House of Fallen Trees

CHAPTER FOUR

It wasn’t until the next afternoon that it occurred to her she should perhaps call the police and tell them she was being harassed. It seemed like a good idea for exactly fifteen seconds and then the reality of it slammed home. The cops wouldn’t do shit. They never did. Even if someone was physically threatening her, they probably wouldn’t do anything about it. She had no faith in the system, which was only in place to protect the guilty and punish the innocent. No faith in cops, most of whom only became cops in order to bully people and make themselves feel superior.

Karen was on her own but she didn’t think she was completely helpless. She didn’t have to take this harassment. She could try to figure out what was going on, try and make it stop, find out who was behind it and why.

The more she thought about it though, the more she drew a blank. She could think of absolutely no one who would want to pull this kind of prank, couldn’t even think of a single motive for such a thing.

Frustrated, she called and left a message for her parents saying a work thing had come up — a deadline for a short story — and she wouldn’t be able to make the birthday gathering after all.

She was relieved she didn’t have to talk to her mother in person. The woman would almost certainly have sensed the lie and pressured Karen to come clean and then proceed to guilt her into attending the birthday dinner, whether she wanted to or not.

That done, she went into her kitchen to brew coffee and took a mug of it into her office with her so she could do Internet searches on her PC. She didn’t quite have the courage yet to touch the laptop, fearing the same message would start popping up all over again.

Sipping coffee, she did her best to dig up info on Sean, which consisted of a few articles in Washington newspapers about his going missing without a trace. She found nothing she didn’t already know.

Next, she searched for anything regarding his partner, Rory Luden, and also turned up next to nothing, except that he was a summer school teacher of social studies in Indigo Bend, Washington, and often traveled to Spokane to run marathons. He had no personal website she could find and, from what she could gather, was about as private a person as she herself was. Of course, being a gay man living in East Bum Fuck Nowhere could have had something to do with that. She doubted the lumber town he called home could be an easy place to be gay in. Most small towns, she knew, were filled with less than liberal minds.

Though she continued to turn up nothing, she kept searching anyway. It wasn’t until her coffee had grown cold that she sat back with a sigh and admitted maybe she couldn’t find anything because there was nothing to find.

Drumming her fingers on the desk, she wracked her brain, doing her best to remember any friends Sean had had before he moved away to the Northwest.

She could think of no one. Even his high school friends remained elusive in her mind. She just hadn’t paid much attention to them at the time.

Maybe her mother would remember some of them, she thought. But asking her mom would be opening up a whole new can of worms to wade through.

“Fuck,” she whispered, reluctant to give up so soon.

After several minutes of trying to think her way out of the box, she decided to give it a break. Work on her novel for a while. That at least would cheer her up some.

She clicked off the Internet and went into her Microsoft Word program, opening the file called DMASQUE and scrolling down to where she had left off the last time she’d worked on it. Her eyes flicked over the words, rereading what she’d written as she grabbed her mug for a sip of coffee. The instant the liquid touched her lips, she grimaced. There was nothing worse than cold coffee, as far as she was concerned.

A new cup was in order. She went to the kitchen, refilled the mug from the still warm carafe, nuked it a minute for good measure, then returned to her office, chilly hands wrapped around the hot porcelain.

The mug tumbled from her hands, splashing her lower body with hot coffee, but Karen barely noticed.

On the screen, the words TWO MEN HAVE THE CARCASS were repeated endlessly on the page, the cursor blinking at the end of an unfinished line: TWO MEN.

Still, Karen did not scream. She sank to her knees, a squeak of confusion escaping her throat.

She was losing her mind.

That was the only explanation that made sense. Hallucinating, maybe. Or asleep. This could be a dream.

She clung to that thought like the victim of a shipwreck clinging to a rotten wooden board in a vast black sea, no moon, no stars, no land in sight.

Just sleeping. Dreaming. A very bad dream, but still just a dream.

On the floor, she curled into the fetal position and closed her eyes, lips moving silently, repeating the word “Asleep” over and over, until she finally was.

When she awoke, she realized she was cold and wet. Sitting up, she remembered everything and saw that she had curled up on the floor in a puddle of coffee, among broken shards of the mug she’d dropped.

Running a hand over her mouth, she stared suspiciously through the dark up at her computer monitor. It was blank.

No matter.

She knew what she had to do now.

Whether Sean was dead or alive didn’t matter anymore. She had to find him. That was what her subconscious had been trying to tell her with all its sleight of hand tricks. Trying to wake her up to the reality of the situation. No one was doing anything to find her brother — or his remains, if that turned out to be the case. Everyone had given up, even her parents. But Karen couldn’t give up. Didn’t want to, though if anyone had said this to her a few days before, she would have scoffed and said, “The past is the past. We can’t wallow in it.” And she believed that still, but now she knew the situation with Sean wasn’t the past at all. It was the present. It would only be the past once he was found and buried, if that’s what it came to. Otherwise, it would continue to haunt her.

She couldn’t allow that. She needed to know the truth. And there was only one place she could go to find it: Fallen Trees, Washington. Sean’s last known residence, his last known connection to the world and the people in his life. Groaning at the stiffness in her body, Karen got to her feet, massaging the back of her neck with one hand. She would clean up the coffee and broken mug later. Right now, she had a phone call to make.

In the living room, she clicked on a table lamp and found Rory’s phone number immediately, something that was a bit unusual for her in the chaotic state of her condo.

She picked up the phone and dialed the number she’d jotted down, suddenly certain the line would go dead or an automated voice would tell her the number had been disconnected, was no longer in service. Something.

But three thousand miles away in Washington State, a phone rang. It rang half a dozen times and just as Karen was about to hang up, frustrated there was no voicemail on which to leave a message, a groggy male voice said, “Hello?”

“Rory?”

“Yeah. Who’s this?”

“It’s Karen Lewis.” She waited for his reply, but received none. “Sean’s sister.”

“I know,” he said. “Do you realize what time it is?”

She glanced at the clock. “It’s five AM. Which would make it…” She tried to calculate the time difference.

“Two o’clock,” he answered for her and sighed loudly. Maybe he was yawning.

With her free hand, she scratched her forehead. “Sorry. I didn’t think about the time.”

Rory cleared his throat and Karen heard the rustle of bed sheets. “What can I do for you, Karen?”

“I want to come out there,” she said. “See the B&B. Meet you. See where my brother lived.”

More silence on the other end of the line. Finally, sounding genuinely confused, he asked, “Why?”

“Wouldn’t you? If you were in my shoes?”

“I…yeah, I guess so. But—”

“No. No buts. I have to do this, Rory.” She hesitated, reluctant to show any weakness. “It would mean a lot to me.”

Rory didn’t say anything for a long time, long enough to make Karen suspect he’d hung up on her. At last, he asked, “What about your parents?”

“What about them?”

“Do they know you plan to come out?”

“No.”

“Good. Let’s keep it that way, if you can. That’s one headache I don’t need.”

She ignored the implication that she was a headache to him and said, “That’s fine. I have no intention of telling them anything. They probably won’t even know I’m out of town.”

“How long do you intend to stay?”

“I have no idea,” she said honestly. “However long it takes, I suppose.”

“However long what takes?”

She thought about it. “I’m not sure. I guess I’ll know when I get there.”

Once more, his silence revealed more to her than words ever could.

“I won’t be any trouble,” she said. “At least, I’ll try not to be.”

“Okay,” he replied, the reluctance in his voice all too obvious. “Just don’t expect much.”

“How do you mean?”

“I mean the house. It’s not quite finished.”

“Oh, I don’t care about that. I probably won’t want to spend more than a few hours looking the place over.”

“You don’t understand,” he said slowly. “The house is in the middle of the forest. The road doesn’t even go all the way up to it. You have to hike onto the property.”

She was somewhat taken aback by this new information. “Jesus. You really are out in the boonies then.”

“That’s one way of putting it. But, I’m down in the town now. I have a small house I rent. You’re welcome to the sofa if you like, but I’m telling you, getting to the house is a pain in the ass. If you go up there, you won’t want to hike back down the same day, especially now that it’s getting darker earlier. And colder.”

She chuckled uneasily. “You make it sound like it’s on the moon.”

“It may as well be. There’s hot water and electricity, but no phone lines.”

“That’s no problem. I’ll bring my cell.”

It was Rory’s turn to laugh. “And no cell towers either.”

“Oh. Well…I’m sure I’ll make do. I’m not one for much company anyway.”

“Good, because you won’t find it up there. I haven’t been there myself for about a week.”

“I see.” They were silent for a few moments, and then Karen wanted to get to the practicalities. “So…where should I fly into?”

He sniffed. “Spokane. Call me back when you book a flight. I’ll pick you up.”

“Oh, you don’t have to do that. I can take a cab.”

He laughed again. “To Fallen Trees? No, I’ll pick you up.”

“Ok, then,” she said, doing her best to sound friendly and appreciative. “I’ll call you back with the info once I get it.”

“Cool. And Karen?”

“Yeah?”

“Pack something warm.”

She smiled. “Will do. Go back to sleep.”

“I heard that,” he said.

She disconnected long enough to dig out the phone number of her travel agent. No phone service, she thought. Out in the middle of nowhere. No people around. What she had initially found slightly alarming was now sounding more and more appealing to her.

Think of it as a writer’s retreat, she thought. If nothing else, maybe I’ll be able to finish my novel.

Suddenly in a better mood than she had been before calling Rory, she went to clean up the mess in her office, then shower and call the travel agent.

The day brightened around her and the unease that had been plaguing her — words like carcass and men—began to fade a bit. Not completely. They were still there, somewhere deep in the pit of her stomach, but she did her best to ignore them and, for the most part, was successful.