The Red Tree

by Caitlin R. Kiernan

  Anyway, after only a couple of hours, I grew bored with the novel—it really isn’t very good, worse than one of mine—and started poking around in the refuse. I think maybe an antiques dealer or a historian would have a field day down there. Then again, there’s so much accumulated filth and mildew, deposited in thick, tacky gray strata, perhaps anything of significant value is beyond salvaging at this point. However, I did come across an old manual typewriter buried beneath a bath towel on one of the shelves. The thing weighs, I don’t know, I’m guessing twenty or twenty-five pounds, though it was marketed in the forties as a portable. I found one like it on a website devoted to the history of typewriters. It’s a 1941 Quiet Deluxe portable, manufactured by the Royal Typewriter Company of Hartford (later known as the Royal McBee Typewriter Company) just like Hemingway used at his home in Key West. “The Snows of Kilimanjaro,” For Whom the Bell Tolls, and Death in the Afternoon were all written on a Royal typewriter of this very same make and model. I saw one in mint condition online for $475, though the one from Blanchard’s cellar is, sadly, far from mint.

  But it does type fairly well, the keys only sticking now and then. Conveniently, there was also a padded manila envelope stored with it, containing several inked silk ribbons that fit the machine. The envelope is lying here beside me. It was shipped from a company called Vintage American Typers from a P.O. box in Burke, Virginia, to a Dr. Charles L. Harvey at the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at the University of Rhode Island’s Kingston campus. The Burke postmark is dated January 12, 2003. More than five years ago. There was even a single page still in the typewriter’s carriage, a sheet of onionskin paper, cockled finish and all. I don’t know if you can even still buy onionskin paper. It makes me think of the Oxford English Dictionary and Bibles and such. Anyway, the page reads as follows:something distinctly Fortean about “bloody apple” affair, though I have searched through all four of Fort’s books and found no record of the tale in any of them, nor any variant of this phenomenon. Indeed, there is little to go on beyond the article in Yankee (collected in Austin N. Stevens’ Mysterious New England ; Yankee Books, 1971), though the legend of the tainted “Mikes” appears well-known locally. This one certainly seems right up Mr. Fort’s alley, young boys biting into shiny red apples only to discover globules of blood at the cores. Also, there is an echo here of H. P. Lovecraft’s short story “The Colour Out of Space,” recalling the poisoned orchards of Nahum Gardner following the fall of a meteorite-like object on his farm. Indeed, Lovecraft might well have known of Franklin’s “bloody apples,” though I can find no direct evidence that he did. The tree from which the apples are said to have grown was purportedly felled by the Great New England Hurricane of 1938, so would have been extant in March 1927 when Lovecraft wrote his story (not published until September of that year, in Amazing Stories; Vol. 2, No. 6, pp. 557-67). In the absence of any document linking the “bloody apples” of the Micah

  And yes, it just ends right there, with the name Micah, about halfway down the single-spaced page. However, I was fortunate to discover a copy of Mysterious New England at the library in Moosup, and, sure enough, the story is on page 156—“Franklin’s ‘Blood’ Apples” by Joseph A. Owens. It corroborates everything on the typed page, which I can only assume must have been written by the same Dr. Harvey to whom the package of ribbons was addressed back in 2003. A nice little mystery, something to take the edge off the monotony of the last month, yeah? Well, it gets better.

  Remember that woman at the store on the Plain Woods Road, the one who thought I had a “right” to know about this place’s previous tenant, but then wouldn’t actually tell me what she was talking about? Well, after finding the typewriter and the envelope of ribbons, after reading that page, I put two and two together, whiz-bang, and figured that she must have been speaking of Dr. Charles Harvey, as I’d already been told by Blanchard that the house’s former tenant had been a professor at URI. It seemed an unlikely coincidence. That professor pretty much had to be the same professor who’d written about the blood-filled apples. I googled the guy’s name and discovered that, yes, he did live here for almost three years, 2001 to 2003. Harvey was a folklorist and anthropologist with an interest in urban legends and occultism in the Maritime and New England. Born in Eugene, Oregon, in 1942, he received his doctoral from UC Berkeley in 1969. Dr. Harvey was on an extended sabbatical from the university, supposedly writing a book on the evolution and propagation of “fakelore” in Connecticut, Rhode Island, and Massachusetts when he died here, in Blanchard’s house, on August 7th, 2003. Well, no. Not actually in the house, but on the property. The obits were sketchy on details, but it seems he hung himself from a tree somewhere within the boundaries of the Wight Farm. He’d divorced his wife years before, and his only daughter lives up in Maine. That’s the stuff I was able to glean from the internet. But I also phoned Blanchard this morning, to tell him I’d likely be a couple of days late on July’s rent (still waiting for that damned check from Germany), and, as tactfully as I could, I broached the subject of Charles Harvey. I made notes during the conversation, pretty much a word-for-word transcript of that part of the call:

  Me: So, anyway, I just found out about that Harvey fellow, Charles Harvey, the suicide.

  (long silence)

  Me: The URI professor? Rented the place before me.

  Blanchard: Yeah. I know who you mean. The man wasn’t right. So, what. You angry I didn’t tell you about him?

  Me: No, I’m not angry. I’m just curious.

  Blanchard: I’m the one found him, you know.

  Me: No, I didn’t know that. None of the obituaries or articles I found online mentioned that.

  Blanchard: Well, ain’t like it’s the sort of thing they hand out medals for, finding a man strung up in one of your trees. But I did. I found him not far from the house.

  Me: This house?

  Blanchard: Yeah. Used an extension cord, not rope, but it worked just fine. He’d been up there four or five days, the coroner said. That’s what they told me. It was hot weather, and that wasn’t a pretty thing to come upon. Birds had been at him, and the maggots, and whatnot.

  Me: I had no idea.

  Blanchard (sounding defensive): Hardly the sort of thing you go around advertising when you want to lease a house. Not the sort of thing attracts the element I want to be renting the place out to.

  Me: No, I guess not. Still, you know, it was a bit of a shock. I have to admit that.

  Blanchard: You’re not angry about this, are you?

  Me (laughs): No, no. It’s fine. Really. I was just curious, that’s all. Poor man.

  Blanchard: I suppose you gotta have sympathy for situations like that. Still, he wasn’t right, and he croaked himself owing me two months back rent. His girl up in Portland offered to pay, but hell, what kind of asshole would I have looked like taking the money from her?

  Me: He was writing a book. That’s what I read.

  Blanchard: Yeah, he was writing a book. You don’t come across like the superstitious sort to me, Miss Crowe.

  Me: No, I’m not superstitious.

  Blanchard: So, sure you’re not sore I didn’t tell you about him?

  Me: I’m sure. Why didn’t the daughter take his typewriter with the rest of his belongings?

  Blanchard: Daughter didn’t take none of his stuff. My wife sent a bunch of it off to the Goodwill, and I just threw most of the rest out. I thought someone might be able to use that typewriter someday, so I put it in the basement.

  Me: And the ribbons?

  Blanchard: Ribbons? You lost me.

  Me: There was an envelope with ribbons for the typewriter. Several of them. I found those, too.

  Blanchard: Yeah. There was an envelope. That’s right.

  Me: So, what happened to his book? The manuscript, I mean. There was a page still in the typewriter. I assume he died with it unfinished.

  Blanchard: Listen, Miss Crowe, can we please talk about this later? I don’t want to be rude, but I
got business over in Wakefield this afternoon, and I’m already running late as it is.

  I told him not to worry, that I was probably being nosy and that I hate nosiness, especially when I’m the guilty party. I promised again to have the rent to him by the 10th of the month, and he thanked me for letting him know I’d be late with the check, then hung up first. I switched off the cell phone, and promptly hid it from myself. Maybe I’ll find it later. Maybe not. If anyone wants to harass me, they can use the landline.

  Anyway, I’m left to conclude that the late Dr. Harvey’s unfinished book, in all likelihood, went to the local landfill or a bonfire or whatever, if it’s true that the daughter in Maine claimed none of his effects. I can’t imagine why Blanchard would have lied about something like that. All that survives is that one peculiar page, incomplete reflections on “bloody apples” from a tree that died seventy years ago. I’ve been thinking about driving down to Connecticut, to Franklin (formerly Norwich), where Micah Hood’s cursed fruit is said to have sprouted some three hundred years ago. If I’m lucky, I might can get a magazine article or short story out of this.

  And that reminds me, I got the extension on the novel. The extension on the original extension. The guillotine will just have to wait another six months. Dorothy’s a miracle worker, but I gather my publisher is magnificently displeased, and I’ve had to promise this will never, ever happen again and so forth. Which is rather like promising you’ll never get the flu again, or let it rain on the Fourth of July. Do they think I’m doing this shit on purpose, just to foul up their publishing schedule? Right now, I’d probably give all the fingers on my left hand (I type mostly with my right) for a finished manuscript to appease my editor and fulfill my contractual obligations. Something I could trade in for a decent goddamn payday. Anyway, maybe if I can give Dorry a short story to peddle, everyone will leave me alone for a while. Also, I think this will be the last entry I make in the notebook. I’ve got half a mind to dust off Dr. Harvey’s old Royal machine, feed it a little oil to loosen up the sticky keys and suchlike, and transcribe everything from the spiral-bound notebook to typescript. It’s something to do. And I haven’t felt like going near the laptop for anything but the web (mostly porn, I will admit) since I got here.

  June 26, 2008 (3:04 p.m.)

  Blanchard called at some ungodly hour this morning and woke me up to tell me he’s letting the upstairs, the attic, out to some artist from California. What the fuck? I think I actually said that to him. He pointed out that the lease permitted him to do so, that, as it happens, I’d only rented the downstairs portion of the house. I asked him to hold on while I read through the lease, and yeah, the bastard’s telling the truth. It’s right there, which is what I get for not bothering to read the things I sign before (or after) I sign them. He offered to let me out of my lease, like I have anywhere to go. I declined. I half think he wants me to leave. Likely, I’m just being paranoid, but maybe I shouldn’t have brought up the subject of the dearly departed Dr. Harvey. The woman arrives next fucking week. So much for solitude.

  I have now typed everything from the notebook. It comes to sixty-five pages, all stacked neatly on the table beside me and the bottle of Jack I’ve been working on since yesterday. From here on, I’ll keep this journal—which is what it seems to have become—on the dead man’s typewriter and give my pens a rest. I had to drive all the way to Foster to get paper, a pack of five hundred sheets. So, I cannot type more than five hundred pages. Oh, and the woman, this painter from California, is named Constance Hopkins. My luck, she’ll be straight. Watch and see.

  June 27, 2008 (6:57 p.m.)

  Spent most of the day in the basement, hiding from the heat and trying not to think about the imminent arrival of the dreaded attic lodger. Also, I got to thinking that just maybe, when Blanchard stowed the old typewriter and the envelope of ribbons down there, possibly he did the same with the anthropologist’s unfinished manuscript. So, hours spent picking through all the moldering junk. I tried to be systematic, beginning at the shelf where I found the typewriter. It wasn’t there, just empty Mason jars, cardboard boxes of grimy machine parts, a busted electric fan that surely must have dated back to the twenties, a plastic milk crate filled with bundled copper wiring, three broken claw hammers, and so forth. I moved from one slouching plywood and cinder-block shelf to the next, venturing deeper into the basement than I ever had before. After about an hour and a half, I came across a low archway of fieldstones and mortar, and realized it marked the northern periphery of the house, below the kitchen table. I shone my flashlight through the arch, and it was clear that more shelves, more boxes, more indistinguishable mountains of refuse, lay on the other side. I thought about giving up the search and heading back to the stairs. Surely, Blanchard would have put the manuscript near the typewriter, had he decided to keep the thing (which was beginning to seem unlikely). I lingered there at the place where the house ends, where the merely dank basement seemed to give way to a genuine clamminess. There was a draft, air that was not cool, but cold, cold and unpleasantly damp, leaking through the archway, and I spotted a rusty iron horseshoe mounted on the keystone. A few of the nails had come loose, and it was hanging down, not up, and the first thing I thought of was Blanchard’s question on the phone—“You’re not a superstitious woman, are you?” or however he phrased it. The remaining nail had a distinctly square head, so I’m guessing that horseshoe’s been up there quite some time. There was a red-brown ghost of rust on the granite from when it had hung with the two ends pointing upwards towards the ceiling, so the overall impression was of something like an hourglass. I thought of the red bellies of female black widow spiders, and tried to recall if they live as far north as Rhode Island. And then I remembered when Amanda and I went to England (a sort of working vacation), how she’d laughed at me because I wouldn’t follow her into some damned abandoned railway tunnel that she wanted to explore. I chickened out and let her go in alone. I looked it up online, the tunnel, before I started writing this entry; it was, in fact, the Morewell Tunnel at Tavistock in West Devon (N 50° 31.154 W 004° 09.997). It had been a passenger rail, closed down since the 1960s, and was overgrown when we visited. There was a gate you had to scale to get inside—to trespass, as I’d pointed out to Amanda. She made clucking noises and scrambled nimbly over the chain link.

  “All right,” she’d said. “But if I break my neck, you’re to blame.”

  I think I told her to get bent, go fuck herself, something like that. Words that only made her laugh harder, her laughter echoing off the tunnel walls as she vanished from sight. That day, the tunnel entrance struck me as an open mouth—the most obvious analogy possible, I suppose. Specifically, I thought of the gaping, open mouths of predatory water things, like snapping turtles and ang lerfish, lying in wait for a curious, tasty morsel to come along and have a look inside before those jaws slammed closed. I stood there shivering, while the miserable English sky drizzled, waiting for the tunnel to snap shut. Are you superstitious, Sarah Crowe? Maybe just a little?

  Anyway, the memory of Amanda mocking me that day was enough to get me moving again and through the cellar archway, past that horseshoe, that rust hourglass. The temperature seemed to drop a good ten degrees, and the hard-packed dirt floor gave way to a somewhat muddy, uneven floor, with native rocks showing through, here and there. I shone the flashlight at the ceiling. It was a foot or so lower than in the basement proper, and countless roots and rootlets had penetrated from above, giving it an ugly, hairy appearance.

  There was a rough-hewn stone threshold, too, dividing those portions of the basement to the south and north of the archway. It wasn’t granite or schist or phyllite or whatever, but some dark, slaty rock that reminded me of the older headstones I’ve seen in local cemeteries, the picturesque ones dating back to the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. I kneeled down for a better look, playing the incandescent beam over the stone. I’m going to have to go back with my camera and get some photographs. The damned thing is inscrib
ed with an assortment of crude designs. At first glance, I thought I was just seeing graffiti. Maybe something Blanchard’s kids or grandkids had done, or something done, who knows, a hundred, two hundred years ago by someone else’s kids. But I quickly recognized a few of the symbols, that they were symbols. Astrological, alchemical, Cabbalistic—really a nonsensical jumble, which put me in mind of the hexes you can still see painted on barns in Pennsylvania’s Dutch Country. The planetary symbol for both Pluto and Jupiter, various presumably Christian crosses and Hindu swastikas, letters from the Hebrew alphabet, a pentagram—a hodgepodge, as though either some very superstitious person had decided to cover all of his or her bases, or, more likely, a teenager armed with a book on the occult. And yeah, sure, I can admit that it gave me the creeps, and yeah, I can also admit I had second thoughts about exploring the darkness beyond the horseshoe-guarded archway. I’m a big girl, and I can admit when something gives me the heebies. And when I’m being silly. But there was Amanda, the fucking ghost of Amanda, my goddamn memories of her standing in the maw of the Morewell Tunnel, laughing at me. I turned away from the threshold, turning, I noted, towards Ramswool Pond, and let the light play across this newfound vacuity below the old farmstead.