House of Fallen Trees (14 page)

   He leaned forward on the couch, his face suddenly animated. “You’ve had other hallucinations.”
   Knowing he must have heard the commotion in her room just before she’d come downstairs, she did her best to keep her expression blank. “And how do you know that?”
   “Because I’ve had others too.”
   Skeptically, she asked, “What kind of hallucinations?”
   Saul’s face darkened slightly, and Karen was unsure what that meant. Was he embarrassed?
   Shifting on the sofa, he clasped his hands together, rested his elbows on his thighs. “First, let me ask you a question,” he said.
   She waited while Saul seemed to grow even more uncomfortable. At last he said, “Forget the question. I’ll just tell you what I know.” After clearing his throat, he said, “You and I have made love every night since we got here.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

Blinking, Karen was certain she must have heard him incorrectly. Perhaps the alcohol was affecting her more than she’d assumed.
   “Excuse me?”
   Saul’s smile was sheepish as he shook a finger at her. “Now, see, I knew you were going to react this way.”
   “I’m reacting this way because you’re full of shit.”
   “No,” he said, getting to his feet. “I’m not. That’s my point. You and I go at it like fucking rabbits every night, but then the next day, I see you and you act like it never happened.”
   “That’s because it
didn’t
happen,” she said, feeling angrier than she wanted to.
   “To you it never happened,” he said. “It didn’t take me long to figure that out. No woman could be so casual and distant about it the morning after, if you know what I mean.”
   She tried not to think about the egotism in that statement and said, “So, you’re saying the house made you think you were fucking me?”
   Smiling again, he said, “Well, I thought it was a little more romantic than that but essentially, yes.”
   She sat back in the lounger, unsure of how she should feel right now. Violated? Flattered? And then there was the very real possibility he was just making all this up, fucking with her for whatever twisted reason he may have. Maybe to get a confession out of her. Could he possibly think she was really behind all these odd events?
   Of course, she thought. Just listen to the house right now. How could anyone be pulling this kind of hoax? Hidden speakers?
   She supposed it was possible. Maybe
he
was the one perpetrating the hoax and accusing her to get the attention off himself?
   Fuck! She was so confused. All around her, the house groaned like an old pirate ship sailing some vast black sea and here she was trying to figure out if she was being accused of something. Now that she was really thinking about it, she knew she had bigger things to worry about.
   This was no hoax and if what Saul was saying was true, then she no longer had to worry about her sanity. Right?
   
Right
?
   The rasping of water against wood grew louder and both she and Saul looked around. When the sound subsided a moment later, he said, “I need me grog.” He walked off, heading towards the kitchen and was already out of sight before Karen even got the joke. Once she did, she jumped up and went after him, finding him pulling a beer out of the fridge. “Want one?” he asked without turning around.
   “I don’t know,” she said. “It wasn’t that long ago that I was thinking the Jack Daniels wasn’t agreeing with me.”
   He chuckled, closing the refrigerator door with his hip while twisting the cap off the brown bottle. “A little seasick, were ya? Maybe you puked over the edge—” He stopped speaking abruptly, all the color draining from his face. “Oh my God.”
   Karen frowned. “What?”
   Saul practically threw the beer onto the counter top and hurried over to the back door. With his hand on the knob, he turned to look at her. “Why didn’t we think of this before?”
   “What?” she repeated. And then she knew. Her jaw dropped. “Don’t open the door!” she cried, rushing over to him.
   “We have to know,” he said.
   She shook her head. “No, we don’t. And even if…if it’s true, it’ll just be another hallucination.”
   “
I
have to know.”
   Karen grabbed his arm. “Please don’t, Saul. I don’t think I could stand it. Not after everything else that’s happened tonight.”
   “What else?” he asked, facing her full-on.
   She hesitated. “I’ll tell you if you don’t open that door. Not yet.” She could see him debating as his eyes studied hers.
   Finally, his hand came off the doorknob and he said, “I guess I am pretty thirsty for that beer and I have a feeling that if I look out there, I probably won’t be in the mood to do any drinking.”
   “Yeah,” she said. “Maybe I’ll join you after all.”
   They sat down at the table, each with a cold Miller Lite. Karen drank the first one fast, begging the powers that be to help dull her senses as fast as possible. She didn’t want to know what was outside, nor did she want to see Saul’s face when she told him about the old man upstairs and the mini-movie the laptop had showed her.
   She told the story quickly, not looking up, pulling the soggy label off the beer with her thumbnail. By the time she was finished, the house seemed to have ceased its groaning and Saul evidently had forgotten his need to see what was beyond these walls.
   He surprised her by saying, “We have to get out of here. Tomorrow. Hike back down to the truck and get the fuck out of here. Hell, I doubt I’ll ever come near this place again. Fallen Trees can kiss my ass goodbye forever.”
   Karen killed the beer remaining in her bottle. “What about Rory?”
   “We’ll have to get him to come with us.”
   “Well, yeah, but where is he now?”
   Saul shrugged. “Sleeping I guess.”
   “He didn’t hear the house having its little identity crisis? Doesn’t that seem odd to you?”
   “He takes Trazodone.” Saul sipped his beer. “Helps him sleep since…uh, since Sean vanished.”
    Karen was quite familiar with Trazodone. She’d been prescribed it herself on more than one occasion. Continuing to play with the beer label, she said, “I have to be honest. I don’t know what the hell Sean saw in that guy.”
    Saul offered her his crooked smile once more. “I’m pretty sure Rory didn’t know either. But I know they loved each other. I guess it was a case of opposites attract.”
   “I guess the hell so. You want another beer?”
   He turned in his seat, glanced at the back door almost longingly, then said, “Sure, why not.”
   She got them each a new beer and sat down again. “There’s no way in hell I’m gonna be sleeping tonight.”
   “I have a feeling it’ll be a while before I sleep at all, even after I’m out of here.”
   They drank in silence for a few minutes and then Karen, probably with the help of the alcohol in her system, asked the question she’d been dying to ask ever since her arrival in Washington. “So…you and Rory. Are you guys… you know…”
   “A couple?” he supplied for her. “No. He’s not my type.”
   She cocked an eyebrow at him. “You have a type?”
   “Not really,” he laughed. “I mean, other than being brilliant, attractive, hilarious and saintly, no, I don’t have a type.”
   Karen smiled at him, raising her beer. “Sounds like we have the same type. Here’s to the flawless.”
   “That’s something worth drinking to.” They clanked their bottles together and each took a long swallow, almost as if they were competing to see who could drink the most, the fastest.
It feels like we’re just a couple of frat boys pounding a few brews on the eve of the big game
, she thought, more than a little amused. And then another thought occurred to her and she couldn’t hide her grin.
   “What?” Saul asked, spotting it immediately. “What’s so funny?”
   “I, uh…was just thinking about your type.”
   “And?”
   “And…you thought…you and I…” She burst out laughing and was amazed at how good it felt. No, not just good. It felt
great
. When had she last laughed? Certainly not that long ago. Yesterday maybe? The day before? Then why the hell did it feel like decades? Centuries?
   Saul was turning purple, he was blushing so furiously. “Yeah, well, the pickings are slim around here,” he joked.
   “You have a crush on me,” she giggled.
   “I do not! It was just…you know…sex.”
   “Sure it was.”
   “It was!
You
even said so.”
   “The phrase that comes to mind right about now is so apropos that I can’t even utter it.”
   “What phrase?”
   “
In your dreams!”
she shouted happily. “Isn’t it ironic? Don’t ya think?”
   Shaking his head, Saul replied with the expected line, “Yeah, I really do think.”
   “Sounds like you two are really hitting it off.”
   They both looked up, startled to see Rory standing in the doorway.
   “Hey, man,” Saul said. “Sorry. Did we wake you?”
   “As a matter of fact, you did.
And
I can see you’re drinking all the beer and you didn’t even invite me.”
   “You were sleeping, dude.”
   “Actually, I wasn’t. I was listening to the house.”
   “You heard it?” Karen sat up straighter.
   “Hard to miss,” Rory said as he went to the refrigerator and got himself a beer. He came back to the table and sat next to Saul. He regarded his friend with what almost appeared to be disgust. “And all these nights, I thought it was me you were fucking.”
   Saul nearly choked on his mouthful of beer, all the amusement that had been in his face gone in an instant. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and said, “You were eavesdropping?”
   “Is it really eavesdropping when it’s your own house?” Rory asked.
   “So, you didn’t really hear the house?” Karen asked. “You were just talking about us?”
   “I
did
hear
you
talking about hearing the house. Does that count?”
   
Every second
, Karen thought.
Every fucking second, I like him less and less
. Before she even knew she was going to do it, she stood up so suddenly the chair she’d been in fell over as she shouted, “What the fuck did you do with my brother?”
   In a flash, Saul was on his feet, ready to break up a brawl, though he needn’t have worried. Rory didn’t so much as flinch. Instead, he chuckled. “You need to keep the little woman in line, Saul. She’s like a rabid pit bull.”
   “What the fuck is wrong with you, man?” Saul snapped at him.
   “A pit bull bitch,” Rory said and sipped his beer.
   “You need to shut up right now!” Saul jabbed a finger at Rory. “You’re not yourself, man.”
   “I’m not myself? I think it’s you who’s not himself. Why are you defending her? She just fucking accused me of having something to do with Sean’s disappearance!” Rory was angry now and could no longer feign indifference. In a way, seeing him like that made Karen feel better. If he was outraged at the accusation, maybe it meant he really hadn’t had anything to do with Sean going missing.
   “We need to get out of here,” Saul said. “The sooner the better.”
   “Why?” Rory asked. “Because you got itchy for a while? Let me tell you something right now, Saul. There is this little thing known as the power of suggestion. It’s really an interesting concept and I’ve never actually seen it put into practice until now.”
   “What the fuck are you talking about?” Saul demanded.
   “I’m talking about how everything was fine around here until
she
showed up. You know damn well how Sean used to always talk about his crazy sister, the reclusive writer. How she used to make him feel crazy too with all her senseless ramblings.”
   “That’s a lie!” Karen shouted.
   “No, it isn’t,” Rory told her. “He said you were a fucking loon and obviously he was right.” To Saul, he said, “And now it’s happening to you too, probably because of all that crap your family brainwashed you with when you were a kid. It made you susceptible to the ravings of a madwoman.”
   Saul and Karen exchanged glances.
   Rory continued, “And, in case you’re forgetting, Saul, I
am
paying you to be here. You work for me.” When no one replied, he added, “Now we all just have to calm the hell down. Can we agree to do that?”
    Karen didn’t think she could stand to be in this man’s presence any longer. “I’m tired,” she said. “I guess I’ll go to bed. Saul, if you’re staying up, please wake me at first light.”
   Saul nodded. “No problem. But are you sure? I mean…about being alone up there?”
   She hadn’t really considered that, but now that she was reminded of it she realized she most definitely didn’t want to go back up to that room. “I guess I’ll try to sleep on the couch for a while.”
   “Good,” he said. “I think we should all stay as close together as possible.”
   Rory laughed. “I feel like I’m in a teen slasher flick.”
   Karen considered telling him to fuck off, but couldn’t be bothered. “Whatever.”
   The moment she left the kitchen, throughout the entire house, the lights went out.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

“This is not good,” Saul said from the dark kitchen.
   The instant the lights were extinguished, Karen had reversed direction and gone back to the room where the men were. “What the hell?” she asked.
   As if replying to her, a gust of wind slammed the outside of the house, rattling the trees together.
   “There’s your answer,” Rory said. “Sounds like a wind storm is kicking up.”
   Karen felt her belly roll over. “Wind storm?”
   “They’re pretty common this time of year,” Saul told her. She could already hear him rummaging around in one of the drawers. A second later and he was striking a match and lighting a candle. A corona of golden light bloomed around him. “I’m sure it’ll start raining soon too.” He handed Karen the candle he was holding and used its flame to light another, which he passed to Rory before lighting one for himself.
   “Every room has at least two candles in holders,” Rory said, standing up. “We should all take a floor and light them too.”
   “What for?” Karen asked. “I think we should just stay here and sit tight. No use in lighting up rooms we won’t even be in.”
   “Who says we won’t be in them?” Rory said.
   “Why would we be?”
   “You never know,” he replied. “We might be running from spookies before the night is over.”
   Resisting the urge to flip him the finger, she said, “Didn’t your mother ever tell you to never leave a candle unattended?”
   “Yeah, she also told me that Jesus was my Savior and that I would grow up to sell insurance like my dad and marry a nice girl and have good Christian children.
Then
she found out I was gay and told me I was an abomination and would be burning in hellfire for all eternity. I guess you could say I’ve learned to disregard all the stuff she told me.”
   “Okay,” she said slowly. “But maybe you should tell me why you feel we need to light every room in the house. That doesn’t make any sense to me.”
   In the glow of orange candlelight, Rory said, “We’re a ship lost at sea. If there is any hope of being seen and rescued by another ship, we’ll have to make ourselves as visible as possible, which means we light all the candles and put them on the windowsills. Happy now?”
   Karen and Saul stared at him for a long time, open mouthed, unsure if he was being serious or not.
   Rory groaned impatiently. “Okay, fine. I’ll do it myself.” He left the kitchen, taking a third of the light with him.
   “What the hell?” Karen said again, but she could see that Saul had no answers for her.
   “I guess we should help him,” Saul whispered.
   “Really?” Karen was surprised, but kept her voice low. “I’ve never heard of the tradition of putting a candle in every window before.”
   “Neither have I. But I have a feeling that he knows more about this place than we do. And even though he said he didn’t hear the sounds of a rocking ship, I think he believed we did. He knows more than he’s telling us.”
   “Well, no shit. Do you think he knows about Sean?”
   “I doubt it.” He took Karen’s free hand with his own. “Come on, let’s get this over with.” He tried tugging her along but Karen resisted him. He stopped, looking back at her.
   “I have a really bad feeling about this,” she said.
   He hesitated before replying. “It’ll be okay. I don’t think anything can hurt us.”
   “Oh, really?” She moved her candle so it shone on the back of his gouged hand. “What would you call this?”
   “My own doing.”
   She couldn’t think of a suitable argument for that. Instead, she asked, “Do they hurt? The scratches?”
   “They sting a bit, yeah.”
   “We should clean them up with alcohol or something.”
   “We will. Let’s just get this crap with the candles over with first, okay?”
   Distressed that her attempt to distract him had failed, she sighed and said, “Okay. But I don’t want us to separate.”
   “Don’t worry. We won’t.”
   She nodded reluctantly and they started off, Saul calling out for Rory to determine the other man’s location in the house.
   “Still downstairs,” Rory called back. “In the Captain’s quarters.” Karen and Saul immediately froze at this news. The Captain’s Quarters? Then the sound of Rory chuckling drifted to them beneath the sound of the lashing wind. “In the library,” he called.
   “Okay,” Saul called back after a moment. “Karen and I will take the third floor. That way we’ll all be able to meet on the second.”
   “Good thinking, Mate.” Rory still sounded amused.
   “This is ridiculous,” Karen muttered, gripping Saul’s hand much harder than necessary but she couldn’t help herself. As they climbed the stairs to the third floor, she kept her gaze on the floor, not wanting to look up and see those grotesquely altered photographs again.
   At the top, Saul said, “I’ll take the rooms on the left. You take the ones on the right.”
   “I thought we agreed not to separate?”
   “I’ll be right across the hall and we’ll meet in front of the threshold of every new room. We won’t be apart for more than a minute, tops.”
   “You said we wouldn’t separate,” Karen repeated, hating the tinge of panic in her voice.
   Saul did his best to give her a reassuring smile. “You know, at some point one of us is going to have to pee, especially after all that beer we drank.”
   That was one thing she didn’t need to be reminded of. She’d had to pee for the last twenty minutes. “Okay,” she said. “But we meet at every threshold.”
   “That’s what I said.”
   “Promise?”
   “Cross my heart and—”
   “Don’t say another word,” she interrupted. “I don’t want us having any more bad luck than we already do.”
   “Try to think of all this as good luck,” he said optimistically. “For all we know, the house could have eaten us by now.”
   She licked her lips. “How do you know it hasn’t?”
   “Because, we’re not drowning in digestive juices.”
   This got a smile out of her, made her realize how silly she was being. She let go of his hand and they each went their separate ways, Saul disappearing into a dark room on the left and Karen turning into what she soon realized was an office of some sort. Probably where Rory did his paperwork and whatever else it was he had to do to get a B&B up and running.
   Karen didn’t bother attempting to take in her surroundings, but made a beeline for the window on the far side of the room. She had to swerve around a monolith of an old oak desk to do it, but she immediately saw the votive candle precariously balanced on the porthole’s windowsill. The glass was small and ruby-red, perhaps an antique. She quickly lit the candle within it and turned to leave, catching a glimpse of a framed photograph on the desk. She almost averted her gaze instinctively, but before she had a chance to, she caught the smiling face of her brother. She paused, felt her heart stutter, considered ignoring it but at the last second reached for the photo, holding her candle close to the glass.
   Sean was grinning up at the camera from a stooped position, his brown hair messy and falling into his eyes. He was shirtless, wearing cut-off blue jeans and canvas sneakers, holding a paint roller which dripped white paint into a tray. Beneath him was a white-spattered drop cloth.
   He looked beautiful and happy and very, very much alive. It made her heart ache, not only because she was almost certain he was dead, but also because she had neglected to get to know him better when she had the chance.
   “Where are you?” she whispered, feeling the prick of tears in the corner of her eyes.
   “Right here,” came the reply. Karen gasped, dropping the framed photo onto the desk where it clattered loudly. She whirled around, shoving the candle out in front of her, searching the darkness in the direction the voice had come from.
   Over in the far corner she could make out movement, but barely. Heart hammering, she screamed for Saul, but the instant his name was past her lips, the office door slammed shut.
   Paralyzed, Karen couldn’t think, couldn’t figure out what to do. Out of the darkness came a grunt and a cry of pain, followed by a wet smacking sound.
   She backed up, colliding with the wall beside the window where she’d just seconds before lit the candle. From far away, she could hear the pounding of a fist on wood, someone shouting her name. Part of her knew it was Saul, trying to get in, but another part—the part present in this room at this moment—focused only on what she couldn’t see and could barely hear.
   More strange sounds—flesh hitting flesh and whimpers and ragged breathing—came from the corner. Shadows moved, rocking fast. “Oh God,” she moaned. “Please, no.”
   As if in response to her pleading, the candle in her hand flared brightly, as did the one behind her, illuminating the room until she could see the figures in the corner just well enough to recognize her brother.
   “Sean!” she cried. He looked up at her from his position on the floor, on all fours, naked, being pounded from behind, just as he had been in the vision she’d seen on the laptop. His hair matted and sweaty, stuck to his forehead, one eye swollen shut while the other filled with blood that spilled down his cheek in a slow rivulet. Mouth pulverized and pulled back in a grimace of agony, he seemed to be searching for where the voice was coming from, just as she had been searching moments before. “Sean, I’m right here!” She moved forward as her words caused Sean’s rapist to look up at her, revealing his own face, twisted in sexual, predatory release.
   The rapist was Sean, holding himself by the hips, fucking himself with such violent force that Karen could clearly see the blood flowing down the inside of Sean’s—the victim Sean’s—thighs.
   Her brother. Both men, her brother.
   “
TWO MEN HAVE THE CARCASS!”
a voice hissed directly into her ear, so close she could feel air brushing her cheek.
   She reeled away, screaming, raising the candle in that direction. A shadow flittered away to where the candlelight couldn’t touch it.
   “None of this is real,” she whispered. “Just hallucinations.” But where Sean—both Sean’s—had just been, there was now a little girl in an old fashioned high-collared white dress. The girl stared at Karen and began walking towards her.
   But no, that wasn’t quite right. She wasn’t getting any closer to Karen, though her legs were clearly moving in a walking motion. She was walking, but going nowhere.
   Karen’s whole body began to shake as her bladder let go. Warmth oozed down her legs, but she hardly noticed. Her eyes were on the walking girl and, as Karen watched, the little girl held her right arm straight out from the side of her body. Beginning at the shoulder, the arm writhed under the sleeve of the dress in a way that was definitely not normal.
   The arm grew wider, fatter, tearing the fabric of the sleeve, splitting the skin beneath it. There was no blood, but Karen could clearly make out the bone beneath the skin.
   But no. Not quite bone. It was too dark to be bone, even in this light she could see that.
   As if some invisible zipper were opening in the child’s arm, the skin fell away, disappearing completely before it hit the floor and whatever it was inside the arm began to grow tendrils that shot off from the main stem.
   A branch, Karen realized. A tree branch was sprouting from the child’s shoulder as the girl stood there and simply stared at her, seemingly oblivious to what her body was doing.
   Soon the child held her other arm out from her side and it too began to morph before Karen’s eyes.
   “No.” Karen shook her head. “No.” The word, at first a soft mewling sound, quickly became the shriek of the terminally insane. Karen pressed the heels of her hands hard against her closed eyes, sinking to the floor where she remained for an unknowable amount of time.
   She’d screamed herself raw long ago, it seemed, when she felt something touch her. She made no sound, resisted having her hands pulled away from her face, but the grip around her wrists was too strong.
   Light punched against her closed eyelids and she squeezed her eyes tightly closed, not wanting to see the next horror, knowing her mind would snap if she did, snap and drift away like so much useless space trash floating through oblivion for all eternity.
   She heard voices, but made no attempt to understand them, blocking them out. She would listen no more. She would see no more. She would feel nothing ever again, forget everything, become no more than a collapsed star falling in on herself and away from herself, never to return.
   Never to return.