And I started seeing the dead women.
And I stabbed my counselor with his own dull knife.
And I ran away from his office, all the way home, where Lulu was waiting for me.
She was holding the door open with one hand and the telephone with her other. The phone's pigtail-curled cord barely stretched from the kitchen, where the machine was mounted on the wall. She'd already gotten the call from the principal.
She stepped aside and let me run past her. I was panting and gasping for air, unable to dash another yard but unwilling to quit trying. In the living room, I did laps around the coffee table while she closed the door and placed the phone back on the receiver. She joined me by standing in the way of my loop, forcing me to stop or run into her.
She did not raise her voice.
"What'd you do that for?" she asked. "Why'd you hurt Mr. Schumann's hand?"
I shivered and shook, though it was warm where I stood, in the patch of sun cast through the huge picture windows. "It was moving. And he wasn't—it wasn't him. It wasn't his hand. It wasn't his hand I wanted to stick!" I hollered. "It wasn't his hand I saw! It was a different one. A little wrinkly one. The one in the book. "
Her eyebrows perked. "What book?"
"The book I saw. It was old, with old pages all yellow and dusty. And when it fell open, there was the hand stuck to the back cover. It was moving. "
"Moving, huh?"
"Yeah. And then when I opened my eyes Mr. Schumann was there, with his fat wiggly hands all moving in front of me—and I don't know. I don't know why I did it. I'm really really sorry. I didn't mean to hurt him. He's a big dumb dork, but I didn't mean to hurt him. "
"Come here. " She picked me up and sat on the couch, wrapping her strong arms around me, letting my head sink against her breasts like one of the most popular pictures of us together. She leaned her mouth close to my ear and whispered the rest.
"You see so much you shouldn't, poor baby. Just know this: know that the sisters would not hurt you, and they would help you if they could. They're looking for something they lost, years and years ago, they're not looking to harm you at all. They would never harm you, even if they could—and I figure that they probably can't. "
"But there's this book, Lu. Are they looking for the book?"
"Good Lord, no, or at least I don't think so. Don't you think any more about that book. Maybe one day you'll outgrow the sight, and you won't see them anymore, but this is our blood, baby. Someday I'll tell you who the women are, and why they follow you with their pleading eyes and reaching hands. You should think of them as your guardian angels, and don't be so afraid. They love you, and so do I. But don't you ever expect anyone else to understand it.
"Tomorrow the police will come and a social worker will want to see you, but that's all right. You tell them you're sorry about Mr. Schumann's hand, and that it was an accident. You tell them that you closed your eyes, you fell asleep, and you had a nightmare. That's close enough to true for now. "
Something awful occurred to me—something more awful than the thought of any school suspension. I sniffled and wiped my nose on her blouse, not even sure how I should broach my fear. "And they won't send me to the pine trees?"
"To the what?"
"To the pine trees?"
She continued to stroke my hair, but didn't respond right away. "What do you mean about the pine trees, darling? Where'd you hear that?" she asked quietly.
"I dunno. " I'd picked it up in some conversation held above my head when I was too young to recall the specifics. It was one of those things I'd heard in passing, not really understanding either the meaning or the context. I had only a dim impression that you got sent to the pine trees if you did bad, crazy things. And if you were especially bad and crazy, you never came back from the pine trees. They swallowed you whole.
Lu snuggled her chin down against the top of my head and kissed me there, where the hair parts. "Okay," she said. "So you've heard just enough to be afraid. I'm sorry for that, and that's just one more thing that I'll have to tell you more about someday. But don't worry about that for now, either. There's no such place anymore. Not the pine trees you're thinking of. No one will ever send you there, or anyplace like it. And any time you find yourself frightened of the pine trees, you remember what I said about those three sisters and you can stop being afraid. They won't let anyone take you off to the pine trees, and neither will I. "
"Never?"
"Not so long as I live. "
3
Branches
I
I took Lulu's words to heart. I envisioned the ghosts as visitors, not malicious boogies, and I began to look for them, though I'd not seen them outside my dreams since that time in the woods. I even started to wander the mountainside seeking them.
Occasionally I'd feel the eyes on me and I'd stop my play to look around. I might have invited them to come out to me if I'd known how. But no, the women kept their distance. I could have forgotten them altogether except for their passing smell of old clothes, drifting sometimes by. Mothballs and cedar. I felt nothing of them except ephemeral words of curiosity, and once of caution. Only one other time in my childhood did they raise their voices, and then they saved my life.