And the Trees Crept In(42)

“I’m staying with you,” he tells me. “Until you’re ready to come.”

I’m ready. So ready. But I never will. I can’t lose Nori.

I curl into his arms, and for once, I sleep.





It wasn’t a boom. Not even a crash. It was more like… a creeeeeaaak and I almost didn’t notice it in my half sleep.

WRONG.

I open my eyes and see nothing. The room is a terrifying black. I’m about to panic about being blind when I spot the embers burning in the grill of the fireplace.

Oh, God.

I reach over to wake Gowan, but all I feel is the cold blanket beside me. And then I hear Nori banging on the wall upstairs, hysterical and alone. I can almost hear her terrified gasping, sense her tears. [LET HER ROT, THE LITTLE PEST.]

“Nori!” I spring up.

“Wait—what’s going on?” Gowan says groggily from somewhere else in the library. Down a level—on one of the sofa chairs.

“I have to get to Nori!”

He’s up in a second. “Damn. Silla, we need lights.”

“There’s a generator in the basement. But it doesn’t work all the time. We stopped using it.”

“Okay, I’ll go down.”

“No!”

“We need to check it, Silla.”

“Okay, but let me come with you, then. I have to get to Nori first, though. There’s a candle on the desk by the window.” Even as I’m telling him this, I’m feeling my way down the spiral stairs. When I’m at the bottom, he already has the candle and is lighting it with the last embers.

I hug the blanket closer to me. It’s so cold. And then I open the door, stepping gingerly forward, very much aware of the hole in the entrance hall and the glaringly loud silence of it. I bump into the armchair and adjust my trajectory. My heart thuds inside me. [SCARED OF THE DARK, ARE WE?] The flesh-ball thing could be right next to me. He could be right beside me, waiting to reach out.

But no. Gowan is here. He has a candle. There is enough light to see by, but it flickers and moves, making the shadows dance.

“Tell me where the flashlight is, and some candles, and then go to Nori.”

But Nori is already coming to us.

Silla? Something’s wrong with my room.

She is breathless and pale, and she takes my hand, holding it firmly.

“It’s okay, bug. We’ve just run out of light.” I pick her up, and sit her on my hip, even though she really is getting too big for this. I tell myself it’s because she’s scared, but I know that really it’s because I am.

“Okay,” Gowan says. “Now, quickly, candles—”

“Okay, but we don’t have a flashlight. There are lanterns, though. Really old ones that will burn this miserable house down if we knock them over. I’ve gotten pretty good with them since being here.”

Gowan makes a face. “Really?”

“Yeah, well, my aunt is a little eccentric, if you didn’t notice. This house is old as hell itself.”

“Better than nothing.”

I grab his arm. “Gowan… this darkness… it’s… could it…”

His eyes harden, and he storms to the window. He opens the curtains and I stagger backward.

Earth. We are buried in earth.

Gowan runs out of the room and upstairs to my room. I follow, Nori clinging to me like her life depends on it, and I’m starting to think it does.

The trees.

They have completely surrounded La Baume, not an inch of air between them.

The trees are here, rising over us.

And La Baume is sinking.

We are completely and utterly trapped.





It’s the trees.

Silla says: This is…

Scary, I sign.

Silla says: … insane.

I nod. We are at the front door, and the garden should be out there, but it’s all dirt and trees! They are so close, like long wooden bricks. They took away all the light, all of it!

Gowan says: You’re kidding me. You’re actually f—ing kidding me.

Silla says: Watch it. (She looks at me.) Gowan says: Sorry.

Silla says: This manor is— Gowan says: Cursed. Or haunted. Or— Silla says: Something. Yeah.

Gowan says: Bloody hell. (Silla squints at him and nods at me and then he nods back and then I nod, too.) They talk for a long, long time, and I look at my friend, but he just smiles and steps back again, and I don’t know why he didn’t take my hand like before.

I put my arms around Silla.

This is a scary game.





Gowan gets the ax from the kitchen. It’s partly rusted, so I’m not convinced of how much use it’s going to be.

We run back up to my room.

“Stand back,” he says.

We do.

He shatters my bedroom window and begins chopping and chopping and chopping and chopping until Nori tugs on my dress and signs, Can we go away? Is there food?

I nod, and we silently leave Gowan to it.

He’s strong, Nori signs.

“Yeah,” I agree. “But I don’t think Gowan’s strength is going to be enough.”

Not him, she signs.





Gowan chops at the trees blocking the window all day.