House of Dead Trees

by Rod Redux

  Jane’s heart was beating fast. People were always intrigued by myths and urban legends, the more gruesome the better. As civilized as modern people prided themselves for being, Jane knew most folk were just a blackout and a creaky floorboard away from medieval superstition.

  Their audience would be captivated by Diane’s morbid tale of sky burials and superstitious lumberjacks and human remains enveloped in trees. The connection between the Indian burial grounds and the haunting of Forester House was too obvious for even the most oblivious couch potato to overlook. In fact, it was so good it was almost cliché!

  She couldn’t wait to show Raj the interview!

  “I have a section of one of those trees if you’d like to see it,” Diane said mildly. “I keep it on the second floor, in my restricted collection.”

  “Yes, of course!” Jane said eagerly, and the amateur historian laughed. She was clearly enjoying the effect her tale was having on her special guest.

  “Follow me,” Diane said, and she walked back to the foyer and started up the stairs.

  As Jane followed, Diane spoke back to her:

  “For several years, I kept all the Sawtooth Hills and Forester House artifacts down on the first floor with the rest of my historical exhibits. I thought it was important for both sides of our town’s history to be available to the public, the bad as well as the good. To be honest, the Forester House and the Indian artifacts are really our little town’s only claims to fame. But after receiving several complaints from local citizens, who’d rather the world didn’t know about the tawdry scandals of our hometown’s past, I decided to restrict access to any items I’ve collected that are related to the Forester home and the Sawtooth Hills Indian burials.”

  “Really?”

  “Oh, yes,” Diane said, nodding. “I even received an anonymous death threat or two when the Forester House display was open to the public. I think people were disturbed by the deviant sexual behavior that was reputed to have gone on up there in the Twenties. Of course, some of the men and women who were involved in the scandal in the late 1920’s have descendants who still reside here in town. I don’t think their grandchildren like their family name being associated with the kind of shenanigans that went on up there when the Forester brothers occupied the house.

  ”You’re referring to the twins,” Jane said.

  “Yes. John Forester’s grandsons, Abel and Anson Forester. They were very handsome young men. Worldly, charismatic… rich. They took possession of the house in the mid-twenties, after they came of age. From all accounts, they derived supreme pleasure in the reputation that had gathered around their grandfather’s property over the years. They completely restored the house, using lumber from the Sawtooth Hills, just like their grandfather did, then they began to hold séances, invited parapsychologists to investigate the house and document the phenomena that was reputed to occur there.”

  Diane turned right at the top of the stairs, led Jane down a narrow hallway.

  “After a while, the séances and psychic investigations took on a more sinister air. There were rumors of occult activity. Black Masses. Sexual deviance. The twins threw wild parties every weekend. Debauches, really. That’s what the local churches accused them of doing anyway. It was really quite the scandal. I have newspaper clippings that follow the editorial tirades of our local Christian leadership, ranting about the hijinks going on at the Forester House, and Abel Forester’s rejoinders in the classifieds, all but daring them to come up and try to stop them. It’s really quite entertaining to read.”

  Diane Belasco opened a door at the end of the hallway and said, “I keep it all in here now.”

  They passed into a medium-sized room that was wall-to-wall with Diane Belasco’s Forester House memorabilia. The clutter reminded Jane of the homes of compulsive hoarders. There were only a few winding paths through the mounds of relics, and, Jane realized with a pang of regret, far too many things to look through in just the short amount of time she had remaining. Glancing at the time display in the viewfinder of her camera, she realized it was almost 5:30 PM already.

  Where to start? Jane despaired, her eyes roaming over all the mouthwatering heaps.

  “Here’s what I was telling you about,” Diane said, pushing through the room like an icebreaker. “This is the only extant example of a Sawtooth Hills ‘dead tree’-- that I know of, anyway. I’ve been offered quite a bit of money for it. On more than one occasion, actually. But it’s so unique I can’t bear to part with it.”

  Jane approached a large glass display case sitting on a hand-carved oak pedestal. Inside was mounted a three foot section of a pine tree trunk, preserved beneath a glossy layer of lacquer. The bark of the tree was scaly, gray and black like a reptile’s hide. Half-enveloped in the bark was what appeared to be a skeletal hand, the bones porous with age.

  It looked like it was reaching out for help.

  Jane videotaped it carefully from several angles, then turned the camera aside and bent to look at it herself. She could see three or four inches of the radius and ulna protruding from the wood, and the carpals, metacarpals and phalanges. Only the thumb and two of the fingers were completely intact, submerged in tree bark like the bones of a beast trapped in tar. Unenveloped, the other finger bones had fallen off at some point in the past.

  “Fascinating,” Jane murmured as Diane looked on with pride.

  There was something deeply disturbing about the relic. It almost looked as if the tree had eaten the poor fellow alive. But of course, he or she wasn’t alive when the body was “buried” in the tree. The tree had merely grown around the remains of the corpse. Jane stood back with a shudder.

  “Over here are my scrapbooks,” Diane said, crossing to the other side of the room. “I’ve clipped and saved every newspaper and magazine article I could find about the Forester House. There’s quite a bit of material from the twenties, when the twins occupied the house. A write-up in Ripley’s Believe it or Not. All kinds of pulp magazine articles. I have all the news stories about the murders, what they called the Halloween Massacre.

  “‘Halloween Slaughterhouse. Mass Murder in America’s Heartland.’ That’s a typical headline concerning the incident.” Diane said, flicking an old newspaper with her finger. She smiled, set it back down.

  “The house was closed up after the murders, but there was a resurgence of interest in haunted houses in the early eighties, after that Amityville Horror movie came out. Several articles were published about the Forester House then, although the family wouldn’t let anyone actually go inside the property.”

  Diane picked up a tabloid, showing Jane the headline: IS THE FORESTER HOUSE AMERICA’S MOST HAUNTED HOME? Below the headline, a grainy photograph of the house itself, sitting on its craggy hill.

  Jane carefully examined a vintage photo that was sitting atop a pile of periodicals. Two men in stiff-brimmed hats, standing shoulder-to-shoulder in front of a white-washed veranda. There were lush ferns hanging in pots from the porch roof, wicker chairs, a glorious tangle of rose bushes. The men were dressed in matching suits: white slacks, dark vests and bow-ties. Both were fair-skinned and mustachioed.

  They gazed out of the photo at Jane like they were staring at her personally, from almost ninety years in the past.

  Their eyes were dark, unreadable.

  Jane stared back for a moment, then turned to Diane and asked, “The twins…?”

  Diane looked down at the photograph Jane was holding lightly by the corner. “Yes, Abel and Anson. Devilishly handsome young men, wouldn’t you agree? Oh, but what a reputation!”

  “Oh?” Jane replied.

  The way the old woman stared at the photo, longing on her face, Jane had to wonder what kind of fantasies fled through the old woman’s head alone in her bed at night, no husband to keep her warm.

  Everybody has their dirty little secrets, Jane thought.

  “No one has ever been able to prove they were the ones who poisoned their guests during that All Hallow’s Eve party.
The twins died along with the rest of the partygoers, but it has always been speculated that they were the ones who did it. There’s just something… cruel in their expressions. Something in their eyes. The way they smile… It’s the way a shark would smile before it takes a bite out of you, wouldn’t you say?”

  Ninety years separated the present from the fleeting moment in time the photo had been taken, but Jane was compelled to agree. The twins grinned out at her, handsome—toothsome!-- but there was something in their eyes. A darkness. Arrogance, and the gleam of perversity. Yes, these were the pearly white grins of two young sharks.

  Jane nodded distractedly as she set the photo back down. “Yes… Ooh, look! I have goosebumps!”

  Diane patted Jane’s upheld forearm. “Oh…they’ll do that to you,” she said, smiling sympathetically.

  Jane explored Diane’s special collection for a while longer as her host told her about the local legends that had sprung up around Sawtooth Hills: how people went missing hiking or hunting in the woods. Sometimes they were found, sometimes they weren’t, but if they did manage to make it back out alive, they invariably claimed that they’d heard strange things in the forest-- inexplicable rustling sounds in the treetops, voices calling out to them, horrible cries for help or the growling of unseen animals. A few people claimed to have seen ghostly beings flitting between the trees trunks, strange mists or drifting balls of light.

  “Swamp gas, maybe?” Diane said. “It’s pretty mucky in those little valleys between the hills. What we call boggy troughs. As far as ghosts and voices… well, people get delirious from exposure, dehydration. But it’s thrilling to talk about, isn’t it? The last fellow that got lost down there was a guy named Floyd… oh, I can’t quite recall his last name… This was two summers ago.” Diane put her finger up suddenly. “Donnelly!” she cried. “Floyd Donnelly!” She sorted through another pile and came up with a newspaper, showed it to Jane.

  LOCAL HUNTER FOUND ALIVE, Lost in Woods for Six Days, the headline declared.

  “He claimed he saw a little boy wandering in the woods while he was hunting. The boy supposedly ran away when Donnelly called out to him, and he gave chase, concerned for the boy’s safety. He ended up getting lost himself, then fell off a bluff and broke his leg. He was at death’s door when a search party found him. Most folk around here know to stay clear of the woods out by Sawtooth Hills, but this Donnelly fellow was new to town. Just moved here from somewhere in Kentucky, I believe.” Diane smiled smugly. “I’m sure he knows now, though. Oh, yes.”

  “What about you?” Jane asked. “Do you believe in all this stuff? I mean, the supernatural phenomena that’s been reported about the Forester House and the Sawtooth Hills?”

  The historian looked straight into the camera lens, her face grim. “Oh, yes,” she said in all seriousness. “I’ve lived here in Cypress all my life. I’ve driven through Sawtooth Hills many times, and I’ve personally seen some mighty strange things. Everybody does, especially if you have to drive out there at night.”

  “What kinds of strange things?”

  “Oh… things moving through the trees. You catch them out of the corner of your eye. You tell yourself it’s just the shadows cast by your headlights, but when you see them for yourself, well… If you’re headed out there, you’ll find out what I’m talking about.”

  That gave Jane a cold tingle. She suddenly began to dread the drive that lay ahead of her.

  “Let’s see…” Diane continued. “Once, I saw the little boy, standing at the foot of the Forester House’s driveway.”

  “You think it was John Forester’s son? The one who disappeared in the woods back when the house was first built?”

  Diane shrugged. “Who can say for sure? I only know when I saw him, I felt such a rush of horror and… pity for him. He was so small, a beautiful little boy with these big blue eyes and flaxen hair. Thin as a rail and dressed in tattered clothes. I was so surprised I almost went right off the road. I… kept driving for a little while, I was so frightened, but then I felt bad and I made myself turn around and go back. Told myself that wasn’t a ghost, just a little boy who’d gotten lost, and I ought to be ashamed of myself for driving right by him instead of stopping to see if he needed help.” Diane smiled. “But of course, he was gone when I got back. Who knows…? Maybe I just imagined him. As you can see, there’s plenty of tinder to fire my imagination up here! I don’t need any encouragement on that account. Still, I believe what I saw was real. That it was the spirit of John Forester’s son.”

  The house’s electronic door chime rang out then and both women jumped, Jane with a little cry. They shared a laugh and Diane said, “That’s probably my friend Betty. She wanted to come meet you. I hope you don’t mind.”

  “Not at all,” Jane said, shutting off her camera. She closed the LCD viewfinder.

  Diane gestured for Jane to exit the room first.

  “Diane?” the historian’s friend called from the floor below. “You upstairs?”

  “We’re coming down!” Diane called back, closing the door of her restricted collection.

  Jane led the way downstairs, glad for a distraction from Diane’s gruesome yarns. She was thrilled that she’d gotten so much good footage, but the woman’s stories had given her the creeps… and she considered herself pretty jaded when it came to spooky stories and haunted houses.

  She went downstairs to greet Diane’s friend.

  The House

  1

  Robert Forester was leaning against the side of his car when Raj and the Dans came jouncing over the last hill and pulled to a stop a couple feet away.

  Forester was a tall, thin fellow, thirty-three years old, with shoulder-length sandy blonde hair, a beard and a fair freckled complexion. He watched as the doors of the Ghost Scouts’ black SUV swung open, the dust thrown up by their arrival wafting over him. Three men clambered from the vehicle, nodding or waving at him, and he nodded back. The sun hovered just above the rim of the surrounding woods to his left, squat and red as an overripe tomato.

  “You’re late,” he said.

  Raj took the lead, approaching the thin man with his hand held out. “I apologize, Mr. Forester. We had a bit of trouble finding the turnoff. I had the address programed into the GPS, but it kept leading us around in circles.”

  Robert Forester stepped away from his car and clasped Raj’s hand. They shook briefly. “I suppose it couldn’t be helped then. Truth be told, I had some difficulty finding the place myself when I first got into town. Please, call me Robert. And you are?”

  “Rajanikanta Chandramouleeswaran.”

  “Wow. That’s a mouthful.”

  “Everyone calls me Raj.”

  “I guess so,” Forester said, the furrows around his eyes softening a little. “Yeah, so anyway… Sorry you got lost. Maybe I should drive down to the end of the road and tie a red bandana around a tree. I hired a local to help me get the house ready for your crew. He was supposed to cut back some of the brush down by the turnoff, but he took off on me this afternoon without so much as a by-your-leave. Nobody wants to do any work on the property. I guess the people around here are superstitious.”

  “You relocated from Washington, right?” Raj asked.

  “Seattle,” the man nodded. “I’m a commercial artist. No wife or kids, so when I found out I’d inherited the house, I just packed my things and hit the road. Got into town a few days ago. Signed all the papers.”

  “She’s all yours now, huh?” Raj said.

  Forester smiled. “Yep. I haven’t decided if that’s a good thing or a bad thing yet, though.”

  As Raj chuckled politely, both men turned to look at the Forester House together.

  The house was big. That was Raj’s first impression. He’d caught little peeks of it as they bounced up the winding and half-washed-out gravel driveway—the flash of the sun on a window, the spires of its roof—but this was the first time Raj had seen it as a whole, and with his own eyes. He’d seen photographs, but
photos were a pale approximation.

  The first thought that went through Raj’s mind was: What a monster!

  It was a sprawling Queen Anne Victorian, but his impression wasn’t motivated by physical dimension alone. The Forester House had a presence. It seemed to crouch, and looked ready to gobble up the first unlucky soul foolish enough to venture too close.

  And it was ugly.

  The house was asymmetrical, with a steep, pointed roof, a jumble of towers and gables and arched Palladian windows, but asymmetry of design was no excuse for the way roof met wall and wall met foundation, every angle just slightly off, none of its lines exactly square or level. There was a broad, sweeping porch. Balconies jutted from several of the second-story rooms. In fact, there didn’t seem to be any rhyme or reason to its aesthetic at all, only that the edifice was meant to be excessive and overwrought. It was clearly an intentional thing, and from its decorative spindles to its heavy stone piers, its tangled topiary to it Byzantine bracketing, there did not seem to be any region of its surface upon which the eye could rest comfortably… not for very long anyway.

  Raj stared at it, taking an account of his physical and mental reactions to the house: the tingle of unease in his belly, the way his balls crawled up in fear, the taste of loathing in his mouth—a taste that was like corroded pennies.

  All its pretentious flourishes seemed disproportionate in their abundance, an affront to the senses. Its strangely patterned wood and stone siding was repugnant. The delicately turned porch posts, the dentil molding, the half-timbered gables, the copious stained glass windows. It was too much to take in all at once. Its features, in their excess, came together in unpleasant ways, and seemed individually to spring out when the eye stumbled across them.

  Robert Forester glanced toward Raj as the two men absorbed the atmosphere of the house, and the expression on Raj’s face made him laugh. “It’s a sight, isn’t it?” Forester asked.