damned staggered to their feet. Ambrose felt his little brother tug at his sleeve.
“What is it, David?”
David pointed to the sky. Ambrose looked through the halos in his eyes at the clouds that were forming into a face. It looked like it was smiling. With big teeth. The man in the grey suit.
“MOM! WE HAVE TO GO RIGHT NOW!” Christopher screamed.
Before he could finish his sentence, Christopher’s mother picked up her little boy and took off running back to the woods. The sheriff followed. David and Ambrose ran with the hissing lady as dark angry clouds began to twist behind them.
“chrisSstopheR!” the voice boomed.
Christopher looked behind his mother’s shoulder and saw tornadoes of fire, spinning at impossible speeds. Each tornado looked like a fang in the nice man’s mouth.
“yoU wilL neveR leavE mE!”
A wall of fire rolled in a tidal wave. Burning through the neighborhood like a house made of straw. There was a grinding sound, then a fantastic BOOM as the nice man stood up, scattering the bodies of the mailbox people like fireflies into dusk. He saw Christopher, his mother, the sheriff, David, Ambrose, and the hissing lady run into the woods. He put his feet down on his beautiful street and climbed down into his tunnel.
Into the passage that no one else knew.
Chapter 133
Christopher’s mother ran with her son in her arms. The deer and the damned behind them. Christopher felt the panic in the hissing lady, her eyes darting down each path. Something was wrong. She knew it. The woods were different.
Where is the door?
Christopher felt David’s terror. In fifty years, he had never seen the woods like this. The trees woke up. The branches reached out. Violent arms trapped for centuries. He could sense David trying to quiet his mind and fly Ambrose above the tree line, but the branches locked arms above them, creating a tunnel. They were being herded like cattle through a slaughterhouse.
Christopher looked back. The clouds were not just clouds anymore. They were smoke from one horrible fire. He felt the heat coming for them. He tried to find his mind’s eye, but the string and the mailbox people left him drained, helpless in his mother’s arms. He felt her, weakened by her battle with the nice man. Only her maternal instincts kept her legs moving as fast as they did.
“WHERE IS THE DOOR?!” his mother screamed.
Christopher looked down the path and saw a wall of trees up ahead. The woods had closed in on them. They were running into a dead end. He felt the ground tremble beneath them.
“dOoo yOuU knOw wHy wE burY bodIes siX fEet deEp?” the voice asked.
Christopher saw the dirt moving under his mother’s feet.
“sO wE doN’t heAr theM whEn theY wAke uPpp, chrIstopheR. theY’re aLl wAkIng uPpPpP nOwwww! theY aRe cOminnnng!”
He could feel all the people under the earth. Roots tilling the soil.
“WHERE IS THE DOOR?!” his mother repeated.
Christopher quieted his mind. And found the memory. He had been here before. He had been here for six days. He knew this place.
“Keep running,” he said.
The group looked ahead at the wall of trees. The branches like giant spears ready to impale them.
“It’s a dead end!” his mother said.
“No, it’s a trick. Trust me.”
Without hesitation, Christopher’s mother did. She ran straight into the wall of trees, ready to be torn apart by the branches.
But the trees weren’t there.
They were only reflections in a mist of water. An illusion inside the nice man’s maze. The group ran through the fog like a waterfall and reached the clearing on the other side. It glowed under the fire-red moon. They looked up and saw it.
The giant tree.
The tree of knowledge. Broken and tortured. The branches moving like marionettes. Each branch with a tree house. The shadows inside them scratching and clawing the doors. Little seeds in acorns squirming. Ready to be born.
“KEY!” the hissing lady yelled.
Christopher pulled the key from his pocket. She grabbed it and led them to the door carved into the trunk. The clouds descended. The faces moved in them like ghosts.
The wind blew the key out of her hand.
“NO!” the hissing lady screamed.
The key carried on the wind, swirling around the tree. Christopher watched as David Olson closed his eyes. He felt David push himself past the pain and find his mind’s eye. Picturing himself flying after the key. Jumping from branch to branch. The tree house doors opening behind him. The shadows crawling out of the tree houses and slithering up the tree, giving