Gina Ranalli - House of Fallen Trees

After the first spoonful, Karen said, “Now that’s what I’m talking about. Hot soup for a cold night.”

Saul cocked an eyebrow at her. “You do realize it’s only November, don’t you?”

“Yeah, but it’s so chilly,” Karen replied with a shiver.

“I thought you New Englanders were supposed to be a hearty bunch.”

“I suppose. I guess I’m just used to it snowing when it’s this cold.”

“It’s only forty-five degrees, Karen,” Rory told her, joining the conversation. “Maybe you’re coming down with a bug?”

She considered it. “I feel okay.” But that wasn’t entirely true. Physically, she felt fine, except for the chill, but emotionally she was on edge. She didn’t like the way the house was getting darker and no amount of lights seemed to help brighten it. Saul, who sat directly across from her, no more than two or three feet away, remained in shadow, his face obscured when he bent to his bowl. Several times, she’d glanced up at the overhead light, only to get a sharp pain behind her eyes, making her look away with a grimace. And each time she did so, the room seemed that much darker around them. She could feel a headache coming on, which at first she’d assumed was due to hunger, but now that she was eating, she thought it had more to do with the lighting in the house. It was hurting her eyes. She ate hurriedly, not because she was starving but because she was so tired. She figured she still hadn’t adjusted to the time difference and was looking forward to just going up to the room Rory had assigned her and perhaps getting some alone time with either her laptop or a paperback before settling in for a good hard crash.

There wasn’t much conversation at the table and part of her was grateful for that. She’d already been more social than she had been in months, and though she didn’t think she was coming across as particularly inept in that department, she knew she wasn’t being a chatterbox either. But maybe these guys didn’t mind. She was pretty sure Rory didn’t anyway. He struck her as being more of a loner, like herself.

When the meal was finished, Karen offered to help with cleaning up, but the guys would have none of it.

“You’re a guest,” Rory said. “The first one to stay at House of Fallen Trees and I’m going to treat you as such. I’m just sorry I couldn’t have made you a better meal.”

“Well, it’s a bed and breakfast ,” she replied. “So, I expect a breakfast with all the fixings in the morning.”

He laughed. “I’ll see what I can do.”

“Excellent. But, for now, I think I’m going to go up to my room. Probably call it a night. I’m beat.”

Rory nodded. “You remember which one it is?”

“Yep. I’m fairly confident I won’t get lost. If I do, I’ll scream bloody murder until you find me.”

She’d meant it as a joke, but the expression on his face told her instantly that it had been a bad one. “Sorry,” she said. “Fuck, I can be so stupid. Talking without thinking.”

“It’s okay,” he tried to reassure her. “No harm done.”

They said their goodnights awkwardly and she left the kitchen, walked through a good-sized empty dining room with a slate floor, and back into the living room where the massive staircase was located.

The house had three floors, not including the basement (and, she assumed, an attic), which she hadn’t seen but Saul had told her was an oddity in itself, because it was packed floor to ceiling with old junk no one wanted to go through. Consequently, they went down there as infrequently as possible. Saul had only been down there to check the status of the foundation from the inside.

“What I could check anyway. Then I got the hell out of there,” he’d told her earlier. “Place gave me the creeps.” Naturally, this had only made Karen curious about the basement and she intended to explore it the following day.

The room she’d been given was up on the second floor and she climbed the stairs wearily, gripping the banister with one hand while keeping her eyes on her feet. It was dark on the stairs and she didn’t feel like taking a tumble back down them.

When she reached the second floor, she paused at the head of the staircase, listening to the wind. It sounded so much louder up here, presumably because she was almost level with the treetops at this height. Why had the Captain, Frank Storm — she chuckled again at the obviously made up name — built what was evidently his dream house in the middle of a forest? Why not on some bluff overlooking the ocean? Puzzling, to say the least.

But Karen enjoyed a good puzzle; it was how she looked at her novels. They were all puzzles to be solved. Each one, a mystery when she began it, with no idea of how she would get to the end. She always managed it though, always figured out the puzzle, whether it was plot or character motivation or whatever. It always came to her eventually and she knew it would come to her here as well. Even if the absolute truth didn’t reveal itself, she would be able to fill in the blank spaces with her mind and be satisfied. It was how she lived her professional life and she knew she was pretty good at it.

She listened to the wind a moment longer before moving off towards her bedroom down the hall. Every so often along the wall, there was a porthole built into it, which was peculiar to say the least. Small round windows with which a person could peek into the majority of the rooms, though there weren’t nearly as many placed on the outer walls.

Strange indeed.

When she reached her room, she stepped inside and closed the door, casting herself into complete darkness. Reaching for the light switch, she was surprised to find there was none. “Dammit,” she whispered, carefully crossing the room to where she remembered the night table to be, hands stretched out before her, blind feelers she hoped would save her shins from any collisions. She found the bed before the night table but from there the rest was easy. Sitting on the edge of it, she explored the table until her fingers found and twisted the light switch on a small brass lamp with a frosted glass shade that did little to illuminate the room.

Despite the dimness, she could see enough of the room to be impressed for the second time. The bed she sat on was an antique canopy, as were the other furnishings, including a beautifully and intricately carved redwood hope chest which was snug up against the wall opposite the foot of the bed.

Who had this room belonged to when the Captain had lived here? Not him — his room was on the third floor and far more spacious and masculine than this one. Though Karen didn’t find this room to be particularly feminine either. The wallpaper was decorated with a woodsy motif — no big surprise there — and the heavy drapes were a midnight blue that matched a floor runner leading from the far side of the bed to the threshold of the bathroom.

Bath.

Now there was a welcoming word if she’d ever heard one. Rory had told her on the drive up that, though they had hot water, in actuality it didn’t run much more than warm.

She decided she didn’t care. Even a little warmth would be better than none at all. She’d take a bath, brush her teeth and hair and then return to the bed, power up the laptop and see if she couldn’t start writing what she hoped would be a long detailed journal of her experiences here in Fallen Trees. With any luck, being able to look at and study words on a screen, she might uncover clues about Sean’s disappearance. Maybe see something that no one else had yet seen.

She stood up, walked into the bathroom, and turned on the tub’s faucet. Leaning over with her hand under the flow of water, it seemed as though she’d had to wait a very long time before the water began to warm up. But it did warm up and she plugged the tub and began to undress, gazing at herself in the clouded mirror over the sink. Beneath her eyes, gray pouches were evident and her mouth looked drawn down, as though being pulled by invisible strings.