Before he left, he pinned a note to his pillow for his mom. It said not to worry and that he’d be back “later.”
Feeling prepared, Teddy looked across the fence at the front door of the abandoned A-house. The dirty glass of the rusty fixture above the door was glowing yellowish-white as though the light had been turned on to welcome a visitor.
Weird, Teddy thought. The bulb must be sixty years old, and the place can’t possibly have electricity.
He took a deep breath. He would rather have waited until morning, but he felt like time was running out. So he crept across the A-house yard, circling around the tree as far from the trunk as possible, and stepped up to the front door.
He knew he’d have to be careful not to leave signs of a break-in, whether he found more answers or not, so he covered his hand with his T-shirt to avoid leaving fingerprints and checked the knob. He was a little surprised to find it unlocked, yet relieved—at least he wouldn’t have to use the crowbar.
Teddy pulled against the drift of sand on the porch and eased the door open. It was dark inside the boarded-up home, so he removed the halogen lamp from his pack. The lamp had a heavy battery, which Teddy detached and put in his pack so he could hold the light more easily. A cord plugged into the handle kept the battery connected.
But before he could flip the power switch, the light in the hall ahead of him came on with a quiet click. At the same time, the porch light winked off behind him.
It wants me to visit, he remembered thinking the day he’d arrived and come to the A-house porch.
The instinct to flee was strong—to run home, tuck himself in his bed and bury his fear under the safety of his comforter. Teddy looked back at his own house.
But isn’t that exactly what the tree would have me do? he thought. Is it guarding the A-house’s secrets? He reminded himself that he would never know if he ran, so he stepped inside.
Moving across the foyer, he found himself in a furnished living room containing an ancient scroll-armed couch that had collapsed in the middle and a dull, insect-eaten coffee table. Through an archway he saw a rusty dinette set with green chairs whose plastic upholstery had dried and split with age.
It seemed to Teddy that the owners had abandoned the place in a hurry, leaving all of their furniture, and that no one had set foot inside since. The air smelled stale, like the corpse of the cat he’d once found in an old shed long after it had withered to leather.
He continued down the main hall, each footstep leaving a print in the decades of dust on the floor. Despite the decay, the lights overhead turned on ahead of him and off behind him as he passed, leading him to a door with a couple of faded old baseball cards thumb-tacked to it.
The players were unfamiliar—Dixie Walker and Elmer Riddle of the Pittsburgh Pirates. Teddy unpinned one and turned it over—the season was listed as 1948, a year when Sloot would have been alive.
There will be secrets and clues inside this room, Teddy thought. But it took a moment to bring himself to turn the knob, and when he did, his hand shook. Finally, he pushed the door open. It squeaked as if to announce his arrival.
A night lamp blinked on beside a small bed as the light in the hall abandoned him. In its glow, Teddy could see a dusty jar of marbles on the dresser. A mildew-stained wooden toy tank aimed up at him from the floor, and an old tabletop hockey game with worn metal players sat on the shelf.
Teddy crossed to the closet and peeked inside. It was full of crumbling, moth-eaten clothes sized for a kid his age. A pair of black and white Chuck Taylors sat decaying on a shelf, and two rusted metal baseball cleats hung from a hook near the top of the wall.
It was then that Teddy saw the small trapdoor in the ceiling. At first he almost ignored it, but then he noticed it was slightly open.
Just as the sycamore tree had invited him to climb it, Teddy now felt himself strangely drawn to the little door, as though it was open for a reason. People kept secrets in attics—look up here, it seemed to say.
He climbed up on the shelf and lifted the trapdoor enough to poke his head through. The attic was dark, so Teddy clicked on his light and swung the halogen’s beam across the room.
The attic seemed to run the length of the house. There was no proper floor—only rows of beams nailed on top of the ceiling below. Teddy lifted himself completely into the room for a closer look.
Then he saw the branches.
They wove between the beams in the rafters, crisscrossing and filling the attic like a huge, tangled vine. Shining the light along the walls, Teddy saw that they’d come in through the broken window at the end of the room, then spread throughout the entire attic.
The sprawling limbs told him that he’d come to the right place. The tree was here, and it was protecting something. He stepped out onto the beam, but he was still staring ahead, and that’s when his foot slipped off.
As Teddy fell, his shorts ripped, and he felt something sharp tear into his leg. He landed hard, straddling the beams and grabbed his thigh. Warm stickiness ran through his fingers.
Blood!
He turned the light on his leg. There was a lot of blood. It ran over his knee in a steady stream so that his upper leg looked like someone had painted it solid red. Jammed into the torn flesh of his wound was the sharp point of a thick branch.
It suddenly felt stiflingly hot in the attic. Teddy swayed and sucked for breath, his head swimming. He turned on his stomach to crawl for the trapdoor, but it was too late. Before he could reach it, he passed out.
CHAPTER 17
Teddy awoke groggily to the sound of a window squealing open in the room below him. He retrieved the halogen lamp and shined it ahead, pulling himself to the trapdoor, where he scrambled through and dropped back into the closet.
When he landed, he remembered that his leg was injured. But when he looked down, he saw that it was no longer bleeding. Frantically, he pulled his shorts aside—there was now no wound at all.
He frowned, wondering if he’d just imagined the ill-fated trip to the attic the same way he might have imagined the scrub-brush park and the construction site. But if he had, his imagination was still at work, for the bedroom now appeared completely different than it had before.
The clothes hanging around him in the closet were no longer old and decayed but neat and pressed. Across the room, the cat-eye marbles were clean and sparkled in their jar, and the hockey game looked shiny new, as though waiting to be played with. In fact, the room appeared just as it might have in 1950.
Cautiously, Teddy stepped out of the closet and walked over to the bed. He felt the kid-sized indentation in the sheets on the bed and was surprised to find it warm. Someone had just gotten out of bed.
As Teddy stood by the bed, a hand reached through the open window by the headboard and pushed the drapes aside. Teddy turned to see a familiar face appear in the window frame.
“Sloot!” Teddy exclaimed. “I found you!”
“I was about to say the same thing, bucko.” Sloot grinned back at him.
“Okay,” Teddy said, “let’s get you in here.”
“No, let’s get you in here,” Sloot shot back. “If my dad catches you in my room . . . well, he’s a bit of a hothead, I’ll tell ya. I ain’t supposed to have friends over at night. C’mon, let’s scram. We can hole up in the tree.” Sloot motioned for Teddy to come to the window, then ducked out of view.
“Wait,” Teddy called. He stepped to the window frame and stuck his head through. The swirling darkness outside made it impossible to see. He was just about to point the halogen lamp out the window when a half-dozen hands grabbed him and yanked him through.
CHAPTER 18
Teddy fell to the ground. He could only see vague shapes in the dark, and a strong wind was blowing sand in his eyes. He felt flailing limbs and bodies around him, wrestling him to the ground. He thrashed and struck out in all directions with his fists and feet. He felt one punch connect with something solid—flesh and bone. Then a body leaped on him and pinned him d
own.
“Sloot! Help!” he yelled. But no help came. Sloot had left the window moments before the hands pulled Teddy through, but now he was gone.
It occurred to Teddy that perhaps the police had come and they were the ones holding him down. Maybe they’d grabbed Sloot too, or he’d run away from them. Then he had a scarier thought—it might be Henry Mulligan and his hoodlum friends.
Teddy felt himself being lifted and carried. He still couldn’t make out the figures, and he couldn’t keep track of which way they were taking him. Not that it really mattered—he’d lost all sense of direction in the struggle.
Don’t panic, he told himself.
With great effort, he stopped himself from squirming and tried to think. By the number of hands on him, he judged that there were three, maybe four of them. Police would have identified themselves, he thought, so it probably wasn’t cops. But whoever had him wasn’t talking, so he’d have to wait to figure anything else out.
He didn’t have to wait long. They were half dragging him now, and the halogen lamp was dangling by its cord behind him. The lamp caught on something in the dark, and it jerked the battery in Teddy’s backpack, which tightened the straps on his shoulders and yanked him free of their grasp.
Teddy fell to the ground and immediately scrambled away from the group. He heard their footsteps shuffling around in confusion, and he desperately fumbled along the ground in the dark for the light. He found the halogen and, holding it out like a shield, he flicked on the switch.
Five hundred watts of light suddenly blew the darkness back. The glare hurt his eyes, and he was blinded for a moment. He heard eerie squeals of pain, commotion, and panicked footsteps. When his eyes adjusted, whoever had attacked him had retreated beyond the lamp’s range into the darkness and dust. But he knew they were still out there beyond the dim edge of the light’s reach.
“Teddy, wait!” It was Sloot’s voice.
“Sloot!” Teddy called out. “Over here! Quick. They’re all around us.” He swung the light back and forth, expecting Henry Mulligan to leap out and grab him at any second.
“Lower the lamp,” Sloot called. “It burns our peepers, pal.”
“Our?” Teddy turned the lamp toward the ground so that it cast only a faint circle of light, enough to see by, but not so bright.
Two pale eyes appeared in the blackness. Sloot melted from the shadows and eased toward him, squinting. “This is a dim place,” he said, rubbing his eyes.
“What does that mean?” Teddy asked. But before Sloot could answer, he heard footsteps to his left. “Watch out!” he warned, and he raised the light.
Sloot stepped to him, squinting in the halogen’s blinding beam, and pushed the light back down toward the ground. “Stop, Teddy,” he pleaded. “It’s us.”
Sloot motioned to the darkness, beckoning forward his unseen companions. A second boy crept from the shadows, then a third. They were pale and hollow-eyed. The third one had a bloody nose. They were about Teddy’s age, and he was relieved to see that none were Henry Mulligan or from his gang.
Sloot patted them on their backs as they joined him and Teddy in the faint light. “Joey and Oliver, this is Teddy. He’s here to help us.”
Teddy gasped. “The other boys from the cemetery!”
CHAPTER 19
Joey and Oliver nodded, but didn’t speak. Joey fidgeted, while Oliver wiped blood from his nose with his shirtsleeve.
“Not too chatty, I’m afraid,” Sloot said. “But they’re very glad you’ve finally come here, believe me.”
He smiled. It was an odd, crooked smile.
“But where is here?” Teddy swung the halogen around. All he could see was blowing sand in all directions. He’d been taken too far from the A-house to see the old home in the darkness.
“Halfway between,” Sloot said. “Not bright like life, not black like death. Just . . . dim.”
Teddy didn’t push it. By now he cared less about where he was than about how to get out. But whatever was after him had clearly brought the other boys to this place. Maybe they could tell him what it was if they could all get to someplace safe to talk.
“Where are Albert and Walter,” Teddy asked, “and the last one? It’s Lawrence, right?”
Joey and Oliver looked at each other. They murmured as though they knew something.
Sloot waved the boys silent. “Lawrence is in the tree. We weren’t sure you’d be coming.”
Teddy checked the dangling cord from the halogen to his backpack to make sure it wouldn’t catch on anything again.
“Seriously, we should all go,” he said. “But I don’t want to leave without everyone. And who were those dark people that attacked me? Was it Henry Mulligan and his friends?”
The boys shot furtive looks at one another again. It made Teddy nervous.
“Servants of the tree,” Sloot answered finally.
As he spoke, a low, loud groan rose behind Teddy. Sloot glanced upward, looking fearful and angry at once.
“He’s here, isn’t he?” Sloot shouted up into the swirling dust and darkness.
The hairs on the back of Teddy’s neck stood on end. He pointed the halogen up to the sky, revealing a massive shadow, which towered over them.
It was the tree.
CHAPTER 20
The sycamore was so big that Teddy had simply mistaken it for a wall of darkness. But now it was revealed by the light in all of its horrible glory. The ragged trunk twisted skyward, more than fifteen feet wide. Its thick bark was crusty and cracked with open scars that oozed inky sap. Overhead, gnarled branches jutted in all directions, their tips well beyond the reach of Teddy’s light. Its deep bass groans echoed in the blackness and shook the ground.
The boys ducked out of the spotlight, and Teddy backed away, trying to protect them with the lamp.
“Take the light off it,” Sloot warned. “You’re making it angry.”
Before Teddy could respond, he heard a softer moaning from above. He moved the light to the left, and, to his horror, he saw a body hanging in lower limbs of the tree.
It was a tall boy he didn’t recognize, but since it wasn’t Albert or Walter, he had a chilling idea who it might be. “Is that Lawrence?” he gasped.
Sloot nodded, unsurprised.
The clawlike branches cradled Lawrence, holding him in place while writhing leaves plastered his body like leeches seeming to suck out his energy the way a normal leaf might suck in the sun. The leaves shrank from Teddy’s beam, however, then popped off of Lawrence’s skin, leaving hideous red welts. Teddy continued to shine the light on the tree, and the branches themselves retreated, releasing Lawrence. The tall boy plummeted to the ground.
Without thinking, Teddy darted forward to drag Lawrence out of reach. He kept the light pointed up at the grotesque tree to keep the branches at bay.
As he pulled Lawrence away, Teddy turned to Sloot. “It uses you as . . . fertilizer?” he sputtered.
“Ah, you get it,” Sloot said. “It’s so much better when we don’t have to explain it, like we do with stupid kids.” He glanced at Oliver. “There’s not much light for it here in the dimness, you see. It needs energy, and we’ve got it. As long as there’s a new source provided every ten years or so, no one has to get completely drained. We take turns.”
“What?” Teddy yelped. He began to back away from both the tree and the boys as the weirdness of the past three days became suddenly, terrifyingly clear. The snags waiting for Albert in the river, the roots that grabbed Walter in the sewer trench, the knothole that held Sloot like a puppet. The tree wasn’t stalking the dead boys—it already had them. And it was using them to lure a new victim . . . him.
But Teddy hadn’t gone in the river, the trench, or the knothole. I never took the bait, he realized.
The thought gave him hope. Holding out the light, he spoke more bravely than he felt. “You’re not gonna feed me to some plant!”
“It’s not a choice,” Sloot said. “You’re already here.”
“Yeah,” Sloot said, “that’s a bit of a problem.”
He motioned to Joey, who pulled out a well-worn Cub Scout pocketknife and grabbed the halogen’s cord.
“Wait!” Teddy cried, but it was too late.
Joey cut the cord, plunging them all into dimness and swirling dust.
CHAPTER 21
Teddy ran blindly. The grainy wind stung his eyes, and the deep sand pulled at his feet. He felt sure the boys were about to catch him, but then he heard Sloot yell from a distance behind him. “Let him go. The desert will send him back. He’ll want to come back.”
Teddy tried to run straight to keep some sense of direction in the blowing dust. He sprinted until his breath came in gasps and his lungs hurt. When he finally felt he was far enough from the tree and the boys, he slowed to a trot so he could think.
Maybe he could circle back to the house. It was how he’d gotten here—through the window.
It has to lead back out, doesn’t it?
As he jogged, the sand gave way to a crunchy surface like gravel, but softer. He still couldn’t see well in the dimness, so he slowed to a walk for fear of running headlong into something solid. He reached into his backpack for the small flashlight he’d packed. It was no 500-watt halogen, and the batteries wouldn’t last forever, but it was better than nothing.
He clicked on the flashlight and shined it ahead—nothing but darkness as far as he could see. At least there were no trees or double-crossing kids. A wave of relief washed over him and for a moment he relaxed, at least until he pointed the light down.
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