Welcome to Beach Reads for Goth Kids, my summer series of creepy-crawly horror, best consumed with a tiny paper umbrella. All summer long, I’m sending out short stories that pack a pulpy punch. Think creatures of the week, heatwave madness, and things that go bump in the backyard.
Oh, and they aren’t really for kids, just the misunderstood goth teen who lives inside us all.
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This week, just when you thought it was safe to go back to the woods, we present Tree House.
The story adults would accept was that Adam had been viciously killed by a wild animal, a raccoon most likely, and his (lucky) little friend fell out of the tree house trying to get away.
They clucked over Dougie after that. Tended to his small broken heart, his rattled brain that could barely remember anything for the trauma.
That story was so powerful, it smudged Doug’s own memories. The grown-ups got a fairy tale, while he fumbled in the dark for the whole truth.
When he closed his eyes at night he saw Adam smiling down at him.
And That Thing.
That Thing and those teeth and that long, lonely fall.
When Dougie discovered the abandoned tree house he loved it right away.
He had wandered into the cool woods past the backyard fence when it caught his eye, bright yellow in a shaft of open sunlight. As he ran up to it, the forest seemed to hush around him, like being in church.
Never mind that it wasn’t anything like a tree house. Dougie’s vision in yellow was a simple platform without walls or roof, a flimsy square of plywood wedged into the crotch of a spreading oak. He looked over his shoulder, then over the other one, squinting into the green distance for a sign of the builder, but there was no one. The tree house, clearly abandoned by some other kid, was his.
In Dougie’s seven-year-old imagination this was a castle, the summer hideaway described in all his favorite books. His mind flipped through all the improvements he would make— the walls and roof he would build, dragging scrap wood from the pile behind his school. The rug he would borrow from his mom’s back porch. The sign he would paint to say Keep Out.
He rushed back to the cul-de-sac to find his best friend and bubbled over with joy when Adam climbed the trunk without a second’s hesitation.
Adam, doing second grade for the second time, was a little older than Doug—a little taller, a little braver—and he made it up quickly. Dougie dragged himself up the branches behind, sweat on his palms and the tread of Adam’s sneakers in his face. A couple tangerines rolled around at the bottom of his backpack, and he hoped the snacks would make it feel like a real clubhouse.
At the final step, a chasm gaped between branch and plywood that Dougie hadn’t discerned from below. He paused at it with embarrassing caution, aware for the first time how high they were. High enough that the air felt cooler, the tree’s dense leaves blocking out the sun. He almost reconsidered, wavering on the risky edge, but Adam was already sitting comfortably, like he had been there all day. Like he was the President of Dougie’s club.
Dougie looked down at the gap he had to cross and his vision went spotty. Instead of leaves and branches under his foot, he saw only shadows and depth, the ground spiraling further and further away. He shrank into himself, balancing on the branch, heart beating so hard his fingers trembled on the bark.
“If you can’t get into the tree house, then it’s mine forever,” came Adam’s sneer.
Dougie’s eyes leapt to his friend’s smug face.
“No…it’s finders keepers,” Dougie said, but there was no verve in his voice. He knew Adam was right. You had to be in the tree house to claim it.
Dougie wiggled out of his backpack one arm at a time and tossed it onto the platform like a planted flag. But he was afraid to let go of the tree’s trunk with both hands and make that leap. How was Adam doing it, sitting there like he owned the place?
When Dougie stepped one foot onto the plywood, it made a squealing sound against the bark. Its center arched like a frown, the edge flexing under Adam’s weight.
Then Adam’s tanned arm came out and Dougie thought it was an offer of help. But his palm passed Dougie’s and headed for the center of his chest instead. For the rest of his life, Doug would remember looking down at that hand, Adam’s bloody hangnail catching his eye, the T-Rex on his shirt obscured by Adam’s spread fingers.
Then he was falling backwards through empty air.
Time pulled Dougie through its slowest lane, the ground waiting for him below, waiting to slam into his little body no matter how long it took. The fall was so slow he had time to feel betrayed, and that feeling socked him in the stomach, hurting worse than the fall could ever do.
He landed flat on his back with a whoompf, slamming into the dry dirt. His mouth was open but nothing moved past his lips except a weird wheeze. His eyes shook in his head, blurring together leaves and branches and a slice of blue sky. His chest felt hot and flat and he wondered if he was going to die.
Dougie searched for Adam’s face in the blur, waiting for him to climb down and help. But he didn’t. Instead, he came into focus over the edge of the plywood, peering down to watch his friend struggle and choke in the dirt. Dougie felt something burning at the backs of his eyes, a feeling of shame that overtook his physical pain like a tidal wave. He wished the earth would swallow him up.
He wished he would die, so he could see Adam feel bad.
Without breath or words he watched Adam peel one of the tangerines from his backpack and drop the rind. The long orange spiral twisted through the air and landed on Dougie’s stomach with a soft plop. The corners of Dougie’s eyes were wet, and though he willed himself to resist, the humiliation and the pain broke him. Tears dripped down his temples and into his ears.
Then the air began to change. A cloud must have passed in front of the sun. Dougie’s arms rippled with goosebumps and the ground under him felt chill. A shadow darkened Adam’s face as he hovered on the edge.
Dougie watched the shadow pass across his friend, cross the yellow plywood and throw itself against the branches. He watched it stretch and roll in the dappled sun until it took on the shape of a body. Unable to move, he darted his eyes, searching for the adult who was casting it.
But there was no one in the tree with his friend—no one human. The shadow hovering behind Adam grew impossibly tall and thin. It unfurled and wiggled fingers so long and pointed they made his stomach twist. The silhouetted head, rippling against its leafy backdrop, was distorted, smoothed, stretched.
Dougie tried to work his little lungs into a scream but they were still hollow from the fall.
A second later, a row of gleaming white teeth appeared in the void, blinking on like fireflies. Big and straight and sharp, they smiled down at him in the dirt.
The gasping feeling in Dougie’s chest told him this was not a dream. In between sips of air he prayed. He begged God for legs that would still work and lungs that could still breathe. He begged to be able to go home to his mother, promising he would never go into the woods again.
And, he thought with acidic guilt, thank you.
He wondered if God could exist in a universe with such a monster— a friend who would push you out of a tree or a black shape of nothing that seemed hungry and unmoved—and he wondered if those teeth were really getting a little bit longer as he watched.
When the teeth clamped down on Adam’s neck, spurting red blood across the plywood, Dougie found he could not turn his head. His eyes locked onto the carnage in the tree, and he began to catch his breath just when he felt the patter of blood raining warm on his face. He heard Adam’s gurgling, whining cries carried through the forest like a bird’s call.
Then his vision darkened again and he saw no more.
Much later, Dougie swam back into consciousness, aware of the sound of drops hitting leaves. He rolled over and stared into the dirt, studying every twig and worm and leaf as if they could deliver him from this. He was able to push himself up and walk home with only a small hitch in his step. His chest burned with new air, but all his body parts were intact.
He found he didn’t have to say much. His near-mute shock was real, and his mom went out the back door as soon as she saw the blood spatter on Dougie’s face, preternaturally honed to find children in dangerous places. After they discovered Adam’s body, Dougie learned the wild animal story was the only one that made sense to adult brains. He nodded weakly when they fed him descriptions.
Even at seven, he knew not to claim he saw something impossible. At night he saw Adam’s face, the shove he could never forget, the orange peel spiraling down to land on him.
The shadow with its horrible teeth started to seem like a fantasy. Over the years his brain blurred childhood memories that made no sense. It even painted new ones with rabid raccoons in starring roles.
But he never forgot the way Adam broke his heart, or the way that little bastard accidentally saved his life. Monsters are one thing, best friends another.
Special thanks to
for the prompt to write about a nontraditional haunted house. Be sure to check out his story too!
This is fantastic!
A few things -
The tangerine peels. This is what I'm talking about. So good. I can smell them.
The demon. Action / Attraction. Time to pay.
The spinning of the tale at the end to help Dougie cope. His friend saved him. Love it.