Campbell Wood (10 page)

"I told you I didn't," he said quietly from the bed. He moved one of his toy soldiers indolently. "I'll leave if you want me to."

She wanted to hit him. She turned instead back to the miniature house and attempted to put the various little pieces back where they belonged.

She flicked the tiny secret cupboard closed, realizing suddenly that Seth didn't even know it existed. And he wouldn't have known where to look for it.

Boris found his way into the room and
was
rubbing against her, purring, trying to get his nose into the dollhouse. Since Feeney had died he hardly ever came out from under the bed, but now
he was nosing around her house as if it were the only thing in the world he wanted to get into. Kaymie tried to keep him away while she worked but he made a sudden move with his paw and knocked over a fragile hutch with glass insets.

Kaymie gasped and reached out for it, but then, without her touching it, it was standing upright once more.

"How did you do that?" said Seth, looking over her shoulder from the end of the bed.

"I don't know." Kaymie was mystified. She had not touched it, she was sure of that.

Boris growled, moving away from the dollhouse to the other end of the bedroom.

"M
ark, we have to talk."

He hadn't heard Ellen enter the study. He glanced over his shoulder with a scowl and kept typing. "Ellen," he said distractedly, "you're not supposed to bother me when I'm working."

"Mark, please."

Something in her voice made him hesitate. For another moment he held on to his train of thought, but feeling her there behind him he gave up and turned in his swivel chair to face her.

"All right," he sighed. "I'm not going to get this damn thing finished now so you might as well shoot." Something told him to pull back the reins a bit, something in Ellen's face, and he added, with
some effort, "I'm sorry. It's just that you know how much I hate to be bugged when I'm working."

"I know, Mark. But that's part of the problem.” Her voice almost broke, she was suddenly so visibly upset.

He looked at her with incomprehension.

"Mark," she said earnestly, taking his hand limply in hers, "don't you think you've been acting pretty weird lately? I know," she went on quickly, cutting off the protest that was forming on his lips, "you've been working very hard and I know why, but for Christ's sake, don't you think you've been going at it
too
hard? You're locked in
here
almost all day and all night with your books and type-writer; the kids hardly ever see you anymore—
I
hardly see you anymore. And before this it was every day at the library. It's not
normal,
Mark. You haven't done anything around this house—hell, you haven't done anything at all but work. We haven't been out since we moved here." She was almost crying.

Mark picked up a pencil and began to fiddle with it. "Honey," he said slowly, knowing his voice sounded hollow and false, "as strange as it sounds, this is the time for me to take my chance at getting established—really established. If I can do it now, the rest will be twice as easy."

"Mark," she said, looking straight into his eyes, "it's not that and you know it. It's almost as if you're working so hard to keep your mind off other things you'd rather not think about."

He was silent. He knew just what she was getting at. He knew he was half lying to himself and to her. He wanted to tell her about Fay then, what had happened in the library, and almost did. But this wasn't the right time. And he knew there was more to it than that. He still didn't understand what was going on himself.

He twirled the pencil in his fingers, bending it convulsively and nearly breaking it in half.

"Ellen," he said in a low voice that almost pleaded, "I know I haven't been acting like myself lately. This has been a hard period for me. I've felt a lot of pressure. What I'm doing is just my way of responding to it, I think. I have no intention of screwing up our lives."

Suddenly, without realizing he was doing it, he pulled her down to him and kissed her, and the warmth with which she returned it made him remember just how good their life together was. It was like being pulled out of a thick fog into clearer air.

"You jerk," said Ellen, gently. "Don't you know what's wrong with you? I'm not worried about you and me. It's your mother that's worrying you; you're afraid to think about her because you don't know how to feel about her now."

He began to protest, and then with a shock realized
she
was
right.

She kissed him again. "Give it time, Mark. You'll be able to deal with it. But don't try to run away from it. Whatever she was she was, and you'll just have to make up your own mind about her. And if she turns out to be something other than what your father told you she was, that doesn't mean you have to change your mind about him, either. He was human, like all of us. Your mother was a real person, Mark, and you have to face that fact and the fact that she may not have been the monster your father told you she was." She took his hand in hers. "Since the day we moved in here I could see it stewing in you. You're living in her house and you feel guilty about it because you didn't know her at all." She ran her hand through his hair, thinking how boyish he really was—and how naive sometimes, too. "The real problem, Mark, is that you're so wrapped up in your own confused feelings that you don't see what's going on around here."

"What do you mean?"

Now there was genuine worry in her voice. "Don't you see how
weird
this town
is?"

"Sure it's weird, but we're new here—"

"That's not what I mean, Mark. We've lived here almost two months, and the only contact I've had with anyone was with
Kaymie's
teacher. And she was one of the strangest people I've ever met in my life. They're
scared,
Mark—there's
something scaring
the people in this town so badly they won't come near us. It's like we have the plague. Seth's been playing by himself in the backyard every day. None of the kids his own age will go near him."

"What about that kid that showed up that one morning?"

"He's dead, Mark. He died in an accident the same day."

"My God."

"Maybe it was a coincidence. I don't know. But Kaymie doesn't have any real friends at school; the only thing she's been able to get involved in at all is the play she's doing. I thought things would get better for her, but if anything they're worse. She has a big part in this thing, and nobody else even really works with her. Even that teacher stays away from her as much as she can. And now Seth says he's been seeing someone up in the trees around the house and I'm starting to
worry,
Mark. And remember Feeney getting killed?"

"That was an accident, Ellen."'

"Was it? A lot of strange things have been happening around here. One day all the drawers were pulled out in the kitchen, and Seth swears he didn't do it. I found broken branches all over the backyard another day, some as big as your arm."

Mark saw how frightened she was getting. "Oh, come on. What do you think we've got, ghosts?"

"No. But something or someone maybe doesn't want us here."

"I never thought you'd want to run out on anything."

"I
don't,
Mark. But this is just a little ridiculous.
Nobody
seems to want us here. I was starting to really fall in love with this house, but I can't go on living like this. It's not natural. It's like living under a microscope or something. And the house alone just isn't worth it. I want to live in a place where my kids have friends and at least have the chance to be popular. Hell, I'd like some friends myself." She suddenly took his arm. "Maybe your mother was a good person, maybe she wasn't. But who
was
she that everybody's so afraid of going near us?"

“I—“

There was a piercing scream and a muffled explosion.

"Oh my God," said Ellen. Mark ran ahead of her to
Kaymie's
room.

Mark threw open the door and his heart nearly stopped beating. Ellen began to scream.

It looked like a bomb had gone off.

Kaymie lay at the foot of her bed, bloody and dazed. Seth was draped over the edge of the bed, covered with debris. There was blood running from a gash behind one ear.

Kaymie said, trembling, "I moved it. I moved it and then it blew up."

Ellen bent down to her. "Kaymie, are you all right?"

"I moved it and then it blew up." She looked up at her mother and began to cry.

Mark lifted Seth carefully back and laid him across the bed. As he did so the boy groaned. "Daddy," he said.

Mark explored the cut on his head and then met Ellen's fearful eyes. "It looks like he'll be okay. It's not deep." As if to answer Mark's reassurances Seth began to whimper and sat up.

Mark turned to Ellen, indicating the half-demolished dollhouse. "What the hell did she have in that thing—firecrackers or something?"

With the realization that both her children were all right, Ellen's mind began to work again. She now saw that the dollhouse had indeed blown up. The only real debris in the room was hundreds of wood splinters that had been shot out from the front of the miniature dwelling. The house was missing most of its face; a large, jagged hole replaced what had been the second floor and attic.

Kaymie began to cry softly, and Ellen helped Mark get her into bed.

"Can I still do the play?" she said desperately.

"
Shhh
," Ellen said. "Of course you can. Go to sleep."

Seth was awake now, and they took him into his own bedroom.

"You okay?" Ellen said, looking closely into his face.

Seth nodded, then burst into tears and grabbed at Ellen, who hugged him tight.

"Seth, honey," she said, sitting on his bed, "can you tell us what happened?"

He looked
as
if he wanted to cry some more, but the earnest looks on his parents' faces made him toughen up and he nodded.

"Kaymie was playing with the dollhouse," he said, a shiver passing through him. "The furniture was all messed up. She said I did it but I didn't, Mom!" He started crying again.

"I know you didn't, Seth," Ellen soothed. "Then what happened?"

"Boris knocked something over, and then it was standing up again. Nobody touched it. All of the furniture started to move around inside the house. It looked funny, and I laughed, but Kaymie told me to be quiet. She was staring at the house, and then she started to shake. Pieces of the dollhouse flew out, like somebody was hitting it with an axe. Then it all stopped, but then Kaymie screamed and the dollhouse blew up." He tried to be brave, but couldn't help it and started to sob again, into Ellen's shoulder.

"It's all right, baby."

She looked up at Mark.

He was silent for a moment, and then he said, "I'll talk to that cop Ramirez tomorrow. If he can't help us we're getting the hell out of Campbell Wood."

T
he dream came to Kaymie again.

The closet was open, and trees grew out of it, filling the room. Figures came toward her, floating, staring at her with blank faces. Then the tunnel in the forest, leading back into the closet, formed. Through it, from far away and moving as slowly as a funeral procession, came the figure with the cloak and hood. It drew up to her bed. Kaymie wanted to scream; her bed was rocking on a sea of twisted, living tree branches. The figure stooped over her. There was a crown over the hood, the same finely spun gold piece, and, as before, the folds of material over the figure's face unwrapped, like the gauze on a mummy.

The last fold fell away.

It was
Kaymie's
face.

She awoke with a yell.

Kaymie lay in bed, suddenly feeling pain, and reached up a tentative hand to touch her face. She gasped at the tenderness of the bruises on her cheeks and forehead, even though they were cleaned and under cotton bandages.

She remembered the dollhouse.