And the Trees Crept In

by Dawn Kurtagich

  “I saw it.”

  “Where?”

  “In the cave. It’s some kind of… I don’t know. Portal. I just… I saw it. And this is his weird lair or something. It sounds insane, but somehow this is all real. He took Nori here into this—place—but we found a way in, too. I don’t think he expected that. So we can save her.”

  “I don’t know, Sill. This sounds too… out there.”

  His casual use of my name like that—Sill—sends a jolt of uncomfortable familiarity through me. And I hate him.

  “Well, look around,” I snap, gesturing. “Does any of this seem normal to you? You can either accept it and help me, or deny it and keep trying to find a rational and completely useless explanation. But I need your help.”

  He sighs, long and low, taking me in. “What can I do?”

  “I need to find out as much as I can about this demon. Cath had a doll. She made it when she and Mam were little. I know she still has it. She wouldn’t have thrown it away. It’s a doll of him… the Creeper Man. I think that if I could destroy it, it might kill him. Maybe it’s his vessel or something.”

  “So we have to find our way back to the house.”

  “Yeah.”

  Gowan glances around. There is no straight path anymore. “We could try…”

  “We have to leave a trail. Like Hansel and Gretel. We’ll find it eventually.”

  Gowan doesn’t believe me, I can see that. But he follows me anyway.

  We walk with purpose for the first time in… how long have we been here?

  We walk straight, and reach the cave.

  We walk in zigzags, and reach the cave.

  We split up and walk in opposite directions. And end up facing each other.

  I run up a rise in the floorboards, leaving Gowan at the bottom, and end up looking up at him. He runs away from me, and crashes into me from the other side.

  And every

  single

  time

  we end up at the mouth of the cave.

  26

  told you i was crazy

  Round and round the halls we go

  running from the shadows.

  up and up and up we go,

  when he gets you, he swallows!

  1980: Catherine goes to check on Pamela and Anne as usual. Ever since Mama’s passing, Catherine has taken the role of carer. She holds the position with pride, and takes it very seriously. Pammy is fast asleep, legs splayed, blankets in disarray on the floor, mouth open—as usual. Cath smiles.

  Wild child.

  One day, she is beginning to realize, Pamela Grey will break the hearts of many boys. Many men.

  One day she will run away.

  The last thought is unexpected. She pushes it away, but an icy chill has taken hold of her spine, like a cool hand, and won’t let go.

  She takes the blankets off the floor and covers Pammy up, then bends to kiss her hot cheek, and whispers, “Be careful, little nut.”

  When Catherine goes to check on Anne, she finds the bed empty and the window open. Moonlight flickers into the room as the wind blows the curtains back and forth.

  Dark, light, dark, light.

  Flickerflickerflickerflicker.

  “Anne?” Cath rushes into the room. “Anne?”

  No, no, no…

  She runs to the window and leans out, scanning the garden. Anne wouldn’t be that stupid, surely.… Python Wood looms in the darkness and Catherine senses its grin. She wants to scream Anne’s name into the night, but Papa would wake. It is her job to protect him from things like this. He needs to work so they can eat, and to work, he needs to sleep.

  She swallows. I’m going to have to go out there.

  She realizes this with a rising sense of dread. It is a cold, murky feeling inside her. She will have to go out there… at night. Out in Python Wood with the trees dancing in the wind with their long, leering shadows.

  She has one leg out the window already when she hears it.

  A sniffle from inside the room.

  “Anne?”

  Another one… and a soft whimper. It is coming from the wardrobe. She walks over to it slowly and opens the doors. Anne sits huddled at the bottom, wrapped in too many blankets to count, hugging her red-scarfed penguin doll tightly.

  “Cathy?” Her voice is tiny in the expanse of the room.

  “Anne! What are you doing in there?”

  “I’m hiding. It’s safer.”

  Catherine laughs, breathless in her relief. “Hiding! Hiding from what?”

  Anne leans forward and peers around the room. “I can’t…”

  Cath climbs into the closet next to Anne and shuts the doors from the inside. The darkness is total, and Catherine is loath to admit that she does feel, somehow, safer. It is irrational.

  “What are you hiding from, Anne?”

  “The Creeper Man.”

  “Why would you hide from our protector? That’s silly.”

  “But he’s not our protector, Cathy. He’s not. He’s a bad man. He’s all wrong.”

  “Don’t say that. What would Pammy say?”

  “Pammy already knows.”

  Catherine is stumped. A secret? Anne and Pamela never keep secrets from her.

  That you know of, comes the horrible thought.

  A terrible empty hollowness has opened up in her belly.

  “Oh.”

  “We knew you wouldn’t believe us,” Anne says. Her voice is apologetic.

  “I do. I do believe you.”

  Cath can hear the smile in Anne’s next word. “Liar.”

  “What the hell?”

  Gowan shakes his head. “I don’t know.”

  “I think there’s a reason we keep ending up here,” I say, staring into the pitiless dark.

  “I think so, too.”

  “It’s like I’m supposed to go in and face whatever’s in there.”

  Gowan nods. “I think that’s the only choice.”

  “But it’s full of lies.”

  “No. I don’t think so. I think it’s trying to show you something.”

  I stare at the cave with rising foreboding. “I’m not sure.…”

  “It’s your choice, Silla.”

  “We keep ending up here. So… I think I have to try.”

  Gowan smiles. “I’m with you.”

  I am beyond what is impossible. I want Nori and I did hear her bell inside. No matter how dark or damp that cave is, no matter what I see, I have to go in. I have to find her.

  I go.

  This is a La Baume I’ve never seen. Sunlight streams through bright windows that shimmer like crystals, falling onto a table draped in a white tablecloth of the breakfast room. It is crisp, clean, and dry. The air smells floral, sunflowers sitting in a vase on the table. Next to the flowers are five large cans of yellow paint, one open, a tray and roller sitting to the side. Yellow paint, again.

  A lovely voice floats across the room, as though carried on the sunbeams. It is warm, honeylike, and rich.

  “Cold blows the wind tonight, my love, cold are the drops of rain.…”

  I follow the voice to the kitchen to find Auntie Cath, wearing another sundress, swaying in the kitchen while she peels and cuts apples into chunks.

  “I only had but one true love, and in Greenwood he lies slain.…”

  Cath turns, an apple pie base in her hands, and begins to fill it with the apples she has cut. There is a smudge of yellow paint on her cheek, and she looks… happy.

  “I do as much for my true love as any young girl may.…”

  She pops part of an apple into her mouth.

  “I’ll sit and mourn all by his grave, for a twelve-month and a day.”

  “Auntie Cath?” I whisper, stepping closer.

  “Oh, there you are, Silla darling!” Cath puts down her pie pan and sweeps me into a firm embrace. Unshed tears choke their way out of my chest and I shut my eyes, feeling her arms around me. So warm, so genuine. She smells like fresh bread and mowed grass and pai
nt.

  It is a good smell.

  I hug her back, tightly.

  This can’t be real. This is La Baume, but when was it not rotten? When was it bright and clean and alive? When was Cath not crazy? When was the land not cursed? I almost can’t remember.

  I breathe this Cathy in, and something stirs on the edge of my memory. A ghost of a scene that I have almost lost in the Nothing my life has become.

  Cathy, sitting on the edge of my bed. A book in her hands. Finishing a story. Then a soft kiss on my cheek as I fall asleep. Cathy stroking my hair, telling me I’m okay, loved, wanted. So safe, so warm.

  When did I feel like that?

  When was the world not cold, damp, and decayed?

  Back in the kitchen, Cath pulls away. “I want you to get some more apples from the tree, okay?” She begins to cut strips of pastry to lattice over her pie.

  Movement outside the window catches my attention. Nori is playing in the garden—a bright, living garden full of flowers and vegetable patches. The sun shines down from a cerulean sky. Nori’s mouth is stained purple, her hands as well—hands that are picking all the mulberries off the bush and shoving them into her mouth with delight. I choke on a laugh, eyes bright.

  Oh, Nori…

  Gowan is beside me then, hands clasped in front of him.

  “What’s going on?” I ask him.

  He just stares at me and says nothing.

  I go into the garden, ready to eat mulberries—to try, in this bright version of my life—

  But I am suddenly back in the cave. Dark, cold, echoing. Alone.

  “Nori?” I call. It echoes back, and expands, growing in size and volume.

  Nori? Nori? Nori? Nori? Nori? Nori?

  Nori? Nori?

  Nori?

  Nori?

  Nori?

  The echoes then echo, distorting and bending around one another.

  Nori? nOri? NoRi? NOrI? norI? Nori? nOri? NoRi? NOrI? norI? Nori? nORi? Nori? nOri? NoRi? NOrI? norI? nOri? NoRi? NOrI? norI? Nori? nOri? NoRi? NOrI? nORi?

  “Stop it!”

  Stopitstopitstopitstopitstopitstopitstopitstopitstopitstopitstopitstopitstopitstopitstopitstopitstopitstopitstopitstopitstopitstopitstopitstopitstopitstopitstopitstopitstopitstopitstopitstopitstopitstopitstopitstopitstopitstopitstopitstopitstopitstopitstopitstopitstopitstopitstopitstopitstopitstopitstopitstopitstopitstopitstopitstopitstopitstopitstopitstopitstopitstopitstopitstopitstopitstopitstopitstopitstopitstopitstopitstopitstopitstopitstopitstopitstopitstopitstopitstopitstopitstopitstopitstopitstopitstopitstopitstopitstopitstopitstopitstopitstopitstopitstopitstopitstopitstopitstopitstopitstopitstopitstopitstopitstopit!

  I collapse onto my knees, pressing down on my ears. The noise is so loud it’s going to burst my eardrums. It is dripping derision.

  “LEAVE ME ALONE!”

  It’s like someone flips a switch. The world is mute.

  When I lift my hand, I am in another place. It is dark in here, and closed in. Slanted wood panels all around me. A shuttered window, high up. It must be night because moonlight shoves in through the cracks, silvery white.

  A little girl sits in the center of the room, head bowed low over something in her hands. Her hair is blocking her face, but I know her anyway.

  It’s Cath. Little Cath. Only older now. And the room is different. More cluttered. Less clean. Cobwebs hang from the corners of the attic and a thick layer of dust rests on all the surfaces she hasn’t touched. Where she has, there are streaks.

  I kneel in front of her, and she ignores me. Or maybe she can’t see me. Her hands are nimble and quick as she sews the doll. A new doll? The same doll? It’s an ugly thing, like the other, made of sackcloth, a black slash of a line for a mouth and no eyes. She seems to be repairing a tear in one of his long legs, but the thread isn’t right.…

  I squint and peer closer. Mud. The thread is dipped in mud. Or clay. There is a little bowl of it beside her thigh.

  “He’ll come with the shadows,” she sings, “to take your fears away, he’ll guide you like a father, he’ll take away the pain.”

  Something about the scene is terrible to watch, and I notice with revulsion that Cathy is wet. A putrid smell rises from her, and I realize that she has messed herself.

  She’s terrified.

  And dirty—she’s filthy.

  And then I notice other things.

  Her hands are shaking.

  Her hair is oily.

  Her spoiled dress is dry—she’s been here awhile.

  And no one has come looking for her.

  And there are dolls everywhere… sackcloth dolls—the Creeper Man—everywhere. I stumble back, horrified. Dolls piled in the corners. Dolls nailed to the walls. Dolls dangling from the beams. Dolls scattered on the floor farther off into the shadows.

  There are hundreds, all of them sightless and smiling.

  “Oh my God.”

  “He’ll take it back I know it, he’ll take away this curse. He’ll say he’s sorry, truly. This can’t get any worse—” She breaks off her thread with her teeth, leaving a muddy line across her face like an elongated grimace, then she lights a candle and places the pathetic effigy beside it.

  And then she reaches into her basket and pulls free more straw, and another piece of sackcloth, and begins again.

  “Three little girls knelt by an alder to summon a man to be their protector. The little girls found their game hard to bear when their protector turned and gave them a scare.…”

  I bend down until I am looking at this child and everything comes out. “You made me think it was me. You told me I was to blame. But you brought this curse down on us. On our family. And now he has Nori, too. And you were always insane. Weren’t you?”

  I realize that it no longer matters.

  Cathy is gone.

  Nori is gone.

  And I don’t have any answers.

  “Stop this.”

  Gowan is beside me, standing in the shadows.

  “Gowan?”

  “Stop getting distracted.”

  “What?”

  He grabs my arm and yanks me to my feet

  and I’m back in the cave.

  He puts a gentle hand on my shoulder, like a warm blanket

  and I am facing the cave opening.

  Or is it the other way around—am I on the inside of the cave, looking out at the forest-manor? Standing before me is the tall, thin, blind man, and he is smiling—too wide to be natural.

  I blink

  and he is a tree.

  I blink

  and I’m back in the bright version of La Baume. A sharp pain in my cheek and now I’m in the woods. Gowan is standing over me, shaking me. “SILLA!”

  The pain again.

  He slapped me.

  I don’t know what’s real anymore.

  I look up at him. “I always told you I was crazy.”

  27

  —. — — —

  Try to hold your stomach tight

  till those feelings pass

  close your eyes and think of light

  the darkness doesn’t last.

  BROKEN BOOK ENTRY

  There are secrets that I have forgotten. Like some kind of power that’s inside me, eating away at me, like a cloud hanging over my head, haunting my every move. Like a shadow. And if I could rid myself of them once and for all, I would. Isn’t it obvious? Was that not the point of this book? As though by putting them down I would make them less alive? Make them less real—or at least get them out of me. Out of my head. But it’s pointless. All of it is. Because now I’ve got nothing but those secrets. And I’m forgetting them. It’s just… it seems important. The garden is dead. The house is dead. And we are all nothings inside it.

  “You have to eat. You have to.”

  I shake my head. Can’t he see it’s useless? My body won’t allow it. “I can’t.”

  He growls as he turns away, throwing out his hands in frustration. Then he whirls on me. “Do you want to save yourself?
” he yells. “Stop getting distracted with things that don’t matter!”

  I open my mouth to reply, but it stretches wide and round, expanding into a dark chasm, and I am stepping through it, back into the dank cave. The Creeper Man’s lair.

  He’s toying with me.

  “Open your eyes,” Gowan whispers.

  The water, dripping somewhere in the distance, echoes louder than before. The cave is, if it’s possible, even darker. Still. Too still.

  A bundle of cloth lays ten paces away from me. I glance back at Gowan, but he is just watching me.

  “Stop getting distracted,” he whispers. “You have to face this.”

  I step forward, and though there is nothing to see but a bundle of—blanket? cloth? curtains?—my legs are weak and I stumble.

  I

  fall

  to my knees when I realize. When I see. It’s not a bundle of cloth.

  “No,” I choke.

  NO.

  My whole being shouts the word. Rejects the sight. Fights this reality.

  “No… No. No. No.” My hands are rigid like claws. “NO!”

  It’s a tiny, little, dried-out husk. A dehydrated thing that used to be a child.

  It’s Nori. Nori is lying on the floor of an impossible cave, deep along the corridor that is also Python Wood.

  And she is dead.

  More than dead.

  She’s a shriveled husk of a little girl, her mouth open and glaring, her eyes sunken and leathery.

  I retch and retch, but there is no food and no vomit.

  “No… no… no!”

  My mind collapses.

  Why? How can this happen? I just saw her running through the woods! I don’t understand. This isn’t happening. This isn’t real. I won’t believe it. Nori! How is this real? What’s going on? NORI! NORI! NORI! I’m sorry—this can’t be real I can’t survive this—Idon’tunderstandthisisn’trealThisiswon’tbelieveit. Nori! How is this real? Whattrickthisisn’thappeningIcan’tIcan’tIcan’tNoriNoriNoriNoriohNoriNoriNori…

  I take all the pain, the anguish, the confusion, the air into my lungs, and I SCREAM.

  Gowan is in front of me. I grab his shirt and I shake it. “Make it stop! Take it back!”