The Secret Tree (2 page)

The creature crashed away through the trees. He was fast and hard to see, but I could tell he wasn’t seven feet tall like the Man-Bat. He was closer to my size.

“Stop!” I yelled. “Get back here!” The creature ran like he was being chased by an ax murderer. Soon he disappeared in the deep dark of the woods. I got about halfway through before I had to stop and catch my breath.

It was full-on night now. A few lightning bugs flickered through the trees. Otherwise, darkness. I listened for the creature. He was gone.

There was another noise, though … a murmur that burbled under the creaks of cicadas and crickets and birds, the breeze shuffling the leaves, the yelps of kids, and the roar of traffic far away … a murmur like voices, whispering.

I took a step toward the sound, then another.

It was close by.

It swelled.

I was almost there.

I found myself in front of a big, old elm tree. It had a hole in its trunk bigger than my head, and when I pressed my hand against its thick bark, it vibrated like a hive full of bees.

I peered into the hole. It was dark inside the tree, but a bit of white winked in the blackness.

There were no bees. Just that scrap of white. I reached into the hole and pulled out a piece of paper, folded up many times.

What was a piece of paper doing inside a tree?

“Minty!” Paz shouted. Her voice seemed to come from far away. “Where are you? Come back!”

I stuffed the paper in my shorts pocket and ran back through the woods. When they saw me, Hugo and Robbie jumped up and down and waved. “Yay! The Man-Bat didn’t get her!”

“Are you okay?” Paz asked.

“He got away,” I said.

“Who got away?” Lennie asked.

“I’m not sure, but I think it was a boy,” I told them. “Sorry, Lennie, but he wasn’t tall enough to be the Man-Bat.”

“Don’t say sorry.” Lennie shook her head. “I don’t
want
it to be the Man-Bat. But it could have been a Boy-Bat.”

“Maybe,” I said, to make her feel better.

“That flash,” Paz said. “Why would he want to take our picture?”

“He must be a spy,” Hugo said. “He was spying on us!”

“Where did he go?” Lennie asked.

“He ran to the other side of the woods,” I reported. “All the way through.” I didn’t mention the tree that stopped me along the way. It was like the tree had told me in its murmur to keep it a secret.

“The other side …” The Calderons all turned their eyes nervously to the woods.

There was only one place a person could go on the other side of the woods.

The Witch House.

“He couldn’t live there,” Hugo said. “No one lives there but the Witch Lady. And she eats children.”

If the Man-Bat was a legend — I couldn’t be sure, but I’d never seen any proof that he wasn’t — the Witch House was one hundred percent real.

“I don’t like being spied on,” Paz said. She clutched her stomach. “Ow.”

“What’s wrong?” I asked.

“My stomach hurts.” Paz sank onto the grass and rolled over on her side. “Oof.”

“Did you do something to it?” I asked.

“No. Everything was fine. Then right after the Mean Boys were gone — pow. Ug. Ow …”

“Oh, no!” Lennie said. “Are you okay?”

“I’ll get Awa.” Hugo ran inside. Awa is the Calderons’ cook. She doesn’t speak much English, but she knows strange herbal cures for everything from bee stings to poison ivy to headaches.

I knelt beside Paz, who moaned and rolled back and forth, her face squished with pain. “I don’t understand it,” I said. “How did you get so sick all of a sudden?”

“I don’t know….”

Awa ran outside, trailed by Hugo. Muttering in Chinese, she examined Paz, staring into her eyes and poking at her stomach. She said something else in Chinese — the Calderon kids can usually understand her, even though they don’t speak much Chinese themselves. She helped Paz to her feet and led her into the house. I started to follow them, but then the bell rang — my parents calling me home with an old ship’s bell they’d hung in our backyard.

“I’ll get my dad,” I said. “I’ll be right back.”

My dad is an emergency room doctor, and my mom teaches nursing at the community college, so they’re like the neighborhood medics.

“That’s okay,” Lennie said. “Awa has it under control.”

“Awa,” I called. Awa turned. “Should I get my dad?” I pointed down the street toward my house, three doors away, where the bell was insistently ringing.

Awa shook her head. “No, no, is okay.”

I frowned. Awa knew what she was doing, but I was worried about Paz. “Lennie, call my dad if you need him. Promise?”

“I promise,” Lennie said. Awa nodded and waved me away. They all disappeared inside the Calderon house, leaving me alone in the front yard, the ship’s bell ringing and ringing. I walked home, thinking about Paz and the Witch House.

We live on Woodlawn Road, a dead-end street, one side lined with cookie-cutter houses, the other side lined with woods. Behind our houses are more houses and more streets, like Carroll Drive, where the Mean Boys live.

On the other side of the woods, for as long as anyone could remember, an old farmhouse sat rotting and lonely, surrounded by barren fields. It was tall and shabby, with peeling paint, cobwebs in the dusty windows, and gray shingles missing from the roof. Everyone called it the Witch House.

A crazy lady lived in the house. As far as we knew, she was as scary, rotten, and alone as her house. Last Halloween, Troy Rogers dared me, Paz, and Lennie to ring the Witch Lady’s doorbell and say, “Trick or treat!” We didn’t want to do it, but Troy said if we didn’t, he’d egg us until we were walking omelets.

So we agreed to do it. “We’ll just press the doorbell, say ‘trick or treat,’ and run like crazy,” Lennie said. “We won’t even wait for the door to open.”

“I guess it can’t hurt anyone,” I said.

For Halloween I’d dressed up as my favorite roller derby superstar, Lemon E. Kickit, in black-and-gold Catonsville Nine’s colors, with a gold helmet and a black mask to hide my eyes. Lennie decided to go as a bat, in case we ran into the Man-Bat that night. She figured he wouldn’t hurt her if he thought they might be related.

Paz had planned to go as her derby favorite, Willa Steele, but changed her mind at the last minute and had dressed up as, of all things, a witch — a
cute
witch — in a silky, black dress. She already has long, black hair, so no wig was necessary. She taped Lennie’s toy cat, Marcella, to her shoulder. “Every witch needs a familiar,” she explained.

Lennie had had Marcella since she was a baby. She protested strenuously.

“You can’t take Marcella,” she said to Paz. “What if something happens to her?”

“Nothing will happen to her.”

“I can’t fall asleep without her,” Lennie whispered. I don’t think she wanted me to hear that.

“I said, nothing will happen.”

“It better not, or you’ll be sorry,” Lennie said.

“Ooh, I’m so scared.”

That Halloween night we marched through the neighborhood, stopping at every house from Woodlawn Road to Western Street to Carroll Drive to Bailey Street. When our bags were stuffed with candy, we dropped them off at
the Calderons’ house and started our trek through the woods. I changed out of my roller skates, since it’s hard to run through the woods on wheels and I wanted to be able to make a quick escape.

The night was chilly and clear. An owl hooted high above us. “I heard that owl tried to swoop down and snatch up Kelly,” Lennie said. Kelly is our neighbor Mrs. Gorelick’s dog, a wheezy little Pekingese. “Luckily, Mr. Gorelick scared it away. But it sits in the woods across from their yard, watching and waiting for Kelly to come out.”

“Quiet, Lennie,” Paz said. “You’re giving me the creeps.”

Lennie’s small laugh had a touch of evil in it.

We crunched over the carpet of leaves, weaving through the trees until we got to the edge of the woods. The Witch House rose tall and dark from fields frosted with moonlight.

“All right,” Paz said grimly. “Let’s go.”

Marcella wobbled on her shoulder as we skittered toward the dark porch. A single light glowed in a back window — the kitchen, I guessed — and smoke puffed out of the chimney.

Someone was home.

We took the three front steps slowly, but they
creak, creak, creaked
. The porch light wasn’t on.

“I guess she’s not expecting trick-or-treaters,” I whispered.

“Shh!” Paz said. “Just ring the bell and get it over with.”

“
You
ring it,” Lennie said.

“I’ll do it.” I reached for the doorbell. Just as my finger touched it …
whap
! An egg smacked against the front door and dripped yellowly down the wood.

“The Mean Boys!” Lennie shouted.

I ducked as another egg burst against the window just over my head, cracking the glass.

“Ha-ha! Gotcha!” David whooped.

Paz ducked behind the porch railing as an egg whizzed past her. Lennie and I ran into the yard to chase the Mean Boys away.

The porch light suddenly flashed on. The Mean Boys threw one more egg at the house and vanished into the woods. Lennie and I hid behind a bush.

“Paz!” I shouted, but she cowered on the porch, frozen with fear, just outside the puddle of light.

The front door flew open and a wild-haired woman stepped out, shrieking, “I’m calling the police!” She wore a ratty bathrobe and a cat mask over her eyes. Maybe she was getting ready to go to a party. Maybe she was celebrating Halloween in her own way. Maybe she was crazy.

She spotted Paz huddled on the porch and lunged for her. “You!” she screeched. “You!” She grabbed at Paz, ripping Marcella from her shoulder. Paz screamed and finally found her legs, scrambling off the porch and racing for the woods. Lennie and I were way ahead of her.

“You!” The Witch Lady called again. “Curse you kids!”

We ran without stopping all the way through the woods. The Mean Boys were waiting on the other side, laughing at the fear on our faces.

“You were the first ones to run,” I reminded them.

“We weren’t running because we were scared,” Troy said. “It was all part of the setup.” They hopped on their bikes. “We’ve got more tricking to do. Later, girls.”

They zipped away, the cards in their wheel spokes
pfft pfft pffting
.

“We should have known they were setting us up,” Paz said.

“Hey.” Lennie reached for Paz’s shoulder. “Where’s Marcella?”

Paz swallowed. Lennie hadn’t seen what had happened.

“Paz? Did she fall off in the woods?”

“Lennie —” I began.

“Let’s go look for her,” Lennie said.

“The Witch Lady got her,” Paz confessed. “She ripped her right off my shoulder.”

Lennie’s mouth dropped open in horror. She isn’t the crying type, but I could tell she was fighting off tears. “Marcella …”

“We’ll get her back, Lennie,” I said.

“How? The Witch Lady’s keeping her prisoner! Who’s got the nerve to go back there and get her?”

“It’s not worth risking
that
again,” Paz said. “It’s just
a toy, Len. You’re getting too old to sleep with stuffed animals, anyway.”

Lennie glared at Paz through wet eyes, a defiant, angry look that scared me. “You don’t care. You don’t care about me at all. You’re a terrible sister.”

“Lennie —”

Lennie ran home. Paz turned to me. “Well? Are you going to yell at me too?”

“You didn’t mean to lose Marcella,” I said.

“Exactly. Thank you.” Paz looked down at the sidewalk, her lower lip twitching. If she felt sad or guilty, she’d never admit it.

“What did she look like?” I asked. “The Witch Lady. Up close, I mean.”

“Her hair was all tangly, and she smelled like beer,” Paz said. “And she was missing a tooth right
here
.” Paz pointed to her upper right canine tooth. “She had a big hole there. But it was hard to see much of her face because she had that mask on.”

“She got a good look at you, though.”

Paz’s lip twitched again. “You think so?”

“You’re the only one she saw, I guess.”

“Yeah.” Paz tugged on a strand of hair and put it in her mouth, sucking on it. Her mother had been trying to get her to break that habit, and I hadn’t seen her do it in ages. “But she can’t do anything to me, right? We weren’t the ones throwing eggs.”

“She doesn’t know that.”

“Minty, are you trying to scare me? Quit it.”

We walked back to her house. I picked up my candy and went home.

Lennie never got Marcella back. None of us had been to the other side of the woods since that night. It was too scary. I’d hardly even thought about the Witch Lady….

Until now.