Strangewood (36 page)

With a smile of her own, Emily went into her office and
immediately was comforted by the overpowering familiarity of the place. There
was the jar of Jolly Rancher candies she always kept on her desk. The floral
calendar she ordered once a year from an Italian import company in Boston. The
huge spider plant that Lorena had — quite obviously — been watering
during her absence.

After several moments of appreciating the space, she slid
into the leather chair behind her desk. For more than an hour, she sorted
paperwork, read over résumés, and returned phone calls that Lorena had been
unable to deal with. It was after ten thirty when she leaned back in her chair,
swiveled slightly, and glanced out the window to enjoy the view of the forest
beyond.

Then she screamed.

Outside her office, she heard Lorena shout, and the sound of
a phone clattering onto the top of a desk or chair. Emily was staring out the
window in horror when Lorena ran into her office.

"Emily, my God, what . . ."

"Out the window. At the edge of the lot, by the trees .
. . do you see him?" Emily muttered and felt like she was babbling.

Lorena came over to the window next to her and peered out. Emily's
heart beat wildly in her chest. She was afraid, for just a moment, that she was
imagining it. That Lorena would see nothing.

Then the other woman said, "Jesus, who the fuck is
that?"

She'd seen him, all right.

And somehow, that was worse.

Under the canopy of trees, Laughing Boy stood and stared up
at the window of Emily Randall's office. His eyes were excellent, and he had
circled the building searching the windows until he spotted her, about twenty
minutes after she had first entered the building.

And now she had spotted him.

He began to giggle madly. He couldn't help it, really. Laughing
Boy was a hyena after all, or part of him was. It wasn't even really a laugh,
so much as a nervous, guttural response he could not control. And he was
certainly nervous. He had been ever since he had first left Strangewood, first
walked the Scratchy Path out to the world that Our Boy had come from. They had
given him a job he didn't know how to perform. They wanted him to talk to her,
to make her believe. Laughing Boy wasn't even really sure he knew why it was
important, only that Fiddlestick and the others had said it was.

For the little one, Nathan, to come back, and for Our Boy to
prevail, she was supposed to believe.

But Laughing Boy had screwed up. He'd frightened her at
first, and how could they have thought she wouldn't be frightened? They ought
to have sent little Tinklebum, or Fiddlestick ought to have come himself. But
the bell-bottom was not stable, the dragon had said. And Brownie and
Fiddlestick were needed in Strangewood.

It had to be Laughing Boy.

But he'd scared her. And she'd screamed at him and hit him
and he'd cut himself crashing out her window.

Now he'd scared her again. Even now she was looking down at
him from her office window. He'd been careless, come too far out of the trees,
and now there were two women up there.

With a cackle of guttural laughter, he drew back into the
trees and began to wind his way back through the forest. He would return to her
town. To her home — or perhaps the hospital. He would simply wait until
he could get close to her again, and then he would grab her, and tell her. Explain.
He would make her believe.

A chill ran through him.

Laughing Boy wasn't just nervous anymore. He was a little
scared. Time was passing too quickly, now. They'd told him to be quick about
it, and already it had been days. He'd begun to realize that whatever it took,
he was going to have to get close enough to her to make her listen. He might be
a bit “tetched,” as Brownie always said, but Laughing Boy was no fool. He knew
the woman was not going to listen by choice.

He would have to make her.

* * * * *

"That's extraordinary," the Peanut Butter General
said, sticky-webbed eyes wide.

He stood next to Thomas, with Fiddlestick resting on his
shoulder once more. Brownie and Tinklebum stumbled up behind them, the
bell-bottom ringing loudly. The General wondered if they couldn't do something
about that without killing the poor little fellow. He also wondered if
Tinklebum wasn't going to turn out to be a liability in other ways. It was
obvious, at least to the General, that the bell-bottom wasn't at all sane. He'd
seen it before, the horror in the eyes of a soldier who'd seen too much.

They snapped so easily.

This was war. They couldn't afford to have Tinklebum
announcing their arrival, or going completely over the edge at the wrong
moment. It was one of many things he and Thomas would have to discuss before
the attack. But for now, the sun would be down soon, and the attack would have
to wait until the morning. They still had a ways to go before they would be in
the foothills of the Bald Mountains. That was where they would make camp for
the night.

Still, he could not have passed by this sight without
pausing, at least momentarily, to appreciate it.

"It was here before I first visited," Thomas told
him.

"It's . . .” the General searched for the word, a word
he hadn't used in such a long time. Then he found it. "It's
beautiful," he said.

And it was. A huge fountain of water pluming up into the air
above a small lake, it was the source of the Up-River. From there, the water
flowed uphill in a circle all around Strangewood, until it cut across the
western edge of the wood and was forced up a water rise, and then on up into
the mountains, where it finally tumbled off into the Misty Nothing.

"I believe the water goes into the Nothing and then
pops up here again," Thomas explained. "Just part of the cycle."

"Indeed," the General said, studying the
hundred-foot fountain. "And if that wasn't the explanation before your
first visit, it became so when you started writing about it."

Thomas winced as if he'd been slapped. He looked penitent,
an expression the General remembered well from his son's childhood.

"Is that how it works?" Thomas asked.

"You tell me," the General said and smiled
amiably. He reached out and ruffled his son's hair. "You're the one who
put me here, remember?"

That didn't help, though. It only made Thomas more sullen.

"Dad, I told you, I . . ."

"That's not what I meant, TJ," said the General. "Believe
me, I never believed in anything . . . after. I wasn't much for religion, as
I'm sure you remember. When you first came here . . .” and now it was the
General's turn to grow somber, for he could not help but recall the
circumstances of Thomas's accident.

He let his eyes drift back to the fountain. The others stood
several yards away, so only Fiddlestick was privy to this conversation. And the
dragon seemed to be doing his best not to pay attention. The General glanced at
him, reached up, and stroked his leathery green wings with sticky fingers. Fiddlestick
nodded once.

"When you first came here," he began again,
"the doctors were sure you were going to die. I guess I always figured
that somehow, Strangewood patched you up the same way this ridiculous peanut
butter takes care of my injuries.

"From then on, it was a part of you in a way that made
it impossible for your fates not to be intertwined. And then, when you started
writing about it, well, that just changed everything."

Thomas glanced around, catching Brownie's eye. Tinklebum
wasn't looking at anyone, but his eyes darted round and he seemed to be
mumbling to himself. The General was growing even more worried about him.

"I'm glad I'm here, Thomas," the General said at
length. "You saved me, in a way. Though I know you had no real reason to. I
wasn't much of a father."

Though a part of him wanted desperately for Thomas to
disagree, he didn't really expect it. And he didn't get it. Thomas remained
silent, staring at the water spout. He was no fool. He knew there was love
between himself and his son. But love didn't mean Thomas was going to lie just
to assuage his guilt.

They stood together in silence for some time.

"I'm sorry about all this," he said at last. "We'll
get Nathan back, TJ. I only wish I'd had the foresight to see it coming. I
might have prevented it completely."

Thomas shook his head now. "It's my fault," he
said. "I'd forgotten about Strangewood, I guess. It was just dreams to me
after a while, and over time, I started taking the dreams for granted. When
Nathan was born, it just didn't seem that important anymore.

"It never occurred to me that I might be . . . hurting
anyone."

Suddenly, Fiddlestick fluttered his wings. The General
winced at the loud music in his ear, and father and son both raised their
eyebrows and looked at the dragon. In that moment, the General didn't think
Thomas had ever looked so much like him, and he smiled just a bit.

"Fiddlestick?" Thomas asked.

"You didn't do anything, Our Boy," Fiddlestick
said gravely. "We could have gotten on without you. The General has
explained a lot to me on our journey together, things I supposed I always knew
but never understood. We were here before you. And maybe some of us would be
gone, or things would change drastically, but I think we'd be here after you. But
even if that weren't true, what the Lantern has done is evil. Your Nathan has
done nothing. Yet it is he who suffers for our fears."

Thomas nodded grimly. The Peanut Butter General reached out
and placed a hand on his son's shoulder, gripping it firmly. Brownie came up then,
and it seemed he had overheard at least part of the conversation.

"Let us go, then," he said. "We'll find the
foothills tonight, and tomorrow morning, we save the boy Nathan."

"Tomorrow morning," Tinklebum said merrily, madly,
"the Jackal Lantern dies."

Several hours later, they broke through a stretch of trees
to find the earth turned hard. Scrub grass led to stone and earth, and ahead,
the mountains rose to the sky. The tallest of the Bald Mountains was straight
ahead.

"Well, then, here we are," said Brownie.

"So where are the Rangers?" Thomas asked. "It
seems that Redleaf has let us down."

Behind them, the wood came alive with thudding steps and
whispering branches, with blowing leaves and crackling roots. Thomas whirled to
see six trees separate themselves and walk forward. Redleaf was there. So were
Whippor Will and Black Bark. Ahead of them all, Captain Broadbough stepped
forward and lowered his branches in a kind of salute.

"You underestimate us, Our Boy," Broadbough said. "Many
of our number have died by fire, but we are with you. The Jackal Lantern must
be stopped, not merely because of the threat he represents to the wood entire,
but for the evil he has already done."

Thomas was nearly overcome with emotion. Relief, honor,
fear, hope, and so many other feelings warred within him.

"Thank you, Captain," he said. "You give me
faith."

That night, they slept safely beneath the branches of the
guardians of the wood.

Dawn would come too soon.

* * * * *

Torchlight flickered off the damp walls of the Jackal
Lantern's audience chamber. On all fours, he paced the stone floor, the flame
inside his pumpkin head blazing more brightly than usual. A low growl escaped
him as he moved about the room.

It was the heart of his fortress. The place where he was
accustomed to retreating from the wood, from the world. He could not be touched
here, not ever. Or, at least, that was what he had believed before Our Boy
turned away from Strangewood and it all began to fall apart. The Lantern was
the king of fear in the wood, but he had suddenly begun to grow fearful
himself, which was why he had stolen the child; to force Our Boy to pay
attention.

But now, deep within his fortress, the Jackal Lantern had
never felt so vulnerable. He would kill the child if he had to, if Our Boy
would not listen to reason. If he cared so little for the wood, at the very
least, he ought to give that power to old Jack. As far as old Jack was
concerned.

"Mmm," the Lantern moaned with a grin of his
jagged pumpkin teeth, the light throwing grotesque shadows from within his
head, the horrid dreams that shone from his mind.

If Our Boy would not cooperate, then old Jack had nothing to
lose. He would tear Thomas Randall's heart from his chest and fry it for his
supper. He would pop The Boy's eyes between his teeth. He would make sausage of
his viscera, and salad from his brains.

And then, along with the rest of Strangewood, the Jackal
Lantern would rot.

It was this very real possibility that was swirling around
his brain when the door to his chamber burst open, iron and wood slamming
against stone. Cragskull stood in the open doorway, ragged beard flecked with
spittle as if from a rabid dog, and a noxious cloud of smoke wisping from his
split skull.

"My Lord Jack!" Cragskull shouted.

The Lantern snarled and leaped across the room, fire blazing
in his head. He slammed into Cragskull, knocking the filthy man to the floor. Old
Jack's claws tore Cragskull's clothing and slashed his chest, and he growled
and snapped at the intruder's face.

"No, please, stop!" Cragskull whined. "I . .
. I'm sorry, but I . . ."

"Silence!" the Jackal Lantern hissed. "You
dare much, fool."

"No . . . please," Cragskull whimpered. "It's
Bob, my Lord."

But then the need for words was over. For the Jackal Lantern
heard the grunting and snuffling of one of the Simian Sisters and looked up to
see the dark shape of a huge mountain gorilla in the corridor. A moment later,
she entered his chamber carrying the limp form of Bob Longtooth. His fur was
matted with dried blood.