Of the Trees Read online

  Or what had been the clearing.

  It didn’t look the same, though that didn’t shock Cassie. It was just different enough though, just changed enough, that she thought others might have trouble recognizing it. Pine needles were scattered all around in thick concentrations, they covered the entire area in a rough circle. Trees, mostly saplings and one tall beech, were littered about the small circle, but the thicker trees, the tallest and oldest, did line the perimeter. She could see the tree Laney had disappeared under. It stood deceivingly still, hovering at the edge of the clearing, watching.

  “This is it,” Cassie said, her voice a low, rough whisper. She cleared her throat and indicated the sloppy circle. Officer Gibbons frowned.

  “I was told it was a clearing,” he said, moving toward the center and spinning slowly. “That it was a kind of bowl, a depression in the woods.” The other police officers moved out in a loose grid, kicking through the pine needles.

  “Are you sure, sweetheart?” Cathy asked. She moved next to her daughter, her eyes only on Cassie.

  Cassie nodded.

  “Okay, Miss Harris, take me through this then,” Officer Gibbons said. “You came here, for what?”

  Cassie hesitated. No one had asked her that yet. “To get something. Laney thought she left her scarf,” she lied, knowing full well that Laney had not been wearing a scarf that night. But if she told the police that Laney wanted to show her something, tell her about the carnies, they may assume her friend left willingly.

  Which, of course, she did.

  But that would halt every bit of the investigation into the three men Cassie described. Cassie herself would be called a liar, rightfully so, but the already slim chance of finding Laney would dwindle down to nothing. She’d be labeled a runaway, forever lost to her parents and friends.

  “Did you find it?” he asked, watching Cassie for a reaction. She shook her head. The tree at the edge, the large, dangerous one, caught her attention. She glanced over at it but diverted her gaze almost immediately. It felt malevolent, like it would uproot and swallow her at any moment. “When did you see the men?”

  “They were over there,” Cassie said, pointing without looking. “Behind the big tree, the one with the crazy roots. Wait, do you see it?”

  Cassie asked the question without thinking it through, suddenly afraid that maybe the tree, like the shifting men and the voices, were meant only for her, that the others wouldn’t be able to see them. Gibbons frowned at her.

  “The White Oak at the edge there? Of course I see it.” He moved toward it and Cassie tensed. She forced a slow breath out when he reached out and patted the trunk. “They were behind this?”

  Cassie nodded, watching him as he moved behind the tree. She pressed her lips together, her tongue darting out to moisten them. The tree was massive, a large trunk with branches that burst out, parallel to the ground. Most of the leaves had fallen, leaving the stark, gray bark bare. Her eyes followed the lines of the branches. She forced her breathing to calm, but she didn’t step any closer to it either.

  She noticed his laugh first, the soft breath of air that escaped from between his lips. She found him in an instant, and she froze.

  Twenty feet up, standing on a large branch that jutted out into the forest, Aidan leaned against the White Oak’s trunk. He winked down at her, smiling broadly.

  She didn’t move.

  Her mother noticed Cassie tense. She must have because a moment later her hand wrapped around her wrist, squeezing in reassurance, and Cassie sucked a deep breath of cold air into her lungs. She hadn’t realized she had been holding her breath.

  Officer Gibbons came around the tree again. “I don’t see anything here. No sign of a struggle.”

  Cassie’s gaze darted from the tree to the base, where the roots dug inconspicuously into the pine-needle-strewn forest floor. There was no turned up soil, no stench of rot. Everything had shifted. Not changed completely, but just enough to make it barely recognizable.

  Except she could recognize it. She could see it. She could see him.

  Cassie watched the police officers, staring hard, pleading silently for them to look in the tree and see him, too, but they didn’t.

  The junior officers were still walking in lines across the clearing, kicking through the undergrowth. Officer Gibbons paused, looked up at the tree, straight at the boy who hadn’t yet moved. Aidan, the boy with the blue eyes, didn’t look down, didn’t acknowledge the man below him. He just stared, searing holes through Cassie with his penetrating gaze. Gibbons pat the tree, shaking his head.

  “And Jessica Evans, she was here, too?” he asked, watching Cassie for a response. She nodded.

  “This was the last place I saw her,” she said.

  “I’m sorry to waste your time,” he said, moving toward them. Cassie jumped when Aidan stepped off the branch, landing with bent knees at the base of the tree. He straightened and moved toward her. No one said a word.

  Aidan paused as an officer with light brown hair moved in front of him. He inclined his head with a little nod as though to say, “After you.” The officer didn’t even pause. A cold sweat broke out on the back of Cassie’s neck.

  “Did you guys find anything?” Gibbons called out to the other officers. Most shook their head or answered in the negative. One held up an empty beer can. Another said he found the remains of a fire.

  Aidan stepped around Officer Gibbons, came to stand between him and Cassie. He peered down at her, not speaking, his blue eyes stormy and distracting. Someone had spoken, asked Cassie a question, but she didn’t hear it, couldn’t focus. His lips twisted into a mocking smile.

  “Cassie. Cassie,” her mother said, tugging on her arm.

  Cassie blinked, jerking reflexively against her mother’s hold. She glanced over, finding Cathy staring at her in concern. “Hmm?”

  “The officer asked you a question.”

  Aidan circled around them, sidestepping her mother with exaggerated emphasis. He looked pleased with himself, speculative but amused. She could feel his hot breath on her neck as he stepped up behind her. Despite the chilly autumn morning, a bead of moisture slicked down her back.

  Someone repeated the question, asked her if she knew what kind of beer everyone was drinking. She shook her head. Fingers, warm and insistent started tracing the lines of her palm. Her arm trembled, but she didn’t dare move it, not wanting him to know she saw him, felt him. The panic started in her chest, the uncontrollable fear that began to pulse with her pounding heart. It beat against her ribcage, her muscles sore with tension. His finger traced patterns, first on her palm and then slowly down each of her exposed fingers.

  “Mom,” Cassie moaned, trying to make it obvious that she needed to leave, needed to get out of here. His laugh sounded close to her ear, and she shuddered violently.

  “Can we leave?” Cathy asked Officer Gibbons. The officer nodded, gesturing back toward the trees. He barked some commands to his junior officers and rolls of police tape and markers were taken from bags and out of pockets. They would canvas the area, search through the pine needles. They would find nothing. He spoke to her too, but she couldn’t hear it, couldn’t focus. Because just as the words were coming from his mouth, another mouth, one closer to her ear started to whisper.

  “Go now, my dear,” it said, soft and lyrical, “I can always find you.”

  Cassie did not sleep well that night. She had checked every window in the house, every door. She locked and double locked everything she could, even propping a chair against her bedroom door before she got under her covers. His voice never left her.

  Leaving the woods had been horrific. Thankfully, everyone, her mother included, chalked Cassie’s nerves up to seeing the place from which Laney had disappeared.

  Aidan hadn’t followed her. Or, if he had, she hadn’t seen him, but she wasn’t exactly looking for him either. Cassie held fast to her mother’s hand, unwilling to be separated from her, and made
a straight line back to Gray Lady cemetery, cutting a path from there to home.

  People came up to her as she broke through the woods closest to her house. The number of volunteers that still combed the woods had diminished, most of them being forced back into school or work. Still, many were there. They patted her back and murmured reassurances, claiming they would search every inch of the woods and that they would find her friend. The officers thanked her for showing them the clearing, said they couldn’t find it before based on everyone’s descriptions. Cassie still wasn’t surprised.

  Ryan arrived just as the sun was coming up the next morning to drive her to school. It was clear and cold and thankfully not raining.

  “I’ll see you there,” her father said, standing behind Cassie at the front door. She nodded, watching Ryan as he started for the walkway. “If you need anything, or if you’re going to cut out, let me know first.”

  “I will, Dad,” Cassie said, turning to give her father a quick kiss on the cheek before heading out the door. Ryan smiled when he saw her. She walked toward his car, and he hurried to open the door for her.

  After he slid behind the wheel, he leaned over and kissed her, soft and quick. Cassie let out a little squeak of surprise, feeling her cheeks heat. She caught his eye in the early washed out color of the predawn.

  “That’s my thing now, isn’t it?” he asked, searchingly. “Kissing you without talking about it.”

  Her lips part in surprise. “Oh.”

  “Okay?”

  “Yeah, okay,” Cassie answered. He caught her lips again then, his fingers stroking lightly along her jaw. She smiled against his mouth as he pulled away, her chest lightening. And then a feeling like a bowling ball getting dropped in her gut slammed into her as she instinctively thought she needed to tell Laney this new development, only to remember that, of course, she couldn’t. Laney wasn’t here anymore.

  School was as horrible as Cassie thought it was going to be. The only real bright spots were Ryan and Rebecca.

  Rebecca understood in a way no one else ever would, and Ryan was a solid, warm presence. It was a relief to have him back; Cassie hadn’t realized just how much she missed him until he was finally there, easy to turn to whenever she needed him. He kept himself close to her, sitting near to her in classes, walking her to her locker. With him there, there were less of the snide comments and little quips that she had been getting as a result of the circulation of Jon’s picture. Either people were too uncomfortable to mention it in front of him, or maybe the disappearance of Laney had eclipsed it.

  The eyes were still there. Not on the mirrors in the bathroom or on the lockers. Even the freshmen had washed them from their skin. But in the soft walls, where people had pressed with pencils, on the desk she sat at in English class, they were etched and scratched in markings you couldn’t just wash away. They stared colorless now, no longer glaring red, but watchful just the same. Cassie kept seeing them, kept feeling a sinister tingle of awareness, as though she was being watched. It was distracting and consuming. She felt like Aidan still had her pinned to that tree, helpless and confused. The still air of the school seemed to rush and hiss whenever the eyes caught her attention, and the voices of the forest would swell around her once more.

  They didn’t seem to bother anyone else, didn’t seem to draw their attention like they did for Cassie. She was having trouble focusing on conversations, even when people spoke directly to her.

  Roger Wilkes and Mike Stevens had cornered her just before lunch, both speaking over each other in an attempt to apologize. Cassie had to ask them twice to repeat themselves. Behind them, on the wooden bathroom door, a faded drawing watched her. Someone had tried to scrub the eyes away, but they must have been drawn in red sharpie, the color from the marker leached into the grain of the wood, leaving a faded, but recognizable imprint behind. They called and whispered, faint words that she couldn’t understand, words that were mingled with the student voices anyway.

  Ryan caught up to Cassie just as Mike was apologizing for the second time. He and Roger seemed worried that it was their teasing that led Cassie into the woods with Laney that day.

  “I’m really sorry, if it’s what I said about the bet, about you taking another picture if you could find the place,” Mike said. He was watching Cassie with concern, and suddenly she worried that he could tell, that he knew the eyes were talking to her. She shook her head and refocused.

  “Oh. No, it wasn’t that,” she said quickly, wishing they hadn’t even brought it up. She could feel Ryan’s tension in the tightening of his muscles, his body shifting in agitation behind her.

  “We thought, maybe you were trying to prove us wrong or something. That’s why you were out there,” Roger continued. Mike nodded from beside him.

  “I’ve seriously felt like such a jackass for days,” Mike said, grimacing at Cassie. She swallowed hard.

  “That’s not why we were out there,” Cassie said. Both boys deflated a bit in front of her, Mike letting out a short breath. Ryan grabbed Cassie’s elbow and steered her away before either could respond.

  “Were they bothering you? Before, I mean,” Ryan asked, gazing down at her as they crossed the threshold to the cafeteria.

  Cassie shrugged, not wanting to answer and especially not wanting to answer over the roar of the voices in the cafeteria. She and Ryan picked a table. Cassie waved Rebecca over as soon as she entered. The three of them commandeered the end of the long table, with a group of braver freshman taking the opposite end.

  Cassie couldn’t shake the feeling of being watched. It was worse in the cafeteria than in any other part of the school. It left her squirming uncomfortably in her hard, plastic chair. Rebecca kept up a long stream of innocuous news, random snippets of gossip she had picked up, and eventually she devolved into the English assignment they had been given. Cassie could hear the stress behind her words, the strain of trying to keep things normal. She grabbed at her hand under the table, squeezing with firm pressure, and Rebecca took a deep breath, shooting her a look of gratitude mixed with understanding. Ryan was quiet, watching Cassie and then looking around the cafeteria in turns. She noticed that something was off, something had caught his eye and bothered him, and when he sat up straight, his body tensed. Before Cassie could turn around, Samantha Collins slipped into the chair next to her. Cassie felt her eyebrows rise high on her forehead, and she knew who else would be standing behind her.

  Her hands flitted nervously under the table, coming to rest on the edge. Something was scratched on the underside of the table, and she drew her fingers away hastily, fearful that she would find another set of eyes.

  “Can I sit?” Jon asked. Ryan didn’t answer, and Cassie watched him in expectation.

  “He means you,” Samantha said to Cassie, her voice low. “I told him he needed to ask you first.”

  Cassie felt a smile start to form, and she pushed it back. She never had much to do with Samantha, but she suddenly felt a new appreciation for the pretty blond who was now taking bites of a turkey sandwich. She turned in her chair to regard Jon. He had trouble meeting her eye, but when he did, Cassie could read the struggle there.

  “I’m sorry about Laney. I spent all weekend in the woods, with the search parties. I—I’m sorry,” he said. Cassie nodded, about to gesture to the chair next to Samantha when the blond next to her cleared her throat purposefully. “And, the picture, I uh … ”

  “Just sit, Jon,” Cassie said, her chest tightening. Ryan’s teeth were gritted, and he was staring over Cassie’s shoulder. She kept her eyes on her lunch, the sandwich she couldn’t bring herself to eat, and the awkward silence of the table lingered until Rebecca broke it with a question for Samantha about gym class.

  “I didn’t realize he was passing that around,” Ryan said, leaning across the table. His voice was low, his gaze darting over to Jon who was sitting beside Samantha. “The picture, I mean. I had no idea.”

  “It’s no big deal,” Cassi
e lied, trying to smooth it over and ignore that it had ever happened. She still felt sick when she remembered that night and what Jon had seen. She had no desire to dwell on it.

  “People have been bugging you about it though, haven’t they?”

  Cassie shrugged in admission, avoiding his question. He blew out a sharp breath.

  Ryan ignored Jon throughout lunch. Part of Cassie felt guilty about that, but most of her didn’t have the room left to care. The teachers were kind, well-intentioned, but they spoke to Cassie as though she were missing a vital organ. She was; she physically ached with the loss of her best friend. There were so many times throughout the day where she’d think of something amusing and turn to tell Laney, only to remember she wasn’t there. She sought her out in crowds, watched her empty seat as the classroom filled. People stared at her as though she were the one missing, looking right through her with glances of pity or fear.

  Many of her peers knew Cassie was in the hospital. Only a few of the stupid ones dared to ask why. Rebecca had helped with one sophomore who asked, yelling at him in the middle of the hallway. Cassie had to find her in the bathroom afterward, crying her eyes out over the sink. Cassie grabbed at her and pulled her into a hug, squeezing tightly until the bell rang and they both walked late to gym class.

  The gym teacher took one look at them and excused them to the bleachers, letting them watch the badminton tournaments that absolutely no one cared about or tried to win.

  “Do you think they’ll find her?” Rebecca asked. Because it was her, Cassie didn’t mind. The wood of the bleachers was hard to sit on, and she brought her knees up, resting her elbows on her bent legs and hanging her head between her arms.

  “No,” Cassie answered, blowing out a sharp breath.

  “Not in the woods?” Rebecca asked. Cassie shook her head. Her friend sat quietly for a moment longer before she spoke, her voice hesitant. “I think it’s worse that way. Jess is gone, and it completely sucks. But I don’t have to wonder.”