Page 114 of Eldritch

Trees? What the?—?

A second later, another low moan from outside echoed from the sides of the house.

“You…Letisha. Get over there and open those curtains,” Taggert said, as he gestured toward the windows.

Letisha stood and hurried to the window closest to the couch where Sybil lay. Letisha flicked the heavy drapes back.

Letisha jerked away from the window. “Shit.”

Pauline and Maria gasped.

“We aren’t crazy,” Maria said, panic filling her voice.

“What the hell?” Doug whispered under his breath. Sybil didn’t care if she fell on her face. She swung her legs off the couch and stood. Her temples pounded. Doug stood and put his arm around her shoulders.

Outside, the blizzard swirled powdery snow around in gusts as powerful as a sandstorm.

Sybil's mouth opened, but she couldn't speak. Her mind whirled with the impossibility of what she saw.

Although the snowstorm whiteout conditions obstructed distant vision, the sheer impossibility of what Sybil witnessed outside the window was undeniable.

“Tell me that isn’t real,” Pauline said.

No one spoke.

The freakishly enormous trees had moved to less than fifty yards from the house. They’d gathered close, their branches sometimes twining here and there. A groaning came from outside that almost reminded Sybil of the tree herders in Lord of The Rings. The house was grumbling. Sybil knew, somehow, what was happening.

The house is pissed. Begging to be rid of the people inside it and asking the forest for support.

Maria made a choked noise, and Sybil turned enough to look at her. The woman had covered her face with her hands.

“We did see it,” Maria said, almost gasping the words.

Letisha turned her back on the window. “We came down here because we heard the moaning outside. I looked out my bedroom window, and it was light enough to see those damned trees.”

“We all did.” Pauline’s eyes held that glazed, fearful look of someone who’d experienced a trauma.

Sybil’s head didn’t feel so foggy anymore, and the ache in her temples was not as intense. Reality had slammed into her as hard as Taggert’s weapon. She turned around, as did everyone else, to look at Taggert. Clarice hadn’t moved from her post on the couch, and the old woman’s calm expression flabbergasted Sybil. Maybe at her age Clarice had mastered the ability to mask her feelings.

So have I.

Taggert seemed stunned, his bravado stunted for the moment. He blinked, and the hatred on his face returned. “What did you bitches do?”

“What?” Letisha asked.

Taggert walked toward her and leaned in Letisha’s face. She took a step back and bumped into the windowsill.

“You must have done some shit for this stuff to be happening.” Taggert snarled the words. “This isn’t normal.”

“What you’re doing is normal, I suppose,” Clarice said.

Taggert turned away from Letisha and walked across the room to Clarice. He smirked at her. “You don’t know a damned thing about me. I’m the way a man should be.”

Sybil noted that Clarice’s smile was subtle. “I love men who are wonderful, caring, and upstanding. You, sir, are not one of them.”

His mouth tightened into a bitter line. “Keep mouthing off, old lady and this is going to end really badly for you.”

Clarice’s eyes lit up, almost as if someone had stoked a fire inside her. “I have a proposal for you that should solve everything.”

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