They pushed into the clearing. Charlie grabbed a braided rope from the air. It was threaded through whittled branches in a makeshift ladder. Charlie began to pull himself upward. Ben watched him scramble onto a platform a few feet above his head.
Ben tested his weight against the ladder. The structure above him creaked, but the rope was thick enough to hold him. The platform was not high. Ben thought it was less than ten feet off the ground. When he got to the top, he saw it was constructed from only four planks propped up by a large forked bough. There was enough room for Charlie to sit comfortably, but Ben had to rest on his stomach with most of his legs dangling off the side. Branches framed the view of the lake like a picture window. The frosted tops of the trees in the south woods were behind it, and he could see the frozen valley beyond.
“You built this?” he asked Charlie.
“The Book of Secrets showed how. Making the ladder was the hardest part. And learning the knots. The knots were hard.”
“How did you get the planks up here?” Ben asked.
“I tied a rope to my foot when I climbed the tree. I threw one end over the branch, then I went back down and tied it to a plank. I pulled on the other end of the rope to lift up the plank, and when it was high enough, I tied my end to a root. Then I climbed up and put the plank in the right place.”
“Did you ever learn anything else from The Book of Secrets?” Ben thought of the worn book’s blood-streaked pages.
“I liked the chapter on animal tracks and reading about the stars. And I learned how to see better at night and how to walk without making sound. It was good for watching animals.”
“There’s a lot of other stuff in the book, too,” Ben said. “Like how to make a fire and catch animals.” Even before finding the man’s bloody thumbprint on the book, Ben had often wondered what Charlie did when he played in the forest. He thought of the burned shed and the piles of carcasses in the pit.
“I made the boats from bark and leaves and put them in the creek,” Charlie said.
“Did you ever start a fire? Did you ever try to catch animals?” Ben asked.
“I had those caterpillars once. And the frog eggs in the jar. I mostly like to watch the animals,” he said. “They’re happier then.”
“Yeah.” Ben lowered his head to the plank platform. He lay there for almost a minute with his eyes closed, letting the cold wood sear his cheek. “Are you cold yet?”
“No.”
“Okay, let’s walk around a little more.”
Ben rolled onto his side, looking for the rope ladder. When he did, he turned toward the trunk of the tree. RUN was carved into the bark, in deep block letters.
“Did you write that?” Ben asked Charlie. Charlie craned his head to see what Ben was looking at.
“No.” He spoke the word so softly that it was barely there.
“Let’s get down,” Ben said.
“We can pull the rope up,” Charlie said. “I do that when I’m up here.”
“We have to get down, Charlie,” Ben said. He knew the man in the smoke wasn’t there. Even if he was, Ben wasn’t afraid. The man should be the one to be afraid. “He’s not here. I’ll go down first.”
Ben lowered himself a few rungs, then jumped the rest of the way to the ground.
He looked around and saw nothing but trees. Charlie started to climb down, and Ben helped him, even though he didn’t need it.
“I don’t think he’s here,” Charlie said.
“No, but we can go back to the Crofts, if you want.”
“Not yet,” Charlie said. “Do you want to check the creek?”
“Sure, let’s do that.” This time they walked side by side through the forest. The trees by the mountains were some of the oldest ones on the Drop. In the spring they shut the light away from the ground, but now the corridors were wide and bright between their columns.
The creek flowed from the mountains, but even at the height of the melt it was only two feet deep. Rounded stones stuck from its white course like a broken street.
The trees here had been glazed in a thin coat of ice, which made the stretch more dreamlike than the other places they’d seen. The low winter sun hadn’t picked up much beyond the horizon, but it lit the space like a hall of mirrors.
Ben put his hand on Charlie’s shoulder. Other than helping him down the rope, it might have been the first time he’d touched him since finding that book in his cubby.
“I’m sorry, Charlie,” he told him.
“For what?”
Ben could only shake his head. He didn’t know where to begin.
He felt cleaved by the guilt of what wild things his imagination had spun about Charlie’s role in all this. In the short hours between finding The Book of Secrets in his son’s cubby and Bub being taken, Ben had wondered if Charlie had burned the shed, killed animals, hurt his dog, or merely been an eager accomplice for the man who wandered their forest. When Hudson attacked Charlie, he must have smelled the man’s scent on him and mistaken the one for the other. Ben was guilty of the same mistake.
“No matter what happens, we’re going to be okay. I want you to know that.”
“Okay.”
But Ben knew there were hard days behind him and worse ahead. He felt this in the pulse of his neck and heard it in the current of the wind.
41
Their search proved useless, and Ben wasn’t surprised. For him, useless endeavors had become something of a specialty.
“What should we do now?” Charlie asked once they’d returned to the Crofts.
“How about you make sandwiches for the three of us,” Ben said. “I need to make a quick phone call. I won’t be long.”
Caroline had moved to the third floor. The sounds of splintering wood led him right to her. Fragments of what had been the hardwood floor were heaped along the hallway like drifts of leaves.
“Where’s Charlie?” she asked when she saw him. She pried an ax head out of the gleaming mahogany.