by John Everson
He shook his head and smiled. “No, I suspect not. I’d probably think World War II.”
Ellen snorted. “A foreign affair,” she said. “Nothin’ we should have ever been a part of.”
Scott nodded but said nothing.
“So do you want me to show you around the place?” she asked.
“In a bit,” he said. “I think first, I’d like to get a room and freshen up first. It’s been a long trip.” He pulled his wallet out and was fishing for a card when he realized Ellen was quietly laughing.
“Mr. Belvedere, my goodness. You don’t need to pay nothin’. All the rooms ’round here? Those rooms is yours now. Ya ain’t thinkin’ yer gonna pay to stay the night in yer own home, now are ya?”
Scott smiled sheepishly. “Yeah, I suppose you’re right!”
Ellen shook her head and grinned. She didn’t take her eyes off him, but over her shoulder she bellowed, “Caroline?” she called. “Come in here, please.”
A couple seconds later, a face poked out of a room off to the side of the desk. A pale, smooth face. A face that made Scott look twice…and again. The girl had flawless skin, cool as cream. It made the startling raven gloss of her kinked dark hair only stand out more. And then she looked at Scott and he felt his heart slow to a crawl.
Her eyes were blue. Pale, incendiary blue.
“Mr. Belvedere, this is my daughter,” Ellen said. “Caroline, this is the last of the blood.”
Scott raised an eyebrow at that. “I prefer to think of myself as Scott,” he said.
Caroline smiled at that and stood demurely next to the innkeeper.
“You’ll be staying with us for a little while, won’t you?” Ellen asked.
He nodded. “I just received word about my Great-uncle Maximilian’s will.” He stopped there, suddenly feeling awkward. He didn’t want to sound like he was saying “Hey, your ass is mine now…” He’d been thinking the whole drive up about how the staff here were probably really nervous about what was going to become of the place.
Ellen nodded. “Maximilian was a wonderful man. He loved this place, so I know if he left it to you, he thought that you would love it, too.”
The older woman smiled, and then reached beneath the desk, pausing to look for something in particular. After a moment, she handed a key to her daughter. “Show him to twenty-three, okay?”
Scott felt a cool hand on his arm, and Caroline was there beside him. “Do you have any bags I should get?” she said. Her voice was quiet, but with just a whisper of twang. In a room with three people talking, she would have been lost in the crowd. But to Scott…her voice was riveting. She was so pretty, but in such an unassuming way. The softness of her voice just underscored how sweet she seemed. He couldn’t take his eyes off her. He shook his head, very slightly. “No bags right now, I’m just taking this,” he said, gesturing faintly towards the knapsack on his shoulder. “I’ll get stuff from the car later.”
Caroline nodded and squeezed his arm before letting go. “Let me show you the way then. Sometimes the hallways here get a little confusing the first time.” She laughed, and added, “Or the second and third, from what folks say! I wouldn’t know about that…I was born here.”
She walked ahead of him then, and Scott followed, admiring the way the long white T-shirt floated around the tight curves of her denim-clad hips. There was something to be said for the backwoods, he thought to himself.
The hallway that left the main foyer was initially narrow—and probably looked narrower than it was, thanks to the dark wood panels and dizzying array of portraits that lined the hall one after the next. But then Caroline turned left into a small sitting room with red leather couches and a small unlit fireplace. The room was something of a hub—two other corridors exited out of it.
“This is the Erickson room,” she said. “It’s a nice place to read, if you’re looking for a quiet nook.”
Scott felt his face flush, just a little, when she stepped closer to him and whispered, “I’ve spent a lot of private time right there in that chair.” Private time brought him an inappropriate connotation and mental image of her sitting there alone in that chair, head thrown back, fingers engaged…an image she probably hadn’t meant to invoke in any way, he realized.
She pointed at a large wooden chair with dark red leather cushions and dragons’ heads carved at the head of the arms.
“Just remember, if you get lost wandering in the hallways, if you find your way to this room, you’re just one hall from the main desk!” she said, turning away and then leading him into the left-most hallway that entered the room. From over her shoulder, she added, “You just have to figure out which one!”
Caroline walked down another longer hall, with a series of numbered doors, and then turned right. “You’re room’s right down here,” she said. “Near the Family Tree itself.”
“You mean the tree this place is built around,” he asked.
Caroline nodded. “You want to see it?”
“Sure,” he said.
She smiled and motioned for him to follow. In a few yards, the corridor turned again, only this time, it T’d onto a hall with windows looking out onto a small courtyard. Caroline stepped up to one of them and pointed to the enormous trunk that dominated nearly all of the space beyond. “There are a couple rooms where the tree has actually grown into and through the wall,” she said. “When they first built this place, I think there was a nice little garden area out there.”
Scott looked over her shoulder and shook his head. There was no room for a garden, or even a bench now. The enormous trunk of the tree dominated all of the available space.
“Wow,” he said. The trunk of “the Family Tree” was impressive. Daunting. The bark wrapped it in furrows that looked inches deep.
“That tree is what this whole place is built around,” Caroline said. Her voice was still whisper soft. “That’s what your great-uncle, and your grandfather and his father, and his father before him all took care of.”
“My family tree,” Scott answered, almost unconsciously.
“Yes.” Caroline’s fingers brushed his arm again. She seemed a touchy girl, and he couldn’t say he hated that.
“Welcome home,” she said. The Southern honey accent of her whispery voice sent a thrill down his spine. Scott nodded, not sure what to say. “Thanks.”
They stood there for a moment, just staring at the monolithic trunk. Finally, Scott turned away, back towards the hallway that housed his still-unseen room.
“You probably want to freshen up,” Caroline said. She started moving back toward the hall. Room 23 was the last dark doorway before the bright respite of the courtyard. “Just dial zero on the phone for the front desk if you need anything,” she said, as she jiggled the key in the lock, and then pushed the door to 23 open.
They used actual keys, not magnetic keycards here, Scott realized with silent amazement. He didn’t think he’d ever stayed in a hotel with an actual room key. This place was like a time machine.
Caroline handed him the key, and then held the door open for him to enter. He couldn’t help but brush against her as he passed. She was not afraid of being…close.
“Do you need anything else?” she asked. Her eyes flashed in the shadows, and Scott had to look away.
“No,” he said. “Just a nap, thanks. It was a long drive to get here from Chicago. I’ll come down to the front desk in a couple hours.”
Caroline stepped away from the door, and Scott smiled at her as he eased it shut. She stood still there, just outside, until he could no longer see her. Part of him wondered if she was still standing there after he turned the deadbolt.
Creepy, kinda.
He turned away and faced the room. It wasn’t large, but it was comfortable. The walls were papered in a mauve, emerald pattern, and the carpet was thick and dark as red wine. A queen-sized bed dominated the
center, its wooden back against the far wall. It looked comfortable—a high, thick mattress covered in pillows and an embroidered comforter.
Scott tossed his backpack on it, and yawned. He hadn’t been lying; it had been a long drive, and he really needed to lie down. He walked around the small room, found and used the toilet, and then lay back on the mattress and closed his eyes.
In moments, he was dreaming.
Chapter Two
When Scott woke from his nap, almost three hours later, he was haunted by the image of an endless forest…and eyes that followed him from behind enormous, ancient tree trunks at every turn. No matter where he had turned, he’d felt as if he were being watched. The last remnants of the dream made him shiver. He blinked and shook his head to wake up…and to try to shake the dream away. The room was darker than when he’d arrived. For a moment, he had that unsettling feeling of not being quite sure where he was, but then he remembered the drive, and the signs and the lobby and Ellen, the innkeeper, and the girl. The soft-spoken, raven-haired girl. Caroline.
Scott sat up and yawned. Then he slapped his cheek for good measure. Way past time to wake up. He’d walked in, taken a room, and had barely spoken to the woman who’d apparently run this place since before he was born. He owed her some time. Some ease of mind. He knew the unease that having a new boss show up could instill in people. They got paranoid, and started cooking up all sorts of theories and plots in their heads, always sure that the new asshole at the top was going to usher them out. He knew the feeling. He’d been in that situation at work himself a time or two. He didn’t know what he was going to do about this place yet, but he felt responsible to at least try to ease the anxieties of the staff.
After washing his face in the small bath, he pocketed the room key and walked down the hall, orienting himself by heading away from the foyer that contained the tree. That strange archeological landmark ought to make navigating this place easy. Hit the tree? You’ve gone too far.
He found his way back to the foyer with only one wrong turn—and he knew it was wrong almost instantly when it ended in the Erickson Room that Caroline had shown him.
He’d barely stepped into the foyer when Ellen greeted him for the second time that day.
“Well now, did you have a good nap, then? What did y’all think of the legendary Family Tree Inn beds? Some of those big city hotels talk about their heavenly beds, but I’ve always thought that ours might be just a little closer to the angels.” She gave him a broad smile and the wrinkles in her forehead and eyes seemed to sink deeper. For a moment, when her face wrinkled up in humor, he thought she looked more like eighty than sixty- something.
“It was very comfortable, thanks,” Scott said. He walked across the room to stand before her at the desk. “Hey, listen, do you want to sit down and talk a bit? I’d like to know more about the inn and how things are going here. And I’d guess you want to know a bit more about why I’m here.”
Ellen nodded. “Yeah, I’d guess I’d say that you and I should git a bit better acquainted. Yer daddy never brought you back up here while he was alive. And now with yer grandfather and great-uncle gone, I guess it’s me who’s left behind ta fill ya in on what’s what. Your family tree—and this Family Tree Inn—are yours, whether you like it or not. You should know a bit about ’em both, I’d suppose.”
Scott nodded. “That’s why I came here.”
At that moment, the door behind them opened and the room filled for a moment with the warm light of sunset. A man and a woman entered, both pulling suitcases on rollers behind them.
“Excuse me,” Ellen whispered, and stepped out from the desk to greet them. As she did, Scott took the opportunity to walk the room. He followed the long series of framed photographs and painted portraits around the room. Some were men, with severe stares and heavy brows. Others were women, with austere, haughty gazes. They all shared a certain look around the eyes…a look that Scott recognized. It was a look he saw every morning. He could definitely see his lineage on the walls.
He was staring at the image of an older man in a dark blue jacket with distinguished, graying sideburns and a pair of silver glasses when Ellen rejoined him.
“Okay,” she said. “They’re all checked in, and I don’t think we’ll be seeing anyone else tonight. If someone does walk in, they’ll ring the bell at the desk. Come with me,” she said.
She led him down the hall that Caroline had taken him down earlier. But this time, they veered away from the corridor that held his room.
Ellen slipped a key in a door without a room number, and he followed her inside. She flipped a switch, and a couple of dim wall sconces flickered to life. They spotlit a small couch, an end table, a recliner, and a refrigerator.
“This is our staff lounge,” Ellen explained. “Everyone needs to be able to duck away for a few minutes.” She pointed to a small silver bell that extruded from the wall near the door. “We rigged it a long time ago so that if anyone rang the bell at the desk, it rang here too.”
Scott didn’t think that was particularly innovative technology, but he nodded. It was smart, in a small operation like this. Otherwise, you lived in one spot twelve hours a day. And then he noticed the far wall of the room, the plaster of which was interrupted by a three-foot stretch of deeply rutted, exposed tree bark. A burnished wooden handle had been screwed into the exposed tree, for no reason that Scott could ascertain.
“How many rooms does this tree punch into?” he asked, pointing at the tree.
Ellen smiled. Instead of answering right away, she walked to the fridge. “Do you like beer?” she asked.
He shrugged. “Sure.”
She pulled a tall bottle with a wide round bottom from the shelf, and poured a glass of darkly amber liquid into two glasses. She put the bottle back, and handed Scott a glass before picking up the other one for herself.
“Try this,” she said. “We call it the Family Ale. It’s more like a heavy mead than beer, but it’s definitely not wine.”
Scott raised one eyebrow, but lifted the glass to observe its color, and then tilted it towards his lips. The scent of something faintly floral and darkly honeyed filled his nose. He tasted it, carefully, and his tongue was suddenly flooded with a flavor both powerful and warm. The back of his mouth tingled as he swallowed a small taste. It wasn’t truly sweet, and there was a malty, vanilla aftertaste that turned faintly bitter…but it hung in his throat like a fuzzy heat, delicious and full as it slid down.
“What is this?” he asked, realizing that he should have perhaps asked the question before drinking.
Ellen smiled, thinly. “That is the reason that this inn was built the way it was. That is your family heritage.”
Scott looked at her blankly.
“That is the blood of the tree,” she said.
His look didn’t change. He really wasn’t sure what she meant.
Ellen pointed at the short wooden implement poking out of the bark that pressed through the drywall. “Your ancestor, William Melton Belvedere tapped this tree more than one hundred and fifty years ago, and discovered the power of its blood. Actually, the Indian tribe of this area had discovered it long before him, and it was their worship of it that led him to understand.”
“Understand what?” Scott asked. The old woman was talking, but he was becoming increasingly more confused.
“That the sap of this tree can act somethin’ like a fountain of youth.”
Scott didn’t say anything.
The old woman nodded slowly. “You don’t believe that. And it’s okay. Whether it makes you live longer or not, I can tell you that anything made with the blood of the tree does boost your stamina. If you stay with us a few days, and drink of the blood of the tree, I guarantee that you will feel more alive when you leave than when you came here. It does have a curative influence, there is no arguing that.”
“Curative how?”
“And he recovered,” Scott finished for her.
Ellen nodded. “He recovered. But he knew he shoulda died. He had lead shot in his gut and he’d bled for hours on the ground before he was discovered. The fever had already begun burning him up, and he’d fallen in and out of consciousness. He questioned that Indian girl later about the cure, and about the tree, and learned that the Indians had had rituals surrounding its care and ‘milking’ for generations.”
“So…how did he come to build a house around it?” Scott asked. “I would think that the Indians would have protected the tree if they believed in its magic so much.”
Ellen nodded. Her smile faded. “That is not one of the nicer chapters in your family’s history,” she said. Ellen raised an eyebrow and cleared her throat before continuing. “But William did recover, and built the inn here around the tree, to protect it.”
“To hoard it, it sounds like,” Scott said.
Ellen shrugged. “Judge that how you will, but it’s been in your family ever since.”
“I don’t know why my dad never talked about it. I remember coming here once as a kid, I think, but…”
Ellen smiled. “You did indeed,” she said. “I remember that visit, though I don’t s’pose you’d recall me.”
Scott shook his head. He felt a little embarrassed.
“I wouldn’t expect ya to,” she said. “But your daddy…he didn’t want anything to do with this place after he went away to school,” Ellen said. “He couldn’t shake the dust from his shoes fast enough.”