The Family Tree

by John Everson

  He used the gun as a crutch and managed to pull himself upright. He staggered towards the car. Then he saw her. Sherrilyn lay on her side a few feet away. He couldn’t see where she’d been hit, and at that moment, he didn’t care.

  “Stop!” Ellen’s voice called weakly from the side of the road. “Please,” she begged.

  “You can’t do this to people anymore,” he said. “This insanity has to end.” Then he crawled back into the car. He didn’t care right now whether Sherrilyn was dead or not. And Ellen could go fuck herself. This was all her fault anyway. If she hadn’t drugged him and chained him up…

  He leaned over Caroline and pressed a kiss to her lips. She was the only good thing about this whole fiasco. And now even her life was in jeopardy. She still breathed, which gave him hope, but she didn’t stir. That may have been a blessing at the moment; best that she didn’t see her family lying on the road beside the car.

  Scott stepped on the gas and drove. In his rear-view mirror, he could see the flames still rising from the roof of The Family Tree Inn. He remembered the country hospitality that the little sign next to the inn’s front door promised to everyone who walked through its doors.

  “‘Our home is yours’, my ass,” he whispered, and then grunted as the pain gripped him.

  Scott drove.

  Epilogue

  The sun woke him.

  It peered with a deep orange light across an open field. At some point during the night, the pain and exhaustion had gotten too much, and Scott had pulled off the road and parked.

  He had wanted to get Caroline to a hospital, but he had also wanted to drive far enough away from The Family Tree Inn so that they wouldn’t find them easily the next day. Caroline was alive, and occasionally she moaned. But she hadn’t opened her eyes since she’d been shot. It looked as if the bullet had gone in on her left temple and exited near her ear.

  Scott had driven for more than an hour amid the twisting, turning, hilly roads and instead of finding civilization, he had found himself ever deeper in the middle of nowhere. He’d passed through a few tiny towns, but nothing was open. In each there would be a main strip with a small grocery, gas station, and maybe a bar and a feed store…but all had been shuttered. No signs of life. And he had seen nothing resembling a hospital. He had tried to keep driving, because sooner or later he was bound to arrive somewhere if he kept to a main road, but his eyes kept glazing over. Everything had grown fuzzy. After he ran off the road a couple times, he decided to pull over to rest before he slammed into a tree. He had stopped near an open field.

  “I’m sorry,” he had whispered for the umpteenth time that night as he had stood on the passenger’s side of the car and leaned Caroline’s seat back as far as it would go, trying to make her comfortable. He prayed that he was doing the right thing, but really, it was the only thing he could do. He simply couldn’t go on any farther. He could barely keep his eyes open. He’d walked back around the car, gotten in and tilted his own seat back then, and in seconds had slipped into his own coma.

  Now with the dawn, he could see again. And he didn’t like what he saw. The wound on Caroline’s head looked horrible, her forehead had yellowed and her hair was matted and dark with dried blood and ragged skin.

  “Caroline?” he whispered.

  She moaned beside him.

  “Caroline?”

  “It hurts so bad,” she answered. His heart leapt. They were the first words she’d said since before she’d been shot.

  “I’m going to get you to a hospital,” he promised.

  “Need to pee,” she whispered. “Help me get out.”

  “I don’t know if…” he began.

  “Help me out of the car,” she begged. “Please. It hurts.”

  Scott opened the driver’s side door and winced as the pain shot across his chest. He hadn’t died himself during the night from the bullet wound, so maybe they’d both make it. The wound didn’t hurt so bad when he didn’t move, but now…

  He almost fell getting out. He used the car to support himself as he walked around the front hood. Then he opened her door, and put his hands under her shoulders, cringing at the pain as he did. He didn’t know if he had enough strength to pull her out. But he had to do this.

  Caroline yelped a couple times as her head moved, but Scott did his best to use his own body as a cushion for hers. He pulled her head to the crook of his good shoulder, and slowly dragged her out and down to the ground.

  Then he reached around and undid her pants, carefully, pushing them down so that she could relieve herself. He realized belatedly that he needed to do the same.

  “You’re hurt,” she whispered as he moved around her, and he nodded.

  “Let me see.”

  He tried to lift his shirt, but it was stuck to his skin with dried blood.

  “Take it off,” she said. “You need to get that off.”

  He grit his teeth and pulled the shirt harder, until it slipped over his head. He felt it opening the wound as it went.

  “Shit,” he complained. “That hurts like hell.”

  “Oh my God,” she said as the shirt came off.

  “What?” he gasped.

  “Your back,” she said. “It’s already healing but…”

  “But what?”

  He reached around to touch his shoulder blade, and instantly knew what she was going to say.

  “Your back looks like…”

  “Bark,” he finished.

  She nodded, faintly, and groaned in pain at the movement.

  Scott thought of the ridges on the skin of the Thornes. Would his skin grow rough and warped now, even if he was no longer connected to the tree?

  “Let me see where you’re hurt,” she whispered. He levered himself over her, so that she could see the bullet wound without moving her head.

  As he did, drops of fresh blood fell from the wound onto her face. She reached up to wipe it from her lips with the back of her hand, but then stopped short. Instead of wiping it away, she touched the tip of her tongue to her lips. And then licked them clean.

  “You…” she began.

  “What?”

  “You taste like the tree.”

  Scott put a finger to the bullet hole and touched it to his mouth. The blood was watery, not even fully red. And she was right. It had a metallic tinge, but it did not taste like blood. Scott’s blood tasted like that hidden flavor in all of the glasses of ale and bourbon that Ellen had fed him over the past month. Like the sap of the tree.

  “You’re making the blood now yourself,” she whispered. “You are the tree.”

  “What does that mean?” he asked.

  Her eyes fluttered closed. “It means that you will heal. It means that we can go anywhere.”

  He thought of the story of William Melton Belvedere, mortally wounded, but nursed back to life by the blood of the tree. If he truly carried that blood within him now…if the life of the tree was somehow now being created within him?

  You are the tree.

  Scott knelt on the side of the road, and gouged his bullet wound with a finger. In seconds, a fresh trickle of blood surfaced, and he leaned over to let the stream drip onto Caroline’s thirsty lips. He would not let her die, not after all this. Not if he had the blood within him to stop it. If it took all the blood he had, he would give it.

  “Stay with me,” he begged again and again as each drip of blood disappeared down her throat and the first full rays of the morning sun kissed his bare, darkening shoulders.

  “You still have to see Chicago.”

  Caroline’s face already seemed to have gained more color, and she smiled as she licked from her lips each precious drop of life that he gave.

  “Yes,” she whispered. “I do.”

  About the Author

  John Everson is a staunch advocate of the culinary joys o
f the jalapeno and New Mexican chiles, as well as an unabashed fan of eccentric 1970s vintage European horror cinema. He is also the author of eight novels, including the creepy SF/horror of Violet Eyes, the erotic horror tour de force of the Bram Stoker Award nominee NightWhere, and the occult/urban legend mystery of The Pumpkin Man. Other novels include his Bram Stoker Award-winning first novel Covenant, as well as Sacrifice, The 13th and Siren.

  His tales have been translated into Polish, French, Italian, Turkish and German and optioned for potential film development. His short stories have been gathered in a handful of collections, including Cage of Bones & Other Deadly Obsessions and Needles & Sins. A 10th anniversary edition of his Vigilantes of Love was reissued in 2013.

  For more information on his fiction, art and music, or to sign up for his e- newsletter, visit www.johneverson.com.

  Look for these titles by John Everson

  Now Available:

  NightWhere

  Violet Eyes

  Their bites are more than deadly...

  Violet Eyes

  © 2013 John Everson

  The small town near the Everglades was supposed to offer Rachel and her son a fresh start. Instead it offered the start of a nightmare, when an unknown breed of flies migrated through the area, leaving painful bites in their wake. The media warned people to stay inside until the swarm passed. But the flies didn’t leave. And then the radios and TVs went silent.

  That’s when the spiders came. Spiders that could spin a deadly web large enough to engulf an entire house overnight. Spiders that left stripped bones behind as they multiplied. Spiders that, like the flies, sought hungrily for tender flesh...through Violet Eyes.

  Enjoy the following excerpt for Violet Eyes:

  Things had pretty much gone south with their vacation for good a couple hours ago, when Jess had been making out on the beach with Mark, and had managed at just the wrong moment to slip her hand into a human skull just below the surface of the sand.

  A skull still attached to a partially decomposed body.

  A skull with a big hole in the back of its head.

  That had pretty much popped their sex on the beach balloon.

  A few minutes later… the swarm of biting flies had come. Which effectively killed any fun for Billy and Casey, who had been discretely shedding suits in the water, a few dozen yards away.

  And now, after hiding out and running through the jungle, Jess, Mark, Billy and Casey had managed to get into the abandoned Quonset hut they’d seen while hiking across this godforsaken Florida Key. Mark had managed to get the door open, and as soon as he did, Billy plowed past him to drop the bags on the floor. He quickly collapsed to the floor with them, gasping frantically for breath.

  “Make sure none of those damn things came in with us,” Billy said, after the door had been closed and he’d caught a piece of his breath. He dragged his nails up and down against the dozens of hive-size bites along his ankles and legs. Fly bites. The things had swarmed from out of the jungle to corner them on the beach. But it had not been just a handful of creepy bugs. This had been a cloud of biting, fast-moving mouths. Thousands of ‘em. A wave of black flies that shimmered with a slash of purple…

  Billy’s girlfriend, Casey, kicked her bag a couple times with her foot, hoping to scare off any stowaway bugs, before gingerly unzipping the latch to dig inside for a water bottle. Then she pulled a package of allergy medicine from her overnight bag and knelt next to Billy. She handed him a bottle of water and a couple pills.

  “Antihistamine,” she explained. “This should keep the swelling on those bites down.”

  He didn’t answer; but he downed the pills in seconds.

  She turned back to her bag and began to zip her things back up when Mark asked, “Got any food hidden away in there?”

  Casey considered for a second and then reached back into the duffel to withdraw a bag of Doritos. She tossed them to Jess, cautioning, “I don’t know if they qualify as food, but…”

  Jess ripped open the bag and downed a handful of the chips before passing them on to Mark, who hungrily did the same. They’d left their tents and supplies on the other side of the island this morning when they’d hiked to this end, but nobody was ready to brave the bugs in the dark to get back there. The abandoned Quonset hut was a good midpoint on the hike back—and a midpoint with a lockable door.

  “We need to get settled for the night,” Billy suggested, reaching for the Doritos. “It’s almost dark and we don’t have a flashlight.”

  He pushed himself up with a groan, and together, they left the main room of the hut, which was filled with shelves and vials and electronic units that none of them could identify, to explore two rooms that had been walled off from the rest of the structure. Each was just large enough to hold a small bed and a tiny bureau.

  “I don’t know about the rest of you, but I would really just like to lie down,” Billy announced. “So I’m picking this room.” He pointed at the far door.

  Mark nodded and moved towards the other bedroom. Jess followed him, holding his hand. “Early to bed, early to rise,” Mark said. “And I don’t really feel like sitting here talking in the dark.”

  Their weekend vacation had started out the day before with high hopes; it was a welcome and needed “let off steam” break after semester finals. Billy had borrowed a boat to take them to a tiny uninhabited Key not far off the Florida coast; the two couples had planned a three-day break from reality. They were all looking forward to “sex on the beach” both in physical and alcoholic form. They’d joked when planning the excursion about the weekend being a chance for a co-ed reenactment of Blue Lagoon, but Jess had taken the joke a step further. She’d given them costumes.

  The last one to arrive at the dock, Jess had come running up the boards yelling, “OK, OK, I’m late! You can make me walk the plank later. But look what I got!”

  From a bulging canvass bag, Jess had pulled out a few scraps of tan fabric, cut with irregular triangles. One piece was clearly meant as a loincloth, the other could have been a bikini top. Both looked like stage costumes meant for extremely scantily clad prehistoric island dwellers.

  “I am not wearing that,” Billy proclaimed, as her boyfriend Mark reached out an arm and helped her climb into the boat.

  “Of course not, silly! That’s for Casey.” She reached into her sack and pulled an almost equally small loincloth and tossed it in his lap. “This one’s for you.”

  Mark cocked an eyebrow and looked skeptically at her. “I know we said ‘Blue Lagoon’ and all, but do you really think we’re all going to parade around in these?”

  “Well, not here,” she grinned, waving at the dock, crowded with sailboats and speedboats and people milling about. It was a gorgeous summer Friday morning, and plenty of people were playing hooky and heading out to sea. On many of the decks, small groups kicked back in easy chairs, taking in the sun, drinking beer for brunch and talking with friends. “But Billy promised that nobody goes to this island, it’s off the map. Totally empty. So if we’re going to ‘get away from it all’ and play ‘Blue Lagoon’ for the weekend, let’s do it. We can change once we’re out near the island.”

  “I don’t think you girls will stay in those outfits for long, anyway,” Billy said with an evil grin. Then he turned the key in the ignition and the motor sputtered to life. “All hands on deck,” he called, and after releasing the dock ties, they slowly began to move out into the crystal blue sea.

  Things had looked a lot more positive yesterday morning. It had been a beautiful day and an easy trip out to the small island. Once Billy navigated to the small dock and tied the boat up, they all got off and looked at their private beach for the weekend.

  Casey surveyed the shore, hands on her hips, the posture making her well-tanned cleavage more than obvious as she slowly turned a 360. “Nice place, Billy,” she finally said.

 
“That’s what I was thinking,” he answered, his eyes fixed obviously on her breasts.

  A tan sliver of fabric hit him in the chest. “Suit up, horndog,” Jess said. She tossed another at Mark.

  “You first,” Billy dared, and Jess shrugged. “All talk, no action,” she laughed, and without pause, turned her back to the guys, reached across her shoulder blades and untied the store-bought bikini she’d worn on the boat. She let it drop to the sand and then slipped on the scanty homemade top. Then she dropped her bottoms, giving them all a clear view of the untanned white triangle on her ass, as she pulled up the thin bits of material attached to a leather string. When she tied the bottoms tight, her tan lines were still clearly revealed.

  “You’re gonna burn your butt,” Mark warned.

  “I brought lotion,” Jess answered. “I might even let you put it on me.”

  “I won’t need any,” Casey taunted, and performed the same quick change routine as Jess, her bronze back and ass clearly demonstrating that she spent a lot of time in the sun. And apparently most of it in the nude.

  “You ever actually study with a tan like that?” Mark asked.

  Jess put a finger to her boyfriend’s chin and pulled, until Mark’s eyes met hers. “Watch this way,” she warned.

  “Sure I study,” Casey laughed. “What do you think I do while I’m tanning?”

  “Boy’s turn,” Jess announced as Casey turned around, now displaying even more bare skin than her previous skimpy bikini had allowed.

  Billy shrugged at Mark and the two turned away from the girls and each other and dropped their shorts, quickly stepping into costume.

  “Aw, look, Jess,” Casey taunted. “They’re shy.”

  “You two are asking for it,” Mark said, turned back to them. He shifted a little uncomfortably in his new island g-string. It hung loosely between his legs, and didn’t hide the fact that he was more than a little aroused by the situation.

  “And they’ll get it,” Billy promised. “They’ll get it plenty. But first we need to pick a camp site and get setup.”