Jimmy Stone's Ghost Town (7 page)

In front of us. I mean,
directly in front of us was a bright circle of trees. There had to
be at least twenty of them in the circle and it was
huge
. If it had snowed,
and it was cold enough, you could have stuck an ice-skating rink in
the middle of the circle.

But what was even stranger
was that each tree seemed to be exactly the same distance from each
other, and they were
glowing
. It was as if they formed a
fence around the huge open circle. Like someone had placed each one
there to protect this incredible open space.

The moon was shining but
the glow on these trees wasn't moonlight, and they sure as hell
didn't each have their own lights attached to them, but they were
still glowing, I tell you.
Glowing
!

The ones directly in front of us, maybe
three of them, were silhouetted against the blackness of the rest
of the forest.

"Should we?" I asked and nodded my head
toward the circle of trees. David hadn't turned his head to see me
nod, but I was sure he knew what I was asking.

"Uh huh," he said, almost dumbfounded, and
without even taking his eyes off the glow in front of us.

"C'mon, Trex," I said and took one small
step toward the circle.

Trex and David took one small step to line
up with me and then we moved slowly in unison toward the glow.

We took maybe four more steps until we were
able to see around the three large trees that were right in our
way.

It was then that we both
gasped when we saw just how
not
completely empty the circle actually was and just
where all these trees were getting their glow from.

There, dead center in the middle of the vast
circle of trees, stood one pristine tree, not too thick around, but
enormously tall. It looked like it stretched all the way to the
moon - maybe even piercing it - like Jack's beanstalk.

For the first fifteen feet
up the tree, at least, it was just tree. Just bark and stump, no
leaves, no branches, no nothing. It was
beautiful
, and clear, and looked -
at least to the three of us standing just outside the circle - like
the most perfect tree you've ever seen in your life. It looked like
God Himself had taken His hand and plopped this perfect tree down
right in the middle of the forest. Right in the middle of this
circle.

But not even the absolute perfectness of
this tree was what made David, Trex, and me all gasp like we'd seen
a ghost (or ten).

It was that the entire, perfect, sky-high
tree was surrounded by a shining light. It was as if a huge tube of
light was dropped around the tree itself. It was shining and bright
from top to bottom and strong enough to create that gorgeous glow
bouncing off every single tree in the circle.

If heaven were a tree, I'd swear we had
died.

I tried to speak, but nothing came out the
first time that I moved my lips. I shook my head, to clear the
cobwebs, and tried again.

"I've got to see it up close."

"Me too," said David as Trex barked loudly,
the sound echoing through the entire forest. "We have to."

So I grabbed Trex's leash, flicked off my
flashlight and took five more steps. With David right behind me, I
crossed through two of the trees in front of us, broke the circle
of light, and stepped inside.

The light was all around us now, and it was
as bright as it had been outside that morning.

I turned to David and he turned back to me
and smiled. I dropped Trex's leash and he sat obediently by our
side.

I laughed (probably the nerves and
excitement) and then David laughed and Trex barked.

"Now
this
is what we came out here for,"
I said as we walked slowly toward Heaven, or God, or just a plain
old tree with her damn shiny glow. Whatever it was, we were walking
straight toward it, and we were going to find out.

Chapter Fourteen

Sometimes, when I had too
much time to sit in my room alone and think, I'd wonder what it
would have been like to have my almost-sister around instead of
Trex. I mean, I figure that Mom and Dad wouldn't have bothered to
bring a puppy home for me if Charlotte had come home with them
instead. I didn't know it at the time, but now I'm smart enough to
realize that Trex was a gift to keep me from asking too many
questions, getting too upset, or wondering why I suddenly
wasn't
going to have a
sister.

Would life have been different? Would Mom
have stuck around? Would Dad be like the Dad I used to remember
from when I was small?

I'd lay on my bed in my room, listening to
the drone of Dad's TV from the living room, and think about how
things might have changed and if things would be better.

But every single time I'd
get just a little
too
upset – every single time a few tears started to well up in
my eyes and trickle down my cheeks – I'd hear a quick bark and feel
Trex jump on the bed, nuzzle up next to me, and whap me slightly
with his tail. That was enough to remind me that things were going
to be just fine. Enough to show me that I have everything I need.
And enough to make me forget - just for a few moments - that I
almost had a sister named Charlotte and that Mom wasn't coming
back.

I always had Trex. No
matter what else happened, who else came into our lives, and what
Dad did to himself or to me, I
always
had Trex. Always.

And it was no different
now with David and I staring up at the shiniest glowing tree you've
ever seen in your entire life (possibly the
only
glowing tree you've ever seen
in your entire life), I had nothing to fear - Trex was right there
by our side.

We had no idea just what
to expect as we approached the massive glowing tree, but we knew
(for some
strange
reason, we really just
knew
) that we'd be okay.

The glow wasn't an ominous glow, and it
wasn't something that you'd think could swoop you up, suck you into
some strange time warp where you'd never see or hear any of your
friends and family again. No. It was more of a warm, glowing cocoon
of light. It was inviting and beautiful. It was, perhaps, the most
beautiful thing either of us had ever seen.

Trex whimpered slightly as we stepped closer
and closer to the glowing ring of light surrounding the tree, but
he never pulled back. He never stopped moving toward the tree and
neither did we.

"Are you sure?" I asked David just before we
reached the point of no return - the last step or two before we'd
be bathed in that glowing light.

"We'll be fine," he said and shook his head
up and down as if to reassure himself of the very same thing. "It's
just light, right?"

"Right," I said and took another step
closer. "Just light."

It was in that very last
step - one little push of the feet and we'd be
there
- that everything around us
seemed to slow down and come to life all at once. We could hear the
slightest rustle of leaves as the wind blew through the trees
around us. The smell of pine was strong in our noses and everywhere
we turned we could see the most gorgeous glow in the history of
light. The forest was
alive
.

The very last step,
although not really frightening, certainly
felt
like a leap of faith. We had no
idea what to expect once we stepped inside the glowing ring of
light. We wholeheartedly
felt
like we'd be totally fine, but there was still
that one last hint of apprehension as our legs moved and our feet
broke the plane of the light and stepped inside. It was the only
thing left to do - just go right ahead and step inside.

David, Trex, and I each took that last step,
and we took it with a conviction that you might not have expected.
We stepped in strong and proud and full of hearts that could go any
which way. They could break or fill to their absolute brims.

And when we finally found ourselves standing
inside that glorious glowing ring of light and saw the monstrous
tree in front of us, there was nothing to fear. We were full and
happy and knew that everything was good.

The strange thing, though, was that once we
were inside that ring of light, everything else seemed to filter
away. We couldn't hear the rustle of the leaves anymore, or the
wind whip through the trees, and the smell of pine had completely
left our noses. It was as if we were enclosed inside a vacuum. The
tree had its own ecosystem and its very own environment, which we
now stood in – stock still and staring straight ahead at the
largest tree trunk we'd ever seen in our lives.

"Is this--"

"--Yes," David said,
cutting me off. "It's everything and anything you could possibly
even say. There's nothing you could ask me that it
isn't
."

As crazy as David's
response might have sounded, I completely understood exactly what
he said. The tree, and its insanely awesome ring of glowing light,
was
everything
and
nothing
. It was whatever we wanted it to be.

"I can't believe how quiet it is in here,"
said David, looking around him in every direction. "It's like the
entire world just disappeared."

Trex looked up at David and let out a quick
bark, jumping just slightly to show his excitement.

"It's beautiful and amazing and the most
surprising thing I think I've ever seen," I replied.

I took the cue from David and allowed myself
to look all around me. I thought, for a moment, that I might need
to pinch myself to actually come back down to earth. It was as if I
was floating in this weird abyss and I could fly anywhere and do
just about anything. The world around me no longer existed in this
moment. There were no more Coogan Boys. My dad wasn't a hapless
drunk. My almost-sister actually came home. And my mom was still
here and hugging me hard every single day.

That wasn't,
unfortunately, how anything
really
was now. But it sure as heck felt nice to think
that maybe - just for a moment - that's how everything turned
out.

When I came back down to earth and shook the
dreams from my head, I saw David inching closer and closer to the
tree, Trex just followed close to David's heels and inched along
toward the tree as well.

"Look!" he said, pointing toward the middle
of the trunk. "Do you see this, Jimmy?!"

I took two quick steps toward David, Trex,
and the massive trunk and set my gaze on where David's finger was
pointing.

"I... I think I see..."

"This," he said, pointing
even closer to the tree's bark without actually touching any part
of it. "Right
here
."

I leaned in closed to the tree and looked
right down David's arm, his hand, his fingers, and his outstretched
pointer until I saw exactly where he was pointing.

"What the--"

"I know," David said. "I know."

At the very end of David's bony little
pointer finger was a bluish glow shining straight out of the tree's
dark, brown bark. The rest of the trunk was your normal, everyday
brown rippled bark, but that shining bluish glow was staring us
right in the face now.

I stepped closer to the tree and looked
right into the glowing light.

"It's--"

"Wait," said David, leaning back a few
inches and craning his neck in a strange way. "Take one step back
and look again."

I stepped back from the
tree and craned my neck as well. It was
then
that I finally saw what had
probably been there all along since we stepped inside the enormous
tree's glowing ring of light.

Right there, in front of
our faces, it looked like someone (or some
thing
) had carved letters into the
trunk of the tree (to be more accurate, it looked like it was
etched with some sort of laser beam). It was these letters that
created the gorgeous blue glow coming from the trunk of the
tree.

I looked over at David and Trex and saw
their faces tinted blue as well as the glowing light shone on
them.

"What do you think it means?" I asked
David.

"I have absolutely no idea."

I stepped back in close to the tree and
stretched out my hand toward the trunk.

"You're not going to--"

"Yeah," I said turning my head toward David
to gauge his reaction. "I was going to."

"Are you sure that's a smart thing to
do?"

"What could it hurt?" I said. "They're just
letters."

I watched David shrug his shoulder and Trex
tilt his head to the side as I turned back toward the tree and
placed my finger at the very top of the first letter. My finger
grabbed the glow from the letter and turned bright blue in the
pulsating light.

I had no idea how these letters got into the
tree, but I couldn't help but be drawn to them. I had to touch
them.

I had no idea, however,
just what would happen when I began tracing the glowing blue "GT"
with my finger, but by the time I'd reached the very bottom end of
that "T," I realized we were in for something we'd
never
expected.

Chapter Fifteen

The more time I spent with David, the more I
began to realize just how good he'd become at fitting in at
school.