Contents
Title Page
Dedication
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Chapter 62
Chapter 63
Chapter 64
Chapter 65
Chapter 66
Chapter 67
Chapter 68
Chapter 69
Chapter 70
Chapter 71
Chapter 72
Chapter 73
Chapter 74
Chapter 75
Chapter 76
Chapter 77
Chapter 78
Chapter 79
Chapter 80
Chapter 81
Chapter 82
Chapter 83
Chapter 84
Chapter 85
Chapter 86
Chapter 87
Chapter 88
Chapter 89
Chapter 90
Chapter 91
Chapter 92
Chapter 93
Chapter 94
Chapter 95
Chapter 96
Chapter 97
Thank You
About the Author
Copyright Page
for Meghan, Sam & Rachel
Have you ever seen a face hidden in the bark of a tree and known that the man trapped inside wanted to hurt you?
That’s what Zack Jennings had always wanted to ask his father, but he never did, because he was afraid his dad would think he was just letting his imagination run wild again.
Except this time Zack was pretty certain he had seen a man’s face hidden inside this huge gnarly tree over in the small park ringing the American Museum of Natural History.
Other kids might’ve seen lumpy bumps and knotholes. Zack saw angry eyes and a snarling mouth.
But Zack never did ask his father. Instead, he asked Mrs. Donna Schlampp, the librarian at his school, if she thought reincarnation extended to plants as well as animals. Could people come back as a tree or just as cows or some kind of bug? Mrs. Schlampp (who had a graduate degree in comparative theology but never got to use it except at dinner parties) said that, yes, some religions believed tormented souls could become trapped inside the elements of nature—most especially trees.
So according to one adult who’d been to college, the oak in the park could, indeed, have an anguished soul trapped beneath its bark.
Thanks a bunch, Mrs. Schlampp.
Fortunately, Zack and his dad were leaving New York City pretty soon. They were moving up to Connecticut right after his dad got married again.
That tree in the park? It wasn’t coming with them.
But maybe Mrs. Schlampp could go visit it from time to time.
Billy O’Claire was doggy-dog tired.
He’d been trying to fix the toilet in the brand-new house for over six hours and the weather outside was extremely hot and muggy, especially for the Friday before Memorial Day.
Billy was sweating up a storm. Since nobody lived in the new house yet, they hadn’t turned on the air-conditioning. His work shirt was a soppy sheet of wet cotton with full-moon stains oozing down below both armpits.
It was nine p.m.
He tightened one last nut, then gave the trip handle on the toilet a flick. Instead of the customary whoosh of water swirling into the bowl, Billy heard a roaring gurgle. The toilet was working backward. He raised the lid and saw a commode burping up chunks of brown gunk. Leaves. Dirt. Twigs.
Nothing else, thank heaven, because nobody had actually used the toilet yet. This woodsy debris had to be seeping in from a cracked sewer line, and Billy realized they might have to rip up the newly sodded lawn to fix a drainpipe ruptured, most likely, by tree roots.
But that was a Monday-morning kind of problem.
Fortunately, it was Friday night and Billy was finished working for the week. He cranked the shutoff valve behind the toilet and went out to the driveway, where he had parked his pickup, the one with O’Claire’s Plumbing painted on the door over where it used to say O’Claire’s Painting and, before that, O’Claire’s Satellite Television Repair.
Billy sat in the cab and drank half a gallon of water out of a glugging plastic jug and aimed two of the truck’s air-conditioning vents up at his armpits.
It felt good. Real good.
He yawned and thought about grabbing a quick nap. Instead, he slammed the transmission into reverse and backed out of the driveway, not realizing that something wicked was lurking a little ways down the road—just waiting for the next doggy-dog-tired driver to come along.
A flashing red stoplight hung suspended over the intersection where County Route 13 crossed Connecticut State Highway 31.
A gigantic oak tree stood near one corner, and its highest branch—as thick around as the trunk of any ordinary tree—suddenly started to move. No wind was blowing. No sports car zooming past had sent up a swirling wake. But the massive limb began to bend and rotate. It sensed an easy target approaching and, longing for a little fun, tore against itself—slowly at first, then with gathering speed. When the final strands ripped free, the bough broke off and fell like a two-ton truck, tearing down the blinking beacon.
Then the tree stopped moving.
Billy O’Claire remembered that there used to be a flashing red stoplight hanging over the intersection of 13 and 31. Tonight, however, there wasn’t one.
Good.
Billy didn’t want to stop. He needed to find a bathroom. Bad. Chugging half a gallon of water straight from the jug will do that to you. And he preferred a bathroom where the toilet didn’t gurgle back at him. He pressed down on the gas pedal.
“How dry I am,” he crooned off-key. “How wet I’ll be, if I don’t find…”
Suddenly he saw someone standing in the middle of the road.
A cop.
A motorcycle cop—holding up his hand and commanding Billy to stop.
So Billy slammed on his brakes and the pickup skidded sideways. Tires screeched, the truck swerved, and he almost hooked on to the bumper of a car he hadn’t even seen coming. He spun around and wound up on the far side of the intersection—backward and straddling a ditch.
Billy wasn’t injured, just totally dazed. He could see the taillights of the car he had nearly hit as it zoomed up the highway. Glancing at his rearview mirror, he saw the cop standing next to his motorbike, which was very weird-looking—it had a moonfaced headlight and chrome fenders swooping up over its tires.