terror at the idea of Nori going into the woods. Maybe her fear is infecting me, too. Now that she’s not really here anymore.
Staring out at the ancient boughs, all of them dripping moss, I whisper, “Nori, tell me right now. What boy?” My skin is crawling.
She wears a pout, unaware that a certain sense of darkness is growing up behind her, deep within the trees. It’s as though the day is somehow later in the wood than it is out in the field. Impossible.
Look! Her hands yell. There he is! I told you!
And someone is coming. I maneuver N
ori behind me and wait, muscles tense and ready to fire. What can I do? Run? With Nori? I look around for a weapon, but the only thing of use is a fallen branch, and I don’t want to touch any part of Python Wood. I’m not even sure I know why.
Don’t be like Cath, I berate myself. But I still don’t touch the branch.
The figure gets closer, and I step back, pulling Nori with me. But then I see it’s just a boy, stalking out from between the trees, hands in his pockets. Dark hair, dark eyes. Like me.
“I didn’t mean to frighten you,” he says. He crosses into the field like it’s nothing. Like he’s not the first person we’ve seen in months. “We were playing hide-and-seek. I think I was losing.” He winks at Nori, but stops smiling when he looks back at me. “Or maybe I’ve already lost.”
“Who are you?” My voice is gravel. “What kind of perv are you? Trying to get my sister to go into the woods. She’s seven!”
“That’s not… I’m—I think you have the wrong…” The boy half smiles, then thinks better of it. “My name’s Gowan. I was just… I used to live here, ages ago, when it was an orphanage? I took care of the garden.” He nods down to the house.
Some vague memory of Cath running an orphanage pricks the edges of my mind. Must have been ten years ago at least. Did she ask him to come back because of what’s been happening with the garden? Possible, but improbable. There’s no phone. The postman hasn’t been in ages. So, unless Cath left the attic at night, in secret, and crossed Python to get a letter to town, then this boy—this Gowan—is lying to me.
“Where did you come from?”
He laughs, then frowns. “I live on the other side of the woods. About three miles from town.”
“There is no town,” I say. “Not anymore.”
“How do you know?”
“I went to look… once. There’s nothing. Everything is still, empty and falling down.”
I don’t want to remember. I don’t want to think about this.
And the Trees Crept In Page 3