And the Trees Crept In

by Dawn Kurtagich

  He doesn’t have to. How could he possibly believe what I barely believe? That this place is wrong somehow, and that… something is in those woods? The tall, thin—thing waiting for us to come? All he needs to know is that I am not going into those woods. Not ever again.

  THAT ONE TIME IN THE WOODS

  I take nothing but my coat, and hurry out while Nori is sleeping. She won’t even know I was gone.

  I run down the field and into the woods, pausing for a moment to look back at the manor. The light is fading, but it’ll be okay if I do this quickly. It’s light enough to find my way, if I’m fast.

  “Please be safe,” I whisper. “Safe until I get back.”

  I push away the image of Cath stalking slowly downstairs and cornering Nori, cornering her to scream at her or strangle her or—

  “Please be safe,” I say again, and then I run.

  The trees fly past at first; I duck and weave through the ancient woodland, skirting fungus-grown trunks and moss-hung branches, until the land begins to change. Rains have created soft mud out of the rotting leaves and earth, and I slip—almost fall—then catch myself on the trunk of a tree. I go slower after that, as the mud gets looser.

  The farther I travel through Python, the trees of which thrash and move around me in the wind like dancing voodoo priests, the deeper the mud gets.

  Ankle.

  Midcalf.

  Knee.

  Before I know it, I’m wading through icy mud that clings and sticks and squelches as I go. Glancing behind me, I consider turning back, but I can’t even see the manor anymore, and I think I’m nearer to the village than not.

  I can’t turn around. We need help. I can’t fail.

  The weather is only going to get worse the closer winter comes. It’s now or never.

  I begin to notice things. Things moving in the dusky dimness of early evening. A twitch here. A buzz there.

  I feel the mud seeping through my jeans and into my socks, and when I glance ahead of me, I realize that I have no idea how deep the mud will go. Maybe I’ll walk and walk, and then suddenly step off the edge of a ravine and be plunged into inky-black mud, miles deep, struggling to return to light and air—forever. I grip the tree beside me, hanging on to one of the low branches, trying to steady my mind and calm my heart.

  They’re just trees.

  Get a move on.

  Then movement again: the buzzing sound. The sound of something small, many things small: Crawling. Scattering. Squelching. Slithering. Something runs over my hand and I flinch away. A beetle. Or an ant. I squint at the tree, which seems to buzz like the static on an old TV. I step closer, trying to make sense of what I’m seeing. And then I do. Hundreds of thousands of crawling things all over the tree. Ants, beetles, borers, cankerworms—some I can’t identify. I move away—as far as I can—unable to take my eyes off them. Their rhythmical, random movement congealing into something disgustingly tantalizing, and I revolt against the sight, but I can’t look away.

  At my knees, the mud bubbles and moves, like the depth hides some swimming creature down there, curling and coiling in the mud.

  I hesitate.

  I run.

  As fast as the mud allows me, until I do go over the edge of some tiny precipice and find myself trapped, the mud pooling around my upper thighs like cold, clammy pudding. Like hands clasping.

  “One step,” I say, taking one forward. “Another step,” I chant, stepping again. “One step… another step. One step…”

  On and on I walk, and the light fades to a dark gray that turns Python into a maze of tall, thin walls and obstacles I can’t quite make out. The buzzing, hissing, creaking sound of the bugs grows louder as the light dies.

  I can see the village now—a few more rows of trees, and I’m there. Except… something is wrong.

  Where are the lights? Where are the signs? Where are the people who should be in the pub drinking their beer and watching the game? Where is the sound of their laughter, the cackling beneath the pump of music and the white noise of chatter?

  Where is the life?

  I squint, leaning closer, my thighs squelching in the mud, and spot the corner store.

  Boarded up.

  Along the lane, the post office—boarded up.

  Farther still, the pub—no lights. Doors chained.

  Dear God… Everyone’s left. The whole village has just… left.

  Left us here alone.

  We’re alone.

  I’m alone.

  The terror is like a foghorn in the darkness. Like a spotlight pointed at me, notifying the monsters of the world exactly where I am: exposed, armorless.

  How could they leave us behind?

  Very suddenly I don’t want to be in Python anymore. I want to be on the pavement of the lane. I want to find someone—anyone—who might still be here. It can’t be just us. It can’t. I have no money, we have no phone, there is no postman—and the nearest town is more than seventy miles away.

  There has to be someone.

  I have to find someone.

  In desperation, I claw my way up the bank, out of the woods, and roll onto the grass by the town lane. I lie there for a moment, ridding myself of the sensation of moving mud around, ignoring the dark sentinel trees waiting for me to return.

  Wandering down the lane confirms what I saw from the woods: Pub, locked. Post office, boarded up. Corner shop, too. I walk down Prairie Street—the houses are all dark and empty, some boarded up, others left wide open, doors swinging on their hinges. I go inside some of them—take the two cans I find. Apricots in syrup. Corned beef.

  I walk the half mile to the train station, and when I get there it is dark. No trains. No lights. No nothing. No sun in the sky.

  I stand at the ticket office, waiting. Hoping. Useless.

  “Hello?” I call.

  I wait.

  “Hello! Please! PLEASE!”

  The returning silence is louder once my echoes have faded.

  On the way back, heart hammering now that my shock is wearing off, I pass the village school. Drawings hang in sad, dark windows, and the school gates swing with high-pitched screams as I pass, the wind blowing through me.

  For the first time in my entire life, I feel truly, utterly, and completely alone on the planet. And I realize: No one is coming. No one is going to help us.

  Cathy’s medieval way of living means it’s likely that no one even knows we’re here.

  Oh God.

  What are we going to do?

  Nori.

  I left her with Cath. Crazy Cath in the attic. Nori won’t understand why I’m gone. She’ll panic. Maybe try to come after me. Get lost.

  She can’t cry out. She can’t scream.

  I’ll lose her.

  I sprint down Prairie Street, along the village lane, and back into Python. I’d give anything to have a way around the woods, or a path through; there is nothing but the waiting mud.

  I slip down the rise and jump into what looks like a black stretch of nothing, with dark figures floating in it, impossibly tall.

  Trees.

  I take a last look at the village, a shiver of dread dripping down my spine and lower, and then I turn my back on it forever.

  The mud is thicker now, and I’ve gone no more than five paces before I am panting, using the branches of the bug-infested trees to pull myself along. The mud is sucking down on my legs, pulling with a force I didn’t know mud could have. I lose my shoes, they are sucked off my feet like a giant tongue has whipped them away. I try to find them, my feet freezing now in the mud, feeling the texture of whatever the mud conceals, but they are gone.

  I pull myself along, five more paces, my toes feeling every rocky or slimy spot, and then I see the dog. I see it because of the eyes. They glint in the moonlight, shocks of white in the dark. The moon is rising fast now, and I have no trouble seeing that the poor thing is dead. Teeth bared, eyes open. Staring.

  If I were to say anything about it at all, it would be tha
t the dog—a cocker spaniel—looks as terrified as I feel. So odd. I’m sure the thing died in fear.

  “Poor pup,” I say, looking down at the corpse. “Did you get lost? Left behind? Me too.”

  And then the mud bubbles around him. I see other glints then. On eyes, on teeth. And lumps in the mud as far as I can see in the moonlight. The things stirring in the mud are rising.

  Oh no… no… it can’t be.

  Dogs.

  Cats.

  Pets.

  All the village pets—all of them—are here in Python. And all of them are dead. Dozens of corpses, all of them staring, mouths open in a final growl, a final shriek, fur clogging with black mud, and all of them

  s t a r i n g

  a t

  m e

  I shake my head. Back and forth. No. No, this is wrong. I suddenly wonder what the hell I’m standing on.

  The village empty… and all the pets dead in Python Wood. Wrong. THIS IS WRONG.

  I back away, but they follow. The suction of the mud means that the faster I move, the faster they come, eyes open and mouths begging.

  “Go away,” I whisper, choking on the words. But they keep coming.

  I turn and I heave myself through the mud, pulling on tree trunks and trying to beat my exhaustion, but I feel them chasing me, all of them pulled by the vacuum I leave in my wake. Or are they swimming?

  The tree trunks give the sudden impression of coal, rather than wood, and beyond them—or in between them—I spot a flash of movement some way off from me. Low down. A long, dark thing.

  Boar?

  Deer?

  Something else entirely.

  There—again. A shadow, scuttling as though on top of the mud. Long-limbed and fast. Impossibly fast.

  I wade and wade, pulling against the suction with every last desperate ounce of energy I have left, chanting, “One step, another step,” all the way. I break out in sweat; it runs down my face and neck, my body exhausted to the bone, until at last I can see the faint, flickering light of La Baume in the distance, up on the hill.

  The thing in the woods is no longer long. It is tall. A torso. Long arms. A bulbous head.

  Maybe not so alone after all, something inside me thinks.

  The thought doesn’t comfort me.

  I pull myself, fighting against the mud, which tugs like something trying to keep me. I fall forward, reaching for the grass beyond the tree line, and I heave myself, gasping and grunting out of the mud, which still tries to drag me back like hands tugging on my jeans.

  I claw my way out, collapsing on the grass, and crawling on my exhausted legs, panting and sweating, yearning to run back to La Baume, but unable to get to my feet.

  The woods seem taller, looming above like they are getting ready to chase me, and I dig my nails into the earth and haul myself farther away. Eventually, I manage to get to my knees, crawling, then half standing—stumbling, and falling all the way back, shedding Python mud in my wake, leaving behind dozens of animal corpses with their pleading eyes, and the tall, thin shadow of something I will ignore until I have no choice.

  I push the memory of that night away. Later, when I’m sure Gowan is with Nori and not spying on me, I put the old root I found in the garden into the grass no more than ten paces from the boundary to Python. I tie a length of Cath’s red ribbon to it.

  Then I walk back inside, convincing myself that the trees are not laughing at me.

  Creeeeeeeeaaaaak.

  Aunt Cath’s pacing is endless. I miss her. I miss the way she used to be. It hurts to remember.…

  Can I have some cream? Nori had signed.

  Cath, who had been sitting with Nori and me every day to learn the signs herself, had smiled.

  “You like cream, little slug. But too much will make you a maggot! How about some big, juicy raspberries from the garden instead and maybe you’ll be a butterfly?”

  Nori had squealed silently, clapping her hands.

  Cath had winked at me over the top of Nori’s bobbing head, and I had smiled.

  And I had loved her.

  October 17, 1980: Three little girls played by the lake. It had been drying up for years, and Papa said that within their lifetimes it would be nothing but a muddy patch no one would look twice at. The water, he said, was going, dying, vanishing. It was being reclaimed by the sky.

  The girls believed there were still fish in the lake, small and putrescent as it was, and they ran the circumference with their nets, trying to catch one for supper. Only one of the three persisted for long.

  One sister, the eldest, sat neatly on the grass, watching while she sewed a new skirt for her doll, Nancy.

  Another sister, the middle one, stood in the mud, letting it squelch between her toes. She was watching the last sister, the littlest of all, run round and round, dipping her net into the water and squealing. But there were never any fish, only tadpoles.

  They had tried to keep one last summer, thoughts of a pet frog to play with tumbling around their young minds. It had died in its bucket. Anne, the littlest, had sobbed for days and carried out a funeral, which even Papa was forced to attend.

  They were sisters three in a house the color of the sky.

  Anne. Youngest. Most precious.

  Pamela. The middle sister. Wildest.

  Catherine. Eldest. Most sensible.

  The Jewel.

  The Adventurer.

  The Protector.

  Three little girls did a very bad thing.

  7

  chew chew chew

  Choo, choo, train!

  chew, chew, brain.

  bite, bite, swallow,

  I am hollow!

  night, night, man,

  dream, I can

  cry, cry, cry!

  bye, bye! Die.

  La Baume is a mammoth. Three stories, not including the attic. The third floor is derelict—everything from the wallpaper to some of the floorboards stripped away by the soldiers or refugees or something during World War II. I’m hazy on the details.

  I have a habit of wandering the third floor by myself. It always feels eerily cold, empty enough to feel slightly sentient. It’s a barrier between Cath and the rest of us, though it doesn’t do much to filter out the creaking of her pacing. It has textured wallpaper. Mostly it’s peeling away, or gone entirely in patches, and it smells like abandoned bees’ nests, the floors of the rooms at the far end littered with the shells of wasps and hornets. A carpet of decay. I closed those doors a long time ago, but every now and then I poke my head inside. Those floors are what my insides look like. Hundreds—thousands—of dead husks of what used to be wasps. These walks are an indulgence.

  Pull yourself together, I tell myself.

  When I go to check on Nori, she is sitting in her room, staring at the corner again and grinning like an idiot. I might be bold and take one of Cath’s old dolls. It’s not healthy for a seven-year-old to be alone so much. The fact that she finds walls so interesting is proof enough.

  We are so alone here. We’re beginning to feel it. I don’t know if Nori does. But I do. All the time. What’s happening? Is there a quarantine? Did the war start, like they said? Did they bomb away the world? Are we all that’s left? Why doesn’t Mam write to us? We are her only daughters, who she let go, and nothing. Did she forget about us as soon as we left? Did she try to visit us already? Have the trees trapped her? Has he got her? My mind can’t stop turning. This can’t go on forever.

  Gowan brings apples again. Nori is at the boundary to the woods before he even clears the trees. I’m too slow to stop her from running off, but when I get there, I pull her back and wrap my arms around her. She holds on to my arms and waits.

  We both wait.

  I scan the ground for the root that I stuck into the ground yesterday. I tied a ribbon around it to make sure I could find it again. But it’s gone. Maybe the wind, the storm, maybe the trees themselves—

  And then I spot it. Twenty paces deep into the woods.

  Th
ey are moving.

  Oh, God. They are.

  “A welcoming committee!” Gowan calls when he sees us.

  Nori calls his name with her hands, and he grins at her and winks. Then he puts down a sack of apples. There have to be twenty in there at least. My stomach roils but I force a smile anyway.

  The woods are moving.

  Gowan leaves Nori with the fruit and then wanders over to me.

  He folds his hands behind his back. “Hello.”

  “Hello.”

  “Would you like an apple, Miss Daniels?” he says, presenting one to me, deftly produced from his pocket.

  “Maybe later,” I offer, a little weakly, eyes flickering to the woods and back. My stomach is doing backflips and I really would rather not vomit on Gowan if I can help it. “Want to go inside? Looks like rain.”

  He stares at the sky for a few moments, briefly closes his eyes, and then looks back down at me. A nod. I try to see what he saw up there, but it’s just another overcast day. It always looks like rain will come. None ever does. The sky is as ashen as the dirt, and once again I wonder about London and the government—their wars and their bombs and their threats—and whether there’s anyone left at all.

  Gowan grabs the bag of apples, lifts Nori onto his back, and we head to the manor.

  “You know, I never see you eat,” Gowan says when we’re inside.

  I send Nori off to drop three apples at the foot of Cathy’s stairs, and then I sit down at the kitchen table and watch as Gowan stacks the green balls of fruit flesh in the center.

  “So? Just because you don’t see me do it doesn’t mean I don’t.”

  My stomach answers for me, a rumbling growl to rival Nori’s.

  “Point proven,” Gowan says, the edges of his eyebrows hiked up with satisfaction.

  “I have to feed her first. There isn’t much, and it’s my job to make sure she gets food.”