Of the Trees(60)

“We should go back,” Cassie whispered. “Something isn’t right here. I can feel it.”

Her words sparked an excitement in her friend, she could see the fire light in her eyes.

“I know,” Laney hissed in a soft, low tone. “This way,” she said, breaking away from Cassie and darting through a cluster of oaks.

Laney made it to the circle before Cassie could catch her again. It was empty. Cassie stepped inside the clearing just as Laney spun in the middle, her arms outstretched to the sky.

Sunlight streamed clear and cold through the opening in the forest, the same opening that had been filled with harsh laughter and empty beer bottles. The ground dipped, just as Cassie remembered, and roots sprung up through the circle. She didn’t understand how the police hadn’t found it. It wasn’t that far from the cemetery. It was just where everyone said it was.

As uncomfortable as Cassie had been that night, she was even more so now. It made no sense. Now, here, alone with just Laney, there was no threat. There were no men twice her age, no drunkenness, no leering. And yet …

She felt something, something like ice prickling at her spine. She felt watched.

She couldn’t see who was leering at her this time, but she sensed it.

“There’s no one here,” Cassie said, forcing her voice above a whisper, forcing normality. “We should go.”

“No,” Laney argued, shaking her head as she grinned at her friend. “It’s exactly as they said it would be.”

“They told you to come here and meet no one?” Cassie asked.

“You can’t feel it?” Laney said. Her tone was incredulous, tinged only slightly with anger. “I don’t believe you.”

“Feel what?” Cassie shot back, her voice louder now. She was angry, scared too, and she couldn’t believe her friend would take blind directions like this. She was supposed to be explaining, supposed to tell Cassie what had happened to Jessica.

Something moved. Someone. In the shadows behind the trees, the whispers started low.

Laney’s eyes narrowed. She moved from the center of the opening, where the sunlight shone directly down on her, elongating her features in shadow. As she moved toward Cassie, she pointed one finger in her friend’s face. “You’re lying,” Laney said, low and menacing. The voices echoed behind her. She’s not. She’s not. “You can feel it; it freaks you out. That’s why you want to go. Because I’m right. I have been right all along, and you don’t want to admit it.”

Cassie stepped back, her lips parting as she watched her friend’s advance. She cast her gaze around the trees, but nothing looked out at her. “I don’t know what you’re—”

She broke off at Laney’s hysterical laughter.

“Liar!” Laney screamed. “I’m right, I always was. They’re real, and it terrifies you. He was right about you. From the start, he pinpointed what you were and I defended you! I thought you heard them, thought you saw them. I thought that it was freaking you out. I was sure that if I brought you back here, you would feel it and know and finally be able to admit that you were wrong. I swore that you’d move on from there, though. That you would finally see!”

“See what?” Cassie said, every muscle frozen as she watched her friend with growing fear. She could hear, she could see—but she didn’t want to.

She won’t. She can’t.

Laney’s hair was coming loose from her tie, tendrils falling past her face. Her gaze roved from Cassie to the trees and Cassie found herself following her line of sight, looking for faces among the trunks, waiting for something evil to appear, knowing they were there, waiting.

“That I was right.”

“About what?”

“About everything,” Laney quipped, a wicked grin stretching over her features, even as her eyes wielded back toward the trees. Her smile faltered as she stared at Cassie once more. “Everything, except you.”

“Laney, don’t—”

She was backing away, slowly shaking her head. Her eyes stayed on Cassie’s, caught and locked, even as her feet shuffled backward over the uneven ground. They were infinite in their depth, and for the first time, Cassie noted the perpetual excitement tinged with a glimpse of sadness.

“I’m sorry you still can’t see it,” she whispered, a heavyhearted smile pulling at her lips. “You should go now.”

“I’m not leaving you out here!”

“I’m sorry Cass, but really, you should go.”

Her back was almost to the tree at the opposite end of the circle. It was large, the largest Cassie could see, old and gnarled with branches that twisted up and around the surrounding oaks. Laney’s eyes closed as she leaned back into the tree. Her mouth opened, and she whispered something. But it wasn’t meant for Cassie, or if it was, Cassie never heard it.

Cassie moved closer just as the forest floor beneath her feet trembled. She looked from the leaf strewed ground to her friend, registering first the obscene smile that had returned to part her lips, then watching as the ground ripped open at her feet.

It sounded like thunder, like air crashing together, but what it was, was earth ripping apart. It churned underneath her, sucking Laney down. Cassie sprang toward the old tree. Roots erupted from the ground and snaked over Laney’s legs. She fell to her knees. Cassie lost sight of her lower limbs under the shifting soil.