And the Trees Crept In(16)

I lift a hand and wave at the me’s. They wave back, and when I laugh, they all sneer.

As I turn away, something about the reflection strikes me as not right, in a way I can’t put into words. Is the reflection out of time with me? Is it too dark at the very back there? The very last tiny me, waving? I rub my eyes and turn away, but then jolt at the idea that I’ve turned my back on hundreds of little versions of myself, all watching me. I glance back and they all do, too. But they are wrong. Somehow.

“Stupid,” I tell myself, and walk farther away.

I’m trying, even now, after three long years, to get a handle on this manor. There are still rooms I haven’t explored, and the idea of not knowing every inch of this place is suddenly very wrong. I need to know La Baume inside and out.

Besides. We’re now running dangerously low on food, and I need to try again to get Cath to tell me if she has any hidden supplies. And she’s not about to tell me.

And I’m not about to go up there and see her.

A creak behind me startles my thoughts away. I turn to look back down the hall, but see nothing. Not even the little me’s are big enough to make an appearance in the mirrors now.

But something is wrong.

“Nori, if you’re spying, then stop it.”

I wait for her to jump out, but there is nothing. Only a stillness that is too still.

I need to be firm with myself, so I turn away.

An old manor, at night. Who wouldn’t get the creeps?

Except I hear the creak again. Barely there. Like a shifting of weight on the floorboards.

“Cath?” I call.

The stillness becomes deeper.

And then I hear Cath upstairs, pacing above me.

Creeeeeeaaaaak. Creeeeaaaaaaak. Crrreeeeeeaaaaak.

And I know that whatever is at the end of the hall is not Cath.


So I run.


I don’t think about anything except the movement of my legs, and where I’m headed: the library.

I rush in and shut the door firmly behind me, ignoring the mocking voice inside telling me I’m a child for being so afraid of what is probably nothing. Probably.

The library is a monolith. Central to La Baume in the way the heart is to a human body. It’s a semicircular room, three floors high—a cylinder cut right through the middle of the manor. Standing in the center, you can look right up through each floor and the skylight to see the sky. It’s a sanctuary, but even here, the oppression of the house is all around, trying to press in.

I’m determined to keep the door to this room locked at all times.

And I have no reason to think this, but I know this room is still uninfected.

I don’t even really know what I mean. Only… that La Baume is somehow sick. Like it caught a nasty bug, and the library is the last defense of its immune system.

I came here looking for… the past. Some feeling of how things used to be. When Cath, Nori, and I would sit here for hours, reading or talking or playing. When Cath stroked my hair and told me everything would be all right, when she cuddled Nori close, like she was her own daughter. If I could catch even a breath of that, I would feel okay.

I wander up and down the rows of books, some of which sit neatly in the bookcases, others stacked in haphazard, leaning towers. While I walk, I sing: “Nobody likes me, everybody hates me, I think I’ll go eat worms…”

I touch the books as I pass, reading the spines.

“Big ones, little ones, fat ones, juicy ones, itsy-bitsy, fuzzy wuzzy worms…”

Some of the titles are the most peculiar things I have ever seen. I’m not sure if they unnerve or delight me.

“Bite their heads off, mmm, they’re juicy, throw the tails away…”

I pick up one and stare at the spine; the title is half-erased by the passage of long years. Bulgarian Thimbles: A History.

“Nobody knows how big I’ll grow eating worms three times a day.”

I decide to make a mental note of my favorites.

A Gentleman’s Guide to Coffin-Making

An Argument Against Tea Cozies (eight hundred pages) Bulgarian Thimbles: A History

A Typology of Bed Fleas

Weaving with Dog Hair

A Practical Guide to Embalming



Despite myself, I grin. But I’m looking for something specific. I touch many of the tomes, hoping that somehow I will know which one to open. Which to explore. There has to be an answer in here. A history of La Baume, maybe. Or of the town. Something that will suggest what could be happening in this manor.

If nothing else, this is a distraction from the roots in the earth and the trees creeping toward us.

A distraction from the fact that I am almost convinced I’m being haunted. From the fact that Cath is mad, in the attic, pacing up and down, that the garden is dying, that we’re running out of food, and that something is terribly, terribly wrong here.

Circling the loom, Silla darling. You’re circling the loom.





4


too stupid to see



Mash it up and add some spice

put it in, keep it down

rumbling is a childish vice

hunger is the dark’s device.





BROKEN BOOK ENTRY


These are my dreams. Someone will walk from the trees, and the sky will be bleak above him. And then he smiles, waves. He is gray-faced. He begins to jog across the green toward me, smiling, and my heart swells into the universe, which cracks open, revealing an infinity. It’s almost like a memory, but of course it is just the night visions. Nightmares. There are too many of them these days. I have them almost every night. Most people have nightmares about their past, but not me. I have them about my present. He reaches me. He takes hold of me and pulls me closer. His head on my shoulder. He wants me. He pulls back to look at me but his face is gone. In its place an eyeless thing watches; I scream…