And the Trees Crept In

by Dawn Kurtagich

  Wakey, wakey, rise and shine

  mind your toe upon that vine

  slinking in across your floor

  oops! The woods are at your door!

  BROKEN BOOK ENTRY

  Listen to me. Listen very carefully. You’re trapped. Right now, you’re trapped. You’re stuck to the bottom of someone’s shoe. You’re walking around in your life, like your own little isolation bubble, following their footprints, thinking: This is it. This is me. This is MY SELF. This is how it goes. This is how it works. These are the rules. But here is the secret. You are free. You’re not one of those fools. There is no bubble except the one they put you in. But it’s made of soap, of air—of nothing at all. Only, you’re taught that it’s indestructible—no way of getting through that barrier. And you can pop it with your little finger. You could pop it with your breath. You could blow on it, and it would fizzle away.

  You are free.

  You can do what you want.

  When you want.

  How you want.

  On your time.

  You can destroy yourself, kill yourself—

  And then get up and walk away.

  You are free. No but. No or. No either.

  You are an indestructible machine.

  You are magnificent.

  You can steal; you can cheat.

  And you can lie. Be a liar.

  I am.

  “If there was meat in the house, don’t you think we’d have eaten it?” I yell. “Don’t you think I’d have given it to Nori, instead of letting it rot?”

  Gowan folds his arms. “Silla, what are you talking about?”

  “Meat! This house reeks of rotting meat!”

  He frowns. “This again?”

  “Can’t you smell that?” I retch, turning away. “It’s disgusting! If there is meat in this house, I’m sure as hell going to find it.”

  I feel a tiny pressure on my hand—fingers encircling my wrist. She has no words, so I probably missed her sign—Silla?—and so I thought it was Gowan. I spin, rage beating through my veins in a pulsing, virulent rhythm of aggression, and I

  slap her.

  She is so small.

  I remember when she was born, this tiny, wrinkly thing in my mother’s arms. Squirming, and so… silent.

  “I will protect you,” I’d told her.

  I was ten.

  I was the biggest.

  I was Big Sister.

  I will protect you.

  My mouth is open and my eyes are open and my palm is open. Stinging.

  Nori has staggered, but she looks up at me, cupping her cheek, and she laughs, like this is a joke. A game.

  My heart cracks

  breaks

  falls out of me.

  Because that tiny, mute laugh is one of disbelief, forgiveness, alarm, shock

  and then her eyes change, widen, fill up with water

  she is crying

  and I wish there was sound so that I could hear what I have done, but she is still trying to smile at me like, It’s okay, Silla, it’s okay, like I’m the one who is hurting, and I am staring at my hand and it is still burning and

  I hit Nori. [YOU ARE THE BIGGEST.]

  I hit my little sister. [YOU ARE BIG SISTER.]

  Do you love anything? Anything at all? I love my sister. [HAHAHAHA!]

  I will protect you. [LIAR.]

  Gowan is as mute as Nori but I see something in his face that I recognize.

  Rage.

  I spin, nearly falling, and run away, leaving Nori and Gowan behind me. Leaving their shock and their goddamn silences and their eyes looking at me all the time and seeing me. Too deep. Too hard.

  I am shaking.

  What have I done?

  Who am I?

  The smell hits me again as I race past the hole.

  Meat.

  Meat.

  Somehow, I let meat go to rot in this house while Nori gobbles up worm-infested fruit and wasp husks and tries to ignore the roaring in her stomach.

  Meat.

  Jesus, God.

  How did I let precious food rot away to feed this damn house instead of us? How did I… hit my Nori?

  “What’s happening to me?” I whisper, but there is nothing except the creaking of Cath’s pacing above me, and the creaking of the house around me, and the creaking of my heart inside me.

  This house.

  It’s watching every mistake I make with glee.

  “You’re not going to win,” I tell it, as though we are in some dangerous competition and it can actually hear me. “You hear that, you little bitch? I’m going to beat you.”

  But I’m beating myself all alone. I don’t need any help.

  I search for the smell all day.

  Nori and Gowan are nowhere to be seen, and I’m glad. I can’t face them. [HIT HER HARDER.] I can’t look into his eyes and see judgment [YOU DON’T GIVE A DAMN] like that. I don’t [DO] want to hurt them. I will never [ALWAYS] hurt them. [LIAR LIAR PANTS ON FIRE.]

  “I will never hurt them,” I whisper, hurrying on.

  I end up in the basement, contemplating the wine racks.

  And my palm, hot on her little cheek.

  I don’t want to think about what is happening to me. I don’t want to think about what’s happening to us. I don’t want to think about the mold on our skin, our clothes, the walls. The rotting fruit and the maggots in the walls.

  I don’t want to have those intrusive thoughts

  Rot

  breaking into my mind

  Decay

  all the time

  Stench

  like flashes of lightning, snap, snap, snap!

  I don’t want to be here. I want to be a normal seventeen-year-old girl, worried about graduation and prom and boys (like Gowan) and getting my own car and going to university and “getting a life.” Aren’t I supposed to be freaking out over my eyelashes, the new tattoo, this hot band, my next outfit like those kids out there? Or shouldn’t I be pondering my career, my path in life, the meaning behind everything for me, the future?

  My head is a word cloud of turmoil, but all of it is silenced—frozen still—by what I see in the concrete of the basement floor.

  A root.

  A root has broken through the concrete, and is growing out of the floor.

  Holy shit bastard shit.

  I thought being trapped in La Baume with Python right outside was bad. But now it looks like not even solid stone will keep the trees away.

  We’re infested.

  We’re infected.

  We can’t win.

  When I finally come out of my hiding place, I feel my way through the house quietly and tentatively, realizing with an ache inside that I miss them… my family. I miss Nori. I miss Cath. And I miss Gowan.

  I find them by following the glow. It’s a soft orange light, moving like the gentle pulse of a heartbeat, drawing me to it.

  The library. They lit the fire.

  I find them on the sheepskin rug in front of the grate, Nori lying against Gowan, the light of the flames dancing over their faces. In Nori, it has a softening effect, her eyes faraway and unseeing as she stares at the flames. In Gowan, the effect is one of hardness. The light sharpens his jaw and brow bone and sets a fire in his near-black eyes. His gaze is here, in the now, even as he watches the heat.

  He senses me, standing still in the doorway, and turns. Ever so slightly.

  I expect his jaw to clench, or his eyes to narrow, or his hand to tighten on Nori’s shoulder, protective.

  But he smiles, and the tension in his eyes vanishes. He’s… relieved.

  I hesitate, looking down at Nori, who, sensing the change in the room, sits up and turns to face me.

  She doesn’t need to say my name for me to know that she thought it.

  She gets to her feet and hurries over to me, burying her head in my torso. Shame, joy, relief, guilt, heartache, and love wash through me, and I hold her head, bending over it and covering it with kisses.
<
br />   “I’m sorry,” I whisper. “I’m so sorry. I love you.”

  I say these words over and over, and they become a mantra. When the frenzy has died, and Nori steps away to look up into my face, she is crying and smiling.

  I cup her cheeks and connect my eyes to hers. “You are the whole world to me,” I tell her. “Did you know that?”

  She sniffs and shakes her head. She really didn’t know that.

  “I love you more than anything.” And then I close the walls and step away. “Now get out of here, you pest.”

  She grins and skips off, settling back down in front of the fire.

  Gowan smiles at her, and then looks over at me.

  “We were worried.”

  I shrug. “Why? Nowhere I could go.”

  I know it’s not what he means, and he knows I know, but he lets it drop and I’m grateful. We leave Nori by the fire and go up to the second level.

  “I found roots in the basement,” I tell him, when we are out of Nori’s earshot.

  His mouth falls a little at that, but he tries to hide it behind a smile. “Oh.”

  “I should have listened to you. I should have taken Nori and gone while we could. With or without Cath.”

  I wait for him to tell me I’m right, that I was stupid to wait, to resist. Instead, he says, “I don’t think that would have helped. I finally realize that running was never the right choice. We need to face this problem, whatever it is. And we have to face it here.”

  “The curse.”

  “If that’s what it is.”

  “I think Cath knows what’s going on. She has a long history with this house.”

  “Has she told you everything? About… the Creeper Man?”

  I catch Nori’s manic motioning with her good arm over the balcony. No eyes, Nori signs from below us, by the fire.

  “No eyes,” I say for her. “No. I don’t think she has.”

  Gowan swallows. “Well. Then we’ve got to go and talk to her.”

  “I…” No, no, no, no. “I tried once. She didn’t make a whole lot of sense.”

  “We have to try again. This is the last chance.”

  “I…”

  Gowan takes my hands. “She’s your aunt. You have to try.”

  It’s not my aunt that terrifies me. It’s those stairs.

  Silla is going to be very upset, but I know that I have to go. The Creeper Man is beside me, so tall he is like a mountain! I am scared, but I know nothing bad can happen, so I tell my tummy to stop shouting that I must be afraid and run very far and hide, quick!

  The Creeper Man is my friend. He said there were still games to play.

  I put my hand into his and we go away.

  Bye, bye, Silla! See you soon!

  19

  we made a man

  There was an old lady

  who lived all alone,

  until her nieces

  came all the way home.

  nightly she prayed

  he’d stay away,

  but childhood demons,

  come back to play.

  A panel of wood, followed by another one, higher than the last.

  Up. And up. Up again.

  Framed by two leering walls of stone.

  They’re just stairs. I keep telling myself that. Steps. A path to follow. That’s all.

  “What is it?” Gowan whispers behind me.

  What is it about these stairs that makes him lower his voice? Something about them reduces volume, and that can’t be good.

  I shake my head, unable to speak.

  “We have to talk to her.”

  I put my hand on the banister, but my whole body is rigid with tension. The stairs seem a mile high—they might as well be a mountain. I start to hyperventilate.

  “Sill…”

  “I can’t.”

  I can’t breathe—I can’t breathe! No—nononono I can’t, I can’t—don’t make me—“You can. We have to.”

  He takes my hand, and the spell is broken. I move because he is with me.

  Step

  by

  step.

  On either side of us, the roots twist and dangle with the stairs and the walls, and when the door swings open, it is to an infestation. Roots have bent and twisted their way into the house, draped along the floor, the windows, the walls—huge, gnarly, strong. Cathy lies trapped in the middle.

  She looks like a princess in a fairy tale gone wrong. Her hair, sun-kissed wheat, is splayed over the roots and vines that have her in a stranglehold, choking her body into a smaller shape than it should be. She should be crying out, but she is smiling, a glassy glint in her eyes.

  “Silla,” she says, tears in her words but not in her eyes. “Oh, my Silla. At last.”

  I fall to my knees with the shock of it. “Auntie Cath…”

  “This is…” Cath tries to take a breath, nice and deep, but the roots are so big across her chest, slowly crushing, getting tighter. “… all your fault.”

  I choke on the blow. “How? How is this my fault? What did I do?”

  “All… your… fault.”

  “I didn’t bring the Creeper Man here. You did that, didn’t you? When you were a girl. Tell me the truth!”

  “He was our protector… but we were wrong.” She gives a tiny squeak as the roots tighten.

  “We have to get her out of there,” Gowan tells me, and he runs from the room. I hear his feet thudding down the steps and I hate that he’s left me here alone.

  “Tell me about the Creeper Man. Tell me what you and Mam did when you were girls. Please, Cath, please!”

  “We… made a man. From clay and twine and shadow. We… made him in the woods. We summoned a p-protector.”

  “But he wasn’t a protector, was he? Was he?”

  The slightest shake of her head, and another tiny intake of breath. “Not a protector. A demon. A curse. Anne…”

  “Anne? Who’s Anne?”

  “Sister. Died. In the woods. Not a protector. A”—another gasp for air—“tormentor.”

  “How is that my fault? If you summoned him when you were children, how could I be to blame?”

  A tear squeezes out of her eye as the roots, once again, tighten, pulling her toward them like a monster with many arms drawing her into its chest. I hear her ribs crack, and she winces, coughs.

  “Silla… it’s going to happen soon. This is all for you.”

  Gowan’s feet thunder toward us, and he has brought the ax. He doesn’t even pause, just roars, the ax high, and then brings it down full-strength on the roots holding Cath’s body.

  She looks up at him with increasingly vacant eyes. “I know you,” she wheezes. “Don’t… I? But… different. Is… it… different…?”

  “Yes,” he says, and somehow that one word calms her.

  “Good,” she wheezes. “Oh, good.”

  She fades off and her gaze slides to the side.

  Cath smiles at me suddenly then, as Gowan chops, and the roots pull her ever farther from us, tangling around her body like some twisted version of a Grimm fairy tale.

  “Cathy!” I cry, reaching out for her.

  Her fingers are almost gone now, but I can still see a sliver of her face.

  “Oh, Silla,” she whispers, and for the first time in years, she sounds like the aunt I came to when I was fourteen. “I’m so sorry.”

  And then she is gone.

  Nothing but a curling mass of chipped-at roots remains.

  There is no sign of Cath now, not even a hair tangled in the roots. I should be horrified to see them moving and bending like no root should do, but instead I am furious.

  I spin on my heel and head for the stairs, the flame on my candle nearly going out with the force of my turn. Gowan grabs my free hand.

  “Where are you going?”

  “If my own family won’t help me,” I snap, “then I’ll deal with the devil.”

  I rip my hand from his and rush down the stairs, heading for the entrance hall. To hell with
this. To hell with this house, this curse, this nightmare.

  I stand at the very edge of the hole, my hands balled into fists at my sides. “Tell me what’s going on!” I yell into the depths. My voice travels into the space but doesn’t return.

  Eerie.

  “Tell me what this is!” My father’s voice is silent. “You son of a bitch!” I throw the lit candle into the hole and never hear it land. “Tell me!”

  Gowan is behind me then, taking my shoulders. “Silla…”

  It is very, very dark.

  “You torture me night after night with your damn words and now you’re silent?” I yell.

  “Silla—”

  “What?”

  “Where’s Nori?”

  “What do you mean? She’s—”

  I turn, looking for her, but there is no light in the house now. The black is so complete that I dare not move my foot even an inch in case I stumble into the hole. I hear Gowan rustle beside me, and then he has a flame in his fist. A lighter.

  I peer around for Nori. She’s not with us. Something inside me makes a tiny click, like a piece of a wooden puzzle falling into place. And I feel sick.

  Gowan’s lighter goes out, and he flips it on again. He lights another candle—the one sitting in the sconce on the wall, and I’m grateful for the tiny orange bubble of light.

  I walk to the kitchen, very calmly, but it is empty.

  “Nori?”

  We check the scullery and then I head for the stairs. The roots have spilled into the halls now and I don’t want to think about being crushed alive by evil trees, but I can’t help it. Gowan heads back toward the entrance hall and I turn for the stairs.

  “Silla!”

  His voice is alarm.

  I run toward the hole, and see her. She’s at the other end of the corridor, only now it’s more like a tunnel of trees, impossibly long, and she is impossibly small—impossibly far away. And her hand is in the hand of a TALL, thin man with

  no eyes

  and

  a w i d e, w i d e

  mouth.

  Vanishing

  down the woods

  the also disappearing

  hall, is into

  that the