by Pete Hautman
“They’re wrecking the woods,” she said.
“It’s just a few trees,” her mother said. “They’re clearing them out for the new lake.”
“I don’t want a stupid boring lake.”
Mrs. Frankel rolled her eyes.
“Don’t leave your cat out there. He’ll get wet.”
Elly bent over and grabbed Grimpus by one floppy fabric leg.
“Don’t you think you’re getting a little too old for dolls?”
“He’s not a doll. He’s Grimpus.”
“Why don’t you let me run him through the wash for you?”
The rain was coming harder. Elly looked at the tattered gray cat hanging from her hand. His ears had been worn to nubs and his remaining eye hung by a thread. White fuzz spilled from the seam on his belly.
“Cats don’t like baths,” she said.
Weeks later, during the hottest part of August, Elly Rose stuffed Grimpus into her backpack and headed out into the woods. The air was utterly still. Clouds of gnats hovered over the path. She could hear the lazy buzzing of bees, occasionally interrupted by the rattle and hiss of cicadas, and a distant roar and rumble.
“Don’t worry, Grimpy,” she said. “It’s not dragons. Just stupid men and their stupid machines.”
Grimpus did not reply. Every day it got harder to pretend.
She reached the bottom of the wooded slope. Tomorrow, everything would be different. This would be the edge of a lake. But for now it was dry. Before her lay devastation, nothing but broken trunks and crushed undergrowth.
“It’s okay, Grimpy,” she said to reassure herself. “They won’t open the dam until tomorrow.”
There would be a ceremony. The mayor would be there, along with her parents and all the other members of the preservation society. This was her last chance to visit the Castle Rose — ever.
It took a long time to get there. She had to climb over or around the fallen trees. Her backpack kept getting caught on branches. When the Castle Rose finally came into view, she stopped and stared. The deadfall had collapsed.
What had once been a grand pyramidal shape now looked like a pile of logs with one long limb sticking up like a crooked flagpole. Elly approached cautiously and peered through the tangle of branches and tree trunks. She found an opening and wriggled inside. There wasn’t enough room to stand, even bent over. One of the biggest trunks had crashed down on the stone slab. Elly recalled the last time she had been there, how the slab had tried to grab her. She felt a chill run through her. Don’t be silly, she told herself. It was a dream.
She thought about Stuey. Maybe everything that had happened was a dream, a hallucination, a fairy tale she had invented. Because rocks don’t really grow fingers of stone, and dragons are just bulldozers made of metal. People don’t disappear into thin air. There are no such things as ghosts.
It was time to stop pretending. Time to grow up.
She pulled Grimpus from her backpack and set him on the stone. “Sorry, Grimpy.”
Back outside, she took one last look at the fallen Castle Rose.
It’s just a pile of dead trees, she told herself. Tomorrow they will be gone forever.
As soon as she turned her back on the deadfall, Elly felt two conflicting emotions: sadness and relief. It was the same way she’d felt three years ago when her real cat, Meowster, died after several weeks of piteous meowing. Meowster had been seventeen years old. Instead of a new cat, her mom had given her Grimpus. Now it was Grimpy’s time, and the castle’s time. It seemed only right that they should go together.
Walking slowly, she headed for home. As she neared the pond she noticed rivulets of water flowing across the path. She had never seen that before except when it was raining. She looked up at the cloudless sky. Where was the water coming from? The path became wetter. Puddles were forming, growing larger before her eyes. Soon she was sloshing through ankle-deep water.
Elly came to a tree that had been cut down. She climbed onto the trunk and looked toward the highway. Even though it was more than a quarter mile away, she could see men moving around frantically by the dam, and the glint of the sun reflecting from water where there had been no water before. The creek had broken through the dam.
The water was returning to Westdale Wood.
Elly jumped off the trunk and landed with a splash. She started running. If she could reach the hill below her neighborhood, she’d be safe. It wasn’t that far — normally she could get there in a few minutes — but she had all those fallen trees in the way, and the rising water was making it hard to run. She couldn’t see what she was stepping on. She had only gone about fifty feet when she tripped on an underwater branch and fell face-first.
I’m going to drown, she thought, spitting out swampy-tasting water. She got up and kept going, her pulse drumming in her ears. The water got deeper with every step she took. It was up to her shins when she saw a groundhog claw its way out of the water onto a fallen tree. It crouched there, sodden and frightened, watching her as she splashed past.
By the time she reached the bottom of the hill she was wading through water up to her hips. She dragged herself, soaked and muddy, up onto the leaf-covered slope.
Behind her, the water continued to rise.
At dinner that night, Elly’s dad was furious.
“What a mess.” He stabbed a meatball with his fork and ate it in one bite.
He wasn’t talking about Elly — she had made it home hours ago, cleaned herself up, and put on dry clothes. She didn’t want her parents to know she’d almost drowned. They always got mad at her when she got hurt, or even almost hurt.
He was upset about the dam.
“A complete and utter catastrophe. The plan was to flood the lake slowly, and it wasn’t supposed to happen until tomorrow. Some fool lost control of his earthmover and the dam collapsed. Now we have no way to control the water level.”
“Will peoples’ houses get flooded?” Elly asked.
“I doubt it. The lake will stabilize at its historic level, which is what we’d always planned. But a big storm could create problems — we need to rebuild the dam to keep the lake level steady. The preservation society will be blamed if anything happens.”
“What about the animals?”
“What about them?”
“Do you think they drowned?”
“I’m sure they’re okay, honey,” said her mother.
“What about the baby groundhogs down in their holes?”
“I don’t know,” her father said. “That was one of the reasons we wanted to flood the lake in stages, to give the wildlife a chance to adapt. It was an accident.”
“When I do something and say it was an accident I get punished!”
“This was not your father’s fault, Elly,” her mother said.
“When I say something’s not my fault you —”
“Elly Rose!” her mother snapped.
Elly closed her mouth and looked down at her spaghetti and meatballs. She’d pushed the meatballs aside because she’d been thinking about the animals. Now she wasn’t hungry at all.
“And Stuey,” she muttered.
“What?” her mother asked.
“Stuey could be out there too.”
Her parents looked at her, but they did not know what to say.
After school let out for the summer, Stuey convinced Deshan to come with him to the deadfall. Deshan hadn’t been much interested until Stuey mentioned that it was the place where Elly Rose Frankel had disappeared. Deshan had never known Elly, but he’d heard about her and he’d seen her on the billboards so he thought maybe it would be cool.
Deshan did not like the woods. He had grown up in Minneapolis where the streets were a grid and there were stores on every corner.
“These trees must be a thousand years old,” he said. “Like they’re ready to keel over on us.”
“Actually, most of them are only sixty or seventy years old,” Stuey told him. “This used to be a golf course, and my family ow
ned it. My great-grandfather built it. He was a bootlegger.”
“Seriously? What’s a bootlegger?”
“Like a smuggler.”
“Like a gangster?”
“I guess so. He smuggled whiskey during Prohibition. But then he went straight and built the golf course.” Stuey told him about how his great-grandfather and Robert Rosen had disappeared on the same night.
“They never found them?” Deshan asked.
“Not a trace. My grandpa used to say their ghosts are still out here.”
Deshan gave him a doubtful look. “Yeah, right.”
“I’m not saying I believed him.”
They followed the trail through a patch of nettles, holding up their arms so they wouldn’t get stung. Stuey hadn’t been in the woods for weeks, and the path was getting overgrown.
“This is crazy,” Deshan said. “Are there snakes?”
“No, but Elly said there were bears and alligators out here.”
“Vampires too, I bet.” Deshan slapped a mosquito. “Bloodsuckers. It’s like a jungle. You ever get lost? Maybe that girl is still trying to find her way out of here.”
“It’s not that big,” Stuey said.
“I hope they build that mall soon.”
“Wait till you see the deadfall,” Stuey said. “It’s really cool.”
“Whatever,” Deshan said.
When they got there a few minutes later, Deshan was not impressed.
“It’s a pile of dead trees,” he said. “So what?”
Stuey had to admit, the deadfall didn’t look as impressive as it used to. It seemed to have sagged a bit. He pointed at the opening. “We can go inside.”
“It looks like it’s about to fall down.”
“Don’t be a wuss. Come on.” Stuey ducked inside.
A few seconds later, Deshan poked his head in.
“I don’t want to get crushed.”
“You won’t get crushed.”
Deshan entered.
“This is it?” he said doubtfully.
“Elly Frankel called it the Castle Rose.”
“You made up a name for it? That’s lame.”
“I was sitting right here when she disappeared.”
He had told Deshan about it before. Deshan hadn’t believed him then, and he didn’t believe him now.
“Yeah, right. Like she got caught in a transporter beam? Give me a break.” He looked around. “Kind of creepy though.”
“I used to think it was magic.”
Deshan laughed. “You believe in the Easter Bunny too?”
“I mean, I thought it was magic when I was a little kid.”
“Yeah, right.” Deshan smirked.
“Mostly it was Elly who thought it was magic,” Stuey said, then felt bad for blaming it on her.
Deshan kicked at the floor. “It’s really dirty in here. Like grimy beach sand.”
“I think it’s an old sand trap from when it was a golf course.”
“What’s with the rock? How’d that get here?”
“I don’t know.”
Deshan shook his head. “Creepy. Creepy and dirty. Let’s get out of here.”
Stuey went by himself after that, but less often. He still heard the voices and heard the music, but it was very faint. The deadfall felt different now. Maybe Deshan was right. Magic was for little kids.
He was thinking about that as he trudged through the woods alone on the anniversary of Elly’s disappearance. He hadn’t been to the deadfall in two weeks. He felt guilty for not going, and he was angry about feeling guilty. Why should he feel bad? He’d been there dozens of times over the summer, and every time he felt stupid. Like Deshan was looking over his shoulder laughing at him. So he got mad at Deshan. And he was mad at Elly Rose for never being there. And at the people who were going to build the mall. And at himself. Why did he bother? He didn’t even like being there anymore.
Deshan was right. It was creepy. Creepy and dirty, and darker than he remembered.
Stuey sat on the slab. Before, being there had relaxed him, but now he was all jagged inside. He stood up and hit his head on a branch. Either the deadfall was settling or he was getting taller. He grabbed the branch and tried to snap it off. It wouldn’t budge. He took out his Swiss Army knife and used the tiny saw blade to cut halfway through, then grasped it with both hands and threw his weight against it. The branch snapped and he fell, his head bouncing off the slab.
He jumped up, suddenly furious, and yanked at the branches above him. The limb he was pulling on gave way; he fell back. Creaking and groaning, the deadfall collapsed. One of the cottonwood trunks hammered down, pinning him to the slab. Stuey gasped as the trunk compressed his chest. He felt as if his ribs were about to crack. He had no air and he could not scream.
It felt like an eternity. The massive trunk squeezed him against the slab. He could breathe, but only in tiny gasps — enough to stay alive, but not enough to shout for help. Not that anyone would hear him.
I’m going to die, he thought.
The Castle Rose was killing him. He closed his eyes and concentrated on breathing, each sip of air a small fraction of a breath. He counted each one; they sounded like hiccups. Then he heard a voice.
“Hang in there, son.”
His grandfather’s voice — but that was impossible.
“Help is coming.”
It was Gramps!
“Gramps?” he squeaked. There was no reply.
Stuey kept breathing. It took all his strength, and with every scanty, meager breath the trunk pressed down harder.
“Somebody in there?” A man’s voice, not his grandfather.
Stuey tried to yell. All that came out was a wheezy rasp. It was enough.
“Are you stuck?” He heard branches breaking. A moment later he saw a face peering in at him. He knew that face.
“Can you breathe?” the man asked.
Stuey shook his head. More breaking branches.
“I’m gonna get a lever under here, son. Don’t think I can raise that trunk up much, but maybe just enough. You feel the pressure ease up, you slide on out. You think you can do that?”
Stuey nodded. The man had a branch about four inches thick. He wedged it under the trunk.
“You ready?”
Stuey nodded. The man heaved up on the branch. Veins stood out on his neck. The trunk shifted slightly, but not enough. The man stopped lifting and the trunk settled even lower, forcing the last bit of air from Stuey’s lungs.
Black bubbles crowded the edges of his vision. He heard the man say, “Hang on, let me try down here.”
The trunk shifted again, but this time the pressure eased. Stuey gasped and air flooded his lungs.
“Now, son! Slide on out!”
Stuey kicked and twisted. The trunk scraped against his chest. He pushed against it with his hands and wriggled out from beneath it. He was free. The man let go of the branch and the trunk crashed down onto the slab. He grabbed Stuey and pulled him out of the deadfall. When the man let go, Stuey fell to his knees and sucked in great ragged lungfuls of air, heedless of the sharp pains from his ribs.
“You okay?” the man asked.
“I think so.” It hurt to talk.
The man was dressed all in camouflage. On the ground next to him was a wicker basket full of yellow mushrooms.
“You’re the Mushroom Man,” Stuey said.
The man laughed. “I prefer Greg,” he said.
“I thought you moved away.”
“I did, but I came back just this once. Next year this place will be all concrete and steel. I figure this is my last chance to pick chanterelles here.” He pointed at the yellow mushrooms in his basket. “They’re delicious.”
“Oh.”
“You’re very lucky,” the man said. “I’m lucky too. If you’d died in there, they might never have found you and they’d try to blame me again.” He narrowed his eyes. “You’re the kid who took my picture, aren’t you?”
Stuey nodded
.
“That girl . . . she was your friend?”
“Elly Rose,” Stuey said.
“You know I had nothing to do with her disappearing, right?”
“I never said you did.”
They both looked at the pile of dead trees.
“How did you know to find me?” Stuey asked.
“It was rather odd.” The man shrugged nervously. “I was picking mushrooms and all of a sudden there’s this guy standing in front of me. Some old dude in a ratty sweater, smoking a pipe. I don’t know where he came from. He told me there was a boy trapped in the deadfall.”
Gramps. Stuey’s heart was racing, each beat causing a twinge in his ribs.
“Where is he?” he managed to ask.
“I don’t know. I looked where he was pointing and when I turned back he was gone. Like he’d evaporated. Kind of spooky, if you ask me. These woods . . . I don’t know. I never feel all that comfortable out here.”
“Do you ever hear the music?” Stuey asked.
The man looked startled. “You hear that too?”
“And the voices?”
The man licked his lips and looked behind him nervously. “Sometimes.”
“Do you ever see Elly Rose?”
“No! But I’ve seen . . . well, one time I thought I saw a man in a suit talking to a guy wearing plus fours. Nobody’s worn plus fours since before I was born.”
“Plus what?”
“Plus fours. Old-fashioned golf pants. Like baggy knickers. I just saw the two men for a second, and I blinked and they were gone.” He spat out a nervous laugh. “I don’t believe in ghosts, but if I did, this is the place for them. Maybe turning it into a mall isn’t such a bad idea.”
Stuey’s mom saw them coming across the orchard. She must have seen that Stuey was walking funny. She ran across the yard and grabbed him by the shoulders.
“Are you all right?”
“I think so.”
“He had a little mishap.” The Mushroom Man held out his hand. “Greg Eagen.”
She shook his hand. “Aren’t you . . .”
“Yeah, that’s me. I was hunting mushrooms. Your son got himself stuck under a log. I helped him out.”
