Arcane II (6 page)

“Derrick,” TJ said again, this time his voice lowered and glancing behind him. “What are you doing, man? Jeanie, the one from the paper is right behind me, not to mention a few others. Get the fuck back up there. You can shit in the bushes later.”

“Damn it, TJ.” Derrick grimaced and contemplated jumping and using his buddy as a soft landing, but heard footsteps coming down the path. Reluctantly, he climbed back up to the platform, pulled the ladder back up, and sat down with his legs dangling over the edge—but he kept one hand tightly gripped onto the rope of the ladder in case the tree got frisky again.

“Holy fuck, he
has
lost it,” Brody Stackhouse said, the first to emerge behind TJ. “Derrick, are you out of your mind?”

“The thought had occurred to me.”

“Pam, get over here and get a load of this,” Brody called out.

Oh no.

TJ had rallied about a half-dozen to come with him, including Jeanie from the local paper, but the only one his eyes could focus on was Pam. She stepped cautiously along the path, her head bowed to the ground as she watched her step. Her cornsilk hair flowed in gentle waves over her shoulders, and when she finally looked up towards Derrick he had to hang on for balance.

Seeing him, her face lit up. “Oh my God, Derrick, what are you doing?” She asked it more as a gleeful exclamation than a question.

“He’s storing nuts for winter. What does it look like he’s doing?” TJ quipped.

A buzz went through the tiny crowd beneath him, which Derrick soaked up as if it were a campfire at his feet. They all made their jokes and asked questions, but when Jeanie tried to snap a couple of photos for the paper, she grunted in displeasure that the batteries had gone dead. Derrick’s smile diminished, and when he noticed Pam standing next to the root of the oak that he saw writhing around earlier, he wanted to yell out.

Pam stepped away from the root as he opened his mouth though, and walked up to the base of the tree.

“I think this is very noble, what you’re doing,” she said.

“Ha! Derrick the Noble Tree Hugger!” Brody announced.

Pam stretched her arms out at her side and pressed herself against the oak, even planting a little kiss on the tree before glancing back up at Derrick. His grip tightened on the rope as he figured he could just about melt off with her looking up at him like that.

“How’s the view way up there?” Jeanie asked.

“It’s amazing,” Derrick answered.

“What in the hell are you all doing on my property?!” Roscoe Finch emerged from the woods on the other side of the brook, accompanied by Constable LeClair.

“Alright, who called the cops?” TJ muttered.

Derrick looked down as the two men glared at the small congregation. The old man hadn’t seen Derrick yet. When Jeanie explained the situation, Roscoe’s beady eyes glared up at him and an expression of momentary disbelief washed over his wrinkled face.

“Derrick Polk, what in the blue hell do you think you’re doing? Get down from there.”

“I can’t do that, Mr. Finch. This tree is centuries old and needs to be protected,” he answered in as genuine and magnanimous a tone he could muster.

Roscoe’s face stayed in its awestruck expression as he stammered for a moment, looking at the others for confirmation of Derrick’s words. Then he shouted back up, “Boy, don’t tell me my business. This is property, this is my tree, and I will chop it down if it so suits me.”

“Not with him in it, you aren’t,” TJ remarked, then let out a laugh that quickly died when Roscoe and LeClair looked over at him.

“Do your parents know you’re doing this, Derrick?” LeClair asked. “I imagine your dad will want to give you a talkin’-to when he gets word.”

Derrick
had
sort of run his plans by his parents in the days leading up to today, but he had deliberately left out specifics. In fact, he kept things as vague as possible—a political statement, he called it. His parents had seemed more impressed that he had any kind of political motivations whatsoever and offered bland encouragement. The fact that Derrick couldn’t even name the Prime Minister was beside the point.

“Drew, order that boy to get down from there before he gets himself hurt,” Roscoe said, his hunched frame seeming to thrum with anger.

“What would you like me to do? Climb up there and fetch him?” LeClair said.

“Goddamn it, he’s trespassing—all of them are.”

“These folks I can escort off your property, no problem. As for him,” LeClair looked up at Derrick with what looked like amusement, “he’s out of reach, so if you want him down, I suggest you hire yourself some extractors.”

“Wh-what?!”

“It’s what they do out west when some fool gets it in his head to stage a tree-sitting. I imagine those boys you hired to cut this thing down could just as easy make a few extra bucks to climb up there and haul him down first. Then, I can arrest him.”

“Fine. You get the rest of them the hell out of here, I’ll go back to the house and make some calls.”

A couple of cat calls rang out from Brody and someone else, but everyone gradually dispersed, shouting words of encouragement to Derrick as they left—Pam even blew him a kiss before she turned and hurried off. And with that, Derrick’s resolve was renewed.

Roscoe kept his eyes on them until their footsteps were barely audible, then his face turned upwards again to Derrick. The hardness of the old man’s expression made Derrick glad the ladder was gone and he had the safety of the tree, despite the difference in age and physicality.

“Derrick, this is no time for showing off. Come on down from there.” There was a calmness to the old man’s voice now, the anger from earlier dissipated.

“I can’t do that, Mr. Finch. I have to protect this tree.”

“This tree. This tree is nothing but a bad omen and it needs to come down.”

“A bad omen? It’s ancient. It’s been around for centuries.”

Roscoe shook his head pitiably. “How well do you think you know these woods, boy?”

“I grew up here. I know them as well as anyone else.”

“And how far back can you remember this... tree being here?”

Derrick gave it a moment’s thought. The question seemed stupid to him—after all, the tree had to be at least ten times as old as he was. “As long as I can remember.”

“Horseshit,” Roscoe said, then spat at the trunk of the tree. “You think you’re protecting some great noble oak like those hippies in B.C., squatting like monkeys in the redwoods? I say horseshit. I’ve been in these woods as long as I can remember too, and I’ve paid a helluva lot more attention to my surroundings than you ever have. And I’m telling you this godforsaken thing is less than a year old.”

“
What?
What are you talking about?”

“That tree was not here a year ago.”

“Okay, you’re cr—”

“Crazy? Senile?” Roscoe shook his head. “I’m old, but I’m not that old yet.”

That was when Derrick noticed that the old man was keeping his distance from the tree, staying across the brook and out of reach from its roots. He wanted to say something about seeing those roots move, but he didn’t want to sound as loony as Roscoe.

“How can a tree this big grow in only a year? It’s massive. It’d need—”

“—To feed,” Roscoe said. “That’s precisely what it’s been doing. You notice there isn’t any wildlife out here? It’s spring time, this place should be crawling with life.”

“Nah, that’s B.S. You’re messing with me. Trees don’t pop up like that out of nowhere, and they sure as hell don’t move.”

“Who said anything about ‘move?’” Roscoe said sharply. “Did you—did you
see
something?”

Derrick’s jaw hung open, wondering if there was something genuine to the old man’s words, wondering if what he witnessed was really real. But he couldn’t bring himself to say it out loud.

“Jesus, Mary and Joseph. You woke this thing up, didn’t you?” Roscoe stepped farther back, his eyes looking suspiciously about the girth of the oak. “Boy, I am not fooling around. You had better get your ass down from there before that thing decides your its next meal.”

Derrick considered it, the rope ladder hanging down.
Would it try to stop me?
he wondered.
Is the Red Giant going to eat me?
The words floating through his head sounded demented, but chilled his heart all the same.

“It’s just a tree,” he said aloud to himself.

“That’s what I thought last December before Maverick disappeared during that first snowfall. I followed his tracks right to this tree. I’d have cut it down then if it hadn’t been for the hellish winter we had.

“It’s a goddamned demon, Derrick. Sprung up from that quagmire somehow, and it’s been hibernating like a goddamned grizzly bear all winter long. And now that winter’s over, it’s going to do something. And if it can move, then I’m even more sure the goddamned thing needs to die.”

Roscoe turned and took off as fast as Derrick had ever seen him or any gray-haired man run in his life.

“Wait a minute!” he yelled after him, but the old man was gone, back the way he came.

He strained his ears until the footsteps died out. The isolation seeped in around him, but with the gnawing sense that he was in the presence of something alive—something conscious. His instincts screamed for him to climb down and make a break for home, feign some illness, and crawl under the covers. But thinking of Pam’s amorous gaze after she had kissed the tree, he knew that if he flaked out then he could kiss goodbye to any chance he had with her. Christ, if word got around, and with TJ and Brody being the kinds of buds they were, he could cross out the rest of the girls at school too.

It’s just a fucking tree.

As minutes passed and stretched into the late afternoon, Derrick resolved to remain in the tree, but still watched and listened for the slightest movement from the red giant. Gentle gusts swayed the branches overhead, low creaks moaned all around. He constantly looked about and waited, but all he observed was a perfectly natural tree. It dawned on him that he had let his imagination run wild, whether by some lingering THC level in his blood or by the stress that came from doing something meaningful for the first time in his life. As for ol’ Roscoe, the man was knocking on seventy and likely had his own mental issues.

A giant northern red oak, bigger than any other tree he’d seen in his life, and according to Roscoe, only a year old. As for Roscoe’s dog, Maverick, it was a rabbit hound. The thing probably chased a rabbit right into the marsh and drowned somewhere. It made a helluva lot more sense to Derrick than the idea that the tree ate it. Though he still hadn’t heard any animals besides the mosquitoes for the duration of his time up there. Being this far in the woods for this long, he should have seen
something
by now, he figured.

Around five o’clock, Roscoe returned with labored breath, carrying a beast of a chainsaw in one hand and a canister of gasoline in the other. It was a wonder he hadn’t dropped dead of a heart attack lugging so much weight over a half-mile of uneven terrain. The old man set the gear down then mopped his brow with his sleeve, red in the face and chest heaving.

“Are you alright? You don’t look so good,” Derrick asked, peering down.

“Never mind, boy. Get down and give me a hand.”

“Mr. Finch, this is ridiculous. You’re being unreasonable. I think if you just take the time to consider—”

“Consider this.” Roscoe bent down and picked up the chainsaw again. “I called them boys I hired to see if they’d come out and do the job today. No can do, they says. So I’m going to do it myself.”

Roscoe grabbed the cord handle and gave it a yank. The thing roared to life on the first go, spitting out a burst of blue smoke before settling into a menacing growl. The blade on the thing had to be twice the length of any Derrick had seen—and still it wouldn’t cut thought the whole of the Red Giant’s trunk.

“So, here’s how it’s going to go: either you’re coming down from that tree the easy way, or the hard way.”

“You’re bluffing.”

“You think I’d haul this cumbersome bastard all the way out here on a bluff?”

Shit. Good point.

“Alright, you win.”

A small wave of relief came over Derrick. Even though he hadn’t even made it to sundown before giving up, and even though a police escort off the premises would have been a good story, getting chased out by a maniac with a chainsaw-on-steroids would work just as well. He might even be able to salvage his chances with Pam.

Derrick strapped on his backpack, threw down his duffel bag, and started his descent. The rope ladder was a bastard, swinging his weight out each time he tried to place a foot on a rung. On the fifth rung, about a third of the way down, something caught on to the bottom end of the ladder. When Derrick looked down, he stopped and titled his head, thinking his eyes were playing tricks. One of the Red Giant’s roots was coiled like a thick vine around the lowest rung and one of the ropes. It pulled the ladder taut until the wooden rung snapped in two, sending the ladder and Derrick swinging like Tarzan on a vine.

“What the—”

“Hang on, Derrick!” Roscoe hurried across the brook, eyes bugged out as he watched the root snap to the ground with a piece of the rung in its grip, while another root flailed at the swinging ladder.

I’m never smoking pot again. I’m never smoking pot again.

The tentacular length snatched onto the next two rungs on the ladder and pulled down. Derrick clung tighter to the ropes, clutching them to his chest, inside which his heart pounded so fast it was all he could hear for a moment. The rest of the ladder gave out and sent him tumbling down. He fell a good ten feet, and when he hit he felt his left knee give out on him. He let out a yelp that died, his wind knocked out of him. He lay sprawled on his back and looked up at the gargantuan tree, which had now sprung to life.

“Ohmygodohmygodohmygod—”

Derrick scrambled backwards, pushing with his hands and his right foot, until the back of his neck and skull smacked against the trunk of a neighboring tree. His hand touched one of its static roots and he let out a yelp and flinched his hand away.