We could have blamed the fire on someone else, said we’d gone out after we’d seen it and tried to put it out. That did occur to us, just because no one in their right mind would have believed the truth. But in the end, Dad’s gas can was left behind at the scene of the crime, my Louisville Slugger was in the bottom of the ravine with my initials on it, and there wasn’t much use trying to pretend. We admitted to the sheriff that we’d done it, but fudged a little, saying we’d started a campfire that got out of control. We got dragged into court and scared by the constable, told we could do 90 days in county waiting for a court date for what we’d done, but since we were kids, our parents would have to pay, and how the hell did we feel about that?
Well, we felt plenty rotten, but after the trouble died down, we felt pretty damn good in the end. All the nights that had gone by after the fire we spent watching our windows, and sometime near the end of the first month of summer we felt certain they were gone. The shapes, spirits, whatever they were had left. We’d reclaimed our forest.
We climbed up to the tree house when we could again, and overlooked the creek and the woods below us with a new appreciation for it. Sometimes I was haunted by the memory of Tom Plecker up there, and I never mentioned anything to Bobby, but maybe he felt it too. Halfway through the summer when it got into the 100s, we didn’t go up there anymore, blaming it on the heat. But that was the last year we went up there at all. Probably that piece of plywood is still nailed up in that tree, our rotten rope frayed and crisp with age, maybe an old Black Lightning comic book, rain-warped and sun-faded, flipping its own pages in the wind.
The following year I finally got up the courage to ask out Wendy Hawkins. I kissed her in the gymnasium at a school dance behind some folded-up lunch tables, and did a pretty poor job of it, but it was amazing, and our hearts ran like jackhammers whenever we saw each other after that.
Bobby stayed at home more often that year. My mom still looked after him, but we kind of sensed that we’d moved past that magical age of childhood into the uncertain teenage years, and even our moms seemed a little sad about it. We stayed the best of friends, but other interests wound their ways into our lives. Wendy and I became an “item”, and when seventh grade started, Bobby joined the football team and became a star running back. Sometimes I would stop by and we’d drink some lemonade and look out on the back yard he’d cleared from the forest behind their house. We’d shoot the BB gun now and again, and talk about girls, and as we advanced into high school we talked about what we wanted to do with our lives and where we wanted to go to college. There were cars, and nights at the drive-in, and the arcade, and movies, and then we were leaving home, and it seemed to happen in a whirl of energy and excitement.
So, our childhood was gone, just like that.
And now when I look back, it seems a distant dream.
Everything but the Bone Tree, which I remembered clear as a summer night, on into college. And then, life crowded my thoughts, and on came the sands of time.
EPILOGUE
Before that night when Lindsey asked me if I was going to die, I hadn’t thought about the Bone Tree in six years. Not since Dad died and I held my mother’s frail frame in my arms as she shuddered with grief.
I wonder if it’s still there.
Sometimes I’m tempted to make the drive down, out of the city, out Greathouse Road, just to see. But I don’t want to see it. I don’t want to talk about it to anyone, and any time over the years that people traded ghost stories, or the subject came up, I clammed up, smiled, and never said a damn thing.
But now that I’ve got this down, I feel better.
A little.
I wonder how Bobby’s doing and I think about my dad.
I wonder if he can see me now.
Trish came home while I was still sitting in the living room watching the fire die. She came in and started talking about the jewelry party she’d been at. I smiled and nodded and smelled her perfume. I looked at the soft lines of her face, the sparkle of life in her eyes. I thought back to when our love had been new. Before we were married and I became a father. How it had felt: like a bonfire in the depths of my heart. And now...how buried we were. How buried that pure and powerful love was, piled under the weight of life.
She stopped talking. Looked back at me. Our eyes met in the dying light of the fire.
“Are you okay?”
The kids asked me if we were going to die tonight.
“Yes, I’m all right.”
She reached over and touched my knee.
“This has been a tough month.”
I nodded.
“I’m tired,” she said.
I touched her hand on my knee. Looked at the way my hand met with hers, the modest wedding ring on her finger. The small diamond caught a bit of light in a facet as she pulled her hand away from mine.
“I’m going to bed,” she said.
“Okay. I’ll be in in a minute.”
She left the room, shutting off the kitchen light. The shadows of the room rushed in to rejoin me. I was left again in the corner, alone with my Bible and the dying firelight.
“You’ll hurt your eyes reading in the dark like that.”
I nodded, but she was gone. Down the hall to the bedroom.
I sat there in the living room, lost in nostalgia.
It occurred to me that Bobby and I never really talked about what the Bone Tree was. Where those beings came from. His mom always said those things came from somewhere else. That they weren’t ghosts, but demons. Evil spirits. Is that what you became when your soul was lost? Had it been a portal to hell and all those tortured souls found the door to freedom through that tree in the backwoods by Sutter’s Creek?
I think we never talked about it because of his dad. Because we saw him there...or at least something that looked like him. He’d been studying to be a pastor, but there weren’t any rules saying pastors couldn’t go to hell. Still, I’m more convinced that it was something messing with us, something evil toying with our deepest emotions, mining our doubts to wreak chaos in our hearts.
I stared into the fire.
There was a shadow in the foyer.
I looked over, expecting to see Trish, but there was nothing.
Nothing at all. My imagination.
The Bone Tree.
Eternity.
I shook it off.
Weariness settled in my bones. My mind wanted to shut down, and my eyes suddenly wanted to follow suit.
I stood with a groan. Forty-one years suddenly felt very heavy. I shuffled down the hall to the bedroom. It was dark and quiet. Trish was already in bed, asleep. I undressed at the bedside in the light that filtered through the slats of the blinds from the streetlights of the neighborhood. I slipped into bed beside her.
I felt the warmth of her body radiating out from her. She lay very still. I wanted to cozy up next to her. Wrap an arm around her and be human spoons. I wanted to gently touch her hair, to stroke it and breathe in the scent of her perfume, to kiss her softly on her neck. I wanted to make love to her.
Instead, I lay on my back, staring up at the ceiling, pondering death. Missing Dad. Contemplating God; feeling very alone in my relationship with him. Knowing he was there, but never hearing his voice speak in my ear. Trusting with faith, hearing him speak through his word, or through others, or my convictions, but never with a voice.
Not like them.
I might call Bobby tomorrow, see if that last number he gave me was still any good, but I’d thought that before, and when the next day came I never made the call. Maybe now was the time. Maybe we could go down together, take a drive out Greathouse Road and have a look around.
Then again, maybe it’s best to leave the past behind.
About the Author
Christopher Fulbright is a former journalist turned technical writer with fiction published by DarkFuse, PS Publishing, Delirium Books, Elder Signs Press, Bad Moon Books, and several others. He is a recipient of the Richard Laymon Presid
ent’s Award given by the Horror Writers Association, and is an active member of the International Thriller Writers organization.
For more information about the author, please visit http://www.christopherfulbright.com.
Other Books by this Author
By Christopher Fulbright
The Midnight Order
Red Chalice
The Bone Tree
When It Rains and Other Wreckage
Of Wolf and Man
Already Gone
Sometimes Women Are So Cold
By Fulbright & Hawkes
Night Wraith
Shamian Gate
Scavengers
Elderwood Manor
The Devil Behind Me
Sorrow Creek
Black Mercy Falls
Blood Coven
Then Comes the Child
Links to buy these books in all available formats can be found at http://christopherfulbright.com/?page_id=2
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