A Soft Barren Aftershock

by F. Paul Wilson

  After that he played an increasingly confused, frightened, and eventually panicked young husband looking for his lost wife. He’d gone to get her a cup of coffee, and when he came back she was . . . gone.

  Morley smiled at how perfectly the plan had worked. The police and his father-in-law had been suspicious—wasn’t the husband always suspect?—but hadn’t been able to punch a hole in his story. And since Julie wasn’t carrying a speck of life insurance, no clear motive.

  The disguise had proved a big help. If he’d stood on line as Bill Morley, someone very well might have remembered that he’d been alone. But as it turned out, no one could say they’d noticed Bill Morley at all, with or without his wife, until he’d begun wandering the decks, looking for her.

  But it had been his fellow passengers who’d helped him the most. A number of them swore they’d seen a woman aboard matching Julie’s description. Of course they had—Morley had made sure of that. One couple even identified Julie’s picture. As a result, the long, unsuccessful search focused on the thirty-mile ferry route. No one gave a thought to digging up the yard back on Nantucket.

  Final consensus: 1) Julia Lange Morley either fell or jumped unnoticed from the ferry; or 2) she was a victim of foul play—killed or knocked unconscious and transported off the ferry in the trunk of one of the cars riding on the lower deck.

  Neither seemed likely, but once one accepted the fact that Julie had embarked but not debarked, those were the possibilities that remained.

  Morley had kept the house for a while but didn’t live there. Instead he mortgaged it and used the money to lease an apartment in Greenwich Village. It was the disco seventies, with long nights of dancing, drugs, and debauchery. In the summers he rented out the Lange place for a tidy sum, and forced himself to pay a visit every so often. He was especially interested in the growth of a certain young maple—his maple.

  And now it seemed his maple had come back to haunt him.

  Haunt . . . poor choice of words.

  And perhaps he should start calling it Julie’s maple.

  All right: What did he know—really know?

  Whether through extreme coincidence, fate, or a manipulation of destiny, he had purchased a piece of maple furniture made from the very tree he’d placed over Julie’s corpse nearly thirty years ago. That seemed to be the only hard fact he could rely on.

  After that, the assumptions grew murky and fantastic. Much as he hated saying it, he had no choice: The wood from that tree appeared to be possessed.

  Two days ago he would have laughed aloud at the very suggestion of a haunted footstool, but after numerous injuries and one potentially fatal close call, Morley was unable to muster even a sneer today.

  He didn’t believe in ghosts or haunted houses, let alone haunted footstools, but how else to explain the events of the past two days?

  But just for the sake of argument, even if it were possible for Julie’s soul or essence or whatever to become a part of that young maple as it grew—after all, its roots had fed on the nutrients released by her decomposing body—why wasn’t JULIE worked into the grain? Why ANNA?

  Morley’s second scotch hit him and he felt his eyelids growing heavy. He let them close and drifted into a semiconscious state where floating woodgrains morphed from JULIE to ANNA and back again . . . JULIE . . . ANNA . . . JULIE . . . ANNA . . . JULIE—

  “Dear God!” he cried, awakening with a start.

  The flight attendant rushed to his side. “Is something wrong, sir?”

  “No,” he gasped. “I’m all right. Really.”

  But Morley wasn’t all right. His insides were strangling themselves in a Gordian knot. He’d just had an inkling about Anna, and if he was correct, nothing was all right. Nothing at all.

  As soon as Morley was through the airport gate, he found a seat, pulled out his cell phone, and dialed Nantucket information. He asked the operator to read off all the names on the short list of doctors practicing on the island. She did, but none of them rang a bell.

  “He might not be in practice anymore.” Might not even be alive, though Morley prayed he was. “He was a GP—my wife saw him back in the seventies.”

  “That was probably Doc Lawrence. He’s retired now but his home phone’s listed.”

  Lawrence! Yes, that was it! He dialed the number and a moment later found himself talking to Charles Lawrence, M.D., elderly, somewhat hard of hearing, but still in possession of most of his marbles.

  “Of course I remember your wife. Saw Julie Lange at least twice a summer for one thing or another all the years she was growing up. Did they ever find her?”

  “Not a trace.”

  “What a shame. Such a nice girl.”

  “She certainly was. But let me ask you something, Doctor. I was just out visiting the old place and it occurred to me that Julie had an appointment with you the day before she disappeared. Did you . . . discover anything that might have upset her?”

  “Not at all. In fact, quite the opposite. She was absolutely overjoyed about being pregnant.”

  Morley was glad he was already sitting as all of LaGuardia seemed to tilt under him. Even so, he feared he might tumble from the chair.

  “Hello?” Dr. Lawrence said. “Are you still there?”

  “Yes,” he croaked. His tongue felt like Velcro.

  “You sound as if this is news to you. I assumed she told you.”

  “Yes, of course she did,” Morley said, his mind racing. “That’s why we were heading for the mainland—to surprise her father. I never had the heart to tell him after she . . .”

  “Yeah, I know. That made it a double tragedy.”

  Morley extricated himself from the conversation as quickly as possible, then sat and stared at nothing, the cell phone resting in his sweating palm, cold damp terror clutching at his heart.

  On the last day of her life, Julie had driven into town to run some errands and to see Doc Lawrence for “a check-up.” A check-up . . . young Bill Morley had been too involved in planning his wife’s demise to question her about that, but now he knew what had been going on. Julie must have missed her period. No such thing as a home pregnancy test back then, so she’d gone to the doctor to have it done. That was what she’d wanted to tell him before he cracked her skull with the three iron.

  Julie had often talked about starting a family . . . not if—when. When she talked of a son, she never mentioned a name; but whenever she spoke of having a daughter, she knew what she wanted to call her. A name she loved.

  Anna.

  Julie had always intended to call her little girl Anna.

  Morley felt weak. He closed his eyes. Something had invaded the wood of that tree, and the wood of that tree had invaded his house, his life. Was it Anna, the tiny little life that had been snuffed out along with her mother’s, or was it Julie, seeking vengeance in the name of the child who would never be born?

  How did it go? Heaven has no rage like love to hatred turned, Nor hell a fury like a woman scorned.

  But what of a woman never allowed to be born?

  Morley shuddered. It didn’t matter who, really. Either way, measures had to be taken, and he knew exactly what he needed to do.

  Night had fallen by the time Morley got home. He entered his house cautiously, turning on lights in each room, hallway, and staircase before he proceeded. When he reached the living room he went directly to the fireplace, opened the flue, and lit the kindling beneath the stack of aged logs on the grate.

  He waited until he had a roaring fire, then went to the hall closet and removed a heavy winter blanket. With this tucked under his arm, Morley headed up the stairs—turning lights on as he went—to the floor where he’d locked the footstool in the spare bedroom.

  He hesitated outside the door, heart pounding, hands trembling. He tried the knob—still locked, thank God. He turned the key and opened the door just enough to snake his hand in and turn on the light. Then, taking a deep breath, he pushed the door open.

  The footstool lay
on its side, exactly as he had left it.

  He felt a little silly now. What had he been afraid of? Had he been half expecting it to jump at him?

  But Morley was taking no chances. He threw the blanket over the stool, bundled it up, and carried it downstairs where he dumped it in front of the fireplace. Using the log tongs, he pulled the stool free and consigned it to the flames.

  He watched the curly maple burn.

  He wasn’t sure what he expected next. A scream? The legs of the stool writhing in pain? None of that happened. It simply lay there atop the other logs and . . . burned. At one point he leaned closer, trying for one last peek at the name hidden in the grain, but the heat drove him back before he could find it.

  Anna . . . his child’s name . . . he thought he should feel something, but he was empty of all emotions except relief. He never knew her . . . how could he feel anything for her? And as for Julie . . .

  “It’s too bad you had to die,” he whispered as the varnish on the wood bubbled and blackened. “But you left me no choice. And as for coming back and interfering with my life, that’s not going to happen. I’d all but forgotten about you—and now I’ll go about forgetting you again.”

  Morley watched the fabric and padding of the stool dissolve in a burst of flame, watched the wood of the seat and legs char and smoke and burn and crumble. He remained before the fire until every last splinter of the stool had been reduced to ash.

  Finally he rose and yawned. A long, hard day, but a fruitful one. He looked around. His home was his again, purged of a malign influence. But how to keep it from re-entering?

  Easy: Morley resolved never to buy another stick of furniture that wasn’t at least a hundred years old.

  With that settled, he headed upstairs for a well-deserved night’s rest. In his bedroom he pulled out the third drawer in his antique pine dresser. As he bent to retrieve a pair of pajamas, the top drawer slid open and slammed against his forehead.

  Clutching his head, Morley staggered back. His foot caught on the leg of a chair—a chair that shouldn’t have been there, hadn’t been there a moment ago—and he tumbled to the floor. He landed on his back, groaning with the pain of the impact. As he opened his eyes, he looked up and saw the antique mahogany wardrobe tilting away from the wall, leaning over him, falling!

  With a terrified cry he rolled out of the way. The heavy wardrobe landed with a floor-jarring crash just inches from his face. Morley started to struggle to his feet but froze when he saw the letters worked into the grain of the wardrobe’s flank: ANNA.

  With a hoarse cry he lunged away and rose to his hands and knees—just in time to see a two-foot splinter of wood stab through the oriental rug—exactly where he’d been only a heartbeat before. He clambered to his feet and ducked away as his dresser tumbled toward him. On its unfinished rear panel he saw the name ANNA wrapped around one of its knots.

  Caught in the ice-fisted grip of blind, screaming panic, Morley lurched toward the door, dodging wooden spears that slashed through the rug. Julie . . . Anna . . . or whoever or whatever it was had somehow seeped out of the footstool and infected the entire room. He had to get out!

  Ahead of him he saw the heavy oak door begin to swing shut. No! He couldn’t be trapped in here! He leaped forward and ducked through the door an instant before it slammed closed.

  Gasping, Morley sagged against the hallway wall. Close. Too close. He—

  Pain lanced into his ankle. He looked down and saw a foot-long splinter of floorboard piecing his flesh. And all up and down the hall the floorboards writhed and buckled, thrusting up jagged, quivering knife-sharp spikes.

  Morley ran, dodging and leaping down the hall as wooden spears stabbed his lower legs, ripping his clothes. Where to go? Downstairs—out! He couldn’t stay in the house—it was trying to kill him!

  He reached the stairs and kept going. He felt the wooden treads tilting under his feet, trying to send him tumbling. He grabbed the banister and it exploded into splinters at his touch, peppering him with a thousand wooden nails. He slammed against the stairwell wall but managed to keep his footing until the next to last step when he tripped and landed on the tiled floor of the front foyer.

  What now? his fear-crazed mind screamed. Would the tiles crack into ceramic daggers and cut him to shreds?

  But the foyer floor lay cool and inert beneath him.

  Of course, he thought, rising to his knees. It’s not wood. Whatever was in the footstool has managed to infiltrate the wood of the house, but has no power over anything else. As long as I stay on a tile or linoleum floor—

  Morley instinctively ducked at the sound of a loud crack! behind him, and felt something whiz past his head. When he looked up he saw one of the balusters from the staircase jutting from the wall, vibrating like an arrow in a bull’s-eye. At that instant the upper border of the wainscoting splintered from the wall and stabbed him in the belly—not a deep wound, but it drew blood.

  And then the entire foyer seemed to explode—the wainscoting panels shredding and flying at him, balusters zipping through the air, molding peeling from the ceiling and lancing at him.

  Morley dashed for the front door. Moving in a crouch, he reached the handle and pulled. He sobbed with joy when it swung open. He stumbled into the cool night air and slammed the door shut behind him.

  Battered, bruised, bleeding, he gripped the wrought iron railing—metal: cold, hard, wonderful, reliable metal—and slumped onto the granite slabs of his front steps where he sobbed and retched and thanked the stars that years ago he’d taken a contractor’s advice and replaced the original oak door with a steel model. For security reasons, the contractor had said. That decision had just saved his life.

  He’d lost his home. No place in that building was safe for him—even being this close to it could be dangerous. He fought to his feet and staggered across the glorious concrete of the sidewalk to lean against the magnificent steel of one of the parked cars. Safe.

  And then something bounced off his head and dropped to the sidewalk. Morley squinted in the darkness. An acorn. Dear God!

  He lurched away from the overhanging oak and didn’t stop moving until he was a good dozen feet from the tree.

  An accident? A coincidence? After all, it was October, the time of year when oaks began dropping acorns.

  But how could he be sure that even the trees hadn’t turned against him?

  He needed a safe place where he could rest and tend his wounds and clear his head and not spend every moment fearing for his life. A place with no wood, a place where he could think! Tomorrow, in the light of day, he could solve this problem, but until then . . .

  He knew the place. That newly restored hotel on West Thirty-fifth Street—the Deco. He’d been to an art show there last month and remembered how he’d loathed its decor—all gleaming steel and glass and chrome, so completely lacking in the warmth and richness of the wood that filled his home.

  What a laugh! Now it seemed like Mecca, like Paradise.

  The Deco wasn’t far. Giving the scattered trees a wide berth, Morley began walking.

  “Sir, you’re bleeding,” said the clerk at the reception desk. “Shall I call a doctor?”

  I know damn well I’m bleeding, Morley wanted to shout, but held his tongue. He was in a foul mood, but at least he wasn’t bleeding as much as before.

  “I’ve already seen a doctor,” he lied.

  “May I ask what happened?”

  This twerp of a desk clerk had a shaved head, a natty little mustache, and a pierced eyebrow that rose as he finished the question. His name tag read Wölf. Really.

  “Automobile accident.” Morley fumbled through his wallet. “My luggage is wrecked, but I still have this.” He slapped his Amex Platinum down on the black marble counter.

  The clerk wiggled his eyebrow stud and picked up the card.

  “I must stress one thing,” Morley said. “I want a room with no wood in it. None. Got that?”

  The stud dipped as the clerk frowne
d. “No wood . . . let me think . . . the only room that would fit that is the Presidential Suite. It was just refurbished in metal and glass. But the rate is—”

  “Never mind the rate. I want it.”

  As the clerk nodded and got to work, Morley did a slow turn and looked around. What a wonderful place. Steel, brass, chrome, marble, glass, ceramic. Lovely because this was the way the future was supposed to look when the here-and-now was the future . . . a future without wood.

  Lovely.

  He did not let the bellhop go—though Morley had no luggage, the man had escorted him to the eighth floor—until he had made a careful inspection. The clerk had been right: not a stick of wood in the entire suite.

  As soon as he was alone, Morley stripped and stepped into the shower. The water stung his wounds, but the warm flow eased his battered muscles and sluiced away the dried blood. He wrapped himself in the oversized terry cloth robe and headed straight for the bedroom.

  As he reached for the covers he paused, struck by the huge chrome headboard. At its center, rising above the spread wings that stretched to the edges of the king-size mattress, was the giant head of a bald eagle with a wickedly pointed beak. So lifelike, Morley could almost imagine a predatory gleam in its metallic eye.

  But no time for aesthetics tonight. He was exhausted. He craved the oblivion of sleep to escape the horrors of the day. Tomorrow, refreshed, clear-headed, he would tackle the problem head on, find a way to exorcise Julie or Anna from his home. But now, tonight . . .

  Morley pulled back the covers and collapsed onto the silk sheets. Hello, Morpheus, good-bye, Anna . . .

  Wölf spots the night manager crossing the lobby and motions him over.

  “Mr. Halpern, I just had a guest here who insisted on a room with no wood—absolutely no wood in it. I gave him the Presidential Suite. I believe that’s all metal and glass and such, right?”

  “It was until yesterday,” Halpern says. He’s fortyish and probably thinks the curly toupee makes him look thirtyish. It doesn’t. “The designer moved in a new headboard. Said he found it in a Massachusetts wood shop. Brand new and carved out of heavily grained maple. But he went and had it coated with so many layers of chrome paint it looks like solid steel. Said he couldn’t resist the eagle. Can’t say as I blame him—looks like it came straight off the Chrysler Building.”