Campbell Wood (11 page)

Slowly, with an occasional twinge of pain, she sat up in bed. In the glow from her nightlight she saw the remains of her treasured house. It seemed to stare back at her like a huge square wooden head, with a large and ragged pumpkin mouth. For a moment she felt a sob form in her throat at the loss, but she quickly suppressed it.

She slipped quietly out of bed into her slippers and pulled on her quilted robe. It was cold; the time of night when the thermostat turned the radiators down before cranking up again for the heat assault against morning.

She moved silently out into the hallway. There was a distorted, window-shaped patch of light on the carpet from the window at the end of the hall. The sight of that cold light sent a chill through her and she tightened her robe around her neck.

She moved deftly to the attic stairway and slowly mounted the steps. The door loomed above her, dark and menacing. Her imagination began to work and she fancied it flying open
as
some un-nameable, pasty ghoul with an open, cavernous mouth flew down on her. She shook the thoughts from her mind.

She had the brief feeling that her feet were sinking into the steps as she mounted them—as
if
the stairs were curling up around her.

She looked down and saw only flat gold carpeting.

The attic door was in front of her. Hesitating a moment, she then turned the brass knob slowly, pushing in. For an instant it seemed as if someone were pushing back. But the door then opened with a soft, musty hiss.

Kaymie gave one last look behind her and discovered that Boris had appeared and was sitting somberly at the bottom of the stairs, looking up at her.

She went in, pushing the door partially closed behind her.

Pulling the chain on the dim overhead light, she gasped. The attic, she now realized for sure, was set up almost exactly like the one in her destroyed dollhouse.

She climbed over a stack of boxes and moved to the far left corner, where there was a cleared-out area. She went to the place that corresponded to the secret compartment in her dollhouse.

She approached the corner slowly. Something caught at the corner of her vision. She turned to see a shape flit across the small window. She stared out for a moment. Soft moonlight drifted in.

She turned back to the corner and again that same something caught her eye. But once more there was nothing. She walked to the window and looked out. She saw only the blue-white light of the moon filtering through the big oak on the front lawn, subtly illuminating the cold night scene of houses, street, mailboxes, lawns.

She moved back to the corner of the attic.

There was nothing there but a crudely paneled surface over the attic wall studs.

Kaymie touched the paneling, moving her hands over its grained surface. There was nothing there—no secret panel, no roughly cut door, compartment, or shelf.

She shivered and pulled her wrap tighter. It was
cold
up here. The door to the room creaked, and she turned quickly to see Boris edging his way cautiously in. He gave her only a cursory glance, and then jumped up onto the narrow ledge under the window. He settled there and looked outside.

Kaymie was about to turn away when Boris's back bristled. He was following something with his eyes. He made a deep-throated growling noise, bared his teeth, and hissed.

There was a crack. The shelf above the window tilted down precariously for a second before settling.

"Boris!" Kaymie yelled. With a shriek the cat jumped away as the shelf suddenly righted itself.

A strange feeling came over Kaymie, the same one she had felt just before her dollhouse had exploded. A tug in her mind. She was sure she had righted the shelf, and she felt another force there, resisting her.

Boris lurked just outside the door, looking in at her.

She felt a tingle at the base of her neck. Warmth was spreading up along the base of her skull and
deep down into it. It was more than just a physical feeling; there was a warmth spreading in her mind, too. A new perception came to her,
as
if a doorway she had never known was there suddenly opened, or as if someone had shown her a new limb with a whole new set of muscles that she had never even thought of using—hadn't even known she possessed.

The door in her mind opened a crack, and then stopped.

She bent closer to the wall, examining the wood paneling at a point where two slats were butted together and nailed in. The warmth spread
^-
like butter over the back of her skull. There was a cracking sound, and then the louder sound of forced wood splintering. The two panels peeled back, leisurely, splitting with the pressure away from the nails that held them in. There were two snaps and sections of them broke away and fell to either side.

There were shadows where the panels had been which resolved into the form of a compartment.
Kaymie's
fingers tingled. She reached in, removing a damp-smelling package covered in brown paper.

Bringing it under the weak overhead bulb, Kaymie carefully unwrapped the bundle, sections of string and wet paper pulling away in her fingers. Underneath she found a further wrapping, this one watertight, of some sort of leather.

She held her breath for a moment when she unfolded the hide covering, for there, in the weak light, was a delicately spun crown of gold studded with tiny diamonds. It was the crown she had dreamed about. Along with it was a pure white linen robe, the fibers of which were so fine she could almost not make them out. When she held it out in front of her it didn't even show a crease from all the folding it had endured.

Suddenly she knew that someone was watching her. Twisting around, she saw through the small window, silhouetted against the nearly full globe of the moon, a tiny figure crouched in the crook of the tree in front of the house. It looked like part of the tree itself. Kaymie could not tell if it was male or female, or even if it was human. It could be a monkey for all she knew. It was either covered with fur or dressed in dark clothing.

Hate was emanating from the shape. Kaymie could see its eyes now, two large glowing coals. They were fixed on her with burning, black hatred.

The window frame splintered. A thin, sharp sliver of wood broke away and flew at Kaymie like an arrow from a bow. She cried out and threw herself to one side, just avoiding it. Another and then another darted at her. The second lodged painfully in her upper arm, drawing a red gush of blood. Kaymie cried out and the splintering abruptly stopped.

She rose slowly, pulling the splinter from her arm and making her way cautiously to the window. She held the stare of the figure in the tree. There were no more sounds, no breaking of wood. There was a battle here, a contest. Kaymie put her hands on the windowsill and glared willfully out; the figure, a mere ten yards away and half hidden in the darkness, locked eyes with her.

Then the eyes were gone. Kaymie thought she saw the creature slink away down the bole of the tree but couldn't be certain. It was there one moment and gone the next. Only the tree was there now, its branches swaying against the background of a late November moon. She looked down. She still clutched the linen garment in her hand. She felt as if she were waking from a dream and wanted to cry like a little girl, but she didn't. She was different somehow. She was not a little girl any more. Briefly she thought that maybe it had all been a dream after all, but there was still a throb in her arm where the wood splinter had gone in.

In the doorway, Boris hissed and then turned away.

T
he sheriff's office was nearly
spartan
. There was only a desk with a chair on either side of it, a small jail cell, a couple of file cabinets. The walls were bare except for the one thing that broke the starkness of the room, a team picture of the 1977 New York Yankees hanging under the barred window.

Ramirez was silent while Mark spoke, his chair tilted back against the wall and his hands behind his head. He had a toothpick in his mouth, and once again Mark wished he would take his sunglasses off indoors, bad eye or no.

"That's real interesting, Mr. Campbell. You think there'd be any chance of your son describing whoever it was he saw in the trees around your house?"

"It's just a shape he saw."

"Could've been an animal?"

"I know he's just a little kid but I think he can tell the dif—"

Ramirez held up a hand. "Please, Mr. Campbell. I'm just trying to make sure. I believe your son saw someone hanging around your house. In fact, it doesn't surprise me at all. I expected something
like this to happen. There haven't been any direct threats against your family?"

"Not really." Mark hesitated, and then told him about Feeney getting killed and the dollhouse exploding. "Although I honestly can't say how either could have happened. I checked that dollhouse for debris from explosives—firecracker casings, all that—and found nothing. Maybe it's all just a bunch of coincidences."

Ramirez was quiet for a moment, his sunglasses fixed on Mark. "I don't think so, Mr. Campbell."

Mark was stunned. "You mean you think there's something
 
. . ." he didn't know how to put it, "not right going on here?"

"You mean spooky?" Ramirez grinned, but it was a mirthless smile. "Depends on what you want to believe, Mr. Campbell. There's plenty of stories around here, if you like to believe in spooks." He adjusted his glasses; for a moment Mark was hopeful that he would take them off but he merely fixed their angle and let them stay. "For instance, I did a little checking back in the files and came up with some interesting things. All this business with pieces of wood isn't really all that new. Seems there was a guy found dead in the woods outside town just like that kid
Phillie
McAllister about twenty years ago. And then I found another interesting report in the file." Ramirez's voice was remarkably even, almost apologetic. "Do you know how your mother died, Mr. Campbell?"

"No, I don't." An icy hand suddenly clutched Mark's heart.

Ramirez sighed. "Well, neither do I, really. But the guy who had this job before me, just before he quit and moved away, filed a report on your mother's death. He says he found her himself, in that same stretch of woods between town and the university campus. She was, according to him, half embedded in a tree, as if she were part of it. Only her head, arms, and part of her upper body were out of it. According to him, she was part of the tree, and when he tried to get her out he found that her legs and the rest of her in the tree was made of wood."

"My God."

"He says he did what he could, got the body into a closed coffin. Two weeks later he quit." Ramirez leaned forward, folding his hands in front of him on his desk. "Now I don't know if that sheriff was a drunk or what, but that's one hell of a spook story. And I don't believe a word of it."

"But—"

"But nothing, Mr. Campbell. You come from the Bronx, you should know better. People don't need ghosts, they do strange things all by themselves. That's why I gave you such a lean going over when you moved in. I figured you were
Una
Campbell's son, maybe you were mixed up in all this crap. The way I see it, someone's been doing nasty things with wood around here for twenty years, maybe more. But people becoming part of trees I don't buy. Maybe your mother was involved, maybe not, but somebody in Campbell Wood didn't like her and did something about it. Now it looks like somebody doesn't like you being around. Murder I believe in, spooks I don't." He leaned back in his chair again, putting his hands back behind his head. "Maybe you'll get mad, but I've been keeping an
eye
on your place since you moved in. Nothing serious, just driving by every once in a while to check things out. I saw somebody in one of your trees one day, but whoever it was
was
too fast for me."

"You think my family's in danger?"

Ramirez sighed. "I hope not. Like you said, there hasn't really been any direct threat against you. Except maybe that dollhouse thing. I think whoever it is wants to scare you off and I'd hate to see that happen. The people in Campbell Wood seem gullible for scare tactics, but I'm not. And I'd hope you wouldn't be, too. You seem like good people, and we need good people up here." He paused. "Okay with you if I keep driving by?"

"Could I stop you?"

Ramirez showed his white teeth. "No. But I want you to know what I'm doing, Mr. Campbell. I want to fix whatever's wrong with this town. I'll watch out for you folks. But I want you to watch out for yourself, too."

"I will."