by Patricia Miller
“This wasn’t my fault.” I say it and mean it. “It is as honest an answer as anyone can expect, and it is true.”
She listened with a seriousness I had come to expect from her. She was the matriarch of her clan, with a keen ear for details and an iron grip on the hundreds which made up the colony under my eaves. Countless generations of her kind had filled my dark cavities and were my only regular occupants, if just during the months they weren’t hibernating.
I had not planned to burden her with this, but the bright sunlight of the early spring day had given way to a night sky filled with flashing red lights and loud sirens. Most of the colony sought refuge in the dark midnight blueness of the neighboring fields, but she had returned after feeding and joined me to ask after my well-being. Her concern was welcome, her friendship treasured, and so I unburdened myself to my only friend.
I had done nothing to cause the calamity which overtook the house party. Indeed, I had done all I could to make it a success.
The rooms were airy, bright, and never smelled of anything but the gentlest hint of vanilla. The chimneys were well-cleaned with working flues to keep out unexpected pests and ill winds. The shutters didn’t rattle in the night; the floors and stairs didn’t creak and jolt anyone out of a peaceful slumber. The electricity hadn’t cycled off in the middle of a tense conversation. No odd drafts whistled around doors or through long hallways to cause a frisson of dread amongst my ten guests. The pipes didn’t bang and echo in shadowed bathrooms, and they provided only the freshest of water; never running rusty or bloody or rank. I had made certain the gardens were in full bloom, with no windblown branches to create any stumbles or provide any weaponry.
“And in spite of that, four people are dead, two more are missing, and the poodles have run away from the carnage so far and so quickly they are probably two counties over. I can find no trace of the missing couple. They have not left through the locked windows or doors, and neither is slender enough to use the old coal shaft. I must therefore assume they are simply bodies not yet discovered.”
The handful of guests who remained held at least one murderer in their midst. I knew who it was, and while it wasn’t the obvious suspect – it never is – it was her lover. At this point it no longer mattered, for I was no longer interested in that. I just wanted to know why.
Why did this happen and why this weekend? Why are four dead people stretched out in my icehouse? Why the elaborate setup, like something out of a Buster Keaton film, just to hit someone over the head? There are easier ways to crush a cranium than by rigging up a set of encyclopedias, a badminton net, three croquet mallets, and a life jacket.
“I don’t even own a croquet set! Don’t people just poison other people anymore?” I muttered.
So by my count, six deaths this weekend. Because let’s face it, those other two will turn up in some odd and utterly bizarre bit of cabinetry brought in by the rental agent who furnished the house for the week-long reunion. There was probably a magician’s chest with hidden compartments or a pool table with a false bottom or something which will only reveal their remains once hounds are brought in to trace the stench.
The three-hundred year old oak timbers which make up my frame shuddered, just a bit. I didn’t groan – I had too much pride to resort to that trope – but I’d had enough. I could trace my roots, quite literally, back to the ancient oaks; majestic, prideful, filled with life and sacred to those who knew them. I was felled and turned into this dwelling fifty years before the first shots were fired at Lexington and Concord. By the time those musket balls flew, five of my occupants had died before their time.
In the succeeding years the count grew: hangings, drownings, poisons, more guns, smoke inhalation, suffocation, a few strings stretched taut along a staircase, and numerous skulls bashed with candlesticks, a poker, and six years later, the shovel from the same set of fireplace tools.
“I’m not certain you can claim someone was defenestrated if they were thrown in a window or through the glass skylight over the ballroom, to be precise. Name a method of death, however bizarre, and I guarantee it has happened here. The death toll has reached 238 by my reckoning.”
Only twenty-three were actually considered murder by the authorities. The others they had classified as suicides, natural causes, and one highly unlikely accidental piercing of the liver by a broken pool cue which permanently stained my library floors and resulted in the installation of wall to wall carpet in a truly unfortunate shade of oatmeal. I suppose the color and commercial grade was the economical option since it had been selected twice more after other unfortunate events.
The matriarch listened patiently to my long recital, her black ears swiveling ever so slightly at my rumbles. She was nestled in a dark corner of my attic, behind a chimney which serviced a no longer used kitchen fireplace. The colony of Large Brown Bats had been driven from their other homes through fear and ignorance and had been seeking a winter shelter when they first entered my eaves. The colony and I reached an arrangement once the first matriarch overcame her surprise at holding a conversation with a former tree demanding to know what she and her children were doing in my attics.
The bats kept me free of beetles and termites, and I provided a safe harbor. They never fouled the air or floors. No trace of them was seen on the extremely rare occasions an occupant ventured into the oddly shadowed rooms. I protected her and the mothers who preceded her, and I would go on protecting the ones who followed. We had an understanding, she and I. We often spoke of the dark of night, the warmth of summer days, the encroachment of people and insecticides.
I didn’t want to bring death into our conversation, but I thought perhaps she might have seen something to explain what happened to me over and over again. She was wise and knew my bones well, not like the many charlatans the house’s human occupants had dragged over my timbers in the past; phonies and hacks who had attempted to connect with the spirits, cleanse auras, untangle ley lines, and banish the demons said to possess me. I wasn’t possessed. I wasn’t erected over a forgotten cemetery or battlefield or pagan altar. None of the 238 untimely deaths left spirits behind either.
“You have had a long, sorrowful time,” she said.
“A sorrowful time. I wanted to be a good house, a home. I wanted to be filled with joy and love, for what better hope can any tree have if they are not to live out their days under the Great Green Sky?”
“Green? The sky is blue, for I fly on its currents and eddies and know its every hue.”
“Air is blue, but the Great Green Sky, the Canopy of All, is lush and filled with life. Why would anyone wish to look overhead into empty air when they could exist under life itself? Had I been granted my full span, I would have taken my place amongst my brethren to shelter and nourish in turn. I would have gladly sheltered you and yours.”
“We would have relished that.” She hesitated then, and I understood she did indeed know something.
“I heard your current owner speaking with the others outside. He wants you dismantled. He plans to strip your fittings, moldings, copper pipes, windows, anything of value and sell them off to restoration and salvage companies. There’s a custom cabinet maker interested in your framing and timbers.”
“No! No! For I do not know how much or what part of me carries the curse!” And it must be a curse which burdens me so, although I do not know where or when it had been laid, or by who.
“Do you believe it could spread, then?” She was so kind and gentle with her questions.
“Can you promise me it will not?”
“I cannot.” I thought she cared. If she didn’t, she was a good enough actor to make me believe she did.
“Then I wish someone could consign me to the flames instead of the hammer. Let me burn.”
“Fire? Won’t that hurt – I mean, won’t that–” The shudder which coursed through her tiny frame made her opinion of fire obvious – most animals fear the flame.
“I have been violently sheared from my roots. I was split, planed, sawed, sanded, stained, painted, and polished. What could be more painful than that? All trees succumb to fire eventually. Fire or decay. In either case, it is a natural thing. Let me burn.”
She gave me no answer, but I could tell she was considering her options.
* * *
She was only a bat. She could not light a match. She could not douse me with gasoline. She could not short out my electrical panel or leave the gas valve open. She did, however, understand the smells and touch of a line of thunderstorms making their way down the eastern slope of the Taconic Mountains and their impending sweep toward western Massachusetts.
She summoned the colony and put them to work. They swarmed the roof, crowded along the pinnacle and swung, clawed, bit, pulled at an innocuous bit of wire trailing down the cupola, the valley flashing, and the exterior wall to a metal stake in the ground. They pounded at the weathervane and the copper spike on which it rotated. Their combined efforts bent it perpendicular to the roof, then knocked it well below the ridgeline.
She kept me company while her brood worked, and then called them to her side when the task was completed as best they could.
“I don’t know if we’ve done enough,” she said.
“You’ve done what you can. You always have.”
“You’ve given us shelter and for that we thank you.”
“At least I’ve been a home of sorts then.” We both knew that however much I’d enjoyed being of service, it hadn’t been enough. My primary function had never been fulfilled.
“Where will you go?” I asked.
“There is a new forest, a preserve to the south and east toward the rising sun. I suppose they have recognized their folly at last. They have returned those and other lands back to good green places.”
Oh, how I envied her. To see such lands restored to a time before their arrival. To see a newly born canopy. No wish of mine would see me there. “May a safe passage await you and yours. My thanks to you all.”
* * *
The wondrous storm reached me on a moonlit night. When one of its bolts struck my unprotected roof and decorative railings, Nature’s full fury was unleashed upon me and had nowhere else to go. Heat cascaded through my old bones, along the ridge cap and beams and studs. The flames started as small flickers in isolated corners, grew, merged into hot spots, finally joined into one single overwhelming conflagration. The rain which accompanied the thunder had no chance at all of containing it.
It was a searing, soaring heat, and I found such release in that. There were so few happy memories to recall of my days as a house (never a home), but I reached back through the rings of my seasons. I had memories of my leaves turning from bud to green to brown until they fell to blanket and nourish the forest beneath my roots. I remembered the chill of winter snow and the sun warming me until my sap ran free.
I gave thought to the many birds who had once nested within my branches, the other creatures who fed themselves and their young on my acorns. Some of those acorns became seedlings. Perhaps a few survived. I hoped so, for they would be my only lasting legacy. I will never take my place as part of the Canopy of All. Still, I will no longer be a vehicle for sadness and death. I gave myself up to the flame.
The fire consumed me. My roof timbers gave way first, and the weight of tiles and brick chimneys crashed through the attic floor, the servants’ quarters below, then all the way through to the cellars. Window panes shattered from the heat – the great expanse of the ballroom skylight refracted a million tongues of flame in a splintering rain. I heard sirens in the distance. They would not reach me in time to make a difference.
The rain stopped. The fire didn’t. It burned white hot. The air around me ionized and steamed. Old paper insulation could not stop superheated air driving smoke and embers inside my remaining interior walls. Timbers exploded, electric cabled arced, gas lines ruptured.
All that I ever was had been reduced to ash.
And then the wind changed direction. It blew hard to the south and east. A few sparks crackled though they did not travel far on the damp ground.
But I did.
I took flight in the wind amidst the smoke and the heat, following the colony’s path until I finally reached the reborn forest. I joined it the only way I could.
I fed my ashes to the Great Green Sky.
* * *
About the Author
Patricia Miller is a US Navy veteran, sixth of ten kids born and raised in Cincinnati, Ohio and currently living in Wisconsin, Land of Cheese. She holds a BS in Education, an MS in Library Science. Patricia started reading at 3 1/2 after becoming obsessed with Batman and is hooked on QI, British murder villages, and professional cycling. She is a weaver, quilter, raiser of roses, and maker. Patricia is on the spectrum and considers that as an asset to her writing.
Patricia is a member of SFWA and CODEX and writes science fiction, fantasy, and horror. Her publications include short fiction in numerous anthologies, Metastellar, Wyngraf, and Cinnabar Moth Literary Collections with upcoming short stories for Dastardly Damsels, 99 Fleeting Fantasies, and Stupefying Stories. She is currently in the query trenches with a middle grade ghost story
A complete listing of stories, occasional blog entries, and more info about Patricia can be found on her website at: https://trishmillerwrites.com