“Are we sure about that?” Liv asked.
The night was warm—hot, really, without even a breeze to cool things down—and I could feel sweat slithering down my back. A mosquito was buzzing around my head, and I swatted at it, thinking I probably should’ve grabbed some Off along with my flashlight.
I turned and looked at Liv. In the dim moonlight, she was even paler than usual, and her eyes seemed huge in her face. “We don’t have to do this,” I said, and I was surprised to find I really meant it.
That for all the time we’d spent working out how to fix this, how to stop it, if Liv had said she wanted to go home, I would’ve packed up my flashlight and we could’ve gone home.
That, more than anything else that had happened, reminded me that Olivia Anne Willingham was most definitely my friend.
And since she was my friend, she shook her head and said, “No. Let’s finish this.”
I grinned and held out my fist. “Bump it.”
She did, and then, together, we walked toward the house.
I fished the key Garrett had gotten for me out of his bag as we walked up the porch steps, the wood creaking underfoot. It sounded too loud in the night, and I had a sudden vision of police cars swarming up the road, somehow magically alerted that me and Olivia Willingham were up here, very firmly up to no good.
But there were no cars, no lights or sirens, and when I put the key in the lock, there wasn’t even a squeal of protest from the door. If anything, it sagged open with something like a sigh.
Like it had been waiting for us.
Okay, no, that was too creepy a thought, and I shoved it away as quickly as I could, pushing my shoulders back and flipping my flashlight on. The beam illuminated the hall that I was so familiar with, and I found myself pointing it toward the spot where we usually met in the morning to get all our supplies. There, right at the base of the staircase, that one tree trunk soaring up through the ceiling overhead.
“This is so crazy,” Olivia whispered next to me. “This thing we’re doing, it is crazy.”
At the beginning of the summer, Liv would’ve said that like it was a bad thing. Her lips would have been clamped together, and there would’ve been a wrinkle between her brows. Now she said it a little breathlessly, and when I looked back over at her, she wasn’t smiling, but there was something in her face that told me that while yes, she thought this was super scary, she was having fun, too.
Which maybe made her the weird one in this friendship.
We crept along the floor, heading for the back hallway. It was weird how being here at night made everything feel so different. If I’d thought the house was scary during the day, that was nothing compared to now. All that stuff we’d spent the summer cataloging cast its own shadows. Big ones, little ones, dark shapes all over the place, and there was just so much dark. With a house this big, there were parts the moonlight couldn’t reach through the windows, rooms so big and hallways so long, my flashlight beam couldn’t reach all the way.
And, as I now knew, there were freaking talking dolls in here.
Yeah, not the time for that thought.
I’d never been down this little hallway before, and it was so narrow, I wasn’t sure anyone much bigger than me or Olivia could have made it down.
“I wondered where this led,” Olivia whispered. “I saw it a few weeks ago but didn’t check it out.”
“I can’t imagine why,” I whispered back, even though there really wasn’t any need for us to be quiet. “It’s not like it’s terrifying or anything.”
There was a door at the end of the hall, and we both slowed down as we approached. My heart seemed to have climbed up my throat and into my mouth, and I reached for the doorknob.
It didn’t turn.
The cellar door was locked.
CHAPTER 32
OLIVIA
R uby rattled the doorknob again, and I crouched down, shining my flashlight on the doorjamb.
“It’s a padlock,” I told her, reaching out with my free hand to touch it.
Sighing, Ruby stepped back. “Great. I didn’t even think about that. I bet Mrs. Freely doesn’t have a key for that, so—what are you doing?”
I had gotten back up and was opening the second bag slung on Ruby’s back, the one Garrett had brought. He probably had something—aha!
Smiling, I pulled a wrench from the bag, and Ruby stared at me. It was maybe the first time I’d ever seen her look genuinely shocked.
“We can break it with this,” I said, and to be honest, I was a little shocked myself. But we had come this far, and we were risking a lot to be here.
I wasn’t ready to turn back now.
“This is bad,” Ruby whispered, even as she steadied the flashlight on the door in front of her. “Like, really bad. Glitter is one thing, but breaking down a locked door?”
My palms were sweating, and my chest felt tight, my skin tingly. But still, I lifted the wrench, smiled at Ruby, and said, “We’re Bad Kids, right?”
And with that, I brought the wrench down on the lock—hard.
I had never broken anything on purpose in my life, and I wasn’t even sure any of this would work, but the lock was old and rusted, and maybe I aimed it the right way, or maybe—and I would think about this for a long time after everything was over—maybe the house had wanted to let me in. Me and Ruby both.
For us to find its last secret.
The lock fell to the floor with a thump, rusty flakes floating in the flashlight’s beam, and the cellar door creaked open slowly.
“That could not have been more horror movie,” Ruby whispered. “There’s probably zombies in there.”
“Hey, Ruby?” I whispered back. “Can you not right now?”
“Sorry,” Ruby answered, and I thought she sounded genuinely contrite until she added, “But when I build this house in Minecraft, I’m putting Creepers down here.”
Ignoring that, I stepped forward and pushed on the door. As intense as it had seemed when we first found it, I’d almost expected to have to really shove, bracing myself for the shrieking of metal. But the door almost felt light when I pushed it the rest of the way open.
I thought about the way the front door had opened, too, so easily, and it made me swallow hard.
Was the house letting us in only to trap us?
A scent drifted out of the cellar as the door swung back, and Ruby stepped back, putting her arm across her face. The bag Garrett had handed her swung down to her elbow. “Eugh.” She shuddered. “What is that?”
I shook my head, my brain trying to make sense of it. Part of it was the sort of earthy smell of dirt and growing things. That was nice, reminding me of my mom’s little flower garden in the backyard, spring afternoons helping her plant impatiens and pansies. But underneath, there was a different, sweeter scent, like something rotting, and it seemed to curl up around us, sliding into our noses and making both of us stand there, frozen, unable to walk forward.
“I think that’s the house,” I heard myself say, the beam of the flashlight wavering on the steps leading down into the cellar. “Like . . . that’s what’s gone bad here.”
“A bunch of groceries rotting?” Ruby asked, arm still pressed to her face, so her words were muffled. “Because that’s for sure what it smells like.”
She shivered again, but then she lowered her arm, readjusted her bags, and took one step onto the top step, the wood creaking underneath her foot. “Okay,” she said, and I felt like maybe she was talking to herself more than to me. “We have not broken into a house just to be scared off by a bad smell. We are going down there.”
“We are,” I agreed, but I couldn’t seem to make my foot take that first step the way Ruby had.
Then she reached behind her, her cold fingers curling around my wrist, tugging me forward. “As long as we don’t get scared at the same time, I think we ca
n do this,” she said, and despite the awful smell wafting up from the cellar and the darkness of the house (and the mind-blowing wrongness of what we were doing), I smiled.
“I think we’re both pretty scared right now?”
Ruby paused and glanced over her shoulder at me, angling so that the beam of the flashlight wasn’t in her face. “Yeah, but I mean really scared. That whole frozen terror. You can do that sometimes, and I can do that sometimes, but we for sure cannot do that at the same time or this won’t get done. So you can be super scared right now, and I’ll be brave, and then later, if I get super scared—”
“I’ll be the brave one,” I said. “I got it.”
“Friendship!” Ruby said, raising her free hand in a fist, and I chuckled, shaking my head.
“You’re so weird.”
But it had made me feel better, joking with Ruby, so that I’d moved down the steps without even thinking about it, really, the light of my flashlight pretty steady.
“We’re right under the tree,” Ruby went on, “or trunk, whatever. I wonder if it goes all the way into the ground down here.”
I could’ve turned my flashlight to the side to see, but even if I wasn’t feeling as terrified right now, I wanted to keep the light right in front of me. What if I looked over to the side and then something came rushing up the cellar stairs?
Okay, that was a bad thought, a Very Not Good Thought, one I for sure should not have had.
Ruby stopped, looking back at me. “Frozen in terror?” she asked, squinting slightly.
I gave a quick nod. “Just for a sec,” I promised. “Suddenly pictured someone—”
“AH!” Ruby exclaimed, holding up her hand, palm out. “No, no, no. I am being the brave one right now, remember? Any scary images, you keep them to yourself, because capital-N Nope.”
I closed my eyes quickly, sucking in a deep breath through my mouth so I wouldn’t have to smell so much of that icky, rotten smell. “Gotcha,” I said. “No sharing the scary.”
“Exactly.” Ruby moved forward again, and the steps kept creaking. I focused on that sound, how everything was so quiet except for our footsteps. That meant we were alone.
Then, as we got close to the bottom of the steps, I saw something that made me pull up short, Ruby’s fingers sliding on my wrist.
“What is—” she started, but as I panned the flashlight up, her words died in her throat, turning into something a little bit like a squeak.
There were . . . things hanging from the ceiling. For a second, I had a bizarre memory of learning about stalactites and stalagmites in third grade. These are stalactites, my confused brain thought, because they’re hanging tight to the ceiling.
But this wasn’t a cave, and those weren’t rocks.
It was Ruby who finally found the courage to say it out loud.
“They’re roots.”
CHAPTER 33
RUBY
I stared up at the ceiling of the root cellar, and there was a part of me that almost wanted to laugh.
Root cellar was definitely the right term for this place, but staring up at all those straggling things hanging from the ceiling suddenly made me think of snakes or fingers reaching out for me, big, fat, dirt-covered fingers, and wow, I really hoped Liv was feeling brave right now because I was definitely not.
“It’s growing,” she breathed, spinning around, her flashlight beam bouncing off the sea of roots above us. “I mean, I knew it was a tree and all, and that makes sense, but . . . I guess I thought the roots would be in the ground? Why are they . . . hanging here? That’s—”
“Both scientifically impossible and also super creepy,” I said. Or croaked, actually.
Then I shook my head, making my numb fingers reach into my pocket to pull out my phone. “Okay. Okay. Okay.”
“Stop saying that,” Liv whispered, and I shook my head again, my hair sticking to sweaty places on my face even though I was covered in goose bumps.
“If I say it enough, maybe it’ll be true,” I told her, then hissed as my phone tumbled from my suddenly numb fingers and landed on the dirt floor. Crouching down, I fumbled for it, and as I did, something moved near my hand.
I shrieked, pulling back so fast that I overbalanced and fell backward, my butt landing hard on the floor, and Olivia’s flashlight swung wildly in my direction, the beam wobbling.
“Ruby?” she called, and I made myself laugh even though it sounded kind of breathless and weird.
“I’m fine,” I called back. “Just clumsy and freaked out.”
Maybe nothing had moved by my hand after all, I told myself. Maybe I was being silly, and—
The root shot out of the dirt fast as a snake, and I didn’t even have time to think before it wrapped around my ankle, squeezing.
Hard.
If I had been creeped out before, I was now terrified, so scared I couldn’t even shout, my mouth opening and closing, but no sound coming out.
And there was a part of my mind saying this couldn’t be happening, I could not be under attack from some kind of killer tree in the cellar of an old house!
Okay, so panic was definitely happening, and I made a sobbing noise, kicking at the root with my other foot as Liv dashed over, dropping her flashlight and sinking to her knees.
And then she did one of the bravest things I’ve ever seen anyone do—she actually grabbed the root with both her hands, pulling hard.
It didn’t do any good, though, and the root tightened even more, tugging me down. Toward what?
I wasn’t sure I wanted to know.
There was another rumbling sound then, and as I watched, another root shot out, grabbing Liv’s wrist.
She shrieked, and I found myself reaching for her, my fingers brushing the edge of her shirt, but I couldn’t hold on. The roots were tugging us, even as we both struggled, reaching for each other, reaching for anything, and they kept pulling. The cellar was full of that rotting smell, of loose dirt, of the sounds of both of us shrieking, and then, finally, my hand caught Olivia’s. Our fingers interlocked, palms sweating, and then suddenly, everything went dark.
• • •
We’re hiding in the hollow of the tree.
It’s our special place, the one place on this whole farm that is only ours, and Ma and Pa never come bother us when we’re out here. Neither does Lucy, but then, Lucy has not paid much attention to us since Felix came to work on the farm.
Lucy loves Felix, but we do not. His hair is too bright and his eyes are too cold, and sometimes he looks at everything—Lucy, the farm—as though it belongs to him.
He doesn’t like us, either, and says we are sneaky just because we catch him and Lucy kissing in the barn.
But being sneaky is how you learn. No one tells us anything, so if we didn’t sneak, we wouldn’t know.
Wouldn’t know that Felix and Lucy meant to run away together.
Wouldn’t know that Pa found out and forbade it.
Wouldn’t know that even though Pa told Felix to leave and never come back, he did come back, in the night, like he was the sneaky one.
We saw. Saw him creep around the side of the house, saw Lucy’s window open. We didn’t tell Ma and Pa, because we might be sneaks, but we aren’t tattles.
What we don’t see is the fire.
We don’t know how it starts. Did Lucy knock over a lantern on her way out? Was Felix worse than a sneak, a monster who wanted to make sure there was no one left to come after him and Lucy?
We don’t know. We only remember the sudden thick, choking smoke. The way our chests ache with it.
We help each other because that’s what we’ve always done, but we are already weak, our lungs full of smoke, and the night is so cold.
When we stumble into our hiding place, we clutch each other, trying to breathe even though it’s hard, even though the frost underfoot st
ings our bare feet. Our nightgowns are thin. Our bodies are too small. But inside the tree, inside our special hiding place, we almost feel warm.
It’s so easy to go to sleep here, holding each other.
And we stay here. It takes us a while to notice that something is strange, that we don’t feel the same as we once did, and that leaving the tree is not possible. But that’s all right. We have each other.
And later, when Felix and Lucy come back, Felix in a nice suit like nothing we’d ever seen him wear before, our sister at his side in a white dress, we whisper to them.
Maybe they don’t hear us, but when the time comes to build their fancy new house far away from these mountains, Lucy tells Felix to take our tree. That our tree will come with them to their new home, be a part of their new house. Maybe she remembers our special hiding place and wants to remember us.
She doesn’t know that she brings us, too.
Bad things happen when we get to our new home. Things we try not to remember. But those things—the bad ones, with the breaking chains and the shouts and the terrible crunching sound—seem to make us stronger. We are still tied to our tree, but it is in the house now, nestled deep inside, which means that we are in the house, too.
Watching. Learning. Sneaking.
We don’t like the new house. We don’t like Felix and his cold eyes. We don’t know how the fire started, but when we look at all these things Felix buys for himself and remember the money Pa had once hidden in the woods by our home, we wonder.
And the longer we wonder, the angrier we get, because we should not still be in this tree, and we do not want to spend forever in a place that Felix built.
So we wait.
And grow stronger.
And grow.
And wait.
We love each other but sometimes wish there were other people to play with. There is a boy once, but he is frightened of us, and he grows up into a man, and then the house is empty again.