And the Trees Crept In(46)
She doesn’t need to say my name for me to know that she thought it.
She gets to her feet and hurries over to me, burying her head in my torso. Shame, joy, relief, guilt, heartache, and love wash through me, and I hold her head, bending over it and covering it with kisses.
“I’m sorry,” I whisper. “I’m so sorry. I love you.”
I say these words over and over, and they become a mantra. When the frenzy has died, and Nori steps away to look up into my face, she is crying and smiling.
I cup her cheeks and connect my eyes to hers. “You are the whole world to me,” I tell her. “Did you know that?”
She sniffs and shakes her head. She really didn’t know that.
“I love you more than anything.” And then I close the walls and step away. “Now get out of here, you pest.”
She grins and skips off, settling back down in front of the fire.
Gowan smiles at her, and then looks over at me.
“We were worried.”
I shrug. “Why? Nowhere I could go.”
I know it’s not what he means, and he knows I know, but he lets it drop and I’m grateful. We leave Nori by the fire and go up to the second level.
“I found roots in the basement,” I tell him, when we are out of Nori’s earshot.
His mouth falls a little at that, but he tries to hide it behind a smile. “Oh.”
“I should have listened to you. I should have taken Nori and gone while we could. With or without Cath.”
I wait for him to tell me I’m right, that I was stupid to wait, to resist. Instead, he says, “I don’t think that would have helped. I finally realize that running was never the right choice. We need to face this problem, whatever it is. And we have to face it here.”
“The curse.”
“If that’s what it is.”
“I think Cath knows what’s going on. She has a long history with this house.”
“Has she told you everything? About… the Creeper Man?”
I catch Nori’s manic motioning with her good arm over the balcony. No eyes, Nori signs from below us, by the fire.
“No eyes,” I say for her. “No. I don’t think she has.”
Gowan swallows. “Well. Then we’ve got to go and talk to her.”
“I…” No, no, no, no. “I tried once. She didn’t make a whole lot of sense.”
“We have to try again. This is the last chance.”
“I…”
Gowan takes my hands. “She’s your aunt. You have to try.”
It’s not my aunt that terrifies me. It’s those stairs.
Silla is going to be very upset, but I know that I have to go. The Creeper Man is beside me, so tall he is like a mountain! I am scared, but I know nothing bad can happen, so I tell my tummy to stop shouting that I must be afraid and run very far and hide, quick!
The Creeper Man is my friend. He said there were still games to play.
I put my hand into his and we go away.
Bye, bye, Silla! See you soon!
19
we made a man
There was an old lady
who lived all alone,
until her nieces
came all the way home.
nightly she prayed
he’d stay away,
but childhood demons,
come back to play.
A panel of wood, followed by another one, higher than the last.
Up. And up. Up again.
Framed by two leering walls of stone.
They’re just stairs. I keep telling myself that. Steps. A path to follow. That’s all.
“What is it?” Gowan whispers behind me.
What is it about these stairs that makes him lower his voice? Something about them reduces volume, and that can’t be good.
I shake my head, unable to speak.
“We have to talk to her.”
I put my hand on the banister, but my whole body is rigid with tension. The stairs seem a mile high—they might as well be a mountain. I start to hyperventilate.
“Sill…”
“I can’t.”
I can’t breathe—I can’t breathe! No—nononono I can’t, I can’t—don’t make me—“You can. We have to.”
He takes my hand, and the spell is broken. I move because he is with me.
Step
by
step.
On either side of us, the roots twist and dangle with the stairs and the walls, and when the door swings open, it is to an infestation. Roots have bent and twisted their way into the house, draped along the floor, the windows, the walls—huge, gnarly, strong. Cathy lies trapped in the middle.
She looks like a princess in a fairy tale gone wrong. Her hair, sun-kissed wheat, is splayed over the roots and vines that have her in a stranglehold, choking her body into a smaller shape than it should be. She should be crying out, but she is smiling, a glassy glint in her eyes.
“Silla,” she says, tears in her words but not in her eyes. “Oh, my Silla. At last.”
I fall to my knees with the shock of it. “Auntie Cath…”
“This is…” Cath tries to take a breath, nice and deep, but the roots are so big across her chest, slowly crushing, getting tighter. “… all your fault.”