She turned toward the blocked exit, and it flew open with a crash. Those in front poured through and out of the auditorium.
Kaymie was weakening, but the room slowly began to return to its quiet state. She could feel the presence of the other, the evil power around her, receding.
The room was filled with dust, and there was moaning from those who had been trampled or injured by falling debris.
The evil was gone.
Kaymie slowly brought her hands down. They were trembling, and she realized she was crying.
The auditorium was almost totally destroyed. The walls had been stripped bare down to the studs underneath; in some sections Kaymie could see through to the hallways outside. A few people had even been able to escape through holes in the middle of the walls. The huge beams overhead were cracked and splintered; some of the floorboards had peeled up. A few wooden benches had been reduced to sawdust. All of this had taken barely ten minutes.
Kaymie stood in the middle of the destruction, amid the creak of settling, damaged wood beams and airborne dust motes which formed a cloud around her. Through the gaping roof a sudden beam of sunlight shot through, throwing a circle of light around her as if she were in a spotlight.
"It's starting," Kaymie whispered under her breath. She now knew what had to be done.
The beginning of the end had come.
19
"Mommy, it's stuffy in here."
Now that Seth said it, Ellen felt claustrophobic too. She moved past his bed to the window, noting the sudden low sheet of gray clouds that had descended over Campbell Wood. Everything looked gray and nasty—like the middle of January after all the Christmas decorations were packed away and the chill rains of the real winter began.
The window wouldn't budge. She put some weight into it, pushing the frame up at the corners in its tracks, but it wouldn't give way. And now that she looked again outside, the trees looked awfully weird today. They looked gray too, and twisted close together as if someone had wrapped them like pretzels. They also seemed awfully close to the house.
"Mommy—"
The house moved beneath them.
"What the—" Ellen began, and then she gasped as she was thrown to Seth's bed when it happened again.
It felt as if the house had moved on its foundation beneath her. Ellen could hear furniture sliding and hitting walls. There was the sound of bottles falling from shelves and glasses and dishes breaking in the floors below her.
With a crash the house was jarred again.
The door to the bedroom flew open. There were terrifying sounds all around them now, as if the very world were coming apart. Above, in the attic, pieces of wall and floor were breaking apart and flying about the room. Wooden crates exploded. Glass jars and tin cans were dropped to the floor as the shelves they rested on tore away beneath them. There was a nearly constant cracking and groaning of wood around them.
"Mommy, I'm scared!" Seth cried, holding Ellen tight.
Ellen shuddered uncontrollably. The sound level increased, and she put her hands to her ears.
Suddenly Seth's bed began to move. Ellen pulled the boy from it and retreated to the far corner of the room, huddling down and looking about with terror-filled eyes. As they watched, the bed disintegrated, the wood frame peeling away, the slats underneath holding up the box spring snapping and falling to the floor, where they writhed like snakes. The broken pieces came together in the center of the room, forming a miniature, hissing funnel, a tiny cyclone. Other pieces of furniture in the room—Seth's desk, the nightstand, a rocking chair—burst apart, their sections feeding the funnel of the tornado.
Bits of wood began to shoot out of the spinning cloud at Ellen. She buried Seth against her, and with a cry she ducked one shard of wood, then another.
The house heaved beneath them again. Ellen heard the back porch swing shattering and crashing against the back door.
Holding Seth tight, she lurched out the door of the bedroom and into the hall. The house was tilting crazily. It was like being in one of those funhouse tilted rooms, where the floor never seems to be even, no matter where you're standing.
She pulled herself to the stairs and made her way down, gripping the railing with one hand to keep from being thrown off. As she reached the bottom the railing splintered as she held it, and she was thrown to the floor.
"Mommy!"
"Seth, are you all right?"
In answer, he crawled to her and held her, shivering.
Groggy, she looked up from the floor where her head had struck it to an incredible sight. No nightmare could compare with this scene of horror.
The living room was alive. It was curling and slithering and creeping around on itself like a living being. The floor was pushing up the individual boards beneath the rug, making the carpet hump and heave like a speared whale. As she watched, the fireplace mantel pulled itself off the wall with a loud crack and soared, whole, across the room to smash against the far wall. Some of the furniture in the room, such as her cane-backed chair and, in the dining room, the hutch and bar, had turned into soft, pliable things, like something out of a Dali painting, and were twisting into odd and grotesque shapes. The frame of the couch had fractured into a thousand wooden knives and was tearing and ripping through the fabric, throwing up great plumes of feathers and stuffing. The grandfather clock by the entrance to the front door exploded. The ceiling began to crack, and slats of the floor above were jutting out here and there, some of them coiling and snapping against one another.
Ellen pulled her feet up under her, holding Seth between her knees, too terrified to move.
There were more loud crashes from below and above. The house quaked, and the few remaining things standing fell over. Windows smashed in their frames, the frames themselves flying out and splitting apart. Shingles broke away from the house; with a huge rip the front porch tore away and disintegrated. Support timbers in the cellar ground themselves into sawdust. The cellar steps collapsed with a grinding crash.
There was a blur of movement to Ellen's left, at the stairs; a movement of fur.
"Boris!"
The cat jerked his head, noting Ellen's presence but turning back to the roiling hell around him. The bannister had fallen away completely; the living room and every other room in the house was pulling itself to pieces.
Ellen measured the distance between herself and the front door with her eyes. About ten or twelve feet. But there was a pile of rubble in her path, which was growing.
There was an unearthly groan, and the house partially collapsed, settling at a precarious twenty-degree angle. The floor was pulling away, slat by slat, each board popping from its place and revealing a gaping and growing hole into the recesses of the black basement. The hole in the center of the living room was growing outward, and whatever remained in the room was pulled into it as the floor disappeared beneath.
Again Ellen looked to the front door. Possibly. If she could move aside the blockage that had accumulated in front of it she could make it.
The ceiling above her was dissolving, and, with wrenching sounds, furniture from the floors above was sinking down through the holes formed and dropping past her into the cellar.
Ellen felt air at her back, cold air, and turned with a shout to see that the gaping hole had reached her. Behind her was a ten-foot drop into the basement. With a short cry she scampered forward with Seth. The hole followed her.
"Come on, Boris! Come on, boy!" she shouted, pushing herself to her feet. There was no way she could make it to the terrified animal. He was crouched back away from the staircase, which now stood at a wild angle; pieces of the lower section of steps had already been pulled into the hole.
There was a great crash as much of the second floor fell through the now empty space between floors and into the cellar. Like Poe's House of Usher, the structure was falling in around itself, collapsing into a massive pile of rubble.
Ellen lurched forward toward the front door, pulling Seth with her. It was now
or never. She screamed at the cat again, but now she could not see him through the cloud of dust and wood particles that was whipping up around her.
The house quaked again, the pile of rubble fell aside, and the doorway to the outside was free before them.
Seth screamed, and Ellen looked up to see sudden and deep blackness.
20
The woods were brooding.
Kaymie felt the sick weight of something pressing down on her, from above. Something menacing.
Something waiting.
Gray afternoon peeked through the heavy trees above. She nearly tripped over a thick tree root—had it been there a second before?—regaining her balance but losing her sense of direction for a moment. The sky disappeared, as if the branches had drawn together.
Brown darkness descended.
There was a sound up ahead. Kaymie paused. A squirrel? Like something scrabbling up a tree. She stood silent and it was repeated, straight ahead of her, in a dense clump of bushes.
Something large fell behind her, startling her. "Is anyone there?" she whispered.
She suddenly remembered her friend Clara again, from the Bronx—Clara, who seemed a million miles and years away.
Above, it grew darker.
She repeated her question.
There was another sound, directly in front of her. The bushes parted, and then fell back into place. Kaymie took a step when a voice said, "Forward."
It was a command, a hiss almost, from the dense bushes.
Automatically, Kaymie took another step. "More." The voice was sharp-edged, desperate. Kaymie drew within a few feet of the underbrush.
The hedge drew apart to reveal—nothing. Black darkness, with the hint of movement within.
A hand emerged, long, thin, and old. The voice had softened to a gentle whisper.
"Come."
Without realizing it, she had stepped into the thicket.
Into a house.
It was just like in the storybooks. Two steps down brought Kaymie into what almost looked like a squat teepee. There was a floor of earth beaten down so hard it almost resembled concrete. The walls were half underground, covered with twigs and foliage that led up and over to a low roof. The room was large, ten or twelve feet in diameter and cut off toward the back with a wall that led to another, smaller chamber. Kaymie could just see the end of a simple mat bed jutting out into the doorway. There were pieces of simple furniture—a chair, a weaving loom, a low table, a bookshelf—rimming the inside of the hut.
The old woman carefully covered the opening Kaymie had stepped through, cocking her head and listening for a moment before turning to face the young girl.
"You've come as I asked," the old woman said. "You've come to see Taemon Gaye.'
Kaymie almost gasped at the change that had come over the old woman since she had talked with her outside the school. She looked like a string of bones hung with loose clothes. Her face was skeletal, her eyes sunk deep into their sockets. But those eyes still burned with an inner fire that again made Kaymie feel a mixture of fear and awe.
"There is no reason to be afraid of me, little one," the old woman said with a marked gentleness in her voice. She held out one shriveled hand, trembling with palsy. "Let me see your crown."
"No," Kaymie said. She took it off and held it in her hand.
The old woman thrust out her hand with more force, and then suddenly seemed to lose her strength. She sank back into a chair behind her. Her breath came in little gasps. "Give . . . it to . . . me."
Kaymie stood firm.
Something that looked like a smile moved over Taemon Gaye's face. She uttered a low laugh.
"You'll make a strong Queen, little one. As strong as your grandmother."
The old woman looked up and over Kaymie, and with a sudden movement the bookcase against the far wall slid across the floor, spilling its contents and taking Kaymie by surprise, knocking her down and pinning her. The low table followed, flipping over and holding Kaymie's right arm fast.
Taemon Gaye struggled to her feet and removed the crown from Kaymie's hand, after the table had exerted enough pressure to force her to let go.
The old woman returned to her chair, and the two wooden pieces of furniture moved up and back to their places.
Kaymie sat up, shaking and rubbing her arm. She contemplated running through the door and back out into the woods.
"Did I hurt you?"
"Not really," Kaymie answered cautiously.
"I couldn't have had I wanted to," Taemon Gaye said. "I was merely your grandmother's guardian, a cousin by birth, and possess a scant amount of true power. It is nothing next to yours. Your strength is nearly as great as your grandmother's; when you are full-bloomed it may even be greater." Her brow darkened. "I fear you might need more than that for what's ahead of you. Come here, child, there's something I must do." There was a sudden anxiousness in her tone. It looked as though she would have one of her attacks.
Kaymie took a step and then stood firm. "Why did my grandfather hate my grandmother? Why didn't he tell us about any of this?"
Taemon Gaye was immobilized, the crown held loosely in her hand and in danger of falling to the ground. She took a few shallow breaths and regained herself.
"Oh, little one," she said gently, and there was pity in her voice. "Because your grandfather was a fool. And because he did not know the truth of what was happening. Come quickly," she said, holding the crown up in her two trembling, weak hands. "There is something that must be done."
The bookcase across the room moved again, and Kaymie knew by the look on Taemon Gaye's face that she had not moved it.
"Quickly!" Taemon Gaye said. "I've been found."
Responding to the urgency in Taemon Gaye's voice, Kaymie stepped forward. "Kneel, child," the old woman panted, and as Kaymie did so Taemon Gaye placed the crown gently on her head.
"It is done," she said.
A shock went through Kaymie, and the window in her mind flew open. It was as if a light had gone on inside her, blinding her momentarily. She knew her power now. She could see each piece of wood in all of Campbell Wood in her mind's eye, could visualize each one and knew that she could control it. A tiny, warm core at the center of her began to glow. A feeling formed there, a kind of shaping limb, and Kaymie saw what she had to do for the people of Campbell Wood. She knew what they wanted of her.
Kaymie came back to herself. Taemon Gaye was gasping, breathing shallowly, leaning back against the wall. The bookcase was pinned against her chest. The other objects in the hut—the table, the chair, the wooden bed in the far room—were flying about in the air, crashing one against the other and breaking apart.
"Go, child . . ." Taemon Gaye gasped, pointing to the door. "You . . . cannot save me . . ."
With a movement of her mind, Kaymie instantly stilled the objects in the dwelling. As she did so, feeling a momentary pang of triumph in her power, there was a shriek from Taemon Gaye that turned Kaymie's bones to ice. She looked to see the old woman being pulled, bone by crushed bone, into the side of the bookcase. Only her face and one arm were visible now as she slowly melted into the wood. She let out an unearthly cry.
Kaymie turned all of her attention on saving the old woman. But Taemon Gaye, with her last agonized scream, cried, "No!" and pointed to the doorway as her last finger disappeared into the bookcase.
The furniture in the room began to fly about again. A cry of fear and frustration escaped Kaymie's throat as she discovered that she was unable to help the old woman. Taemon Gaye vanished, leaving only the vaguest outline of her being in the grain of the wood.
Kaymie let out another cry, and then turned her attention back to the furniture in the hovel, and to the whacking branches that were now flying in from outside. She was able to still them, but as she stole a look out into the forest, she saw an almost solid wall of wood advancing on her, a tidal wave of sticks and twigs that picked up every tree, leaf, and bush in its path and added it all to its fury. The wood in Taemo
n Gaye's hut was exploding. Kaymie silenced the madness around her, turning to the blockade outside. With an effort, she formed a tunnel through the wooden mass, forcing it foot by foot back into the forest and keeping it there. She climbed out of the hovel and into the tunnel.
There, at the other end, its head covered by a cowl and the wild wind of the savage forest streaming about it, waited the hooded figure of her nightmares.
21
A hundred yards into the woods, Mark had to abandon the car. The road was there one moment, and then the next moment it vanished in a tangle of weeds, twisting branches, and chunks of wood. The car wheels caught; spun loose, then caught again, and as they spun loose one more time something caught at the car from behind and jerked it to a halt. It felt as if a tow rope had been attached, and Mark looked back to see that a huge vine had indeed attached itself, octopus-like, to the rear of the car. There was a sickening snap as the rear axle broke in two.
A hockey stick of Seth's in the back seat abruptly split into shards and flew at Mark's head. The glove compartment burst open, letting a pencil fly out at him like a bullet; the radio buttons were inset with slabs of wood that popped off, flying at him.
His face and hands bloodied, Mark threw open the door, pushing aside some grasping branches as he did so, and leaped back. He watched in horror as the car seemed to be eaten alive, pulled whole into the wall of the woods.
Looking behind him, Mark sought to make his way out the way he had come in. But he saw now that this was impossible. Behind him, the forest had closed, like the jaws of a lion. A barrier of sinuously twisting vines and dead leaves was barely twenty yards back, pushing at him with uncanny speed. He looked to either side and, spying a pathway that seemed less dangerous than the others, he ran into it.
There were eerie noises in the woods all around him—cracking and crashing, and the sound of wood knocking loudly against wood. It was horribly loud, like a million raucous, excited animals concentrated into too small an area.
Campbell Wood Page 10
