by Tobias Wade
It looked far older than any of the models we had driven past, with the large branches of the hickory pines almost swallowing it whole. The construction of the treehouse looked like it was meant to resemble one that a child might build, with a solitary window and a rope ladder used to climb inside.
With the windows boarded up and the foundation clearly decaying, I figured it was probably some idea the lodge had concocted to draw in more customers but one that had never grown popular.
When Leon had finished bringing the bags upstairs I pointed it out to him and he gave it a curious stare.
“Huh, kinda spooky looking isn't it?” he commented. I gave him a smile but didn’t have the guts to admit it made me feel uncomfortable to have our window open, so I closed it and then fell into his arms.
I wasn't about to let some weird abandoned tree house ruin our trip.
After a round of love making, I took a shower and walked back down to the car to get my camera gear, wearing nothing but a shower robe. I figured since we were the only ones out here it wouldn't hurt.
But my hopes were dashed as soon as I got to the car, when I saw a group of men step out of a white van parked adjacent to the hill.
They didn't seem to notice me observing them, so I stood there for a minute and watched as they set up all sorts of equipment like they were about to film something.
My curiosity got the better of me and I grabbed one of Leon's coats out of the trunk and walked over to them.
One of the cameramen spotted me and gave me a friendly smile; I don't know if he was nervous cause he found me attractive but he seemed surprised to see anyone else here.
“Good afternoon, ma'am,” he said as he adjusted his ball cap.
“What are y'all doing out here?” I said as a soft chilly breeze flitted through my wet blonde hair.
Before he could answer another man, shorter and fatter, approached me and smiled broadly before speaking.
“Howdy! Franklin Dean is the name, did you come to try and brave a night at the Valleyview Tree of Terror?” he asked with a laugh.
I looked at him in puzzlement and then saw that the cameramen were adjusting their equipment to point towards the abandoned tree house just beyond where we were staying.
“I'm... not sure what y’all are talking about...” I admitted hesitantly. The chubby older man smiled at me and gestured toward the strange decrypted lodge.
“That there is the reason we came here sweetheart. My team and I are expert paranormal investigators and we explore the active sites offor spirits in this area including mountains, swamps and well, well this!” he explained as he gestured toward the treehouse again.
“Y’all think it's haunted?” I asked skeptically.
It certainly looked like it could be.
“We got several reports from folks who stayed here reporting they heard ghostly screams in the night,” another camera man said as he strolled by with his equipment and added, “And they said they heard the sound of scratching against their windows.”
I wanted to call their bluff, knowing that I had seen far too many faux reality shows with a similar premise. They were just trying to cash in on this rundown treehouse, probably without any permission to probably even be there.
But I lost interest in with them and went back upstairs to tell Leon about our new neighbors. He was flipping through the channels on the TV while I watched the five of them carefully climb the rope ladder to get inside the abandoned cabin.
As it drew darker I noticed that they still hadn't come out and I commented dryly, “I bet they set up some kind of sound booth in there to make ghostly noises. We probably won't get any sleep.”
“Don't worry, I'll protect you,” Leon teased. I rolled my eyes and kissed him before tucking in.
Sure enough, about an hour later the noises I had predicted started to slowly wind their way through our cabin walls and woke me up.
These guys are pretty hardcore, I thought as I felt my hair stand on edge.
It's not real, I kept telling myself as I heard the whispers and the sounds of wailing.
Then the noises intensified and I heard scratching on the outside of the cabin.
“Seriously??”
Leon fumbled out of bed and raised the window to get a good look at the treehouse. It looked pitch dark inside but we could still hear the sound of the screams.
They were distant, almost old and echoey, like you would hear in a typical haunted house.
“This is annoying. I should go over there and give them a piece of my mind,” he insisted.
“Oh let them have their fun,”
I told him as I yanked him toward the shower, “Besides, there's other ways that we can distract ourselves.”
With the water hitting our naked bodies and our loud moans we were able to drown the noises out for a minute.
The rest of the night we watched television, since it seemed their film shoot wasn't going to be over until morning.
The next day Leon decided to go talk to them anyway, despite my efforts to convince him to let it go.
“They probably weren't planning on bothering us anyway,” I said as I followed him toward the ravine.
He ignored my protests and walked carefully down the side of the pass to reach the rope ladder even while I followed behind.
The ladder creaked It as he went up to the top and then he started banging on the door to get their attention.
“Leon! Stop!” I told him once I reached the top.
“I want to see how they like it when they are disturbed,” he commented as he tried to look past the boarded-up windows to catch a glimpse of the five men.
“It doesn't look like anybody is here,” he said.
“Maybe they went out?” I suggested, feeling even more uncomfortable in this strange place than I did a moment ago.
Before I had a chance to again tell him again that we should leave, Leon used his elbow and knocked out one of the boards to get inside.
He pushed himself through the small passage and I waited for only half a second before following him inside.
The dark and dank space made it difficult to see anything, but it was clear we had stepped into some sort of living space.
Dust and decay covered the whole room and Leon covered his mouth and nose. A few seconds later the odor hit me as well, and I realized it smelled like something had died here recently.
“It doesn’t look like anybody has used this for a while,” he observed and used his phone to shine a light toward the ceiling.
Roots were growing in from the tree.
We stepped into the kitchen.
When we got there I saw something shimmer near the kitchen table and when he focused his light on it, both of us stood still as we looked at the strange ensemble of vines that covered what seemed to be a human form slumped over on a plate. As we got closer and I examined the man’s face, I realized it was one of the camera men I had seen.
“Leon, he’s been dead awhile,” I said my heart racing as we looked about the strange open space.
Next was the master bedroom, where Leon was staring at the paintings on the back of the wall. I looked as well and I saw what seemed to be more strange dark roots encasing four individuals in the bark.
“They died here, they all died,” he muttered as he scrambled to leave.
“How did it take their bodies so quickly?” I asked looking toward the table again and seeing what appeared to be a toppled over camera near the man’s foot.
I couldn’t help myself and propped the camera up, surprised that it still had battery life. Leon was tugging at my arm to leave but I simply had to press play.
The video came to life, filled with the sound of static, and I saw the five men standing in the dining room smiling at each other excitedly. They were getting ready to set up their other cameras and film the strangeness events of the tree house.
One of the camera men focused on the odd roots
that we had seen entangling the roof and said, “Seems like every minute we stay here they move.”
The video clipped and became distorted as Leon and I watched the men experience a phenomenon I can’t even describe. The tree house was coming to life, ensnaring them in its grasp.
One of them was meshed into the wall before he could run away, another felt the roots tighten around his body as he filmed.
“Help us, please, we’re stuck here,” Franklin, the director, shouted to the camera.
As though he knew we were there, like he was speaking to us directly.
“We need to go,” Leon said. I felt the tree house watching us, like it was coming to life as we hurried to leave.
But I couldn’t resist. I took the memory card out of the camera out and raced toward the exit alongside him and down to safety.
The soft screams were whistling through the vines as we hurriedly climbed back down.
Leon caught his breath as we stood there and I looked up toward the strange enclosure, trying to make sense of what we had just seen.
“It’s a trick. They set this all up to just scare us. Cause otherwise we would be dead too right?” I muttered softly. I flickered the memory card in between my fingers, desperately wanting to see the rest of the video.
He said nothing as we walked back to our own cabin, and it always felt like the abandoned tree house was watching us.
That night, as he took a shower to calm his nerves, curiosity got the better of me and I inserted the memory card into my own digital camera.
I watched in silence as the video showed one of the men laughing madly, and then roots springing out from his mouth and eyes.
Until it covered his body like a second skin.
Then it changed perspective as though some unseen force was guiding the imagery.
And I saw myself. Kissing Leon, pushing him toward the shower. Making love to him while this ethereal force watched on in silence.
I closed the camera and tossed it toward the ground in horror. I ran toward Leon and told him I wanted to leave immediately.
He tried to reassure me it was all a trick of the camera as we walked toward the car.
But then we looked toward the east ravine and the tree house was no more.
Swallowed up by the forest.
We did not ask for our security deposit back.
P. Oxford
Police Suspect Foul Play
I was working on a local history paper for a college class, flipping through microfiche of the local newspaper, when a headline caught my eye. After a series of articles about how a big storm would ravage, did ravage, and had ravaged the small coastal community, it stood out:
“Unidentified man found dead, police suspect foul play”
I skimmed the article. There weren’t a lot of details, but he had been found in the same remote area that I used to live. Why hadn’t I heard about it? I leaned back in the squeaky office chair, and stared up at the white library ceiling. I remembered that storm; it had been the most dramatic storm of my young life. I closed my eyes as hazy memories fit themselves together in my mind. I had seen a man outside the cabin, hadn’t I? And I sat for a police sketch?
It all came rushing back.
***
I was curled up on the old armchair in front of the fireplace in the cozy living room of the old cabin. The wind was howling, the rain drumming on the window, and the many little streams that had appeared since the rain started were gurgling outside. The heavy rain made the mountainside behind us come alive with water, the newborn streams gathering into larger flows before they hurled themselves over the steep rock face in spectacular waterfalls—while I was safe and warm between the timber walls.
I stared intently at the page I was trying to read, attempting to ignore the conversation in the kitchen. My parents were talking in low, tense voices again.
“We’re out here in the middle of nowhere,” mommy let slip in a slightly louder voice. “That little girl needs friends!”
I reached out a hand to turn up the radio to drown them out, but daddy hushed her. I didn’t need to hear, I knew why they were arguing. The little farm house in an isolated part of a deep Norwegian fjord used to be our cabin, and we had moved here after daddy lost his job. I didn’t know why it bothered mommy so much, I loved having the forest as a playground. I turned the page of my book, and stared intently at the next page, willing it to come alive and distract me.
“…The storm is hitting small coastal communities hard,” a newscaster read from the radio. “We have reports of several large landslides along the S—fjord. A slide has blocked road 6—, likely isolating the small community until the cleanup work can be finished. In other news…”
“Did you hear that, Jon?” Mommy’s voice rose. “Did you hear that? The goddamn road is gone! We’re stuck here! What if there’s an emergency? We’re trapped until they drag their asses out here to fix it!”
I couldn’t make out daddy’s answer, but it was probably something about keeping her voice down. The wind howled, drowning out the rest of the conversation in the kitchen.
The sky darkened further as the sun set, and I moved closer to the fire. I finished a particularly scary story in the horror collection I was reading, and delighted in the chills that ran down my spine.
Something scratched the wall.
I jumped in my seat, heart pounding. Something had come out of the woods, something was scratching at the far wall of the house, it was gonna come in, it was gonna break down the wall, I knew it! Werewolves? Monsters? A cry for help rose in my throat, but I swallowed it at the last second. I didn’t want another stern lecture on the danger of reading horror stories. And it was probably just a branch.
The wind howled again, with an eerily human quality. I shuddered, and put the book on the wooden coffee table next to the chair. I glared at it, before glancing towards the kitchen door. I could still hear soft voices out there. My parents were still there, in the next room, I thought with relief. Well, for now, but they slept all the way at the other end of the hallway... I shivered. Stupid me, why did I read those stories?
A muffled thud rang through the room. I sat up straight, looking at the flowery curtains that covered the view of the woods behind the cabin. Branches don’t do that. Had the wind gotten strong enough to fling logs around? I considered tiptoeing over to the little window, to peek out through the gap in the curtains to the dark tall firs that surrounded us. Immediately, I pictured a man pressing his face against the window.
God, that stupid, stupid book. In the story I just read, a boy sees the ghost of an old sailor peer through his little window. The illustration that accompanied the story would come to haunt me for years and it kept me from looking out the window as surely as if I had been shackled to the chair.
Instinctively, I pulled my feet up onto the chair, disturbed by the idea of someone grabbing at them. I quickly promised myself I’d never read another horror story. Another human-like howl from the wind made me pull my knees closer to my chest, and a low gurgling sound sent my heart racing.
It was definitely just the wind and a stream, though.
The door slammed open, and I jumped so I almost fell out of the chair. Daddy chuckled as he entered, saying something about children and horror stories before shooing me off to bed.
I brushed my teeth as slowly as I could, before walking hesitantly down the hallway to my room. Had it always been this long? I couldn’t stop myself from glancing out the little window in the front door, and jumped as a flash of lightning illuminated the tree outside. I couldn’t shake the image of the fisherman with his face pressed against the window.
In my room, the sounds of the woods seemed louder than ever. I tugged at the curtains, making sure there was no gap between them, no little opening for someone to peek through. Breathing in deeply, I bent down so that I could jump into my bed, keeping my ankles out of reach from anything that might be hiding in the dark abyss ben
eath it. Then I curled up under the huge down duvet, pulling at the corners so that every part of my body was covered, leaving no limb dangling over the edge for anyone or anything to grab at. Daddy came in, kissed my forehead, and told me to sleep tight, before closing the door and leaving me all alone in the little cave of darkness, miles and miles away from the safety of my parents at the other end of the hallway. After a few uneasy twists and turns I drifted off to sleep.
I awoke with a start, the outline of a nightmare fading, leaving me with a feeling of dread. I sat up, quickly turned on the bedside light, and pulled the duvet up to my neck. Could I stay awake until morning? Leave the light on? …run into my parents room? No, I decided, I’m too old for that. The wind howled, and I whimpered, pulling the duvet up even higher. And then I heard it.
Footsteps.
Right outside my window. I looked around wildly, but the heavy curtains saved me from having to see anything outside. I pulled the duvet up to my eyes. Lighting flashed, and thunder shook the room. I squealed, jumped out of bed, and was halfway down the hallway before I remembered the window. The window in the front door didn’t have curtains, it was exactly the same size as the window in the story, with just enough room for a face, and I had to pass it to get to my parents’ room.
My heart beat faster, but I couldn’t turn back now. Just three more steps, and I’d be safe. I didn’t even have to look, I could just stare straight ahead, and then I’d be safe. I retreated a few steps back towards my room, and turned on the hallway light.
Two steps forward, pause, deep breath, run, don’t look.
But I did look.
The world froze.
There, in the little window, lit by the light in the hallway, was a face. A man, wild-eyed, hair plastered down the side of his face, a strange sneer on his lips, was staring back at me.
The world unfroze, and I screamed. Footsteps rushed towards me, warm arms hugged me, and I screamed until I had to gasp for air.
“There was—there is—there’s a man! Outside! Out there!” I stuttered, pointing at the dark square in the door.
