Campbell Wood

by Al Sarrantonio

  She kissed him again. "Give it time, Mark. You'll be able to deal with it. But don't try to run away from it. Whatever she was she was, and you'll just have to make up your own mind about her. And if she turns out to be something other than what your father told you she was, that doesn't mean you have to change your mind about him, either. He was human, like all of us. Your mother was a real person, Mark, and you have to face that fact and the fact that she may not have been the monster your father told you she was." She took his hand in hers. "Since the day we moved in here I could see it stewing in you. You're living in her house and you feel guilty about it because you didn't know her at all." She ran her hand through his hair, thinking how boyish he really was—and how naive sometimes, too. "The real problem, Mark, is that you're so wrapped up in your own confused feelings that you don't see what's going on around here."

  "What do you mean?"

  Now there was genuine worry in her voice. "Don't you see how weird this town is?"

  "Sure it's weird, but we're new here—"

  "That's not what I mean, Mark. We've lived here almost two months, and the only contact I've had with anyone was with Kaymie's teacher. And she was one of the strangest people I've ever met in my life. They're scared, Mark—there's something scaring the people in this town so badly they won't come near us. It's like we have the plague. Seth's been playing by himself in the backyard every day. None of the kids his own age will go near him."

  "What about that kid that showed up that one morning?"

  "He's dead, Mark. He died in an accident the same day."

  "My God."

  "Maybe it was a coincidence. I don't know. But Kaymie doesn't have any real friends at school; the only thing she's been able to get involved in at all is the play she's doing. I thought things would get better for her, but if anything they're worse. She has a big part in this thing, and nobody else even really works with her. Even that teacher stays away from her as much as she can. And now Seth says he's been seeing someone up in the trees around the house and I'm starting to worry, Mark. And remember Feeney getting killed?"

  "That was an accident, Ellen."'

  "Was it? A lot of strange things have been happening around here. One day all the drawers were pulled out in the kitchen, and Seth swears he didn't do it. I found broken branches all over the backyard another day, some as big as your arm."

  Mark saw how frightened she was getting. "Oh, come on. What do you think we've got, ghosts?"

  "No. But something or someone maybe doesn't want us here."

  "I never thought you'd want to run out on anything."

  "I don't, Mark. But this is just a little ridiculous. Nobody seems to want us here. I was starting to really fall in love with this house, but I can't go on living like this. It's not natural. It's like living under a microscope or something. And the house alone just isn't worth it. I want to live in a place where my kids have friends and at least have the chance to be popular. Hell, I'd like some friends myself." She suddenly took his arm. "Maybe your mother was a good person, maybe she wasn't. But who was she that everybody's so afraid of going near us?"

  “I—“

  There was a piercing scream and a muffled explosion.

  "Oh my God," said Ellen. Mark ran ahead of her to Kaymie's room.

  Mark threw open the door and his heart nearly stopped beating. Ellen began to scream.

  It looked like a bomb had gone off.

  Kaymie lay at the foot of her bed, bloody and dazed. Seth was draped over the edge of the bed, covered with debris. There was blood running from a gash behind one ear.

  Kaymie said, trembling, "I moved it. I moved it and then it blew up."

  Ellen bent down to her. "Kaymie, are you all right?"

  "I moved it and then it blew up." She looked up at her mother and began to cry.

  Mark lifted Seth carefully back and laid him across the bed. As he did so the boy groaned. "Daddy," he said.

  Mark explored the cut on his head and then met Ellen's fearful eyes. "It looks like he'll be okay. It's not deep." As if to answer Mark's reassurances Seth began to whimper and sat up.

  Mark turned to Ellen, indicating the half-demolished dollhouse. "What the hell did she have in that thing—firecrackers or something?"

  With the realization that both her children were all right, Ellen's mind began to work again. She now saw that the dollhouse had indeed blown up. The only real debris in the room was hundreds of wood splinters that had been shot out from the front of the miniature dwelling. The house was missing most of its face; a large, jagged hole replaced what had been the second floor and attic.

  Kaymie began to cry softly, and Ellen helped Mark get her into bed.

  "Can I still do the play?" she said desperately.

  "Shhh," Ellen said. "Of course you can. Go to sleep."

  Seth was awake now, and they took him into his own bedroom.

  "You okay?" Ellen said, looking closely into his face.

  Seth nodded, then burst into tears and grabbed at Ellen, who hugged him tight.

  "Seth, honey," she said, sitting on his bed, "can you tell us what happened?"

  He looked as if he wanted to cry some more, but the earnest looks on his parents' faces made him toughen up and he nodded.

  "Kaymie was playing with the dollhouse," he said, a shiver passing through him. "The furniture was all messed up. She said I did it but I didn't, Mom!" He started crying again.

  "I know you didn't, Seth," Ellen soothed. "Then what happened?"

  "Boris knocked something over, and then it was standing up again. Nobody touched it. All of the furniture started to move around inside the house. It looked funny, and I laughed, but Kaymie told me to be quiet. She was staring at the house, and then she started to shake. Pieces of the dollhouse flew out, like somebody was hitting it with an axe. Then it all stopped, but then Kaymie screamed and the dollhouse blew up." He tried to be brave, but couldn't help it and started to sob again, into Ellen's shoulder.

  "It's all right, baby."

  She looked up at Mark.

  He was silent for a moment, and then he said, "I'll talk to that cop Ramirez tomorrow. If he can't help us we're getting the hell out of Campbell Wood."

  13

  The dream came to Kaymie again.

  The closet was open, and trees grew out of it, filling the room. Figures came toward her, floating, staring at her with blank faces. Then the tunnel in the forest, leading back into the closet, formed. Through it, from far away and moving as slowly as a funeral procession, came the figure with the cloak and hood. It drew up to her bed. Kaymie wanted to scream; her bed was rocking on a sea of twisted, living tree branches. The figure stooped over her. There was a crown over the hood, the same finely spun gold piece, and, as before, the folds of material over the figure's face unwrapped, like the gauze on a mummy.

  The last fold fell away.

  It was Kaymie's face.

  She awoke with a yell.

  Kaymie lay in bed, suddenly feeling pain, and reached up a tentative hand to touch her face. She gasped at the tenderness of the bruises on her cheeks and forehead, even though they were cleaned and under cotton bandages.

  She remembered the dollhouse.

  Slowly, with an occasional twinge of pain, she sat up in bed. In the glow from her nightlight she saw the remains of her treasured house. It seemed to stare back at her like a huge square wooden head, with a large and ragged pumpkin mouth. For a moment she felt a sob form in her throat at the loss, but she quickly suppressed it.

  She slipped quietly out of bed into her slippers and pulled on her quilted robe. It was cold; the time of night when the thermostat turned the radiators down before cranking up again for the heat assault against morning.

  She moved silently out into the hallway. There was a distorted, window-shaped patch of light on the carpet from the window at the end of the hall. The sight of that cold light sent a chill through her and she tightened her robe around her neck.

  She moved deftly
to the attic stairway and slowly mounted the steps. The door loomed above her, dark and menacing. Her imagination began to work and she fancied it flying open as some un-nameable, pasty ghoul with an open, cavernous mouth flew down on her. She shook the thoughts from her mind.

  She had the brief feeling that her feet were sinking into the steps as she mounted them—as if the stairs were curling up around her.

  She looked down and saw only flat gold carpeting.

  The attic door was in front of her. Hesitating a moment, she then turned the brass knob slowly, pushing in. For an instant it seemed as if someone were pushing back. But the door then opened with a soft, musty hiss.

  Kaymie gave one last look behind her and discovered that Boris had appeared and was sitting somberly at the bottom of the stairs, looking up at her.

  She went in, pushing the door partially closed behind her.

  Pulling the chain on the dim overhead light, she gasped. The attic, she now realized for sure, was set up almost exactly like the one in her destroyed dollhouse.

  She climbed over a stack of boxes and moved to the far left corner, where there was a cleared-out area. She went to the place that corresponded to the secret compartment in her dollhouse.

  She approached the corner slowly. Something caught at the corner of her vision. She turned to see a shape flit across the small window. She stared out for a moment. Soft moonlight drifted in.

  She turned back to the corner and again that same something caught her eye. But once more there was nothing. She walked to the window and looked out. She saw only the blue-white light of the moon filtering through the big oak on the front lawn, subtly illuminating the cold night scene of houses, street, mailboxes, lawns.

  She moved back to the corner of the attic.

  There was nothing there but a crudely paneled surface over the attic wall studs.

  Kaymie touched the paneling, moving her hands over its grained surface. There was nothing there—no secret panel, no roughly cut door, compartment, or shelf.

  She shivered and pulled her wrap tighter. It was cold up here. The door to the room creaked, and she turned quickly to see Boris edging his way cautiously in. He gave her only a cursory glance, and then jumped up onto the narrow ledge under the window. He settled there and looked outside.

  Kaymie was about to turn away when Boris's back bristled. He was following something with his eyes. He made a deep-throated growling noise, bared his teeth, and hissed.

  There was a crack. The shelf above the window tilted down precariously for a second before settling.

  "Boris!" Kaymie yelled. With a shriek the cat jumped away as the shelf suddenly righted itself.

  A strange feeling came over Kaymie, the same one she had felt just before her dollhouse had exploded. A tug in her mind. She was sure she had righted the shelf, and she felt another force there, resisting her.

  Boris lurked just outside the door, looking in at her.

  She felt a tingle at the base of her neck. Warmth was spreading up along the base of her skull and deep down into it. It was more than just a physical feeling; there was a warmth spreading in her mind, too. A new perception came to her, as if a doorway she had never known was there suddenly opened, or as if someone had shown her a new limb with a whole new set of muscles that she had never even thought of using—hadn't even known she possessed.

  The door in her mind opened a crack, and then stopped.

  She bent closer to the wall, examining the wood paneling at a point where two slats were butted together and nailed in. The warmth spread- like butter over the back of her skull. There was a cracking sound, and then the louder sound of forced wood splintering. The two panels peeled back, leisurely, splitting with the pressure away from the nails that held them in. There were two snaps and sections of them broke away and fell to either side.

  There were shadows where the panels had been which resolved into the form of a compartment. Kaymie's fingers tingled. She reached in, removing a damp-smelling package covered in brown paper.

  Bringing it under the weak overhead bulb, Kaymie carefully unwrapped the bundle, sections of string and wet paper pulling away in her fingers. Underneath she found a further wrapping, this one watertight, of some sort of leather.

  She held her breath for a moment when she unfolded the hide covering, for there, in the weak light, was a delicately spun crown of gold studded with tiny diamonds. It was the crown she had dreamed about. Along with it was a pure white linen robe, the fibers of which were so fine she could almost not make them out. When she held it out in front of her it didn't even show a crease from all the folding it had endured.

  Suddenly she knew that someone was watching her. Twisting around, she saw through the small window, silhouetted against the nearly full globe of the moon, a tiny figure crouched in the crook of the tree in front of the house. It looked like part of the tree itself. Kaymie could not tell if it was male or female, or even if it was human. It could be a monkey for all she knew. It was either covered with fur or dressed in dark clothing.

  Hate was emanating from the shape. Kaymie could see its eyes now, two large glowing coals. They were fixed on her with burning, black hatred.

  The window frame splintered. A thin, sharp sliver of wood broke away and flew at Kaymie like an arrow from a bow. She cried out and threw herself to one side, just avoiding it. Another and then another darted at her. The second lodged painfully in her upper arm, drawing a red gush of blood. Kaymie cried out and the splintering abruptly stopped.

  She rose slowly, pulling the splinter from her arm and making her way cautiously to the window. She held the stare of the figure in the tree. There were no more sounds, no breaking of wood. There was a battle here, a contest. Kaymie put her hands on the windowsill and glared willfully out; the figure, a mere ten yards away and half hidden in the darkness, locked eyes with her.

  Then the eyes were gone. Kaymie thought she saw the creature slink away down the bole of the tree but couldn't be certain. It was there one moment and gone the next. Only the tree was there now, its branches swaying against the background of a late November moon. She looked down. She still clutched the linen garment in her hand. She felt as if she were waking from a dream and wanted to cry like a little girl, but she didn't. She was different somehow. She was not a little girl any more. Briefly she thought that maybe it had all been a dream after all, but there was still a throb in her arm where the wood splinter had gone in.

  In the doorway, Boris hissed and then turned away.

  14

  The sheriff's office was nearly spartan. There was only a desk with a chair on either side of it, a small jail cell, a couple of file cabinets. The walls were bare except for the one thing that broke the starkness of the room, a team picture of the 1977 New York Yankees hanging under the barred window.

  Ramirez was silent while Mark spoke, his chair tilted back against the wall and his hands behind his head. He had a toothpick in his mouth, and once again Mark wished he would take his sunglasses off indoors, bad eye or no.

  "That's real interesting, Mr. Campbell. You think there'd be any chance of your son describing whoever it was he saw in the trees around your house?"

  "It's just a shape he saw."

  "Could've been an animal?"

  "I know he's just a little kid but I think he can tell the dif—"

  Ramirez held up a hand. "Please, Mr. Campbell. I'm just trying to make sure. I believe your son saw someone hanging around your house. In fact, it doesn't surprise me at all. I expected something like this to happen. There haven't been any direct threats against your family?"

  "Not really." Mark hesitated, and then told him about Feeney getting killed and the dollhouse exploding. "Although I honestly can't say how either could have happened. I checked that dollhouse for debris from explosives—firecracker casings, all that—and found nothing. Maybe it's all just a bunch of coincidences."

  Ramirez was quiet for a moment, his sunglasses fixed on Mark. "I don't think so, Mr. Campbell."
r />   Mark was stunned. "You mean you think there's something . . ." he didn't know how to put it, "not right going on here?"

  "You mean spooky?" Ramirez grinned, but it was a mirthless smile. "Depends on what you want to believe, Mr. Campbell. There's plenty of stories around here, if you like to believe in spooks." He adjusted his glasses; for a moment Mark was hopeful that he would take them off but he merely fixed their angle and let them stay. "For instance, I did a little checking back in the files and came up with some interesting things. All this business with pieces of wood isn't really all that new. Seems there was a guy found dead in the woods outside town just like that kid Phillie McAllister about twenty years ago. And then I found another interesting report in the file." Ramirez's voice was remarkably even, almost apologetic. "Do you know how your mother died, Mr. Campbell?"

  "No, I don't." An icy hand suddenly clutched Mark's heart.

  Ramirez sighed. "Well, neither do I, really. But the guy who had this job before me, just before he quit and moved away, filed a report on your mother's death. He says he found her himself, in that same stretch of woods between town and the university campus. She was, according to him, half embedded in a tree, as if she were part of it. Only her head, arms, and part of her upper body were out of it. According to him, she was part of the tree, and when he tried to get her out he found that her legs and the rest of her in the tree was made of wood."

  "My God."

  "He says he did what he could, got the body into a closed coffin. Two weeks later he quit." Ramirez leaned forward, folding his hands in front of him on his desk. "Now I don't know if that sheriff was a drunk or what, but that's one hell of a spook story. And I don't believe a word of it."

  "But—"

  "But nothing, Mr. Campbell. You come from the Bronx, you should know better. People don't need ghosts, they do strange things all by themselves. That's why I gave you such a lean going over when you moved in. I figured you were Una Campbell's son, maybe you were mixed up in all this crap. The way I see it, someone's been doing nasty things with wood around here for twenty years, maybe more. But people becoming part of trees I don't buy. Maybe your mother was involved, maybe not, but somebody in Campbell Wood didn't like her and did something about it. Now it looks like somebody doesn't like you being around. Murder I believe in, spooks I don't." He leaned back in his chair again, putting his hands back behind his head. "Maybe you'll get mad, but I've been keeping an eye on your place since you moved in. Nothing serious, just driving by every once in a while to check things out. I saw somebody in one of your trees one day, but whoever it was was too fast for me."