Wrong. This is wrong.
Cath still stands in the kitchen doorway, the light pooling around her. She is laughing, tears running down her cheeks.
Gowan lets go of my hand, and the air seems to bite with cold.
“Give me that,” Gowan says, his demeanor utterly changed. “No more cake.”
Why? Nori signs. I want it!
“No more,” he repeats, and gathers up my plate, too. He strides to the kitchen, gesturing at Cath and pointing at the plates.
She simply rolls off the wall, goes inside, and Gowan, agitated, follows her.
We don’t see either of them all night.
It is the early hours of the morning when Gowan slides into bed next to me.
“You were right. Something is wrong with her.”
The next day Cath goes up to the attic.
And never comes down.
1980: The woods are waterlogged, and Catherine has trouble finding her way. She screams for Anne as she runs, searching, but the trees all around her move and whisper, thrashing in the storm, and it is many hours later that she sees.
And the wood echoes with screams.
It was her job to be carer… to protect Anne. To protect them both. She was the eldest and the wisest. Anne tried to tell her about their protector, but Catherine, growing up fast, had not quite believed. At twelve, she fancied herself grown, and so her childhood faith in stories had started to fade.
And now look.
Anne is gone.
Shredded up on the forest floor.
And it is all her fault.
“You never came back. You left us that day. You went for help, but you never came back.”
I r e m e m b e r him.
Gowan’s face has fallen a lot since then. “That’s not true.”
Behind me, I can hear La Baume sighing and shifting and changing.
“You abandoned us.” Nothing. There is nothing alive inside me right now. My heart died a long time ago. He left us. He left us all alone. He left me.
I don’t wait for his reply. I just turn and drag myself back to the now root-infested manor, ready for the shadows to take me. Inside, the walls flake and peel away as I pass, which gives me intense satisfaction. Everything breaks down as I wander by; the roots bend and twist behind me, cutting him off, locking him out. And I know that it is me doing this to La Baume.
I am the infection.
I am the decay.
29
anne
Children are sponges, yes
we soak up everything!
including all your blackness, yes
we do it just by breathing.
BROKEN BOOK ENTRY
I miss someone. I wish I knew who. I feel abandoned, which is silly. But I can’t shake this feeling that I’m never going to see this person again. Nothing I do helps. Who do I miss?? I tried to get Cathy to come down again last night, but she just stared at me with this weird, empty expression, and then after a while she started screaming and tearing at her hair. I hurried to leave because I didn’t want Nori to hear and I knew she’d stop if I left. But she started calling, “Pammy! Pammy come back!” and I lost it. I ran from there as fast as I could and locked myself in my room. Anything to get away. After a while, Nori knocked. She’s looking worse. We curled up together in the huge closet and fell asleep. When I woke up it was morning, and it was more sleep than I’d had in ages. Need to find some food.
The other me steps out of the kitchen. She is following the sound that has plagued me for so long.
Creak.
Creak.
Creak.
Endless. Unendurable. Futile.
I follow her as she, frowning, searches.
“Nori? Auntie Cath?”
Her voice is so young! So innocent. Is this really me?
Eventually she finds the stairs leading to the attic. Cath, she knows, has not come down for at least two weeks; she has been leaving trays at the door. But maybe it’s longer than two weeks now. It must be, since she went up there the day Gowan left.
Gowan…
The other me climbs the stairs slowly. “Cathy?”
I don’t want to follow, but I do anyway. I need to remember this piece.
At the top of the stairs, she knocks on the door. She calls Cath’s name once more, tentatively, and then she walks in. She is probably worried about invading privacy, or seeing a weak moment, but that is gone the moment the door swings open, banging the wall on the other side.
I fall to my knees at the same moment the other me does. Our eyes are level with Cath’s feet.
Creak
Her face
Creak
is a vicious
Creak
purple.
Creak
The rope
Creak
is cruelly
Creak
tight.
Creak
Her neck
Creak
is definitely
Creak
broken.
“C-C-Cathy…”
The other me screams, scrambles forward, tries to hoist Cath up. She jumps onto the window seat, where Cath placed a chair to jump from, and scrabbles to free the rope. All she does is make it tighter and break the skin at Cath’s neck. There are
c r a c k s
as she tugs.
She falls off the chair, landing heavily on her hip. She is sobbing. On the wall, words: I CAN’T DO IT. And then: THE CREEPER MAN IS COMING.
A little bell tinkles behind us, and then we hear Nori’s hurried footsteps. She is coming up the stairs—she must have heard the scream, the crash. Other me struggles to her feet, wipes her face furiously on her dress, and backs away, shaking her head in horror. She stares for one more moment, then closes the door on the scene and hurries to meet Nori farther down the stairs.
Behind her, the creeeeeeeaking continues, and eventually slows to a stop.
I’m somewhere else. It’s dark, yes, but so much more. Movement, wind, rain on my skin, fresh air all around, sounds. I see a shape moving quickly through the woods and I back away instinctively, falling over a log in the process. I land hard just as the figure pauses near me, hands on her knees, panting.
Cathy. The same age, or close, to when I saw her sewing that horrible doll.
She straightens, peering through her hair and the rain. “Anne!” she yells. “ANNE!”
That name again. When she runs off into Python, I follow. We run for a long time, but I don’t seem to get tired. Cathy, though—she falls several times, covering herself in mud and cuts, and by the time we see the shape by a half-fallen tree—an alder tree—she has already been crying for a while.
Cathy pauses, and so do I, but I think I know what’s coming, and I don’t know how much more of this I can take. History really does repeat itself. Cathy moves over very slowly, her body taut like a stretched-out elastic band. She reaches the shape, and even I can’t pretend it isn’t what it is.
There is a torso. Of that I am sure. It has been shredded in parts, but I can make out the small rib cage, the almost-formation of small breasts. There is an arm, at least one, and I see two legs. I can’t see the head, but there is a tangle of hair.
It is, without a doubt, the body of a small child. A girl in a black dress.
Oh. No. Not black. It’s white. The black is…
Cathy stumbles, crashes in a staggering way to her knees, and then she throws up on the corpse before turning roughly away, trying to contain the vomit with her hands. It spews between her fingers and she gags, coughs, and cries.
When she turns back, her mouth is contorted and ugly. “Anne…”
I look at the legs, the arms, the hair, and the torso. Anne. The third sister.
“You did this,” Cathy whispers, looking out into the woods. “You tricked her. You lured her, wooed her, then you crept up and killed her. You’re a monster. A Creeper Man. You’re the Creeper Man.”
A legend born, right here.
&n
bsp; I close my eyes for the aunt I never knew, for the pain I never realized Cath and my mother shared—for the darkness born that day. When I open them, we are inside, and Cathy is standing, drenched, in front of Pamela. My mother, but as a child. So strange.
“This is on you,” Cathy says. She slaps my mother before I even see it coming.
Pamela cries out and grabs her cheek. Starts to cry.
“This is all your fault,” Cath spits. “I will never forgive you.”
“Cathy—”
“Don’t talk to me again. You’re a killer. You let her go out there alone while you hid in the closet, and he killed her. The Creeper Man killed her! It should have been you.”
With that, she turns away, leaving my little mother sobbing behind her.
Oh, no. Is this what I am born of? Is this the pain that is passed on in my family?
We have no right to children if despair is all we bring with us.
30
s i n k i n g
Hush now, baby
don’t mind the roar
that’s just your tummy
asking for more.
BROKEN BOOK ENTRY
A man was in the woods today. Nori told me that she spent a long time talking to him. His coat was ripped and his face was blotchy with red sores, but she said she wasn’t afraid because he had a friendly smile. She even took his hand to prove she wasn’t afraid and drank some of his water. She is a stupid child sometimes. Do I teach her to be afraid, as Mam would have me do? To feel fear when something unfamiliar comes? Do I teach her to be defensive, as Dad would? Is that the right thing to do? Or do I bestow kindness, the way Cath might tell her? I’m just glad he’s gone.
I’m in the cave again. “You knew.”
Gowan looks tired. So tired. “Yes.”
“You weren’t just here to fix the garden.”
“No.”
“You were in my past. I just didn’t remember.”
“Yes.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I couldn’t. I can’t.”
“Why… where did you go? Why?”
“I came back.”
“I don’t remember.”
“I know.”
I close my eyes.
“Please,” Gowan says. “Keep going.”
I can’t hold on anymore. I am so tired.
When I open my eyes, I’m standing on the lip of the hole in the entrance hall. Only there is no entrance hall now, the hole has taken over the entire space. A chasm at my feet.
I understand, my father’s voice says. It is so warm. I understand, my daughter, about being tired. Rest now. Come with me and you can rest your head.
I sway. I want to. How easy it would be.
“Please, Silla…” Gowan whispers. “You’re strong. You’re so close.”
I look at him. “Why are you here?”
I recognize that tension in his face. It’s been there ever since he came to La Baume to “fix the garden.” It’s like he wants to say something to me, but he can’t.
At last, he says, “To help you.” His eyes fall, and I see his hopelessness. “To love you.”
His words. His face. His voice. I remember him. I remember my love for him, and I feel a new love for him, one that grew all over again when I didn’t know who he was.
And I fall into him. His arms come around me right away, and my lips meet his. Perfect fit, something inside me says. I kiss him and I hug him and I never want to let go. This feels urgent and desperate. Completely vital.
“Help me,” I whisper.
“I’m trying,” he says.
I allow him to lead me back through the Python manor, away from the hole—far away from it—but I can’t stop my mind from thinking about everything I’ve seen. Especially… that…
My little Nori, reduced to that. It can’t be real. It just… can’t.
Not again. I can’t take this anymore.
La Baume. The kitchen. I watch myself mash up peanuts, like I’ve done a million times before. The other me adds sugar and a little butter. She mixes it up, fiercely. I can see she is trying not to cry. When she’s done, she turns, revealing Nori standing behind her, and hands the mess over.
I step forward without thinking. But something is wrong.
Nori eats the peanut butter slowly
something is wrong
and it looks
like the effort is gigantic.
She swallows it down and smiles at the other me
something is wrong
trying to reassure the other me—I’m okay, Silla, I really am, her eyes say—but then she vomits it all back up, curling over and heaving like her body won’t take the food it is offered. So familiar. I know this feeling well.
And now I see it.
Nori is sick. She’s very, very sick.
The other me says, “Don’t worry,” because Nori looks so ashamed of herself, but then Nori sits down very suddenly, looking dazed and thirsty, so the other me gathers her up and carries her upstairs.
I don’t want to follow.
I follow.
I stay.
I watch.
It’s like some sick kind of stop-motion film, sped up. I watch myself as the days pass, caring for Nori, who wastes away in her bed. She is so thin, so pale, so thirsty. The other me tries to feed her the peanuts, but Nori rejects it all. The other Silla wishes she had fresh apples. Gowan always brought the apples from the apple tree.
The other Silla wanders from the chair by the window, peering out into the woods, to the chair by the bed, sitting beside Nori and reading to her, feeding her, cleaning her, crying for her.
Day passes day passes day. She visits the window often, but the view doesn’t change. No one comes.
One day, another long day of suffering, Silla finds a journal. It is old, so old, that it has calcified somehow, the cover turning hard as stone. It is cracked down the middle. She finds a pen, opens the broken book, and begins to write.
I peer over her shoulder.
They say I’m crazy, she writes.
Days, nights, days.
No Gowan. No sign.
Nori grows thinner, sicker, thinner. She stops taking water, too, after a little while. The other me looks better, but not much.
The food is gone now. Only one dried apple left, which she was hoping to avoid because it has some mold on the side.
I watch as Silla feeds it to Nori, instead of taking it herself, even though she knows Nori won’t keep it down. But she must try. She has to try. I watch the slow painful bites, the excruciating swallows.
And then—
And then I am in the other Silla. I am her, and she is me, and there is ink on my fingers, which are curled around a broken book. I am so hungry. The pain is constant, inevitable, wholly distracting.
I try to feed Nori, but she is no longer awake or responding. Terror like a blinding flash hits me, and I check—she’s breathing. Shallow. So shallow. I begin to cry, but there is no water in my body.
I try to say Nori’s name, but there is not enough strength even for that.
I climb into the bed next to my sister, clutching her to me, and I fall asleep.
Please… I think. Please, Gowan. We need you.
When I wake, Nori is ice cold in the bed beside me.
“It gets bad after this.” Gowan is standing in the shadows of the room.
“I know.”
I stay in bed for a long time. The smells get pretty bad, but I won’t let go of her, and it soon passes. There’s something wet in the bed with us, but that passes, too. I can’t… I can’t do this.…
And I’m out. Watching. Once more a spectator. The other Silla is in the bed, and I am standing at the foot of it.
I watch myself linger on, staring with yearning, desperate eyes at the window.
I watch myself write, sicken, suffer, and very slowly… die.
“This is what happened,” I say.
Gowan, beside me now, nods.
He nods again.
“I’m to blame.”
He faces me, takes my shoulders. “No. You can’t think that. It was so hard back then, all that talk of war, people running scared.… People died. So many people died. Cath was weak and sick, and she went mad and killed herself. That’s not your fault. Nori died from some kind of wasting sickness and that was not your fault.” He pauses. “You couldn’t have saved her, Silla.” He pauses. “You starved to death, and, yes, that was your choice. But… you have to forgive yourself, Silla.”
“I died,” I whisper. “I’m… dead. I’ve been dead… this whole time?”
“Yes.”
I look up at him. “Are you even my Gowan?”
“Yes.”
“Are you… dead, too?”
He takes my hand. “Yes.”
“And you’ve known I’m dead since the moment you came out of the woods…?”
“Yes.”
I take a moment to process this information, but something is niggling at me, is wrong.
And then I see it.
“No.”
All this… all this is happening inside the Creeper Man’s lair—his cave. It’s a trick! Oh, God. I nearly fell for it. He’s trying to distract me from finding Nori. This is an illusion, a trap!
I push Gowan away from me, and I’m back in the forest. Before he can stop me, I run. I need to find his cave again. I need to find it and go in strong. I will find him and face him and I will kill him and save my sister.
I run for a long time chased by
Creaking
and
The growl of my stomach
and
The retching of Nori throwing up
and
A symphony of suffering.
And then he’s there. The Creeper Man.
He is tall.
He is thin.
A dark outfit.
Like tree bark.
And the Trees Crept In Page 20