Gina Ranalli - House of Fallen Trees

She reached the bottom only to discover herself on a small landing. A turn to the left revealed yet another staircase. She took a deep breath, her belly suddenly twitching with nervousness beyond any rational explanation and started down this second staircase, holding fast to the railing with one hand and the candle with the other. She felt as though she were descending deep into catacombs, going down deeper and deeper into the earth and when she moved the candle to examine the wall, she saw it was not concrete or even stone, but hard-packed dirt, as if this basement had always been here, just a huge hole dug into the ground, and then someone — the Captain — had built the house on top of it.

Letting go of the wooden railing on the outside of the staircase, she touched the dirt wall with cautious fingers, expecting to feel cold damp earth but her fingers came away dry and when she rubbed her thumb across the pads there was not even the slightest trace of grit, as if she had touched a painted wall.

Yet another strange thing about this house, she thought, grabbing the railing again and continuing downward. When she came to a second landing, she was less surprised than she’d been at the first, but still thought it was peculiar. Exactly how deep was this basement?

Her answer came a minute later when she struck bottom, stepping off the last stair into what was, as far as she could tell with her pathetic candle flame, one large, cavernous room.

Moving slowly, she saw a couple of small tables to her right, each with a brass plate atop it and three ruby-red candles placed on the plates. She used her own candle to light these smaller ones and turned around to face the center of the room. What she saw there, only hinted-at shadows before, made her breath catch in her throat. Two oblong boxes resting on some sort of stone pedestals. Side by side, dark wood, lids down.

Coffins.

I will not scream , she told herself. I will not scream. Will not scream. Will not scream.

Air hissed out from between her clenched teeth but she kept her promise and didn’t scream. She stood rooted to the ground, afraid to move, her mind reeling.

It was true. Her dream or premonition or whatever it had been, was true after all.

Sean had to be in one of those caskets.

Two men did indeed have the carcass.

She stood there trembling for a long time, gradually becoming aware the basement was colder than upstairs. She could see her breath down here, as though she were standing in a freezer.

She had to open those coffins. Had to see what was inside. Who was inside, though her heart already knew and didn’t want to see. Her poor brother. Poor baby Sean. Missing for all this time. Why had the police not found him in such an obvious place?

The thought startled her out of her trance. It was a good question. Surely, the investigating team would have searched the house. That would have been standard procedure. They would have interviewed Rory and probably Saul and who knew how many others from town.

Karen closed her eyes, suddenly wanting nothing more than to go to sleep, forget she’d seen these coffins, find solace in some dream world, and not mention anything to the men she suspected of murdering her brother. Sleeping would be so welcome…she was so tired now… Reluctantly, she opened her eyes again. The coffins were still there, dark and foreboding, and all at once she realized she was standing in a crypt.

“Jesus,” she whispered. Taking a final deep breath, she steeled herself and moved forward to the nearest casket. With the heel of her free hand, she pushed the lid up, shocked it wasn’t nailed shut.

But when she saw what was inside, she knew why the casket had been so easy to open.

Nothing.

Just red satin padding and pillow. The casket was empty. She released the breath she’d been holding, closed the lid, and moved slowly to the neighboring casket. The second coffin made a creaking sound, the lid seemingly heavier than the first, and her belly immediately coiled into a tight acidy ball.

But when the lid was pushed open and she moved the candle in order to see within the black depths, she saw that it too was empty.

“What the fuck?”

The emptiness of the coffins did nothing to ease her tension. She still only wanted to sleep. It’s the stress, she thought. Stress always makes me tired. She actually found herself looking into the second casket with longing, wishing she could just crawl inside and curl up. It would be so easy…she’d be out before she knew it.

The only thing stopping her from doing exactly that was the knowledge that these caskets had almost definitely held dead bodies at some point, even if they were empty now. Perhaps they’d even been dug up out of the ground in some distant era, cleaned up, maybe re-stained, the insides reupholstered.

She had to get back upstairs. Maybe lie down on the sofa in the living room. She remembered there was a handmade afghan thrown over the back of it. That would suit her just fine.

And if the men were there? If they saw her emerging from the basement? What then? Would they kill her too? Knowing that she knew?

She considered this possibility and found she didn’t much care either way. If they did kill her, then at least she could stop worrying and sleep. That would be a blessed relief. Eyes drooping, she turned away from the caskets, crossed the hard-packed dirt floor to the staircase and began the long climb up. It did occur to her to blow out the candles she’d lit down there, but now that she was already ascending, she couldn’t be bothered to go back down. Maybe if she saw one of the guys she would mention there were lit candles in the basement, but maybe not. She would decide when she saw them. If she saw them.

Of course, if she did see them, they would have plenty of explaining to do. Why was she even concerned about the candles when she had just seen two coffins?

She wasn’t thinking clearly. Maybe it was her sleepiness affecting her rational thought patterns, but it seemed like more than that. She wondered yet again if perhaps she was losing her mind.

Once she reached the top of the stairs, she half-expected to discover herself locked in this basement, left to starve to death in the dark and cold.

The fear woke her up a bit and she reached for the doorknob quickly, almost in a panic, but it turned easily in her hand. The door creaked open and she was back in the living room, snapping out of her dreamlike state the moment the door closed behind her.

Standing in the gray light filtering in through the front windows, she blinked rapidly, pulse tapping out an SOS in her wrists.

Totally awake now, it occurred to her she may have just experienced some sort of fugue. Or perhaps she’d been sleepwalking. The headache that had been nagging at her temples bowed back into the shadows like a butler who’d been waved away.

Spinning around, she glared at the closed basement door as if offended by its existence. When had the fugue begun? She remembered studying the various photographs and crossed the room to look at them again.

The first photograph she’d seen that day had been of a lone handsome man, seated sideways in a chair, holding a violin by the neck, propping it up on one thigh with his left hand, while his right held the bow. He’d been dark-haired, wearing a dark suit and tie, and looked to be in his early twenties perhaps.

Now, the photograph was different.

She swallowed what felt like a wedge of wood in her throat, eyes going wide at the sight of the violinist. No longer handsome, his face and hands were now stark white and horribly wrinkled and deformed. His eyes sat too low on his face and too far apart from each other, resting where his cheekbones should have been. What could be seen of his nose was no more than a vertical slash in the middle of his face, thin, the edges ragged and raw.