Past the hole. Past the basement door—
WHICH IS AJAR
—and into the library.
I slam the door behind me and gasp into the wood, keening animal sounds leaving me in terrible wheezes.
The basement door was open.
And something was behind me.
And the wall was flesh.
And my blanket didn’t get caught on the banister. It got caught on something else. Because when I checked—it was torn. Ragged as if claws [OR BRANCHES] had ripped the corner to shreds.
Circling, circling, circling the loom…
“Stop it. Please… stop it.”
From beyond the door, I hear a faint
shuffffffling
like something dragging itself closer. I hear the
thumping
of something meaty and heavy, like the sound of an object
rolling
and
falling
down the stairs. One at a time.
Closer.
The sound changes.
Stops.
And then I hear a giggle.
I turn the lock on the door to the library, even though I know that means Nori is locked out, but this is crazy and I am terrified and she is safely asleep and so is (crazy) Aunt Cath.
It is only me, alone in the night, who needs this protection.
I don’t need it against the imaginary thing out there.
I need it against myself. Because, surely, this can’t be real. Please, please, don’t let this be real.
I turn, squaring my shoulders, and stride into the library. I am safe in here. Nothing can get through that door.
Just to be sure, I look over my shoulder.
And find the door wide open, a black, endless corridor yawning at me in greeting.
10
liar liar liar
Hold your breath,
close your eyes
you are in
for a big surprise!
BROKEN BOOK ENTRY
What is Cath doing up there in the attic? The creaking—her pacing—is so constant. Is she just walking up and down? Is she even eating the food I bring on the trays? I picture her doing all kinds of gross things with it—painting the walls, throwing it at the ceiling. She never comes down; nothing will make her. It must reek of her waste. Maybe she eats that, too. I want to go up and talk to her, I want to make her see reason. But there is nothing of the old Cath left. She is as mad as Mam always said she was.
Remember, I sign at Nori in the kitchen. Remember that game we used to play? You would go and hide and then I’d come looking. You’d make little sounds—clap your hands, close a door, give a whistle—to give me clues?
Nori nods, a wide grin breaking the softness of her face.
“You would cheat,” I say. “Move around. I always thought it was so funny.…” I shut my eyes for a moment, and then open them. “Remember?”
We should play! Nori signs, hands so fast in her excitement that I almost don’t see. I shake my head no.
Please! We can play upstairs! Please, Silla, please!
“You’re too old. And so am I. No more games.”
Nori’s smile dies and I hate myself.
No more games.
There’s danger in it.
My eyes take in the straight line of his jaw, the suggestion of stubble as we sit in the library. The flecks of brown in his eyes and the way his hair falls just so. I linger over the curve of his shoulders, and I inhale his scent. So heady, so wonderful. I’m careful not to let my infatuation show on my face, but I can’t deny it. He is like a shining beacon in this place. Everything is slightly damp, slightly moldy, slightly pale. But he is beautiful and bright and, well, handsome. You notice him.
Gowan.
Something stirs in the stone of my insides. Something warm. Vital. Totally dangerous.
Despite the danger, I’m grateful, for the first time since the day he stepped out of Python Wood, that he’s here.
I am careful to school my face.
But Gowan senses my regard and looks up, smiling. “Hi.”
A slow smile touches my cheeks. “Hey.”
“See something interesting?”
“As a matter of fact.” I nod at the book in his hands. “Looks interesting to me.”
He actually looks disappointed, and a pebble of remorse drops into my stomach. And a little bit of satisfaction, too.
“It’s an old copy of Amadís de Gaula.”
“You read Latin?”
“Spanish, and yes. ‘Gran locura es la vuestra en hacer enojo a quien tan bien vengarse puede,’” he quotes. “The author’s talking about anger, madness, and revenge.”
“Charming.”
“I think you’d like it, actually.”
I close my eyes, but I can’t seem to do that for long. I look around us, at all Cath’s books. Books that have been in my family for generations. “I wish we didn’t have to leave this room.”
Gowan makes a face. “Are you sure?”
“It’s a haven.”
“Only because the manor is so worn out.” I know what he wants to say, what he wants to ask me. I brace myself for it, waiting for the Please leave this house, Silla, but it never comes. Instead, he looks at me for slightly too long, even after I have looked away.
When I look back, the only thing that’s changed is his jaw, which clenches and unclenches, over and over in a rhythm of frustration.
Something like regret bleeds through me. I’m sorry. Why do you keep coming here? Why do you like me?
And then the voice from my dream is there in my head.
LEAVE THIS HOUSE
AND YOU WILL DIE
AND SHE’LL BE MINE.
Never.
Something of my thoughts must reflect on my face because Gowan, now observing me again, sighs, his mouth pinched, and goes back to his book. I watch him for a while, but he’s not seeing the pages. He’s lost somewhere else, probably in a fantasyland where I’m not myself and I take his hand and follow him stupidly into Python, singing and dancing, both of us draped in sunlight.
I have to admit, it sounds appealing. Not being me. Being… I don’t know. Warm, or something. It sounds sort of perfect.
And very naïve.
THEY COME
I don’t move as much anymore—or maybe I move more. I know this space very well. So well. And I know what to expect, even though they think I am craaaaaayyyyzzzzeeeeeee. I know, oh yes I do.
“This is all your fault!” I spit, my saliva, white and drying, hitting the glass. “This is all your fault!”
I look out the window, past the creeping ivy.
Here they come.
Here they come.
“Oh, dear. oh, dear, oh, dear.”
Here they come again.
I wake to the sound of clapping. Little claps somewhere in the house. Distant, at first. I climb out of bed and open the door.
“Nori, would you quit—”
The corridor is dark and empty, but I still hear the claps. They are coming from down the hall, too far down the hall, and in the opposite direction from where I am looking.
“N… Nori?”
I stand frozen as the claps draw closer. Grow louder. Until I am sure someone has to be standing not three feet from me, watching me.
Clap, clap, clap.
And then the clapping stops. And it is infinitely, infinitely worse. The silence. Loud, awful silence.
And then creak.
Upstairs, in the attic.
Creak…
From (crazy) Aunt Cath.
Creeeeaaaakkkk.
I hold my breath, my mind so full I worry it might burst with fear and—
Stop it.
Stop it now.
But as I close my bedroom door, the clapping starts again. Slow. Mocking. Exulting.
CLAP. CLAP. CLAP.
Hide-and-seek is our favorite game to play. He is reeeeeeally tall, but he’s very good at it! There are
a lot of places to hide away in the basement—it’s my new favorite place! I cover my eyes and count, “One… two… three!” And then when I look, he’s gone! When I find him, I giggle, but I try not to be very loud because Silla will get angry.
Silla doesn’t sleep anymore. And we hardly eat anything and the monster in my tummy gets loud. I think her tummy monster is even bigger. And she gets upset. Sometimes I see that Gowan looks at her funny. He looks at the pointy bits on her hips and then his mouth gets all hard and he looks away quickly. I think he thinks something is bad inside Silla. Maybe Silla is sick.
I want to tell her about the tall man and my game very, very much because I hate Silla being upset. But there is the game and I’m not allowed to spoil it. There are rules.
And if you break the rules, then bad things will happen.
So the game will carry on, and I won’t say a word.
I can’t stop watching the trees.
I can’t let Nori go into them.
If it’s true, even only a little,
then we will never leave this house.
Remember what Cath said
when we arrived? “Poor thing.”
That’s what she said.
I thought she meant the state of me. Of Nori.
But she meant something else.
“He’ll never let you leave.”
She knew we were stuck here.
From the moment we crossed
through those dark woods.
I thought it was just a story.
It makes so much sense now.
And now there’s the other thing.
My suspicion.
We might be sinking.
Which means I might have no choice.
I might have to go into the woods.
But I believe what I heard.
I will die, if I try.
It makes sense why Mam never
wanted to talk of La Baume.
She wasn’t hiding a paradise.
She was hiding a hell.
The next day, the trees are in the garden.
They are the garden.
And they are definitely taller than before. Or, we are lower. Lower in the earth, which is softening like out there in the woods that day… full of worms and mulch and dead animals and—
I realize, with dawning horror, that we might be at the head of a kind of funnel,
s
i
n
k
i
n
g
into the earth.
BOOK 3:
Sky Roots
The earth and the sky
will not obey time,
I bet you don’t know
your life’s on the line.
the earth and the sky
met in the wood,
decided to try
all that they could.
11
bloody creepo
Wear him down?
You could try!
But patience is
His one true vice.
BROKEN BOOK ENTRY
I found a book lying in the library, less molded than the others. Smells of mildew, still, but then everything does. It almost fades after a while. Picked up a pen—plenty of those—and began to write. Nothing very important at first. Who would ever read it? It feels old, and hard like stone; there is a long crack in the leather, calcified. A symbol in the center—from the Greek alphabet. Omega. I wrote nothing much, but then slowly, little truths. Like this one: I don’t know if I’m more terrified of the woods, or of the fact that we are going to die here, and that is the end of the story. I’d like to write it all down first, if I may. If I have enough time. It seems like all I have is time. But I know it’s only a matter of… Ha. Ha. TIME. And then there will be… I don’t know. So I will pick up my pen. It’s all I can do. And I write.
His face is pale when I open the kitchen door. Behind him, the trees stand sentinel in the garden.
[THEY HAVE PASSED THE GATE.]
I give a panicked laugh, and step back to let Gowan in. In my hand, I clutch a broken book. He stops and stares at me, taking in my pale, thin face, my collarbones, which protrude beneath my dress, and my matted hair, and it’s like something inside him snaps.
“We have to leave,” he says right away, snatching up one of Cath’s baskets and piling in the apples he has brought with him. “No more excuses. No more delays.”
“I…” In the garden. They are in the garden. “I can’t.”
“For God’s sake, Silla,” he snaps, stuffing the last scraps of food in with the apples. “You have got to get out of here. This place is going to kill you!” He is almost hysterical. “Get Nori and we’re going.”
His panic calms me. It distills all around me like a warm cloak, and I feel my old anger returning. “No.”
He freezes, turns to me, and his voice is barely controlled. “What are you talking about?”
“I am not leaving this house, Gowan. I told you that before. I’m not going into those woods—and they’re the only way out. We’re going to… we’re just going to wait.”
He puts the basket onto the counter very slowly; his hands are shaking from—what? Rage? Panic? Adrenaline?
“What do you think you’re waiting for, exactly?”
Now it’s my turn to walk away, but he grabs my elbow.
“What are you waiting for?” he yells.
“I don’t know, I don’t know!”
“You’re lying—tell me the truth!”
I pull myself free. “Don’t touch me!”
He turns and, with a speed I’ve never seen in him, he punches the wall. His fist goes right through the plaster, an explosion of white and gray, leaving a massive, dusty hole, and revealing the stone behind it. He yells at nothing, then puts his plaster-covered palms on either side of the destruction and tries to control his breathing.
“What the hell are you waiting for?” he asks, but he’s not really asking me.
What am I waiting for? Waiting a bit longer to live? Waiting a bit longer to see what happens. Waiting to keep Nori safe, just a bit longer. Waiting to avoid a repeat of what I saw in the woods that day… what I felt.
Waiting to avoid his promise.
YOU WILL DIE AND
SHE’LL BE MINE
Gowan leaves me there in the kitchen and I follow him into the entrance hall. He stumbles over the hole there, and turns back to look at it with horror.
The hole is small, but definitely bigger than it was yesterday. And he knows it.
“When did this appear?”
I shrug. “A while ago. It’s gotten bigger.” [DADDY’S VOICE COMES OUT OF THERE.] “It’s weird. I couldn’t see anything down there. I mean—nothing at all. The flashlight just found more darkness. I checked the basement, but the entrance hall isn’t above it. This is just—a hole.”
[A SINKHOLE, WAITING TO GET US ALL.]
“I’ll fix it,” Gowan tells me. “I don’t want this here. Do you have any unwanted wood? Crates?”
I shake my head; I can’t look away from the place my father’s voice comes from.
“Never mind. I’ll cut back the trees. Use that wood. I saw an ax by the kitchen door.”
He has my full attention now. “The trees? You’re going to use the trees?”
“We have to get out of here, Silla. You have to see that. You can’t ignore it.”
“Yes, but—”
“So I’ll cut us out. The trees are in the garden, and I can’t explain it, but we have to cut through them to get out—”
“This place is weird. You sense it, right?”
“—so I’m going to take that ax—”
“It’s haunted or something.…”
“—and I’m going to cut those damn trees, and I’m going to fix this hole.” His eyes bore into mine. “And then you’re coming with me.”
As he leaves, I wonder why he’s taking the time to fix the hole at all.
Tried to eat the
apple.
Can’t keep it down.
Think I have anorexia
or maybe a stomach bug.
Food feels disgusting.
Can’t imagine putting it
inside my body.
Thought makes me squirm.
Another cavity
even though I knocked
out the other tooth.
What is wrong with me?
I think I’m getting sick.
But I can’t help feeling
that it’s La Baume
doing this to me.
It is another gray day, too still. Darker than yesterday, which was darker than the day before. It’s barely noon, and already the day is at half-light. Maybe less. It feels like five in the afternoon, or six.
I slump over a cup of cold water and glance up at Gowan, sitting next to me. “What are you thinking?”
He looks at me pointedly. “I don’t think you’ll believe me.”
I know it’s probably true, but I want to hear it anyway. “Spill.”
“Because I love you.”
“You’re right. I don’t believe you. I asked for the truth. Don’t lie to me, Gowan.”
“It wasn’t a lie.” He takes my hand. “I love you, Silla Daniels. Please believe me. I love you.”
“But how could you? You barely know me. And I’m…” [A BLOODY MESS.]
“I do, I know you. Maybe it’s just instinctive. Like a scent that you smell, fresh like apples, and can’t ignore. Maybe when you know, you just do. Maybe we knew each other in a past life. But I don’t just feel this, Silla. I know this. It just… is.”
I recoil from him. “I don’t believe in that.” I pause. “And I hate apples.”
He laughs. “Since when?”
“Since you brought them.”
His face falls. “Oh.”
A moment of silence, and then he says, “I still love you, even if you hate my apples.”
Flights of fancy, passion… love… What good do they do? They destroy people. Women. My mother.
And the Trees Crept In Page 9
