Of the Trees(63)

“May I speak with your daughter in private?”

“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” Patrick answered firmly, his hand clamping down on Cassie’s shoulder. She looked from her father to the police officer. Gibbons was calm, sure of himself. He nodded in acquiescence, but Cassie cleared her throat.

“I don’t mind, Dad,” she murmured. Her father blustered, but Cathy stepped further into the room, watching Cassie. She laid a hand on her husband’s arm.

“Would it be easier?” she asked, her voice low. Cassie caught her mother’s eye and was immensely grateful for the flash of understanding there. She nodded. “We’ll be upstairs if you need us. Just yell.”

She pushed her husband toward the hall, shushing him.

“You’re seventeen, Miss Harris?” Officer Gibbons asked once her parent’s bedroom door shut. Cassie nodded. “And do you hear voices? See things?”

“What?” Cassie asked, startled. He continued as though she hadn’t interrupted.

“Think about hurting yourself or others? Ever try to kill yourself?”

“No!”

He took it as an all-encompassing no. Though it wasn’t, not really. She was indignant. Cassie’s heart was pounding, and she was sure her pulse was jumping visibly enough for him to see if he happened to glance at her bounding neck. She felt warm and uncomfortable and almost wanted to call out for her mother, but she didn’t. She knew why the officer wanted to talk with her, knew he could mention the picture, or Aidan, and she didn’t want her parents to hear any of that.

“Okay, good,” he continued, not acknowledging her discomfort. “So you’re not insane?”

She shook her head, staring at him.

“So, clear it up for me,” he said bluntly. “What happened tonight?”

Cassie paused, taking a quick breath. She had already decided, at the hospital and on the short drive home: the truth wouldn’t work. If she told them what she saw, why she was covered in dirt and her fingernails broken, they would not believe her. They would think she was insane. She couldn’t explain about the voices, about the way Laney was sucked into the earth, about the terrifying freakishness of the men from the carnival. But she could describe them, she could point them in the logical direction toward Jude and Aidan and Corey. Because however it happened, whatever had happened, that was where Laney was now. Dead or alive or something in between, she was with them.

Cassie told Officer Gibbons a more elaborate version of the final story she told the nervous cop at the hospital. She told him there was a man; she could remember his features. She didn’t say he was from the carnival, knowing what that had earned her the last time she tried. She offered to describe him. She plucked out every last detail of Jude’s face and body that she could remember, and she repeated it to Gibbons. She told him the man grabbed Laney. She told him she could hear others and that she was afraid. She said she saw two other men waiting in the forest, described Aidan and Corey, said the three of them took Laney and that she was afraid they would take her, too.

“What about this tree?” he prompted, suspicious, but listening. Cassie shrugged.

“I was talking to Laney, and I looked down. When I looked back up, she was gone. He was behind the tree, I didn’t see him until he moved back, into the woods. At first, it looked like she just disappeared.”

“But you got a pretty good look at the guy,” he said, his eyebrows raising. She nodded. “You said the tree ate her. That’s what you were saying to the officer on the scene.”

Cassie tried to work up the appropriate blush. “I freaked. I ran. I left her.” She teared up at the admission because this, at least, was true. She had left her. She had no idea how to find Laney, how to help her. Tears spilled over onto her cheeks, and Gibbons had the decency to pause his questions until she had wiped them away.

She tried again to explain where the clearing was, but she knew it wouldn’t be there if he tried to find it. It wasn’t natural, it didn’t consistently exist. An overwhelming calm swept through her as she accepted that, a natural admission that something, something she couldn’t explain using laws of the known world, was occurring. Her mind felt quieter as she admitted this to herself.

He didn’t seem to mind her being unable to give directions to the clearing. He seemed to accept that she had gotten lost, and she had, coming out of the woods miles from where she entered it.

Because that too was unnatural. Something had chased her out, taunted her with whispers and wind and roots springing up to catch her toes. Her breathing settled into a calm pattern, her mind blocking the panic that she knew would come.

“What happens now?” Cassie asked, locking eyes with Gibbons. He held her gaze, suggested they call her parents down. Once Cathy and Patrick had Cassie sandwiched between them on the couch, he continued.

“We’re organizing a search party. We’ll start in the morning. You all should probably stay inside. The media will kick up a frenzy outside your house. We’re going with the kidnapping, just like your daughter said. I’ll talk to the Blakes, give them your side of the story.” He paused here, regarding them. “They’ve been your neighbors for a long time?”

“Years,” Patrick answered, “since the girls were babies.”

“And our friends, as well,” Cathy offered. Gibbons nodded.