“We could tend to the garden.”
She raised her head and, after a brief glance at the woods, nodded. I helped her to her feet and we walked to the house, Cath leaning on my arm all the way. Nori took Aunt Cath’s hand before we were halfway back to La Baume, and I hung back. The sun was setting, and they looked quite beautiful in the red light.
I couldn’t believe my reaction. Why had I shoved Cath away? Why had Cath acted so fiercely about keeping Nori from the woods? The story about the Creeper Man was just that. A story. A stupid child’s warning.
By the time we got back into the house, Cath was laughing, waving me inside, and Nori was smiling. Nori’s tears had stopped, as had Cath’s, and the oncoming night had dissolved my rage.
Something in the house had changed, though, before the night was over.
The garden sparkled in orange hues of sunset, the old wooden table draped with a pale cloth and sprinkled with bundles of dusty-pink roses from the garden. I smiled at them, even though I wished Cath had just left them on the plant.
So pretty.
Cath made a cake. I took a slice from her offering hand, noting that her nail polish matched the roses. Her smile was so wide that a jolt of pleasure jumped through me.
Until I saw that it didn’t reach her eyes. And that the nail polish was actually textured and lumpy, slopped on over her cuticles. There was a drop of it in her hair.
And then I noticed something else. She was still smiling, but she wasn’t looking at me. Not directly. She was staring at the tip of my left ear. Or something over my shoulder.
“Enjoy!” she proclaimed, wiping her hands on the floral apron.
I took my plate into the garden, away from the light of the kitchen, which licked the grass with a paraffin tongue, and sat by the hedges, alone. It was moist cake, and I had three pieces.
The breeze brushed my cheek, and I laughed.
I was happy, I realized. I’d never felt so happy, despite Cath’s strange smile. Amazing that a cake could do that. Or maybe it was more about the acknowledgment. Acknowledgment that I was born fifteen years ago, and that I was here and it was worth celebrating. Maybe.
Nori skipped over, carrying a paper plate. She put it down and showed me what she was holding. Something dangled from her fist, the one attached to the bad arm, so it shook a little with the strain of lifting it up to show me. Her mouth was covered in pink icing. More pink.
Look, she signed, one-handed. Look!
The thing swung like a fatty bit of raw bacon covered in cake.
Worms! She laughed, digging into the piece of cake to find more.
Everything s l o w e d down around me.
Wrong. This is wrong.
Cath stood in the kitchen doorway, the light pooling around her. She was laughing, tears running down her cheek.
I felt cold bite my hands.
The next day Cathy went up to the attic.
And never came down.
Fifteen passed.
Sixteen, too.
Seventeen arrived, and so did he.
BOOK 2:
Earthen Sky
The man in the trees
came in the night
to steal the girl
and give her a fright.
the little girl blocked
her ears and eyes
but the Creeper Man wears
many a disguise.
OLD MAN IN HIS CHAIR
In a faraway place, an old man sits in his armchair.
Next to him, on the table, there is tea.
It went cold a while ago.
He’s been staring at the picture in the frame—it also sits on the table. Beside the cup of tea.
He ponders it, unblinking.
Thinking of all the things that were, that are, that will not be.
The picture is old now. The face no longer real. Only to him.
The days have grown long, and longer. The dusk droops languidly over gray skies that seem as aged as he is. As wrinkled, too.
And the nights: endless, as they have always been. Too many memories. Too many nightmares.
Too many nights.
He is tired.
A life, too long, has made him so.
He reaches for his tea at last, but it seems his wait is over.
His eyes are closed now, his jaw slack.
His nightmares are done. And so are his nights.
1
beautiful disposition
A silly girl did silly play
with dolls and mud and thread
the tall blind man who watched her game
did send her round the bend.
BROKEN BOOK ENTRY