House of Fallen Trees

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Karen blinked awake early the next morning for one of two reasons, either she’d been having an odd dream involving a dark room where she huddled in fear, listening to predatory voices on the other side of the walls as the beams of flashlights played back and forth outside a solitary window.

She’d been hunted, but by who or why, she had no idea.

The other reason she may have woken up was an unusually urgent need to pee.

Glancing at the bedside clock, she was startled to discover it was just past 5:00 a.m. and still quite dark outside.

She groaned, flipped the bedding back and made her way to the bathroom, stumbling and weaving a bit, as though she were not only drunk but also in a sea-tossed ship. The thought almost made her giggle — she was after all on a ship of sorts.

When she finished in the bathroom, she returned to the bed where she lay restlessly for over an hour before she finally gave up and accepted that she was awake for good.

Without bothering to shower, she dressed and padded quietly down to the kitchen, making her way through the gloom as carefully as possible, unwilling to turn on any lights just yet.

Helping herself to a glass of orange juice, she sat at the table sipping and thinking about the dream that was most probably the reason she was up at this ridiculous hour.

What did it mean, if anything, and who had been hunting her? And, why?

So strange.

She pondered the dream, trying to puzzle it out, until she finished the juice and finally concluded that it was pointless to try to decipher the workings of her slumbering mind. It was just one of those things. There was no reason or meaning.

Once her glass was rinsed, she briefly debated putting on a pot of coffee, then rejected the idea. Maybe she’d want to return to bed soon. In fact, she already did want to go back to bed, but she still felt too awake at the moment.

Gazing out the window at the shrouded morning, she drummed her fingers against the countertop, thinking. Several minutes passed before she resigned herself to the fact that if she was awake anyway, she may as well be getting some work done.

Silent as a wraith, she moved through the house, wondering when the men would wake up. Not that it mattered. She knew neither of them would disturb her if she was in her room with the door closed. They would probably assume she’d never even been up.

Back in her bedroom, she pulled out the laptop, waited for it to power-up and then opened the document file containing her latest book.

She carefully read over the last page, fingers hovering over the keyboard, and when she’d finished re-reading what she’d written and her brain was back in her fictional world, she began to type with an almost magical speed.

Lost in the land of make believe, Karen didn’t look up again until 8:45, surprised, as she often was, that she’d been able to disappear inside her head for so long.

She listened for the sounds of movement in the house, but heard nothing and assumed the men were still asleep. Despite its size, the house had an odd way of amplifying noise — particularly voices — and she was positive if the guys had been talking she could have easily heard at least murmurs.

Putting aside the laptop, she rose and stretched. The idea of coffee was irresistible now and besides, her belly was rumbling up a storm.

She left the room, anxious for the caffeine and maybe a couple of slices of toast and jam and, coincidentally, she heard a voice drift down to her from the floor above.

Oh, good, she thought. They’re up.

She paused in the hallway, head cocked, listening, waiting for the second voice she knew would come.

But there was no second voice. Only the first, speaking low, then pausing as if listening to a reply she couldn’t hear.

Immediately, she knew one of them — probably Saul — had somehow managed to get a cell signal and was chatting on the phone.

Thank God.

She began climbing the stairs. Though she didn’t need to call anyone, it was still comforting to know that she could call out if she wanted — or needed — to.

At the top of the staircase, she hesitated, looking down the long dim hallway, first in one direction and then the other, trying to determine if the voice was coming from the left or the right.

When the voice spoke again, she knew it wasn’t Saul and her chest tightened painfully. She held her breath, peering down the hall to the left.

More murmurs. This time she was able to make out a single word:

“…crawling…”

Slowly, she forced herself forward. One foot in front of the other, almost shuffling. Her mouth had gone dry, her palms damp. She suddenly felt as though she were moving through a dreamscape. A nightmare…

She’d determined where the voice was coming from, three doors down on the left.

What Rory had said was Captain Storm’s office.

With every step closer, more words floated to her through the ether, but still no more than broken fractions.

“…everyone asleep…”

“…hiding in…”

“…angry…insects…”

When she reached the door, she found it slightly ajar. Leaning forward, she peered inside, seeing only darkness, and the whispered murmurs abruptly ceased.

With trembling fingertips, she pushed the door carefully, letting her eyes adjust to the gloom as she did.

“Hello?” she said softly. “Saul?”

She knew she was being ridiculous. Knew it wasn’t Saul she’d heard, but she was beyond caring. If her suspicions were correct…

The room was empty.

She reached for a light switch and squinted in the sudden illumination.

The office was exactly how it had been when she’d first seen it, when Rory had given her a tour of the house. At least, it appeared to be the same. But, still, she couldn’t shake the feeling something was amiss.

Crossing the threshold, she glanced around the room, taking care to look behind both the door and the huge mahogany desk on the off chance someone may have been hiding there.

No one was.

Imagination, then. What she had thought was a person speaking was either an over-active, stressed mind or perhaps just the wind or creaking support beams. Or who knew what. But, it hadn’t been a person. That much was now clear.

Still…

She went to a large framed map on the south wall. The edges yellowed with age but still easily read, the map was probably three feet by four feet, mostly in varying shades of browns and greens.

It appeared to be a layout of the surrounding area, with Indigo Bend to the southwest and a large black X in the middle of empty forest land, the X presumably signifying where the house now stood.

Besides its age, there was only one other thing remarkable about the map: the thin red lines crisscrossing it. Perfectly straight, there must have been a dozen or more of them going in every direction. The black X stood directly on top of the spot where six of the lines seemed to intersect and converge.

“That’s been here since the beginning.”

Karen spun around to see Rory standing by the Captain’s desk, dressed in sweats and a T-shirt, his hair tousled and falling over one eye.

“It’s something else, isn’t it?” he asked. When Karen was still too startled to reply immediately, he asked, “What are you doing?”

She was tempted to ask what does it look like, but instead turned back to the map, tapping the X with a finger. “‘You are here’ I assume?”

“Yep.” Rory joined her at the map, sleepy eyes traveling over it with only mild interest. “Still haven’t gotten around to researching it much though. No clue about the lines.”

Karen frowned at the map. “I think they might be ley lines.”

“What?”

“Ley lines. I don’t know a whole lot about them, except that they’re supposedly alignments of holy places — churches and whatnot — dating back to ancient times. Some people still believe the places where they intersect are somehow magical.”

Rory sniffed and rubbed his cheek. “Magical how?”

“Maybe magical isn’t the right word. But possessing a certain…I don’t know…cosmic energy, I guess. Like I said, I don’t know much about them. But I do remember reading that some people believe that vortexes can form at the spots where the lines intersect and that those places are often ripe for paranormal activity.”

“Are you serious?” Rory laughed. “And who are these ‘people’?”

Karen shrugged. “Psychics, mediums. Sensitives.”

“Ah,” he said. “That explains everything.”

She gave him a quizzical look, but said nothing.

Rory laughed again. “You’re not going to tell me you believe in that kind of stuff, are you?”

“I don’t know,” she replied, turning her attention back to the map. “But I wouldn’t say I don’t believe.”

“You actually think we’re sitting on some kind of vortex?” He tapped the X on the map just as she had done a couple minutes before. “That we’re being sucked into a magical realm?”

“No. Of course not. But…” She let the word hang, unsure of how to continue.

Rory watched, waiting for her to complete the sentence, but when it became apparent she wasn’t going to, he stretched and yawned. “Well, I need some coffee. You want some?”

“Yeah. Thanks.”

He turned and left the room, leaving Karen alone once more. Her mind immediately went back to the voice which had drawn her here in the first place. Chewing her lower lip, she glanced back at the map, the wheels of her mind spinning…spinning…

She stood there for a long moment, and finally decided that sometime today she would see what else she could learn about ley lines, if anything. That was, if the internet would cooperate. And, she knew, that was one hell of a big if.