The real star of House of Dead Trees-- The Forester House

This excerpt is from Chapter Six, Titled "The House". In this segment, the show's director and a couple of its technical crew get their first sight of the infamous Forester House. Please be aware that this is a work in progress...

Robert Forester was leaning against the side of his car when Raj and the two Dans came jouncing over the last hill and pulled to a stop a couple feet away. Forester was a tall, thin fellow, thirty-three years old, with sandy blonde hair, a beard and a fair, freckled complexion. He reclined against his car, a dark blue Mercedes, his arms crossed, and watched as the doors of the Ghost Scouts’ black SUV swung open and three men clambered out. His mouth was a thin line, his eyes narrow. The sun had just lowered itself upon the jagged horizon, squat and red as an overripe tomato, and his shadow stretched long and thin across the grassy gravel drive.

“You’re late,” he said.

Raj took the lead, approaching the thin man with his hand held out. “I apologize, Mr. Forester. We had a bit of trouble finding the turnoff. I had the address programed into the GPS, but it kept sending us in circles.”

Robert Forester stepped away from his car and clasped Raj’s hand. They shook briefly. “I suppose it couldn’t be helped, then. Truth be told, I had some difficulty finding the place myself when I first got into town. Please, call me Robert. And you are?”

“Rajanikanta Chandramouleeswaran.”

“Wow. That’s a mouthful.”

“Everyone calls me Raj.”

“I guess so,” Forester said, the furrows around his eyes softening a little. “Yeah, so anyway… Sorry you got lost. Maybe I should go down to the end of the road and tie a red bandana around a tree. I’ve been trying to get someone to cut back some of that brush, but nobody wants to do any work on the property. I guess the people around here are superstitious.”

“You’re not a local?” Raj asked.

“No, my parents lived up north until they died. After that, I sort of… drifted a while. I’m a freelance artist, so I don’t have to stay in any one place for work. No wife or kids, either. I pick up and go whenever I feel like it.”

“Until now,” Raj said.

Forester smiled. “Yeah. Now I own this.”

As if that was their cue, both men turned to look at the Forester House together.

The house was big. That was Raj’s first impression. He’d caught little peeks of it as they bounced up the winding and washed out driveway—the flash of the sun on a window, the spires of its roof—but this was the first time Raj had seen it as a whole, and with his own eyes. He’d seen photographs, but photos were a pale approximation.

The first thought that went through Raj’s mind was: What a monster!

It was a sprawling Queen Anne Victorian, but his impression wasn’t motivated by physical dimension alone. The Forester House had a presence. It seemed to crouch, and looked ready to gobble up the first unwary soul unlucky enough to venture too close.

And it was ugly.

The house was asymmetrical, with a steep, pointed roof, a jumble of towers and gables and arched Palladian windows, but the asymmetry of its design was no excuse for the way roof met wall and wall met foundation, every angle just slightly off, none of its lines exactly square or level. There was a broad, sweeping porch. Balconies jutted from several of the second-story rooms. In fact, there didn’t seem to be any rhyme or reason to its architecture, only that the edifice was meant to be great and excessive and overwrought. From its decorative spindles to its heavy stone piers, its tangled topiary to it Byzantine bracketing, there did not seem to be any region of its surface upon which the eye could rest comfortably or for long.

All its pretentious flourishes seemed disproportionate in their abundance. Its strangely patterned wood and stone siding was repugnant. The delicately turned porch posts, the dentil molding, the half-timbered gables, the copious stained glass windows. It was too much to take in all at once. Its features, in their excess, came together in unexpected and unpleasant ways, and seemed individually to spring out when the eye stumbled across them.

Robert Forester glanced toward Raj as the two men absorbed the atmosphere of the house, and the expression on Raj’s face made him laugh. “It’s a sight, isn’t it?” Forester asked.

It’s hideous, Raj wanted to say, but that would have been rude. Instead, he replied, “It certainly is.”

But the home’s new owner seemed to catch wind of his thoughts anyway. Robert Forester turned back to the house, the humor fading from his eyes, and he said, “Maybe I’m crazy for planning to stay here. It seemed like a grand idea when I was living in the city. Reclaim the ancestral home, you know. Live in the famous haunted house. But now, after actually setting eyes on the place, being inside it for the first time, I think I might be making a mistake. What do you think?”

He glanced back at Raj, who shrugged noncommittally.

“If you’re asking me for advice, I can’t tell you anything one way or another. Not until we’ve investigated the home.”

“Do you really believe in ghosts, Mr. Chadramoolease—Er, Raj?” Robert Forester asked. “I mean… I’m sure you have to say you do, but… do you?”

Raj nodded. “We’ve been doing the show for nine years now, Mr. Forester. In that time, I’ve seen things that lead me to believe there are indeed phenomena in this world we have not yet quantified scientifically.”

“The supernatural,” Forester said.

Raj shrugged. “Call it what you will.”

“What do you call it?”

“The underpinning of the universe… The quantum substratum… The laws of physics get a little fuzzy below the subatomic level.”

“So you would call what you do the science of the supernatural?”

Raj tilted his head.

“And you think you can help me? Your team of ghost hunters?”

“We try to help when we can.”

Behind them, Big Dan and Little Dan had finished unloading the back of the SUV. They shuffled toward the house, large aluminum cases bumping against their knees.

“The place got lights?” Little Dan asked the owner.

“I had all the utilities turned on when I first arrived in town,” Robert answered. “The electricity is working, but I can’t guarantee how reliable it is. I hope you have surge protectors.”

“Oh, yeah,” Little Dan said with a friendly grin. “This ain’t our first rodeo.”

“If you could show us inside,” Raj said to the owner, gesturing toward the front door. “I’d like to get some preliminary readings, familiarize myself with the layout of the home. Plus, I’d personally love to have a look around. This house is quite famous in paranormal investigation circles. But I’m sure you’re well aware of that.”

They started across the lawn toward the front porch, their legs swishing through knee high grass that had been allowed to grow unchecked—probably for ages. As they walked, a grasshopper or two flicked into the air, buzzing away on wings that rattled like rice paper. Aside from the flick and buzz of the grasshoppers, however, the air was strangely still. There was no birdsong in the forest that encircled the big house on the hill. No whirring cicadas. Only the sound of the wind in the treetops, and from time to time, a furtive little crackle, as something small and timid fled through the underbrush.

The grass, too, was lifeless. Withered. Yellow. Raj could feel it crunching under the soles of his shoes as he walked, brittle as spun glass, but the main of his attention was centered on the house.

The house… the famous house…

He could feel his heart begin to race as the quartet approached the veranda. His chest got tight, as if his windpipe had shrunk to the size of a pinhole.

THE house!

Forester House was the most infamous haunted house in North America, rivaled only by the Winchester Mansion, the Villisca Ax Murder House, Waverly Hills Sanitarium… and his team had exclusive rights to document its hauntings! No paranormal investigators had been here in decades! None would have the chance to investigate after, as the new owner planned to completely remodel it.

The home’s new owner, Robert Forester, was rambling on about his aunt, who had left him the house in her will, Robert being the last living male descendent of the home’s original owner. His aunt had written him a letter shortly before she died, Robert said, explaining the conditions of his inheritance, that he must never sell the house or take up residence within its walls.

“’The land is cursed, and the house doubly so,’ she said,” Robert related over his shoulder with a grin. He dug his keys from his pocket as he climbed the veranda steps. “’It is our burden to safeguard the innocent from the wicked things the hearts of men are led to do here.’ I thought she was being melodramatic. You know, because of the house’s infamy. Until the first time I stepped inside.”

Raj started up the steps… and felt dizziness wash suddenly over him. He snatched instinctively for the step rail, waving his left arm, but his flapping fingers couldn’t find it. Luckily, Big Dan was right behind him.

“Hey!” Big Dan exclaimed as he shored up the listing director. “You okay, boss? What’s wrong?”

“Whoa, careful, dude!” Little Dan cautioned.

“I’m so sorry!” Raj said, pinching the bridge of his nose. He wavered for a moment, drew himself upright. “It’s passing. Must be my allergies. My inner ear... it threw off my balance for a moment.”

Robert Forester was standing in the open doorway, his brow furrowed. He looked as if he wasn’t sure whether Raj was being serious or playing out some little piece of theater.

“Are you going to be okay?” Forester inquired.

Raj stood and waved to the homeowner. “I’m fine now. I have very severe allergies. I took my allergy medicine this morning, but, I guess, all this grass and… the woods…”

“Are you sure? It’s not any better inside. I can assure you of that.”

“Yes, yes. I apologize. Please. Let’s continue.”

Raj put his hand on the rail and finished climbing the steps. Still frowning, Robert shifted aside and gestured for his guest to precede him.

“Enter freely, and of your own will,” Robert said with a ghoulish smirk as Raj walked past him.

Raj smiled politely, but, stepping into the dark throat of the house, it didn’t seem particularly funny.