The Skeleton Tree (6 page)

Frank pressed every button; he turned every dial. Then he swore and hurled the radio across the cabin. It smashed against the wall. The back cover flew off; a battery ricocheted under the bed.

“Piece of junk!” shouted Frank.

“It's not the radio; it's the batteries,” I told him.

“Who cares? It's still useless!” He gave me a furious look, as though I was the one who had drained the batteries. “It's all junk. A stove without matches.” He sent
that
flying across the room too. “A candle you can't light.”
Wham
went the candle in its little holder. Then he folded his arms and dropped to the bed, pouting like a two-year-old.

I felt just as angry. I wished we had never found the radio, that we had never found the cabin. It was worse to have had our hopes raised so high and dashed again. But I started picking up the things that Frank had scattered. I had to crawl under the bed to chase the parts from the radio.

“Leave it,” said Frank. “You're wasting your time.”

“There might be spare batteries,” I said.

Frank snorted. “And spare matches?”

“Why not?” I backed out from the under the bed. “If the guy had a stove, he must have had matches.”

“Look in the spare room,” said Frank.

Well, of course there was no other room. Frank was just trying to annoy me again, and he was getting pretty good at it. But I believed there had to be a box of matches somewhere, and probably another battery. So I set the rickety chair on the bed and peered over the edge of the shelf.

“There's
something
up here,” I said. “There's a couple of things, I think.”

The first was a book, an old paperback with pages coming loose.
Kaetil the Raven Hunter,
a novel by Daniel J. Chesterson. On the cover was an unbelievably muscular man wearing animal skins, and on his shoulder perched a raven with a black hood, its talons tipped with silver spikes.

I read the blurb on the back aloud.

Left as a baby to die on a mountainside, Kaetil was rescued by ravens. Taught to hunt like a raptor, to think like a bird of prey, he grew up with one ambition: to find the man with yellow eyes. The man who'd killed his father.

“That sounds pretty good,” said Frank. “What else is up there?”

I looked again. At the very back of the shelf was a box made of orange plastic. Frank snatched it from my hands and flicked the little latches. “A bunch of junk,” he said, and dropped it on the mattress.

I got down and picked up the box again. Inside was a whole survival kit: a space blanket made of shiny foil; a whistle with a tiny compass fitted into the tip; a small mirror with a clear hole in the middle. There was a metal tube the size of a pen that I held up for Frank to see.

“Yeah, so
what
?” he said.

“It's a flare gun,” I told him.

“You think I don't know that?” He was so angry that he looked ugly. “There's
nothing
you know that I don't know.”

“But there's a flare too.” I held it up, a little red cylinder.

Frank's voice broke into a squeak. “Who
cares
?” He swept his hand across the mattress, sending the whistle flying. “You moron. You think you can go out there and shoot off a flare and somebody's going to come and save us?”

“Why not?” I said.

“Because
NOBODY'S THERE
!”

I tried not to let him bother me. “The world's not all that empty,” I said. “There's ships and planes and stuff, and somebody's going to come by. They're probably searching for us already.”

“Don't be stupid,” said Frank. “It'll be weeks before they even know the boat's missing. They won't have a clue where to look. There are thousands of miles, and they can't search every inch. It would take forever.”

“So what do you want to do?” I asked.

“So whaddya wanna do?”
he said, mocking my voice. “I want you to die, that's what I want.”

That made me feel cold and small and awful inside. I was standing there like a butler, holding the flare and the little gun, and I didn't think I could take much more of Frank. I dropped the things on the bed and went outside.

The raven shouted at me.

He had dragged the dead bird from the bushes and was hunched over it now. Stuck in his beak were tiny black feathers. He thrust out his head, puffed his wings and shrieked at me.

He seemed a cruel thing, a little cannibal busily chewing away at his dead companion. He had covered the ground with bits of red insulation pulled from the wire. It was obvious that he was telling me to keep away, so I held up my hands as I stepped around him. “Okay,” I said. He swiveled his head to watch me with his black eyes.

To my left was the trail coming up from the beach. To my right, another path led into the bushes. The branches on either side nearly met in the middle, but I could see that the trail had been used many times. There was a rut worn into the ground.

I took that trail through the forest. Twisting between the trees, it led me toward the narrow finger I had seen from the beach, the sound of surf growing louder. I came out onto a small meadow surrounded on three sides by the sea. Yellow grasses bent in the wind, and a lonely tree stood black and gaunt against the clouds. Storms had shaped its trunk into a twisted cord, its branches into spidery fingers. Black with age, almost bare of needles, it looked like a crippled old woman, a hag dressed in fluttering shreds of moss.

Squinting against the glare of the setting sun, I saw four wooden boxes set in the crooks of the branches.

Made of cedar planks, they looked nearly as old as the tree. Spotted with lichen, turned silver by sunlight, they were slowly disintegrating. Two had split open; their ends had caved in. I could see leg bones and ribs inside, and the round top of a skull. They were coffins.

In the red light of the sunset, I felt a cold chill. I thought of the skeletons sleeping together in their separate boxes, like astronauts in a spaceship or something. I backed away slowly, through the shadow of the tree where it sprawled across the grass. Then I turned and ran to the cabin.

The raven was still on the ground, tearing now at the wire that bound the corpse. Again he raised his head and spread his wings. He opened his beak so wide that I could see his tongue inside, a little orange dart. He made a strange sound that rattled from his chest, as though he was trying to speak.

He was big enough to seem threatening. I was wondering how to get around him when Frank came up the trail from the sandy beach. At that moment, the raven lifted into the air and flew away between the trees.

Frank was angry. “Where did you go?” he said.

“Out there,” I told him, pointing down the other trail. “There's a tree with coffins in it. And there's skeletons inside them.”

He looked doubtful. “Show me,” he said.

“It's nearly dark,” I told him.

“So what?” He tossed his hair aside. “You scared?”

I hated the way he smirked. Yes, the skeletons had scared me. But I wouldn't admit it. “Let's go,” I said.

By the time we reached the meadow, the sun had gone down. Beyond the forest, a jagged mountain rose like a crouched giant, and the skeletons rested unseen in their boxes, under a purple sky.

Frank stepped toward the tree. I had a sudden fear that he would break off a branch and start bashing at the skeletons.

But he was solemn and serious. He walked twice around the tree without speaking, his feet shuffling in a slow funeral march. Then he stopped, with his hands on his hips, and stared up at the coffins. The highest one was so small that it must have held a child. A lower one had broken open, and scraps of cloth hung from the box like cobwebs. I saw the skeleton inside, stretched out on its back with its skull tipped sideways, as though staring across the sea.

Frank went closer, but I wouldn't move. He noticed, and laughed. “You
are
scared,” he said.

“No,” I told him. “It's just creepy.”

“Why?” said Frank. “It's just a cemetery. There's so much rock and stuff, this is how the Indians used to bury people. They're just old bones.”

“That used to be people.”

“So what?” Frank tossed his head. “Everybody dies. I'd rather be put in a tree than buried in the ground. Who wants to be eaten by worms?”

“Who wants to be pecked by birds?”

Frank shrugged in his annoying way. He went right up to the tree and touched its black bark. He ran his hand along the trunk.

“What sort of tree is that?” I asked.

Frank stared up through the branches. He looked at me, then walked away. “It's a skeleton tree, moron.”

The wind was fading, the sea becoming calm. Waves breathed up against the shore, and a seagull cried as it flapped its way home. But these were sounds I barely noticed anymore, a background hum like traffic in the city, so I heard quite clearly the little scratch and shuffle that came from the tree. In the fading wind, it could not have been a creak of branches. It was something scraping on wood, something scratching.

As I turned to follow Frank, I noticed something strange. In the shadows of the open coffin I could see the skeleton's gaping eyes. It had turned its head to peer down at me.

Even now, weeks later, I still feel a prickly chill when I think of the skeletons.

I've had nightmares trying to figure them out. Why are there coffins up in a tree? Could the tsunami have tossed them there? Were people put in the coffins alive and left to die? Did they climb up there themselves?

Or maybe Frank is right. Maybe once, long ago, a village stood along the sandy beach, and the tree is just a graveyard in a land with a lot of rock but not much dirt. Maybe the most important people were put to rest in the branches of the skeleton tree. That makes more sense.

But I can't get it out of my mind that the skeletons come down in the night. I've imagined them lifting the lids of their coffins, peering out at the twilight, then clambering down to run through the forest.

What's that sound behind me? If I turn around now will I see the skeletons climbing back to their places? I can imagine one swinging his long bones over the edge of the box, sliding into his coffin like a fighter pilot into his cockpit.

I will be glad to be away from here. But I don't think I'll ever forget the skeletons. They'll appear in my dreams for as long as I live.

I knew it that first day, when Frank left me alone at the skeleton tree. He went away without telling me, and I looked back to see him already at the far side of the clearing, nearly at the forest. “Wait up!” I shouted.

He laughed and kept going.

I started running. As I stumbled across the grass, Frank looked over his shoulder and saw me. He started running too. He vanished down the black mouth of the trail.

It pleased me to think that he was at least a little bit frightened. But that wasn't true; Frank was only planning ahead. He didn't care about skeletons; he had only hurried away to claim the only bed.

By the time I arrived in the cabin he was already sprawled across the foam mattress. The orange box and all its contents were dumped on the floor.

I felt stung, but there was nothing I could do. I managed to pull the door shut and wedge it in place, but the old wooden latch was broken. The boarded window made the cabin as black as a tomb, and I had to feel my way to the corner, where I settled down on the bare floor. I fell asleep in a moment, only to snap awake again. Something was moving outside.

“Did you hear that?” I asked. “Frank! Did you hear that?”

Half-asleep, already annoyed, he growled at me, “Hear
what
?”

“That sound.”

“What sound?”

It came again, a tiny scratching. “There!”

“It's nothing,” said Frank. “Go to sleep.”

“I think there's something out there,” I said.

“There's
always
something out there,” said Frank. “It's the forest.”

The bed creaked as he rolled heavily onto his side. To him, that was the end of it. I lay back again on the floor, but I couldn't possibly sleep. I lay still and straight, listening for every sound. But nothing moved.

“Frank? Are you asleep?” I asked.

He groaned. “Yes, Chris, I'm asleep.”

I tried to speak to him nicely. “You think we're going to get home?”

He said nothing.

“I think we will. I bet boats go by all the time. Floatplanes too. We might even see one tomorrow.”

Frank was lying quietly on the bed.

“We could take turns watching,” I said. “If we see a boat or a plane, we can shoot off the flare.”

He didn't even grunt.

“Or we could use the flare to start a fire. Hey, why not?” I said. “A fire would keep us warm. It would be a signal too. I mean, if you can't start a fire with—”

“I
know
how to start a fire,” said Frank. “I told you that, moron. Now shut up and go to sleep.”

For a while I lay silently below him. Then I said, “Frank? Just—”

“Shut up.”

“Just tell me one thing,” I said. “Do you want to stay here in the cabin? Or do you want to keep going north?”

No answer.

“Frank, what do you want to do?”

“Sleep,” he said. And he did. Soon he was snoring softly, and the sound was a comfort.

Morning came in slits of gray light through the boarded window, through the doorframe, even through little chinks in the cabin walls. Cold and uncomfortable, I groaned as I got up from the floor. Frank was awake, just lolling on the foam pad with his jacket for a blanket. He watched me walk toward the door.

“Where are you going?” he asked.

“To look for ships,” I said.

“Look for water,” he told me. “That's more important. Or look for food.” He tossed the jacket aside and sat up. “Go get some seaweed.”

I didn't like being bossed around. “Go get some yourself,” I said.

“All right, Chrissy,” he said with pretended patience. “I was
going
to get a bunch of clams or something. But if you'd rather do that, go ahead.”

He knew exactly how to annoy me. He used just the right tone and just the right words, and he knew very well that I didn't have a clue about clams. “Forget it,” I said.

I shoved the door to go out, and it fell back on its last hinge, slamming into the ground. Again I saw the raven peering up at me from the body of his dead friend. As surprised as me, he thrashed his wings and soared over my head, up to the cabin roof. He rocked from one foot to the other. The feathers on his back were ragged and out of place, and he looked like a worried little man. When I crouched over the dead bird, he began to mewl sadly. When I picked it up, he howled.

“It's okay,” I told him.

As large as it was, the dead bird weighed almost nothing. It felt hard and hollow, dried out like an old gourd. As I held it, Frank appeared. His hair was spiky and disheveled, like the feathers of the raven, and when he saw me he grimaced. “That thing's probably loaded with lice,” he said.

I dropped it. Frank stepped forward and kicked it into the bushes. On the rooftop, the raven screamed. Frank paid no attention. “You won't find seaweed in the forest,” he said as he walked past me.

The raven on the roof muttered and cooed. I could see the dead bird lying upside down in the bushes. So I found a stick and pulled it out again. I scraped out a little grave from the moss and the dirt.

The raven's cries grew louder. He swung his head and slashed his beak across the plastic. He
moaned.
I remembered standing over my father's grave at the huge cemetery on a hillside, hearing my mother cry beside me. The way I'd felt then, that was the sound the raven was making.

I placed the dead bird gently in its shallow hole, and was about to cover it over when I thought of the skeleton tree.
Who wants to be eaten by worms,
Frank had asked. Not a raven, for sure. I lifted the bird out of the ground and carried it down to the point. From the roof, the raven rose to follow me, and when I reached the clearing he was already perched at the top of the skeleton tree. For him, it was just a place to look out across the sea and the land. The skeletons meant nothing to a raven; for him there was no fear of death and old bones.

It was a day with no wind, a day that felt like the end of summer. Small, high clouds dotted a sky of watery blue, and the ancient coffins looked like little boats floating on a great wide sea.

As the raven watched, I unwrapped the red wire and hung it in a loop around my neck. I was shocked to see the deep ruts in the bird's feathers and body. But its wings fell open, and I thought I'd set the raven free. Reaching up as high as I could, I placed the poor dead thing into a crook of the branches.

I didn't mean to look in the boxes. But the movement of a tattered cloth caught my eye, and I suddenly found myself staring right up through the rotted floor of a coffin, at the same skeleton that had looked down at me the night before.

I saw shreds of moss clinging to a skull that had turned up toward the sky again.

The wind had moved it, I told myself. But I couldn't remember any wind.

I ran to the end of the point. The tide was so high that most of the seaweed was underwater, but I found a few pieces of brown kelp cast up among the stones. I tore off the long leaves and took them back to the cabin. I didn't even glance at the skeleton tree.

Frank came in right after me, carrying an old bucket that he plunked down in the middle of the floor. He chose two sticks from the scattered firewood and squatted down to start a fire. I peered into the bucket at a squirming mass of Frankenstein creatures, half plant and half animal. “What are those?” I asked, disgusted.

“What do you think?” said Frank.

I had no idea. I shook the bucket to make the creatures tremble. Frank had said he was getting clams, but these weren't clams. They had bulbous heads that looked like claws, and short, stubby bodies, and they twisted and twitched in a way that didn't seem normal. I thought of the nuclear reactors destroyed by the tsunami. “Are they mutants?” I asked.

Frank snorted. He rubbed the sticks so quickly that his hands moved in a blur. But no smoke or flame appeared. Just as he had last time, he soon lost patience and threw the sticks away. “Forget it!” he shouted. “We can eat them raw.”

“But what are they?” I asked.

He almost screamed at me. “Gooseneck barnacles, you moron!” Then he came and grabbed the bucket. When he looked inside, his expression almost made me laugh. I thought he was going to vomit. “They stick on to stuff way out at sea,” he said. “Mostly they're dead when you find them. I never really ate them before.”

“What happened to the clams?” I asked.

“High tide, moron.”

I had never gone digging for clams, but even I knew that you couldn't do it if the beach was underwater. I watched Frank pull one of the barnacles from the bucket. He held its claw pinched in his fingers as it writhed like a maggot.

It had brown skin as wrinkled as an elephant's trunk. With a little tearing sound, Frank peeled that away. The flesh underneath was yellow. Frank grimaced. Then he shoved the thing into his mouth, bit off the fleshy head and dropped the claw in the bucket. He wiped his mouth with his hand.

“Not bad,” he said.

I laughed. His face looked sour and disgusted.

“No, really,” he said. Then both of us laughed, and the yellow goo of the barnacle bubbled up in his mouth. It was gross and disgusting, but the first nice moment we had ever had together.

He ate a second barnacle, and then a third before I tried one myself. It was salty and rich, and I hated the idea that it was still alive. The feel of it sliding down my throat nearly made me gag. But the taste wasn't all that bad.

Frank watched as I swallowed. “Well?” he asked.

“It's not the worst thing I ever ate,” I said. “Once, when I was a kid, I ate dog droppings.”

Frank laughed. “I ate glass.”

“Really? What happened?” I said.

“I don't remember exactly,” said Frank. “But it was scary. My mom freaked out and called nine-one-one. They came and fed me cotton wool.”

“Why?” I asked.

“To pad the glass, I guess.” Frank shrugged. “It made me cry; I remember that.”

It was strange to think of Frank crying. He started telling me more, then suddenly stopped, as though he'd said too much already. But we kept eating the barnacles. We finished the whole bucket, laughing together as we did silly things. I arranged four in my hand as though they were fingers. Frank dangled two from his head like alien tentacles. In that little cabin, in that lonely land, we were happy.

“Hey, Frank?” I said.

“Yeah?” He looked up, smiling.

“Why did Uncle Jack take you sailing?”

It was as though a door suddenly closed between us. I could almost hear it slamming shut. The smile vanished from Frank's face. A half-finished barnacle drooped from his fingers.

“I don't want to talk about that,” he said. His voice was so cold that it scared me. “I'm glad he's dead, and that's all.”