Campbell Wood (12 page)

Mark had his hand on the door when Ramirez called to him. Mark turned to see the cop with his sunglasses off, pointing with them to the New York Yankees team picture hanging crookedly under the barred window. His bad eye was not quite set in the right direction, but stared coldly at the blank wall.

"That team, in 1977, was the best that money ever bought in baseball. And as far as I know," Ramirez said, fitting his sunglasses back on and smiling, "they had no ghosts in the lineup. Take care of yourself, Mr. Campbell."

A
ll of a sudden it was snowing hard.

The windshield wipers were working full tilt, but the snow was falling so fast the new clumps formed right behind in their sweep, keeping vision down to an absolute minimum. They had slowed to twenty miles an hour, and Greg
McGreary
was concentrating on just keeping the car on the road and out of the woods. At least the snow tires were doing their job.

"Jamie, are you sure this is the only way to get to the thruway?" he asked tentatively. He was hunched down over the steering wheel, squinting out into the barely illuminated darkness.

The amber light of the radio dial glowed dimly; the announcer was droning on about the lifting of the heavy snow alert and that the forecast was now for "two to three inches of light snow, tapering off by early morning."

"Goddamn idiot should be in the back seat of this car with us," Greg said. "Jamie, did you hear me?"

Jamie
McGreary
was staring out the side window at the passing line of trees. She turned around to him at his second question. There was fear
in
her voice. "This is the only way to get to the thruway; please hurry, Greg."

"If you hadn't interfered with the girl we wouldn't have to be running like this, from our own home and people," he shot back.

"Greg,
please."
Her hands were clenched in her lap, so tight that the knuckles showed white in the radio light. "Someone had to. I . . . had to."

"You didn't!" he nearly shouted. "Things could have gone on. They would have worked themselves out."

"Would they have?" Her voice gained strength, though it was still shrill. "Or would all of us have been destroyed? Someone had to bring the girl out."

"And you and I suffer for it."

She was silent, again lost in her own fear.

He reached over, snapping off the radio. They were left with the dull swish-swish of the wiper blades and the muffled crunch of tires against the snow. He placed his hand on hers.

"You did the right thing," he said. "They all know that. And only they can benefit by it, the cowards. But it's been hard living with the fear, Jamie. Being toyed with. Maybe they'll have their play, but I only hope we didn't wait too long to get out." His tone of voice changed suddenly. "Oh no."

"What is it?" Jamie clutched at his
arm as he peered closely out the windshield. The car did not seem to be moving very fast.

There was a scrape across the car's hood, and a bunch of branches crept up the windshield and tangled there. The car stopped dead.

Greg gave it some gas, but some obstacle seemed to be blocking them in front. The rear wheels spun futilely, whining against the packed snow underneath.

Greg threw the car into reverse, trying to spin back away from the obstacle, but they were sandwiched in.

"Slide over here while I take a look," Greg said grimly. "And pray that it was just the storm did this."

He turned his collar up and opened the car door.

The snow seemed to be falling almost in a sheet, it was so thick. Greg peered ahead, over the car hood, but could see nothing beyond the twist of tree boughs there.

"Stay where you are."

He slammed the door and made his way out in front of the car, his boots crunching.

He was back a moment later, tapping on the window for her to roll it down.

He breathed heavily against the cold. "Let me try to clear the branches out. I'll give you a signal when I loosen them up; try to push the rest aside with the car in gear."

He struggled his way out to the front of the car again.

Jamie heard him out there grunting. She could barely make him out through the windshield. The car rocked gently for a moment. She waited for a signal, but none came.

She heard a choked cry, and just at that moment the wind gusted, clearing the snow away. The windshield wiper cleaned the glass in front of her.

Greg was struggling with something in front of the car. There seemed to be tree branches all around him.

Greg screamed. Jamie pushed at the car door, trying to open it, but found it blocked by twisting, vine-like tree limbs.

“Please, no," Jamie cried.

She rolled down the window all the way. Greg was fighting desperately, his legs and arms pinned by a virtual wall of tree boughs and roots. He was being pulled up and absorbed into it. Jamie looked desperately back through the rear window and saw that more tree roots were climbing up and over the car.

Greg gave a final cry and was lost to view as Jamie cried out his name.

A root curled up over the lip of the car window and snaked its way in. Jamie felt something on her leg, and looked down in horror to see the tip of a branch curling around her ankle. She pulled herself back into the car and slammed the door shut,
trying to grab at the handle to roll up the window. She nearly succeeded until a tree tip snaked its way over the top of the glass and began to make its way down into the car. She screamed hysterically. It was snowing heavily again. She heard, as if from far away, Greg give a horrifying scream and then there was silence.

"Please!"
she screamed at the boiling wood around her.

The branch was still
making its way into the car.
The automobile was surrounded now by a thick, weaving network of vine-like limbs. Shuddering, Jamie slid across the front seat away from the roots. They began to branch as in a nightmare, multiplying and thickening before her eyes.

The windshield wipers suddenly stopped, clogged with branches and twigs. Jamie heard their motors whirring hopelessly. As she slid all the way across the passenger side she felt a pressure behind her head. With a cry she turned to see a mass of roiling, tortured roots pressing with immense weight against the door and window. The car began to rock and heave.

Wild with terror now, Jamie clawed her way over into the back seat as the two side front windows shattered. Wood poured into the car. She threw her arms over her head as she felt something snakelike and hard press down at her, and then something else from the side moved over her.

She screamed once, twice; there was a terrible pressure pushing her back into the seat and then the back windshield broke, cracking behind her into a thousand shards of safety glass. The car was lifted. Jamie screamed a final time, as off in the distance she heard the muffled, beaten whine of the car engine falter and grind into silence.

The wood was upon her.

W
hen Mark entered the library Fay
MacGregor
was not there. There was another girl behind the desk instead, older, plain-looking, with thick, round glasses—the traditional dry librarian type.

She asked to see his university library card, and when he didn't produce one she obviously debated whether or not to refuse him use of the library. But when he put on the charm, showing her some of his articles and promising to send her a copy of one of them, she relented.

"Do you have any idea what happened to the girl who used to be here?" he asked, trying to sound casual.

The librarian got a self-satisfied look on her face. "I
was told
she took a couple of weeks' vacation. But if you ask me, she got into some sort of trouble. She looked like the kind that would get into trouble. I doubt she'll be back." Seeing the look that crossed Mark's face, she added suspiciously, "Why do you ask?"

Mark smiled. "She was pretty helpful to me, that's all. But I'm sure you know just as much about this place."

"I should
hope
so," the girl said, "I've worked in state university libraries for ten years."

Mark breathed a sigh of relief that Fay was not there. On the way up, driving under a gray slate sky over clearing snow, his mind had begun to work on him with growing apprehension of what he would do and say when he finally confronted her. Things were clear in his mind now; despite what had happened, and the obvious attraction he had for her, there was just no way he wanted to get embroiled in any kind of affair. He loved Ellen too much. He had come to realize just how much; and the thought that she might be hurt was enough for him to get things straight with the girl. But how? How would she react? She had not tried to contact him after their encounter in the projection room. He wanted to talk to her, gently, since he did feel some amount of friendship for her at least, and tell her the truth, that he could go no further with her. At least he could try to do that.

But now that she wasn't here he felt a momentary sense of reprieve. It was like when he was a kid and had gotten to the dentist's office one Saturday morning only to find that the dentist had broken his leg and was in the hospital. He had wanted to feel sorry for that dentist but just couldn't bring himself to do so since he had felt so good himself Guiltily, he felt a little of that same selfish relief now.

"Is there any way I can get in touch with her?"
Mark said, and then quickly added, "She borrowed something from me I'd like to get back."

"Try in two weeks, as I said," the librarian responded haughtily. It was apparent Mark had lost whatever leverage he had with her. "And we're not allowed to reveal the whereabouts of our employees anyway."

"Possibly—" Mark began.

The look on the librarian's face told him that the word "possibly" was not in .her vocabulary.

It took him twenty minutes of trudging through the thick but quickly melting snow to find the other building. It was in the farthest and messiest corner of the sociology department offices. Mark still wasn't sure if he had the right place until a knock on the glass-windowed door produced an answering grunt from within and he opened the door to find Tom Nolan slouched in a chair by the lone dirty window with his back to him. The room was barely a closet, with every available inch of space, except for the Mr. Coffee machine and coat pedestal, covered with teetering stacks of books and ring binders and manuscripts. This stack of academic paraphernalia was dominated by a pile of papers reaching nearly one third of the way to the ceiling.

"Whoever you are," Nolan said without turning around, "I can't do anything about your grade. I was probably too generous as it is."

"I'm not one of your students."

Nolan swiveled his chair around, peering at Mark over his glasses. He was trying, it was obvious, to remember where he had seen him before. "Are you here about some meeting I missed?"

Mark shook his head. "We bumped into each other, literally, at the
Ferman
Library one day."

"Ah," said Nolan, holding up a finger but still not quite sure.

"You told me how much you know about Campbell Wood."

"Right! Now I remember." It was transparent he didn't. He sat there, waiting for Mark to say something.

Mark said, "My mother was
Una
Campbell, and I thought you might be able—"

"
Una
Campbell?" Nolan brightened as if a flame had been lit under him. He pointed to the huge mound of papers climbing up one wall. "Five years' worth of work. Most of it about
Una
Campbell and her people." He suddenly looked perplexed. "But what could I possibly tell you about your own mother? I'd hope you could tell me something about her. You'd be the first real lead I've had in more than a year."

Mark told Nolan how he hadn't seen his mother since he was young.

"The
Bronx?"
Nolan said. "You mean you don't know anything about the Faerie in Campbell Wood?" Nolan was dumbfounded.

"The
what?"

Nolan waved a hand. "The word `faerie' is the romantic, mythological term for them. Historically, they were called
Picts
. They were late Bronze and early Iron Age people from north and central Scotland, early invaders of Britain. They were later driven out by the Romans and others. What really wiped them out—or what I had
thought
wiped them out until I came here—was Christianity. All the myths, all the faerie stories originated from the clash of Christianity in Britain with these
Picts
." He had slipped into his lecture mode, and was up now, slowly pacing in the cramped room. "The
Picts
were Earth worshippers. They had a horned god, fertility rites, all that kind of stuff. When the Christian missionaries came along they saw these small, relatively unsophisticated nomads as a real threat, so they made their paganism as frightening to their own congregation as possible. They turned the horned god into Satan, and the
Picts
themselves into faeries who were devil worshippers and did black magic. That, and the fact that they were nomadic and just couldn't keep up with the newer agricultural cultures that were streaming into Britain, sealed their fate. The various groups were either absorbed or wiped out."