A Grave Tree (6 page)

The rain had let up slightly, but the forest was still shrouded in patches of mist. Mark scrutinized these until his eyeballs felt a bit scratchy, not wanting to be surprised by a rogue ghost. Caleb called routinely for Farley, and Abbey, after thrusting the card in her pocket, joined in. But the friendly brown dog didn’t come bounding through the bushes in response. Mark shivered. There was an increasing edge of hysteria to Abbey’s calls that even Mark, despite his limited attunement to that sort of thing, could hear.

Ocean was curled up on Mark’s bed back at the cabin. Mark had cleaned her litter box and filled three food and water bowls to heaping before closing his door. He’d wanted to bring the cat with them, because who knew, really, when they would return. But Caleb had insisted that it was a bad idea and that Ocean was safer where she was. Caleb had also pointed out (while Mark was objecting) that their plan to escape was important because they also had to find Mark’s mother, who had apparently been checked out of the hospital by his half-sister, Sandy.

Sandy.

Mark had surprised himself with his statement at breakfast regarding Sandy and the aluminum mine. He hadn’t even known where it was coming from or why he said it. Was it something he heard while his head was flying around the room with the beret man and the bad man the previous night? (The whole thing creeped Mark out. How had his head flown around the room?)

Even though he knew he was supposed to like his half-sister (or try to like her), he didn’t. She drove too fast, and there was something about the way she looked at him that he didn’t like. So while Mark sometimes had trouble identifying and labeling his emotions, especially where his mother was concerned, the prospect that she was somewhere with his half-sister had been enough to spur him to leave the cat behind.

Abbey’s and Caleb’s calls for Farley diminished in frequency the farther they got from the cabin, and Abbey’s body seemed kind of slumpy. Thankfully no ghosts had appeared, but Mark didn’t plan to let down his guard.

“I think we should stop and look for Farley,” Abbey said to Caleb.

“Ian said to meet him at noon,” Caleb said. “We have to keep moving.”

“It’s probably just another one of Ian’s riddles.” Abbey’s voice was sharp and full of needles. “It probably means noon on another planet, or noon is the name of one of the tunnels under Coventry. It’s all gobbledygook, like the writing on Ian’s card: ‘To know, to will, to dare, to keep silent.’ What is that? I don’t believe any of them have the faintest clue what they’re doing, although they’re certainly good at keeping silent.”

As she spoke, Abbey was looking all around frequently, as if she also wondered if they might be accosted by a ghost, or worse. Mark had heard Russell’s warnings while he packed his own bag, and he wondered if they were making an enormous mistake.

The path had turned west about a thousand meters from the cabin and had headed steadily uphill ever since. Mark couldn’t be sure precisely where they were (Caleb had insisted they all leave their phones behind so Sylvain would think they were still in the cabin, and Mark’s pocket compass was only so effective), but he was feeling fairly certain they were heading in the direction of the Granton Dam.

He tried to stop and listen whenever there was a break in Abbey’s and Caleb’s yelling or chatter about whether this was a good idea (Abbey apparently harbored doubts too, but more related to going to meet Ian than the whole adventure). He thought he could just barely make out the sound of the rush of the Moon River, which with the excessive rainfall and the fact that the spring freshet was at its height, would be an impressive sight indeed (an impressive and quite scary sight). If Caleb had allowed him to bring more of his maps (as he had wanted to do), then he might have been able to do some sort of triangulation to figure out how close they were to the river.

The forest smelled earthy and fresh, but there were a few moments as they walked when Mark could have sworn he smelled the heavy, sweet scent of the clawed woman’s perfume. Each time he looked around for a plant or a tree, such as a wisteria or lilac (which would be in bloom this time of year) that might be throwing off such a scent, but he saw no comforting purple or white blooms in the forest. Once he thought he saw the glossy green leaves and twisting limbs of a Madrona tree in the distance, but with so much green and mist in the forest, it was difficult to tell.

“It’s not gobbledygook, Ab. Remember what Ian said about some of us being extuits, intuits, and pattern finders, and that I’m probably an extuit? When Mark and I were up on the roof, I directed all my thoughts to Russell giving you his phone and then coming outside in response to the ghosts, and he did. If he hadn’t, the plan wouldn’t have worked.”

The shake of Abbey’s head was forceful and sudden. “Don’t be silly. I asked Russell for his phone, and going outside was not an unreasonable response to seeing the ghosts. There is no evidence whatsoever that your thoughts influenced him in any way.”

Caleb shrugged. “Suit yourself. I believe it worked.”

Another whiff of perfume floated past, and Mark could have sworn he felt the graze of fingernails on the back of his neck. He swung around, nearly losing his footing on the slippery root-strewn path, but nobody was there.

The roar of water had become increasingly discernible over the rain in the last few minutes, and Mark experienced no surprise when they reached the steep edge of a deep canyon—Skull Canyon, as it was called due to a skull-shaped rock formation farther up river. The wild and frothing Moon River thundered over the rocks below. Mark hung back and tried to contain his sudden surge of vertigo, while Caleb went right to the edge and looked over, the wind blowing his matted, wet orange hair.

Abbey stayed well away from the edge of the canyon with Mark, her freckled features tight and pale. Mark glanced up to their right. The trail followed the very edge of the canyon wall. One misstep and…

Mark decided he did not want to think about missteps. He would remain well off the path, in the trees.

They began to slowly pick their way up the trail (with Caleb seemingly content to walk far too close to the edge of the canyon). The spray of water from the river dampened their clothes even further, and Abbey muttered something about this being absolutely crazy. As a result of the last few months of traipsing through forests and tunnels and along roads and causeways with the Sinclairs, Mark was fitter than he had ever been in his life. But he still found his breath coming in jagged puffs as a result of the steepness of the trail and the instability of the footing. He skittered around trees and rocks, staying at least a meter to the right of the path at all times.

“What did Russell tell you, anyway?” Caleb said. “Anything useful?”

Abbey stopped to carefully clamber over a tree trunk that had fallen across the path. “He said the Madronas and those of us with witch blood are entangled, and that due to the DNA Phantom Effect and gravity, we can manifest entanglement on a macro level, which I guess, hypothetically would explain the extuit and intuit thing, but I don’t buy it.”

“Why not?” Caleb said. “Don’t you think it’s possible?”

Mark slipped on a slick stone and grasped at the narrow trunk of an aspen on the side of the trail while the maw of the river roiled and swirled fifteen meters down. He decided that it would be best if he were grasping a tree trunk at all times and tried to make his way up the path moving from spindly tree to spindly tree.

“It’s possible,” Abbey said. “Anything’s possible. But it’s not probable.”

“What about all those thought experiments?” Caleb said.

“There’s something there, but most people stretch the results of those very limited experiments way out of proportion.”

“Still,” Caleb persisted. “If there’s something there.”

Mark tried not to spend too much time watching Caleb, who apparently could glide over the craggy, rooty path like a gazelle while Mark stumbled along like a three-footed rhinoceros. Watching Caleb would make him lose his own footing. Nevertheless, he marveled at how effortlessly Caleb seemed to be moving up the trail.

Mark was navigating around a large rock when Caleb stopped suddenly and extended his finger in a point. There in the trees, about five meters away, its twisting, peeling trunk emerging from a thin layer of soil, was a tiny Madrona, only four feet high, its emerald green leaves trying to reach the sky through the heavy canopy.

As he stared at the tree, a movement in the understory caught Mark’s attention. The sea of bramble and snowberry bushes parted to reveal one of the nasty Egyptian dogs, its teeth bared in a snarl. Mark recoiled in fear, and he was instantly enveloped by the sickening smell of Selena’s perfume.

She was here. She had come to get them. He turned and saw the dark-haired woman with the long fingernails behind him. Then he felt an acute pain in his head, and the dimly lit forest went very dark.

*****

Abbey saw Mark topple inexplicably like a sack of potatoes, landing terrifyingly close to the edge of the canyon, his body splayed in the unorganized and slack manner of the unconscious. She fell to her knees and grasped his leg as if to stay Mark’s fall into the river, while looking wildly about for the cause of his collapse.

The forest and the trail behind Mark remained empty. She thought she could see a ripple of
something
, like the ghosts they had seen the day before, move through the underbrush, but she blinked once and it was gone.

Caleb, meanwhile, had lunged into the trees and grasped a stout stick, which he started waving in front of him like a weapon.

“We need to pull Mark away from the edge,” he called. “It’s going to try to drive us off the side.”

Abbey’s stomach fluttered with terror. “What are you talking about?
What’s
going to try to drive us off the side?”

“The dog,” Caleb said, his voice low and terrible. “Can’t you see the dog?”

Abbey searched the trees frantically, but saw nothing but the stoic Madrona reaching its branches to the sky. “I don’t see a dog,” she said.
Was Caleb hallucinating?

“It’s one of
their
dogs. It’s right in front of us.”

Abbey licked her dry lips and tugged as hard as she could on Mark’s leg. She couldn’t budge him. “I really can’t see it. Are you sure?”

Caleb wheeled over to his left, his branch weapon aloft. “There’s the other one. They’re closing in. I’m going to try to draw them away while you pull Mark from the edge. Or do you want to make a run for it, while I pull Mark away?” He glanced over the edge of the jagged precipice at the raging water below them, his freckled face pale and tight. “There’s no way we can jump. There are no good options here.”

The prospect of either jumping, or running through the woods pursued by one of Selena, Nate, and Damian’s vicious dogs, made Abbey’s knees weak.

She stared at the rows of slender pine trees around them. The underbrush on the rocky canyon top was sparse; there was no way the dog was hidden from her view. And what had happened to Mark? A small pool of blood had formed beneath his head in the loose soil on the rocks. Had he hit his head on something? No. No low-hanging branches blocked their way. It was like his attacker had come out of nowhere and then vanished—which was impossible.

Wasn’t it?

What had Ian’s card said? To know, to will, to dare… to know.

Caleb swung the stick wildly in all directions.

“Wait!” she said. “In the quantum world, we create reality by our observation. Particles are in every possible position until we observe them, and then they appear to pick a state. If witchcraft is entanglement on a macro level, maybe it operates by the same principles. Don’t look at the dogs. If you don’t observe them, they can’t be here, and this isn’t happening.”

Caleb responded in a clipped voice. “I hate to break it to you Abbey, but this is happening.”

Mark moaned and lifted his hand to his head.

“Why can only you see them?” she hissed. “Because you believe in this witchcraft mumbo jumbo is why. I don’t, so my brain isn’t collapsing the wave function.” She shook Mark. “Get up. Get up.” She pulled him into a sitting position. His face was distended with terror, and blood snaked down the back of his neck. Clearly, he could see the dogs too.

“My brain is about to collapse between a set of teeth,” Caleb snapped. “Maybe we can give them some granola bars.” He fumbled with the zipper of his pack, but before he could get it open, he dropped the pack and thrust the stick wildly at nothing, and yet nothing appeared to grab hold of it and thrust Caleb’s arm from side to side. Could “nothing” grab a stick?

“Run, Abbey! The other one is almost on top of you.”

Abbey rose uncertainly as Caleb’s stick jerked around in the air. He took step after terrifying step back toward the edge of the precipice. Where was she going to go? How did one fight an unseen enemy? And yet even as she thought this, the ripples in the air had started to take the shape of dogs. She was observing, too. Her growing belief that there was something there, fueled by Caleb’s and Mark’s behavior, was collapsing the wave function.

Her voice shook. “Just close your eyes. Everyone. Please. Try it. Remember what you said about influencing Russell with your thoughts. Do the same with the dogs. They’re not here.” She smelled a whiff of dog, felt breath on her face.

“If we close our eyes and they
are
here, we’re dead,” Caleb said through gritted teeth. “Run for the skull—there’s a swimming hole there. People jump off the cliff. Ian—” He lurched back as if struck, and then he whirled, pulling the stick close to his body and releasing it over the edge of the cliff. He teetered, and in a jumble of sneakers, jeans, and red hair, he fell, hurtling off the side of the cliff into the foaming rush of water. His body disappeared, pulled under by the roiling current.

Abbey screamed.

Caleb’s brilliant orange hair erupted to the surface, and he flailed his arms and gasped for breath. He managed to stay above water for a few seconds before the current pulled him under again, carrying him relentlessly, rapidly downstream away from her, until he was lost from sight around a bend in the canyon wall.