House of Fallen Trees

by Gina Ranalli

  Thrashing wildly, she barely heard someone shouting her name until it sounded as though the lips were pressed right to her ear.

  “Karen! Wake up!”

  Light immediately filled her vision and she was free, shrieking, her body drenched in perspiration.

  Saul crouched beside her on the floor, shaking her by the right shoulder, his brown eyes wide with concern. “You had a nightmare, but it’s over now.”

  “No.” Karen shook her head as the tears broke free and she raised a hand to wipe them away, certain her fingers would come away covered in plaster dust. She choked out a sob when she saw they were clean. “It wasn’t a nightmare. It was real.”

  It had been real, hadn’t it?

  Her eyes went immediately to the mural above the bed. It was just as it had been when she’d first entered the room with Rory. The ceiling around it was perfectly intact with only a few thin cracks to show its age.

  “But…”

  It couldn’t have been a dream. It had been so terrifying. She’d never had a dream even remotely like it.

  “Come on,” Saul said. “Let’s get you up.”

  He helped her into a sitting position and she winced at the pain in her shoulder. She knew she’d have a bruise there come tomorrow.

  “What was the dream about?”

  It was Rory, standing at the foot of the bed, surprising her. She hadn’t even known he was in the room with them.

  “I…” She began. “It was…”

  Saul, sensing her reluctance, said, “It’s okay. You don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to.”

  And she didn’t want to. How could she? They probably already thought she was insane.

  When Saul assisted her to her feet and suggested she sit on the bed, she eyed the mural once more and refused. “I’m okay,” she said. “I can stand.”

  “Are you sure?”

  She nodded. “I could probably use some aspirin though. My head is killing me.”

  “I’ll get it,” Rory said and disappeared into the bathroom.

  She looked again at the mural with suspicion—a look which Saul caught.

  “It’s kind of creepy, isn’t it?” he asked. “Painting your wife above your bed?”

  “Yeah,” she replied slowly. “Creepy.”

  Her heart was finally beginning to return to its normal pace when Rory returned from the bathroom with two ibuprofen tablets and a small glass of water, which she accepted gratefully.

  Then a thought occurred to her. “How long was I…uh…asleep for?” she asked Rory.

  He glanced at his watch. “Not long. Half an hour maybe.”

  “Half an hour,” she repeated. “Odd.”

  “What’s odd about it?” he asked.

  “I’m a bona fide insomniac. I’m never able to fall asleep in half an hour, much less enter a deep dream state.”

  Rory looked skeptical. “Well, this time I guess you did.”

  “Maybe the fresh air cured you,” Saul added, offering a smile. “It’s been known to do that, you know.”

  “Maybe,” Karen said, handing the glass back to Rory. She did her best to return Saul’s smile, but she was very much aware of Mrs. Storm hovering over them all and though she resisted glancing upward again, she couldn’t help but wonder if the painted woman in the cream-colored dress was also smiling.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Drinks forgotten, the three of them trudged down the stairs while outside darkness was quickly descending. It seemed that within a matter of minutes, the day had grown sullen and windy. The sound of trees swaying and lashing against each other could be heard in every room they entered.

  “I hope we don’t lose power,” Rory said when they’d returned to the living room, an absolutely enormous space with a stone fireplace large enough to burn an entire armchair without taking it apart.

  A pale floral patterned divan sat beneath the front bay windows while a matching lounger rested next to the fireplace. A single end table, carved out of a huge hunk of driftwood stood in a far corner, an antique oil lamp atop it. Other than these few items, the immense room remained empty.

  “Most of the other stuff was beyond saving,” Rory said, sitting down on the divan. “Moths or other bugs had gotten into it.”

  “Mice too,” Saul said, yawning. “Nesting inside the guts of the furniture.”

  Karen felt a twinge of alarm. “The beds upstairs?”

  Rory waved away her distress. “All the mattresses and bedding are new, don’t worry. The rest of the beds are original though.” He stopped, tilted his head as if listening intently to the wind outside, then added almost to himself, “Sean really loved the Captain’s bed. As you saw, it’s obscenely large.”

  Karen agreed. “Yeah, you could probably sleep four or five people in it quite comfortably.”

  “They wouldn’t even knock elbows,” Saul laughed.

  Karen sat down beside Rory, stretching her legs out in front of her and scrunching down a bit. “Sounds pretty nasty outside.”

  “This is nothing,” Saul told her, taking the lounger. “A real wind storm will scare the crap out of you around here.”

  “Yep,” Rory agreed. “With any luck, we’ll have one while you’re here.”

  She laughed. “Thanks a lot. I don’t really think I need to have the crap scared out of me though.”

  The statement made her remember the dream, if that’s what it had been. The strange phone call. How afraid had she been then? Not very…at least, not at first. Not until her computer had grown a mind of its own. If there was one thing she was grateful for here though, it was the lack of phones.

  And she couldn’t deny feeling safer in the presence of men. She was pretty sure a lot of women would find that to be offensive, and it probably was, but a lot of women would also feel the exact same way she did. There was no denying that having a guy around made a woman statistically safer. And so, as was often the case with some things, two had to be better than one.

  Though, if she was losing her mind, she doubted these two would be able to do much to save her. Especially not Rory. He seemed a tad insensitive, more like a macho guy than Sean had ever been. It occurred to her maybe that was what Sean had been attracted to in the first place. Rory seemed so self-assured, so confident and as far as she knew, those qualities had not exactly been running rampant in Sean. He’d been quiet, shy until he was comfortable with a person, much more involved with the arts than she was back when they’d been growing up. Sean used to be a musician, studying piano and guitar, and as a teenager he’d had a garage rock band called…Damn, she couldn’t remember. Something Catalyst. She smiled at the memory of their dad always yelling at Sean and his two band mates to “Quiet the hell down!”

  “Care to share?” Rory asked, startling her. “You were just staring off into space smiling.”

  “Oh.” Her smile widened even as her face grew warm with embarrassment. “I was just thinking about Sean. He used to be in a band when he was in high school. I can’t for the life of me remember what they called themselves though.”

  “Euphoric Catalyst,” Rory said without hesitation.

  “That’s it! Wow…they were pretty terrible.”

  Rory laughed. “He told me they were pretty good. He had an old cassette tape of a practice or a show or something. He wanted me to listen to it, but I never did.” His voice dropped an octave. “Now I wish I had.”

  She knew how he felt and reached out to squeeze his knee. Rory tried to smile at the gesture, but then, before any of them knew what was happening, his eyes welled up with tears which spilled down his cheeks to drip off his chin.

  Just the sight of him in that state made Karen want to weep herself.

  Saul shifted uncomfortably and began to study the ceiling.

  “I’m sorry,” Rory sniffed. “I thought all my crying was over. It’s just that…”

  “What?” Karen asked.

  “You really do look like him. You have the same brown eyes, the same smil
e.”

  She almost apologized, but realized how ludicrous that would sound. Rory went on. “In a way, it’s great having you here. It’s like having a piece of Sean back. But in another way…”

  She nodded. “I know.”

  “Fuck!” Rory shouted suddenly, pressing the heels of his hands into his eyes. “So much for being a brave little soldier.”

  At this, Saul chuckled and Karen gave him a confused look. “It’s something Sean used to say,” he explained. “He said his dad...I mean, YOUR dad…would always tell him to be a brave little soldier when he was a kid.”

  “Ah.” Karen smiled a little at the memory. “He did used to say that. Every time we fell down or got in a fight with a neighborhood kid or had a nightmare.”

  “That’s what he told us,” Rory said. “No offense, but from what I’ve heard your dad was kind of a dick.”

  “There’s really no ‘kind of’ about it,” she replied. “He was a major dick when we were growing up. He’s mellowed out over the years, though.” Both men laughed at this and Karen was relieved Rory had stopped crying. The last thing she wanted was for her presence to be difficult for him.

  “I’m hungry,” Saul announced, jumping to his feet. “Let’s see what we can forage up, shall we?”

  “Yes!” Karen also rose. “I’m starving.”

  “We don’t have too much fresh food,” Rory said. “But we have plenty of canned and dried goods. Soups, cereal, oatmeal, stuff like that.”

  “Canned soup sounds like the perfect thing right about now,” she said. “Anything to get rid of this chill in my bones.”

  “Amen,” Saul said and led the way through the house towards the kitchen and a hot meal.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  The night came on like something alive and hungry, scratching at the windows, swirling through the eaves, scrabbling up the outer walls of the house, searching for a way inside. In the kitchen, the three of them sat at a cheap folding table blowing on large bowls of soup, chicken noodle for Rory and vegetable for Karen and Saul.

  After the first spoonful, Karen said, “Now that’s what I’m talking about. Hot soup for a cold night.”

  Saul cocked an eyebrow at her. “You do realize it’s only November, don’t you?”

  “Yeah, but it’s so chilly,” Karen replied with a shiver.

  “I thought you New Englanders were supposed to be a hearty bunch.”

  “I suppose. I guess I’m just used to it snowing when it’s this cold.”

  “It’s only forty-five degrees, Karen,” Rory told her, joining the conversation. “Maybe you’re coming down with a bug?”

  She considered it. “I feel okay.” But that wasn’t entirely true. Physically, she felt fine, except for the chill, but emotionally she was on edge. She didn’t like the way the house was getting darker and no amount of lights seemed to help brighten it. Saul, who sat directly across from her, no more than two or three feet away, remained in shadow, his face obscured when he bent to his bowl. Several times, she’d glanced up at the overhead light, only to get a sharp pain behind her eyes, making her look away with a grimace. And each time she did so, the room seemed that much darker around them. She could feel a headache coming on, which at first she’d assumed was due to hunger, but now that she was eating, she thought it had more to do with the lighting in the house. It was hurting her eyes. She ate hurriedly, not because she was starving but because she was so tired. She figured she still hadn’t adjusted to the time difference and was looking forward to just going up to the room Rory had assigned her and perhaps getting some alone time with either her laptop or a paperback before settling in for a good hard crash.

  There wasn’t much conversation at the table and part of her was grateful for that. She’d already been more social than she had been in months, and though she didn’t think she was coming across as particularly inept in that department, she knew she wasn’t being a chatterbox either. But maybe these guys didn’t mind. She was pretty sure Rory didn’t anyway. He struck her as being more of a loner, like herself.

  When the meal was finished, Karen offered to help with cleaning up, but the guys would have none of it.

  “You’re a guest,” Rory said. “The first one to stay at House of Fallen Trees and I’m going to treat you as such. I’m just sorry I couldn’t have made you a better meal.”

  “Well, it’s a bed and breakfast,” she replied. “So, I expect a breakfast with all the fixings in the morning.”

  He laughed. “I’ll see what I can do.”

  “Excellent. But, for now, I think I’m going to go up to my room. Probably call it a night. I’m beat.”

  Rory nodded. “You remember which one it is?”

  “Yep. I’m fairly confident I won’t get lost. If I do, I’ll scream bloody murder until you find me.”

  She’d meant it as a joke, but the expression on his face told her instantly that it had been a bad one. “Sorry,” she said. “Fuck, I can be so stupid. Talking without thinking.”

  “It’s okay,” he tried to reassure her. “No harm done.”

  They said their goodnights awkwardly and she left the kitchen, walked through a good-sized empty dining room with a slate floor, and back into the living room where the massive staircase was located.

  The house had three floors, not including the basement (and, she assumed, an attic), which she hadn’t seen but Saul had told her was an oddity in itself, because it was packed floor to ceiling with old junk no one wanted to go through. Consequently, they went down there as infrequently as possible. Saul had only been down there to check the status of the foundation from the inside.

  “What I could check anyway. Then I got the hell out of there,” he’d told her earlier. “Place gave me the creeps.” Naturally, this had only made Karen curious about the basement and she intended to explore it the following day.

  The room she’d been given was up on the second floor and she climbed the stairs wearily, gripping the banister with one hand while keeping her eyes on her feet. It was dark on the stairs and she didn’t feel like taking a tumble back down them.

  When she reached the second floor, she paused at the head of the staircase, listening to the wind. It sounded so much louder up here, presumably because she was almost level with the treetops at this height. Why had the Captain, Frank Storm—she chuckled again at the obviously made up name—built what was evidently his dream house in the middle of a forest? Why not on some bluff overlooking the ocean? Puzzling, to say the least.

  But Karen enjoyed a good puzzle; it was how she looked at her novels. They were all puzzles to be solved. Each one, a mystery when she began it, with no idea of how she would get to the end. She always managed it though, always figured out the puzzle, whether it was plot or character motivation or whatever. It always came to her eventually and she knew it would come to her here as well. Even if the absolute truth didn’t reveal itself, she would be able to fill in the blank spaces with her mind and be satisfied. It was how she lived her professional life and she knew she was pretty good at it.

  She listened to the wind a moment longer before moving off towards her bedroom down the hall. Every so often along the wall, there was a porthole built into it, which was peculiar to say the least. Small round windows with which a person could peek into the majority of the rooms, though there weren’t nearly as many placed on the outer walls.

  Strange indeed.

  When she reached her room, she stepped inside and closed the door, casting herself into complete darkness. Reaching for the light switch, she was surprised to find there was none. “Dammit,” she whispered, carefully crossing the room to where she remembered the night table to be, hands stretched out before her, blind feelers she hoped would save her shins from any collisions. She found the bed before the night table but from there the rest was easy. Sitting on the edge of it, she explored the table until her fingers found and twisted the light switch on a small brass lamp with a frosted glass shade that did little to illuminate the room.
>
  Despite the dimness, she could see enough of the room to be impressed for the second time. The bed she sat on was an antique canopy, as were the other furnishings, including a beautifully and intricately carved redwood hope chest which was snug up against the wall opposite the foot of the bed.

  Who had this room belonged to when the Captain had lived here? Not him—his room was on the third floor and far more spacious and masculine than this one. Though Karen didn’t find this room to be particularly feminine either. The wallpaper was decorated with a woodsy motif—no big surprise there—and the heavy drapes were a midnight blue that matched a floor runner leading from the far side of the bed to the threshold of the bathroom.

  Bath.

  Now there was a welcoming word if she’d ever heard one. Rory had told her on the drive up that, though they had hot water, in actuality it didn’t run much more than warm.

  She decided she didn’t care. Even a little warmth would be better than none at all. She’d take a bath, brush her teeth and hair and then return to the bed, power up the laptop and see if she couldn’t start writing what she hoped would be a long detailed journal of her experiences here in Fallen Trees. With any luck, being able to look at and study words on a screen, she might uncover clues about Sean’s disappearance. Maybe see something that no one else had yet seen.

  She stood up, walked into the bathroom, and turned on the tub’s faucet. Leaning over with her hand under the flow of water, it seemed as though she’d had to wait a very long time before the water began to warm up. But it did warm up and she plugged the tub and began to undress, gazing at herself in the clouded mirror over the sink. Beneath her eyes, gray pouches were evident and her mouth looked drawn down, as though being pulled by invisible strings.

  Karen frowned at her mirror image. Yes, she was tired, but shit. She didn’t feel nearly as bad as she looked.

  She reached around her back to unhook her bra, letting it drop to the floor just as the sound of male laughter caused her to yelp and whirl around, instinctively covering her breasts with folded arms.