And the Trees Crept In(43)

“This doesn’t happen,” I hear him muttering when I pass.

The wood splinters and falls away, piece by painful piece.

“Tomorrow,” Gowan says, dripping with sweat. “I’ll break through tomorrow. And then we’re getting the hell out of here.”

“Okay,” I tell him in a small voice. He doesn’t need to tell me that this is all my fault. If I had just gone with him when I still could have, then we’d be long free. Instead of trapped in a cursed (?) house, waiting to die. Waiting to sink into the earth and be buried alive. Waiting for him to arrive and tear us to shreds.

He seems to read my thoughts in my face because he pulls me into a tight hug. I tense, but he doesn’t let me go.

“There’s blame to share,” he whispers in my ear, softly, so Nori won’t hear.

I pull away. “There really isn’t.”

I leave the two of them staring after me as I wander into the house.





The next morning, the trees are full and whole again. It’s like Gowan’s ax never touched them at all. I am in the kitchen, trying to find something for Nori to eat, moving dishes around pointlessly, when I hear Gowan’s furious cry somewhere above us.

I go to find Gowan. When he spots me, he walks over and wraps me in his arms, lips in my hair, heart pounding against me. He is shaking. I hug him back, clenching my eyes shut against his awful, impossible reality. The strangest sensation takes over. That he is clinging on to me because he is afraid. Not of being trapped, or of… him… But afraid of ME. Afraid for me.

“I don’t know what to do,” he says, but I have the strange feeling he means something else entirely. Maybe: I’m scared.

“I don’t either,” I say, and think: We are going to die in here.

He closes his eyes. “It’s hopeless.”

There’s that word again.

Somewhere, out there, the trees are pushing even closer. If it’s possible. And we are sinking.

And a thought strikes me with such a chill that I almost drop the dish in my hand.

If the trees are at La Baume’s doorstep…

Then the Creeper Man is, too.





The air is stale in here.

My imagination, I’m sure, since we haven’t been trapped long enough for me to be able to tell. But I feel like I’m breathing in Gowan’s, Nori’s, and Cath’s soupy secondhand air. The rotting fruit full of worms doesn’t help. Nori is so hungry, I caught her trying to eat it.

That’s why I’m here, now. At the hole.

It’s gotten so big that it has swallowed up the chairs I put around it for my Nori’s protection. I let the plate tilt forward, slowly, so that the fruit slips off the plate in increments, leaving a trail of brown juice behind. A few worms linger, so I drop the plate, too.

I bend forward and listen. Intently.

I never hear an impact.

I stare down into the pit, straining to see something. And for a moment, the merest fraction of a minute, I think I see something writhing down there. Roots, maybe, twisting and bending around one another? Or were they vines? Hell, for all I know, they were arms, reaching out for me.

I certainly feel the pull. I think my future may just include an attic and a singular pacing path.

I will never tell Nori that.

I will never tell Gowan.

But it’s getting to be a bit of a challenge to hold back.

That’s right, his voice coos. Daddy’s little girl is coming home.

We’re trapped in this house, waiting to die. Why not… give in?

Why the hell should I resist?





Gowan is here all the time now and I’m happy. He’s really nice.

But sometimes I get sleepy because my friend wants to play almost every night now. But I fall asleep during the day because Silla doesn’t notice and we don’t try reading anymore. But Auntie started screaming again one night while she walks up and down her high-up room, and now Silla walks up and down all night, too, and once I saw her pulling at her hair and it made me scared because she looked scary.

But Auntie screamed and screamed and then Silla screamed. But then Gowan came to sit with her and it got better after that because then only Auntie was screaming.

The only bad thing is that Silla shouts at me a lot and that’s a bad thing. But my tummy is so sore that I have to put something in it sometimes and Silla doesn’t like that.

I don’t want to make Silla angry.

And I don’t want to play with the man anymore.

I don’t think he’s really my friend at all.

But it’s too late now.





Gowan is unusually quiet at our mockery of “dinner.” It has been three days now. I think he is realizing how futile it is. The trees grow back each time he cuts them away. We talked about opening the kitchen door to dig a tunnel, but I pointed out that giving the earth entry might allow it to bury us alive. He had closed his eyes and covered his face with hands blistered and broken.

Maybe he is giving in to the HOPELESSNESS that pervades the air. I should feel satisfaction: I told you, a tiny voice whispers inside. Instead, I feel afraid. Please don’t lose hope, too. You are the only one with any vapors of it left.

So now I am the one staring. Staring at the way even his hair seems limp. The slow movement of his hand as he runs his spoon listlessly through the watery soup. The candles burn low and no one speaks. Even Nori isn’t eating.