Read Every House Is Haunted for Free Online

why the tree frightened me so. I think it was what it represented. A place where it was always autumn. There was something unnatural about the idea. My fear lay in the root of that concept. Unnatural. Un-nature. The tree was something that shouldn’t be. It was a tree out of time. A living monument that shouldn’t exist, and yet at the same time couldn’t be ignored.
    I inched back to the edge of the clearing. The tree wasn’t on fire, but a part of me still thought I would get burned if I stood too close to it. I started to back away, and the Professor turned, holding me in his gaze for a moment. There was something in his eyes. Disappointment, maybe. But then he turned back to the tree. When I realized the Professor had no further interest in me, I simply slipped into the woods and left.
    I didn’t think I’d be able to find my way back, but I did. I saw my hat hanging on a branch and grabbed it as I ran past.
    I never saw the Professor again. I guess he got another boy to deliver his groceries.
    That was many years ago. I’m an old man now, as old as the Professor was then. I have a son, and from time to time I see a look of curiosity on his face that is very familiar. It’s like looking into a mirror to the past. I see that look on his face and I find myself thinking back to the Professor’s final words to me, and the world I was too afraid to imagine.
    It doesn’t scare me anymore. In fact, it’s a comfort to me now.
    I see it when I close my eyes.
    A world where the sky is cloaked in perpetual overcast, the scent of woodsmoke is always in the air, and the trees that burn there burn forever.

C ABIN D
I
    When the man in the houndstooth jacket stepped through the door, Rachel knew he was going to be trouble. It wasn’t until later, after he had dropped the biggest tip she ever received, that she learned trouble was, in fact, where he was going.
    It was a few minutes past eight on a Friday morning and Rachel was nursing a cup of coffee and leafing through the Sutter County
Register
. The breakfast crowd had come and gone, and she expected things to pick up again, oh, sometime tomorrow morning. The Crescent Diner did a good business in the hours between six and eight AM, but afternoons and evenings were deader than disco.
    At the moment, the only sounds in the diner were the low gurgling of the Silex and the whisper of the ceiling fans turning overhead. Reg was out back having a smoke and the jukebox (which contained such golden oldies as “Gangsta’s Paradise” and “Mambo No. 5”) was mercifully silent.
    The bell over the door jingled, and Rachel was so surprised by the sound that she almost dropped her coffee cup. She looked up from the newspaper and saw a man standing in the doorway.
    “Morning,” he said, and gave her a sunny grin. He squinted his eyes in order to read the orange, moon-shaped name-tag pinned to her blue rayon uniform. “Rachel.” He raised a hand in greeting. “I’m Henry.”
    The waitress’s first thought was that the man, Henry, had crawled out of a Salvation Army donation bin. In addition to the houndstooth jacket, he wore a paisley shirt, a plaid tie, and a pair of tan slacks so short they looked like flood pants. He was also wearing mismatched socks—one brown, one yellow and covered with a pattern of lobsters. She wondered idly if the circus was in town.
    She was about to head out back and tell Reg they had another homeless person in the diner, but something made her wait. She stared at the man a moment longer and realized that, despite his ragged, clownish attire, he clearly wasn’t one of the homeless vags who wandered in from time to time in search of food or money. He was in his late twenties or early thirties. He was thin, clear-eyed, and clean-shaven, and he didn’t give off the stink of either cheap wine or puke.
    “Hi Henry,” she said finally.
    “I just hitched in.” His jacket opened a bit as he jerked a thumb over his shoulder, and Rachel caught a glimpse