the dirt where he fell. A few footprints. And then, nothing. Christopher looked up, trying to see if David had started flying again.
And that’s when he saw it.
For a moment, Christopher didn’t understand what he was looking at. He had come to the clearing so many times, he took for granted what he would find. There was the grassy path. The perfect circle. And the old withered tree that looked like an arthritic hand.
The tree was still there.
But it was gigantic.
Like two skyscrapers standing on top of each other.
At the base of the tree, Christopher saw there was now a door carved into the trunk. With a large doorknob and a keyhole. Hundreds of mailbox people stood on either side of it, standing guard. Keeping something in. Or something out. Was this a prison? What was this place?
Christopher stood breathless. He found the tree house that he built with Special Ed, Mike, and Matt. But it wasn’t alone. There were hundreds of other tree houses hanging on the giant branches, each swinging like a body in a noose. Little birdhouses. A big angry hive.
He stared at it, remembering somewhere in his belly that he had been here before. He had been in one of those little birdhouses for six days. Being scratched. Being whispered to. Being warmed like a baby in an incubator. An egg ready to hatch.
Do you know where you are?
Chapter 90
106.4 degrees
beEp.
Christopher’s mother sat by the sheriff’s bedside, looking across the way at her son helpless on the bed. His brain less than a degree away from being cooked. The security guards and orderlies keeping her out. Or maybe keeping Christopher in. She didn’t know anymore.
The sheriff and Ambrose sat with her inside this pregnant silence. Their minds raced. People had stopped dying. People were going mad all around them with the flu. That wasn’t the flu. It was her. There were other children in the imaginary world. The children were building something. They had been building it for hundreds of years. Their tree houses linked. Including David’s. Including Christopher’s. There had to be an answer.
“What does the diary say?” the sheriff asked weakly.
Christopher’s mother snapped it open, her eyes racing over the pages.
“We already read it cover to cover. Nothing,” she said.
“No word about people not dying, Sheriff. No word about other children,” Ambrose concurred.
“May I see it?” the sheriff asked.
Christopher’s mother handed him the diary. The leather binding cracked a little when he opened the brittle, faded pages. She heard the sound of the liquid morphine falling into his IV bag.
Drip. Drip. Drip.
The sheriff turned the pages, his eyes darting across the words in a way that only a trained professional would read. After a few minutes, he looked at Ambrose.
“David was a smart kid, right?” he asked.
“Yes, sir,” Ambrose said.
“Then, why is his handwriting so bad? It doesn’t make sense.”
He handed the diary back to Christopher’s mother, closed his eyes, and drifted back to sleep. She looked at him. His body so weak and fragile. She had no idea what forces were at work right now, but she knew that the sheriff was here for a reason. So was Ambrose. So was she. Christopher’s mother opened David Olson’s diary again.
Drip. Drip. Drip.
She studied the diary over and over. Not reading the words. Just looking at the handwriting. That disturbing, terrified handwriting.
afTEr aLL, i AM god.
Drip. Drip. Drip.
“Mr. Olson, did David always have bad handwriting?”
Ambrose thought, then furrowed his brow and shook his head.
“No,” he said. “It only got worse as he started to lose his mind.”
“But he wasn’t losing his mind,” she said.
She flipped to the next page and studied that strange combination of capital letters, lowercase, cursive, and printing.
BefoRe we kill the hissing lady, the sOldier said we needed to do Some rEcon…
“What does it mean, Mrs. Reese?” Ambrose asked.
Christopher’s mother suddenly felt a chill run across her skin. A whisper brushing against her ear like an insect. She flipped back to the previous page.
afTEr aLL, i AM god.
Flipped forward.
BefoRe we kill the hissing lady, the sOldier said we needed to do Some rEcon…
Drip. Drip. Drip.
Christopher’s mother flipped back and looked at only the capital letters.
afTEr aLL, i AM god. BefoRe we kill the hissing lady, the sOldier said we needed to do Some rEcon lIke They do in thoSe wAr movies ambrose loves … i followed her during the dayTime. i could see her ReAching into People.
The letters spelled…TELL AMBROSE IT’S A TRAP
Chapter 91
Christopher approached the tree.
Somewhere deep in his soul, he