Gina Ranalli - House of Fallen Trees

Karen frowned at her mirror image. Yes, she was tired, but shit. She didn’t feel nearly as bad as she looked.

She reached around her back to unhook her bra, letting it drop to the floor just as the sound of male laughter caused her to yelp and whirl around, instinctively covering her breasts with folded arms.

Goosebumps popped up all over her flesh as she poked her head out the bathroom door, expecting to see Rory or, more likely, Saul, sitting on the bed, having a good chuckle over one thing or another. But there was no one.

Her eyes went to the door — still closed — and the travel bags she’d placed in the center of the bed when Rory had first shown her the room upon their arrival. Nothing appeared to be disturbed.

She shivered, colder than ever, listened in the bathroom doorway to see if the sound of laughter would be repeated. When it wasn’t, she chalked it up to a tired and overactive imagination coupled with the loudness of the water running in the bathtub and the trees thrashing against each other outside.

This time, she closed the bathroom and, though she thought she was being ridiculously silly, used the eye-hook lock to prevent anyone from barging in on her.

Like who? She asked herself, only partly amused. One of the two gay guys downstairs?

She turned off the faucet and stepped carefully into the warm water, sitting down, immediately immersed in what had to be the coziest spot in the entire house right now.

Sinking down low until only her face from the nose up remained above the water level, Karen sighed, causing bubbles to boil up around her head.

The warm water instantly soothed her aching muscles, letting her know just how much of a workout she’d gotten on the trek up here.

If only I could have some hot water, she thought. Scalding. Now that would be heaven. It seemed like mere minutes had passed and already the water was growing tepid. Soon it would be cold and unless she wanted to keep refilling the tub, she should move on from the soaking stage to the scrubbing one.

Reaching for the new bar of soap Rory had provided for her, her hand stopped in mid-air as a dog began to bark ferociously. Outside. Dusty, of course. She doubted there were any other dogs freely roaming the woods, but why did the dog sound so hysterical?

Maybe ran into a raccoon or a deer. Nothing the dog hadn’t run into before, in all probability.

Still, the barking made Karen uneasy and she quickly finished her bath, dried herself with a starched white towel and hurried into the bedroom to put on her night clothes.

By the time she finished dressing the barking had faded into the night until it was completely gone, with only the sounds of the wind remaining.

That poor pooch, Karen thought, scrubbing at her damp head with the towel. She couldn’t blame Saul for despising the townie who had allowed his children to abuse and neglect the animal. Though she didn’t have any pets herself, it wasn’t because she disliked animals. Just the opposite, in fact. She was too afraid of the emotional attachment that came with them. Knowing she would come to love an animal like family — hell, probably more than family, given her hostile upbringing — just to watch it grow old and die. She didn’t see the point in putting herself through that kind of inevitable heartbreak.

Once her hair was dry enough, she hung the towel on the doorknob and crawled beneath the covers of the bed, reaching for her computer bag as she did.

She made herself comfortable, propping two plump pillows against the headboard, and powered up the computer. While she waited for it to boot up, she listened once more to the wind, which seemed to be dying down at last. Thank God. The last thing she needed was a two ton pine to come crashing down on her head.

When the computer was ready, she opened a new Word document and titled it HOUSE OF FALLEN TREES, for lack of anything better. She thought for a moment and then began at the beginning, with the phone call from Rory. She knew this wasn’t the actual beginning of the story. The actual beginning started with Sean’s disappearance six months ago, but she didn’t think she could handle writing all that out just now. She would come back to it later.

As she typed, she fell into the familiar trance most professional writers find themselves in once they tumble into the white of the screen or paper, vanishing from the present world into one made up entirely in their own minds and escaping through their fingertips. In a sense, it was almost the same as automatic writing in that the writers become unaware of their physical bodies and the world around them. She had gone as many as ten hours straight, lost in space and time, unaware she’d grown tired, hungry, thirsty or even that her bladder needed to be emptied.

To the non-writer it probably sounded like some form of self-torture, but to writers, it was sheer bliss and a state they wished for every single time they sat down to do their jobs.

She entered that state now, bringing herself back to her condo the evening before Rory had called. The night she’d woken to the sound of the phone, heard a bizarre message, her door open to the night.

Her surroundings faded before her. She no longer sat in a canopy bed in an ancient and strange house in the middle of nowhere in Washington. There was only the white screen, the black words racing to fill it up, the gentle tapping of the keyboard.

All else was lost.

It was after midnight when she looked up from her computer, her memories of the events so far now out of her system and stored as she clicked the SAVE button for the last time that night. She couldn’t believe that despite feeling so exhausted all day, she’d still been able to get it all down without a single yawn.

But now she barely had the energy to put the laptop aside. A walk to the bathroom was out of the question, at least for a couple minutes. Just a few minutes…she would close her eyes, only to give them a little rest. They were burning inside her skull and they needed a rest…

She jerked awake in the dark. Had she shut off the light? She couldn’t remember doing so.

The laptop was still open on the bed beside her, its screensaver dancing loops of color across it. The light thrown by the open computer was weak but enough to see shapes by. Groaning, she tossed the covers off and got out of bed, aiming for the bathroom like a drunk on a tossing ship.

A ship, she thought. Now that’s funny…

She did her business without turning on any lights and made it back into the bed without stumbling over anything. She debated on closing the laptop but realized the feeble light thrown by it was comforting in this strange place. She rolled over, her back to it so it wouldn’t keep her awake but she could still have the benefit of a nightlight. Closing her eyes, she snuggled down into the bed, feeling almost happy for a reason she couldn’t define and was too tired to puzzle out.

Maybe it was being here. Yes, the place was odd, but it also had a certain old world charm about it. And it was Sean’s…

The touch on her forearm was feather-light, so light it was barely perceivable, could have been mistaken for the fall of a cotton sheet across the skin, had it not been for the heat it radiated.

Close to the precipice of sleep, she opened her eyes slowly, not even a squint, closed them again, opened them again.

The hand on her arm was illuminated by the screensaver, clearly masculine and whiter than the petals of a new daisy. She could clearly see the cuff at the wrist — some dark-colored flannel — and then she was screaming, sitting up fast and screaming, reaching for the lamp beside the bed and screaming, fumbling fingers in the dark, screaming, screaming until she found the light switch and, despite it being a low watt bulb, the room flooded with light, plenty enough to see by and she was alone…alone in the room and still screaming, screaming, heart beating painfully, throat searing with her screams until the bedroom door flew open and Saul was there, his face terrified and confused and half asleep, dressed in a white tank-top and blue boxers.