“As she said, you come back to your new home. I have the papers here. You may sign them now if you wish. The transaction becomes valid once I affirm you spent the required time under the tree.”
Jacqueline led her back to the table, where she opened the folder and offered Janie a pen that had been clipped inside. The silver instrument gleamed in the afternoon sun.
“So this is it,” Janie stared at the pen.
“This is it,” Jacqueline echoed. “Now you choose. You may either go back down to your car and return to the life you know, with all the good and bad things that entails. Or you sign on the line and take the path out the east gate to a life that will be very different. It’s now or never.”
“Well then…there’s certainly no pressure in that.”
“I’m afraid that’s the way it has to be,” the older woman replied. “Whatever choice you make here is final. There is no going back.”
Which means you already have another bastard or two lined up in case I don’t work out. Lady, your husband must have been a real piece of work.
Janie stared at the pen a few seconds more then took it in hand.
She tried to ignore the two women leaning forward as she bent over the folder. The contract was surprisingly short, a mere four pages of paper, and very straightforward. Upon signing the document, and then Jacqueline signing to certify she had spent a satisfactory amount of time under the tree, she would receive the property of Magnolia Rise along with all operating accounts and trust funds associated with it…totaling $142, 532, 206 and thirty five cents.
“And thirty five cents…” she choked out.
“Accountants.” Rosaline popped yet another truffle in her mouth. “Gotta luv’em.”
“Oh well,” Janie quipped in a voice far lighter than she felt as she scribbled her name on the indicated line. “I guess it’s like the old saying goes…go big or go home.”
“That’s my motto!” the blonde laughed from across the table. “Welcome to the family!”
“Indeed.” Jacqueline scooped up the folder and tucked it under her arm. “Congratulations, you will soon be a wealthy young woman. I’ll have the chef make something special in celebration. Tonight, you shall dine as one of us.”
Her voice sounded slightly strange, and Janie couldn’t tell if the woman said that last part with reassurance or pity.
***
“Okay, Mr. Tree. I guess it’s just you and me.”
Janie stood in the park, at the edge of the clearing surrounding the massive tree.
The afternoon sun shone warm and bright, and a few people were out enjoying the beautiful weather. Near the front of the park, a gaggle of perfectly coiffed teenage girls practiced some kind of pom-pom routine to the low throbbing beat of a boom box. Three boys in cargo shorts watched from a nearby bench. A pair of tanned, middle-aged bicyclers in Speedos and helmets drifted by on the sidewalk, and she could hear the soft “thwop” of a tennis ball being batted in the nearby courts.
It was an idyllic scene of upper class leisure, and Janie couldn’t imagine a less ominous setting for this “test”.
And the tree was magnificent.
She had forgotten trees like this existed.
At least forty or fifty feet tall, its enormous crown covered an area that spanned over eighty feet. Gigantic limbs branched away from the massive trunk in all directions. One of them hung so low and long that somebody had braced it up with forked poles to keep it from touching the ground. The rest spread above into the enormous canopy, forming a dizzying maze of boughs and leaves.
Green branches drooped low around the entire circumference of the massive organism, giving the impression of a leafy tent.
The cell phone in Janie’s shoulder bag rang and she pulled it out and put it to her ear.
“Hello?”
“Is something wrong?” Jacqueline’s voice came over the speaker.
Janie had wondered how to know when she stayed at the tree long enough. The three had decided the simplest solution would be to give Ms Danford her cell phone number and have the woman call once satisfied. A glance back to the west showed her distant figure standing at the balcony rail, just visible over the trees of the creek.
“No, everything is fine,” she laughed. “I’m just having a pause to size things up before diving in. It’s pretty out here and not the least bit creepy. But now that I’m this close, a question did cross my mind.”
“What’s that?”
“Well, I don’t really imagine this happening…but if I do have something spooky happen, or if things start to get weird, do I still need to stay under the tree till sunset?”
“Miss Galtz, if at any point you feel like you are in danger, I want you to leave and get back to Magnolia Rise immediately. Understood?”
“Yes,” Janie answered with just a twinge of relief, “Thank you.”
“You are welcome. I will let you get on with your task. Goodbye.”
“Bye.”
Janie pocketed the cell phone with an exasperated sigh. Jacqueline’s stiff formality took some getting used to, even if the woman was being friendly.
“So be it.” She straightened and marched toward the tree with determination. “Time to earn my bajillion dollars and thirty five cents.”
She crossed the open meadow and entered the shadow of the great tree.
It felt like passing into a hoary forest of old, despite it being but a single tree. The gnarled and scabrous branches twisted in all directions overhead, like a canopy over a world slightly separate from that of the rest of the park. It was a place distinct onto itself. The sounds of the park filtered in but seemed softer and more remote.
Janie walked around the enormous trunk, running a hand over the rough bark. This tree wore age like a skin. She ducked under the low branch as she circled, careful not to trip over the great roots that spread from the bottom of the trunk. A complete circuit of the area revealed she had it to herself.
Nothing ghostly or phantasmal jumped out to threaten her.
“Yep.” She nodded. “Pretty much what I thought. The old jackass builds his house with a direct view of the site of his biggest crime and wonders why he’s ‘haunted’. I guess even sociopaths have a conscience that sneaks up on them from time to time. They’re just so out of touch with the thing they don’t recognize it when it pays them a visit.”
Janie shrugged her shoulder bag on to the ground by the trunk and sat down beside it. Reaching into the bag, she fished out her ebook reader and a bottle of diet soda. The combination seemed perfect. Even under here the weather was warm and sultry. She figured the best way to pass the long afternoon would be with a good book and cold drink. That was assuming she could keep her mind from going crazy trying to grasp the events of the past hour and a half.
The full enormity of the situation still hadn’t sunk in, and she half expected the whole thing to be revealed as some kind of elaborate joke. She had a hard time grasping how a forty-five year old ‘dalliance” suddenly resulted in a hundred and forty million dollars being dumped in her lap. It boggled the mind.
Janie leaned back against the trunk and closed her eyes, trying to imagine how her life would change. A new home. New cars. New friends…or would they really be friends? Who the hell could she trust to advise her through this? Jacqueline? The cheerfully decadent Rosaline? There was so much she didn’t know about that kind of life and her mind reeled at the possibilities. She had no idea what to expect.
And the last thing she expected was to fall asleep.
But she did.
***
Sometime later Janie became aware her eyes were closed, and they had been that way for some time.
She could feel herself tucked in a comfortable slouch between two of the tree’s largest roots. Her ebook reader lay in her lap, and the bulk of her shoulder bag rested under her arm. She mused in drowsy wonder at her ability to fall asleep in these circumstances and wondered if it were a reaction to the stress of the day’s events.
The sounds of the park had faded, and the girls doing their pom-pom routine must have moved on. Now the sounds were different. A gentle breeze rustled the leaves, and the air was filled with the creaking of branches. Behind that, the lazy atmosphere buzzed with the drone of flies.
Janie considered checking her watch, then remembered Jacqueline would call when time came to return. Falling asleep was fortuitous. It meant the hours passed faster, and with a lot less stress. She considered falling back asleep and letting Jacqueline’s call wake her up. It would be the most comfortable way to do things, and it would be easy.
If it weren’t for the smell.
Janie wrinkled her nose, and realized that must have been what woke her. Something was definitely rotten in Denmark. She wondered if an animal had died in the trees across the clearing and a change of wind brought the smell over her way. If so, then sleep no longer existed as an option because the smell grew worse as she focused on it.
She stretched and opened her eyes…
And nearly screamed.
A dead man hung from the branches about fifteen feet in front of her.
“Holy shit!” Janie clapped a hand to her chest and scrambled back against the tree trunk. “Oh, holy shit!”
The man hung before her horrified eyes, dead as a doornail. His face looked swollen and purple, and his sightless white eyes stared up toward the sky. Flies buzzed around his body and crawled over his discolored skin. He wore some kind of tuxedo, like something one would see in an old movie. His neck stretched obscenely long and the noose caused his head to tilt at an unnatural angle.
The smell grew worse as she stared and Janie struggled to rise with her back against the tree. Her eyes locked on the corpse, she fought her way to her feet only to have her head hit something yielding. Something that moved.
The terrified girl looked up and found herself staring into the livid face of a dead woman.
She hung from the branch directly above, and her feet still swung from where Janie had bumped into them. Her tongue protruded, thick and black. Her white hair surrounded her dead face like a frizzy halo. The flies swarmed even thicker around her, and a beetle crawling along her jawline lost its grip and fell toward the young woman below.
“Augh!” Janie gagged and tried to dodge.
The girl forgot she stood between tree roots and her foot caught as she tried to move. The world spun and veered, and Janie cried out as she fell. She landed on her back with a jarring thud. Her vision swam from the impact. She struggled to refocus, then her eyes widened in horror as she stared up into the canopy above.
The tree was full of dead people.
Bodies hung from branches throughout the mass of greenery. Most were men, dressed in different suits and formal wear that she now recognized as having come from different times over the past century. A few were women, dressed in the same variety of assorted finery. And all were coated with flies.
Their faces were ghastly and bloated. Depending on the tilt of their head, some stared with unseeing eyes into the foliage above, while others blindly surveyed the ground as they slowly twisted on their lines.
Great swarms of flies moved and shifted like clouds through the higher portions of the tree. The upper branches were blurry with the things. Their buzzing now filled the air, swelling to an insectile roar. And as the volume of their drone increased, Janie started finding it hard to breath.
The atmosphere seemed to thicken as if the sound itself were gaining substance. Janie fought to draw a breath. To make matters worse the atmosphere turned foul with the smell of rot. The stench seemed to settle around her head in a thick fog, choking her with what little air could find its way in.
Her throat hurt from the effort, and she clawed at it in an instinctual effort to free up her airways. The pressure on her windpipe tightened. The girl thrashed and scrabbled, her vision turning red around the edges.
Then her fingers curled around the rough hemp of a noose.
Somebody had put a rope around her neck!
Her eyes bulged and pain flared in her throat as the noose jerked tighter. Somebody yanked on the rope, hard, and she felt herself pulled up into the air. The world spun crazily…a whirling panorama of branches, dead faces, and shifting clouds of flies.
Her feet kicked the air with dying futility. The rope bit deep into her neck, thwarting her feeble attempts to get her fingers under it. She was dying, her life running from her body like water from a broken bowl. Her hands fluttered then fell limp. Her flailing feet slowed to a spasmodic twitch. Somewhere nearby, a choir sang a hymn she did not know. The buzz of flies became a roar, filling her universe as blackness overtook her.
And then she woke up.
“Aughhhh!”
Janie doubled forward from where she slept against the tree, retching in agony.
Her stomach heaved, causing her to gag as she struggled to breathe. The girl wavered on her hands and knees, her fingers clawing into the dirt. She felt panic begin to set in. For a moment she thought she would lose consciousness again, the victim of her body trying to throw up and draw breath at the same time.
At last, after a few more seconds, respiration prevailed and she drew a long shuddering breath. A thick rope of spittle hung from her mouth to the bare ground between her hands.
“Oh god!” she gasped, “What was that? What the hell was that?”
Janie grasped at her throat, where it still ached as if the dreamed abuse it had taken were real. It really hurt. A second later her eyes widened as she felt the red welt where the noose from the nightmare had closed around her neck.
“What the hell!”
She pushed herself up to her knees, massaging her wounded windpipe. The dim light coming in under the edge of the tree had an orange tinge, letting her know the sun already sat on the horizon somewhere behind the park’s tree line. The overall silence suggested the other park goers must have left while she slept. She straightened and reached for her cell phone, then froze at the sight of the figure standing a mere ten feet in front of her.
This time, she did scream.
It only took Janie an instant to match the apparition to the story Jacqueline told her—even though it wasn’t the one she would have expected.
Standing at about her height, it wore canvas bib overalls and a rough cotton shirt. They had the look of something bought at a general store over a century ago. Rough lace-up boots covered feet that were probably a size or two smaller. A thick thatch of short ebony hair contrasted with corpse white skin, but even its hair wasn’t as black as its eyes…
For it had no eyes at all.
Deep shadowy sockets stared back at her, dominating the thin face.
Oh Christ! It’s the kid! Janie scrambled back against the massive trunk. The one that died in the tree!
The figure tilted its head, following her movement with its skullish sockets. The darkness seethed in their depths like something alive. It studied her for a moment, fingering a coil of rope it wore over one shoulder, then a horrid grin split the pale face. Its teeth were shiny and black like the shells of beetles.
“I smell Danford blood,” it hissed in a voice that buzzed like a thousand flies.
“No!” she protested. “I wasn’t there! I had nothing to do with that!”
Janie snatched up her bag and clutched it in front of her. Desperate looks to the left and right confirmed the emptiness of the dimming park.
“Yes!” the buzzing hiss confirmed. “I do smell Danford blood…and blood must answer for blood.”
Oh shit! This messed up kid was up in the tree and heard his Dad’s dying curse. Only he took it as an order!
The revenant stepped forward, clenching and unclenching its pale hands. Its face contorted and a line of flies started to crawl down one cheek from a dark eye socket like a ghastly tear trail.
“Blood must answer for blood,” it repeated. Not even the buzzing distortion could mask the hate that now clotted its voice.
“This is a mistake,” Janie w
himpered and started to edge around the trunk of the tree. “I’m sorry about your dad. I don’t even know those people! I never met them before today!” She realized the futility of the words as she said them.
The thing that had been Andre Puscasu wasn’t listening.
She could feel the raw hatred radiating off the entity and suffusing the murky atmosphere under the tree. There would be no mercy or reasoning going on here. It could apparently tell who was or wasn’t a descendent of Solomon Danford, and her presence here meant she must have come to claim her inheritance—the land its father had died over. Janie grasped with horrified clarity the hopelessness of protesting her innocence. She had already defined herself to this being far beyond any hope of conciliation.
The specter clenched its black teeth in a snarl. It took another step toward her, both eye sockets now beginning to weep vermin. This was definitely personal on its part.
Then it lunged with a distorted howl.
Janie shrieked and rolled sideways against the tree. She heard the dead boy hit the place she had occupied a split second earlier as she fled around the massive trunk. Even in her panic she remembered the roots she tripped over in her dream, and this time she kept her eyes firmly on the ground. Her feet found spots between the roots with adrenaline fueled precision
What she didn’t remember was the low hanging limb projecting from the other side of the great live oak. Watching her feet, she slammed headfirst into the large branch at full speed.
The universe exploded and she hit the ground hard.
But even blinded by pain, she struggled to turn over and get to her feet. Fractions of seconds expanded to distinct instances…each one a possible last chance to escape, each one a possible end point of her life. She didn’t have time to think but operated by pure survival instinct alone.
“Blood for blood.”
The voice had her on her feet before she knew it. But now things were worse. Once again the drone of flies seemed to fill the branches above, just like in the dream. The smell returned as well. This added to the disorientation caused by her collision with the branch, confusing the elements of the dream with the reality of the present. Janie stumbled forward, her hand running along the low limb as a guide.
Shades: Eight Tales of Terror Page 14
