The boys came back from the elm covered in dirt, and they did not come back alone.

Their jeans were a mess. Denim soaked up stains like a dry rag in oil, and there were too many spots to avoid a trip to the laundromat, but one look at the girl’s face and any yell Bella may have made withered in her throat. The girl, the stranger, was a young thing, probably the age of the twins, but was the kind of girl who looked one minute older. She was pretty enough, except for her feet dragging mud in the kitchen like a follow-me trail, but her eyes were odd. Off. Open just a bit too wide; there was too much white showing. Bella could not tell if she was afraid or enraged, and her mouth gave no indication either way.

“Mom,” Georgie said, tugging Bella’s hand. “Can we keep her?” Artie, his twin in all but manners, stared at the ground. He was the smarter of the two, and he knew what Bella would say.

“She doesn’t belong to us,” Bella said, avoiding the girl’s big white eyes. “Go on home now.”

For a moment, Bella thought the girl was dumb and deaf because she didn’t make any movement to show she heard. She didn’t even blink. Just stared for a long moment, long enough to make the guts clench. Then she turned around and left out the kitchen door, like she’d never been there at all, except for her footprints.

Bella didn’t know how long she stared after her, but it must have been long enough to make the twins feel awkward. Georgie seized her in a hug meant to penetrate, but a ten-year-old only has so much strength, and she only had eyes for the door, only had feelings for the breeze coming through. Artie moved her arms to wrap around Georgie, and when the boys went to bed there was a wet spot on her dress. Thank goodness, salt from the eyes don’t stain. No need to go to the laundromat for that.

* * *

There was an art to gambling how long clothes can hold up before needing to be cleaned. Jeans could go the longest, provided they were the dark kind. Bella had a point system. Fourteen days for jeans, subtract a day for wear, so long as you only normal-sweat. You might go longer in the colder months without too much of the water leaking out of your skin. Shirts were always bought black, because they hide stains the best, but you could get away with a navy blue dress for the rare occasion you can’t get out of going to church, though it had been a long time since Bella couldn’t get out of going to church. She learned long ago the value a “yeah, maybe” could have in conversation. A bra did not need to be washed until it smelled, and you only had to wear a bra when others were around. The big problem was underwear, and the hole between her legs. She took to wearing dresses whenever she could and went without panties, and if she did have to go to town a carefully folded wad of toilet paper caught most of the drippings. It meant a longer reprieve from washers and dryers.

No matter how perfected her art, though, the boys had a way of making her go earlier than her system allowed. At least they were old enough to leave at home when she went to town—two less things to worry about—though unsupervised they were likely to go and get their clothes soaked in mud and grease. It was an endless, useless battle, like that man Bella heard about in school who was pushing a rounded stone up a mountain. She didn’t understand it at the time why he didn’t let the rock roll to the bottom and give up, but as she grew she figured the rock wasn’t just a rock, but all sorts of detergents and softeners.

She made the boys peanut butter sandwiches—two each, loaded with cream until it was likely to burst out the edges with a good squeeze—in the hopes that while she was away they would rub their bellies and take an afternoon nap. The laundry took up most of the backseat of her little gray two-door and piled up so she could barely see out the top of the rear window, but there was no need to look behind.

In the parking lot, she loitered, car still running, until Martha Gladsby noticed her through the large, smudged windows of the laundromat. Martha, at eighty-three years old, kept working because her son thought if she got out of the house she would live a more fulfilling life, but he didn’t know that she had a nicotine addiction as strong as her affection for yelling at teenagers. Because she had lied to him for years about quitting, she needed to get away from him every day to sneak the long, thin sticks she was fond of. Everyone in the town who didn’t have their own washer and dryer had an agreement of some kind with Martha: you didn’t snitch on her to her son, and she didn’t say anything if you washed underwear that didn’t belong to your spouse. Bella and Martha had a different agreement; Martha gave her a nod if it was safe to enter, and Bella explained to Martha’s son that the yellow stains on his mother’s fingers were from the chemicals in the soaps, nothing more.

“He was here earlier this week,” Martha said as Bella walked in with her first load. “Doubt he’ll be back today.”

Bella nodded and filled one machine before going back to her car for another load.

“Were you in town yesterday?” Martha asked her once Bella had five machines running. “No, I suppose not. Leaves are changing. The tourists are upon us.” Martha rolled her eyes all the way around her sockets. They both shared the same opinion on their annual visitors.

Martha continued to prattle at her. At her age, the old woman no longer required the help of another conversationalist to keep the chatter going, though she did appreciate a body in clear view. Bella sat curled on the floor next to the machines, counting the rhythmic bumping. She no longer needed to wait for the ding to know when it was done. She had a system for this, too.

“…and goodness knows they don’t watch their children,” Martha said over the dull hum of the machine. She repeated this line again, and again, until Bella lost count of the rhythm and looked out the window where the old woman was pointing a yellowed finger.

It was that girl from the night before. She wore the same graying dress that fell just a little bit below her knees and no shoes, even though she was standing on cracked concrete. There was no expression on her face, save those too-large, too-white eyes, open as wide as human skin is allowed to stretch. The girl was staring straight at Bella, and Bella could do nothing but stare back at her and concentrate on her own breathing.

Remember, one breath in, one breath out, focus on the way it enters and exits your body. Everything that enters your body will eventually leave. One in, one out.

The ding of the dryer startled Bella into a cry, and she got to her feet out of habit. When she looked out the window again, the girl had turned around and was walking away on her dirty feet.

Martha shivered and reached under her chair where she kept a packet of cigarettes duct taped. “Ugh,” she said. “I feel like someone walked on my grave.”

* * *

Over a decade ago, a young man who believed himself to be a small-town poet took to writing verse in his head at the coffee shop and the courthouse, but found the ambient noise to be all a little too much for slant rhymes. He decided he was a nature poet, a poet of the plains, and instead took long walks through the fields and sparse trees. One day, as he was leaning against a large, rotting elm tree on a small hill, thinking of what he could say about dead wood in spring, he felt a sharp pain in his back. Examining the tree closely, there was an odd white lump, barely visible. He tore away at the wood and found, to his horror and delight, a skull peeking back at him, with fungus veined out around the left eye socket. He did the appropriate thing, which to him was to alert the local authorities, but also the local paper. A reporter caught the photos of her whole skeleton as it was dislodged from the body of the tree, almost like she had been consummated and grown there.

The whole thing became something of a small sensation, enough where folks who wouldn’t have dared taken their town exit before now made a short detour to see the tree-woman with her fungus face, and bits of taffeta lodged in her throat, kept on display at town hall after no one claimed the body. It was gruesome, the town agreed, but it was hard to argue with the influx of tourists and tourist wallets. Even the tree was left in as much peace as it could be, though it was torn in half and worms had taken up residence there, eating and defecating in a cycle of mud.

Bella only made two trips to the tree in her life, and only one to see the skull. As a child, her father decided he ought to know what the whole hullabaloo was and took her to the tree first. “It’s a tree,” he said, all disappointment, even though there was a small plaque commemorating the woman. Not much was known about her, the sign said, but more than likely she’d been in the tree for fifty years, based on the fungus growth, and, of course, someone had put her there. Dutifully, her father followed the suggestion at the bottom of the plaque, which was to take the three mile walk to town, and he held Bella up by her armpits so she could get a better look at the display.

She didn’t remember much about the trip, but her father always reminded her how she screamed something fierce when she saw the skull.

They never did find out who murdered the woman in the tree, or who she was. The mystery only added to the income. All sorts of amateur sleuths ate the story and their fill of burgers with American cheese at the local grill and bar. The mayor named the exhibit “Strange Folk,” and used tax dollars to fund billboards on the side of the highway three miles in each direction. “Come visit the Strange Folk,” they said beside a painted skull.

* * *

The sandwich trick worked, thank goodness. Both boys were yawning away the nap from their faces when she returned and dumped piles of clean clothes on her bed. In order to get out of the laundromat sooner, Bella didn’t bother folding the clothes at the machines. The boys started separating clothes into their own piles to bring to their bedroom, aimlessly bickering over whose shirt was whose, even though most of them were solid black and the same size.

That evening, the boys were uncharacteristically quiet. Usually, they were loud and screaming at one another. They were still working out the benefits of sharing, and Bella could rarely afford two of the same toy at once. They sat on the battered couch from the local thrift store and whispered, shooting looks at their mother when they thought she wasn’t looking. She was looking—at ten years old, they were too young to be subtle or secretive—but she graciously allowed them the illusion of privacy. Her habit, at the end of a day, was to sit near the little window in her living room on her grandfather’s rocking chair and sway back and forth, forward and back, until the boys decided it was time to turn their minds to dream. Her window faced the hill with the tree, but in the darkness, at that distance, Bella imagined there was no tree on the hill, no skull in the courthouse, no body on the grass. She only imagined a long stretch of emptiness, expanding out like the unfurling of a great winged animal, all that soft black, punctured with small dots of white.

The boys stopped whispering to one another and looked out into the darkness, but Bella could not see what grasped their attention. Georgie took to his feet and ran out into the field, clumsily slipping, more than likely staining his jeans with green and brown, but Bella did nothing more than stop her rocking. How far could he go in the darkness? And, anyway, his brother would bring him back if he wandered too far.

Soon enough he returned and he did not return alone. He dragged that pale, strange girl behind him, like an overexcited dog tugging on the leash. Artie ran to meet them partway across the lawn, and the boys began to argue, raising their voices loud enough for Bella to know they were upset, but not loud enough for her to make out what they were saying. The girl stared in the window, directly at Bella. Neither of them blinked.

There was not much hope that ignoring the issue would make it fade into memory, so Bella rose from her chair and went outside.

“She can’t stay out here all night,” Georgie said as soon as he spotted Bella. “It’s cold,” he added, as if Bella was unaware of the temperature.

Artie stared at her, face blank, except for the wrinkles near his eyes.

“Where is your family?” Bella asked the girl.

The girl did not open her mouth, and Bella wondered what the girl was keeping closed up inside of her. Was that the reason she did not speak? She never believed the stories, but her parents were often fond of telling each other fairy tales of girls and boys who coughed up frogs and toads when too much rain threatened to drown the harvest. Horrible stories. Even though her parents told her—it’s made up! Imagine all those slimy things swimming around the wet land, having the time of their lives—Bella kept her mouth clamped shut for almost a month, only drinking water through a straw, and was only relieved from the fear of monsters swimming around in her belly, waiting to be released, when her mother washed her mouth out with soap, telling her the bubbles would drown anything alive down there.

“She can stay the night with us,” Artie finally said, as if he had the authority to make such decisions. “We’d be bad if we didn’t let her.”

The girl’s wide eyes were too awful to look at, so damned white. Bella turned away from the three children and walked back into the house, which her sons took as permission, and dragged the girl along with them, each of them taking an arm and pulling.

Inside, as they released her, the boys marveled at how where they’d touched her they’d left black marks on her skin and checked their own palms to see if they were dirty.

Georgie rushed to his own bed and started to pull out sheets to make up the couch for the girl, and though Bella couldn’t bear the thought of the girl’s dirty feet on anything that needed to be washed immediately, she said nothing. She waved at the girl to follow her and ran the hot water in the tub.

“Water’s hot,” Bella remembered to say.

The girl could borrow Georgie’s t-shirt and shorts—they looked to be about the same size. Bella told her to leave her dusty dress on the tile. The girl grasped the ends of her dress and lifted it above her head. Bella looked away and made her exit, but not before noticing that the girl wore nothing underneath.

She closed the door so the boys wouldn’t see and waited until she heard the sounds of water splashing before heading to the linen closet for a towel. She paused and sniffed the extra one they had for spills. She’d done it with the load that day and didn’t fancy having someone else’s sweat on it. Bella went into the kitchen and gathered a load of rags, mostly ripped from clothes she no longer fit into, and thought they’d have to do.

As the boys prepared the couch, Bella knocked on the bathroom door and asked if she could come in to drop off the rags and some clean clothes. There was no response, so Bella pressed her ear against the door. She heard nothing, and imagined, for a moment, that the girl had drowned. That would be a right mess, wouldn’t it? There would be all sorts of people in her home, then. Policemen, a coroner, perhaps even a priest to talk to the boys about the cycles of life, and none of them were likely to wipe their feet at the door or remove their shoes. Plus, it would upset the boys, and they were the type who got into trouble when they were upset.

She turned the knob on the bathroom door and went in and was surprised to see that the girl had not closed the shower curtain, but was sitting in the tub with her knees raised to her chin and her arms wrapped around herself.

“There’s soap,” Bella said, in an attempt to encourage the girl to wash her skin. “Dry off when you’re done.” She dropped the rags at the edge of the sink.

The girl looked at her, eyes so wide and white.

And then, she frowned.

Her lips were pale and thin, and that slight downturn made her whole face into something ugly, something that made Bella wish she herself had eyelids as thick as iron, something strong enough to block out that face, but even as she closed the flesh around her eyes, she still saw the girl, still saw her staring like she could stare right into the center of any living thing and find something wrong.

Bella retreated into her room and went under the covers, something she rarely did to avoid washing the sheets. She curled into a ball and made sure not even a lick of her hair was sticking out from underneath. Can’t hurt you if you can’t see ‘em.

* * *

Bella did not sleep well. Years of practice had taught her the value of not letting her mind wander, not during the day, and certainly not at night when there was no light to distract her. Her mother once told her a wandering mind will inevitably find a trail of sweets, but the more you eat, the more you follow, and eventually you’ll find an oven at the end of it, and a witch with sick-black teeth and one outstretched palm. Bella always thought those stories were dumb, but she took the advice to heart.

She tried, anyway. She closed her eyes, tensed her limbs, and thought about that tree, lonesome on the hill, how it never really left her mind, but sat near the edge of her memory like a soldier, ready always with a rifle, ready always to aim, ready always to explode.

She knew a secret, though. The town fell over themselves with the easy questions—how could a body be so broken to end up in the hollow? None of those found bones were bent, and yet she fit into a space no human should be allowed to. Bella knew. Her own body had twisted and bent like a bow, like a reed in the air, and it had become as small and motionless as a baked pretzel, left on the grass, all that soiling green. Those stains didn’t come out. She had to throw out the blue dress she’d worn. How cruel that grass had been. Why hadn’t it washed out? She should have used lye.

Bella emerged her head from the covers to take a breath of cool air. The girl was there, at the foot of her bed, staring, staring, staring. Bella did not scream. She’d long ago kept that noise buried in her lungs to rot, but she did inhale, in and out, in and out.

“Go to bed,” she said, because that worked on her sons. The girl did not blink, did not twist her face, but she raised her hand and pointed her finger at Bella’s head, like an accusation.

“I said,” Bella repeated, “go to bed.”

The girl turned around and drifted out, and Bella stared after her for a long while, then went back under the covers.

There was something terribly wrong with that girl. It was as if she had seen a ghost.

* * *

The boys argued that they should accompany their new friend to town and Bella only put up a minor protest. In truth, she didn’t want to be alone in the car with the girl.

Because Bella was practical, she loaded up the trunk with the sheets the boys used for a makeshift bed and added the comforters off of their twin beds. Comforters took too long, you had to dry them at least twice, and she did not remember the last time she had them cleaned. She could drop Georgie off at the laundromat to keep an eye on the load. Martha could be trusted to keep him in line. The old woman couldn’t keep her eye on both of them, but Georgie shrank when anyone raised their voice to him, and Martha enjoyed the high cadence she could reach. She handed Artie a scribbled grocery list of nonperishable foods—pastas, mostly, and jars of peanut butter and tomato sauce. The sorts of things you could stock up on. Because they were inclined to whine that their new acquaintance was going bye-bye, she added honey to the list for them to spoon into their mouths. Sweetness to cover their inevitable sour moods.

Bella must have sucked up all the uneasiness into her own belly, because the boys shared none of it. The three of them sat in the back, the boys on either side of the girl, which unfortunately meant that anytime Bella looked in the rear-view mirror, she would see those eyes.

Thankfully, there was no reason to look behind.

Georgie asked the girl all sorts of questions—where was she from? Did she like winter better than summer? What was her favorite color? Has she ever seen a dragonfly? Why didn’t she like to wear shoes? Did she also think the sky was too big sometimes? That the girl didn’t answer, or even acknowledge him, didn’t seem to bother him, but he’d asked those questions of Bella before, and got a similar response. Perhaps he was used to it.

Artie took the girl’s hand and splayed his fingers across hers, holding them up to his face.

“We match,” he said, all wonder. “We’re the same size.”

“Leave her alone,” Bella said, though she didn’t know why she said it.

* * *

Martha frowned at the girl in the back of the car, but she dutifully took Georgie by the hand and lead him to the machines. She gave him a lollipop when he started asking her if she liked ducks. She did, she told him, but not enough to carry a whole conversation about it.

“There’s something wrong with that girl,” Martha said. “Makes my whole throat dry.”

Bella wanted to say the cigarettes were the likely cause, but she only nodded her agreement.

“Something familiar looking about her,” Martha added, tapping her cheek. “But she’s too pale to be from around here. Goodness, her skin looks like it’s paper. Think someone’s kept her locked up in a cupboard?”

“I don’t know,” Bella said. And she wasn’t about to find out. Other people’s pain was just that—belonging to them, and none of her business.

* * *

After dropping off Artie at the store with a wad of singles and fives, she drove to city hall, and the skull. She wasn’t sure where you dropped off unwanted, lost children, but she suspected the people who collected taxes would have some idea.

It was impossible to avoid the skull, not in a place that collected little agonies. There were smaller displays littered in the center of town hall, some perhaps real, and others very clearly made up from bored, sick minds. Discovering that woman in the tree gave them the right to collect and display all manner of local atrocities, like they were immune to horror now, and could collect a few more pieces. To the left, a pile of poorly woven cloth from a girl who once lost a weaving contest, which is one of the worst things you can do, if you are a girl. Lose. She hung herself, in her grief, because no one ever let her forget that one time she had not won, that time her fingers slipped the loop, that time she meant to use black thread, but instead had brought so much white. She died doing what she loved, tying strings together around her neck, and knotting them to the rafters above her bed. All those people who made her feel small? They felt bad, too, in that way that grief curls into your throat tight enough to make you choke on it if you inhale too fast. So they undid her last knot and put her body in the ground to nourish the spiders, all those spinning small things. Perhaps they hoped the creatures would spin her out anew, make of her flesh into silk, so they wouldn’t feel so bad anymore.

There was a helpful little sign under the display: Remember to be happy.

To the right, a lump of what was more than likely coal dusted with green and brown paint, but was said to have come from the local reservoir—the fossilized remains of a monster, under consideration for study from the local university’s anthropology department.

Above them hung a wooden flute that was said to produce the most beautiful music in the world, but only people who had died could hear it, so it was floating above them, like a reminder that there was beautiful music in heaven. You’d hear it eventually, if you were good enough.

There, a shrunken head, and over there, golden coins that almost certainly did not have chocolate inside. Different administrations put more effort into the collection than others.

But the main attraction was the first.

Once Bella and the girl entered the building there were printed banners announcing its presence, along with viewing hours, guided tours that lead tourists to the tree and back to the skull again, ending with a meal at the diner, which had become adept at making skull shaped pancakes. There was a garishness to this presentation of pain that made Bella almost apologize to the girl for forcing her to look at it, but she didn’t want to say anything. She never really wanted to say anything.

As Bella attempted to read the directory and figure out where it was best to take her—would the Lost and Found work? It was technically correct—the girl walked towards the skull, as if possessed.

Not wanting to lose her before she got rid of her, Bella trailed after.

The skull was like she remembered, but also unlike she remembered. In her memory, it was larger, and the vein-like fungus near the eye socket pulsated as if blood was running through it. The teeth were smaller than she recalled, but larger than the ones in her own mouth. They looked like a row of weapons. Whoever this woman was, once upon a time, she must have had very thick lips to fully hide those fangs.

Bella wondered if the girl, too, had a row of weapons in her mouth, but the girl’s lips were so pale it was impossible to tell where the smoothness of her cheeks ended and the stitch of those lips began. The girl was frowning, again, in that ugly way of hers, but she was not frowning at the skull, no, she was frowning through the glass at a tall man walking out of the elevator.

Breathe in, breathe out.

He had not grown much since she had seen him full on, not just a glance through the laundromat window before turning around, not since that night in her blue dress, the one that her mother made for her and made her look like a prairie princess. She’d twirled in front of her mirror for hours, just to see the cotton move. She no longer had the dress, but he still sported close cropped hair and a severe line of bangs at the edge of his forehead. She’d called his hair silly that night. He didn’t listen to her then, and it seemed he hadn’t listened since.

He saw her.

It was inevitable. Nothing that is buried can stay in the ground. All sorts of things will bring it to the surface. Worms and germs. It all turns to worms and germs eventually.

He walked towards her. Bella did not move. That’s the sort of thing animals did when they were afraid, freeze or flee, and Bella was not the type of woman who really learned the value of running. Not until it was much, much later.

But he, too, froze, and Bella wondered, for a hysterical moment, if she had made him do that, if her face showed how much she didn’t want him near her, and if he learned how to read her after all, but he did not look at her. He looked at the girl.

Bella held her breath, the same way one does when they are driving past a cemetery, lest you be the one buried next, and backed away. One step under and over the next—there’s no need to look behind you. She felt the door behind her, reached for the knob, opened it and turned, running out into the sun, but not before seeing the girl raise her finger to point at him.

* * *

Even before the body was found crammed inside, the elm tree had been an unsettling site. Most trees grew reaching towards the sky, with long, thick branches peppered with leaves. This tree grew squat and fat, out instead of up, and the branches grew out at angles this direction and that, so it resembled an angry porcupine. Bella’s second trip to the tree was on a bet, the kind with no physical stakes but loads of social ones.

He was the one who asked her there, him and a group of his friends, boys and girls, not the most popular or good looking group, but the kind who were respectful to adults and sometimes able to snatch a small bottle of gin from one of their parents for sharing. He complimented her dress, said she looked nice in the way only a young boy can make such a mundane compliment sound like he was head over heels.

They sat on a blanket in front of the tree as if they were all about to have a picnic, but they only had alcohol, and dared one another to go inside the tree. The girls, including Bella, blanched at the thought, but he smiled at her and asked her if she was a newborn chicken with all the fluff between her ears, and so, after a boy or two tried and failed (too big, their growing bodies) to go in and said there weren’t any worms (they were lying), Bella got up, folded her body, and went into the husk.

* * *

Martha asked if something was wrong when Bella came back to pick up Georgie, but Bella took the boy by his hand and dragged him into the back of the car where Artie was trying, unsuccessfully, to unscrew the honey jar.

“Where’s our friend?” Georgie asked. “Did you find her family?”

Bella slammed the door on him and got behind the wheel. She peeled out of the parking lot so fast she almost hit Martha, who was waving a rag from the pile Bella forgot about.

No time, no time, don’t look behind.

* * *

Georgie pressed himself against her on the couch and intertwined his fingers with her palm, telling her that one day, his hand would be bigger than hers.

Bella allowed him to twist her hand and arm this way and that. She concentrated on her breathing. She took the plate Artie gave her—honey and peanut butter with white bread—but kept it in her lap until Georgie asked her for a bite. The boys asked her if they could watch television and took her lack of a response as permission. Artie sat on the other end of the couch, away from her, but he looked at her from the corner of his eye.

Georgie fell asleep with his head on her lap, and Artie moved her arm so it would rest on his brother’s shoulder. It was late enough where the only thing playing on the few stations they got was infomercials, but neither Bella nor Artie moved to change the channel. He opened and closed his mouth a few times, huffing out breath at the beginning of sentences he never finished.

He gave up on trying and looked out the window instead. Bella closed her eyes and concentrated on the feel of her eyelids pressed together.

“Mom,” Artie said.

Bella was not sleeping, but she did not open her eyes either.

“Mom, wake up.”

He’d said this to her before, on those occasional days when she stayed on top of her bed well past the lunch hour, and she gave him the same response she did then.

“Georgie,” Artie said, shaking his brother. “She’s back.”

Bella did open her eyes then. The girl was outside their window, staring in at them, eyes so white, so wide.

Bella sucked in the air through her teeth.

* * *

“You oughta be locked up, the way you drive,” Martha cheerfully said over Bella’s small kitchen table. She came bearing gifts for the family—two bright lollipops for the boys and Bella’s forgotten laundry. When she saw the girl, she apologized for not having the foresight to bring three lollipops, but the girl only stared at her until the boys lead her out into the yard to play with a half deflated basketball.

“I’m being haunted,” Bella said.

“That’s no excuse for almost hitting people with your car,” Martha joked, but she turned her eyes to where the children were playing. The girl sat on the lawn while the boys threw the ball with increasing intensity at one another, all while looking back at the girl to make sure she was watching when they caught it.

“She keeps coming back,” Bella said.

“I thought you dropped her off with the authorities yesterday,” Martha said, eyeing Bella’s teapot. “Do you mind if I make myself a cup?”

“I…” Bella said. “He was there.”

Martha frowned and patted Bella on the shoulder. “Let me make you a cup of tea. Where do you keep it?”

Bella pointed to the top of the fridge and Martha busied herself with filling the teapot under the faucet.

“Some things,” Martha said, slowly, tasting each word in her mouth like it was a lemon, “are inevitable. Take my cigarettes, for example. I know each day is closer to the one where I won’t be able to breathe.”

Bella looked at her.

“Goodness,” said Martha, “your stove is old.” She turned the knob. “Like I was saying, some things are inevitable. You’re bound to run into him eventually. No matter how many precautions you take.”

“She keeps coming back,” Bella said.

“So you said,” Martha replied.

“I think,” Bella said, tasting the words on her tongue and finding them sour, “I think she’s a ghost.”

Martha hummed. “I thought ghosts were invisible.”

Bella blinked. “I…”

As the water heated up, Martha brought up all other sorts of facts she knew about ghosts: they were often tied to places, not people, they could be malevolent, not just irritating, and they were stuck between two places they could not reach, life and the afterlife, so it was a little unreasonable to expect a girl whose feet were getting dirty and who everyone could plainly see was anything other than that. Plus, ghosts did things like move furniture or flicker lights. They didn’t just stare at people.

“Where did you learn all that?” Bella asked as the teapot screamed.

“The tours. They’re claiming the motel is haunted now. Lets them charge ten extra a night.”

Bella took the cup of tea Martha offered and sipped. It burned and tasted cheap, but it was the kind of cheap burn Bella was used to. She didn’t want to say any more, but this was a rare opportunity to talk to someone. Her sons wouldn’t understand. They were too young. Even mad words need to be voiced, sometimes.

“I went into the tree,” Bella said.

Martha tsked and blew on her drink. “Recently?”

“No, no. Before the boys. When he…I don’t believe in this sort of thing. But that woman was murdered and put there and I disturbed her…her grave.”

Martha cut her off. “I hardly think a ghost would wait that long to begin haunting you. Isn’t there a time limit for that sort of thing?”

“What else could it be?” Bella asked.

Martha sighed and muttered something about Bella talking to someone, specifically someone who was not Martha, about this, but she sipped her tea and threaded her fingers on the table. “If this is true, and I don’t want to give fanciful ideas any weight, but if it was, I think removing her bones from the wood would have been more disturbing than a teenage girl going inside. You think you’re the first one who ever did that?”

“No, but—”

“But nothing. She’s odd, I’ll grant you that. Lord, she’s looking at us right now.” Martha frowned at the window. Bella didn’t look. “She’s lost and she’s attached herself to you. Her parents are probably worried sick about her.”

Bella rubbed her temples.

“You know, it’s funny. I think this is the most you’ve ever said to me. She’s really got you bothered, doesn’t she? Look,” Martha said gently, “I came for two reasons today. Your laundry and because he came into the store last night. Asking after you, like when you usually came in. He said he wanted to talk to you.”

Bella placed her hands in her lap and looked out the window at the girl. The boys were still throwing the ball at one another, but the girl was looking in at Bella, that frown dipping her face ugly.

“I said it was none of my business,” Martha continued on. “But he’s a tenacious one.”

* * *

Wearing one of Artie or Georgie’s shirts, the girl, somehow, managed to look even more pale with the black against her skin. She didn’t answer any of Georgie’s questions, and though Bella had a few of her own, she figured if the girl didn’t want to talk to him, she probably wasn’t going to talk to her either. She didn’t eat or drink anything, even though Artie insisted that Bella make her a sandwich. Either she didn’t like well water or, as Bella was now convinced, the girl wasn’t from this world.

The boys watched television that evening and Bella excused herself to sit on the porch. She assumed the girl would follow her and she didn’t want the boys to hear.

After some time, the girl did follow her out. She stood until Bella asked her to sit next to her, and was surprised to see the girl listened, crossing her legs over one another, the same way her boys sat. Bella looked at the girl’s belly, trying to see if there was the slow up and down of breathing, but the shirt was too baggy on her.

“Why,” Bella started, almost losing her nerve. The girl turned to face her. “Why are you here?”

She didn’t know what she expected the girl to do: open her mouth and say, “I’m from Pittsburgh and I got lost?” or “You disturbed my favorite worm that day, and it took me over ten years to find you.” This close, Bella could see the green speckled in the girl’s brown irises, a really pretty color, like her mother had when she still had eyes, and would have suited the girl’s face fine if her eyes weren’t so damn big.

“Are you haunting me?” Bella finally asked. The girl did not respond, but her eyes, somehow, beyond the limits of the possible, got even larger.

All the unsettling feelings, guts churned, teeth rubbed against the enamel of each other, the part where you can feel your skin covering you, holding you in, the moment when you are aware of your mouth taking in air, rolling into your lungs and releasing, overcame Bella, and she was almost knocked sideways by the whole of it, all at once.

It had been a long time since she felt much, except fear, except smallness.

She thought about all the comforting things in the world; how linen smelled like clean when it came out of the dryer, how the knobs ticked over each setting, how socks can be turned inside out to give them a few more wears, how nice it was to not smell like a body on that day after the laundry was done, how she was never reminded that she had a body on those days, before the sweat set in. How it bought her time between the risk of the next clean. But even those things could not make her forget what her body felt like, what her voice sounded like in her head, as one does after they awaken from a deep slumber, and memory drives forward to awareness.

Awakened.

“Where did you come from?” Bella asked, the words pulled out of her lips.

The girl turned her head to the distance, out towards the fields where, a few miles away, the tree sat alone on a small hill, and pointed.

* * *

The air smelled bad in the tree, like sour wine and dirt. It had been reconstructed as best as possible after the bones were removed, so little light managed to penetrate inside. Bella had to duck and twist herself to get her whole body to fit, and her nose touched the wood when she was fully confined. She held her breath as long as possible, straining to hear the cheers of the others outside the wood. The longer she stayed inside, the longer they would admire her, but she could only hold her breath for a little over a minute, and when she released it she tasted the air and almost blanched, and felt something crawl on her arm, wet and sick.

She heard herself screaming and she did not stop until he reached inside and pulled her out.

“It’s okay,” he hold her as he gathered her in his arms. “It’s alright. It’s just a tree.”

The others were looking at her with a mix of amusement and disgust. One of them called her a pussy.

“Go off,” he told them. “None of you had the guts to go in.”

He held her as she shook and rubbed at her arms, trying to get rid of the feeling of that small, living thing on her. He held her even as the others left, bored with the tree or with her, and then she started to cry. She couldn’t help herself.

“Hey, hey now,” he said. “It’s okay. Just look forward, okay? Look at all that green. Don’t look behind you. You won’t see it if you look straight ahead. If you don’t see it, it’s not there, right?”

Right. She looked ahead, out into the expanse of green and browning grass, and thought it was good advice.

Such good advice, she kept looking ahead when he put his cheek against hers and repeated, don’t look behind you. She didn’t look behind her when he put his lips on her cheek, and didn’t move when his hand reached under the neckline of her dirty dress. She didn’t look behind her when he dirtied his own clothes by tossing them off, one piece after another, onto the ground.

When he left, when he finally left, Bella breathed in and out, but she did not turn to look at the tree.

* * *

In the morning, she woke up alone, but she woke up feeling. She stood up and felt all the points and pricks that she remembered as numbness fading away from having your arms or legs in one position for too long, and she felt it all over. The light from the sun was too bright, and when she looked out her window at the green grass, the color felt overwhelming.

But it also felt good, like tonguing the sore spot in your gums where the milk teeth were about to come loose.

Artie eyed her with the indignant suspicion only a ten-year-old is capable of. Bella bustled around her little-used kitchen, marveling at just how many wooden spoons she owned as she whipped the children up a batch of cornmeal pancakes after smelling the package to make sure it had not gone bad. She didn’t remember when she purchased it. As she whisked the batter she answered Georgie’s questions as soon as she could get a word in, though his enthusiasm did not allow her to answer much beyond a yes, no, or I’m not sure before he launched into another set. The girl sat between the boys and watched Bella, but her eyes seemed a little less large this morning, a little less terrifying.

“What do you think her name is?” Georgie asked, kicking his feet back and forth.

“I don’t know.”

“Everyone has a name.”

“Yes.”

“I like my name,” Georgie said, sniffing the air as the batter hit the oiled pan.

Bella didn’t remember who taught her this recipe, but she did remember the movement of flipping the cakes over once the edges were brown. She remembered the smell. It reminded her of Sunday mornings.

She made enough cakes for all of them, and even set a small stack in front of the girl. What was left of the honey was poured on top, and she answered Georgie that, yes, she liked these cakes. Yes, she might make them again tomorrow. Yes, maybe they could have them for dinner, too.

“Can we play outside?” Georgie asked her. The question surprised her; the boys rarely asked her if they could. They often just did.

Bella took a long sip of tea; her throat felt dry from speaking. “I’m taking her back,” she told them.

“Back where?” Artie asked, frowning.

“Where she came from.”

“Aw,” Georgie said. “Where did she come from?” He turned to the girl. “Where did you come from?” Then he looked up at the ceiling and squinted his eyes. “Where did I come from?”

Georgie yelped and glared at his brother. Artie must have kicked him under the table.

After they were done eating the boys piled the plates in the sink. Georgie took the girl to watch cartoons with him with the desperation of someone who is about to lose their beloved pet goldfish. Bella ran the water and poured soap on a sponge that had seen fresher days. She hummed a song that wasn’t a song, just noise, deciding that she liked the sound of it all the same.

“Mom?” Artie asked. She turned and looked at him, his scrunched face, the way he twitched his fingers into a fist and back flat again. He took an unsteady step towards her, wobbling in his socks, then slowly put his arms around her waist and burrowed his face into her belly.

“You have to put your arms around me,” he said when she didn’t move.

“Oh,” Bella said, and did.

He felt small and greasy, like all little boys did, but Bella found that she liked the way her fingers felt in his hair, how it reminded her of her own. He left a wet stain on her dress where his face was pressed up against her belly, and Bella thought about how tall he had become.

* * *

There are some stories that say all the pain in the world began at a tree.

From her house it was about a twenty-minute walk, mostly along an old winding two-lane highway. The girl dutifully strayed behind her and waited patiently when Bella slipped over a small hole and fell to her knees, smudging the hem of her dress with dirt. She got up and wiped the mud off her knee where it mixed with a little bit of blood from a scratch. If there was pain, she did not feel it. She thought about how she’d have to wash the dress, how it might need two cycles if the blood set. Not that blood ever really gets out.

The girl’s eyes went wide again, and Bella felt the sting in her knees. The pain was a memory of skinned knees and curled toes, and it, inexplicably, as pain can do, helped her put one foot in front of the other.

Cars passed them on the road, going at least ten miles over the already generous speed limit. Someone honked at her and started to slow, but Bella did not turn her head to look. She headed up the small mound, not quite a hill, the girl trailing behind.

In front of the tree, Bella wondered if she miscalculated the journey, though she was so good at futile counting. The tree was smaller than she recalled—in her head, its spindly branches could almost reach the moon, but in the light, with her eyes, it was only a foot or two larger than she was, just a bit squatter than she was, though it was as dark and rotten as she recalled. She waved a limp hand at the tree, a way of saying “well, you’re home now,” to the girl, but the little thing only stared at her, as if waiting for some miracle.

Bella counted to ten. Then she counted to twenty. Nothing. She thought, perhaps if she counted to the number it takes to finish a load, something would happen. It was a ritual she needed to keep herself quiet, and the girl, if she was from the tree, would need a similar sort of incantation.

“One,” Bella started. “Two.”

She was halfway to the 1,920 seconds she needed to count when she gave up, seeing as the girl wasn’t even moving. At a loss, Bella walked to the sign in front of the tree and read.

No-name woman. Petite. Found with her legs bent into her spine and mushrooms on her face. Snugly-packed, as if she had been born inside. Worms, mud and rot. Perpetrator unknown. To learn more, follow the road to…

“Did it hurt?” Bella asked the girl. “When you were put inside?”

The girl nodded.

Coming up the other side of the hill, she heard the soft stomp of feet moving towards them, and she cursed under her breath that there would be a tour, now, when she was attempting something like an exorcism. But it was not a tour, only a lone man in leather loafers and a crisp button-up, not so different from what he wore that day. Him.

He said her name.

She saw his mouth move, saw how his lips carefully rounded and flattened, how his tongue rested against his front teeth as he tasted letters, but she could not make out what he was saying. She heard only her own smallness, though she was no longer small, how it sounded like the low whine of a teapot on the stove. He moved towards her, raising his hands with his palms out like one does with a frightened stray dog.

“Bella,” he said. “There’s something I need to say to you.”

That, she heard, and opened her mouth to reply, but only a low whine came out.

“Those boys,” he kept going. “Are they…?”

She curled down into herself, a ball of flesh and cotton, and put her fingers over her face, but dared not cover her eyes in case he tried to reach out to her.

He stopped, blessedly stopped moving, face scrunched into involuntary disgust. “I’m not trying to scare you,” he said. Her fingers shook on her face.

He shook his head and looked around, raising an eyebrow at the girl, then turning his attention back to the huddled woman in front of him. “Okay, okay. How about…how about you go first. Is there anything you want to say to me?”

She opened her mouth, for there were things, buried words, she wished to articulate, but they circled in her lungs and refused to reach her throat, and when she tried to push them out only a gurgle of spit came forward.

He took a step towards her, hand reaching out, and then the girl moved to stand in front of him. He withdrew his hand, his own eyes going wide.

Then, the girl opened her mouth.

Worms and fungus did not fall out of her; instead, it was Bella’s own voice, one she recognized from the times when she liked to speak, how she used to like to speak, and she was screaming.

“FIFTEEN MINUTES TO WASH MUD OUT OF BLUE COTTON. TWENTY FOR BLOOD THAT NEVER GETS OUT. THIRTY MINUTES TO DRY. THE BLEACH WILL STAIN. ALL THAT IS LEFT BEHIND ARE STREAKS. CANNOT COLOR THEM IN. IT REMAINS. IT REMAINS. EVERYTHING RUINED REMAINS.”

She yelled the brands of Bella’s favorite detergent. She screamed how legs hurt to bend. She cried out about the thin layers of panties, and how they cannot catch everything that falls. She yelled how much bleach cost ten years ago when bought in bulk.

Bella closed her eyes under the onslaught of her own voice, and felt herself calm with each shrieked word, as if it was a lullaby, one of those sweet songs she never sang to her boys, or to herself.

When she opened her eyes, the man was gone, as if he had never been there at all. The girl stood before her, her mouth closed and her eyes a little less wide, almost normal for a girl her age, almost like Bella’s own.

Bella lifted her hands to the girl, whose own smaller hands met hers. Are these my hands, or hers? But it didn’t matter, not really, in that place where hurt was crafted and conceived. There was mud on the tips of the girl’s fingers, and Bella bent her head low to put her lips on those stains.

“Come,” she told the girl. “Your brothers will want dinner.”

They walked off, dirty hand in clean. Before the tree was out of sight, Bella paused to turn around and look at it.