Campbell Wood (13 page)

He stopped pacing and placed a thin hand on the massive manuscript. "But not totally. It seems there were remnants of them, more or less living the old way, who survived in Scotland well into the twentieth century. But even then they found that, slowly, their numbers were being eroded,
as well as
their customs. So, finally, what was left of them made their way to the New World for what they saw as a new start. They literally carved what became Campbell Wood out of the forest, seeing a small, fairly isolated town as a chance to keep their ranks together and prosper." Nolan looked at Mark. "Your father told you none of this?"

Mark shook his head. "All I knew was that my ancestors were from Scotland."

"I can't believe it. Then again, maybe I can." He went through the manuscript, finally finding the pages he was looking for. "You know, this might explain a lot. You see, when I first started looking into all this I had a pretty easy time of it. The people in Campbell Wood were pretty open about it, more or less. They may have been Earth worshippers, but they seemed more like Presbyterians. I mean, Earth worship just happened to be their religion. Your mother, who was well loved, was their Queen—but that was just her designation. There weren't any black masses or any of that mythical baloney; about as wild as I ever saw them get was a wood celebration, a sort of festival with dances, that I snuck up on in the forest once. The only strange thing I could ever claim to have seen in connection with this whole bunch was that, during this festival, the tree branches overhead
seemed to be swaying in time to the music they were playing. But I was so excited at just being there undetected that I might easily have imagined it. There were a few snippets of conversation I had with townspeople about the supposed powers of the Queen to affect objects made of wood, but I always discounted them. In fact, after what I'd seen in the forest I figured I had used a bit of wishful thinking in seeing those tree limbs move. Outside of those hints, like I said—Presbyterians.

"There was one other intriguing custom, though. I always wondered who would be Queen after
Una
Campbell. You see, the
Picts
were matriarchal, meaning that royalty, or power, was passed through women, not men. Your mother was alone when I met her, except for an old woman named
Taemon
Gaye, who looked as close as any of them to the mythical faerie and who visited her a lot, but I could get nothing out of anyone about why your mother wasn't married or what would happen after she passed on. The subject was taboo." He began to pace again, nearly bumping into something every two or three steps. "Then
Una
Campbell died suddenly and mysteriously, and everything changed. Nobody would even look at me anymore, never mind talk.
Taemon
Gaye disappeared. I was left with a lot of loose ends in my hand. Since then, nothing. Except a weird feeling. When I say things changed overnight, I mean they changed for the worse. People were scared, more than anything. I
got the feeling there was someone behind
it—someone or something that was terrifying them. And now you turn up." He sat down in his chair. "Do you have any daughters?"

"Yes, I do. My oldest, named Kaymie."

Nolan nodded excitedly. "As far as I see, she's Queen then. Since you are a man the leadership passes through you to your daughter. No one in Campbell Wood told you anything about this?"

"No one. We've been treated like lepers."

"That's beyond belief." He raised his pencil excitedly, and then suddenly frowned as his body made a sudden jerk forward in his chair. "Oh dear."

"What is it?"

"I seem—" Nolan began, and then blood was running from the corner of his mouth. He dropped his pencil and reached around weakly behind him, then abruptly pitched forward toward Mark. Mark caught him, and his blood froze when he saw what had happened to Nolan. There was a foot-long triangle, a sharply cut piece of wood from the desk behind him, sunk deep into the teacher's back. Mark tried to yank it out but couldn't. His stomach wanted to empty itself.

He turned Nolan over in time to see the life on his ashen-white face fading. "Your daughter," Nolan whispered, and then he was gone.

There was a sound under the window, and Mark looked up to see another slice of the desk pulling off like a piece of telekinetic birthday cake. He
dropped Nolan's body as the hunk of wood shot at him, barely missing his ear. There was a crack from the doorway, and a panel ripped away, flying across at him and hitting him painfully in the shoulder. Then the room erupted, the chair he had been sitting in burst into fragments, and the entire desk flew into shards of wood.

Mark dove for the door, throwing himself under the lower panel
as
it pulled away to fly across the room and shatter the window. As he pulled himself to his feet and ran he saw that the wood paneling in the hallway was rattling, buckling out and snapping away from the wall in places. The horror was following him down the hall, and as he reached the stairs to the exit the
bannister
exploded in his hands, cutting him and sending shards of deadly wood at his face. Luckily, none of them hit him hard and he was rolling down the steps, jumping to his feet and bursting through the doorway into the outside world.

Everything seemed quiet out here. Off across the quadrangle a couple of students walked arm in arm, and the few barren, snow-dusted trees between him and the parking lot were still as the late afternoon air. He ran to the car, not pausing for breath until the doors were locked and the engine in first gear. He gunned the automobile out of the parking lot and through the gates under the bronze-
plaqued
arch, nearly losing control when he took the turn toward town too sharply. His
breathing steadied as his brain registered the calm blue sky overhead, the yellow and orange leaves on the side of the road, the steadiness of the road itself. In thirty seconds it almost seemed that what had just happened to him was more of a dream than reality. But he knew now that he had to get his family out of Campbell Wood. Coincidence was not a possibility—there was something frightening and dangerous going on and it was obvious that his own family was at the very center of it. He wasn't about to give it the chance to destroy them all. They would go back to the Bronx or wherever else was far enough away from the Faerie of Campbell Wood and whatever other evils lurked there.

The stretch of woods that gave the town its name loomed ahead, and Mark put his foot to the accelerator. On the other side of that forest his family was in danger and waiting for him, and he was going to get to them before whatever it was that had attacked him and killed Tom Nolan got to them. A cluster of images came to him—Feeney, the dead cat, with his middle torn open by a slice of wood;
Kaymie's
dollhouse, its front gaping wide; the image of someone outside his bedroom window, in the trees, staring in at him while he slept; someone in the trees looming over Seth while he played—and he pressed the accelerator nearly to the floor. The woods shot closer, and he noticed that something didn't quite look right with the roadway. It didn't seem to be where it was sup
posed to be. Mark's foot leaped from the accelerator to the brakes, and he screeched to a halt as the forest loomed up before him. Now he saw what was wrong. There was almost no pathway through the trees where the road should be, but rather a heaving mass of foliage growing all across the road and everywhere, reaching out to him.

The woods were alive.

T
his,
Sheriff Ramirez thought,
is bullshit.

He hadn't been scared a moment in his life—nothing his body would admit to, anyway—and here was the hair on the back of his neck rising as if he'd just seen a ghost. Trouble was, he hadn't seen anything. Nothing he could put a finger on, anyway.

He'd been parked across from the Campbell house all morning long, waiting to see something happen. And nothing had happened. The girl's school bus had picked her up at eight-fifteen. A little while later Mark Campbell had left in his Chevy. As far as he knew, the other two, the mother and the little boy, were still in the house. And, as far as he knew, just about the whole rest of the town was over at the school auditorium today to see some school production or other. Hell, even that weird deputy of his had wheedled his way into going, saying he should keep an eye on things over there, see if anyone needed any help. Ramirez had let him go; he'd gotten the feeling the kid would have gone anyway. The whole town was full of weirdoes. And here, at this Campbell house, was maybe the one weirdo he wanted to get his hands on.

A tingle went up the back of his neck again.

He rolled the car window down, ignoring the cold. It had been warmer earlier in the morning, melting most of the previous night's snow, but now the temperature had dipped. This was going to be a cold winter. Ramirez glanced at the empty thermos next to him in the front seat and muttered a curse.

He raked the trees across the Campbell property, looking for any sign of movement. Nothing—and yet
something
was out of the ordinary. They were just trees, for Christ's sake, but there was something about them—the shape, or the way the nearly empty branches hung out like arms—

Hell, I'm going
looney
.

He rolled the window up, starting the car to get the heater going again. Once more that ominous feeling passed over him.

What the hell was it? He looked up through the front windshield; it suddenly occurred to him that
the
trees lining the road looked awfully low. The tips of their branches were almost touching the hood of the car.

Am I
going
looney
?

He felt a shortness of breath, as if he were being closed into a tight room. This had to stop. Revving the engine, he threw it into gear and pulled out onto
the
street. As he did so, some of the branches
did
touch the roof of the car. He looked into the rearview mirror, and it almost looked as
if
they pulled back and up as he passed—

Bullshit.

He gunned the engine, pulling up through town a few minutes later past his office and then pouring it on
as
Campbell Wood passed behind him. In a moment he was into the forest and his breath, which had evened out, began to grow short again.
What the hell's going on?
The trees seemed to be bending precariously low over the road. They almost seemed to be brooding.

A branch suddenly fell from above, glancing off the windshield and startling him. He pulled his hands off the wheel, for a moment losing control of the car but then pulling it back with a jerk onto the road. There didn't seem to
be
much road, now that he noticed it; leaves covered almost half of each side of the two-lane blacktop, drifting down from the curb.
I've got to get the state to do something about this,
he thought, and as this passed through his mind another branch, larger this time, fell with a crack onto the windshield in the same spot.

He pulled the car to a stop on the side of the road and got out. It was unnaturally cold, colder than it had been, and he grabbed his overcoat from the front seat, pulling it on and turning up the collar. It was unnaturally dark, too. Leaves were swirling around the car, and the wind had somehow picked up; the tree boughs above him began to whip back
and forth, clanking their close branches together with an unearthly sound. He shoved his hands in his pockets to find his gloves and then lifted the tree branch from the hood of the car.

Damn,
he thought. It had cracked the windshield, badly enough so that it would have to be replaced; a spider web of cracks led out from his line of vision behind the wheel almost to the top and bottom of the glass.

He threw the bough off into the woods, disgusted. The wind was fierce now, and biting cold. Ice had formed from the melting snow in the branches above, and there was an eerie tinkling sound.

He pulled at the car door but it wouldn't open. He brushed the frost from the side window and looked inside. Sure enough, there were the keys in the ignition. But he hadn't locked the door behind him; he could see the button in the up position. He yanked at it, but it wouldn't budge. Somehow, a bit of moisture must have gotten into it, freezing it in place.

Shit.

There was a loud, strange sound above him, and he glanced up just in time to see another huge branch falling toward him. He pushed himself off the car and back, and the chunk of wood hit the hood just above where he had been standing. He couldn't believe it; if he didn't get out of here soon the police cruiser would be totaled. The wind was
even fiercer now; he pushed the piece of wood off the top of the car, noting with a curse the fresh damage it had caused.