House of Fallen Trees

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

The day never brightened beyond that of the dusk of a cloudy day, which left Karen feeling gloomy and alone, but still determined to find some trace of Sean, some vibe, whether it revealed that he was near or far.

She roamed the house freely, Rory and Saul off doing she didn’t know what, but she was happy to be left to her own devices.

Once she finished examining all the photographs, which proved interesting but ultimately a waste of time, there was only one place she felt immediately drawn to: the basement. Suspecting Rory would discourage her from exploring down there, she took it upon herself to make her own way down.

The door leading to the basement was not in the kitchen as it is in almost every other house, but for some mysterious reason, in the living room. She thought it odd, but didn’t ponder it for long. She was quickly learning the Captain was eccentric in so many ways that most of them would probably never be revealed to her or anyone else. She had a feeling even his family, assuming he’d had one, were left in the dark when it came to the workings of his mind.

She listened at the bottom of the grand staircase before moving to the basement door, ears cocked for the sound of conversation between the two men that would hopefully ensure they would be detained long enough for her to take a peek downstairs without being reprimanded or scolded like a child.

At the top of the stairs, she peered down into total blackness, feeling for a light switch, but not being particularly surprised when she didn’t find one.

This sent her back to the kitchen for one of the candles she’d seen that morning while looking for spoons for the coffee. A small box of wooden matches was located in the same drawer and she helped herself, putting the entire box in the front pocket of her pants after lighting the white taper candle. Trudging back to the living room, she paused only briefly at the stairs, couldn’t hear anything and wasn’t particularly surprised. The house was so enormous the guys could have been anywhere. Probably they had moved from the second floor to the third and were discussing plans for new rugs or curtains or wallpaper.

She returned to the basement door, and had to open it again. Odd, she thought. She couldn’t recall closing it when she went to retrieve the candle and matches. She wondered briefly if that meant either Rory or Saul had been by, saw the door open, and closed it. If so, that would mean she’d just missed seeing them by seconds. The other possibility — the more probable one, in fact — was that she’d just shut the door without thinking about it and now couldn’t remember having done so.

No matter. She opened it again, holding the lit candle out before her and took the first tentative step down. The old wooden staircase creaked under her weight but she knew it was safe. Rory would have certainly mentioned it if it hadn’t been.

To ensure she wouldn’t be interrupted in her exploration, she turned and closed the door behind herself, darkness falling on her like a heavy object, and only the small circle of light cast by the candle revealed she was not, in fact, buried alive. Carefully, she began descending the stairs, pushing any feelings of claustrophobia to the back of her mind, concentrating only on her footing.

She reached the bottom only to discover herself on a small landing. A turn to the left revealed yet another staircase. She took a deep breath, her belly suddenly twitching with nervousness beyond any rational explanation and started down this second staircase, holding fast to the railing with one hand and the candle with the other. She felt as though she were descending deep into catacombs, going down deeper and deeper into the earth and when she moved the candle to examine the wall, she saw it was not concrete or even stone, but hard-packed dirt, as if this basement had always been here, just a huge hole dug into the ground, and then someone — the Captain — had built the house on top of it.

Letting go of the wooden railing on the outside of the staircase, she touched the dirt wall with cautious fingers, expecting to feel cold damp earth but her fingers came away dry and when she rubbed her thumb across the pads there was not even the slightest trace of grit, as if she had touched a painted wall.

Yet another strange thing about this house, she thought, grabbing the railing again and continuing downward. When she came to a second landing, she was less surprised than she’d been at the first, but still thought it was peculiar. Exactly how deep was this basement?

Her answer came a minute later when she struck bottom, stepping off the last stair into what was, as far as she could tell with her pathetic candle flame, one large, cavernous room.

Moving slowly, she saw a couple of small tables to her right, each with a brass plate atop it and three ruby-red candles placed on the plates. She used her own candle to light these smaller ones and turned around to face the center of the room. What she saw there, only hinted-at shadows before, made her breath catch in her throat. Two oblong boxes resting on some sort of stone pedestals. Side by side, dark wood, lids down.

Coffins.

I will not scream, she told herself. I will not scream. Will not scream. Will not scream.

Air hissed out from between her clenched teeth but she kept her promise and didn’t scream. She stood rooted to the ground, afraid to move, her mind reeling.

It was true. Her dream or premonition or whatever it had been, was true after all.

Sean had to be in one of those caskets.

Two men did indeed have the carcass.

She stood there trembling for a long time, gradually becoming aware the basement was colder than upstairs. She could see her breath down here, as though she were standing in a freezer.

She had to open those coffins. Had to see what was inside. Who was inside, though her heart already knew and didn’t want to see. Her poor brother. Poor baby Sean. Missing for all this time. Why had the police not found him in such an obvious place?

The thought startled her out of her trance. It was a good question. Surely, the investigating team would have searched the house. That would have been standard procedure. They would have interviewed Rory and probably Saul and who knew how many others from town.

Karen closed her eyes, suddenly wanting nothing more than to go to sleep, forget she’d seen these coffins, find solace in some dream world, and not mention anything to the men she suspected of murdering her brother. Sleeping would be so welcome…she was so tired now… Reluctantly, she opened her eyes again. The coffins were still there, dark and foreboding, and all at once she realized she was standing in a crypt.

“Jesus,” she whispered. Taking a final deep breath, she steeled herself and moved forward to the nearest casket. With the heel of her free hand, she pushed the lid up, shocked it wasn’t nailed shut.

But when she saw what was inside, she knew why the casket had been so easy to open.

Nothing.

Just red satin padding and pillow. The casket was empty. She released the breath she’d been holding, closed the lid, and moved slowly to the neighboring casket. The second coffin made a creaking sound, the lid seemingly heavier than the first, and her belly immediately coiled into a tight acidy ball.

But when the lid was pushed open and she moved the candle in order to see within the black depths, she saw that it too was empty.

“What the fuck?”

The emptiness of the coffins did nothing to ease her tension. She still only wanted to sleep. It’s the stress, she thought. Stress always makes me tired. She actually found herself looking into the second casket with longing, wishing she could just crawl inside and curl up. It would be so easy…she’d be out before she knew it.

The only thing stopping her from doing exactly that was the knowledge that these caskets had almost definitely held dead bodies at some point, even if they were empty now. Perhaps they’d even been dug up out of the ground in some distant era, cleaned up, maybe re-stained, the insides reupholstered.

She had to get back upstairs. Maybe lie down on the sofa in the living room. She remembered there was a handmade afghan thrown over the back of it. That would suit her just fine.

And if the men were there? If they saw her emerging from the basement? What then? Would they kill her too? Knowing that she knew?

She considered this possibility and found she didn’t much care either way. If they did kill her, then at least she could stop worrying and sleep. That would be a blessed relief. Eyes drooping, she turned away from the caskets, crossed the hard-packed dirt floor to the staircase and began the long climb up. It did occur to her to blow out the candles she’d lit down there, but now that she was already ascending, she couldn’t be bothered to go back down. Maybe if she saw one of the guys she would mention there were lit candles in the basement, but maybe not. She would decide when she saw them. If she saw them.

Of course, if she did see them, they would have plenty of explaining to do. Why was she even concerned about the candles when she had just seen two coffins?

She wasn’t thinking clearly. Maybe it was her sleepiness affecting her rational thought patterns, but it seemed like more than that. She wondered yet again if perhaps she was losing her mind.

Once she reached the top of the stairs, she half-expected to discover herself locked in this basement, left to starve to death in the dark and cold.

The fear woke her up a bit and she reached for the doorknob quickly, almost in a panic, but it turned easily in her hand. The door creaked open and she was back in the living room, snapping out of her dreamlike state the moment the door closed behind her.

Standing in the gray light filtering in through the front windows, she blinked rapidly, pulse tapping out an SOS in her wrists.

Totally awake now, it occurred to her she may have just experienced some sort of fugue. Or perhaps she’d been sleepwalking. The headache that had been nagging at her temples bowed back into the shadows like a butler who’d been waved away.

Spinning around, she glared at the closed basement door as if offended by its existence. When had the fugue begun? She remembered studying the various photographs and crossed the room to look at them again.

The first photograph she’d seen that day had been of a lone handsome man, seated sideways in a chair, holding a violin by the neck, propping it up on one thigh with his left hand, while his right held the bow. He’d been dark-haired, wearing a dark suit and tie, and looked to be in his early twenties perhaps.

Now, the photograph was different.

She swallowed what felt like a wedge of wood in her throat, eyes going wide at the sight of the violinist. No longer handsome, his face and hands were now stark white and horribly wrinkled and deformed. His eyes sat too low on his face and too far apart from each other, resting where his cheekbones should have been. What could be seen of his nose was no more than a vertical slash in the middle of his face, thin, the edges ragged and raw.

He had no lips to speak of, his teeth fully exposed, small and sharp in the round hole of his mouth.

She felt her belly do a slow underwater somersault. She closed her eyes, swaying on her feet, clenching her teeth, trying to will the contents of her stomach to remain where they were. She took several deep breaths through her nose before she was brave enough to open her eyes again, certain the violinist would be back to normal. But he wasn’t.

He was still a monster and as her gaze wandered away from the photograph, traveling down the line of photos on the wall, she could see that all of them had undergone a similar transformation.

They were all monsters, but Karen didn’t let her eyes focus too closely on any of the rest. Didn’t think her sanity could take if she saw them… changed…mutated…

Instead, telling herself to remain calm and not run, she walked slowly away from the wall, towards the staircase, knowing—praying—that Rory and Saul were just on the next floor up.

They weren’t far and she needed them. Needed them to see what she saw. But she didn’t obey herself for long and had only gone a few steps before breaking into a run, stumbling up the stairs, half shouting, half crying out their names.