Author: Stuart Conover

Bed And Breakfast

The sycamore tree in the back yard was the main reason Marilee and Garth loved the house. The hollow trunk in the sycamore tree was twenty feet across.

“It’s a true colonial built in 1785 and has the original Franklin stove. The windows and insulation were updated about twenty years ago,” said the realtor.

Marilee said, “Tell us about the tree. Why’s the opening in the trunk filled with bricks? Is it haunted, we want a place that’s haunted?”

“There are pictures taken after the civil war when the tree was barely fifteen feet across. The hollow trunk was open back then. The opening was bricked over during the great depression. My grandmother said hobos liked to sleep inside the tree.”

“Like a one-tree hobo jungle?”

“More like a tramp’s graveyard. They found a new body inside almost every week. Some wanderer would squirrel himself inside at sunset and turn up dead in the morning. The final bough broke when the owner’s daughter disappeared. The police left no twig unpruned, but they never found the girl. Her parents insisted the tree had killed her, but the police believed she’d run away with some young sprout from the city. The police chief said, “Don’t be a couple of saps. Surely, you don’t think the pollen ate her.”

“The owners walled the tree closed. The house and tree stayed in the family for years. It’s been empty since the Second World War. Everyone in town thinks it’s haunted.”

Garth tapped on the brick and said, “I saw a sycamore this big in Pennsylvania. These trees live five or six hundred years and they hollow out after they turn three hundred. The inside of this one has to be huge and it will make the best bed and breakfast in the world. I like this place and it’s high time we put down roots somewhere. Let’s buy it.”

The realtor smirked. “At the price, this deal is low-hanging fruit.”

Marilee nestled up to the tree and said, ‘I never thought of myself as a tree-hugger, but I agree. This tree likes me.”

Garth and Marilee remodeled the dormant sycamore that winter. They removed the bricks and used them to build a patio and fire pit. They ran power, installed windows, modern plumbing, and a round door. Frodo would have been proud. They loved the trunk’s interior rustic feel and they left the soft rough wood untouched. The odor of the cleaning fluid lingered inside the tree, and they named their treehouse, “Pith and Vinegar”.

Garth accosted the electrician when he fell asleep inside the tree. The electrician said, with a quivering timber in his voice, “No charge, I quit. The tree makes me dizzy. It saps my energy.”

The framing crew said working inside the tree made them groggy and walked off the job. Garth didn’t mind, they were too slow, and they just lumbered around or spent half the day sawing logs. The foreman said, “I’m stumped as to the reason, but my men and I are afraid of the tree. You and your wife are nuts if you don’t chop it down.”

Garth finished the hard work and Marilee painted the framed opening and decorated the inside with furniture, carpets, and tapestries. They installed a television and reading lamps.

“Garth, I’m tired. I guess I’m getting old, I’m exhausted after I work in the treehouse.”

“Me, too. I’m glad we’re finished. You did an amazing job, it’s a real fairy house. After dinner, let’s chill a couple bottles of wine and spend the night in the tree.”

“Let’s build a fire and snuggle on the patio before we go to bed,” asked Marilee with a sparkle in her eyes?”

“Tremendous idea.”

After dinner, they walked arm in arm to the hollow tree and sat together on the couch. They fell asleep in minutes.

Two days later the realtor found them, and their desiccated bodies were covered with tendrils sprouted from the interior walls. The couple were encased in a web of fine rootlets. The tendrils twitched toward the realtor. They crawled mindlessly across the wooden floor and probed blindly through the air. The roots entwined around her and touched her face.

She welcomed their sylvan caress. She smiled at the dead couple and said, “Looks like you’ve gotten yourselves into a vine mess. Nothing for me to pine about.”

She let down her hair and her auburn tresses were filled with foliage. Her hair had a greenish tinge in the morning sunlight. The backs of her hands were covered with scales that matched the tree’s bark. The tree welcomed the return of its dryad. She’d been barricaded outside since the Great Depression. Dryads won’t touch brick or masonry. They only work with living things.

“I’m back, darling,” she said. “And I swear with God as my witness, we won’t ever be hungry again.”

The dryad filed paperwork and deeded the property to herself. She opened a quaint bed and breakfast, just like Garth and Marilee had planned. She did a blooming business, but refused to open a second branch. Most guests were charmed by the hobbit-like treehouse, stayed a few days, and wrote glowing reviews.

Some guests checked in, but never checked out. Breakfast was always served, but the tree decided what or who was on the menu. Things never worked out well for visitors who barked at the owner. Even the prettiest rose needs a little protein now and then.

The Crimson Mirror

Jim Burcher contemplated his purchase as it lay on his studio workbench at the rear of his shop. He was unstinting in his self-deprecating curses at being an impetuous and careless fool.

Jim had been late to the auction, missing half the items he wanted, and being outbid on the rest. He’d almost resigned himself to a wasted trip, when he’d seen the last item to for sale was a mirror unlisted in the catalogue. A last-minute entry to the sale, probably to clear it out of storage.

On impulse and determined to come away with something, he’d bid a tenner and got it. His triumph however, was short-lived. It had looked fine from the back of the saleroom, but on closer inspection he realised his mistake. The frame was molded plaster, chipped and fractured in places, causing its coat of cheap gold paint to flake off. But it was the mirror glass itself that was the real disappointment. Not only was it ‘foxed’, his reflected image engulfed in a grey mist, but its surface was a web of crazed cracks. How it adhered to the silvered backboard he couldn’t guess.

A piece of crap. Another star item of object d’art for ‘Jim Burcher Collectables Emporium’. Jim liked to think his business was an antique-come-retro boutique. Others crueler in mind and spirit referred to it as a junk shop-come-scrapyard.

He decided, despite his bad luck to keep it and brought it back to work on that evening. Jim grabbed a late supper and a mug of tea and returned to his studio just before eleven hoping he might try and salvage something before retiring to bed.

He held up the mirror, tilting it around under the light and studied the damage to its glass surface.

It suddenly seemed to twitch violently, pulling away from his grip. He made a series of desperate frantic grabs trying to catch it before it crashed to the floor. In his fumbling attempts to grasp the frame, his hand rubbed across the cracked glass and pain bit through his fingers and palm as the jagged edges cut into his flesh.

Cursing and bleeding profusely, he dropped it, ignoring the crunch as it hit his wooden bench, and he ran for the bathroom.

After half an hour of washing, disinfecting and dressing his wounded left hand, he returned to his studio, determined to bin his dodgy buy and call it quits whilst he still had any limbs left.

What he saw on that bench defied reason, almost freezing his brain. A transformation had occurred in his reflective nemesis which appalled and fascinated him in equal measure.

The surface of the mirror reminded him of a diagram of some creature’s circulatory system. His blood, rather than forming droplets and smears on the broken surface, had seeped into its glazed fissures and had spread along their zigzag courses. The mirror was delineated into tiny glass sections edged with crimson.

The phenomenon amazed and disgusted him. He knew of the capillary action of fluids from old college biology lessons but to see it demonstrated, and with his own vital bodily fluids, was unsettling. There was a surprising weird beauty in the patterns defined in the ruined glass and the resemblance to veins and arteries was remarkable. It also dawned on him that the ‘foxing’ effect had vanished and if the tracery of fine scarlet lines was ignored, his reflected image was crystal clear. Even more intriguing was something was etched onto the inner surface of the glass. It was hard to define amongst the reddened cracks, but it looked like two words.

The mirror’s fall onto the bench had caused its plaster border to crumble away on one corner. Jim brushed away the gold paint and plaster debris and discovered a solid inner frame made of a dark wood.

An hour’s work with a variety of his tools revealed the frame in its entirety. He surmised it was red stained oak and of great age. Older than baroque or rococo periods. Perhaps late medieval. Whatever period, the quality of the carving was superb, if somewhat macabre.

The frame was bordered by two columns topped with Corinthian capitals and its other surfaces crowded with twenty carved heads of men and women, each being about an inch and a half in diameter and rendered in incredible detail. They appeared to have been drawn out of the fibres of the raw timber rather than chipped away by a woodcarver’s chisel and they were deeply disturbing. The torment depicted on the carvings chilled his heart, their features contorted in an agony of pain and absolute terror. Jim shivered, falling prey to some unspeakable feeling that haunted his reason, magnified by the shadows and loneliness of his gloomy studio.

Despite the grotesque element to this unusual antique, it was obvious there was money to be made. It was rare and ancient. It was a shame about the glass which would have to be replaced, but the frame alone would bring a fine price.

Midnight announced itself by the gentle chiming of the shop’s battered grandfather clock. Jim hadn’t realised how late it was and felt exhausted. He resolved to return to the mirror in the morning.

He turned to leave, switching off the lights and reaching out to close the door.

Some strange urge made him turn back into the room. There was a fluorescent glow emanating from the mirror, which he’d propped up on his workbench. Mesmerized with an unnatural compulsion, he walked towards it, drawn on by its bright light which pulled his gaze into the depths of the mirror. The radiance was stained with an ochre tint which coalesced around the words he’d seen earlier in the mirror’s glass. The letters became bolder, larger, emerging from the dark reflections of himself and the studio, crawling into words.

Sanguinis speculum

He knew enough to recognise Latin, but no translation came to mind. The glow increased, deepening in intensity, illuminating the darkened room in a throbbing scarlet light which oozed from the bloodied cracks in the mirror’s surface.

Jim found his limbs paralysed and beads of perspiration traced lines down his flushed face. Even the involuntary blinking of his eyes was stayed.

His vision was totally focused into the beating heart of the mirror in which only his image was reflected. Jim’s mind screamed with a stark true dread which took on a physical force, pulling, distorting and twisting his face into one of abject fear and utter horror. The mirror’s ruby-red fractures bulged and stretched, dissolving their own edges and flowing into the glass, becoming a solid unbroken surface of blood.

A whispering voice sounded in his mind, shouting its corrupt incantation. A voice of many tongues: all ancient and malicious. Hell’s own words of corrupted crimson magic.

A lesson in evil was being taught to Jim, the unwilling and unfortunate sacrificial pupil.

‘Sanguinis speculum.’ Mirror of blood.

With that final understanding he wept and tried to scream his fear and prayer, but no sound came from his mouth. The glass surface was now a pulsing pool of liquid crimson, its aura staining his flesh, blinding his eyes and reason. It dissolved him, consuming his body and spirit, absorbing his outer and inner self.

Only in his reflection did he exist at all, and only whilst his soul was digested. The remains of Jim Burcher became transformed and deposited in the shape of a screaming head, rendered in a wooden sculpture on the frame, now the colour of congealed blood. The light faded, and the room returned to silent darkness.

Jim Burcher’s disappearance was, over time, noticed by concerned neighbours and reported to the authorities. The police searched his shop with its attached flat and studio, but to no avail. The file remains open, the case unsolved, Mr. Burcher forever missing.

After a few years of legal processes, the property became subject of probate and the shop and its contents put up for sale by public auction.

At the auction rooms, the auctioneer smiled at the return of the sacred mirror. He reverently picked it up and greedily licked the stained surface, closing his eyes in ecstasy at its taste. His sharp tongue delighted in the texture it discovered in the grainy folds of the new head that had erupted from the wood.

He carried the mirror to his workroom where he positioned the mould around its dark carved border, then poured in the plaster of Paris, burying the frame under a dead white solidity. When it dried he would apply gold paint and it would be ready for sale again.

All he would need was a new bidder.

Mouse Trapped

“Oh, I love a rainy night, I love a rainy night…” I warbled alone in the cocoon of steel and vinyl that is my Crown Vic. She’s my prize possession—a tank that would probably survive a Zombie Apocalypse better than I would. By a long shot.

In my car, on a night when the rain falls in crystalline sheets barely glazed by the headlights, it doesn’t matter that I have a voice like broken glass. No one has to listen but me, and, to me, I sound like a rock star.

Not that I look like one…everyone calls me “Mouse,” even my parents did—and I do rather look the part. I’m mostly forgettable. Which is fine with me. I like my own company best, and I know there is more to me than meets the eye.

With no particular place to go on this particular night, I was just cruising. It might be irresponsibly wasteful of me to squander gasoline in my huge metal monster, but who cares if I squander my own money? I pulled up to a stoplight just as Eddie finished crooning, the big car idling like a purring cat.

I was minding my own business when something bumped me from behind. The light turned green and I took off. It was just a love tap, and I really didn’t want to get embroiled in all the red tape that came from a traffic accident. No way such a tiny bump hurt my car, and I really wasn’t worried about the other guy. After all, it was their fault.

I wasn’t going to let the other driver spoil my good mood.

Taking a left on one of the farm roads dotting the landscape, I headed vaguely homeward, but not directly. I wasn’t finished cruising.

Meatloaf began wailing teen angst and unrequited lust, and I belted it out at the top of my lungs. Glancing in the rear-view mirror, I saw headlights behind me. No big deal, there were a lot of farms out this way still…

I felt a slight frisson run up my spine. It was a bit remote out here, and I hadn’t been expecting any trouble, so I hadn’t taken my usual precautions.

I laughed aloud at my foolishness.

No one was following me. I was perfectly safe. Everyone in Steelville knew the Crown Vic, and knew me by sight if not name. I knew all of them. At the worst, the car behind me was one of the Peterson boys or Liam Thompson getting up to a bit of mischief. Nothing to worry about.

I put the car behind me out of my mind and went back to planning the gardening I needed to do tomorrow. The rain could be either a blessing or a curse, depending on when it let up. I had planned to start this evening, but the rain had put a literal damper on that.

The big flat spot behind the barn would be just perfect. There are few rocks left, because Papa cleared that space for hay way back when our farm was a working concern. There might be some residual clumps of roots or something, but it shouldn’t be too bad to dig up.

A bright light caught my attention, and I looked up at the mirror in time to see headlights fill it. A loud bang sounded, and my car skidded forward about three feet. “Damn!”

My hands gripped the wheel so tightly my knuckles went white in the glare through the rear window. My heart raced faster than Secretariat.

I still had confidence that the Vic was undamaged, but that hadn’t been a car sliding on the wet road at a stoplight. He’d attacked intentionally.

I floored it. Despite her size, my car has a lot of horsepower under the hood. I pulled away from the vehicle behind me, thanking the powers-that-be the rain was slackening.

The roads beneath my wheels were packed caliche and gravel, not smooth asphalt. They sucked at the wheels in places, and slid out from under them in others. I focused on the road unwinding before me, muscles locked with tension.

Despite the endorphins of pursuit being thrown into the mix, or maybe because of them, I felt a sense of exhilaration. Did someone really think they could intimidate me? Think a couple of taps on my bumper would throw me into a tizzy and make me do something stupid?

They’d picked the wrong Mouse for that.

I’d been driving these roads since I was twelve, I had a full tank of gas, adrenaline coursing through my veins, and—according to my Mama—a bit of a death wish.

The wheels spun and grabbed as I rounded the tight corners between my neighbors’ fences. The vehicle behind me—it had to be a truck or something with the headlights riding that high—took them almost as quickly, though I flatter myself I was a bit faster, a bit more in control.

My mind raced, trying to decide what to do. The farm was in the other direction now. Turning for home and the safety of Papa’s shotgun was very tempting, but that might end the fun.

I took a hard right, heading back toward the river. If he followed me—I knew instinctively it was a he—it would prove my assumptions correct. He skidded around the curve with a rattle of pebbles and a spray of dirty water in his headlights.

Okay then. Definitely following me. Most likely with less-than-honorable intentions. My heart raced even faster—I hadn’t known that was possible.

A giddy little giggle escaped. I hadn’t had this big a rush in a very long time. Probably not since the reading of my parents’ wills, when I found out that the Mouse Hole—as I liked to think of the farm—was mine free and clear with a nice tidy nest egg besides. Who knew they were so thrifty?

It was enough that I could quit my job pretending to teach children English. How can you teach something to anyone who would rather throw eggs at your chalkboard than turn in an assignment, and whose parents are totally okay with that? Now, I am a lady of leisure…except when I’m being chased by big pickup trucks with probable mayhem on their mind…

How long did I want to play this game of cat and Mouse? Eventually, he was going to catch up to me. The truck was at least as powerful as the Crown Vic, and the second collision had shown an intent to cripple the car. A lesser made vehicle would have stopped in its tracks. Once again, I sent up a swift thank you for good ol’ American steel.

I careened around the next turn, fishtailing a little on the wet caliche. Time to bolt for home. If he got bored before I got there, no loss. If not…the shotgun was loaded and just inside the front door.

I sped up the straightaway that led home. There‘re no other farms out in my neck of the boondocks. The river curls around my property protectively, but it makes farmland limited. The last family within shouting distance left several years ago…but I liked the solitude. Usually.

The truck behind me was keeping pace. I was a bit surprised. These roads weren’t the easiest to navigate.

I really should get a Concealed Carry permit. Then I could carry a pistol in my glove box. Legally.

I have often considered carrying one without a permit, but there’s really no need to tempt fate. As soon as I do, I’m bound to get pulled over for a broken taillight or something and wind up in jail for an illicit firearm. That would never do.

I took the turn onto my property, hitting the cattle-guard with teeth-rattling speed. I threw it into park as soon as I hit the front yard, and saw the truck’s headlights wash over the Vic as he followed.

My key was in my hand, and the door open before he crashed into the back of the car again. This one popped the trunk lid. I grabbed the shotgun and turned back to find a stranger staring dumbfounded into the trunk well of my car.

I sighed. “You had to go and follow me, didn’t you?”

He pulled his gaze away from the plastic-wrapped body currently residing in my trunk. If it hadn’t rained, I’d have buried it already…

The shotgun let off a satisfactory belch of fire and sound. “That’s for Vic, you jerk.”

He dropped like a stone, and I stepped forward, nudging the body with the toe of my shoe. I’ve always been a good shot.

“Thanks…now I’ll have to do twice the gardening.”