House of Dead Trees

by Rod Redux

  The sheets tightened across his limbs as the pig-man climbed the bed. He couldn’t have moved now, even if he had sense enough to flee, first his legs trapped beneath the weight of his assailant, and then his arms, as the man in the mask stalked further up the bed.

  This isn’t possible! the medium’s mind revolted. This can’t be happening! I’m dreaming this—wake up!

  There could be no weight, yet there was weight. He couldn’t move. Not even an inch.

  The bedsprings creaked. The sheets pulled taut across him. This revenant, this monster, was a disembodied thing, thought that had survived the death of flesh. It had no mass to answer the tug of gravity, and yet Francis could not deny its reality. It held him pinned to the mattress. Its weight squeezed the breath from his lungs.

  The heat of its obese body penetrated the sheets. The foul breath that gushed from the holes of its mask caused his gorge to rise. It was hot and sweaty and foul. It had the stink of the grave, the heat of the living.

  The pig-man climbed higher, its horrid erection dragging across Francis’s shin, then stabbing him bluntly in the crotch. It put a hand to either side of Francis’s face and rose up over him, the snout of its mask scant inches from Francis’s nose.

  Putrid breath whooshed in and out of its paper mache disguise. Black eyes twinkled down at him from the eyeholes of the mask.

  Not real! Not real! Francis thought, and he turned his face from the creature’s breath, squeezing his eyes shut.

  But it would not be denied. It would not be ignored. It made a sound like a laugh and caught Francis’s face between its fingers, squeezing his cheeks, making his lips pucker out. It forced Francis’s head to turn back, and waited for him to open his eyes.

  Francis surrendered. He opened his eyes. He stared up at it, his entire body trembling.

  What is it waiting for? he thought. He was helpless. At its mercy. Alone.

  Perhaps… perhaps it didn’t intend to harm him!

  Francis seized upon the possibility, wrestled down his terror, summoned spit to cottony mouth. “What… what do you want?” he whimpered.

  The pig-man drew back a little as if confused, cocking its head to one side. But it let go of Francis’s face.

  Encouraged, Francis gasped, “I know you can understand me. Tell me what you want. Maybe I can help you.”

  He could hear the creature breathing inside its mask. Its eyes twitched with uncertainty inside the dark holes of its disguise.

  “You’re trapped here aren’t you?” Francis pressed. “Trapped by the entity that rules this place.” Its weight upon his arms eased and Francis shifted on the mattress, trying to work his hands free. His fingers tingled where they’d begun to go numb, the circulation cut off. “I can help you,” Francis continued. “I can free you from this place, if you want. Help you transcend this plane of existence. Is that something you want? Do you want to be free from this house?”

  For a moment it seemed to consider his words. Its eyes moved up and to the left as it pondered his proposal.

  Then slowly it turned its head back toward him. Its pig snout swung left and right.

  The bedsprings squawked as its hands flew to Francis’s throat. Francis gaped in shock and horror as the pig-man’s fingers tightened around his neck.

  Wait! You don’t have to do this! he tried to object, but he could not speak. The pig-man’s fingers had sunk too deep in his flesh.

  He tried to bring his arms up to defend himself, but the pig-man pinned them down with his knees.

  Francis’s lungs began to burn for lack of oxygen. His eyes and cheeks bulged with blood, the pressure of it building inside his head, making the veins in his temples stand out, the capillaries in his eyes explode.

  The mask man panted, his body slick with sweat. His cock swelled, aroused by his violence, growing so large and taut it looked like a sausage in a skillet, sizzling and ready to split.

  He’s going to kill me, Francis thought with disbelief, and then the real horror, the realization that he was going to die here in this terrible place. He would be trapped, a disembodied spirit, just another plaything for the monarch who reigned here to torment.

  Forever.

  No, God, please, help me! Don’t let me die here!

  Obsidian flowers bloomed in Francis’s vision, unfurling in his brain, filling him up, drowning him in drifts of black fallen petals.

  The pig-man squealed, bouncing up and down in excitement as it choked the life from the diminutive psychic. It squealed as the little man flopped, the sound of its triumph chasing Francis into the void.

  2

  Little Dan swiped the sweat from his brow as he hurried through the foyer, his bowels locked in a volcanic cramp.

  Fucking cookies! he thought. Oh, why do you have to taste so good?

  His sphincter quivered, threatening to unload a quart of bubbling brown lava in his underpants.

  Cheeks, don’t fail me now, he thought as he tightened his clench.

  He was determined not to shit his pants twice on one shoot. Uh-uh… no way! Big Dan had ragged him bad enough while they were driving through Illinois.

  Lord, I promise, no more gluten from here on out, he prayed. Just let me make it to the toilet! Just a few more steps, God, please!

  By the time he made it to the bathroom, he was doing the straight-legged shuffle, puffing and blowing like a woman in labor.

  He jerked the door open and stepped inside, reaching for the light switch.

  Daniel Stein stepped into the void.

  “Oh, shit!” Little Dan cried as his body pitched forward into darkness. He still had one hand on the doorknob as he teetered, and his body weight jerked the door shut behind him. His legs swung out, one heel banging off the edge of a stair riser, and then the knob came loose in his grip, and he tumbled down the cellar steps.

  He went down like a grand piano in an old time comedy movie, bouncing from step to step, breaking a couple ribs on the first impact, then fracturing his tibia on the next. He threw his arms out to halt his fall, the knob still clutched in his left hand, and his left arm shot through an unseen stair rail and snapped just below the elbow, caught between two balusters.

  The momentum of his body caused him to roll forward, and his broken arm rotated completely around, the bone shards grating against one another, then punching through his flesh.

  He reeled to his feet, his right arm waving in the air, and then he pitched forward one last time, somersaulting through the dark to land in the splits on the stone floor six feet below. He came down with both legs angled unnaturally, and his right knee exploded in its socket as his full weight slammed down upon it.

  The impact of the fall was so powerful, the pain so overwhelming, Little Dan was instantly knocked unconscious. His thoughts shot into darkness like an arrow fired from a bow.

  He lay twisted in the lightless cellar of the Forester House, a trickle of blood seeping from one nostril, blood pooling beneath him where the jagged ends of his radius and ulna had punctured through the flesh of his arm.

  Adding insult to injury, his bowels had let go during his disastrous descent, and hot excrement oozed through the fabric of his jeans as he lay motionless on the basement floor.

  Blood and shit steamed in the cellar’s chill.

  Something else stirred in the dark.

  3

  Billy was lying with his eyes closed, lost in his thoughts, when the knock came at his door. He jerked violently, his heart leaping into his throat. He had almost gone to sleep!

  He opened his eyes, craned his head to catch a glimpse of the man who had summoned him, but Robert had already passed the doorway. All Billy saw was the fellow’s retreating back, and that indistinctly. Robert Forester moved without pause down the dimly lit hallway, trailed by a tuneless whistle.

  Billy didn’t hurry after. That would have been too obvious. Instead, he forced himself to relax, taking several deep breaths as he waited for his racing heart to slow.

  He thought of Ben a
gain and heat rose into his cheeks.

  Do you really want to do this? he asked himself. Cheat on Ben, or worse-- risk being outed in front of all your friends? What if Rob went blabbing to the tabloids, or spilled the beans on the internet? Forester was hot—yes, they had chemistry—but he hardly knew the guy.

  His head said no. It was too risky, and he should be loyal to Ben, even if their relationship was more off than on these days, if only for his own self-respect.

  The danger enticed, however. The prospect of exposure. He had always been weak that way, a sort of adrenaline junky. Every time he and Ben broke up, which they did with pathetic regularity, Billy found himself drawn to the shady underworld of the homosexual lifestyle, the secret world most gays were uncomfortable admitting to, even to themselves (the self-respecting ones, anyway). The cruising scene. Leather bars and internet hookups. Anonymous backroom sex, sucking off married men through holes carved in bathroom stalls. It was degrading. He always hated himself afterwards, but he was drawn to the thrill of it like a moth drawn to flame, addicted to the rush, knowing he was going to get burned someday but helpless to stop himself. Silly even to debate it. He had to have his fix.

  Billy decided he’d waited long enough.

  He swung his feet to the floor, made a drinking gesture toward the camera so Raj wouldn’t be concerned.

  Allen snorted as he rose, mumbling something in his sleep. Billy watched him for a moment, waiting to see if he was going to throw a monkey wrench in his plans, but Allen sank back into his dreams, smacking his lips and grunting. Heart hammering, Billy smiled in relief.

  He tiptoed from the room, turned left in the corridor and headed toward the stairs. His stomach rolled over and over as he navigated the dimly lit hallway.

  Down the stairs, his hand trailing on the bannister, Billy moved through the house like a scrap of food through the intestines of some grotesque organism, its menace brushing cool fingers over his laboring heart, ratcheting up the thrill, the danger, to a level that made him breathless, lightheaded.

  He craved this rush.

  He peeked through the doorway into the parlor and saw Big Dan snoozing at the command center, his chin in his palm, Raj and Little Dan nowhere in sight.

  Probably outside having a smoke, Billy thought, wondering why smokers thought no one could smell their vice. Billy had smelled it the first time Raj fell off the wagon. He’d come inside, floating in a cloud of stinky nicotine like that Peanuts character Pigpen, the one who was always enveloped in a cloud of squiggly lines.

  Lucky break, Billy thought.

  He turned and crossed the foyer, circling around the rotten spot in the center of the floor.

  Down the hall, through the kitchen.

  He let himself through the door into the mudroom. There, at the far end of the enclosed back porch, the entrance of the servant’s quarters stood open, dark beyond but for the sallow glow that slanted from the kitchen.

  The light was low enough here that he could see out the windows of the enclosed back porch. Beyond his reflection, green leaves and tree branches scrawled across the glass-- stirred by the wind, he hoped-- making tiny squeaking sounds, like scrabbling little fingers.

  Funny, he thought. He hadn’t noticed any trees that close to the house before, and he had looked out these very windows when he was talking to Robert in the kitchen earlier.

  The trees must have been just out of sight where he was standing before.

  “Rob?” Billy stage whispered, easing closer to the door. “You in there?” He glanced over his shoulder, paranoid that someone would walk into the kitchen, catch the two of them meeting in the dark.

  He saw movement in the darkness on the other side of the doorway. Heard a floorboard creak as the man’s fuzzy shape receded into the void.

  “Enter freely and of your own will,” Robert whispered, chuckling at his own black wit.

  With a nervous smile, Billy slipped into the shadows.

  4

  Raj finished coffin nail number two and threw the smoldering butt to the ground, crushing it beneath his shoe. The sky in the east bore the faintest tinge of dawn, a lightening from black to blue. Just a promise, but one he was heartened to see.

  It had been a long day, the excitement he’d felt earlier gone to seed. He was eager to review all their recordings, certain they would discover even more spectacular evidence, but first he needed at least ten good hours of sleep.

  He decided it was time to wake the team, pack up all their equipment, and retire to the rooms they’d reserved in town. He could hardly wait to shower the dust and damnation of this cursed house from his body, slide into some cool, clean sheets and let his weariness sweep him into restful oblivion.

  Dreadful, how silent the forest here was, he thought with a shiver. There should be birdsong, a choir of insects, even at this hour. Yet the forest was silent, a deathly hush. He felt suspended in time and space. Exiled from the rational universe.

  He turned and headed back to the house, bracing himself for its psychic assault. The unnatural silence of the forest was bad. It made your hackles rise, an animal instinct. But the house itself was far, far worse. A distillation of the forest’s menace, concentrated evil that dogged your every step, breathing down your neck. Stepping through its door was like throwing yourself in the mouth of a wicked idol, sacrificing your sanity on the shrine of some hate-filled chthonic god.

  In all the years he’d been investigating the paranormal, he had probably explored at least five or six hundred haunted houses. And his experiences were not just limited to human habitations. His travels had carried him to cursed graveyards and abandoned high rises, derelict prisons and creepy asylums. Yet none of those places had come close to the level of malevolence that Forester House bled from every board, stone and shingle. Forester House was the epitome of the Bad Place, and he was eager to be shut of it.

  Raj climbed the front steps and crossed the porch. As he neared the door, he subconsciously ducked his head, bringing his shoulders up as if bracing for a blow.

  He could feel the house crouching over him like a living creature. It was an effort just bringing his arm up to reach for the knob.

  The house was silent inside, the air thick.

  Raj crossed the foyer, found Big Dan in the parlor slouched in front of the monitors.

  “Wake up, sleepyhead,” Raj said sympathetically.

  Big Dan jumped as if someone had goosed him. He sat up and blinked at his boss, a guilty expression on his face. “Sorry, man,” he said. “Didn’t mean to doze off.”

  “Don’t sweat it. We’re all exhausted,” Raj replied. “What say we call it a night? Pack up our gear and head to the hotel? I think we have enough footage.”

  “That sounds good to me,” Big Dan said, smiling at the prospect. “I’ll start waking everybody.”

  Big Dan rose, started toward the foyer.

  “I have to confess, I’m going to breathe a lot easier once we’re away from this… Hey, where’s Little Dan?”

  “What?” Dan glanced toward the sofa, where his partner had been dozing earlier. “Oh, yeah… he had to go to the bathroom.” He grinned at Raj. “I think it was an emergency.”

  Raj laughed. “You should be ashamed of yourself. You know he’s allergic to wheat.”

  Big Dan laughed with him. “Yeah, well… the little fella wouldn’t know what to do with himself if I ever quit giving him hell.” He raked his fingers through his thinning orange hair, huge bags under his eyes. “You want me to go check on him?”

  “No, just start waking everyone. I’ll check on Little Dan in a moment.” Raj sat in front of the monitors, scrutinizing the camera feeds before powering off the devices. He scowled. “What in the world is wrong with Francis?” he asked.

  From upstairs, the medium’s muffled cries. It sounded like a pig squealing.

  Raj and Big Dan exchanged twin looks of surprise and guilt, then pelted as one for the stairs.

  5

  Dan Stein was the youn
gest of five boys, son of Reverend Emery Stein and Beverly Jean McFadden. For the Steins, the old saw about preachers’ kids was more like a truism. The five Stein boys were the wildest kids in the neighborhood—reckless, uncivilized, uncouth, and responsible for an untold assortment of petty crimes and various acts of minor vandalism. The property damage that could be laid at the doorstep of the Stein household ranged from broken windows to grass fires, never anything too serious, just annoying to the adults who lived in the vicinity of the Steins and their precocious brood.

  The older Stein boys—Gregory, Clifford, Terry and Mike—were big strapping boys like their father. Little Dan was the only one of the five who took after their mother, who was a small, frail beauty, though they had all inherited her brassy red hair.

  His brothers called him Runt.

  As wicked as all four older boys could be—and they could be pretty rough from time to time, brawling in the house, the yard, at school, even, on one memorable occasion, in the parking lot of the church their father preached at—they always looked after their baby brother. They boxed him around, teased him, played cruel jokes on him just like all big brothers do, but let some schoolyard bully pick on him and there would be four very large, very vengeful siblings for his persecutor to contend with later that afternoon.

  The worst thing they ever did to Little Dan was lock him in the basement.

  He was eight years old when it happened. It was summer break, and their mom and dad had left them home alone to go shopping the next town over.

  They left the boys home alone quite often back in the day. Taking those five hooligans shopping was like putting on an improv production of William Golding’s Lord of the Flies.

  Hoping to keep her boys out of trouble, Beverly had left a list of chores for all of them to do. She didn’t really believe even half of them would get done, least of all to her satisfaction. She just hoped the list would keep her sons somewhat occupied. Emery, her husband, had threatened to whip all of them with his belt if they came back and nothing had been checked off the list. The last time she and her husband went to town, the boys had set the back yard on fire, and the fire department was threatening to charge them if they had to be dispatched to the Stein household one more time that year.