House of Dead Trees

by Rod Redux

  Raj pushed back from the command center and addressed the team. “It’s getting dark, gang,” he announced. “I say we start our investigation. I’m anxious to see what else we can catch on video.”

  Everyone nodded in agreement, eager to get the investigation underway.

  “Let’s—umm—let’s begin with you, Francis. Do you feel up to doing a reading for us?” Raj asked.

  Francis lowered his psychic defenses—just a little, and only for a moment—and found that the dark entity was once more in retreat. It seemed safe for the time being. The entity, whatever it was, had obviously been weakened by its most recent exertions.

  Francis nodded.

  “I think the coast is clear,” he allowed.

  “Good man,” Raj nodded. “Big Dan, Allen, Jane… you guys want to accompany Francis? And, Rob, why don’t you go, too? We usually have the homeowner walk the property with Francis when he does a reading. I think you’ll be impressed.”

  Allen took charge then. He rubbed his hands together. “You heard the man… let’s get this show on the road!”

  2

  “Aren’t you going to turn the lights out?” Rob Forester asked as he followed the first team into the ballroom. He looked somewhat embarrassed when Big Dan swung the camera toward him.

  “Naw, we don’t do that,” Allen replied. “Other paranormal investigators might do that,” he explained, making quotation fingers when he said investigators, “But the only real reason they do it is to create a more menacing atmosphere. People see ghosts during the day just as often as they see them at night.”

  “I guess that’s true,” Rob replied.

  “More importantly, when people see an apparition, they usually report it as being insubstantial, like a shadow figure, and you’re not going to record something like that with the lights out.”

  “Real ghosts don’t glow in the dark, I guess,” Rob smirked.

  Jane chuckled. “That’s not the only reason. You have to use flashlights when you shoot in the dark, and that creates all sorts of weird shadows, not to mention, it can be pretty dangerous for an investigator wandering around in an unfamiliar environment. Going lights out also gives a paranormal investigator more of an opportunity to fake their evidence.”

  “You should always be suspicious of video evidence when it’s obtained in a poorly lit setting,” Allen said, and Jane nodded in agreement.

  Francis stood quietly in the center of the ballroom as the others talked, his head slightly tilted, his eyes closed. There were several light sources shining on him—Dan’s camera, a few bulbs winking fitfully in the chandelier, the light from the corridor and a tripod mounted lamp—and a half-dozen shadows sprouted from his feet, twitching on every wall of the cavernous chamber.

  It was a large octagonal room, with tall stained-glass windows and a bare parquet floor. If there had been furniture once, it had long since been removed. There were no carpets to soften their footfalls, no drapes to conceal the darkness gibbering at the windows, only a large chandelier suspended from the domed ceiling.

  Francis lowered his mental barriers one at a time. Carefully controlling his respiration and heartbeat, he strove for the semi-hypnotic state in which he was most sensitive. A carousel of shifting shadows, like a grim jury of ghosts, surrounded the medium on all sides.

  It was no easy task, opening his mind. He was afraid of another attack, but he knew he couldn’t use his abilities efficiently unless he was in a meditative state. Letting his barriers down was like trying to work up the courage to take a trust fall, only he had no confidence his partner would catch him… and it felt like he was standing on the rim of a tank of hungry sharks.

  Just a little at a time, Francis counseled himself. No need to jump right in. Take slow, measured breaths… and dip in a toe.

  He felt his third eye open. The eye that saw without seeing. He exposed himself tentatively, expecting the dark force that had attacked him at the road to fall upon him like a lion, roaring, merciless.

  No attack came.

  He opened himself a little more, stretched out with his mental senses like a turtle coming out of its shell.

  Still no attack.

  Not even a grumpy snarl.

  Wherever it had retreated, Francis was alone.

  He turned his inner eye toward the house. He could feel it winding around and around him like the spiral chambers of a conch shell. There was a subtle vibration inside its hollow auricles, like the ocean sound inside a sea shell.

  No, it’s more like...

  Finally, he spoke, his voice made small and flat by the arched ceiling and hard surfaces of the room.

  “I hear music,” Francis intoned. “Laughter. Conversations. This house is a very lively place.”

  Rob shifted forward to hear the little man better, and Jane put a finger in front of her lips, warning him not to speak, lest he break the medium’s concentration.

  “Are there any spirits in this room?” Allen asked softly.

  Francis heard him, but it was as if his friend was speaking to him from the end of a long and echoing corridor. Francis opened his eyes and looked around, a smile breaking across his face. It was an expression of surprise and wonder. When Robert Forester shifted around to see him better, he realized the little man’s eyes were unfocused.

  No, not unfocused, Rob corrected himself. He’s seeing something that isn’t here.

  A rash of goosebumps shivered up his back.

  “So beautiful!” Francis sighed. He turned around in a circle, ogling the dusty blank windows, the bare floor, the empty walls. “I see people,” he said. “They’re dressed in fancy clothes. There’s a man with a top hat and tuxedo. He has a monocle. Women in shimmering gowns, dripping with jewels. Oh…! They’re having a masquerade! That’s why.” He nodded, smiling to himself. “There’s a man dressed as a pirate, another dressed as a pig. Some of the women have feathered masks. The room is decorated so richly. Red and gold drapes with glimmering tassles. There’s a grand piano and a big brassy gramophone. They’re playing records… something jazzy… I can’t quite make it out.” He fell silent, as if listening, then laughed softly. “’My Gal Sal’!”

  He looked troubled then, put his fingers to his temples. “Oh no…! This is the night they poisoned all their friends! The Twins. The brothers. But why would they do such a thing…? I can’t…”

  His eyes fluttered, and he addressed Allen. “No spirits. Just residual energy. They died in agony, the partygoers, and the house just… sucked up their energy like a sponge. They’re here… in the walls and the floor and the ceiling, but they’re not self-aware.” He shuddered all over. “They’re just bad dreams now. They can’t communicate intelligently with us.”

  “Shall we move on then?” Allen suggested.

  “Yes,” Francis said distractedly. He looked back over his shoulder as they left the ballroom, scowling at the bodies twined in the center of the chamber—an orgy now, naked figures massed and frenetic, piled one upon another. Some of the bodies at the bottom of the writhing knot of libertines were cyanotic, foaming at the mouth or smeared with blood and excrement. The rest of the celebrants continued to rut atop them, their faces devoid of expression.

  “Y-yes… let’s move on,” Francis stammered.

  Allen, Jane and Rob began to shuffle through the door. Francis was the last to leave-- except for Big Dan, who was filming him. As Francis waited to exit, he glanced back.

  Like Lot’s wife, curious.

  From atop the seething mound of depravity, one of the orgiasts looked sharply up at him. It was the man in the pig mask.

  Francis felt a cold dash of fear as the pig-man locked eyes with him.

  He’s… looking back at me! Francis thought. But how--?

  The pig-man thrust once more into the mouth of the naked woman beneath him, then disengaged himself from her frothing orifice, letting her body roll limply to one side. He stood and began to pick his way through the flopping limbs and writhing torsos that surrou
nded him.

  Francis could see the man’s eyes glinting in the cutouts of the pig mask. They were red-rimmed and menacing. The porcine specter ran his palms down his body as he stalked across the room toward the medium, smearing something dark and wet across his skin. He was fat and hairy, his flesh like unbaked dough. A large and rigid erection bounced like a lance between his lily white thighs.

  Not real, Francis reminded himself, trying to stay calm. Remember, it can’t touch you. It can’t hurt you.

  The ghost was just a couple feet away now. The pig mask inclined toward his face, its upturned snout just an inch or two from Francis’s nose. Francis could hear the man breathing inside the mask, rapid and ragged. He could feel a feverish heat radiating from the apparition’s body. Its bloodshot eyes searched his, and then the flesh around them crinkled as it smiled beneath its disguise.

  Francis cowered back, squeezing his eyes shut, and the pig-man began to squeal.

  A hand fell on his shoulder.

  It was Big Dan.

  “You okay, buddy?” the husky cameraman asked, looking down at Francis with concern

  “Yes,” Francis said shakily. “Just… a little freaked out.”

  “It’s a spooky place,” Big Dan laughed.

  “Yes, it certainly is.”

  Francis forced himself to look past Big Dan. The room was empty, of course. No orgy. No pig-man. It was all an illusion, a psychic echo of an event that had taken place a long, long time ago. There was nothing in the ballroom that could hurt him.

  Not physically, anyway.

  “You guys coming?” Allen called.

  3

  They went to the library next.

  The library of the Forester House was full of big, overstuffed chairs and wall-to-wall with antique books. It was a cozy room, a place for learning and quiet contemplation, but that only made Francis doubly hesitant to expose himself. Books, in his experience, were psychic magnets. They picked up telepathic impressions like mirrors pick up fingerprints.

  The atmosphere of the library was different from the ballroom, however. He felt a lone feminine presence, the lingering scent of a sweet perfume.

  “There’s someone here,” Francis murmured.

  The others froze as if they feared they might scare the ghost away.

  “It’s intelligent, not residual,” Francis said. “Female…”

  Allen looked to Jane, excited.

  Francis cocked his head and called out, “Hello? My name is Francis Fontaine. These are my friends, Allen, Jane and Robert. Don’t be scared. We’re only here to ask you some questions. We mean you no harm.” He waited, then explained, “We only wish to make contact, to document your presence here.”

  He heard a whispering voice, and what sounded like a page turning, as if the spirit were reading aloud from a book, but if the presence was aware of him, it did not respond.

  Jane had brought a thermal camera. She consulted the device and said, “Temperatures here are a little lower than baseline. Nothing out of the ordinary. No unusual cold spots.”

  Allen made a circuit of the room with an EMF detector. “EMF levels are only slightly elevated. One point five. Three point oh.” The gadget clicked slowly.

  “Can you tell us your name?” Francis called.

  He listened intently, but could only hear that murmuring voice. Was she saying a prayer? Reading a storybook?

  To Big Dan’s camera, Francis muttered, “She isn’t answering me. Sounds like she’s reading to herself. Soft, droning voice. So low I can barely hear it, but definitely female.” In his full speaking voice, Francis called again, “Tell me your name.”

  Silence. The whispering had stopped.

  Francis listened for a long time, then shook his head. “It’s gone.”

  “Guess you scared her off,” Jane consoled him.

  Francis shrugged. “I suppose.”

  Robert looked completely unnerved.

  “It’s all right,” Francis comforted him. “I didn’t sense any malice on her part. I don’t think she even knew we were here. She’s in her own little world, whoever she is. It’s very often like that with hauntings. Sometimes they aren’t even aware of other spirits inhabiting the same space.”

  Rob’s throat crackled as he swallowed. He nodded, said, “Okay.”

  They continued to explore the ground floor—touring the kitchen and the servants’ quarters, storage rooms and bedrooms. They ventured to the second floor, and then the third. Twice they felt that they had gotten turned around and doubled back, only to discover that they had merely become confused by the endless winding corridors. The house was a maze.

  If there were any other spirits haunting the sprawling manse, the ghosts had carried themselves into hiding or fled ahead of them through the twisting and joyless halls.

  Try as he might, Francis experienced no other paranormal phenomena, and when Raj called them on Allen’s walkie talkie sometime later, saying it was time to let another team have a crack at it, Francis had forgotten his fear, was merely disappointed with himself, and frustrated by his lack of success.

  4

  “I bet this house was a real showpiece back in the day,” Tish said as she and Jane and Little Dan meandered through the first floor library. Tish was equipped with an Olympus EVP recorder. Jane was using a Trifield meter. The other Scouts were taking a break in the command room while the girls took a shot at the house, Little Dan in tow.

  “Oh, it was,” Jane said. “It’s still a beautiful house, even now. Very well preserved, considering how long it’s been unoccupied. In fact, I’d say that’s almost paranormal in and of itself. The house’s new owner claims there’s nobody keeping this place up that he knows of. By all rights, Forester House should be falling in by now.” She was speaking more for the benefit of their viewers than to Tish, with whom she had only a cordial relationship—and that on the best of days.

  “We’ve investigated a lot of buildings together now,” Jane went on. “You know how quickly they decline once they’re abandoned. Yet this house is still very solid. There’s little sign of rot, except for the musty smell that permeates the structure.”

  “What do you think has kept it from rotting?” Tish asked, flipping through the pages of a book that was sitting open on a table.

  Jane shrugged. “I suppose it was constructed very well, for one thing. From what I’ve read, the house was built almost entirely by hand by the original owner, Robert Forester’s great-great-great-great grandfather. He got all the timber from the forest here on the property. Cut the trees down himself. He even fashioned most of the furniture and trimwork himself. He was a very talented craftsman. The house was featured in several periodicals at the time. Some of it probably has to do with the atmosphere here on top of the ridge, too. The structure has sort of been naturally mummified, like the bodies of ancient human beings anthropologists sometimes find in caves or peat bogs. Acha man, a mummy from the Atacama desert, was naturally preserved for almost nine thousand years.”

  “Wow,” Tish remarked. “That’s pretty mind boggling.”

  “Think we should do some EVP work in here?” Jane asked, changing the subject. “Francis claims he sensed a paranormal presence in this room when they toured the house earlier. Said he heard a female voice whispering, sounded like she was reading.”

  “Sounds like a plan,” Tish replied.

  As the girls found a pair of sturdy chairs and sat next to one another, Little Dan moved around for a different angle, coming in closer to them. Tish positioned her EVP recorder in the center of the coffee table in front of them.

  “Hello… I’m Jane. This is my friend Tish. We’d like to make contact with you.”

  “We mean you no harm,” Tish said. “We just want to talk.”

  “We’ve set a small device on the table in front of us. It will record your voice even if we can’t hear it ourselves. If you want to communicate with us, just talk into the little silver device on the table. Don’t be afraid of it. It can’t har
m you in any way.”

  Jane brushed her hair behind an ear, then asked, “So… our friend Francis said he heard a woman whispering in here. Are you a woman?”

  The ladies waited a bit, giving the spirit time to talk, if it was so inclined.

  “What’s your name?” Tish asked.

  “Are you John Forester’s wife, Clara? Are you Clara Trigg?”

  “Maybe you’re his daughter,” Tish said. “Can you tell us who you are?”

  They heard a squeaking sound, so soft and high-pitched it was almost inaudible.

  “Did you hear that?” Tish said excitedly. “Is that you, Clara? Say something else! Please!”

  Little Dan chuckled guiltily, and then they smelled it.

  “Oh, lord!” Jane cried, pinching her noise.

  “Jesus!” Tish exclaimed. She jumped to her feet and fled across the room. “Daniel! That’s disgusting!”

  Little Dan laughed out loud, holding his stomach. “I’m sorry! Really! It just slipped.”

  Jane started giggling. Still pinching her nose, she said, “Slipped my Aunt Fannie! You better go check your underwear!”

  Blushing, Little Dan snorted, “I’m sorry…! My stomach’s kind of upset from eating those cookies.”

  They heard laughter from the parlor, where some of the other team members were monitoring their session.