And the Trees Crept In

by Dawn Kurtagich

  I hate myself.

  The word slaps me, hard, out of nowhere.

  hate

  And I know, in the moment I think it, that it’s true.

  I hate myself.

  Why?

  24

  obscurantism

  Follow me here, follow me there,

  Creeper Man comes to give you a scare

  send him away, think you can?

  foolish children call on Creeper Man.

  BROKEN BOOK ENTRY

  This one time, Dad gave us permission to make Halloween costumes. It was a total surprise because it was the first Halloween he’d ever allowed us to have. We had no means of buying costumes, of course, so we enlisted the help of Mam. She had amazing sewing skills. I was a Jedi warrior, and Nori was Yoda. It was the best night of our lives, and nothing could top that. Nothing.

  My feet no longer obey me. They drag and flop with every floundering step. Am I walking up the hill to La Baume in a storm, dragging Nori through the mud? Is it three years ago? Even my arms hang loose and numb, fingertips tingling with fading sensation. [AM I DRAGGING NORI?]

  For the first time in a long time, I could cry. But my body has no water to spare, and the ache inside me explodes into a dry sob.

  “Nori, I’m sorry.”

  All the times I wished she would stop with her ever-talking hands. I imagined tying them up behind her back… [CUTTING THEM OFF.] I was horrible. I would give anything to see them flopping about in excited animation. I would give anything to have her in my arms.

  My fault. Myfaultmyfaultmyfault.

  The thoughts break through again. Images mostly, in flashes. Painful.

  I see the woods… the manor in front of me. Trees with moss hanging from branches. But then in a flash and a rumble of my stomach, they are full of maggots. I shake my head, even as I’m bending over to quell the horrible bone-deep pain in my gut, and the wood comes back into focus.

  I stumble on.

  Another flash, and the floor is rotten, organic mulch, moving and squelching beneath my feet. I gasp and cough as another bite of nausea and pain comes. When I fall to my knees, I land on the floorboards. Solid, hard.

  “Stop it,” I whisper.

  But it comes again.

  Maggots.

  Worms.

  Mulch.

  Rot.

  Slime. Mold. Decay. Bugs. Food. Stink. On and on.

  “STOP!”

  I spit out another tooth. Feel more of my hair dropping away.

  Voices ring in my head—dozens of them, laughing, cackling, hysterical.

  Stopstopstopstop oh stop please stop poor me boohoo hahahahahahaha!!!!!

  I retch into the floorboards, the pain in my gut like a gaping hole filling up with bile and nothingness.

  Notttthingnessssssss, cajole the voices. Obscurantism…

  “You’re not real,” I mutter, covering my ears and squeezing shut my eyes. “You’re nothing.”

  And they blink off, like someone turning down the volume on my mind’s self-derision. I gasp, looking up tentatively, and there is a horrible

  empty

  silent

  still

  ness…

  all around me.

  La Baume has started crying. I find the first bit of water coming from a hole in the wall—the first wall I have seen in… how long? The wall is collapsing, soft around the hole, like cottage cheese, and it is spilling slimy maggots onto the floor in a puddle of putrescent-looking water.

  I fall to my knees and I drink, my lips pursed and willing. The maggots wriggle and contort near my eyes but I shut them and keep drinking, swallowing whatever comes into my mouth.

  I am going to die if I don’t keep this down.

  When my body begins to protest, my stomach to contract, I lean back and clench my jaw.

  Keep it down. Keep it down.

  I feel the maggots moving inside me.

  I exert the last amount of will I have, but it’s not enough. I am sick, my stomach purging more than I have to offer.

  I roll onto my back, looking up at the ceiling (an interlocking tapestry of branches and waxy leaves), and I think only one thought.

  I’m empty as a husk.

  Hunger.

  It’s like a force of its own: a heavy, weighty feeling that you sort of forget about after a while, even though it’s always with you. At first it’s uncomfortable. A rumble, like stones, deep inside you. Then comes the choking, gagging nausea. Then come the daydreams. Roast ham. Gravy. Buttery potatoes. Peas soaked in butter and garlic. Then the imagining becomes torture. That food seems sickly. Disgusting. But it’s infected your mind, so you can’t stop.

  GravySausageLimeTomatoBreadPeanutButterSquashRiceChicken—

  So you cough and gag and you throw up nothing. Eventually it fades into a dull, heavy ache. Your eyes droop. Your mouth bleeds dry. Your head pounds. Your tongue grows thick and heavy and you feel slow-headed and stupid. Clumsy.

  Hunger.

  It’s always with you.

  I try the words on my furry tongue. “It’s… always… withoo…”

  I remember the time Mam took me to the National Gallery of Art. It was before Nori, so maybe I was nine. Maybe ten. Was Mam pregnant? I can’t remember. We went out for a “girls’ day” together, and the museum was free, so it was the perfect choice.

  I walked along the corridors, my hand in hers, and I could smell her vanilla oil, which she used like perfume, even though it was meant to be for potpourri, and I could hear the click, click, click of her heels.

  This one particular section was all still life paintings. Huge pieces that stretched almost from the floor to the ceiling. To a seven-year-old, they looked enormous. Galaxy huge and impressive. And they were mostly food. I stared at these paintings in awe, thinking: People painted food! Actual food that existed all those years ago. Right here in front of me! Pears, apples, bread, cheese, meats—all of it laid out so neatly.

  I remember wanting to pluck a giant pear from one of the bowls in the painting, imagining how it would taste and feel. Wondering how long it would take me to get through the whole thing. Thinking about how tiny I would be standing next to it. How I could eat myself a little corridor inside, live like James and his Giant Peach.

  After that, I told Mam I was hungry. She found ten pounds in her pocket and we went to McDonald’s and had a feast. I was sick for three days straight after that, but it was worth it. Mam kept saying it was all her fault, she should have fed me better, stopped me at McChicken Sandwich number two, but I kept grinning while I puked and told her it was the best day of my life.

  Hunger. It stays with you.

  It’s like a disease that you can never shake.

  Well, I suppose that’s not strictly true.

  If you’re dead, there’s not much use for hunger, is there? So all I have to do is die.

  Ha.

  The pain passes slowly, and my stomach moves and complains inside me. When it is silent enough that I can move, I find that I am lying at the entrance to a dark, wet-smelling cave. I sense the depth within it the same way I sensed the depths of the hole. This is not a place I want to be.

  Deep within the chasm, I hear dripping water—

  and a tinkling bell.

  “Don’t go in there.”

  I gasp as I spin, hands raised to defend myself. Gowan’s own hands are limp at his sides.

  “Why the hell not?”

  “Please, Silla, could you just trust me?”

  “No.”

  He sighs. “I love my anger.” He quotes my own words back at me, and I nod.

  My anger is all I have now.

  “And I’m going to find my sister, so you better stay out of my way, Creeper Man.”

  “You know I’m not him.”

  I raise my eyebrows—a monumental exertion of will. “Oh, really.”

  His lips are set in a grim line and he nods. “Let me come with you. You don’t have to do everything alone.”

 
; I want to protest right away. I want to say, No. No, I don’t need your help. I don’t need you.

  But I would be lying.

  Instead, I turn back to the cave and walk carefully inside.

  The light disappears.

  Nothing much happens for a long time. The walls around us curve upward, and I have the impression of willingly walking down the gullet of some giant stone creature—a long granite snake, maybe. Not even that would surprise me now.

  And all of a sudden, this seems irrationally funny.

  And I laugh.

  And I can’t stop laughing.

  My laughter becomes hysterical before I can contain it and I fall against the wall, clutching my sides.

  “A—snake!” I manage, giggling.

  Gowan looks at me like I have, finally, snapped. But he is grinning, too.

  “I just… This is so messed up.”

  Gowan looks around him, at where we are, at where we’ve come from, and grins. “Yeah.”

  A tinkling echoes between us, cutting my laugh off like a diamond scalpel. Sharp and brutal. Quick and silent.

  Gowan says, “Wait” at the same moment I rush off into the dark.

  By the time he’s reached me, bringing the flame of his lighter with him, I am standing stock-still. I don’t understand what I am looking at.

  Before me, on the floor, is a crumpled pile of cloth. Only, no—not cloth. Clothes.

  “Silla, wait.”

  “What’s…”

  And then there is a light. Off to the right. I frown into it, leaning closer, trying to see the something beyond it.

  “Silla.”

  The light is blinding. Like the sun decided to take a nap in front of my face. As it fades and my eyes blink through tears of pain and light spots, a kitchen table comes into focus.

  It’s our kitchen table.

  La Baume. We’re inside La Baume.

  But it can’t be. I’m about to turn around and ask Gowan if we made it back to the house, when I see the paint. Buckets of yellow paint, stacked on the cloth-covered table.

  Yellow.

  And then Cathy drifts into the room, paintbrush in hand. She is wearing a long yellow sundress, and she is smiling.

  25

  dare you

  Grab some twine to twist and thread

  some dirt plucked at night with dread

  cloth to make his suit and tie

  finish before dawn or else you’ll die.

  BROKEN BOOK ENTRY

  My favorite food is vegetable pie. All you do is chop up as many different kinds of vegetables as you like, like potatoes and carrots. You could even have parsnip in there if you like. You chop them up fairly well, pop them all into a pastry base. Cover it with a pie crust, and pop into the oven for about forty-five minutes. This pie answers every question of hunger, I’m telling you. What’s for dinner? Veggie pie. Hungry at midnight? Leftover veggie pie. I’ve made one already, so you’ll need to make your own.

  1980: “Ring around the rosie, a pocket full of posies…”

  Catherine and Anne and Pamela skip in a circle, their hands joined. Cathy is wearing a blue dress. Anne is wearing red. Pammy is wearing yellow. Each has her hair in curls, as their mother prefers. Each a perfect flower.

  “Ashes! Ashes! We all fall down!”

  Cathy loves this part. The part where they all collapse. She doesn’t understand what the rhyme means—none of them do—but she knows that the end (collapsing) is the best. For a moment, the sisters lie on the grass, staring up at the sapphire sky. In another hour they will be called inside, their adventure over for the day. Cathy closes her eyes, and feels the earth tilting as it does sometimes.

  Then Anne is kicking her in the foot. “Let’s go into the woods for a while!”

  She tries not to get cross. Anne is always wanting more. Mother says she has too much spirit for her own good, and Cathy is beginning to see why.

  Cathy leans up on her elbows. “We can’t, Anne. It’s getting dark.”

  “So? We’ll be quick. Come on! I saw rabbits!”

  “Imagine if we could catch one,” Pammy says. “We could have it for supper.”

  Anne scrunches up her nose. “Ew.”

  “Nobody is going into the woods,” Cath states, getting to her feet. She brushes grass from her dress and reties her bow. “Anyway, we should be going in right about now.”

  Anne rolls her eyes and Pammy giggles. “You spoil everything.”

  “Yeah, yeah.”

  “Anyway,” Anne says, sniffing and lifting her chin. “I don’t need you to have fun, and I don’t need the woods. The woods can come to me. The protector will make sure of that.”

  “I think we’re getting a bit old for the protector game.”

  “He’s real,” Anne says. “And maybe you’re getting old. So old you can’t even see him anymore.”

  “I see him!” Pammy declares.

  “Neither of you sees him. We made him up.”

  Catherine hasn’t got time for silly games anymore. Mother told her that she was growing up, and now she can see it is true. She does feel much older than both Anne and Pamela. Well, she is older, but now her age is accompanied by a feeling of superiority. She can see so much more than they can. They are still lost in a game about a make-believe man that they sewed from sackcloth one day in the woods.

  I’m growing up, she thinks again, and smiles, closing her eyes and turning away so that her sisters don’t see her pride. She envisions a future of long dresses—the kind Mother wears—dinner parties at the long table at La Baume in the grand hall, and long hours alone with all those books Papa won’t let her touch. One day, it will all be hers, and she will know how to care for it. She has such dreams for La Baume and her life!

  “Come on,” she says again. “We have to get inside. Mother will be waiting.”

  She turns back to her sisters and finds that they are gone.

  She clenches her teeth, watching their tiny figures rushing toward the forest boundary in the fading light.

  They are leaving her behind more and more.

  Well. She’s moving forward without them.

  What babies they are.

  I’m somewhere else now.

  It’s quite dark in here. I can hardly see. In the corner of the room, a little girl sits bent over something. Her hands dance very well, quick movements, back and forth. She pauses now and then to check her work, and then bends low again over the thing in her hands.

  I step closer, expecting the child to look up, but it seems I am a ghost in this place.

  “Hello?” I call.

  Nothing.

  I look around, scanning the room for Gowan, and realize that I’m in La Baume again. The attic. The same room that Cath locked herself in for months and months. The same room where she was eaten alive by roots. As I think Cathy’s name, the child looks up, as though startled by a sound.

  “Hello?”

  She leans forward into a shaft of moonlight cast through the tiny sole window to her left, and I see that this child is Cath. She looks about twelve years old, or maybe older. Her eyes are pink and swollen, her lips cracked and bloody.

  “Cath… Auntie Cath.”

  The child frowns for a moment, and then shifts back into the shadows to continue her work.

  I inch closer, aware of every step. I’m five feet away when I see what Cath is doing. In her hands: a limp and rather pathetic excuse for a doll. It is made of sacking cloth and strips of black material, long and thin with elongated limbs. It has no eyes, only a gaping mouth that has been roughly stitched closed again.

  The sight of it sends a chill down my spine.

  And when I realize what Cath is doing, I fall to my knees, dumbstruck.

  “There,” little Cath says, her voice breaking. “Now you can give her back.”

  Cath puts down her needle and takes up small sewing scissors instead. Carefully, she snips the black twine holding the doll’s mouth shut, and it falls open in a manic grin lik
e the jaw is weighted down with stones.

  The lack of eyes disturbs me. Look away.

  But then Cath speaks again.

  “Anne… can you hear me, Anne?”

  Silence.

  “Anne, it’s Catherine. It’s Catherine, Anne, can’t you hear me?”

  Nothing.

  “You took her,” she whispers at the doll now. “You crept up and you took her away.” A pause. “You’re a Creeper Man. An ugly Creeper Man. You were never our protector.”

  I swallow.

  “Come on, then!” Cath cries suddenly, throwing the doll into the moonlit strip of wood. She stands slowly, like a storm gathering the strength to surge.

  “I dare you,” she spits at last. “I dare you to come here.”

  The doll doesn’t move, but it seems to me that it is observing the child. Considering her.

  “Creeper Man, Creeper Man, I dare you to come. Creeper Man, Creeper Man, you are the one. Creeper Man, Creeper Man, bring me my Anne. Creeper Man, Creeper Man, I curse you, be damned!”

  Cath-the-child is hissing the final words, her eyes leaking tears that she doesn’t seem to notice.

  I watch her fury with understanding. “You did this,” I whisper. “Auntie Cath, you did this.”

  The image seems to freeze

  and when I blink I am back in the cave and I finally, finally understand.

  “He’s a demon.”

  Gowan shakes his head. “What?”

  “The Creeper Man. He’s a child-stealing demon. I saw Cath summon him. She thought he was a protector, but she was wrong. She probably had no idea what she was doing, but she dared him to come. She rhymed, like a spell or something, and I got the weirdest feeling he could hear.”

  Gowan opens his mouth and then sighs into his fists. “Silla—”