House of Dead Trees

by Rod Redux

  He pushed himself from the doorway like some kind of horror movie zombie, bloody feet leaving smears on the floor. His blanched lips split into a terrible grin.

  “Why don’t you stay a little longer?” he gurgled. “This party’s just getting started!”

  4

  Allen stepped around Raj and Jane and caught hold of Francis’s arms. He opened his mouth to speak—he was going to say something strong and brave, Jane knew-- as Raj bent to help her to her feet. Before Allen could say anything, however, Francis jerked his arms away from the man and struck him with both palms in the center of the chest.

  The blow was impossibly powerful. It was so powerful, in fact, that Allen was lifted several inches from the floor. He reeled back, arms pinwheeling, and fell with a thud in the center of the foyer—

  Right where the floor was nearly rotted through.

  “It burns!” Francis choked, looking at Jane with his one good eye, and then his hands flew up to his neck like two startled birds. He hooked his fingers in his flesh and tore out his own throat. His body crumpled to the floor as Jane and Raj cried out in despair.

  Jane pulled against Raj’s hands, sobbing. “Oh, Francis-- No!”

  Robert stood frozen in shock.

  “Uh, guys,” Allen called out behind them, his voice strangely conversational.

  They turned from Francis’s prone form to see Allen on his hands and knees, his face pale with fright.

  The floor was sinking beneath him.

  “Little hand here,” Allen said mildly as the rotten timbers creaked.

  They stared at him in mute horror for a moment, clueless how to help him.

  “The sheets!” Raj suddenly blurted, his face lighting up.

  “Make it quick!” Allen hissed, clenching his teeth.

  The tongue-and-groove planks began to splinter beneath him. He winced at the loud crackling sounds that emanated from the floor.

  “Don’t move! I’m going to grab one of the dust covers from the parlor and throw the end of it to you,” Raj said.

  Before Raj could race to the parlor, however, the floor gave way beneath the stocky man. Allen dropped with a crash.

  “Allen!” Jane wailed.

  For a moment, Allen clung to one half-rotted floor beam, his cheeks puffed out, a cloud of wood particles eddying around his head, then the beam gave out, snapping in half beneath his armpit, and he was swallowed by the darkness that waited down below.

  5

  It was the way Billy spoke, sort of wheezy and wet-sounding, that nearly broke Tish’s mind. She cowered as he lurched toward her, still grinning that horrible zombie grin.

  “You know what the best part of being dead is?” he bubbled.

  He didn’t wait for her to answer.

  “You don’t have to be scared anymore!” he crooned.

  Droplets of blood pattered onto the floor between his bare feet. Tish shook her head in denial, retreating from the undead thing limping across the room toward her, but she was also retreating from the door, retreating from the light.

  “Let me help you, Tish,” he snuffled, taking another shambling step in her direction. “It’ll be just like getting a shot at the doctor’s office. One little sting, and then it’ll all be over. You won’t have to be afraid anymore. Never ever ever. Doesn’t that sound nice?”

  As he questioned her, his right hand floated up to the handle of one of the knives in his chest. She watched as his fingers curled around it, and then he pulled it out of his flesh with a wet puckering sound.

  His head rolled loosely on his shoulders as he took another step. “Come over here, girlfriend,” he whispered seductively. “Let me stick this in you.”

  Tish lunged past him and plowed through the door, screaming the whole way. She stumbled down the granite steps into the side lawn, fell to her knees, but was up again in an instant, looking back over her shoulder as she raced away from the murderous revenant.

  Any second now, she expected Billy to come lurching through the doorway in pursuit of her. She was so intent on the idea, she didn’t realize for several moments that she had escaped from Forester House. She was free!

  Tish stumbled over something in the pastel light of dawn and sprawled onto her face. She rolled over, panting, her eyes locked on the mudroom door, which had swung shut behind her, but Billy did not follow. She turned her attention to her ankle, which had been snared by a length of curling ivy.

  Breathing hard, she scrabbled with her fingers at the vine or root or whatever it was, losing a nail in the process, then a shoe, but she finally got free. She stumbled back to her feet.

  Still no Billy.

  Maybe… maybe it can’t get out of the house, she thought. Maybe it’s trapped in there.

  There was no basis for the theory but her own desperate hope, but it calmed her. She clasped her hands together and offered a prayer of gratitude to the lightening heavens.

  I made it, she thought. I’m alive!

  She laughed aloud at the wonder of it.

  Alive! Alive!

  I’ll go and wait for them at the cars, she thought. If the rest of them aren’t out in fifteen minutes, I’m driving to town and sending the police back for them.

  Nodding at the logic of her plan, Tish skirted around the bole of a tree and started toward the front of the house where all the cars were parked. A sliver of the rising sun peeked through the encircling pines, and its golden gleam raised her spirits even further.

  Forester House had gotten Big Dan and Billy, and maybe it would get the others, too, before this long, deadly night was over, but it hadn’t gotten her.

  No, sir! Not this chick! she thought, looking down at her feet as she stumbled over the uneven terrain. I’m going to make it! I’m a survivor!

  Tish leaned against the trunk of a tree to take her other shoe off. The heel was making her wobble like a sailor with a peg leg. And they were Jil Sanders, too. Damn it.

  Her eyes went round. Her jaw dropped.

  “Oh, no…” she whimpered. “No… This isn’t fair!”

  The house, the cars, the sky, the sun… it was all gone!

  She was surrounded by wilderness.

  6

  “Allen!” Jane cried into the darkness.

  Raj seized her arm as she edged toward the hole in the floor. “Don’t get any closer, Jane,” he hissed. “You don’t know how much of the floor is rotten.”

  From below: a cough… a groan. Allen had survived the fall! They heard the clatter of small debris. Motes of wood dust eddied in the air.

  The smell of black earth and fungus roiled up from the hole in the floor like the belch of some corrupt and white-bellied thing.

  “Allen?” Jane called again. “Honey, can you hear me?”

  “Jane?”

  “Yes, it’s me! Are you all right?”

  “I think—Ahh! I think I twisted my knee. And I can’t see anything, Jane. Everything’s pitch black down here.”

  “Just hold tight. We’re coming down to get you,” Jane called.

  “All right. Hurry, though. I’m all alone and it’s dark.” There was panic in his voice. He was trying to conceal it, but his control sounded dicey.

  Jane turned to Raj, ready to run to Allen’s rescue.

  “You’re not going down there!” Raj objected. “Robert and I will go. I want you to wait outside.”

  Jane and Robert objected simultaneously.

  “When did I volunteer to rescue your pal?” Robert blurted.

  “Oh no you don’t! I’m not some princess you have to protect!” Jane snapped.

  Raj looked back and forth, uncertain how to respond. To either of them.

  From the hole in the floor: “Not trying to rush you guys, but I can hear something creeping around down here! Can you please make up your minds who’s coming down here to rescue me? I can’t stand up.”

  “Fine!” Raj surrendered, throwing up his hands. “Robert, you can go wait outside if that’s what you want to do. If we’re not out
in twenty minutes, drive to town and send back some help. If you see anything strange, though, just get the hell out of here. Don’t wait around. Jane, you’re with me.”

  From below: “Is there someone down here?”

  Allen again. And he wasn’t talking to them.

  Robert Forester hesitated. “I’m sorry,” he said. His eyes gleamed with sincerity. Then he turned on his heel and bolted to the door.

  He gave the hole in the floor a wide berth, and he didn’t look back.

  Jane and Raj blinked at one another, faces grim.

  I love you, Jane. I’ve always loved you. I love you for your intelligence, your bravery, your sense of fairness and your selflessness. If this is it for us, I just want to make sure you know that, whether you feel the same way toward me or not.

  The words trembled on his lips. He wanted to make them real… but he couldn’t. He didn’t want to burden her with his feelings, especially if his affection was not reciprocated. Instead, he said, “Flashlights.”

  Jane nodded, and they trotted to the control room.

  7

  Robert froze on the veranda, all the color draining from his face. There were no cars in the overgrown drive. In fact, there was no driveway. No lawn. No outside world to flee to. He was trapped!

  They were all trapped!

  The forest had moved, somehow! It had crept forward to encircle the house. Gray, crenelated tree trunks, thicker around than his arms could reach, rose into the air just a yard away from the porch.

  “That’s impossible!” he moaned.

  It was so dark and cold! The canopy of the crowded trees had drawn a veil across the sky. The rising sun was just a wan glimmer of gold through the leaf-laden boughs. Tendrils of mist crept toward his ankles, and he drew back from them with a cry of disgust, his blood roaring in his ears.

  “This can’t be happening!” he howled. “It’s not real!”

  Robert turned to retreat from the impossible forest, but ivy had overspread the door while his back was turned. The knob was knotted in vinery and would not budge, though he twisted and jerked on it with all of his strength.

  The woodland creaked behind him, foliage rustling, and he spun to face it, his lips peeling back from his teeth. “No!” he snarled. “This is just… an illusion! It has to be!”

  His mind seized on that.

  Yes! An illusion! That’s what it was! Trees can’t move on their own! The spirits that haunted this place—they were just messing with his head, twisting his perceptions, making him see things that couldn’t possibly be real.

  And he would prove it.

  He nodded.

  Yes, he would prove it!

  Robert Forester carefully descended the front steps. He stepped down into the milky fog until it had engulfed him to the knees. He swallowed, his body trembling all over…

  Then he closed his eyes and walked into the wilderness.

  He made it two paces.

  8

  “I think this is the basement door,” Raj said.

  “Why is the knob laying on the floor?” Jane asked. She squatted and picked up the doorknob, a cut glass handle with a square-shaped rod coming out the end of it. It glinted when Raj swung the beam of the flashlight toward it.

  “I don’t know,” he said.

  “Doesn’t matter, I guess,” Jane replied, then she slid the rod through the hole in the knob plate and twisted. The bolt disengaged with a pop and the cellar door swung inwards, creaking eerily.

  Jane and Raj looked apprehensively at one another.

  “Yuck,” Jane said.

  “Indeed,” Raj nodded. He smiled tentatively. “Ladies first?”

  Jane laughed. “No way!”

  Gallows humor.

  Raj pushed the cellar door out of the way and shined his flashlight into the blackness. The beam of light revealed gray wooden risers, their paint chipped and peeling, descending to a moist-looking stone floor.

  “Do you find it strange that the door swings toward the stairs?” Raj asked. “That’s so dangerous. It would swing in and knock someone right down the steps.”

  “Everything in this house is strange. I don’t think I’ve seen one right angle since we got here,” Jane replied. “Every wall is loosy-goosy. None of the floors are level. It’s psychotic. Also, I think you’re stalling.”

  “I know.”

  Raj sighed and placed his foot on the first step, shifted his weight upon it experimentally.

  “Seems solid enough,” he said. “Do you want to wait up here while I go find Allen?”

  “Are you kidding?”

  “No.”

  “I’m not letting you out of my sight.”

  Raj released the doorframe and descended gingerly to the next step.

  It creaked but did not give.

  “There’s blood on some of the steps.”

  “What?” Jane gasped, peering over his shoulder.

  Raj pointed with the flashlight. “There. And there.” A splash of blood on a baluster, a smear of blood on the edge of a riser, shaped like a comma.

  “Do you think Billy or Little Dan got confused and walked through the cellar door--”

  “Instead of the bathroom?” Raj finished, looking at her with dawning hope. He turned and swung the flashlight toward the stone floor, but neither of their teammates was sprawled at the base of the stairs. “Dan?” Raj called. “Are you down here?”

  “Let’s go!” Jane said impatiently.

  Raj threw caution to the wind and descended the stairs all at once, praying as he did that the rotten wooden steps didn’t give way beneath him.

  He wasn’t quite sure who he prayed to. He did not believe in the Christian deity, or even his father’s great pantheon of gods. He simply prayed—mostly that his karma was in good enough condition that he and Jane might have some luck and make it out of this terrible house in one piece.

  He paused at the foot of the stairs and swung the flashlight around, scrutinizing the cellar’s interior as he waited for Jane to catch up to him. They seemed to be in a small antechamber, its slick stone walls mottled green and black with mold. The cellar main lay just around the corner, out of sight beyond the stairs.

  “Whew! It stinks so bad down here,” Jane said behind him.

  Raj nodded. “Watch your step. The ground is really slippery.”

  Raj shuffled forward, following the rough hewn walls around and behind the stairs. In the dark beyond, water dripped and tiny creatures rustled. Furtive, creeping sounds.

  “God, I hope there aren’t rats down here,” Jane said.

  “I’m sure there are. Just stay close to me. Kick them if they try to bite you.”

  “You may be carrying me piggyback if they try to bite me!” Jane said, laughing nervously.

  “You do know I have a bad back, right?”

  “Oh, hush! I’m not that fat.”

  Raj leaned past the edge of the wall, shining his flashlight around.

  “Just another corridor,” he said.

  “Seriously?”

  He nodded.

  “What is this? Some kind of maze down here?”

  Raj shrugged.

  “Well, go on.”

  They turned the corner and started down the adjoining passage. Jane was practically dry-humping him from behind, her breaths coming in harsh gasps. The circle of light from her flashlight quivered as it swept back and forth across the dripping walls.

  “The smell down here is making me sick,” Raj said. A pulsing band of pain had cinched across his eyes and the bridge of his nose, tightening like a vice. His lungs felt tight and cold, his windpipe narrowing.

  “Allen!” Jane cried out suddenly, making him jump. “Allen, can you hear me?”

  Raj paused, listening.

  Somewhere in the great rustling darkness, Allen responded. “Yes! I can hear you! Can you follow the sound of my voice?”

  “We’ll do our best!” Jane yelled back. “Just keep talking, okay?”

  “Try to hurry,
please!” Allen called. “I can hear something rustling around in the dark.”

  They passed through a large chamber full of rotten cardboard boxes and broken furniture. A seamstress manikin made Jane shriek before she realized what it was. Great stacks of old newspapers were dissolving back into their constituent pulp in the moist atmosphere of the cellar.

  “Rat heaven,” Raj said, wrinkling his nose.

  “This way guys!” Allen called.

  “He sounds closer,” Jane smiled.

  “Oh, God, what is that?” Allen suddenly wailed.

  Raj and Jane broke into a run at the terror in his voice.

  The floor beneath their feet transitioned from slick stone to lumpy black earth as they passed through an arched doorway and into a great echoing space. The darkness yawned around them, cathedral-like. Ahead, wan light angled down through the hole in the floor above. Rotten timber lay in a jumble upon a mound of poisonous-looking dirt, but they could not see the man they’d come down to rescue.

  “Allen!” Jane and Raj cried simultaneously.

  They saw an arm waving on the far side of the earthen mound. He must have rolled away when he fell to the ground below.

  They started toward him.

  “We see you, baby. We’re coming,” Jane called.

  That’s when Allen began to scream.

  “It’s got me! Oh, Jesus, it’s got me!” he howled. His voice had risen to an unmanly falsetto.

  Jane and Raj ran to him.

  “Hold on, we’re coming!” Jane called, thinking, Rats! Oh God, if it’s rats, I am going to lose my mind…!

  They ran around the earthen mound, stumbling over loose clods of mud and hunks of rotten floor beams. Raj’s flashlight swooped across the man, then zoomed back.

  Allen was clawing at the ground, writhing inside a nest of snakes.

  No, not snakes! Roots! Hundreds of slick slithering tree roots.

  “Tatti!” Raj cursed.

  Allen twisted his head to look at them, his lips peeled back from gritted teeth. As he grunted, trying to keep himself from being dragged away into the darkness, several more tendrils curled around his body. Roots encircled his neck, cinching into his flesh. They slithered up his arms, prying his fingers from the muck.