Campbell Wood (7 page)

All of this surprised her. She had gritted her teeth and smiled when Mark suggested they move. She had resigned herself to at best getting used to it, for his and especially the kids' sake. It was, after all, a better and healthier life in a lot of ways.

And here she was, loving it more than any of them.

Well, most of it, anyway. Something bothered Ellen, tugged at the corner of her mind where she didn't like to look. Campbell Wood was a strange place. While she loved the house, the town itself she had not warmed to. Nor it to her. The people here all had an odd, almost inbred look about them —not only physically, though they all were, for the
most part, short. Mark and Kaymie, she now saw, had much the same look about them, though Seth, it was obvious, would be tall like her when he grew up. The inbreeding of the people of Campbell Wood was more of a spiritual, or mental, thing. They weren't very nice, or even polite. Ellen always had the feeling she was an outsider, someone who didn't belong. People even seemed to go out of their way to avoid her.

Now that she thought about it, something was bothering her about Mark, too. The kids seemed happy enough, though they hadn't really made any friends yet, but Mark was too wrapped up in his work all of a sudden, too single-minded when she knew him to be someone who never took anything too seriously. That facet of his personality was what had attracted him to her.

Maybe I'm too paranoid?
she thought, and then her reverie was broken by Seth.

"Mommy, I hear noises in the cellar."

She put down her iron and looked at him. "Noises?" The kid was always hearing or seeing something. Anything to get her away from her work. She wished he hadn't had a half-day at school today.

Seth was defiant. "Someone is knocking down there."

Ellen sighed. "Oh,
all
right."

She paused at the cellar door. There
was
a sound down there—like two pieces of wood being whacked together. She knew the damn house creaked all the time, but this was something different.

There was a loud bang, and Ellen jumped. "You stay here," she said to Seth, pointing him into a kitchen chair.

Ellen eased the cellar door open a crack, tilting her head to listen. Cool air brushed her from below.

"Mommy—"

"Stay here," she said, sternly.

She opened the door farther and reached in, turning on the light at the top of the stair. There was a thump as she did so and no light went on. Iciness gripped her until she realized she had hit the red oil-burner switch by mistake.

Jerk,
she thought.

She snapped the burner off and hit the light switch, throwing a patch of dull yellow on the steps at the bottom.

She placed a foot on the top stair. Suddenly something touched her leg from below and she held her breath. She turned, seeing Seth, his hands in his overall pockets, staring sullenly at her from where she'd left him. Gritting her teeth, she lowered her eyes, breathing a sigh of relief at the sight of one of the cats.

"Boris," she said. The cat rubbed against her leg and purred. "Want to come downstairs with me?" The cat brushed past her and trotted down.

Ellen followed, taking the steps one at a time.

As she reached the bottom there was a crash and a yelp from Boris at the far end of the basement, outside the pale circle of light. The cat ran back toward her.

Peering into the gloom, Ellen called out, "Is anyone there?"

There was no answer.

Summoning her courage, she crossed the black-tiled floor and pulled the chain on an overhead light.

The cellar was empty. She could see that immediately, and she quickly discovered the source of the noise. Two food shelves mounted under the back slope of the stairs had collapsed, dropping their cans and bottles all over the floor.

How the hell could that happen?

As she bent down to pick everything up Seth appeared on the stairs above her.

"There's a knock at the front door."

Ellen sighed. "No more noises today, please."

"Someone's
there."

"At the door? Okay, be right up." She shoveled all the wreckage into an empty shopping bag, and then took a look at the broken shelves.
Strange,
she thought, holding two halves of one shelf in her hands. They fit together perfectly, but there was no ragged edge where they should have cracked apart.

"
Mommeee
!" Seth called.

"All right!" Ellen shouted back, dropping the shelves and climbing back up the stairs.

There was a young woman at the door who identified herself as Jamie
McGreary
. When Ellen gave her a blank look she said, "
Kaymie's
teacher."

"Oh!" Ellen apologized, throwing open the door and inviting the woman in. The woman hesitated. Ellen suddenly realized that Kaymie should be in school now. She added, "Is something wrong?"

"Not at all," the woman said. She was short, and seemed extremely reserved. "It's lunchtime, so I'm not due back for almost an hour."

After they settled in the living room Ellen waited for Ms.
McGreary
to continue.

The woman was positively dour and sat silent as a statue, looking as though she might leap through a window at any moment.
Maybe I
should
be paranoid,
Ellen thought. Here was this person in her house waiting for her to ask why she'd come to see her.

"Is there something you wanted to see me about?" Ellen said at last.

It occurred to Ellen that Ms.
McGreary
looked absolutely
terrified.

"Are you all right?" Ellen asked. The woman's hands were trembling. She wouldn't look up at Ellen.

Abruptly Ms.
McGreary
stood up and threw a glance at the front window. Then, turning around very quickly, she bent close to Ellen and said, "I only wanted to tell you how
special
Kaymie is." It was a whisper, and there was actual fright in it.

"Why . . . thank you," Ellen stammered, not knowing how to deal with this. "As long
as
you're here, I should tell you that Kaymie has had a little trouble at school. She's had a hard time making friends."

"I want her to do a play," Ms.
McGreary
went on, almost as if Ellen hadn't spoken. "It's not that the others don't like her. It's—" She stopped, as if pulling back from a ledge. "I know Kaymie wants to do the play, and if you'd encourage her . . ."

"I'll certainly try."

"Thank you. It's . . . important for her. Everyone in Campbell Wood will be there." She glanced at the window again. "I really must be getting back."

Before Ellen could open her mouth the teacher was out the door and walking, in quick, rabbit-like steps, toward her car. Ellen watched her from the window. She thought,
And I
thought I
was paranoid.

She heard the crack of wood against wood behind her, and her breath caught in her throat.

"Seth?" she called out, realizing that he was nowhere in sight.

The banging came again, and she ran toward the kitchen, her heart beating like a drum now. "Yeah, Mom?"

Seth looked up guiltily from his perch on the stepstool, his small hand curled around a cookie tin on a shelf above the sink. On the floor were two wooden Danish bowls that normally rested on either side of the jar.

"I only wanted one."

"Go ahead and have one. Have two."

"Thanks, Mom."

She waited till he was off the stepstool before swatting his behind.

T
he old woman was watching her again.

Kaymie had seen her in the morning when her bus let her off, sitting on a bench by the curb outside the school. She had still been on the bench at lunchtime when Kaymie had gone outside to play volleyball. The woman was tiny, wrapped in rags like one of the bag ladies Kaymie used to see in New York City. The ball had gotten away and rolled to the fence, and when Kaymie bent to pick it up she knew the creature's eyes were on her. Lifting the ball, she looked up quickly to see, under the hood of rags, a dark, creased face like a monkey's. Their eyes had met and Kaymie felt her stomach muscles tighten.

Kaymie tried her best to ignore her after that and was glad when it was time to go back inside. She soon forgot about the old woman.

Her fifth-period English class was held in a room overlooking the front of the school. When
Kaymie's
eyes wandered to the window about halfway through the class she saw that the woman was still there. She looked like a bag of sticks propped up. Her head rose, and Kaymie had the feeling that the woman was looking straight up through the window of the classroom and staring at her.

When the last bell of the day rang, Kaymie almost dreaded leaving school. Sure enough, there was the old woman, in the same spot on the bench.

Kaymie's
school bus was parked down the line, and there was no way to get around passing the bag lady. Kaymie tried to hurry, turning her eyes away until she felt something like a bird's claw on her arm.

"Wait."

The voice was stronger than Kaymie would have imagined.

Kaymie tried to keep walking. "Let me go—"

"Talk with me," the old woman said, and Kaymie was forced to turn and confront her.

The face was old, but the eyes weren't. They looked almost like the eyes of a baby, bright gray and piercing. Strong. Not the eyes of a madwoman. Kaymie couldn't help being drawn to them.

"I really should go," she protested.

"Sit and talk with me," the old woman said, in a surprisingly gentle tone. "I knew your grandmother."

Kaymie found herself sitting on the bench next to the old woman.

"You really knew my grandmother?"

The woman nodded, and her rags, or the tiny body beneath them, trembled for a moment. "I raised her," she said in a whisper, looking at her gnarled hands. Then she turned back to Kaymie.

"You're a strong and healthy girl."

Kaymie said nothing, thinking that maybe this woman was crazy after all.

"What do you know, child?" the woman asked, again in that gentle voice. There was pity, mixed with something else—anxiety?—in that tone.

"I don't know what you're talking about," Kaymie replied. "I have to get my bus—"

"Do you know anything? Does your father know anything at all about it?" The woman put her claw-like hand on
Kaymie's
arm again and Kaymie pulled away.

The woman's grip tightened, remarkably powerful. "Look in the house."

A spasm went through the woman, and her grip on Kaymie loosened. She straightened with effort.

"You must go," she said. She turned and touched
Kaymie's
arm, weakly now. "When you find it, you must come and see me in the wood. That is what must be done. I will talk with you, it won't matter what happens to me then." She bent over, gasping, then sat up once more. Kaymie used the opportunity to slip from her grasp and step back.

The old woman looked up. Her face was racked with pain but her eyes were clear.

"See me then."

Kaymie backed off and just made it into the bus before the doors closed and it moved off.

She looked back through the rear window to see the tiny huddled figure, almost blending in with the bench, sitting alone and shivering.

F
or the first time in his life, Mark found himself completely caught up in his career. His byline was appearing everywhere, and this in turn was generating new commissions, which made a circle that, it seemed, would go round and round for some time to come.

He was in the
Ferman
Library almost every day. He nearly had the place to himself, since winter vacation had set in at the campus and only a peppering of graduate students and other professionals were still around.