And the Trees Crept In(49)

I get to my feet.

And when I take my first step into the void, Gowan takes one beside me.





The house all but disappears into this eerie wood. It is too still to be any conventional forest, too creepily silent. There are no birds here. There is no breeze. No real life. Here and there, I spot a wall sconce protruding from one of the trunks and I know that I am in La Baume and maybe this is all just a messed-up delusion. Did I take some kind of drug—LSD maybe? Am I still back in London, hallucinating the hell out of my mind?

We walk for a long time, looking for signs, searching the carpet and bracken for footsteps, but there is nothing.





Cath is gone. And still I hear the creaking.

Only now, it’s the boughs above us. The floorboards beneath us. My stomach even creeeaaaks as it growls. It’s like I’m turning to wood along with everything else.

And the mold is still growing on me. And I still smell rotting meat.

“The smell,” I say on the third day. “It’s getting stronger.”

He nods. “Yeah. I can smell it now.” He glances over at me. “Wait. Sit down. You’re practically falling over.”

I shake my head.

“I want to ask you something. I’ve wanted to ask you something.”

I’m so tired.

“Tell me about your mother.”

I bite my tongue and sit down on the mossy, stinky carpet.

After a pause, Gowan sighs. “You always do that.”

“What?”

“Whenever I mention your mother, your face changes. I know you lied to me before. I know that wasn’t the whole story. What are you hiding, Silla? Why won’t you talk to me?”

“Because you’re… I don’t know.” Too good.

“You can’t call me unimportant or a stranger or whatever line you have in your head. Not after everything we’ve been through.”

I stare at him. “It’s just the opposite.… You’re just another thing to hurt me.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Just leave me alone.”

I struggle to my feet and walk away.

“No! No, I won’t skulk off this time.” He takes my shoulders into his hands. “You have to talk to me. You can’t keep running away from me!”

“Why not?” I yell, my voice barely carrying beyond my face.

“Because I’m in here with you and I’m helping you and I love you!”

I try to shake him off with some violence. “Then so much the worse for you!”

He holds me tighter. “What happened to make you so cold? Cold as stone! Your heart is like a rock in there, drumming against your body and breaking everything inside!”

“Yes!” I shriek. “Yes, it is! I got that from my father, my wonderful, abusive father—happy now?”

“No, I’m not, because you’re still hiding!” Gowan takes a breath. “All of this,” he says, gesturing around us. “It’s to do with you. Cath is gone. If she was to blame, then surely this would have stopped. It would be over, right?”

“Firstly,” I snap, “what logic are you using here? Is this something you have prior experience with? Are you following the cursed-mansion-haunted-woods-child-stealing-creature handbook?”

He gives me a pained expression.

“Second,” I say, talking louder when it looks like he’ll try to interrupt. “How do you know that Cath vanishing wouldn’t just leave everything like this forever? How do you know that her”—death death death—“disappearance isn’t part of the puzzle?”

His eyes burn me. “I don’t. We don’t know anything.”

“Exactly.” Our lips are close now. So close.

“But I do know this,” he persists, his breath caressing my lips. “I know you’re hiding something. You’re carrying around a secret, Silla Daniels, and it’s eating you alive.”

His words stop me in my tracks. Suspicion pulses inside me. Howdoesheknow? Howdoesheknow?

It’s eating you alive.

“What are you talking about?”

He leans even closer to me and the shadow of a thick branch falls over his face like a shroud. “I can see it in your face. It’s like a weight pulling down your features. It’s dragging you into the earth.”

I snort. “Melodramatic much?”

He lets go of my shoulder and touches my cheek, and his words are soft. “Come off it, Silla. Let me help you.”

“Gowan,” I whisper, our lips touching ever so slightly. “Let me go.”

“Silla, please,” he breathes, closing his eyes. “Please don’t do this to me.”

“Let me go. Let me go, let me go—”

And he does. He lets me go, even though I can see in his face everything inside him is bursting to keep me. Love and hope are warring with despair, all on his beautiful face. He wants to help me, to love me, and to save me. I recall his words on those green pages; I hate what I’m doing to him. But he’s an idiot because you can’t save someone from herself.

“Stop trying!” I yell at him, as though he knows what I mean.

I walk some feet away from him and then collapse into a puddle because my legs can’t hold me anymore and the weight on my shoulders is too heavy to carry much farther.