Campbell Wood

by Al Sarrantonio

  Ms. McGreary stopped. "Oh, you've got the part, Kaymie," she said. "No one else is going to read for it."

  Kaymie was both elated and stunned.

  "No one else wants to try out for it?"

  Ms. McGreary shook her head, giving what looked like another forced smile. "It's all yours, Kaymie."

  "Don't you even want me to read through it?"

  "I've heard your voice in class, and there's nothing wrong with it. I think you'll do fine."

  Kaymie was clutching her paperback copy of the play so tightly that the binding was cracking. What was going on here? Was she some sort of leper, to be given whatever she wanted as long as she stayed away? This was even worse than in class; there her shunning had seemed merely impersonal, here it was obviously deliberate.

  She was getting upset. Ms. McGreary looked as if she was struggling with herself. She abruptly walked down the steps and put an arm around Kaymie. Kaymie felt the arm on her; it was trembling.

  "Kaymie, what's wrong?"

  "Why are you treating me like this?" she answered. She was nearly crying, and she could feel her eyes burning, filling with tears. "What's wrong with me?"

  "There's nothing wrong with you," Ms. McGreary said. She knelt down and looked into Kaymie's face. Kaymie saw a mixture of panic and concern there; then there was only concern. Ms. McGreary's arm stopped trembling, and she held Kaymie by the shoulders more firmly.

  "Would you like to read a little for us?" she asked softly.

  "I don't know," Kaymie answered.

  "Read just a little," Ms. McGreary said, and she pushed Kaymie gently toward the stage.

  Kaymie walked up the steps slowly. She looked up, and saw the soft spotlights above her bending their light down to bathe her. She was standing in the center of the stage, and there was complete silence. Ms. McGreary's face had an expectant look on it.

  Kaymie looked down at the crumpled paperback in her hand, and started to open it but then stopped, closing it again. She knew her lines. She had studied for two weeks, hoping to win this part, and she knew the dialogue backward and forward. Suddenly the stage and the lights and the curtains filled her with the enchantment she always felt, and she was taken away from this place and all the faces in front of her disappeared and everything else disappeared except her voice.

  "These are the forgeries of jealousy:

  And never, since the middle summer's spring,

  Met we on hill, in dale, forest, or mead,

  By paved fountain or by rushy brook,

  Or in the beached margent of the sea,

  To dance our ringlets to the whistling wind . . ."

  She was carried away, and the rest of the words flowed out of her like wine. She had forgotten where she was.

  "An odorous chaplet of sweet summer buds

  Is, as in mockery, set: the spring, the summer,

  The childing autumn, angry winter, change

  Their wonted liveries; and the mazed world,

  By their increase, now knows not which is which:

  And this same progeny of evils comes

  From our debate, from our dissension;

  We are their parents and original."

  She stopped, waiting for Oberon to answer her, and only when echoing silence met her did she come back to herself. She blinked, and her voice settled back into her body. The stage underfoot became only a set of boards again, the curtains just curtains, the lights not the forested sun but only electrical lamps. She was out of the woods and back in a school auditorium with solemn eyes looking up at her.

  She looked down at the faces before her, at the peculiar stare they were giving her, and at that moment a shocking realization dawned on her. They didn't hate her—they were afraid of her. Or of something about her.

  Everything seemed different now. It was as if the world had been turned on its head. This avoidance of her wasn't a peer-pressure thing, or because she was the new kid in town, or anything like that. Something to do with her frightened all these people to death. And looking at them now, staring up at her, she felt that there was something more to it: she felt they wanted her to do something. Though they didn't want to go near her, they wanted something from her. There was something she was supposed to give them. She suddenly felt upset, and a little bit older.

  "Why are you afraid of me?" she said.

  There was utter silence, and so she looked out at them again. She felt empty inside, not knowing what to say or do. She felt that they wanted to run away from her and run to her and embrace her at the same time. What could be the reason for this? She was not a freak. She was just a girl, and there was nothing about her that was different from any of them. She wasn't special. All she wanted was what everybody else did: to be accepted, to have friends, to be happy. She didn't want anything else. But she now felt this burden being thrust at her, almostphysically, and it frightened her.

  What do they want from me?

  She began to walk from the stage when suddenly Ms. McGreary was there beside her, holding her again. "Oh, Kaymie," she said, and for a moment she said nothing more. Again the woman was trembling. Then her voice changed and again it became a mixture of warmth and ice. She let Kaymie go. "You'll do just fine," she said.

  Kaymie saw that the other members of the drama club were packing up their books and putting on their coats. Some had already made their way to the back of the auditorium. A cold blast of autumn air swirled in as one of them pulled open one of the heavy doors to slip outside.

  "Next Thursday," Ms. McGreary said, and then she too was hurrying away, throwing on her coat and picking up her things. Kaymie walked slowly from the stage, hearing her footsteps echo until she reached the carpeted stairs. In the back of the auditorium a maintenance man entered with a barrel and a sweep broom; he began to work up one of the far aisles, ignoring her. She even stared at him for a moment but he did not look up.

  Maybe I am a freak.

  She put on her coat and put her books under her arm. She looked at her watch. It was a quarter to five; Mom wouldn't pick her up for fifteen minutes. She felt like standing out in the cold anyway. She didn't want to be here anymore. She saw the bent paperback on top of her pile of books and hesitated to smooth it out. She let her hand rest lovingly on it. She made a resolution. No matter what, even if they cared nothing about her, she would do this play. She was in love with it now, and there was nothing that would stop her.

  She walked to the back of the auditorium and pulled open a door, holding her coat close around her neck as she stepped out. It was getting too cold to stand and wait. She thought of going back inside, but as she looked back she saw the janitor staring at her oddly from the front, by the stage.

  She let the door close, hearing the loud, final click it made. The lonely cold surrounded her.

  11

  Boris snapped awake.

  Something in his cat mind, the half that never really slept, sent him into wide-eyed readiness. A sound? He listened, his ears straight up. Maybe, but there was nothing now. A bright light at the corner of his eyes? He turned his head, but there was no repeat if that was what it had been. Feeney, asleep next to him on the bed, his head curled under one white paw, had looked up also, but now yawned, lowering his head again. He was content to let the other cat do all the preliminary work.

  Boris cocked his head for another few moments, and then, just as he was about to give up he heard it again. A sound, very low, almost inaudible, but out of the ordinary. What could it be? Not Seth or Kaymie; he could still faintly hear them playing outside in the backyard. A mouse? Bird? Squirrel? There were certainly possibilities there.

  He stretched languidly awake, his ears alert for any repeat of the disturbance.

  There it was.

  It seemed to come from the attic.

  As Boris jumped nimbly off the bed Feeney awoke, gave him a disgusted look, and curled back into himself.

  Boris padded to the base of the stairs leading to the attic and paused, taking the time to lick an unrul
y patch of fur on his hind leg into place. His ears were listening, though, and when the sound repeated he knew just where to go. He moved quietly up the carpeted steps to the attic door.

  Sometimes it didn't close all the way when it was shut. Sure enough, when he pushed at it with his paw, using the side of his head as a sort of wedge, the door angled open a crack.

  Cold air from inside pushed out at him.

  He eased his way through the small opening, sliding his body around the door and inside. The room was dark, with only a splash of late autumn sunlight from the single small window giving long shadows, but that didn't matter; his eyes quickly adjusted to the chilly gloom.

  The sound came yet again.

  It was a creak almost; not the scrabble he would have expected from an invading rodent or the scratch a bird would make. Also, a bird probably would have sensed his presence by now and would be flapping madly around the room. He would have liked that, of course.

  The sound seemed to originate in the far left corner of the room behind some old boxes. But then the same kind of sound came from the other side of the room, high up. This confused him. From past explorations, he knew there was nothing over there but a high and apparently empty shelf; it was even too high for him to negotiate, though Feeney, being nimbler and thinner, had once accomplished the feat. He had found nothing of importance, apparently, since after looking down gloatingly at Boris for a while, he had jumped back down. There was something, it seemed, up there now.

  Boris decided to concentrate his labor on the first source.

  There were a couple of empty wooden milk crates over there, filled with old records mostly. Boris slowly made his way toward them in a stalking crouch.

  A bird crossed the light outside the window, drawing his attention away for a moment. The sound came again.

  A vague, formless memory came to Boris. He remembered something like this sound, another time. In the cellar. It had been something much like this, and he had chased its source and found nothing. Just broken things, and he remembered two shelves breaking over him. He had darted away.

  But something had been there, though he hadn't found it.

  He glanced back to see that Feeney had been roused to the point where his sloth was overtaken by curiosity. He was sitting just inside the doorway. Boris turned his back on him. He resumed his half crouch and moved off toward the rear of the milk crates. He could almost smell something back there now.

  There was a dry crackling sound that started again, stopped again.

  Boris glanced back to see Feeney leaping in a graceful curve up onto the overhead shelf, disappearing over its lip. He turned back to his own business, nosing around the corner of the record carton.

  There was nothing there.

  The sound came once more, and he scrabbled around the crate, hoping to trap it. There was nothing to trap. The thing, whatever it was, must be inside the crate.

  Boris pulled himself up on his hind legs and tried to look down into the box.

  There was a horrible screeching cry from Feeney. A kind of paralysis took hold of Boris, and with it the ancient rule of instinct took command of his body and hurtled him through the attic door in two bounds. Something ragged and ungraceful fell past him as he darted out. He crouched at the bottom of the stairs, staring back at the open door.

  The hair along his back was standing on end.

  No sound came from the attic. Boris waited, still as a statue, his ears straining like two fine-tuned antennae.

  There was absolute stillness in the room above.

  Curiosity, mixed with caution, set in. Mewling low and deep in his throat, ready to bolt in a split second, Boris moved up the steps again.

  The room was silent. With the darkening of day the shadows had deepened even more. No sound came from the crate filled with records.

  Boris mewled again, almost backing away. But something in him pulled him toward the unmoving shape in the center of the room.

  It was Feeney.

  His teeth were bared in a frozen snarl of hatred. A huge sliver of wood stood out from the center of his spoiled belly. He had nearly been bisected by it. Blood and entrails spilled out demurely from the neat wound onto the slatted floor.

  Boris made another sound, deep down in his throat, and circled Feeney, alternately sniffing and pulling away. The body gave off a sickly warmth that was rapidly cooling.

  The remains of light pushing in through the attic window were eclipsed. Boris turned, hissing, in time to see a figure, lithe and dark, moving in the tree outside, silhouetted dimly against the dying light.

  Boris hissed again.

  As the sun dropped, the figure disappeared with it. When Boris leaped up onto the window ledge there was nothing to see but the cold orange disk of the sun sinking rapidly through the trees. A sickle of moon shone high above, a sharp cutout in the chilly, blackening sky.

  Feeney's body vanished into the shadows.

  Boris dropped down to the floor. As he did so a crack came from the shelf high above. Again, instinct took over.

  Boris found himself out of the attic and under the bed in Kaymie's room, growling softly in the coming darkness.

  12

  Seth said, "I told you I didn't touch it."

  "You must have, no one else would." Kaymie sat cross-legged on the floor, surveying the damage inside her dollhouse. All of the furniture was jumbled around; a few small pieces were broken. She knew Seth was trying to ignore and goad her at the same time.

  "You did do this, I know you did," she spat out, turning on him. She felt like crying.

  "I told you I didn't," he said quietly from the bed. He moved one of his toy soldiers indolently. "I'll leave if you want me to."

  She wanted to hit him. She turned instead back to the miniature house and attempted to put the various little pieces back where they belonged.

  She flicked the tiny secret cupboard closed, realizing suddenly that Seth didn't even know it existed. And he wouldn't have known where to look for it.

  Boris found his way into the room and was rubbing against her, purring, trying to get his nose into the dollhouse. Since Feeney had died he hardly ever came out from under the bed, but now he was nosing around her house as if it were the only thing in the world he wanted to get into. Kaymie tried to keep him away while she worked but he made a sudden move with his paw and knocked over a fragile hutch with glass insets.

  Kaymie gasped and reached out for it, but then, without her touching it, it was standing upright once more.

  "How did you do that?" said Seth, looking over her shoulder from the end of the bed.

  "I don't know." Kaymie was mystified. She had not touched it, she was sure of that.

  Boris growled, moving away from the dollhouse to the other end of the bedroom.

  "Mark, we have to talk."

  He hadn't heard Ellen enter the study. He glanced over his shoulder with a scowl and kept typing. "Ellen," he said distractedly, "you're not supposed to bother me when I'm working."

  "Mark, please."

  Something in her voice made him hesitate. For another moment he held on to his train of thought, but feeling her there behind him he gave up and turned in his swivel chair to face her.

  "All right," he sighed. "I'm not going to get this damn thing finished now so you might as well shoot." Something told him to pull back the reins a bit, something in Ellen's face, and he added, with some effort, "I'm sorry. It's just that you know how much I hate to be bugged when I'm working."

  "I know, Mark. But that's part of the problem.” Her voice almost broke, she was suddenly so visibly upset.

  He looked at her with incomprehension.

  "Mark," she said earnestly, taking his hand limply in hers, "don't you think you've been acting pretty weird lately? I know," she went on quickly, cutting off the protest that was forming on his lips, "you've been working very hard and I know why, but for Christ's sake, don't you think you've been going at it too hard? You're locked in here almost all day and al
l night with your books and type-writer; the kids hardly ever see you anymore—I hardly see you anymore. And before this it was every day at the library. It's not normal, Mark. You haven't done anything around this house—hell, you haven't done anything at all but work. We haven't been out since we moved here." She was almost crying.

  Mark picked up a pencil and began to fiddle with it. "Honey," he said slowly, knowing his voice sounded hollow and false, "as strange as it sounds, this is the time for me to take my chance at getting established—really established. If I can do it now, the rest will be twice as easy."

  "Mark," she said, looking straight into his eyes, "it's not that and you know it. It's almost as if you're working so hard to keep your mind off other things you'd rather not think about."

  He was silent. He knew just what she was getting at. He knew he was half lying to himself and to her. He wanted to tell her about Fay then, what had happened in the library, and almost did. But this wasn't the right time. And he knew there was more to it than that. He still didn't understand what was going on himself.

  He twirled the pencil in his fingers, bending it convulsively and nearly breaking it in half.

  "Ellen," he said in a low voice that almost pleaded, "I know I haven't been acting like myself lately. This has been a hard period for me. I've felt a lot of pressure. What I'm doing is just my way of responding to it, I think. I have no intention of screwing up our lives."

  Suddenly, without realizing he was doing it, he pulled her down to him and kissed her, and the warmth with which she returned it made him remember just how good their life together was. It was like being pulled out of a thick fog into clearer air.

  "You jerk," said Ellen, gently. "Don't you know what's wrong with you? I'm not worried about you and me. It's your mother that's worrying you; you're afraid to think about her because you don't know how to feel about her now."

  He began to protest, and then with a shock realized she was right.