Every House Is Haunted (20 page)

“I wish I could tell your mother why I left,” Sheldon suddenly said. “I wish I could tell her that the only thing harder than leaving was staying.” He looked at the boy. “It’s important that you remember this. I can’t stress that enough. You can’t let them drive you away. There’s a writer who said you can’t go home again. He was only partly right. You
can
go home again, but when you come back you find out home isn’t home anymore. It’s just a place where you used to live. It’s lost something, but you can’t tell what it is. It’s like an itch that you can’t scratch. I think that’s what the unnaturals want. I think they want me, and people like me, to leave the island. I think they want this place for themselves.”

Ben looked out across the water.

“
You must remember the fall
,” Sheldon said emphatically. “When the days shorten and the leaves brown, that’s when you need to be strong. The dreams can’t be stopped—everybody has to dream, God knows why, but we do—but you’ll get used to them. You need to stay here and you deal with it, Ben, because nothing good comes from running. Your dreams will run with you. You need to push them to the back of your mind where they can’t bother you. Focus on the natural.”

Ben considered this for a long moment, then nodded.

“Just keep in mind that thinking about the unnaturals is exactly what they want. They
want
to be seen. They
want
to get inside your head.
Don’t let them
.”

“I’ll try, Grandpa.”

“Good.”

Sheldon felt a drop of rain land on the back of his neck. He looked up at the dark, heavy clouds and said, “What say we head back and get us some cider? I got a hankering for some.”

“Okay,” Ben said.

They started back along the path. Before they entered the woods, they turned and looked back toward the breakwater. The lighthouse stood at the end of the point like a sentinel, sweeping its beam endlessly back and forth, throwing its light on all things natural and unnatural alike.

They sat around the campfire like old friends, although they were not: friends to themselves, perhaps, and the games they played, the stories they told, but hidden from one another, alone except for the wary, suspicious looks they exchanged.

“Everyone toasty?”

Court was crouched in front of the fire. His head was lowered and his features were cloaked in shadow. He threw on another log and looked over at Harry, sitting quietly with his board. The planchette was kept safe in an inside pocket of his coat for fear that one of the others might accidentally (or deliberately) mistake it for kindling.

The fire blazed bright with the fresh fuel, outlining the previously shrouded shape of their third, Beth. She sat on an angle to the others, almost with her back to them, working meticulously on a five-hundred-piece jigsaw puzzle. Her thick robe was not for warmth, as the fire provided more than adequate heat, but instead to provide a shield against the wind which threatened to blow away the puzzle pieces scattered before her on the ground.

“Well then,” Court said, fingering the wooden charm around his neck. “Who’s first?”

Beth didn’t say anything. She found a piece of the border and was moving it along the edge of the mostly completed frame. Court turned to Harry. He had taken out his planchette, a small object no bigger than his hand, and placed it on the long oaken board that lay across his lap like a dinner tray. It was not like any planchette Court had ever seen, and that bothered him for a reason he could not articulate. It was covered in runes and cabalistic symbols and strange protrusions, like knobs of varying size, and for some reason it reminded him of the sewing board his mother used to have when he was a boy. She’d run different-coloured yarn around the knobs so that when she began knitting, the colours would turn out in the desired pattern. Court had once tried to use the board to make a throw rug for the laundry room where the floor was so cold, but the mismatched green and yellow he had used turned out so deformed that everyone who saw it was inclined to ask what had been spilled on such a nice rug.

Harry shifted his position, tilting forward slightly so that the light from the fire illuminated the board. His face was not that of a twenty-four-year-old man, but that of someone who had seen the horrors of previous campfires and the games of other players. “Why don’t you start, Court?”

“That’s a great idea. Is that okay with you, Beth?”

Beth continued to fiddle with her puzzle pieces. “Fine with me,” she said with a small shrug. The image was gradually taking form before her: a forest setting with a large oak tree protruding into a clearing.

“Excellent,” Court said happily. “I shall begin then.”

There once was a boy made of wood, who had been so unhappy with his appearance that he had taken to carving himself into the images he desired as his tastes changed. Soon he was left with a body barely large enough to fill a box of toothpicks.

So into the woods he went and found a great oak tree. “This will give me many bodies for days to come,” he cried with glee. “Or maybe even one large body that could last me a million carvings.”

Indeed, the tree was clearly the largest and strongest in the forest with a trunk the size of an elephant and roots like thick tentacles.

The boy picked up his axe and prepared to chop it down when a voice like a sleeping giant suddenly bellowed out.

“Why would you cut me down, boy?”

The boy was shocked to hear the tree talk and almost dropped his axe. He quickly gathered his wits. Of course it can talk, he told himself. This is the strongest tree in all the forest—if any tree could talk, surely it would be this one.

“I’m sorry,” the boy stuttered. “I meant no harm. I only wanted to chop down a tree so that I might carve myself a new body. I’m not whole you see, barely even a boy.” He bowed grandly to the tree, showing it the top of his head. “Count my rings and you’ll see, barely a boy I am, but the body I have still.”

The tree made a loud creaking noise as it straightened to its full height. The boy of wood watched in amazement as it nearly doubled in size.

“You will not cut me down,” it growled. “I will not allow it.”

The boy looked ashamedly at the axe in his hands and hid it behind his back. “Surely you don’t think I would cut down a talking tree. I meant no harm. I will cut down one of your speechless kin instead.”

The tree stood fast. A large knot hole seemed to watch the boy like an abyssal eye. A pair of thick branches crossed themselves in a concerned gesture.

“A tree that does not talk is still a tree.”

It bent over at the trunk, creaking and cracking, and studied the boy’s face. “Do you understand, boy?” As it yelled, a powerful gust of wind blasted out of its knot hole, buffeting the boy’s carved face.

Instead of being scared, the boy smiled. “Of course I do,” he said, beaming. “I was once a tree and I don’t think I would like it very much if someone were to chop me down.”

“Good,” the oak tree said, slumping back to its original, slightly canted position. “Then don’t let me see you go against your word or else you may find yourself without the body that you have now.”

The boy continued to smile like it was painted on his face. “I won’t,” he said. Then added: “I promise.”

Harry interrupted: “I think I should continue from here.”

Court smiled and nodded assent. “Please do.”

The great oak tree watched as the boy walked away, twirling his axe in the air as if it were a walking stick.

That night as the boy sat in the clearing that was his home, he thought to himself:
Why shouldn’t I be allowed to chop down a tree that does not talk? A normal tree would not scream the way I imagine the great oak would had I taken my axe to it.

So it was that then that the boy decided the great oak, which had clearly become senile in its old age, didn’t know what it was talking about when it came to talkless trees. The boy could speak of axes and carving knives since he knew them well, and the great oak could speak of other great oaks because it knew them well, but for a talking tree to speak on behalf of those that could not talk—well, that was just plain wrong.

That night with conscience clear, the boy crept back into the dark forest and chopped down one of the talkless trees. He continued to take one tree every night until the only one left was the great oak.

The boy was still unhappy with his body, so he picked up his axe and went back to the forest . . . or rather, the place where the forest once stood.
Why shouldn’t I cut down the great oak?
he thought.
It is just a tree after all, and it serves no real purpose in this world. I will give it purpose, as I did the others.

The great oak was waiting with its mighty branches crossed when the boy arrived and raised his axe once more. He brought it down against the thick trunk with a mighty chop, but the oak did not scream. Most unusual, the boy thought, and swung again. Still nothing.

Then, when the boy had chopped halfway through the trunk, the great oak spoke:

“I told you not to cut down my brothers and sisters and you did. Now you would cut me down?”

The boy explained that he was giving the great oak a purpose, something it never had before. “I’m doing you a favour,” he said. “You should be thanking me.”

“A favour indeed,” the great oak said, snort air through its knot hole. “Then a favour to you I will return one day.”

The boy heard the great oak’s words but did not listen. He was not thinking of consequences. He was thinking of all the bodies the great oak would give him. Bodies for years to come, maybe a million if he used it sparingly (although he knew he would not).

When he finished chopping, the great oak fell with a mighty crash that echoed across the land that had once been dense with trees. Immediately the boy set to carving the first of what was sure to be several handsome bodies for himself.

After he finished, the boy left his tired old body and entered the new one. It was glorious! Never before had he felt so strong and able. His hands, more agile than any he had carved before, would surely be able to craft even greater bodies now. His legs were those of an athlete, his body almost as thick as the great oak from which he carved it. It was a most impressive body indeed!

“You did not think I would stand idly by while you murdered me, did you?”

The voice was that of the great oak, but it did not come from its fallen body. The sound seemed to come from . . .

“Well then, maybe you did. After all, it was the same stupidity that cut me down which has now used me as a vehicle.”

The boy spun all around, searching for the source of the voice, but he was the only one there. The voice seemed to have come from right over his shoulder. He reached around with both hands, feeling along his back, and found a knot hole. His mouth fell open in horror, destroying the smile he had carved into his face.