Campbell Wood (15 page)

The window wouldn't budge. She put some weight into it, pushing the frame up at the corners in its tracks, but it wouldn't give way. And now that she looked again outside, the trees looked awfully weird today. They looked gray too, and twisted close together as if someone had wrapped them like pretzels. They also seemed awfully close to the house.

"Mommy—"

The house moved beneath them.

"What the—" Ellen began, and then she gasped as she was thrown to Seth's bed when it happened again.

It felt as if the house had moved on its foundation beneath her. Ellen could hear furniture sliding and hitting walls. There was the sound of bottles falling from shelves and glasses and dishes breaking in the floors below her.

With a crash the house was jarred again.

The door to the bedroom flew open. There were terrifying sounds all around them now, as if the very world were coming apart. Above, in the attic, pieces of wall and floor were breaking apart and flying about the room. Wooden crates exploded. Glass jars and tin cans were dropped to the floor as the shelves they rested on tore away beneath them. There was a nearly constant cracking and groaning of wood around them.

"Mommy, I'm scared!" Seth cried, holding Ellen tight.

Ellen shuddered uncontrollably. The sound level increased, and she put her hands to her ears.

Suddenly Seth's bed began to move. Ellen pulled the boy from
it and retreated to the far corner of the room, huddling down and looking about with terror-filled eyes.
As they watched, the bed disintegrated, the wood frame peeling away, the slats underneath holding up the box spring snapping and falling to the floor, where they writhed like snakes. The broken pieces came together in the center of the room, forming a miniature, hissing funnel, a tiny cyclone. Other pieces of furniture in the room—Seth's desk, the nightstand, a rocking chair—burst apart, their sections feeding the funnel of the tornado.

Bits of wood began to shoot out of the spinning cloud at Ellen. She buried Seth against her, and with a cry she ducked one shard of wood, then another.

The house heaved beneath them again. Ellen heard the back porch swing shattering and crashing against the back door.

Holding Seth tight, she lurched out the door of the bedroom and into the hall. The house was tilting crazily. It was like being in one of those funhouse tilted rooms, where the floor never seems to be even, no matter where you're standing.

She pulled herself to the stairs and made her way down, gripping the railing with one hand to keep from being thrown off. As she reached the bottom the railing splintered
as
she held it, and she was thrown to the floor.

"Mommy!"

"Seth, are you all right?"

In answer, he crawled to her and held her, shivering.

Groggy, she looked up from the floor where her head had struck it to an incredible sight. No nightmare could compare with this scene of horror.

The living room was alive. It was curling and slithering and creeping around on itself like a living being. The floor was pushing up the individual boards beneath the rug, making the carpet hump and heave like a speared whale. As she watched, the fireplace mantel pulled itself off the wall with a loud crack and soared, whole, across the room to smash against the far wall. Some of the furniture in the room, such as her cane-backed
chair
and, in the dining room, the hutch and bar, had turned into soft, pliable things, like something out of a Dali painting, and were twisting into odd and grotesque shapes. The frame of the couch had fractured into a thousand wooden knives and was tearing and ripping through the fabric, throwing up great plumes of feathers and stuffing. The grandfather clock by the entrance to the front door exploded. The ceiling began to crack, and slats of the floor above were jutting out here and there, some of them coiling and snapping against one another.

Ellen pulled her feet up under her, holding Seth between her knees, too terrified to move.

There were more loud crashes from below and above. The house quaked, and the few remaining things standing fell over. Windows smashed in their frames, the frames themselves flying out and splitting apart. Shingles broke away from the house; with a huge rip the front porch tore away and disintegrated. Support timbers in the cellar ground themselves into sawdust. The cellar steps collapsed with a grinding crash.

There was a blur of movement to Ellen's left, at the stairs; a movement of fur.

"Boris!"

The cat jerked his head, noting Ellen's presence but turning back to the roiling hell around him. The
bannister
had fallen away completely; the living room and every other room in the house was pulling itself to pieces.

Ellen measured the distance between herself and the front door with her eyes. About ten or twelve feet. But there was a pile of rubble in her path, which was growing.

There was an unearthly groan, and the house partially collapsed, settling at a precarious twenty-degree angle. The floor was pulling away, slat by slat, each board popping from its place and revealing a gaping and growing hole into the recesses of the black basement. The hole in the center of the living room was growing outward, and whatever remained in the room was pulled into it as the floor disappeared beneath.

Again Ellen looked to the front door. Possibly. If she could move aside the blockage that had accumulated in front of it she could make it.

The ceiling above her was dissolving, and, with wrenching sounds, furniture from the floors above was sinking down through the holes formed and dropping past her into the cellar.

Ellen felt air at her back, cold air, and turned with a shout to see that the gaping hole had reached her. Behind her was a ten-foot drop into the basement. With a short cry she scampered forward with Seth. The hole followed her.

"Come on, Boris! Come on, boy!" she shouted, pushing herself to her feet. There was no way she could make it to the terrified animal. He was crouched back away from the staircase, which now stood at a wild angle; pieces of the lower section of steps had already been pulled into the hole.

There was a great crash
as
much of the second floor fell through the now empty space between floors and into the cellar. Like Poe's House of Usher, the structure was falling in around itself, collapsing into a massive pile of rubble.

Ellen lurched forward toward the front door, pulling Seth with her. It was now or never. She screamed at the cat again, but now she could not see him through the cloud of dust and wood particles that was whipping up around her.

The house quaked again, the pile of rubble fell aside, and the doorway to the outside was free before them.

Seth screamed, and Ellen looked up to see sudden and deep blackness.

T
he woods were brooding.

Kaymie felt the sick weight of something pressing down on her, from above. Something menacing.

Something waiting.

Gray afternoon peeked through the heavy trees above. She nearly tripped over a thick tree root—had it been there a second before?—regaining her balance but losing her sense of direction for a moment. The sky disappeared, as if the branches had drawn together.

Brown darkness descended.

There was a sound up ahead. Kaymie paused. A squirrel? Like something scrabbling up a tree. She stood silent and it was repeated, straight ahead of her, in a dense clump of bushes.

Something large fell behind her, startling her. "Is anyone there?" she whispered.

She suddenly remembered her friend Clara again, from the Bronx—Clara, who seemed a million miles and years away.

Above, it grew darker.

She repeated her question.

There was another sound, directly in front of her. The bushes parted, and then fell back into place. Kaymie took a step when a voice said, "Forward."

It was a command, a hiss almost, from the dense bushes.

Automatically, Kaymie took another step. "More." The voice was sharp-edged, desperate. Kaymie drew within a few feet of the underbrush.

The hedge drew apart to reveal—nothing. Black darkness, with the hint of movement within.

A hand emerged, long, thin, and old. The voice had softened to a gentle whisper.

"Come."

Without realizing it, she had stepped into the thicket.

Into a house.

It was just like in the storybooks. Two steps down brought Kaymie into what almost looked like a squat teepee. There was a floor of earth beaten down so hard it almost resembled concrete. The walls were half underground, covered with twigs and foliage that led up and over to a low roof. The room was large, ten or twelve feet in diameter and cut off toward the back with a wall that led to another, smaller chamber. Kaymie could just see the end of a simple mat bed jutting out into the doorway. There were
pieces
of simple furniture—a chair, a weaving loom, a low table, a bookshelf—rimming the inside of the hut.

The old woman carefully covered the opening Kaymie had stepped through, cocking her head and listening for a moment before turning to face the young girl.

"You've come as I asked," the old woman said. "You've come to see
Taemon
Gaye.'

Kaymie almost gasped at the change that had come over the old woman since she had talked with her outside the school. She looked like a string of bones hung with loose clothes. Her face was skeletal, her eyes sunk deep into their sockets. But those eyes still burned with an inner fire that again made Kaymie feel a mixture of fear and awe.

"There is no reason to be afraid of me, little one," the old woman said with a marked gentleness in her voice. She held out one shriveled hand, trembling with palsy. "Let me see your crown."

"No," Kaymie said. She took it off and held it in her hand.

The old woman thrust out her hand with more force, and then suddenly seemed to lose her strength. She sank back into a chair behind her. Her breath came in little gasps. "Give . . . it
to
. . . me."

Kaymie stood firm.

Something that looked like a smile moved over
Taemon
Gaye's face. She uttered a low laugh.

"You'll make a strong Queen, little one. As strong as your grandmother."

The old woman looked up and over Kaymie, and with a sudden movement the bookcase against the far wall slid across the floor, spilling its contents and taking Kaymie by surprise, knocking her down and
pinning
her. The low table followed, flipping over and holding
Kaymie's
right arm fast.

Taemon
Gaye struggled to her feet and removed the crown from
Kaymie's
hand, after the table had exerted enough pressure to force her to let go.

The old woman returned to her chair, and the two wooden pieces of furniture moved up and back to their places.

Kaymie sat up, shaking and rubbing her arm. She contemplated
running
through the door and back out into the woods.

"Did I hurt you?"

"Not really," Kaymie answered cautiously.

"I couldn't have had I wanted to,"
Taemon
Gaye said. "I was merely your grandmother's guardian, a cousin by birth, and possess a scant amount of true power. It is nothing next to yours. Your strength is nearly as great as your grandmother's; when you are full-bloomed it may even be greater." Her brow darkened. "I fear you might need more than that for what's ahead of you. Come here, child, there's something I must do." There was a sudden anxiousness in her tone. It looked as though she would have one of her attacks.

Kaymie took a step and then stood firm. "Why did my grandfather hate my grandmother? Why didn't he tell us about any of this?"

Taemon
Gaye was immobilized, the crown held loosely in her hand and in danger of falling to the ground. She took a few shallow breaths and regained herself.

"Oh, little one," she said gently, and there was pity in her voice. "Because your grandfather was a fool. And because he did not know the truth of what was happening. Come quickly," she said, holding the crown up in her two trembling, weak hands. "There is something that must be done."