THE TREEHOUSE
A NOVEL
ANDREW J BRANDT
Copyright © 2019 Andrew J Brandt
All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review or scholarly journal.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
ISBN: 978-1-09-46629
CONTENTS
PART ONE
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
PART TWO
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty One
Chapter Twenty Two
Chapter Twenty Three
Chapter Twenty Four
Chapter Twenty Five
Chapter Twenty Six
Chapter Twenty Seven
PART THREE
Chapter Twenty Eight
Chapter Twenty Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty One
Epilogue
DEDICATION
To my wife, for believing in me and my dreams.
To my kids.
FACT:
In a survey of 110 junior and senior high school students in Texas, 55 admitted to sneaking out at least once.
170 children go missing in Texas every year.
PART ONE
THE BODY IN THE WOODS
CHAPTER ONE
Friday 14 March | 10:55pm
“OW! SHIT!” THE words left the eleven-year-old boy’s mouth almost instinctively. He’d never cursed before, but the hammer hitting his thumb – instead of the nail he was holding – made the word come out effortlessly. Lucas dropped the hammer and shook his hand. The hammer thudded against the wooden planks that made up the floor of the treehouse. His thumb throbbed and pulsed, and he stuck it in his mouth.
The two other boys in the treehouse tried to contain their laughter as Lucas held his thumb in his mouth, but to little avail.
“I’m gonna tell your dad you said ‘shit’,” Tyler said, giggling almost uncontrollably at the last word.
“Yeah, you shouldn’t say ‘shit’, Lucas,” the third boy, Elijah said.
“Shut up, guys! It really hurts!” Lucas held out his hand to show his friends his right hand. The thumb was red and showed the beginnings of a bruise, but there was no blood. He moved the thumb back and forth to ensure he hadn’t broken the digit.
Lucas had been hammering up an Avengers poster on the wall of the treehouse, the fort they called it, when the mishap occurred. The three boys committed to spend the night in their new hangout in the woods once the project was complete. After some round-robin explanations to their parents of where they would be that evening, they couldn’t think of anything more perfect than spending the first night of their first middle school spring break in their new fort.
The woods just beyond their neighborhood was full of these large pine trees that could reach over a hundred feet high with bases anywhere between four to six feet in diameter, perfect for supporting a treehouse.
The fort itself was a project the boys had been working on since Christmas break. Though they were often told to not venture too far out into the woods, the three boys would spend countless hours after school playing and exploring. Once the idea of a treehouse came up, they searched for a perfect tree as their base. Using any extra money they had to purchase supplies, as well as scrounging up any scrap lumber they could find (including, fortuitously enough, the leftover scrap wood from a home renovation that had occurred in their neighborhood over the course of the fall), the three of them would haul their materials by hand the few hundred yards out into the woods. Lucas begged his sister Allison, who had a car, to take him to the hardware store to buy screws and nails. She demanded $30 for the ride and to keep the whole thing a secret from their parents.
The plans and design for the treehouse came from a copy of The Dangerous Book for Boys that Elijah’s grandmother had given him as a Christmas present. Following the instructions in the book, they were able to screw in two long four-by-four studs into the base of the tree at about five feet above the ground. From that base, the boys laid down eight-foot-long two-by-fours as the floor foundation, with the tree trunk piercing through the middle of the frame. Once that was finished, they created walls using two-by-fours and scraps of plywood. The roof was completed by screwing more two-by-fours higher up on the tree base and draping more plywood over them, nailing the sheets to the planks. Finally, after nearly three months of working on it, the fort was finally “done.” To the three friends, it was perfect and for a while they simply stared at it. The treehouse was something all three of them were incredibly proud of. A place of their own, away from parents and school and bullies, it was their own oasis in the woods.
For their first night in the treehouse, each boy brought snacks, a sleeping bag and a few personal items they thought would make the place “really freaking cool," Tyler’s current catchphrase.
“Did one of you guys bring the drinks?” Lucas asked, the pain in his thumb subsiding.
Tyler reached into his backpack, pulled out three bottles of Mountain Dew and tossed them to his friends. They all sat around the floor of their treehouse and twisted open the sodas.
“My mom doesn’t let me have these at home,” Elijah said between gulps. “I don’t know why though! Sometimes I think my parents just don’t want me to have any fun. Like, what’s the difference between this and regular Coke?”
Tyler took a long sip from his bottle. “I know what you mean. Parents suck sometimes.”
“For sure. My mom said I have to be back home by ten thirty in the morning because she has to work tomorrow. I have to spend my whole Saturday watching my sister!” Elijah rolled his eyes and tipped his bottle back for another swig.
Lucas looked around the treehouse, examining their handiwork. “I can’t believe we finally finished this place. We can keep whatever we want out here and our parents will never have to know,” said Lucas. “I have a few more things to bring this week. We need more lights and something to listen to music with.”
“My dad has a really freaking cool bluetooth speaker in the garage he doesn’t use. I bet I can get it,” Tyler said, continuing to drink his soda.
“That would be awesome!” Elijah nearly burped the last word and all three boys laughed.
“You know what else is awesome? I can’t believe sixth grade is almost over,” Lucas said. “Do you guys know what classes you’re gonna take next year?”
“I don’t know,” said Tyler. “My dad really wants me to play basketball. He said he was a point guard and that I’m built like him. But I just don’t know if I want to play sports.”
“Yeah, my mom doesn’t want me to play football. She said I could do any other sport.” Elijah took another gulp from his Mountain Dew, finishing the bottle off. “I may sign up for soccer, but I haven’t played since we were in the fourth grade.”
“I remember that!” quipped Lucas. “You were so fast! I would t
hrow the ball in really far down the field because I knew you would beat everyone else to it.”
“Too bad I sucked at actually kicking the ball!”
All three laughed at that.
Elijah continued, “Maybe I’ll sign up for track. I just don’t want to do a whole lot of running.”
Lucas laughed, “That’s all track is, dude!”
“Hey Lucas, does your sister still have her boyfriend?” Tyler asked.
“Yes, and she said she will never go out with you so quit asking.”
Tyler rolled his eyes to Lucas’s reply. “She thinks she’s too good for me, it’s all good. Just wait til I’m in high school. She won’t be able to resist me. I’ll be the coolest dude at Henderson High.”
“Except she’ll be, like, twenty when we’re in high school!”
As Lucas and Tyler bantered back and forth about Lucas’s older sister, Elijah opened up his backpack and pulled out an LED lantern. “I found this in my closet last weekend. Figured we’d need it up here for at night.”
“I wish we had something to make a fire so we could have s’mores,” said Lucas. “But a fire in a tree would probably not be a good thing.” They all laughed at the idea of a campfire in the middle of their treehouse. “Just think! We wouldn’t have to go get firewood!”
As they continued their banter, the back and forth and talking about life, school and girls, Lucas took delight in the treehouse and the fact that they were able to get it to the point that they were spending the night in it. Spring break in East Texas was usually very calm and cool, but not too cold. The temperature could get down in the low-fifties at night, but the boys figured with enough blankets and the walls of the treehouse keeping the air out that they’d be fine. The four walls were made up of particle boards supported by two-by-fours, with a single window cut out of one of the panels, so there weren’t too many holes for the wind to come through.
Lucas noticed that Tyler’s voice was already changing, getting deeper. His and Elijah’s were still high-pitched, not having reached puberty yet. He often wondered when that would happen. And what would happen? And how? Would he wake up one day with hair under his armpits and an Adam’s apple? He wanted to ask Tyler, but he was also embarrassed.
He pulled his phone out of his backpack to check the time. It was just after one in the morning, but he was nowhere near feeling tired. The excitement of being in the treehouse, and probably coupled with the caffeine from the sodas, was keeping sleep at bay, at least for now.
“Are you guys hungry? I brought some peanut butter and jelly’s,” Lucas said.
His friends gladly took the sandwiches that he pulled from his bag and though they were slightly smashed from being tossed in there with the rest of his stuff, they were protected in sandwich bags.
“Seriously guys, maybe we can make a fire pit outside and we can make hot dogs or something,” Lucas said as he bit into his own sandwich. “My dad makes these things called ‘hobo dinners’ when we go camping and they’re super easy. It’s just chicken and vegetables and you wrap it all in foil and cook it right in the campfire.”
“I can’t wait for summer,” said Elijah. “We can spend every single day out here.”
“Is your mom going to make you babysit your sister this summer?” Lucas asked. Elijah’s mom and dad separated and his dad moved to Austin just before Thanksgiving.
“I don’t think so. I hope not. I’m too young to take care of a five year old! It’s not my fault she and my dad couldn’t get along. So, I shouldn’t be punished. She’s not going to ruin my summer.”
“My dad wants me to go to this basketball camp at SFU this summer. But it’s only like two weeks,” Tyler said. He finished his sandwich, pushing the last bite into his mouth. “He thinks I’m just like him. It’s like he wants me to do everything he did.”
“Would you have to stay in Nacogdoches?” Lucas asked.
“Yeah, it’s like this whole camp thing. Something to prepare for, like, competitive basketball. He says colleges are going to start looking at me in a couple of years.”
“Well, just don’t forget about us when you’re up there with Steph Curry!” said Elijah.
“Man, I’m never gonna be as good as -” Tyler cut himself off and cocked his head. “Do you guys hear that?”
The other two boys both silenced themselves and listened. Tyler lowered his voice and whispered, “I heard someone out there. Turn off the light.”
When building the treehouse, the boys used a piece of plywood and some blocks to hold it in place over the window cutout. Elijah turned out the LED lantern and Tyler slowly removed the plywood window.
The first thing Lucas thought was that they’d been caught. Someone’s mom called someone else’s and they’d been found out. Or, his sister Allison ratted him out to their parents. His heart pounded in his chest, knowing that they’d look out the window and see all of their parents coming out to the woods this secret place, their hideout.
The moonlight illuminated just enough of the area that he could see that there were no parents outside, no flashlight beams coming their way. Lucas breathed a sigh of relief but choked up again when he heard a sound.
A grunt, or a cough, in these woods travelled far. The boys couldn’t see anything, but they darted their eyes about, trying to make out the source of the sound. Again, a grunt. The shuffling of feet in dirt and leaves.
There, just a few yards out the window, Lucas saw it. He pointed so his friends could see what he was seeing. It was a man trudging, laboriously, through the woods. He was carrying something large draped across his shoulders. From the rustling sound, it seemed to be a trash bag; a large trashbag with something heavy inside.
Lucas’s heart beat even faster than before, though his body felt paralyzed. He didn’t know what was going on. Could the man see them as well, up in the tree? Could he hear them?
The man dropped whatever he was carrying on his shoulders onto the ground in front of a fallen tree log. He had a shovel in one hand, and he started to dig. The three boys watched for – what felt like to them – an eternity as this man dug a hole in the soft earth.
Finally, the man shoved the trashbag and its contents into the hole, covered it up with dirt and leaves and attempted to roll the fallen log over his handiwork. Once he was done, he ran off, back toward the city, out of the woods.
The three boys slumped down onto the floor of their treehouse. Lucas felt sweat on his palms and on his forehead. He looked at Tyler, his eyes large and full of fear. Elijah was holding his legs up against his chest. Neither of them said a word.
Tyler slowly reached up and slid the window back into place over the framed hole.
“Guys, what did we just see? What was that?” Elijah’s voice cracked, breaking the silence and darkness. It was the first sound any of them had made in almost an hour.
Tyler looked at Lucas and Elijah, the same fear still in his eyes. He said, “That was a body.”
CHAPTER TWO
Saturday March 15 | 12:45am
ALLISON HANES CHECKED the time. It was almost one in the morning, and she’d been gone for nearly an hour at this point. She knew she was risking it being out at this time, but she figured that her parents had gone to bed at around ten, and her brother was spending the night with one of his little friends.
The Dodge Challenger’s windows were fogged over with breath and body heat. Her boyfriend put his shirt back on and handed her hers. She clasped her bra back together and pulled the black American Eagle t-shirt over her head, pulling her long brown hair through the hole. She had light brown hair that fell nearly to the small of her back.
The keys to the Dodge Challenger were in the ignition and turned backward so the radio played while the two teenagers made out. A song by Marianas Trench played on the speakers from the girl’s iPhone plugged into the aux.
“We need to find a better place than this. I don’t like the park,” Allison said. “It’s too busy. Someone is going to see your car here.”
Yates Park was a popular place in the spring and summer for little league soccer and pickup softball games. At night, however, the park was empty and quiet. City ordinance in Henderson stated that no one was allowed in the park after 11:00pm though that didn’t stop teenagers from using it as a frequent hookup destination.
“I don’t think anyone that lives on this side of town knows me enough to know this is my car,” the young man said.
Kilgore Drive, the main strip that ran through town, was the separator between the have’s and have-not’s in Henderson. Yates Park was on the have-not side.
“Brandon. Everyone knows this car.”
Allison also hated making out in the backseat of a Dodge Challenger. She’d rather be with her boyfriend in the comfort of her bedroom or even in the roomier backseat of her Jeep Liberty, but that couldn’t be an option tonight. There was no way she could get her vehicle out of the driveway without her parents noticing. And technically, her parents forbid her from having a boyfriend.
“How about next time you park up the street from my house and come to my window?” she asked
Brandon pulled the visor mirror down to check his hair. It was sticking in every direction. Allison had run her fingers all through it, giving it a light tug during their making out. “Yeah, I could do that. I just don’t want my car sitting in front of some rando’s house in the middle of the night. Maybe your parents could, like, chill, for a minute and you wouldn’t have to sneak around with me. I’m a nice guy. They’d like me.”
“They don’t like anyone. I can just hear my mom now. I warned you about boys like that.”
Brandon shook his head at that. “She’d like me. I’d make her like me. She wouldn’t have a choice. I’d tell her all about going to church and stuff.”
“She may buy it, but my stepdad would see right through your bullshit, Brandon.” And she was right. Her dad was very much a no-nonsense kind of guy, and one look at this jock with his muscle car and Mr. Bobby Beaker would shut the door directly in the kid’s face.
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