Gina Ranalli - House of Fallen Trees

She raised a shaky hand to her mouth, biting down hard on the knuckles to keep herself from screaming again.

Her heart felt like a machine gun shattering her ribcage in an attempt to escape her body, her eyes wide and unblinking, ears pricked for a sound, any sound, but most especially the sound of approaching footsteps from the hall.

Surely, Rory had heard her scream. Why wasn’t he coming to investigate? Saul could have been knocked out from the Benadryl or just plain exhaustion, but where was Rory? Why was he not responding?

She considered the possibility her cry of terror hadn’t been as loud as it had sounded to her own ears, in her state of paralytic fear.

Still in her lap, the computer chirped. She glanced down, the screen flashing so blindingly bright she brought a hand up to shield her eyes. A second later, she dropped the hand to see a scene playing out on the screen, a scene from a movie. A scene starring her brother Sean, who was naked in a bright patch of sunlight, surrounded by trees.

Sean was down on all fours, another naked man behind him, fucking him, pounding him hard enough to make him cry out in pain. The man pressed his face into Sean’s back, concealing his identity, one hand on Sean’s hip while the other held a fistful of his hair, yanking his head back with every thrust.

Dirty, covered in pine needles and patches of sticky sap, Sean opened his eyes and appeared to look directly at Karen, his eyes pleading.

In the blink of an eye, his entire agonized face filled up the screen, battered black in places, and he spoke, his voice amazingly calm, his teeth smeared red with blood, as he said, “ Two men have the carcass .”

Karen choked down a cry as the camera pulled back again, showing the same scene, Sean being fucked, possibly raped by the unknown man. She grabbed the laptop by the screen, intending to throw it across the room the same way she’d thrown the glass and then another figure stepped into the scene, entering on the right, closer to the camera than her brother and his assailant.

A cloaked figure in a dark robe, hood raised, immediately bringing to mind the Grim Reaper. An instant later, as if reading Karen’s mind and playing to her thoughts, the head raised up, revealing a skeleton face, just bone, empty black sockets where eyes and nose had once been.

She felt something inside her mind snap and her mouth moved wordlessly as a single trickle of blood began to ooze its way down from the top of the screen, thick and slow and so unbelievably red. Unsure if it was part of the movie — if it was a movie — or actually coming out of her computer, she reached out, fingers shaking worse than any palsy victim’s ever had, but at the last instant she drew her hand away, not waiting to know for sure, certain that if her fingers came away red she would disappear so deep inside herself she would never again know reality and be forever locked away in the dark.

Hissing, she tossed the computer away, off her lap, off the bed. It crashed against the dresser and hit the floor with a heavy thud. She was dismayed to see it remained open, though the screen had gone dark. “Jesus,” she gasped. “Jesus. Fuck.” Breathing hard as hot tears spilled down her cheeks, she again willed herself not to scream, not to cry out in any way, though she had no idea how she was managing it. Insane , she thought. You really, truly are insane .

No, another stronger voice shouted from somewhere inside her head. Remember the photographs. Rory and Saul saw them too. It’s not you, it’s this…place. It’s cursed, haunted. But by what? By who? And why?

The answer was there, of course. Had been there all along. It was the Captain. Captain Frank Storm. That’s who she’d just seen, kneeling before the hope chest/coffin.

She waited until her heart had settled into as normal a rhythm as she thought she was going to get out of it, swung her legs off the bed, never taking her gaze from the computer on the floor.

The blood was gone, so it had been part of the show after all. Knowing there was no way in hell she’d be able to sleep tonight, she retrieved the glass from the floor, relieved it hadn’t broken, and poured herself another shot. The whiskey scorched her throat going down and almost came back up again. She coughed and sputtered, but managed to keep the burning fluid in her belly. She needed to get out of here, out of this room. She grabbed the bottle and left, hurrying downstairs, thankful the hall lights were still on. As she hit the bottom step, she heard an odd creaking sound that made her pause, ready to run back up if she had to.

The creaking came again, slow and lazy, as if something were rocking in a relaxed, leisurely way. But what? There was no rocking chair in the living room, which was what immediately sprang to mind. She stood stock-still, listening to the sound as it reached its listless crescendo before fading again, never growing very loud.

It was, she realized, as if the walls themselves were creaking under some unknown weight and the sound beneath the creaking — a very gentle splashing — gave it all away.

She was listening to the slow easy sound of waves splashing sleepily against the hull of a ship, the ship itself creaking under the pressure of the water sloshing against it. She sank down into a sitting position on the stair. The whiskey was threatening to come up again and her head had begun to pound like a new hangover.

“You hear that?”

She nearly jumped out of her skin, leaping to her feet and spinning around to see Saul at the top of the staircase. The sight of him both relieved and frightened her.

Wanting to proceed with caution, she asked, “Do I hear what?”

He smiled crookedly at her, a painful sight that went beyond all the ugly scratches covering his skin. “It was a dark and stormy night,” he said as he began to descend the stairs, one hand grazing the banister absently. “We were standing on the deck. The ship was sinking and the Captain said to me, ‘Tell me a story, my son.’ And so I began. ‘It was a dark and stormy night.’ We were standing on the deck. The ship was sinking and the Captain said to me, ‘Tell me a story, my son.’ And so I began. ‘It was a dark and stormy night—’”

“Stop it,” Karen snapped.

Saul stopped, that half smile still on his face but Karen could see his dark eyes were haunted. When he reached the bottom of the stairs, she had already backed across the living room, trying to keep her distance.

“Sorry,” he said. “I guess all this,” he gestured around the room and she knew he was referring to the ship sounds the house was now making, “is getting to me.”

“What’s going on?” she demanded.

He shook his head. “I don’t know.” He peered at her, as if noticing her body language for the first time. “Are you afraid of me?”

She suspected a trick question and had no idea which would be the right answer, so she said nothing.

“You don’t have to be afraid of me, Karen,” he said. “Look at me.” He held his arms out to her, turning them so she could see the fronts and backs. “Look what I did to myself. I’m just as much a victim here as you are.”

Watching him carefully, she said, “I’m not a victim.”

Dropping his arms to his sides once more, he said, “No?”

“No. Sean was a victim though and I will find out what happened to him.”

“This is all so strange, don’t you think?”

Again, she didn’t know what the preferred response would be and remained silent.

“I guess my grandmother was right all those years ago,” he continued, crossing the room to sit on the couch, taking care to give Karen a wide berth, almost as though he were just as afraid of her as she was of him. “She used to spout on about all that hooey. Angry spirits getting their revenge, lost souls wandering the earth, not even knowing they’re dead.” He sighed heavily, as though he’d never been so tired in all his life. “Do you think that’s what’s happening here? Angry spirits?”