It wasn't far to the base of the tree, but every step closer heightened Mystery's misgivings. The journey from the middle landing of the front stairwell to the top wasn't more than a minute's walk, but Arthur's face had closed down like a fortress by the time they reached the top.
"We can get at it over here." Arthur gestured to the right and turned aside just before they reached the porch. There was a smallish garden area at the top landing, fenced off up to the house. The picket fence was just below waist height, clearly intended as only a mild discouragement.
Mystery pawed at Arthur's leg. "Arthur, are you sure? It feels…" he ended his sentence with a growl and a whine.
"I know. I feel it too." Arthur's voice was tight. The tips of his fingers were trembling. "And I want to turn around and run right now."
That was more than enough for Mystery. "Then we go. Vivi can make apologies for us and some other group will be hired to deal with it."
Arthur shook his head and took another step toward the fence. "Can't."
The fur on Mystery's back stood up. "Can't?"
Arthur winced. "No, not can't. Won't. Have to go. It's screaming."
"Screaming? Arthur, what on earth—"
Arthur hooked a leg over the fence and slipped over. Mystery wasted no time vaulting it. "Arthur, you're the one that said we turn back the second it's over our heads! Arthur, at least reconvene with Vivi! We're split up!"
"I know what I said." Arthur wasn't walking so much as drifting toward the tree, his hand outstretched. "It's screaming. Nobody's listening. I can hear you, I can hear—"
"Don't touch—!"
Arthur's right hand rested on the trunk. A moment later, a thorn sprouted through his hand. Blood ran down the roots before he could draw breath to scream. Bark enveloped his hand and surged up his arm.
The outside of the garage was nothing special. There were a few rotted siding panels and garden tools propped up along the wall. There was a rather large doggie flap in the door that Vivi could have crawled through to get inside. Would have crawled through, if she'd found it fifteen minutes ago. Now, she just stared at it, kicked it once or twice to watch it swing, then turned away and walked further back.
Large wooden fence between her and the backyard? No problem. She dragged a wobbly, sun-brittled plastic chair over with her foot. With a single fluid motion—designed to leave her weight on the chair as briefly as possible—she stepped up with her right leg, sprang, hooked her left leg up and over the fence, and straddled it. She plopped down on the other side, feeling momentary relief to have a barrier between her and Arthur.
Her mouth twisted at the bitterness of that thought.
Another tree flourished here. Hanging from a major limb was a crooked, wood-slat swing. Vivi frowned, batting at it. It hung at her head height, wound all the way around the limb. "Should fix that. Nobody could get up there to sit in it," she muttered, passing underneath.
A decrepit picket fence that could no longer pass for white lined an abrupt drop off. Vivi's eyes widened as she took in the view. It was impossible to see from the front, but the house was directly on a shoreline and the back overlooked a gorgeous bay view. Sunlight glinted off the calm waters, gently washing back and forth on the short, stony beachfront. A half-collapsed pier pointed haggardly out into the bay. A seagull glided overhead, harassing a few wispy clouds across the sky.
Just to her left, the fence broke rank with a gate that led to a path. Intrigued, Vivi put her hand to the gate, then stopped. Further to the left was another path with no fence, and that one led to what looked like… she let her hand drop from the gate and walked along this second path. Past a picnic table and a long-abandoned bike. Past ancient lantern hangers, some with rusted-shut, long-empty lanterns still swinging from them. Down and around a path carved out of rock that wound between smaller, solemn trees. Into the cemetery.
Vivi laughed softly as she read names off the tombstones. "Shadow. Daisy. Burpy. Durpy. Churpy. Just pets. Wow, they went all out for their fur babies." She squatted near Daisy's granite headstone, engraved with the cartoonish outline of a cat's head. "And Bailey gets a solid stone doghouse, huh? How'd the rest of you feel about that?" She grinned, lifting her head.
The grin faded. The path didn't stop here. Her apprehension crept back in as she stood, dusting her hands on her knees, and followed the path to the next section. It was a smaller, circular area with headstones arranged around a central tree. A wooden sitting platform encircled the tree so you could sit and stare out at any one of the headstones. Unlike the previous section, these headstones all bore first and last names, and all last names were "Finch". Each headstone had elaborate decorations attached to them; a saw, a moon with a spaceship hanging off it, a book with letters springing out of it.
Vivi exhaled hard. "Family cemeteries are normal. Mhmm. Putting them by your house is a little weird, but that's just what I think. The family's probably really, really old school. Old-world, probably."
If you drag the old world with you, you're dragging the good and the bad together. How much bad stuff did they drag with them?
Vivi shivered. The path still didn't end. It curved upward, past a strange stone monument divided into two parts. A man and a woman in a boat on the left of the path reached out, horror-stricken, toward the right side of the path. Across from them was a stone house that appeared to be sinking into the ground. A man stood on its roof, like a grizzled sea captain determined to go down with the ship. From there, the path stopped just ahead at a telescope, pointed out to sea.
No, it kept going! She turned completely around to see that the path also did a hairpin curve, leading to a different section. There were more headstones there, two more sections in groups of three or four, with either stone or wooden benches facing them.
A kid was sitting in the final section. He looked to be about eleven or twelve years old with short, milk-chocolate colored hair and a hoodie. He had a book splayed on his lap and his right arm was wrapped in a cast from wrist to elbow.
Vivi approached, unsure whether he was an intruder or if she was. "Um… hey…"
The kid's head jerked up. A smile lit his face. "Oh! Are you… you're Vivi, right? With the Mystery Skulls?"
He already knew her name and their group. Vivi's heart sank as a hunch took hold. "Uh… yeah… and… look, please tell me you're not, um… Mr. Finch? Who contracted the Mystery Skulls to check this property for a curse?"
The smile turned a little sheepish. "Well, um. I kind of… really needed some help. Figured you wouldn't come out just for a kid, so…"
That was a pretty high-pitched voice. He probably hadn't even hit puberty. Fuddling muck rudders, Artie's not going to like this. She raked fingers through her hair, sighing.
The kid dug into his pocket with his good hand. "But I can pay! I've been saving for, like, a year. I'm not pranking, please!" The smile turned into something desperate-looking. Something scared.
Vivi paused her hair-raking, then dropped her hands to her sides. Sighing, she muttered, "Scoot over, would ya? We can talk about pay later. We're already out here so no sense running off before we check everything out. What's your name, Mr. Finch?"
The sheepish grin returned as the kid scooted over. "Christopher. And, thanks."
Vivi sat next to him and looked across at the headstones. Lightning jolted her spine and she shot to her feet, her heart pounding as her field vision narrowed to one headstone.
Lewis Finch.
"Um?! What? D'you see something?" Christopher looked wildly around as Vivi tried to collect herself.
"Sorry. This is Finch… not Pepper… I just… I had a… Lewis. Lewis Pepper, though. He died, too. Just had a start." She forced herself to sit again and tried to smile. "Common name, eh?"
Christopher shrugged. "Maybe? I don't know any other Lewises at school."
She jerked her chin at the headstone. "Did you know your family Lewis?"
He shook his head. "No. He's an uncle that died way before I was born. I'm here for her," He pointed at the headstone just to the right of Lewis. "She's my Mom."
Edith Finch.
Christopher dug the tip of his sneaker into the dirt. "This is the end of the cemetery, with all my parents'-aged people here. It goes backwards through the family if you follow the path back to the swing."
"I'm sorry about your Mom." Vivi sighed. "Just you and your Dad, now?"
He shook his head. "No clue who he is. No hints in here, either." He lifted the worn notebook in his lap. "Mom was alone, and she died when I was born. Left me this journal and a house key, that's it."
Frowning, Vivi hedged, "Don't take this the wrong way, Christopher, but you're here without an adult."
"...yeah… they'll probably come looking for me here, soon. I've hitchhiked over here lots of times already. I probably still have a couple hours."
"They who?"
He fidgeted in his seat. "Foster parents. Or police, if they don't feel like coming to get me themselves."
"Jiminy swimming rootbugs, Christopher!" Vivi dragged her hands over her face. "If they find you with us, then we're going to be in worse trouble than you. We can't do a job like this!"
"I'm sorry! I really am, but I need help. If you don't help me, then I'll be next!" Christopher's face twisted. "You gotta help me. Please. I don't wanna have this hanging over my head! I don't wanna end up here, too!"
Vivi scrubbed her face a few times with her hands, then took a deep breath and faced him. "Okay, first off, what exactly do you have hanging over your head? What's this all about?"
Standing, he grabbed her hand and towed her back to the statue of the man standing stalwart atop the roof of a sinking house. "It started with him. This was Great-grandfather Odin. He was coming to America to get rid of the family curse, but he didn't want to let go of the family house, so he loaded the entire thing onto a ship and sailed it here." Christopher turned, pointing out into the harbor. "At low tide, you can see parts of it sticking above the water. It sank there."
Vivi stared out at the calm waters. That was not a promising start to the family history. From there, the story only got stranger.
A new house built in sight of the sunken remains of the old. The unfortunate death of a young child soon after completion. A series of deaths in every generation, following a strange pattern that kept one sibling in each generation alive long enough to reproduce, then killed that one off, too. No rhyme or reason to the cause or age of death. A house that slowly sprawled out and upward with each new addition to the family. Rooms progressively sealed off with each death, each converted into a private shrine complete with journals, poems, photographs, and articles detailing each death. The matriarch, Great-grandmother Edie, living to a ripe old age, watching over every death until her daughter and granddaughter fled the house, leaving her to die alone.
"The rooms are all sealed up," Christopher concluded, "but there's a way into each one. Mom drew me a map in here," he held up the journal, "and I've been in them all and read all their stories, just like she did. Most of 'em knew there was something wrong, but nobody agreed what it was. Some thought we had a monster. Some thought it was a curse. Some just… I don't know. Didn't care enough to keep living, maybe? We had one get away! Uncle Milton vanished. Went missing. There's no note, just a flipbook he drew that makes it look like he walked through a door that he drew himself and poof!" Christopher splayed his fingers out, then shrugged.
Vivi chewed her lip, mulling through the story in her head. "So. You're the last one?"
"Unless Uncle Milton comes back somehow."
"So, what do you think is going to happen to you?"
"I'm probably gonna live long enough to have a kid or two, then something bad is gonna happen to me." He turned back to his mother's headstone, looking sick. "Then they'll squeeze me in next to her. Or start a whole new section? Probably a new section. Then it'll happen to my kids. And then their kids, and their kids…" he turned back to Vivi. "Please, please you gotta help me. There's gotta be a way to make it stop. Great Gramma didn't bother, but there's got to be a way to kill it."
Vivi stared at the headstones in front of her, thinking. According to Christopher, Lewis and Edith Finch were about my age when they died. How long does Christopher have left? It could be six years, it could be sixty. It depends on when he has kids and how many. What happens if he chooses not to have kids? Is that the solution? No, no, focus, Vivi. I need to get Mystery and Arthur in on this. Whatever this is, we have to banish it and banish it fast. Preferably before the police get here. Or, maybe we hide and come back later and do the job after Christopher gets picked up. Maybe we can do this one pro bono. If anyone needs a break, surely it's this kid—
A howl shattered her thoughts. She raised her head just as Mystery leaped over the back fence, bounding down the path in his full-sized seven-tailed glory. Christopher screamed, falling off the bench as Mystery skidded in front of Vivi.
She gulped, turning to Christopher. "I can expl—!"
Teeth clamped onto the back of her sweater, swinging her around and onto Mystery's back. Instinctively she clung to his mane as he drew his legs together. A moment later they were flying through the air. He sprang from the edge of the cemetery back to the broken-down swing. Another leap cleared the fence, and then he was tearing up the winding drive, away from the house.
"What the fish—!" Vivi nearly bit her tongue on the words. She clung tight with one hand and swatted the side of Mystery's neck with one hand.
"Need your bat!" he barked. He skidded to a stop next to the van. "Get your bat now! It has Arthur!"
Vivi's blood ran cold. She slid off his back and flung open the van, rifling through their gear. "What?! What's got him?"
"The tree! The tree's got him! It's swallowing him up!"
Note: I say "Oh, it's only going to be two chapters" and then they all go and pull this. I did NOT plan for this, it just happened. I also did not plan for a cohesive story at the start, but it's pulling itself together. It's so weird, I spent probably over a year totally unsure of how to deal with this Edith Finch section, and then it just begins hitting me. This is part of why I find it worth it to sit and wait out my periods of uncertainty on how to handle a story. Sometimes that means a year goes by, but then the words. Just. Flow. And it is the best feeling in the world.
