“Carl, I think I have a bad connection,” the sheriff said. “Say that again.”
“The victim was buried alive.”
Chapter 30
On the other side of the woods, Christopher sat at the dining room table with his mother for their first Thanksgiving in their new house. It was not the festive evening either of them hoped it would be.
And it was all his fault.
Christopher barely ate his dinner. He told his mother that he had no appetite because his head hurt, but the truth was, he didn’t want to get sleepy. So, after he consumed enough apple pie to avoid suspicion, they watched A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving in silence, and both went up to bed.
After she tucked him in with a kiss and tried to jump-start a conversation that would not come, she finally went to her room. Christopher listened to his mother’s television turn on. He waited for hours until his mother’s television turned off. And she fell asleep. And it was safe. Then, Christopher got out of bed.
As he had all week.
He went to his dresser to get warm clothes. He put them on over his PJs, dressing in layers to make sure that he could work in comfort. He put his pillow under his blanket to make it look like he was still there.
Then, he tiptoed downstairs.
Once he was clear of the creaky stairs, he slipped on his boots and went outside through the sliding glass door. He looked up at the black sky. A shooting star shot across the clouds. Christopher walked to the far side of the lawn, right up to the edge of the Mission Street Woods. The woods that the sheriff closed down to investigate, which made it impossible for Mr. Collins to keep ripping them up. It would give Christopher the time to finish the tree house before Christmas.
that’s why i showed you the skeleton
i wouldn’t have done that otherwise
i don’t want to scare you, christopher
Christopher could have helped with the sheriff’s investigation. He knew how he found the skeleton. He knew that the bones had been there for a long time. He even thought he knew the name of the kid who died. But he couldn’t tell the grown-ups that. Because eventually, they would ask him how he knew everything. And he only had one truthful answer.
“Because my imaginary friend told me.”
There were moments that Christopher’s faith wavered between fact and fantasy. He was becoming too smart not to understand that either the nice man existed, or he was a crazy kid wandering around the woods alone.
But Christopher still kept building the tree house.
He felt like his head would rip apart if he didn’t.
Sometimes, the headaches were dull. Sometimes sharp. And other times, he could eat Children’s Tylenol all day, and it would do nothing. Christopher’s headaches were now just a part of his life. Like school or Froot Loops or Bad Cat cartoons on Saturday morning. The only thing that made it livable was working on the tree house.
So he did. Thanksgiving night. And the night after that. And the night after that.
He never got headaches at the tree house.
He never got headaches near the nice man.
For the next week, every night, Christopher waited to hear his mother’s television go silent. Then, he put the pillow under his covers, grabbed his coat and gloves, and ran out to the tree house to get one more nail into the frame or paint one more wall. All the while talking to the white plastic bag. He stayed out until his hands got too numb to paint. Too sore to hammer. Then, at dawn, he’d race back to his house to make sure he was in his bed when his mother got up. The fatigue was so brutal that eventually, he had to take his mother’s makeup and blend it under his eyes, so that she would think he was still sleeping at night.
But he kept building.
He didn’t dare stop.
The fatigue finally caught up to him after Movie Friday. His mother served him a huge spaghetti dinner with meatballs and butter rolls and an ice cream sundae for dessert. By the time he reached the tree house, his eyes were already closing on their own.
Christopher tried to fight the sleep. He needed to stay awake. He needed to drag the windows up to the tree house. He needed to finish the roof. He needed to…sleep. I can’t. But you’re so tired. No, I’m not. Then, maybe you should just rest your eyes. Yes. That’s all. Just