More tree house doors opened. Shadows leaked onto the branches. Some of them moving up toward David. Others moving down.
“chrisstttopppherrrr…”
A fog bank crept in from all sides of the woods like camouflage. The deer and the damned playing hide-and-seek in the mist. The last of the nice man’s army. The man in the hollow log. The couple. The man in the Girl Scout uniform. All of their eyes glowing like coals from a fire. Christopher felt them descend from all sides of the clearing.
They were completely surrounded.
The adults made a circle around Christopher as the deer and the damned attacked. The two women turned back to back. Christopher between them. The deer swarmed, tearing the hissing lady’s flesh with razor-sharp teeth. The man in the Girl Scout uniform jumped onto Kate’s back. Licking her neck. Ambrose looked through the halos in his eyes as the shadows dripped off the tree onto the ground like sap. Creeping toward them.
“Sheriff!” he yelled.
The sheriff turned as the ground opened up. Little skeleton hands reached up from the soil. The missing souls that built the tree houses over centuries. The bones of children approached the sheriff.
“sherifffffffff…” the children giggled.
The children threw themselves onto him, biting, leaving their skeleton teeth in his skin. The sheriff fell to the ground as more hands broke through the earth and started pulling him down.
Christopher. Help!
Christopher felt David’s plea on the wind. He looked up and saw the key moving through the air faster than David could fly. Christopher needed to grab the key for him, but he was too weak to follow. He needed thousand-foot arms. He needed hands.
He needed the tree.
Christopher had given all of his strength to his mother.
But he still had his mind. Christopher closed his eyes and let the whisper take his body. He touched the tree, pulsing like a heartbeat. It didn’t feel like bark. It felt like flesh.
I was here for six days.
Christopher pushed the whisper from his mind into the tree’s flesh. He spread his fingers, moving the top branches like fingers in a glove. Christopher watched the key flying up past the branches. David Olson behind it. The shadows chasing. Everything slowed down. The wind. The air. The tree branches above them. The key raced in the wind. It was almost at the top. It was now or never. Christopher reached out with the top branch like a fishing line.
Christopher snagged the key out of the air.
He held it for David, who snatched it away from the branch, the shadows right behind him. Christopher opened his eyes and saw David crest the top of the tree.
Where the nice man floated.
“hI, davId.”
He brought his hand down like a thunderclap, striking David Olson, who fell like a clay pigeon out of the sky. David crashed on the ground at Ambrose’s feet, blood pouring from his mouth and eyes.
“NO!” the hissing lady screamed in anguish as David dropped the key.
Chapter 134
The key lay on the ground. Ambrose watched in horror as the clouds descended. He saw the nice man through the halos in his eyes, hidden in the fog. The nice man jumped through the air and landed quietly on the ground. He reached for the key. Ambrose hit back with all of his rage at the man who took his brother. The man who tortured him for fifty years.
But he was no match.
The nice man grabbed his arms and drove his thumbs through the old man’s eyes. Ambrose felt his body go. His fingers shriveled with arthritis. His back. His knees. His feet numb from the trenches. Whatever Christopher had healed was gone. He was an old man again, blind and helpless.
The nice man reached for the key.
Ambrose heard the hissing lady throw off the deer and tackle the nice man to the ground. The two battled, her screams filling the night with red. All he could do was listen helplessly as the damned attacked Christopher and his mother. The giggling skeletons of the children dragging the sheriff to his grave.
Ambrose reached blindly for the key. His hands digging through the dirt until he found it buried in blood. He picked up his little brother’s body and moved to the door on brittle knees. He held the key in his arthritic hand and searched for the keyhole with the clouds in his eyes.
“yoU wilL neveR finD iT, olD maN,” the wind taunted.
“I know how to be blind, motherfucker,” Ambrose said.
Ambrose’s hands found the keyhole. He put in the key and turned it