Of the Trees(70)

“It was through here,” Cassie murmured, walking ahead of the crowd that followed her. Her mother tried to keep pace, cursing under her breath as snarls of underbrush caught on her boots. Officer Gibbons kept back, his eyes steady on Cassie’s back. She could feel them there. But it was a comfort, really, having someone sure and steady, someone with a gun on his hip, following her into these woods. Several junior officers were behind him, their footsteps loud and intrusive in this still place.

Cassie moved silently, instinctively ducking branches and following the path ahead. She wasn’t sure she would recognize it, wasn’t sure she could definitely find the place Laney had disappeared from, but once in the woods, things came back to her easily. The trees were shockingly familiar. She hadn’t expected that. The clusters of oaks that she recognized, the fallen pine that she had to step over, she knew this path. It didn’t take long to reach the clearing.

Or what had been the clearing.

It didn’t look the same, though that didn’t shock Cassie. It was just different enough though, just changed enough, that she thought others might have trouble recognizing it. Pine needles were scattered all around in thick concentrations, they covered the entire area in a rough circle. Trees, mostly saplings and one tall beech, were littered about the small circle, but the thicker trees, the tallest and oldest, did line the perimeter. She could see the tree Laney had disappeared under. It stood deceivingly still, hovering at the edge of the clearing, watching.

“This is it,” Cassie said, her voice a low, rough whisper. She cleared her throat and indicated the sloppy circle. Officer Gibbons frowned.

“I was told it was a clearing,” he said, moving toward the center and spinning slowly. “That it was a kind of bowl, a depression in the woods.” The other police officers moved out in a loose grid, kicking through the pine needles.

“Are you sure, sweetheart?” Cathy asked. She moved next to her daughter, her eyes only on Cassie.

Cassie nodded.

“Okay, Miss Harris, take me through this then,” Officer Gibbons said. “You came here, for what?”

Cassie hesitated. No one had asked her that yet. “To get something. Laney thought she left her scarf,” she lied, knowing full well that Laney had not been wearing a scarf that night. But if she told the police that Laney wanted to show her something, tell her about the carnies, they may assume her friend left willingly.

Which, of course, she did.

But that would halt every bit of the investigation into the three men Cassie described. Cassie herself would be called a liar, rightfully so, but the already slim chance of finding Laney would dwindle down to nothing. She’d be labeled a runaway, forever lost to her parents and friends.

“Did you find it?” he asked, watching Cassie for a reaction. She shook her head. The tree at the edge, the large, dangerous one, caught her attention. She glanced over at it but diverted her gaze almost immediately. It felt malevolent, like it would uproot and swallow her at any moment. “When did you see the men?”

“They were over there,” Cassie said, pointing without looking. “Behind the big tree, the one with the crazy roots. Wait, do you see it?”

Cassie asked the question without thinking it through, suddenly afraid that maybe the tree, like the shifting men and the voices, were meant only for her, that the others wouldn’t be able to see them. Gibbons frowned at her.

“The White Oak at the edge there? Of course I see it.” He moved toward it and Cassie tensed. She forced a slow breath out when he reached out and patted the trunk. “They were behind this?”

Cassie nodded, watching him as he moved behind the tree. She pressed her lips together, her tongue darting out to moisten them. The tree was massive, a large trunk with branches that burst out, parallel to the ground. Most of the leaves had fallen, leaving the stark, gray bark bare. Her eyes followed the lines of the branches. She forced her breathing to calm, but she didn’t step any closer to it either.

She noticed his laugh first, the soft breath of air that escaped from between his lips. She found him in an instant, and she froze.

Twenty feet up, standing on a large branch that jutted out into the forest, Aidan leaned against the White Oak’s trunk. He winked down at her, smiling broadly.

She didn’t move.

Her mother noticed Cassie tense. She must have because a moment later her hand wrapped around her wrist, squeezing in reassurance, and Cassie sucked a deep breath of cold air into her lungs. She hadn’t realized she had been holding her breath.

Officer Gibbons came around the tree again. “I don’t see anything here. No sign of a struggle.”

Cassie’s gaze darted from the tree to the base, where the roots dug inconspicuously into the pine-needle-strewn forest floor. There was no turned up soil, no stench of rot. Everything had shifted. Not changed completely, but just enough to make it barely recognizable.

Except she could recognize it. She could see it. She could see him.

Cassie watched the police officers, staring hard, pleading silently for them to look in the tree and see him, too, but they didn’t.

The junior officers were still walking in lines across the clearing, kicking through the undergrowth. Officer Gibbons paused, looked up at the tree, straight at the boy who hadn’t yet moved. Aidan, the boy with the blue eyes, didn’t look down, didn’t acknowledge the man below him. He just stared, searing holes through Cassie with his penetrating gaze. Gibbons pat the tree, shaking his head.