Free The Skeleton Tree by Iain Lawrence

trouble down there! You gotta believe me.”
    But that didn’t seem very likely.
    The plane became a dot again and slowly faded away. The contrail began to break apart, turning red in the high sunset. Seeing it all vanish made me feel at the edge of the world in a different way. All the normal things were still going on, and would go on no matter what happened to Frank and me. There were seven billion people on Earth, and all but a handful were living their lives unchanged, without a thought or a care for us.
    Frank looked so slumped and sad that I felt sorry for him.
    “It might come again,” I said. “Maybe there’s a schedule.”
    “Yeah. Once a century,” said Frank.
    We went together down the trail, together to the cabin. Frank stepped right over all the things from the orange box and collapsed on the bed. He rolled himself up in the foam pad, using it as both a blanket and a mattress.
    “I thought we were taking turns with the bed,” I said.
    “We are,” he said. “When it’s your turn, I’ll tell you.”
    I jammed the door shut as I had the night before. I stuffed everything back in the plastic box except for the flare—which I couldn’t find—and the space blanket—which I hoped would keep me warm. With the cabin guy’s spoon I scraped two marks in the wall, to show that we had lived two days in the cabin. I wondered how many days would have to pass before I’d covered the whole cabin with notches. I imagined myself again as a bearded old man, gouging the last possible mark in the far corner, trying to remember what I was counting.
    Frank watched from the bed, but didn’t say anything.
    I put the spoon on the table, opened the pouch and pulled out the space blanket. It looked and felt like a shiny garbage bag, just one thin layer of plastic that crackled as I spread it out. Disappointed, I pulled it over my feet and legs, up to my chin, and curled myself in the corner.
    I wasn’t as cold as I had been the night before, but I sure wasn’t toasty. I shivered as I tried to sleep, and even
that
annoyed Frank.
    “Stop crinkling!” he told me.
    I slept off and on until dawn, when a shadow flitted past the slits of light in the cabin wall. Something tapped at the window.
    I couldn’t see anything between the nailed-up boards. The thing scratched at the plastic pane.
    As loud as I dared, I whispered for Frank. The sounds stopped for a moment, then started again.
    “Frank!”
    He spluttered in his sleep, but didn’t wake up. I whispered again.
    And that thing outside began to talk.
    It muttered words I couldn’t understand. Its voice wasn’t human, or at least not alive. Through the window came a croaking hiss, like an old man’s breathing.
    Lousy birds.
    I didn’t care if Frank got angry. I scrambled out of the space blanket and shook him awake.
    “Frank!” I shouted. “Frank!”
    He woke with a gasp, then pushed me away. “Leave me alone,” he said.
    “Something’s trying to get in,” I told him.
    “Oh, Chris.”
    “Just listen!” I said.
    He lay back, glaring up at me. I saw his eyes shifting as he looked up across the ceiling, down toward the floor. “I don’t hear anything,” he said.
    “Well, it’s there,” I told him. “It was pulling at the window. It was—”
    Frank shoved me aside as he got up. He crossed the cabin, pushed open the door and stepped out. I held my breath, expecting that thing to come charging from the forest.
    But whatever had been there was gone. Frank walked around the little cabin, and when he came back I felt about two feet tall, a frightened little kid. He looked at me as though I was a bug.
    “It
was
there,” I told him. “I heard it, Frank. It talked to me.”
    He flicked his hair. “What did it say?”
    “ ‘Lousy birds.’ ”
    He laughed. He sat on the bed and put on his boots, and he shook his head and laughed again. “You really are a moron. Now come on, let’s go.”
    “Where?” I asked.
    “To the river.” He picked up the