My nose pressed against the window, breath fogging the glass, I spotted a stand of trees at the far corner of the farm. They were old, like a section of forest that time had forgotten. Their twisted, giant trunks were bunched together like some sort of crowd…or guards. As I stared at them, the pressure on my chest came back—the feeling from before. Someone…or something was out there searching.
Searching for me.
A flash between the branches caught my eye as we drove past.
“What’s that?” I asked.
“What’s what, sweetie?”
“In those trees over there. Something’s shining.”
Granddad shook his head. “More foolishness, that’s what it is.”
“Hush, Walter,” Nana said. “That’s just the Bottle Tree forest, baby.”
“The what?” What sort of trees were those—and there was another one! Something flashed again, like light on a mirror or glass.
“Bottle Trees. Oh now, would you look at that? I skipped a stitch. What was I saying? Oh, the Bottle Trees. I could’ve sworn I’ve talked up one wall and down the other about this before.” She turned around in her seat. “Slaves carried the practice over with them from Africa as a way to capture and dispose of any haints wandering around.”
“Haints?” I pressed my nose against the glass and squinted.
“Evil spirits, baby. Lord knows, plenty of those ramblin’ about, what with…Well, anyway, don’t you worry about it none,” Nana continued. “I don’t want you messing around over there. Them old trees aren’t for playing on. You liable to hurt yourself.”
“Need to cut ’em down,” Granddad grumbled, but Nana just shooed the words away with her hand.
“Hush, Walter. Now look, Tristan, over there….” She started playing tour guide as we drove up to the house, and I settled back, unable to shake the tingling feeling that something weird was going on.
“Grab that end, boy, and lift. Lift! Stop half-steppin’ and put your back into it.”
I heaved at the end of a log as Granddad and I slid it into the empty top slot of a pole. We dropped it into place, and I sagged against the repaired fence with a sigh. We’d been working for the last hour, racing the sun to get this section of fence fixed, and I was exhausted. I hadn’t even had a chance to drop off my bags. I picked up my backpack, and Eddie’s journal nearly fell out of the open compartment. I could’ve sworn I’d closed the zipper….
Granddad watched me put it away and shook his head. He mopped his forehead with an old rag he kept tucked in the back pocket of his overalls, then put it away and rolled his sleeves down.
“You need to leave that writing nonsense alone, boy. Ain’t gonna get you nowhere but confused.”
I didn’t say anything.
“What you got to write about, anyway? Video games? TV? All that city life got you boys soft. I would’ve had your dad out here at the break of dawn. How you think he got them heavyweight shoulders? Strongs work, boy.”
I squeezed the straps of the backpack until they cut into my palms, but I still didn’t say anything.
He spat out the twig he was chewing. “Hmph. Go on, then, and run that extra wire back to the barn. Then clean up for dinner. Hurry up, now—your grandmother’s waiting.”
I grabbed the spool of wire and stalked down the trail toward the barn. I heard Granddad grumbling to himself, and I tried to ignore it. No matter what I did or where I went, someone always wanted to tell me what I was doing wrong and what I should do different.
You’re pretty big, Tristan. Go play football.
Stop reading comic books, Tristan, and go read a real book.
Stop…
I looked up, suddenly aware that the world had gone quiet. I mean, nothing made a sound. No birds, no squirrels, no rustling leaves—even the wind held its breath.
The old stand of trees loomed in front of me.
How long had I been walking? How had I found myself here?
The shadows on the ground deepened and stretched toward me. Thick vines around the trunks seemed to curl like fingers beckoning me closer. They felt desperate, needy. The trees grew larger and larger, and it took me a second to realize that it was because I was walking toward them.
FIND IT.
The words boomed and crashed in my head, a thunderstorm of a command, and I froze. They were the same words, the same voice, from my dream in the car. That had been a dream, right?
I had reached the edge of the trees. A breeze gusted softly from the dark center of the forest, almost like a breath. It smelled…old. Earthy. Like whatever was in there hadn’t been disturbed in years. I didn’t want to be the first new intruder.
And yet…
I took a step forward.
“Tristan? Tristaaaan?” Nana’s voice broke whatever spell had fallen over me, and I shook my head to clear the cobwebs. My right foot hovered in the air, inches away from entering the shadows. I slowly placed it on the ground, then retreated a few steps. I squinted into the trees. Something was in there, and it wanted me. I could feel it.
“Tristan, dinnertime!” Nana’s voice floated out of the sky, riding the breeze in the way only an elder’s voice could.
I backed up farther, then turned and ran through the cornfield to the farmhouse.
No way are you going in those woods, I told myself. No way.
I was wrong.
WHEN THE ATTACK CAME, I was half-asleep.
The car trip, the weird dream-that-wasn’t-a-dream, working on the farm…By the time I went to bed, my eyelids felt like they weighed a ton. Still, I couldn’t quite get to sleep.
It wasn’t the darkness, though I wasn’t used to nighttime in Alabama. I was used to the almost-night of Chicago—with the glow of streetlights and the flicker of neon signs outside my window.
Here, the complete lack of light made everything seem…different. A flashlight lay on top of the blankets next to me. Not that I’m scared of the dark, you get me, but in case I had to use the bathroom or get a drink of water.
Man, what I wouldn’t have given for a couple of streetlights.
It wasn’t the silence, though it was also way too quiet. Instead of the comforting sounds of cars and trucks and sirens and people talking on the street, I heard cornstalks rustling in the wind. The window wouldn’t close all the way because of the warped wooden frame, and that was good and bad. Good because I didn’t feel so pressed in, so enclosed, but bad because of the crickets.
Maaaan, those crickets. Talk about annoying. How could anything so small make that much noise? It was like a million of them surrounded my window and were screaming the lyrics to the most annoying song you could think of.
Yep, that one you’re thinking of right now.
Sucks, doesn’t it?
And yet it wasn’t the darkness, or the strange sounds, or the unfamiliar house that was keeping me up. The pressure I’d felt on my chest in the car was back, waiting for me to relax. I knew that as soon as I did, it would seize me like an opponent in the ring, clinching my head between its gloves and waiting for the right moment to let go and hit me with that perfect punch. I could feel it. As soon as—
Thump
The noise had come from across the room, by the window, like something falling to the floor.