The Crossroads (3 page)

“The Tree
of Life has three hundred and twenty-five images of endangered and extinct animals carved into its trunk, roots, and branches,” said Judy.

On Memorial Day, Zack, Judy, and George—the whole new Jennings family—wound their way around the fourteen-story-tall man-made baobab tree that was the centerpiece to Disney's Animal Kingdom amusement park.

“It's awesome!” Zack stared up at all the animals etched into the fake tree like a gigantic interlocking jigsaw puzzle.

“Can you see the lion?” his father asked. “In the bark there? I think it's a lion. Maybe a leopard. I know it's not a panda bear….”

“Yeah. Cool.” Zack had been having a blast in Orlando and figured his new stepmom could turn out to be a whole lot more fun than his real mom.

That's when he smelled her, smelled the cigarette.

His mother.

Zack imagined she had come back from the dead to teach him a lesson. How dare he have fun with his pretty new stepmother when his real mother was dead on account of him? This wasn't the Tree of Life. It was the Tree of Death!

“Zack?” his dad asked. “Are you okay?”

He nodded. Tried to speak. “Yeah. Fine.”

Judy sniffed the air. She smelled it, too.

“Somebody's smoking,” she said.

“I thought the whole park was nonsmoking.” Zack's dad sounded mad.

“It is,” said Judy. “But you know smokers. They have trouble reading signs.” Now Judy looked at Zack. She must have seen the panic in his eyes. “You okay, hon?” she asked softly.

“Yeah. Thanks.”

Zack knew smokers, too. Lived with one most of his life. His mother went through two or three packs a day. Sucked on them hard, like she wanted to drain each stick dry. His mother kept smoking until the day she died, even though the cigarettes were what caused the cancer.

“They're the only joy I have left,” she used to croak from that hospital bed in the dining room. She would stare at Zack with a look that seared his soul deeper than the glowing tip of a cigarette could scorch his skin. “My only joy in the world.”

Gerda Spratling
lived in the one true mansion near North Chester, Connecticut: Spratling Manor.

Her great-great-grandfather Augustus J. Spratling, the founder of Spratling Clockworks, had built the stately stone castle in 1882 on one thousand forested acres six miles west of town. Miss Spratling had lived in the manor her entire life. When her father died in 1983, he left her the house and a handsome inheritance. Her mother had died years earlier, when Gerda was an infant.

It had been twenty-five years since her father had passed away, and the money was starting to run out. Still, she had enough to live on, provided she lived frugally. She sold off some of the land, trimmed the staff to three, shut down parts of the mansion, and kept most of the rooms upstairs locked or boarded shut.

Miss Spratling had moved her bedroom furniture into what had once been the library, a mahogany-paneled chamber entered through colossal sliding doors and connected by a secret passageway to the Spratling family chapel.

The area around her island of bedroom furniture was empty save for her father's old rolltop desk and the dusty bookshelves climbing up the towering walls.

There was a rolling stepladder resting against the tallest bookcase. No one had ascended it for twenty-five years, not since Miss Spratling's father had climbed to its top, noosed a braided curtain pull around his neck, kicked the ladder aside, and fallen just far enough to snap his neck and die.

 

Miss Spratling's
personal assistant, Sharon, slept in the walk-in pantry off the kitchen so she would be close at hand should her employer require anything during the night.

Sharon's mother, a chambermaid who had worked for the Spratlings for many decades, lived in a ramshackle carriage house down one of the winding drives coursing through the estate's overgrown grounds. Mrs. Jones roomed there so Miss Spratling would not have to listen to the screaming infant the woman took care of: Sharon's baby boy.

A little before midnight, Sharon awoke to see a black silhouette standing in her doorway.

“Sharon, we have run out of Frangelico. Sharon?”

Sharon's name always had a much longer “ssshhh” at the front of it on Monday nights when Miss Spratling had been drinking. The weekly visits to the memorial made the old woman sad, and sadness made her drink more than usual. Frangelico was Miss Spratling's favorite alcoholic beverage: a sweet and syrupy concoction that tasted like a hazelnut milk shake, except that it burned your throat.

“Sharon? God in heaven! Wake up, girl!”

“Yes, ma'am,” Sharon mumbled.

“You must go to the store immediately!”

Sharon knew no liquor store would be open at this hour, so she would need to improvise. She sleepwalked to the curtained shelves where she kept her work clothes.

“Hurry along, girl! Lay a patch, as they say.”

 

Sharon drove
over to the Mobil station on Highway 31. They were open twenty-four hours and had a mini-market that sold coffee. At the counter with the Styrofoam cups and plastic lids were tubs of flavored nondairy creamer. One was called Hazelnut Delight, which sort of tasted like Frangelico, especially if you never saw the tiny tubs. She'd bring home a few dozen, empty them into a glass, and add some whiskey.

“Just the coffee?” asked the checkout clerk.

“And the creamers.”

“Did she run out of Frangelico again?”

Sharon nodded.

“You sure you have enough?”

“Yes.”

Sharon pulled out a wrinkled dollar bill.

“Coffee's free tonight,” said the clerk. “Creamers, too.”

“Really?”

The clerk winked. “Yes, ma'am. Happy Memorial Day.”

“Thank you.”

Sharon scooped up the creamer tubs and slipped them into the pockets of her smock. She wasn't a nurse, but Miss Spratling insisted that she wear a uniform. She hurried out to her car. It was well past midnight.

She drove away from the gas station and reached the darkest stretch of highway. No strip malls. No houses. No lights. Just the dark forest lining both sides of the road, the treetops becoming a dense stockade fence, running their jagged tips against the inky sky. Sharon had the road to herself, except for the moths and bugs intent on dive-bombing into her headlights. She flicked on the radio but heard nothing except static.

She looked down.

Weird.

She'd never had radio trouble in this spot before. Even at night.

Weird.

She looked up from the control console to the road.

“Oh, no!”

There was a girl standing in the middle of the road. A girl dressed all in white.

Sharon slammed on her brakes. The front end of the car swerved left; the rear end skidded right.

Sharon's heart thumped against her chest.

She tried to breathe.

Her front bumper was only two inches away from the girl in white.

I could've killed her.

A smile blossomed on the girl's placid face as she made her way over to the passenger-side window. She seemed to glow, to carry her own aura of throbbing red light. Then Sharon realized she had come to a stop at the crossroads, with its blinking red stoplight.

“I wonder if I might trouble you for a ride?” the girl asked.

“What?”

“I'm terribly late.”

She could also be terribly mental,
thought Sharon.

Standing in the middle of the highway like that.

“Where are you going?” Sharon asked.

“Down the road. I'm late.”

The girl in white was a teenager. Sixteen, maybe seventeen. Her soft blond hair was tied back in a ponytail by a white chiffon scarf. She wore a stiff white dress that was snug around her slender waist. She had on long white gloves. A white shawl was draped over her bare shoulders. She was white on white on white.

She'd also get creamed if she kept standing in the middle of the road.

“Hop in,” said Sharon.

The girl in white waited outside.

“Could you open the door, please?”

“What?”

“It's these silly white gloves. I'd sure hate to sully them.”

Reluctantly, Sharon leaned across the seat and opened the door.

“Thanks! You're the most!” Her gown rustled as she slid into the car.

“Um,” said Sharon, “we really can't go anywhere until you close your door.”

“Do you mind doing it for me?”

“What?”

The seated girl showed Sharon her white gloves again.

“Right,” Sharon mumbled. “Wouldn't want you to ‘sully' them, would we?”

As Sharon leaned across the teenager's lap to grab the door handle, she felt a strange chill. Goose bumps exploded on her arm.

The girl in white just giggled. “Come on! Let's lay a patch and wail!”

The little
car hummed along for about a mile. The girl in white sat silently and stared straight ahead. More moths threw themselves at Sharon's high beams. Others went for her windshield.

“So, where are you headed?” Sharon finally asked.

“Down the road.”

“I know. But where? North Chester? Monroe?”

“Down the road.”

“This road's awfully long.”

“I'm going to the dance. At Chumley Prep.”

Sharon felt her stomach twist into knots. “Chumley?”

“Yes. My boyfriend invited me down for their summer social.”

“Chumley?”

“Yes.” The girl looked at her delicate wristwatch. “We should just make it. The dance won't start until eight.”

Sharon tasted something sour rising up into her throat. “Uh, you know, it's already after midnight.”

“Oh, dear. Midnight?”

“Yeah.”

“Why didn't you come along sooner?”

The girl in white wasn't smiling anymore. In fact, she looked ready to snarl. So Sharon decided it was her turn to stare straight ahead.

“Maybe you made a mistake,” Sharon said to the windshield, hoping to calm her passenger's quick-trigger temper. “You know that school? Chumley Prep? They closed that down years ago. Back before I was even born.”

She dared to look over at the girl in white.

But she wasn't there.

The passenger seat was empty.

On Tuesday,
the day after Memorial Day, a tanker truck traveled down County Route 13, hauling its load of fresh milk to the dairy-processing plant on the far side of North Chester.

It hissed and clicked its air brakes as it came to a stop at the crossroads. The driver looked up at the blinking red stoplight, glanced out both side windows, and checked for traffic coming in either direction on Highway 31.

Then his windshield exploded.

A tree limb slammed through the glass and pinned him to his seat like a prized trophy in a butterfly collection.

The branch had come from a gigantic oak tree that towered over the intersection.

An oak tree with a white wooden cross nailed into its trunk.