Girl From the Tree House

by Gudrun Frerichs

  This is heaven. Our heaven. I could sit here forever and let the serenity of the place soak into my bones. But I don’t have forever. I feel pressure in my head telling me the Tribe on the inside is rather bewildered. All they see is an out-of-control wilderness and the sea of blackberry bushes that re-possessed what once must have been a garden with pathways and vegetable plots.

  It’s not always easy with a bunch of little kid parts. They are stuck in the past. Miss Marple is right, they only learn and grow when they come into the body and interact with the outside world. Only then can they see that now is different from then. Otherwise, they live forever in the trauma memory they hold, like Groundhog Day. That’s a horrible existence. My heart goes out to them.

  Although how she expects bring the children out to happen is a mystery. They are not puppies you can take for a walk at a dog park or throw balls to fetch. I’ll ask her the next time we speak. I always thought that’s what therapy sessions were for.

  I leave the van and make my way to the house. Our new home is built of study weatherboard and is in decent condition by the looks of it. It’s difficult, though, to clear a path to the front door. I end up with scratches from pesky blackberry bushes and leaves and twigs end up stuck all over my person.

  Where’s the key? When we found the deed, nobody thought about the house key. I search everywhere for a key, under the wooden doorstep, on top of the door frame, and under bushes. Nothing. This can’t be the end of our successful escape. If need be, I’ll smash one of the downstairs windows.

  “Have a look in the watering can.”

  Oh my, I’ve totally forgotten little Mikey, our very own Jim Hawkins. He won’t know where you’ve put the car keys you’ve mislaid, but he sure knows where people hide things. I pick up the old watering can that’s lying forgotten on the ground under the window two yards from the door. Mikey was right. There, banging in the tin can is a rusty old key.

  “Thanks, Mikey. Well done, you.”

  I take the key and chuck the watering can back into the overgrown garden. I sympathize with the kids, the wilderness is a bit too wild, even for me.

  “Nothing a little elbow grease can’t fix.” Luke is trying to send a positive message to all of us.

  “Really? That’s how you want to spin it? Look around. It’s a jungle.”

  “Don’t worry, I can do it. Give me two or three days and you’ll think you’re walking through the gardens of Versailles.”

  I have no clue where he gets the Versailles idea from. We are no Sun King with ambitions of manicured gardens and flowerbeds. A nice cottage garden you can enter without being skinned alive would do, thank you.

  The key fits and the front door opens with ease as if someone had come along yesterday and oiled the lock. Fat chance, but I take it as a good sign. We’ve had a hard life so far. I’m not going to be ungrateful for small mercies. Bring them on.

  As soon as I open the door, pandemonium breaks loose inside my head. Sometimes the Tribe is terribly undisciplined, especially when everyone talks at the same time. It tires me like nothing else, and it drives Elise crazy. She calls it having a large choir in her head. That’s silly. None of us can sing. I compare it to Black Friday Sales. The doors open and hundreds of customers are trying to get through all at once. That’s how it feels inside my head right now, pushing and shoving. Everyone wants to have a look.

  I’m standing in a large living-dining-kitchen area. This forerunner of the open-plan idea is the only room on the ground floor, not counting the laundry and the toilet to my right. That’s when I know I’ve been here before. I test my sense of déjà vu by opening a drawer of the kitchen cabinet. And yes, that’s where linen serviettes are. Now, this is interesting. I don’t remember ever setting foot in this house, but others do.

  Our new home even comes fully furnished. There is a large, worn-out couch and two armchairs standing close to an open fireplace, a bookshelf and a dining table with four chairs in front of it stand closer to the kitchen area, and a large floor loom dominates the far corner. An old cooking range, a leftover from the last century dominates the kitchen part of the room. Close to it towers a beautiful rimu kitchen cabinet.

  A thick layer of dust covers everything, and large spider webs have found a home in the corners of the ceiling. Small scratch patterns in the dust on the wooden floorboards tell the tales of families of mice calling this place home as well. I’ll leave that worry to Ama. I don’t do mice or spider webs. They creep me out.

  Going up a flight of stairs is a surprise too. No creaking steps or wonky banisters. We didn’t inherit the height of modern architecture, but the house is solid and promises to last another hundred years at least. Upstairs are two large bedrooms each with a big wooden bed, bedside tables, and a simple wardrobe. Not very fancy but we didn’t come here for fancy. At least we have real beds and real mattresses to sleep on and not just piles of straw.

  It looks like my job is done. I’ll leave the rest for Ama. She can get the place ready for the body to have a place to sleep tonight and whip up something for us to eat. I’m happy to help get our stuff from the van. Perhaps Luke can have a go later at getting the stove working. We could use it because the temperature has dropped in the last half hour. Perhaps I should search for some firewood?

  My hunt for firewood becomes another fight with brambles and spiky bushes. The back of the house is just as overgrown and impenetrable as the front. It’s impossible to tell what grew here when the house was lived in. I lift my eyes and almost faint when I register a giant tree standing less than twenty yards away from me. Three adults would have to link hands to reach around the circumference. Massive branches thick with leaves reach up far into the sky.

  I swear I hear a loud cry for help. It comes so unexpectedly that I’m unable to avoid being sucked inside.

  Chapter Seven

  Elise: 18 November 2015, Early Evening, Wright’s Homestead

  “Help!” My lips form words but no sounds come out of my mouth. I stare at the tree and bend over, clutching my hands to my knees, trying to get air into my lungs. Like in a horror movie, the tree comes alive and moves toward me. The shadows of its giant, spindly branches creep up to me. Any moment now they’ll squeeze the life force out of my body.

  Helen was right. I am bonkers, loony, crazy, kooky, nutty, cracked. Totally mental and useless. I have to get away or… I stumble backward and fall over a bucket and a stack of rusting gardening tools I hadn’t seen under the sea of out-of-control weeds. With a loud clatter, I land on my backside.

  It’s such a surprise; the terror from seconds ago disappears. I laugh until tears run down my face. The spell is broken. Rubbing my behind, I get up and look at the tree. Yes, it’s a tree, not a monster. A huge tree, but just a tree. Perhaps not just a tree. It’s the tree I’ve seen hundreds, no thousands of times. Not a tree similar to this one. No, the very tree right in front of me.

  It is the tree of my recurring nightmares, right down to the cut-off branch about a yard above the ground, the knotted rope dangling down at the back, and the rickety old bench leaning against it.

  “Elise, don’t you remember our tree?” I clearly hear a young child’s voice chiming silvery like a delicate bell. Where is this kid, and where the heck am I?

  “It’s our tree, silly.”

  My head shoots up. “Who’s talking? Show yourself. This isn’t funny.”

  “Elise, don’t you remember?”

  I know trees don’t speak to people or attack people, other than in Walt Disney movies. As so often, my imagination is running away with me. It’s actually a beautiful giant of the forest, strong and majestic. I hear soft giggling and then it feels as if someone takes my hand and pulls me toward the tree.

  I step up to the trunk and let my fingertips follow the crevices of the bark and rest on the welts that have moss growing on them. It’s like a miniature landscape of hills and valleys. The nerve endings of my fingers are throbbing as I grip around the trunk. It’s as if I could s
ink into the valleys, become small like an ant and find a home inside the cracks and lines, or hide under the loose bits of bark.

  I have seen this tree so many times, every line, every crevice is like a familiar friend. In my dreams, I always run away from something ugly and end up slipping through the crevices into the trunk. There I’m safe and untouchable. There nobody puts me into a hospital or sends me away. Nobody can hurt me.

  “That’s it. You’ve got it.”

  I don’t have the darnedest clue what it is that I’ve got. Then a little girl appears in my mind’s eye, not older than four or five years. She’s dressed in a white summer dress covered with thousands of little pink flowers and a wide skirt that swings around her small, chubby legs. She has blonde, curly locks and smiles at me through cornflower blue eyes.

  I’ve seen her before, in my dreams. She laughs now and her blonde locks bounce around her face as she nods encouragingly.

  “Don’t you remember?”

  I remember. She looks like my doll Maddie. I’m not sure who gave her to me, but she’s been with me for as long as I can think back. We were inseparable, and I often wished she’d come alive. She never did, though. I was grief-stricken as a young child.

  Her image fades away and I feel a sharp sting of loss that drives tears into my eyes. Who is that child? I know her, yet I’ve seen her today for the first time. If you can call having a hallucination that talks back to you as seen. My shoulders sink in resignation. What use is it to wonder about anything? My head hurts trying to separate fantasy from reality.

  I let my fingers glide over the rough bark of the tree one last time and turn around. Where am I, and where is my van? A moment ago, I was sitting at a beach… or didn’t I try to start the van? And now this? I look around this unfamiliar place. Will the blackouts never end? No matter how hard I try to remember what I’m doing, no matter how hard I pray for mercy, nothing seems to help.

  “You are the host of a personality system and during your blackouts, other parts of you take control of the body and do what’s needed.”

  I remember sending stabbing looks to Charlotte.

  “Host? Being a host means I invited people into my life and into my house. I don’t remember having issued an invitation to those time-thieves. Or do you mean host as in a living form in which parasites live?”

  I don’t recall how that particular conversation ended. It wasn’t a good session, that much I know. From the way she spoke, I took that she thought those time-thieves—that’s what I call them—do what’s needed much better than I can. I resent that. Whoever is doing it, could at least ask, couldn’t they? But nobody’s asking. If they were a part of me, as Charlotte suggested, they wouldn’t take without asking. That’s just not how I do things. It’s another piece of evidence that her multiple personality theory is flawed.

  I guess these blackouts probably have a medical cause. As always, I have to stitch my life together from the little clues I can find. The tree is familiar and that’s a good start. I was on my way to my aunt’s house. Maybe that’s where I am? Although the house I’m looking at isn’t all that familiar. There’s not even the slightest stirring in my memory. Perhaps I got lost?

  To get to the front of the house, I wade through a sea of prickly bushes and overgrown thistles that fight with ferns and ivy for precious light. My van is parked twenty yards away from the house. That’s a good sign.

  “Hello? Is somebody home?” I approach the house. The last thing I need is a furious house owner storming out and accusing me of trespassing.

  “Hello? May I come in? I think I got lost.” I peek through the open door. Somebody must live here because there is a fire in an old cooking range. Not that I see any fire. Only large clouds of smoke are coming from the ancient appliance. Not enough to make Indian smoke signals, but my eyes are burning, and tears run down my cheeks. And the smell is… let’s say it still has a way to go from stinking, unused stove to welcoming wood fire.

  “Hello? Anybody home?”

  I get no answer, but my bags and suitcases are piled up in the middle of the room. It looks like I arrived at the right place. Going by the inches of dust that cover everything, nobody has lived in this house for a long, long time.

  I rush to the nearest window and try to open the old-fashioned sash fasteners. After a few attempts and a little elbow grease, the old latches give, and the window opens with a loud squeal. One down three to go. Soon a fresh breeze takes care of the stale air in the room, or rather the house because as far as I can see, there is only one room on the ground floor. Two doors to the right look promising, but behind them, I find only a combined laundry and toilet, and a large pantry.

  I sink into one of the chairs at the dining table and look around, waiting for some level of recognition to stir, but nothing happens. Only when my eyes land on the big loom in the corner, tucked behind the stairs leading up to the top floor, do I get a sense of familiarity. In front of me, I find my clipboard with the instructions to get to my aunt’s house and the deed.

  I take the deed with the attached survey plan and go outside to look for the boundary. The small creek and the line of trees where the clearing ends, all fits. The house seems to be the one in the deed. I have arrived. That’s a strange feeling. I expected excitement and joy, but instead, I’m feeling rather flat. It’s not the house’s fault. I don’t have a great need for luxury. The house seems to be adequate for my needs.

  My gaze wanders from my pile of bags to the dust and the spider webs, the dirty windows, and the still smoking range. It’ll take a lot of work to turn this cabin into a welcoming home.

  “Not today.” My voice echoes through the empty house challenging the walls to respond. But nothing disturbs the peacefulness, not even a mouse scuttling into a hiding place. It’s just me. I get up and inspect the bags I brought along. My stomach is rumbling. Somewhere needs to be food. I’m not disappointed. There is a bag with enough apples and peanut-butter sandwiches to feed an army.

  I take an apple and am about to sit down again when the distant clatter of hooves stops me in my tracks. I thought I was alone in this wilderness. The sound of a rider unsettles me. I look for a weapon I could defend myself with if need be. It’s not an easy task. In the end, I find an old broom in the laundry. It has to do. I wait at the front door, trying to ignore my racing heart.

  From working with dogs in Horace’s vet clinic I know it’s important to show no fear. Not that the rider is a dog, but it could be an unsavory visitor. As he comes closer—it is a he—I try to relax.

  The closer the rider comes, the more I try to relax. He’s just a rough looking man in his fifties. A hunter going by the gun tucked into a bag at the side of his saddle. Even without the gun, the thick camouflage green vest over a gray woolen shirt and a floppy hat pushed back from his weathered, suntanned face tells the story of a man who spends his time outdoors.

  He sits on his horse as if he was born in the saddle. It tells me he’s good with animals. I take that as a positive sign. He doesn’t dismount but squints at me. I know next to nothing of human nature. Everyone agrees with that. But in the years working with animals in Horace’s clinic, I never went wrong judging a person by the way they are with animals.

  This guy is okay. There is no reason to be on tenterhooks. No reason to become best buddies either. He lifts his hand halfway for a greeting and slides sideways off the horse.

  “I smelled the smoke. Are you supposed to be here? We don’t take kindly to squatters.”

  He takes off his hat and slaps it on his outer thigh. Sunrays create a reddish copper gleam in his brown hair. He’s fairly tall and has an athletic build, but I’m determined his grunting persona will not intimidate me.

  “This is my place. How about you?”

  “Your place? I know for a fact that Amanda didn’t sell, and they couldn’t find any relatives when she died.”

  He sounded pleased with himself as if he’d uncovered a major scam. I can’t falter now, but having a comple
te stranger questioning me on my property is not going down well with me.

  “I’m her niece, but that really is none of your business.” I’m summoning all my energy to transmit that I want him off my land. He seems to get it when I raise my eyebrows because the color is rising on his face.

  “This is a rough, unforgiving country. It’s no place for easy-come-easy-go, Hare Krishna, sunshine people. You shouldn’t be here.”

  I guess he would see me like a sunshine person with my baggy Bali pants, the thigh-length oversized t-shirt, and the masses of chestnut brown hair piled up on my head, held in place with a handful of colorful hair ties.

  Horace often complained that my clothes disguise my delicious figure. Delicious? As if I were the gourmet version of a hot dog… do you want mustard and ketchup to go with that? He never got that a disguise was exactly what I had in mind. Calling my body shape delicious made me cringe.

  The stranger looks at me with a frown. Did I allow my mind to wander again?

  “Are you policing this part of the woods?”

  “No.” He drags out his ‘no’ as if he isn’t sure how official his visit is.

  “Then I guess you are trespassing. If you don’t mind, I have work to do.”

  “Hold on, Kiddo, it’s my duty to check. We don’t want a forest fire starting because some cocky townspeople don’t know how to deal with a fire in the open.”

  “As you can see, no open fire here, only a chimney that hasn’t been used for decades and wood that’s not dry enough. No need for you to worry.” I hope that sends him on his merry way, but I’m mistaken. He steps up to me and holds out his hand.

  “Where are my manners? I should have introduced myself. Scott Thompson. My friends call me Scott.” He snorts, amused by his joke, and pulls his hand back when I don’t shake it. “Not that there are that many out here. I’m your neighbor, I live in a cabin two miles up east from you.”