House of Fallen Trees

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

Karen emerged from the hot shower feeling refreshed and awake. She wrapped a fresh towel around herself and began to wipe condensation off the mirror above the sink with her hand.

The moment her hand came into contact with the glass, it cracked beneath her fingers.

She gasped in surprise and yanked her hand away. Her first thought was that she’d put too much pressure on the old mirror — a thought which she quickly dismissed as being absurd. It wasn’t as if she’d punched the damn thing…

Studying the crack, which ran from the upper left corner of the small mirror to lower right, she raised her hand to touch it again, but even before she made physical contact with it another crack appeared, crisscrossing the first.

“Holy shit.”

She took a step back, confusion creasing her forehead.

The mirror cracked again…and then again and as she stared, the fear just beginning to tingle in her veins, the cracks began to ooze a dark red fluid.

Blood, she realized as it dribbled down the mirror and dripped—tap, tap, tap—onto the back of the sink.

Not possible, her mind cried while her body backed up even further, until she was against the opposite wall, eyes widening with fear. Losing it. No other explanation. I’m just losing it…

She wanted to shout for Rory…for Saul…but the fear of them running and finding she’d been screaming and hysterical for no reason whatsoever prevented her from doing so.

She could be crazy, but if that was the case, she wanted to be quietly so. Not a blabbering idiot, not some lunatic schizophrenic yelling at hallucinations and drooling down the front of her shirt.

Please, she begged herself. Just stop.

She forced herself to not hear the cracking sounds, the blood drip-drip-dripping, covering her ears with her hands. She made herself close her eyes and count until she reached twenty. Then it would be gone. The mirror would be normal once more and she could think. She needed to think, goddammit.

Beginning her count, she tried to get her breathing back to normal, to relax and put all thoughts of insanity out of her head. She was simply overtired…jetlagged…

At twenty, she opened her eyes to find that even more cracks had formed, more blood had spilled onto the sink, flowing over the side of the pristine porcelain now, dripping onto the gray and white tiled floor and puddling there, collecting in the spaces between the tiles and slowly traveling towards her bare feet.

She sucked air into her lungs and began to step forward, hand reaching out to the mirror and her cracked red reflection.

“It’s not real,” she whispered. “It cannot be real.”

The moment her foot came down and touched the pooling blood, she grimaced and then the entire bathroom floor gave way, plummeting her downwards into nothingness. She didn’t have time to scream, no time to react in any way at all. She was simply falling through darkest space, the sound of the splintering floorboards ringing in her ears even as they fell with her.

Arms pin-wheeling, she was dimly aware of the urge to vomit and in the next millisecond, she hit bottom, landing squarely on her tailbone.

Face pinched in pain, she immediately attempted to stand up and found she couldn’t. Instead, she looked around to discover she’d fallen into the Captain’s office, having missed falling on top of his desk by mere inches.

She groaned and put a hand to her lower back, hoping she wasn’t seriously hurt. How had this happened? On the floor around her, she expected to see broken floorboards and other evidence of a collapsed floor, but there was nothing. Just the immaculate Persian rug. Tilting her head, she saw the ceiling above her was intact.

A dream then?

But she knew better. This was no dream. The pain in her backside told her that.

And furthermore…

How had she fallen from the bathroom on the second floor to end up in the office on the third floor?

The question nearly stopped her heart.

What the fuck was going on?

Pain or no pain, she climbed to her feet with the intention of getting the hell out of there but froze when she saw the notebooks scattered across the top of the desk. They hadn’t been there on her previous visit to this room, and she doubted Rory or Saul had even been in here since then. And even if they had, why would they have left half a dozen notebooks out in the open this way?

She stepped closer to the desk and saw they were journal-type notebooks, some of them more battered than others. Older, with creases and doodles scarring their covers.

She could not deny her curiosity and when she flipped open one of the covers, her breath caught in her throat. Despite the many years since she’d last seen it, the handwriting of her brother was unmistakable.

Her eyes quickly scanned the first lines and without even realizing it, she sank into the ornate desk chair, now oblivious to the pain in her lower spine.

The entries were undated and it took her a while to put the notebooks in what she guessed was some kind of order but when she’d done so, she had to blink back tears. The things Sean had written about were disturbing to say the least.

Turning another page in the last book, she read:

“Now that they’re both dead, I have nothing to keep me here and yet I feel I cannot escape. To leave here would be to leave my last memories of my beloved family and I simply cannot bring myself to do that. They both loved this house as much as I did and it would be a betrayal to them, and to myself, to flee in the face of heartbreak. That is not something Melinda would have wanted. ‘The Forest Sea’ is what she used to call our beloved home, always with that small smile and her eyes glowing as emerald as the pines surrounding us.

No, I must stay here and somehow battle on through the heartache. For them. For myself. They died here and so shall I…”

Karen gasped at the last sentence, her heart sinking, the strange event that had brought her to this room and to these notebooks completely forgotten. She stared at her brother’s handwriting for a long time before turning to the last page of the notebook.

There, scrawled in black ink as though written by a drunkard, the words screamed up at her and somehow she wasn’t particularly surprised.

“TWO MEN HAVE THE CARCASS!!! TWO MEN HAVE THE CARCASS! TWOMENTWOMENTWOMENTWOMENTWO-”

She slapped the book closed and gathered them all up in her arms, racing from the room as if chased by demons.

“Rory!” she shouted. “Rory!”

By the time she’d reached the bottom of the stairs, both Rory and Saul were there, expressions of alarm on their faces.

“Jesus, Karen!” Rory asked. “What is it? What’s wrong?”

Panting, she held the notebooks out for him to see. “Why didn’t you tell me about these?”

He frowned, looking more confused than ever. “What? What are they?”

“Sean’s notebooks!” she barked. “Why would you keep this from me?”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about!”

Saul came forward, reaching for the notebooks, but she pulled them away and burst into tears. “He was fucking insane! How could you have let that happen? Why didn’t you tell me?”

“No,” Rory insisted. “He was fine! Why would you even think that?”

“It’s all here!” She held the notebooks up once more. “Right fucking here! He thought he was your precious fucking Captain! Does that sound like a sane mind to you?”

“Let me see them, Karen,” Saul prodded gently, extending his hand once more.

Her eyes found his and she snarled. “Did you know about this too? You did, didn’t you? How could you not have? It’s right here!”

“I didn’t know anything,” Saul said in the same soothing tone. “Please. Just show us what you found.”

A moment passed, her cheeks flushed with anger and grief and then she shoved the notebooks at Saul’s chest before sinking to the bottom riser and sobbing freely. “He killed himself. He’s dead. He killed himself.”

“No!” Rory suddenly shouted. “Sean is alive! He never would have hurt himself! He loved me! He loved this house!”

“The Captain loved this house!” she yelled back.

Rory stalked to the other side of the room, breathing hard, his fists clenching and unclenching at his sides.

With one of the notebooks open in his hands, Saul asked Karen where she’d found them.

“In the Captain’s office. They were on the desk.”

“I’ve never even seen those before,” Rory said, still clearly infuriated.

Saul rapidly began turning pages, his face darkening as he did. “Maybe you should, Rory.”

“What the fuck is that supposed to mean?” Rory rushed over to his side and snatched the top notebook away from him. He couldn’t have read more than a few lines when he threw the notebook across the room. “This is bullshit! Those aren’t Sean’s.”

“It’s his writing,” Karen insisted.

Rory’s jaw worked up and down. He wanted to argue but she suspected he was out of words. Finally, when he spoke, it was barely above a whisper. “Sean did not kill himself.”

That said, he stormed through the living room and out of sight.

Saul carried the notebooks over to the sofa and sat with them on his lap, reading. Karen watched his face very carefully, looking for signs of…she wasn’t sure what. When she couldn’t stand his lack of expression for another second, she said, “He was crazy, wasn’t he?”

He looked up at her sadly. “I don’t think you should bring this up to Rory again. At least, not for a while. Let him read these when he’s ready, once he’s calmed down.”

“You didn’t answer my question.”

Sitting back on the sofa, Saul released a long sigh. He thought about his answer for a long time before replying. “My grandmother used to say that we’re all surrounded by spirits, all the time. She believed that they can affect our moods because we breathe them in and out, absorb them through our skin. That sometimes they can overcome us.”

She frowned at him, confused. “I don’t get it.”

“Well,” he said, and set the notebooks on the cushion beside him. “It basically boils down to this. Either Sean was crazy. Or…”

“Or what?”

“Remember I said don’t mention this to Rory.”

“Or what?”

“Or he was…I guess, for lack of a better term…he was possessed.”

Karen stared at him. “Possessed.”

He shrugged. “I’m just saying what my grandmother believed and it seems like those are our only two choices. Which do you prefer?”

But she didn’t know which she preferred. And, she supposed, she never would.