Gina Ranalli - House of Fallen Trees

He laughed again. “I guess you could say that, if your idea of a neighborhood watch is if someone gets woken up by hearing a raccoon tip over their trash can and comes running outside in their tighty-whities holding a shotgun and ready to blast away anything that moves.”

She wrinkled her nose. “Must be a pretty low raccoon population then, eh?”

This time the three of them laughed as Rory turned down a dark side street and, seconds later, pulled into a short driveway behind a Toyota pickup.

“Home, sweet home,” Saul said as Rory turned off the engine.

“That wasn’t too bad of a drive,” Karen remarked. “I figured we’d be on the road for hours.”

“One hour,” Rory said. “You probably didn’t notice since Saul was talking your ear off about clear-cutting and all the injustices humanity thrusts upon the natural world.”

“Hey, it’s important shit,” Saul said, climbing out of the Jeep. Rory and Karen followed suit, the guys grabbing her bags for her.

Saul’s house looked a little worse for wear, but was neat and small, a little clapboard number with a modest front porch.

“Watch your step,” Saul told her. “A couple of those slate slabs are cracked.”

She did as she was told, though she was more interested in the towering pine trees surrounding the house. Hell, they seemed to surround the entire town, or at least what she had seen of it on the drive in.

Before entering the house, she gave the autumn air one final sniff, relishing the pine scent and general cleanness of the place. If one could judge a town solely on its smell, then she could completely understand why Sean loved it here. There was something invigorating about it and she looked forward to seeing the place — as well as Fallen Trees — in the daylight.

Later that evening, the three of them sat on the front porch with mugs of Earl Grey spiked with whiskey. The air was chilly and through the towering pines they could see a starry sky hanging low and ominous.

“So, I take it you and Sean were close?” Saul asked Karen.

She sipped her tea. “When we were kids we were, yeah.”

“Huh.” Rory shifted in his chair. “He didn’t talk very much about his past. I got the feeling that…well, that you weren’t close at all.”

“I guess we drifted apart over the years,” she admitted. “I’m sure that was more my fault than his. I’m a bit of a loner these days.”

“Sean was never actually Mr. Sociable either,” Saul said.

Rory shot him a look. “He’s sociable enough.”

Karen couldn’t help but notice Rory’s tense slip. Did he believe Sean was out in the world somewhere? After all these months?

“Besides,” Rory went on, “The Lantern isn’t exactly the friendliest place on the planet. Unless you’re a native.” He looked at Karen. “And unless you were born here, you’re never a native.”

“It’s not that bad,” Rory assured her. “Saul is exaggerating, as usual.”

Amused, Karen smiled at them. The two seemed to have a rapport that went back a long time. More like brothers than friends and she said as much.

After clearing his throat, Rory said, “Why don’t you tell us more about Sean as a kid? That should be good for a laugh or two. You said you were close then?”

“Pretty close, I guess.” Karen gazed deep into the depths of her mug. “Sean was always a shy kid. And small for his age. I remember being very overprotective of him when we were young. The other kids were always giving him a hard time in school. We used to have a connection back then. It was really quite odd. Whenever he was in trouble, I just, somehow… knew .”

She let herself be carried away by the nearly faded memories, amazed at how long it had been since she’d thought about her childhood with her brother. Rory and Saul didn’t interrupt as she told them about one day in particular. A spring when she was twelve and Sean was ten.

She’d been walking home from another day at South Junior High School, swinging her backpack, lost inside a story she’d been making up in her head to pass the time when she’d suddenly thought of Sean and a feeling of dread had overcome her. Without giving it a second thought, she’d reversed direction and began running towards the elementary school where she knew Sean was. He’d joined the school choir that year and had been staying late to practice with them.

Karen had no idea what was happening to her brother — only that he was in trouble and needed her and, sure enough, when she’d reached the school, having raced around to the back where the cafeteria was, she found a group of about six boys outside surrounding him, shoving him back and forth between them.

“Hey!” Karen had shouted as she ran towards them. “Leave him alone!”

And then the pack had turned on her instead, one of them going so far as to jump on her back, trying to bring her down.

It was that day Karen had learned that kicking a boy in the crotch, as her father had advised under such circumstances, was not nearly as easy in execution as it was in theory. Males, even at that early age, had already mastered the twist and block and she wasn’t able to land even a single kick that found its target.

The boys, jeering and taunting, calling Sean “faggot” and herself “dyke” and “whore,” had continued their assault until a teacher on his way to his car in the nearby parking lot had finally put an end to it.

Karen had been enraged by the end, while Sean struggled not to cry, and together they’d walked home, bruised but more humiliated than hurt.

To make matters worse, the parent of one of the boys had called their mother and complained that Karen had attempted to beat him up while hurling insults at him.

Both she and Sean had vehemently denied the accusation, trying to tell their side of the story, but their mother had wanted to hear none of it and Karen had been punished.

Drinking down the rest of her tea, she was surprised to find herself angry all over again when she’d finished relating the story to Saul and Rory. It seemed to sum up her entire relationship with her parents. She remembered now why she didn’t like to dwell on her past and at least partly why that relationship had always been strained to the point of breaking.

She did her best to put her parents out of her mind and focus solely on Sean and other examples of their seemingly psychic connection.

All the times Sean had run away from home, it had been his sister who always knew where to find him, no matter how often he changed his hiding place.

When he’d been sad or scared or worried, Karen had known, even when she hadn’t been in his presence, and she’d gone to him to soothe or comfort him, to ease his mind in the best way another child could.

Lost in these thoughts, she spoke in the same way she wrote — forgetting where she was until it was time to breathe again. Then she looked around as if she’d just woken up from a long sleep, surprised to find herself in the company of others, blinking like a person coming up from a state of hypnosis.

After a long moment, Saul said, “Wow. That was a hell of a story.” He looked at Rory. “Did you know about any of this?”

Rory shook his head, looking nearly as dazed as Karen. “I wish I had.”

“Too bad you weren’t here when Sean first disappeared,” Saul said to Karen. “Maybe that ‘psychic connection’ would have done us some good.”

But Karen was skeptical. “I doubt it. Like I said, Sean and I kind of lost that connection after a while.”

“That’s ridiculous,” Rory said in a scoffing tone. “There’s no such thing as a psychic connection anyway.”

Saul ignored him, keeping his attention on Karen. “It reminds me of what you sometimes read about twins. How they always know when the other is upset and can sometimes even feel the pain the other is feeling.”