“I’m amazing.” He sighed.
“Don’t get a big head.”
I didn’t even have to tell him to go to bed. Sam always behaves, almost too well. (Well, except he hates brushing his teeth.) He slithered out of my arms and slipped silently off my bed.
I poked my head out to see him off, and watched him give everyone a kiss good night. He even walked on tiptoes (he loves walking on his toes) over to the pull-out couch where Oliver was reading (Little Women, of all things—he’s so peculiar) and laid a big sweet kiss on Oliver’s cheek. “Night, Oliver,” he said, and then disappeared. Oliver looked over at me from his book, and a rare smile climbed onto his face. “I never had siblings,” he said. Then his smile kind of melted and disappeared. Maybe he was thinking that he doesn’t have a mom and dad either now. I didn’t know what to say, so I pretended to get really interested in something on the ceiling, and then ducked back into my bunk.
* * *
We just passed a mall that looks like it’s been closed for years, with stores like Pottery Barn and Toys “R” Us all grown over with weeds. I’ve been sitting here writing, on and off, and playing with my Home Again suitcase: opening and closing it.
Now I can hear Sam in Mom and Dad’s bed talking to Jim the bear. I can’t hear what he’s saying, but it’s clearly a very lively conversation in which Sam is convincing Jim that, actually, Grandma is not going to be awful at all. I suppose he’s just convincing himself. I wish I could convince myself too. Dad says that once we get to Smoky Mountain State Park, it’s just a short hike through the mountains to the Crow’s Nest. I have to say that part doesn’t sound so appealing either.
I wonder about the Crow’s Nest. Is it really a nest? Does Grandma have a flock of crows that will peck our eyes out? Recently, in New Hampshire, a witch made a boulder fall on a couple who cut her off in the parking lot at Safeway. I’m not sure Grandma is that violent, but Mom and Dad never told us why they stopped speaking to her. Millie has always said it’s because she put a curse on Sam, and that’s why Sam is always sick and why he’s so small. She met her once when she was little, before the big rift, and she says she has pointy teeth and that she’s one of the most infamous witches in the Smokies, which are full of infamous witches.
I guess now I have a habit of thinking of pleasant things before I try to go to sleep.
October 16th
Eighty or so years ago, according to Dad, people tried to build highways across America, but the forest monsters—mostly sasquatches, ghosts, and wood demons—harassed and kidnapped the workers. The dream of the highways was soon abandoned, and that’s why, in order to get to Grandma’s, we have to take this winding, crumbling road that makes Millie carsick. Even now, sitting on the bench near the back windows, she looks a shade of green, which I find pretty satisfying.
No sign of the Cloud again today, though I suppose if it were following us we wouldn’t see it anyway, since the road is so curvy. I’ve decided I’m going to tap three times on my silver suitcase for luck every morning, to keep it away.
In the past hour I’ve been noticing that lots of the billboards along our way have been ripped down or torn to shreds. I’ve seen some lying on the side of the road, crisscrossed with gashes that could only come from large and vicious animals. I keep looking at Oliver to see if this worries him. He looks calm, but I’ve also noticed he has a habit of rubbing his ears when he’s nervous, and that’s what he’s doing now.
Sam has found his new idol, and he likes to wait beside Oliver’s bunk in the morning for him to get up. He’s even started squeezing his hair to try to get it to stand straight up like Oliver’s. He then walks around raising his eyebrows at us. It seems he thinks raising the eyebrows heightens the effect. Little kids are so indecipherable.
October 17th
Dusk is falling and we’ve crossed the border into West Virginia. (“Welcome to Wild, Witchy West Virginia”—I learned from the sign posted at the border—is the state motto.) I just had the most surprising conversation, which I’ll try to record faithfully here.
Oliver and I were sitting together at the kitchen table. He’s been teaching me bridge, which he says his mom taught him. Every time I think I have the hang of it, I miss some big rule and he has to patiently explain things to me again.
“No, spades are ranked higher than hearts,” he said apologetically.
“That’s stupid.” I sighed and laid my cards, mostly hearts, face down on the table.
“I’m sorry, Gracie. We don’t have to play.”
His politeness made me feel embarrassed about my bad temper. He’s very good at bridge, which annoys me. Actually, he’s good at everything, because he’s patient—patiently going through the rules with me, patiently helping Sam tie his shoes, patiently cleaning around the camper even when it’s not him who’s made the mess. He’s managed to keep his little area of the Trinidad neat and inviting, while my bunk is permanently disheveled. I’ve noticed he also has a great attention span for reading. I get bored so quickly and end up flinging books over the side of my bed, while Oliver lies perfectly still and can read for hours. He’s already finished Little Women and moved on to The Giant’s Lament. He says he read To Kill a Mockingbird last year, while I’ve only gotten to the part where Scout dresses up as a ham for Halloween.
Also, he’s been trying to find things for me to do to pass the time. Yesterday he showed me how to make paper boxes out of loose-leaf. He puts little gifts in them—like a single goldfish cracker or a penny—and leaves them on my bed. Millie just raises her eyebrows at me like she can’t believe someone would like me enough to give me presents. I don’t think it’s that Oliver likes me especially, but just that he’s extremely thoughtful (almost too thoughtful) and maybe extremely lonely.
Anyway, back to our card game. When I’d had enough, Oliver began collecting all the cards and shuffling them. “Don’t worry, Gracie, you’ll get it next time.” I sat back and stared at the table, feeling grumpy.
He opened the cabinet above the couch to put the cards away, and I noticed a photo lying on top of his things. He saw me looking at it and pulled it down to show me.
“It’s my parents,” he said. I stared at the photo: In it was a younger Oliver, scarless, looking happy and bright. His dad looked sporty, like he might be just about to go for a jog, and his mom was wearing a net over her face.
“My dad worked at McCormick spices—they import cinnamon and nutmeg and things like that. My mom was an accountant, but really she thought of herself as an amateur naturalist. That’s why she’s wearing the net over her face. She loved to take us into the woods behind our house and collect butterflies and bugs.”
“Sounds risky,” I said. “All that time in the woods.”
“Mom said if you want to enjoy the wilderness, you have to take risks.” There was an awkward silence while I wondered if it was her belief in risks that had gotten her tangled up with the sasquatches.
“Oliver . . . ,” I said, wishing there was more privacy on the Winnebago, “why did you decide to come with us? I told you where my dad wants to go. Surely you could have picked some people less . . .” I glanced toward my dad in the driver’s seat and then lowered my voice. “. . . um . . . destined for failure?”
Oliver smoothed down his hair, thinking. He was quiet for several moments. I was just about to give up, when he finally spoke. “I want to get as far away as possible . . . from them.” He looked up at me, his green eyes extra bright in the dim afternoon light.
“From those sasquatches?” I asked. He shook his head.
“No. I know it sounds bad, but I mean . . . from my parents, and where we had our life, in Connecticut. I just want to be far away from that. The Extraordinary World sounds like it’s about as far away as you can go.” He ran his fingers along the edges of his photo, looking sheepish. “I shouldn’t want to forget them, but I do. I wish I could forget I ever knew them and that they ever loved me.” His hair sprang up again from where he’d smoothed it down
. “Though, so far being with you guys actually makes me think about them more. My mom loved road trips—she had all these Irish traveling songs she liked to sing. The weird thing is,” he went on, looking out the window, “she loved animals—all kinds. Even the beasts and monsters. She always said you can’t blame animals for doing what’s in their natures. She would have said not to blame the sasquatches.” I could tell by the angry way he said it that he didn’t share the sentiment.
We were silent for a while. I was thinking to myself how we’re going to the Extraordinary World to protect someone, and Oliver is going to forget the people he couldn’t protect. I thought of how I’d looked at him when he’d first arrived at school, how I thought he’d looked like a fish. But really he just looked sad, I guess.
* * *
Mom is driving today, and instead of spending time with us, Dad has his nose stuck in a book (of course) called something ridiculous like Einstein’s Cat or Einstein’s Cricket or something like that. Sometimes I’m tempted to pull down the lucky penny on my wall that’s dedicated specifically to keeping him safe and throw it out the window.
Millie just poked her head up into my bunk, her brown curls sticking to the flannel of the blue sheet I’ve hung around it for privacy.
“Do you know we’re broke?” she whispered. “Nobody’s made an offer on the house, and Mom and Dad are almost out of money.”
“But they have savings.”
Millie shook her head, ducked out for a moment to make sure we weren’t being listened to, then appeared again. “Not as much as you think. We may have to sell our hair like in Little Women.” She then gazed at me appraisingly, taking in my messy dishwater-blond mop. “Well, mine at least.” She looked almost sorry for me, and then she disappeared again.
Millie can be dramatic, but I think she must be telling the truth, because yesterday Mom was adding length to my jeans with some scrap fabric and a needle and thread instead of just promising to get me a new pair. Also, when we stopped at a rest area for lunch earlier today, we were only allowed to order one thing each off the McDonald’s dollar menu.
I’ve just poked my head out of the cubby to see if our surroundings are shabbier than I’ve had the chance to notice, but it all looks pretty much how I thought—pretty shabby generally, but not destitute. Dad’s still reading, and Millie’s looking out the window and stroking her hair, as if she’s thinking it may be one of the last times she has the pleasure of doing so.
Outside, the landscape has changed a lot over the past few hours, but there is still no sign of the Cloud. We’re surrounded by dipping valleys full of mist, like bowls of milk—fog rising off creeks and riverbeds and leaking up into the hills to hide the mountaintops. It’s witch country, for sure.
Witches tend to like their privacy, and the hills give them lots of places to keep their lives and their secrets hidden. That’s what Millie says. I guess the only bad thing is that they have to share the hills with all manner of beast—not only sasquatches, but also ghosts.
The thing with ghosts is that they pop up wherever there are caves, and the Smokies are just riddled with caves. Ghosts use them to come and go from the Underworld, even though that’s not technically legal. They have a tendency to try to snatch people into the Underworld. That’s one main reason why they aren’t allowed up here aboveground, and why—if your house does end up being haunted—you have to “disclose” that before you sell it. (I overheard Barbara the real estate agent mentioning that to Mom.) They’re only supposed to officially interact with humans at the Mausoleum Headquarters in Florida, where there are psychic mediums on call twenty-four-seven to handle their concerns, but they’re sometimes seen floating into towns to visit relatives. It’s hard for the police to keep them completely contained—especially in hills like these or out on the open sea, where they’re hard to catch. I suppose the witches tolerate them somehow.
I guess, knowing all that, it’s no surprise these hills give me an eerie feeling—I can barely see through the thickness of the trees, and the houses are all surrounded by tall wooden fences, as if to keep creatures out. The deeper we get into the Smokies, the more wild the woods become.
* * *
PS: The most disturbing thing about ghosts is that they’re the souls of people who were never taken by a Cloud at all. Either they died too suddenly and unexpectedly, or somewhere too remote to be reached. So they drift around in Limbo. As terrible as it is to be taken by a Cloud, it’s supposed to be even worse to die without being taken by one.
Luckily, neither is going to happen to Sam, because he’s going to get better. Just to prove it, I looked out the window a second ago, and the sky behind us is perfectly clear.
October 21st
I can’t believe where I’m writing this from. My fingers are freezing, and Millie says I’m crazy for working on this diary so obsessively. She may have a point. Right now there’s barely enough firelight to see the words. Because here I am in a sleeping bag in the woods, in the ghost-infested, witch-infested, sasquatch-infested Smoky Mountains.
This morning we parked the Trinidad in a dusty lot, climbed out, and saw the sign marking the trailhead that Dad said led toward Grandma’s: WELCOME TO THE SMOKY MOUNTAIN STATE FOREST! WARNING: HIKING AND CAMPING MAY RESULT IN DISMEMBERMENT BY SASQUATCH, WITCH, OR BEAR, AND POSSIBLE KIDNAPPING BY SPECTRAL INHABITANTS. PLEASE RESPECT DESIGNATED WILDLIFE AND WITCHCRAFT AREAS.
It was far from encouraging.
“I hiked these woods a million times as a boy,” Dad said brightly. “I wouldn’t take you if I wasn’t sure I could protect you.” I just blinked at him, my heart sinking with trepidation. My dad is pretty spindly, and since he’s always muttering and nudging at his glasses, and always looking disheveled because of his stubble, he is pretty much the last person you’d expect could protect anyone from any of the things we saw listed on that sign.
Millie and I exchanged a doubtful glance, then I popped into the Winnebago to search for weapons. All I found was a corkscrew, a skewer, and a spatula, all of which Mom confiscated from me as soon as I emerged with them.
Still, she too seemed to hesitate on the verge of boycotting the whole thing. She looked in the direction we’d driven, as if searching for the Cloud. Then she sighed, turned to the trailer at the back of the camper, and began unpacking: sleeping bags, a gas stove, pots and pans, and her portable violin case that attaches to her back. (She’s always prepared for anything, even remote musical interludes.) “I’ve read there are lots of witch villages up in the hills,” she said, putting on a brave face. She stuffed sleeping bags into knapsacks and attached pots to straps. “That’ll be interesting. I’m sure they’re charming.”
Once Mom and Dad are united on something, there’s no amount of protesting that will change their minds. So I hefted a knapsack onto my back, and Millie and Oliver did the same. Sam only grabbed Jim the bear while Mom gathered his things.
We left the Winnebago locked up and abandoned at the foot of the trail. It looked a little forlorn there with no other cars in the lot to keep it company. And then we were off . . . Dad at the front, then me and Oliver, then Millie, and Mom and Sam bringing up the rear.
* * *
Luckily, our first day’s hike was pretty uneventful. We saw a few openmouthed caves to the Underworld—but no ghosts—and possibly the shadows of a few tree demons slipping through the woods. (Tree demons are timid and especially scared of humans—supposedly they only pick fights with angels, and there are barely any angels in the east.) We did see our first witch village, though we didn’t really get to see much of it. It was positioned off to the right of the trail and had a big unmarked wooden gate at the front with an elaborate silver lock. It was surrounded by a spiky wooden fence too high to see over. But from one spot farther up the trail, we could make out the tip-tops of pointy black hats bustling back and forth beyond the gates, and we could smell the cookfires, and hear the occasional cackly laughter and the sound of someone playing a fiddle.
All day, ta
king advantage of his captive audience (we were too out of breath not to be), Dad went on and on about physics. “There’s no reason we should think time only moves forward, just because it looks that way to us,” he expounded over his shoulder. “The only thing that really tells us time has a direction at all is entropy. Entropy is when things move from order to disorder. The universe gets more disorderly all the time.”
I looked helplessly back at Millie, who caught my glance and pantomimed fainting from boredom, and then over at Oliver, who was listening with his head to one side as he walked. When he noticed me watching him, he smiled. “Your dad’s really interesting,” he said.
I suppose one person’s most-boring-lecture-of-all-time can be another person’s “interesting.” I guess stranger things have happened than somebody finding my dad worth listening to.
* * *
Now we’re camped beside the trail not far above the village. Mom’s pulled out her violin and is playing something soothing to distract us from the eerie sounds of the forest all around us, her fingers moving on the strings like elegant spiders. Sometimes I nearly forget she’s a classically trained musician and that she ever had a life before being our mom.
I can still hear the creaks and distant howls (possibly ghosts, hopefully not sasquatches) and nearby croaks, but she says the fire will keep them all away. Dad is smoking a pipe and staring at the sky. He probably prefers being here in the woods rather than being boxed into the house with all of us, where he has to have table manners and talk to us at dinner. I’d like to ask him if he thinks we’ve lost the Cloud for good, but Sam is curled up against me in my sleeping bag like a hot water bottle, and I don’t want to wake him or risk him overhearing me.
Millie is reading by flashlight. Oliver has been working on something mysterious across the fire. He always has to be doing something, and everything he does, he does just so.