And the Trees Crept In(61)

BROKEN BOOK ENTRY


There are secrets that I have forgotten. Like some kind of power that’s inside me, eating away at me, like a cloud hanging over my head, haunting my every move. Like a shadow. And if I could rid myself of them once and for all, I would. Isn’t it obvious? Was that not the point of this book? As though by putting them down I would make them less alive? Make them less real—or at least get them out of me. Out of my head. But it’s pointless. All of it is. Because now I’ve got nothing but those secrets. And I’m forgetting them. It’s just… it seems important. The garden is dead. The house is dead. And we are all nothings inside it.





“You have to eat. You have to.”

I shake my head. Can’t he see it’s useless? My body won’t allow it. “I can’t.”

He growls as he turns away, throwing out his hands in frustration. Then he whirls on me. “Do you want to save yourself?” he yells. “Stop getting distracted with things that don’t matter!”

I open my mouth to reply, but it stretches wide and round, expanding into a dark chasm, and I am stepping through it, back into the dank cave. The Creeper Man’s lair.

He’s toying with me.

“Open your eyes,” Gowan whispers.

The water, dripping somewhere in the distance, echoes louder than before. The cave is, if it’s possible, even darker. Still. Too still.

A bundle of cloth lays ten paces away from me. I glance back at Gowan, but he is just watching me.

“Stop getting distracted,” he whispers. “You have to face this.”

I step forward, and though there is nothing to see but a bundle of—blanket? cloth? curtains?—my legs are weak and I stumble.

I

fall

to my knees when I realize. When I see. It’s not a bundle of cloth.

“No,” I choke.

NO.

My whole being shouts the word. Rejects the sight. Fights this reality.

“No… No. No. No.” My hands are rigid like claws. “NO!”

It’s a tiny, little, dried-out husk. A dehydrated thing that used to be a child.

It’s Nori. Nori is lying on the floor of an impossible cave, deep along the corridor that is also Python Wood.

And she is dead.

More than dead.

She’s a shriveled husk of a little girl, her mouth open and glaring, her eyes sunken and leathery.

I retch and retch, but there is no food and no vomit.

“No… no… no!”

My mind collapses.

Why? How can this happen? I just saw her running through the woods! I don’t understand. This isn’t happening. This isn’t real. I won’t believe it. Nori! How is this real? What’s going on? NORI! NORI! NORI! I’m sorry—this can’t be real I can’t survive this—Idon’tunderstandthisisn’trealThisiswon’tbelieveit. Nori! How is this real? Whattrickthisisn’thappeningIcan’tIcan’tIcan’tNoriNoriNoriNoriohNoriNoriNori…

I take all the pain, the anguish, the confusion, the air into my lungs, and I SCREAM.

Gowan is in front of me. I grab his shirt and I shake it. “Make it stop! Take it back!”

He takes my chin and he forces me to look at the thing that is Nori.

“I can’t!” I scream. “I can’t!”

Gowan’s own cry does not block out my own; I hear him nonetheless. “You have to remember!”

But it is too late.

And I am falling.





BOOK 6:


Flaming Stone



The truth of the tale

reads between lines

what can you see

within those vines?

the manor is tall

the manor is wide

the Creeper Man is

the only divide.





Do you know what grief feels like?


Really feels like?





Like this.





28


do you see?



He knows when you slumber

because that’s his domain

he feels your fearful blunder

in darkness he remains.





BROKEN BOOK ENTRY


The one thing I cling to now is the memory. The truth in memory. Doesn’t that mean something? Like, a memory will hold the truth even when everything else fails? While you wait for something that may not happen? It’s because of that memory, that truth, that I’ll wait forever. Mam’s voice. Circling the loom, dearie, is also a memory, and also the truth. Except she never called me “dearie.” Did she? Don’t think about it. You’ll get all turned around. Who does my mother think I am now? That is a question that might scare me if I think too hard about it. What does your memory do for you? What does your mother think of you?





1980: “Where is she, Pammy? Tell me, now!”

Pamela shakes her head, her lips quivering. They part and a stuttering of sound staggers out. “I—I—I—I—”

Catherine grabs her shoulders roughly. “Pamela, where is Anne?”

Her voice rings through the room and down the hall, louder than the storm outside. Papa left her in charge, and look what she has allowed to happen.