The next morning, Teddy sat at the kitchen table as his mom got ready for work. He’d lain awake puzzling over the disappearances of Walter and Albert, all the while listening to the branches clawing at his bedroom window. Either the boys in the neighborhood were playing very disturbing tricks on him or his mind was, but he couldn’t figure out which, and for the second night in a row, he hadn’t slept a wink.
His mom noticed. “So I take it you haven’t had the best first couple of days here,” she said.
“Not the best, no,” Teddy admitted.
She rose from the table. “I’m too new to ask for time off work or I’d stay here with you, but listen, I want you to stick close to home today, okay?”
“No problem,” Teddy mumbled, and he meant it. He wasn’t going near rivers, construction sites, or anyplace remotely dangerous.
“Okay,” his mom said, giving him a good-bye kiss for which he felt too old. “A repairman is coming later to look at the air conditioner.”
An hour later, the repairman was bent under the air-conditioning unit with his skinny rump in the air. Teddy stood nearby holding a length of new pipe.
The repairman tossed out a piece of old metal pipe from the unit that was tattered and mushroomed out at one end as though it had exploded.
“Here’s your problem,“ he said. “Tree roots in your pipes.”
“What?”
The man stood up, one greasy hand on his pockmarked chin. The name tag on his coveralls said HANK.
“You deaf?” he said.
“No. It just seems weird.”
“It’s common, really.” Hank yawned, flipping his stringy hair out of his eyes. “Over time, they get into everything.”
“Why?”
“Looking for water, usually. In the desert those roots will get into sewers, plumbing, even crawl all the way to the river. Can’t believe this one went after the air conditioner, though. Must be desperate.”
Hank rummaged in his pocket, pulled out a pocket knife, and began to clean his fingernails. He turned his narrow green eyes on Teddy. “You know, you look familiar, kid,” he said as he rubbed an old scar on his forehead. “Do I know you?”
“I don’t think so,” Teddy said. “I just moved here.”
Hank shrugged and snatched the new pipe from Teddy. He plopped back down to install it, hoisting his rump back up in the air.
Teddy stared at the old mutilated pipe. “This is completely destroyed.”
“Yeah,” Hank agreed from under the air-conditioning unit. “They pry their way in. Powerful things, though they usually just crack stuff. That little number looks like a nuclear bomb went off in it.”
Hank finished attaching the new pipe and scooted out from under the air conditioner, wiping his hands on his shirt.
Teddy nodded, troubled by how easily simple tree roots had forced him out of his home.
“Will they come back?” he asked.
Hank shrugged. “Maybe, eventually. No one can give guarantees, kid.”
CHAPTER 9
Once Hank left, Teddy retreated inside the house. But he knew deep down he couldn’t simply cower in his home. If the tree was trying to get in through the window and sabotaging the air conditioner to force him outside, he had to figure out why.
Summoning his courage—it was just a tree, after all—Teddy pushed the kitchen door open and peeked outside. He crept to the edge of his backyard, where the massive sycamore rose above him on the other side of the fence, its cracked wood riddled with scars from the many decades of nature’s abuse. It seemed to frown down at him, healthy but somehow unsatisfied.
“What do you want?” Teddy asked.
The sycamore, of course, did not reply. It only swayed in the hot desert breeze, and Teddy instantly felt stupid for talking to it. He turned to go back inside.
Just then, something hit Teddy in the head.
“Oww,” he grumbled as a sycamore seed ball bounced to the ground beside him. It was the size of a golf ball, and its surface bristled with pointy seeds. Teddy looked up to see where the ball had dropped from and saw a boy sitting on a branch above him almost completely hidden by leaves.
“Hey, what’s cookin’?” the boy said. His grin was not quite a smirk, so Teddy couldn’t decide if he’d meant to throw the sycamore ball hard enough to hurt him or just to get Teddy’s attention.
The kid was about Teddy’s age, but looked a little taller, and he wore long wool knickers and an argyle patterned sweater-vest over a white shirt. His outfit made him look like an old-time schoolboy dressed for fall instead of summer.
“Why’d you do that?” Teddy said, rubbing his head where he’d been struck by the sycamore ball.
“I didn’t,” the boy replied. “The tree dropped it.”
“It’s a pretty odd coincidence,” Teddy said, “seeing as you were sitting directly above me when it fell straight down and hit me directly in the middle of the head.”
“A wiseacre, eh?” the boy said. “I like that.”
Before Teddy could reply, he heard a long, low groan, like the creaking timbers of a massive wooden ship. He whirled around to find the source, but it seemed to come from all around him, even up from the ground.
“Are you making that sound?” he asked.
The kid chuckled. “Do I look like I could make a sound that grand?”
As Teddy stood trying to figure out what might make such a grand sound, he spotted a large branch above his head swaying in the breeze. Only it wasn’t just moving back and forth—it was also moving down toward him, creaking and groaning as it came. The branch descended to within arm’s reach of Teddy and stopped directly in front of him.
Teddy leaped back. “Did you see that?” he gasped. “That branch just moved!”
The kid nodded and slid from his own branch onto the base of the moving branch, perching himself so that his legs dangled over the side. “Sure. The wind blows. They make noise. They go up. They come down. They move side to side. It’s no big deal.”
Teddy eyed the tree suspiciously, unconvinced that it was just the wind.
“Swell, huh?” the boy said. “It’s the biggest tree on the block.” He waved a foot toward the smaller birch, willow, and fruit trees lining the long street.
“You live near here?”
“Yeah,” Teddy said. “I just moved in next door.”
“I’m Eugene,” the boy announced, “but everyone just calls me Sloot. I’m pretty much in charge around here, because I’ve been here the longest.”
Teddy had a sudden brainstorm. “Hey, since you’ve lived here so long, do you know Walter or Albert?”
“Of course,” Sloot said.
“Really?” Teddy asked, excited and a little surprised that someone finally knew what he was talking about. “I just met them, but they both kind of disappeared.”
“Nonsense,” Sloot said. “I saw them this morning.”
CHAPTER 10
Teddy let out a deep breath as relief washed over him. Somehow Walter hadn’t been buried and Albert had gotten away.
“That’s so great . . . !” he exclaimed, the words pouring out of him now. “Whoa. You wouldn’t believe what I thought happened to them. I mean, Walter must have totally fooled me, because it seemed so real when he—”
“They’re fine!” Sloot interrupted angrily. “Walter’s as weird as ever, and Albert’s still a lard-butt. Do we really need to blather on about them?”
“Uh, no, I guess not,” Teddy mumbled, taken aback by Sloot’s change in tone.
“So, do you like this place?” Sloot asked quickly, changing the subject.
“No offense, but I think it’s a little weird.”
Sloot laughed. “Boy howdy, you got that right. The G-men built this town from nuthin’ right up out of the desert a few years ago.”
“G-men?”
“Government men. Do your folks work at the nuke-u-lar project? You can tell me. I’ll keep it under my hat.”
“My mom does, yeah,” Teddy said. “But I don
’t think it’s a secret.”
Sloot shrugged. “Well, loose lips sink ships, as they say. My dad works there too, but if he knew I said something about it he’d give me a knuckle sandwich, so don’t you go tellin’ anybody.” Sloot made a fist and gave Teddy a sudden fierce look.
“Ooo-kay,” Teddy said carefully.
Sloot nodded, satisfied. “You coming up?” he said, instantly turning cheery again.
Teddy eyed the huge tree. It looked like a long way up, and Sloot’s sudden changes in mood made him nervous. “Wasn’t planning to.”
“Aww, c’mon,” Sloot cooed. “If you take a gander from the top, you can see all the way to the river. Branches are thin up there, but they might hold you. You’re nice and skinny.”
“Sounds like a good way to get killed.”
Sloot went quiet for a moment. “Pretty good, yeah,” he finally said. “A fella could climb up there, and nobody would find him . . . ever.” Then he looked over his shoulder toward the trunk of the tree and the A-house beyond. “Well, my time’s about done. You coming up or not?”
“Uh, I think not.”
Sloot frowned, his face turning dark again with a flash of anger. “I’m not sure I heard you right. Did you tell me no?”
“Uh, well, yes,” Teddy spluttered. “I mean, yes, I said no.”
Sloot rolled his eyes. “Well, I can’t sit around flappin’ my lips all day with some meatball like you who can’t make up his mind.”
“But I did make up my mind.”
Sloot stood up on the branch. He gave Teddy a long look. “No, you haven’t.” He stepped out to the middle of the branch, which swayed upward in the breeze, lifting him into the tree as if it were a small elevator.
Teddy stared up at the tree. His instinct, common sense, and rattled nerves all told him to walk away and forget about Sloot. But instead, the longer he gazed into the sycamore, the more he felt it drawing him closer—the same way the A-house had pulled him to it the day he’d arrived.
He marveled at how it could be so unnaturally green, its leaves so strangely vibrant and healthy compared to the dead yard. The tree was so full of life that it felt inviting. More and more, Teddy found that he did want to climb up into it. He wanted to see Richland from the top.
Maybe just halfway to start with, he thought. What would be the harm?
Like a moth attracted to a bright light, Teddy found himself walking toward the trunk of the tree. The large branch creaked in the breeze, lowering itself again.
They go up, they come down . . . no big deal, Sloot had assured him.
Teddy climbed onto the branch, and it immediately lifted him into the tree. In an instant, he was ten feet off the ground, climbing through the limbs.
As he moved higher, the soft leaves brushed his arms and caressed his face. Branches seemed to bend toward him so he could reach them easily and keep climbing up. The air felt cooler as he rose in the protective shade of the tree, and because he couldn’t see more than five feet in any direction, the outside world soon seemed miles away.
“Sloot?” he called.
“Up here,” Sloot’s faint voice replied.
He still couldn’t see Sloot, so he kept working his way higher. Somehow, the climb didn’t seem dangerous. The branches felt solid beneath his feet. In fact, it was so easy that it felt almost as though the branches were passing him up from one to the next.
“Up where?” He called.
“Keep coming.” Sloot’s words sounded muffled, like he had leaves in his mouth.
“Show me where you are,” Teddy said, wondering if Sloot was kidding around, perhaps lurking somewhere nearby to jump out at him or smack him with another sycamore ball.
As Teddy spoke, the branches above him parted, revealing a huge, gaping knothole in the trunk of the tree. The hole was more than three feet across and rimmed with a thick, swollen band of purplish bark that glistened like the wet lips of a fish. There sat Sloot with his rump in the hole and his upper body and legs hanging out so that he looked folded in the middle.
“You’re almost here,” he said eagerly.
“This is getting a little high for me,” Teddy replied from below. “I just wanted to see the view.”
“Sure. Relax. You’re high enough now for a look around.” Sloot pointed out through the thick branches, and the hot breeze eased them apart.
Suddenly, Teddy could see for miles. He immediately spotted the scrubby park by the river to the east where he’d met Albert. But when he looked north, Walter’s construction site was missing. In fact, while he didn’t know the neighborhood well yet, there were a lot fewer rooftops than he expected. And there were no homes at all where he thought Lynwood Court should be—only open desert.
“It looks a lot smaller,” Teddy said.
“It used to be,” Sloot said from above him. “Okay, you’ve seen enough, and I’m about out of time here. Come on up. I want to show you something.”
The branches on the tree shifted again, obscuring Teddy’s view of the town. Inside the thick limbs, it once again grew shady, almost dark. The leaves were still touching Teddy as they had on the way up, but now they felt probing instead of caressing. He felt one inch behind his ear and another slither up his sleeve into his armpit, where their strangely wet surfaces stuck to his skin, and they clung like leeches.
Teddy turned to Sloot for help, but Sloot was gone. The knothole in which he’d been sitting yawned open, bigger and dripping wet now, and Teddy was glad he wasn’t any closer to it.
Just then, the limbs supporting Teddy’s weight rose, lifting him up toward the black opening like hands shoveling food to a drooling mouth.
Teddy glanced around, frantic, and shouted. “Help! Sloot, help me!” But he was no longer there, and Teddy was too high for anyone else to reach him in time.
He had no choice. Teddy ripped away the leaves clinging to his flesh, tore himself loose from the limbs that held him, and jumped.
He didn’t fall far—there were too many branches. The next one down caught him on his stomach while he clawed for a handhold on another. But when he got hold of the branch, it jerked him upward again.
Teddy let go instantly, dropping through the tree again. He felt a branch slam into his shin. Another whacked his head. As he bounced back and forth between limbs like a pinball, he thought he might be pummeled to death before he reached the ground.
At last, Teddy tumbled clear of the huge lower branches. He saw the ground coming at him out of the corner of his eye and managed to squirm around so that he could try to land on all fours.
The impact stunned him, and he instantly hurt in places he didn’t even know existed. But there was no time to see if he’d broken anything—he was lying right beneath the tree, and two huge branches were swaying back down toward him. Frantically, Teddy dragged himself to his feet and stumbled across the yard toward his house.
CHAPTER 11
Bruised and shaking, Teddy took a shortcut through the garage. As he hurried past the shelves, he grabbed a hatchet and a small plastic pump-spray bottle of weed killer, which he stuffed in his pocket.
For the next three hours, Teddy cowered in his room. He kept an eye on the tree from his bedroom window, hatchet in hand. But it didn’t move again, and there was no sign of Eugene Sloot.
After a while, Teddy calmed down enough to consider what had happened in the tree, as well as all the other strange events of the last two days. Sloot was the third kid to mysteriously disappear. But, like the others, Teddy didn’t think he could prove it to anyone—he couldn’t even prove it to himself. Each crime scene changed as soon as he left. Even the sycamore just looked like a motionless tree now—nobody would believe it had tried to eat him.
Keeping an eye on the tree, he quickly moved into the study, sat down at the computer, and scanned the local news again. There was still nothing about recently missing kids.
Back in his own room, he checked his window latch again. There was no question now that he was unsafe even in
his own house. Whatever ghastly fate was stalking the other boys, it had come as close as next door to get Sloot.
I have to do something, Teddy decided. But it was all a horrible puzzle, and he still had no idea where to look for answers or what to do next.
That is, until the mail slot clanked in the foyer.
Teddy crept downstairs to see what had arrived, and lying on the floor in the entryway beneath the slot, he found a bill for the air conditioner from Mulligan Repair Service.
“Mulligan?” he said to himself, trying it aloud as he walked the bill toward his mom’s desk. It sounded familiar. He recalled that the repairman’s name tag on his uniform read “Hank.”
“Hank Mulligan,” Teddy said, wrapping his mouth around the entire name. But as he ran his finger down to the bottom of the page, he realized that Hank was a nickname. He found the man’s full proper name printed below the signature line.
Henry Mulligan.
CHAPTER 12
Teddy biked madly down Saint Street, out toward the desert, then hung a left. If his own repairman was Henry Mulligan, the kid he’d hit with the rock had to be Henry Mulligan, Jr.
After all, Teddy thought, how many Henry Mulligans can there be in Richland?
Mr. Mulligan would have answers about his son. He probably knew all about Leslie Groves Park, too, and maybe even the other boys.
The mobile home park Teddy had seen when they first came into town was less than a mile from the corner where he turned. He covered the distance in record time and skidded to a stop in front of the park.
He recognized the faded sign over the cracked blacktop pavement leading into the park from two days earlier. The old trailers looked like they had just been plopped on top of the desert sand and sagebrush and simply left to rot.
He bit his lip and pedaled in, winding his way through a grid of streets between the mobile homes until he came to the return address on the repair bill. Before he could chicken out, he walked straight up onto the porch and knocked.
Nobody answered.
Teddy shuffled around on the porch, rising on his tiptoes to look in the window. He couldn’t see anything through the dingy curtain, but he couldn’t leave, either—no questions had been answered.
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