House of Fallen Trees

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

She knew how it sounded. Of course she did. But what could she do? It was the truth, dammit, and they had to see.

Karen fully expected the photographs downstairs to look perfectly normal once she’d dragged both Rory and Saul down to look at them, but as it turned out, that wasn’t necessary.

In her haste to get to the men, she had sped through the upstairs hallway, not even glancing at the photos lining those walls, and Rory had stepped out of one of the bedrooms first, holding paint swatches in one hand, Saul right behind him, hands in pockets. “You have to see them!” Karen cried. “I’m not going crazy! They’re monsters!”

“What?” Rory asked, his cheeks flooding with color.

“Coffins in the basement and the pictures are monsters!”

She fell into him, feeling like a fool, like a terrified buffoon of a woman in a gothic horror novel, certain she had to get it out of her before she fainted. Because she knew she was only moments away from passing out. Just like that night in her office… “The pictures are of monsters,” she said and then surprised herself by not fainting but vomiting instead, turning her head to the side at the very last instant to avoid puking on Rory.

“Whoa!” Saul stepped around Rory and grabbed her with both arms around the waist, staying behind her, holding her up as she doubled over, spewing the contents of her belly all over the antique Oriental floor runner while tears of terror and humiliation spilled down her face.

“It’s okay, Karen,” he said. “You’re okay.”

Over her head, Rory said, “What the fuck is going on?”

“I don’t know,” Saul replied, not loosening his grip on her even after her retching became dry heaves. “Food poisoning?”

Karen sank to her knees, taking Saul to the floor with her. She was openly sobbing now, terrified she was losing her mind, but when she tried to look up at Rory, she saw the photographs on the wall behind him. Her cries became wails of anguish as she pointed and screamed, “LOOK!”

She knew they wouldn’t see what she saw. How could they? They were sane and she was not. She needed medical attention. A hospital. Meds and restraints.

“Holy fuck!” Saul blurted, untangling himself from her and trying to stand. His words were nearly drowned out by Karen’s howls but Rory heard enough to turn around and look in the direction Karen was pointing as Saul stared in wide-eyed wonder.

“Jesus,” he whispered and the color that had only moments before flushed his face now bleached out as if it had never been there. He reached quivering fingertips towards the glass of the nearest photo, but stopped just before they made contact. He looked over his shoulder, first at Saul and then down at Karen before returning his full attention to first the same photograph and then the entire wall.

Karen’s red-rimmed eyes traced his slow path. Though she couldn’t see every photograph from her position on the floor, she could tell by the faces of her new friends that each and every one of them had changed.

They were no longer pictures of long-dead, unsmiling children in dresses and suits. Though they still wore the same clothing, the creatures inside the clothes were distinctly not human.

Half an hour later, the three of them sat in the kitchen, visibly shaken and uncertain of what to do with themselves.

“Someone must have come in here before we arrived,” Rory said. “Messed with the pictures…I don’t…could have been days ago for all we know.”

Karen shook her head. “No! I told you, I’d just looked at them before I went down to the basement and they were all normal.”

“Before you went down to the basement,” Rory repeated. “The basement with the coffins.”

“That’s right.” Her voice was stronger now, though her eyes remained puffy and red.

“There’s nothing but junk in the basement, Karen.”

Several seconds ticked by, Karen trying to decide how to respond to this lie. Finally, she simply said, “You’re wrong.”

Rory glared at her and Karen suspected he thought she may have had something to do with the changes in the photographs.

Saul, sensing the tension, quickly said, “Maybe whoever defaced the photos was also in the basement.”

Rory’s eyes darted to his friend and he snapped, “That’s fucking ridiculous. Who the fuck would bring caskets down to the basement? And even more importantly, why?”

“If you think I’m lying,” Karen interrupted, “why not just go down there and see for yourself?”

“Well, obviously, I’m gonna have to,” Rory told her, sounding snotty and petulant.

“I’m ready whenever you are,” she said. But she didn’t know if she really was ready. Her headache was coming back and her stomach still gave a lurch every so often. The chill from the house seemed to have taken up permanent residence in her bones and she grimaced every time she noticed her hands trembling.

“Why would I make something like this up, Rory?” she demanded. She was getting angry now and it felt good. So much better than feeling like a fearful, reprimanded child. “If you think I’m full of shit, why don’t you just go down there and see for yourself?”

Rory’s lips pressed together in a hard white line. She could tell he was just as pissed as she was. But did he actually think she ran around the house vandalizing every last photograph into something gruesome? The idea alone was beyond comprehension.

“I think we should go down there, Rory,” Saul said. “If there’s someone in the house—”

“There’s no one in the fucking house,” Rory snapped, his eyes never leaving Karen’s.

“Oh,” she said. “So, we’re back to thinking I’m crazy, right? Not only did I imagine someone touching me last night, but now I’m imagining entire scenarios involving coffins and creepy pictures. Is that right, Rory? You think I’m just some fucking nut-job who needs to be institutionalized?”

“I didn’t say that,” he replied.

“You didn’t have to.” Karen stared right back, chin raised defiantly.

Saul cleared his throat, shifting uncomfortably in his seat. “Arguing about it isn’t gonna help, guys,” he said. He touched Rory’s shoulder to get the other man to look at him. “Let’s just go check it out. No harm, no foul, okay?”

Reluctantly, Rory said, “Fine,” pushing his chair back from the table so its feet made sharp scraping sounds against the linoleum. “Let’s go.”

Karen stood up, unsure of what she wanted to do. “I’ll wait here,” she said at last. “Well, in the living room.”

“I think that’s a good idea,” Rory told her as he left the kitchen.

Saul gave her a sympathetic look as he followed Rory out to the living room, Karen trailing behind the two, wringing her chilly hands.

There was no further discussion on the matter. Rory opened the basement door and stood at the threshold, reaching around to flick a light switch. Karen’s stomach did another flop as she remembered there had been no light switch when she went down. She was about to say something about it when Rory, after flicking the switch several times, said, “Damn. Bulb must have blown. We’re gonna need a flashlight.”

Like a magician, Saul pulled a red Mini-Mag from the breast pocket of his shirt. “Got you covered, partner,” he drawled in a very poor imitation of John Wayne, doing his best to lighten the mood. Rory was not amused. He took the flashlight, turned it on and started down the stairs without a word. Saul glanced back at Karen once, shrugged, then followed his friend down into the darkness below.

Continuing to rub her hands together for warmth, Karen paced back and forth in front of the door, listening as the men clomped down the old wooden staircase, neither of them speaking. She glanced nervously at the old photograph of the violinist, still mutated into an abomination, as were all the other portraits around him.

Now that the initial shock had worn off, she was curious as to whether or not the original photographs themselves had been tampered with or if they were entirely new photos. Peering closely at the face of the violinist, so close her nose nearly bumped the glass, she couldn’t see any evidence of tampering. It didn’t look to her as though someone had painted or scribbled over the photo, or erased the face and hands to draw the altered versions over them.

Frowning, she took a step away from the wall and heard a startled yelp from the basement, followed by shouts and curses and the sound of boots pounding stairs.

She whirled towards the door just as Saul burst through it, ripping off his shirt, the buttons clattering onto the floor, pinging off the wall and the nearby end table.

“Jesus, fuck!” he screamed, ripping the garment from his body and throwing it to the floor as if it were on fire. The T-shirt he wore beneath it was next, pulled over his head with such violence Karen heard the fabric tear and then Rory was there, also ripping the clothes from his body.

“What happened?” Karen asked, watching the men strip naked without even pausing to consider her presence. “What’s wrong?”

“Fleas!” Rory cried. “A huge nest of fucking fleas!”

She looked down at the clothes they had discarded, stooping over a little, and then she saw them. Swarms of tiny black fleas crawling and hopping over the fabric and each other, moving across the shirts like a single entity. A tiny black wave covering everything.

“Oh my God,” she said, utterly horrified.

“Fuck!” Saul screamed, dancing around, trying to rip the leg of his jeans over his boot. “Fuck, fuck, fuck!”

Rory, quicker at undressing than Saul, was slapping his own head, shaking his hair, scratching at his chest, underarms, and pubic region.

“Shower,” Karen said quickly. “Go get in the shower! Both of you!”

Both men looked at Karen as if noticing her for the first time, but still didn’t care about being nude in front of her.

“Go!” she screamed, pointing at the stairs, already noticing small red welts puffing up all over their bodies.

They ran, both of them, one behind the other, pale buttocks racing each other up the staircase as Karen ran for the kitchen, throwing open cabinets and drawers until she found a box of black plastic garbage bags, which she snatched with one hand while the other was already reaching for the box of matches she’d found earlier.

Back in the living room, she despised the idea of touching the infested clothing, but knew it had to be done. The quicker the better, she told herself and, trying not to look at the teeming insects, she bundled the clothes up into one of the bags as fast as she could, hissing slightly when she felt the quick little stabs of pain as the fleas bit into her hands and wrists.

Once all the clothing was in the bag, she ran for the front door, bag held out before her the way some people carry a dirty diaper.

Quickly, she yanked the door open and dashed outside.

She looked around the front yard frantically, searching for a spot far enough away from any trees to set the bag alight without causing a fire hazard. The only place she trusted was right in the middle of the flagstone walkway, so she dropped the bag down, pulled out a single match, struck it and once lit, let it fall. At first, it didn’t seem the clothes would burn — the plastic bag only melted and smoldered a bit — but finally, after dropping several more matches onto the heap, Saul’s shirt caught and from there, it was as if the entire bundle was drenched in gasoline.

The cold and gray forgotten, she stood over the burning pile, watching nervously as a few sparks broke free and shot high into the boughs of the nearby pines. It was several minutes before what had happened really sunk in.

Fleas.

A huge nest of fleas, Rory had said. How peculiar, she thought. When she had been in the basement, she hadn’t noticed even a single flea bite, never mind an entire swarm of them attacking.

She was still mulling this over when both Saul and Rory emerged from the house, dressed, hair damp and plastered to their heads. They joined Karen in the middle of the walkway, looking down at the burning pile of clothes. She could tell by their faces how disturbed they both were by the incident and thought she had a pretty good idea of how they felt. Weird happenings were beginning to be a regular part of her existence.

“You didn’t mention anything about fleas,” Rory said eventually.

“That’s because I didn’t know about them,” she said.

“How could you not have known? They were everywhere. All over everything.”

She could only look at him apologetically.

“Maybe they just hatched,” Saul offered, not raising his dark eyes from the smoldering pile of clothes. “Or whatever it is fleas do. Maybe it has something to do with the weather.”

Both Karen and Rory looked at him skeptically before facing each other again.

“And, just so you know,” Rory said. “There were no coffins.”

“What?” Her face fell.

“Just a bunch of old junk, just like it was the last time we were down there.”

“That can’t be!” Her voice rose to an almost hysterical pitch. “I saw them! I touched them!”

“Well, if you did, they’re not there now.”

“But…” She tried for words that wouldn’t come. Finally, she managed. “You went all the way down?”

“Yeah, we went all the way down.”

“All three staircases? I mean, all the way to the dirt floor? You saw the candles?”

The two men gave each other a fleeting glance before returning their attention to Karen.

“Three staircases?” Rory asked.

Karen didn’t like the sound of his voice when he said it. She already knew what it would be followed with and she liked that even less.

“Karen,” he said. “There’s only one staircase. About ten steps.”