And the Trees Crept In(9)

The garden sparkled in orange hues of sunset, the old wooden table draped with a pale cloth and sprinkled with bundles of dusty-pink roses from the garden. I smiled at them, even though I wished Cath had just left them on the plant.

So pretty.

Cath made a cake. I took a slice from her offering hand, noting that her nail polish matched the roses. Her smile was so wide that a jolt of pleasure jumped through me.

Until I saw that it didn’t reach her eyes. And that the nail polish was actually textured and lumpy, slopped on over her cuticles. There was a drop of it in her hair.

And then I noticed something else. She was still smiling, but she wasn’t looking at me. Not directly. She was staring at the tip of my left ear. Or something over my shoulder.

“Enjoy!” she proclaimed, wiping her hands on the floral apron.

I took my plate into the garden, away from the light of the kitchen, which licked the grass with a paraffin tongue, and sat by the hedges, alone. It was moist cake, and I had three pieces.

The breeze brushed my cheek, and I laughed.

I was happy, I realized. I’d never felt so happy, despite Cath’s strange smile. Amazing that a cake could do that. Or maybe it was more about the acknowledgment. Acknowledgment that I was born fifteen years ago, and that I was here and it was worth celebrating. Maybe.

Nori skipped over, carrying a paper plate. She put it down and showed me what she was holding. Something dangled from her fist, the one attached to the bad arm, so it shook a little with the strain of lifting it up to show me. Her mouth was covered in pink icing. More pink.

Look, she signed, one-handed. Look!

The thing swung like a fatty bit of raw bacon covered in cake.

Worms! She laughed, digging into the piece of cake to find more.

Everything s l o w e d down around me.

Wrong. This is wrong.

Cath stood in the kitchen doorway, the light pooling around her. She was laughing, tears running down her cheek.

I felt cold bite my hands.


The next day Cathy went up to the attic.

And never came down.


Fifteen passed.

Sixteen, too.

Seventeen arrived, and so did he.





BOOK 2:


Earthen Sky



The man in the trees

came in the night

to steal the girl

and give her a fright.

the little girl blocked

her ears and eyes

but the Creeper Man wears

many a disguise.





OLD MAN IN HIS CHAIR




In a faraway place, an old man sits in his armchair.

Next to him, on the table, there is tea.

It went cold a while ago.

He’s been staring at the picture in the frame—it also sits on the table. Beside the cup of tea.

He ponders it, unblinking.

Thinking of all the things that were, that are, that will not be.

The picture is old now. The face no longer real. Only to him.

The days have grown long, and longer. The dusk droops languidly over gray skies that seem as aged as he is. As wrinkled, too.

And the nights: endless, as they have always been. Too many memories. Too many nightmares.

Too many nights.

He is tired.

A life, too long, has made him so.

He reaches for his tea at last, but it seems his wait is over.

His eyes are closed now, his jaw slack.

His nightmares are done. And so are his nights.





1


beautiful disposition



A silly girl did silly play

with dolls and mud and thread

the tall blind man who watched her game

did send her round the bend.





BROKEN BOOK ENTRY


I was born on a moldy mattress in a bad part of London. Sometimes I think that’s why I’m crazy. But (crazy) Aunt Cath doesn’t like to talk about all that. She doesn’t want to think about the grimy windowsills or the dirty ceiling, or the fact that her sister, Pamela, had to live that life. She hates it when I talk about how all Mam had to wear was a blue nightdress—silk and faded. I didn’t even have shoes. It was an emergency—a real emergency—that forced my father to buy clothes. No less. He thought all humans should remain beautiful and naked, which he was most of the time. I don’t know if he was a nudist or just extreme. It was simply his strange and sometimes sinister disposition. Auntie Cath thought he was trash. By the end, I thought so, too.

There was fear in Mam’s eyes when she held Nori sometimes. I know she felt it. Everyone thought she was weak, but I thought she was strong. Until the end. Nori would think her weak, too, if she’d been old enough. It was no secret that we were all afraid.

She didn’t have many words to use by the end. He beat them out of her, with his words, with his hands. They were knocked clean out or crooked, like some of Nori’s teeth. But, see, Mam wasn’t crazy. Or maybe she was. We were all a bit gone living with him.

We snuck onto the train at 10:03, me and Nori alone, and we watched the gray of London fading away into green and yellow fields, and then into gray mountains. It was a long trip, and a big woman served food from a trolley in each compartment. But we had nothing to spend. People get precious about money, funny thing that, it being paper and ink. Nori tugged on my hand and pointed to her belly and I shrugged because what could I do? But there were tears on her cheeks, smudging the dirt, so I pulled off my button–the only one left–and gave it to her to suck, and she fell asleep, wrapped up in the good blanket.