Andrea lay very still, staring up at the ceiling, what she could see of it by the flickering candlelight. She lay staring at the high ceiling of the whore’s bedroom, warmed by the afterglow of sex, and by the woman’s naked body, so near to Andrea’s own. It occurred to her that Michelle’s sheets smelled like apple cider, which made her think of autumn. And it also occurred to her that it had been a long time since she’d felt this content.
“You promised you’d tell me the story,” Michelle whispered. “After we fucked.”
“You won’t like it,” Andrea replied, wishing silently that she could go back to the quiet, undemanding moment before.
“Isn’t that for me to decide?” the whore asked.
“It’ll only leave you with more questions than answers,” Andrea said. “And just when you think it’s one thing, this story, it’ll go and become something else entirely. It’s fickle. It’s a fickle story.”
“The whole wide world is fickle, and you promised,” Michelle insisted.
“It’s not even a real story,” Andrea continued. “And it’s populated with fairly reprehensible people.”
“So is life,” replied the whore.
“It really doesn’t make a great deal of sense, this story. It’s filled with loose ends, and has no shortage of contradictions. It shows no regard whatsoever for anyone’s need of resolution.”
“Just like life,” the whore added, and she laughed softly and nipped lightly at Andrea’s left earlobe.
“I doubt I’ll be able to finish the whole thing before sunrise,” Andrea said. “In fact, I’m almost certain I won’t be able to.”
“Fine,” said Michelle. “Then I will have to call you Scheherazade, and you will have to think of me as the king. I will be forced to grant you a stay of execution until you’re able to tell me all of it.”
Andrea didn’t respond immediately. She kept her eyes on the ceiling, and tried not to think about the antique straight razor in the pocket of her coat, draped over the back of a chair on the far side of the bedroom.
“How the hell did I wind up with such a literate whore?” she asked, and Michelle laughed again. “Anyway,” Andrea continued, “you’d make a better Dinazade.”
“That’s dirty,” the whore snickered, then added, “Vice is nice, but incest is best.”
“Sure. Besides, the king has lots of other concubines to keep him occupied.”
“Odalisque,” Michelle said. “It’s a prettier word.”
“Fine, then. Odalisque. Regardless, you’ve been warned. This story, it has a lot going for it, as long as you can live with the questions it raises and never answers, and with a certain lingering inexplicability.”
“I pays my money, and I takes my chances,” said the whore, whom Andrea was unable to think of as either a concubine or an odalisque. Michelle was just a whore, and Andrea was just a trick, and the razor was just a razor.
“You don’t get to whine about it afterwards, or ask for your dollar back.”
“I never would,” Michelle assured her.
“Very well,” Andrea sighed, closing her eyes. “But only because Scheherazade always did carry a torch for her sister. Whenever she was getting banged by that fat old bastard Shahryar, she would shut her eyes tightly and think of Dinazade, instead.”
“Well, there you go,” said the whore.
There was a long moment then when neither of them said anything; there was no sound but a few cars down on the street, and a police siren somewhere in the distance. Then Andrea opened her eyes, and she took a deep breath, breathing in the cider sheets. And then she began.
“Not long ago, there was a very talented painter named Albert Perrault, but, before he could finish what would have been his greatest painting, he died in a motorcycle accident in Paris.”
“Wasn’t he wearing a helmet?” the whore asked.
“I have no idea,” Andrea replied, sounding slightly annoyed. “And do not interrupt me again, not if you want to hear this. As I was saying, this unfinished painting, it would have been his masterpiece. . ”
AUTHOR’S NOTE
In August of 2006, while walking in the woods near Exeter, Rhode Island, I happened upon an enormous oak tree. There were a number of peculiar objects set all about its base — dismembered doll parts, empty wine bottles, a copy of the New Testament missing its fake leather cover, faded plastic flowers, and other things I can’t now recall. For no reason I could put my finger on, I found the sight unnerving, and didn’t linger there. Perhaps it was only the tree’s relative proximity to the Exeter Grange Hall and Chestnut Hill Baptist Church. The state’s most famous “vampire,” Mercy Brown (1873–1892), is buried in the church’s cemetery. Or perhaps my disquiet arose from the simple, unsolvable mystery of those random objects scattered about the base of the tree. Regardless, like everything else that I see and hear, the oak tree was filed away as potential story fodder. And, two years later, from it grew the novel that became The Red Tree.
There are a great number of other sources of inspiration that I feel I should acknowledge, some of which have been quoted and/or alluded to in the text of the novel. These include: Michael E. Bell’s Food for the Dead: On the Trail of New England’s Vampires(2001); Jorge Luis Borges’ “The Garden of Forking Paths” (1941); various works by Edgar Allan Poe and H. P. Lovecraft; Peter Straub’s Ghost Story(1979); Arthur Machen’s The Great God Pan (1890, 1894); Tennessee Williams’ Suddenly, Last Summer (1958) and Gore Vidal’s film adaptation of the play (1959); Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland(1865) and Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There(1871); Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sánchez’ The Blair Witch Project (1999); the works of Carl G. Jung and Joseph Campbell; Joan Lindsay’s Picnic at Hanging Rock(1967); Mark Z. Danielewski’s House of Leaves (2000); Joseph Payne Brennan’s “Canavan’s Back Yard” (1958); Angela Carter’s The Bloody Chamber (1979); Karl Edward Wagner’s “Sticks” (1974); Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House(1959); Henry David Thoreau’s The Maine Woods (1864) and Walden; or, A Life in the Woods(1854); Charles Hoy Fort’s The Book of the Damned (1919),New Lands (1923), and Lo! (1931); Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness(1899, 1902); Algernon Blackwood’s “The Willows” (1907); and M. R. James’ “The Ash Tree” (1904). Also, the section of The Red Tree titled “Pony” originally appeared in Sirenia Digest#2 (January 2006).
I would also like to thank my agent, Merrilee Heifetz of Writers House, and my editor, Anne Sowards, for their support of this book; Sonya Taaffe, for many helpful conversations, and for proofreading, translation, and invaluable feedback; Carol Hanson Pollnac, for her assistance with research, including that first trip to Moosup Valley; William K. Schafer, for all his continued support; Harlan Ellison, for the pep talks; Dr. Richard B. Pollnac (University of Rhode Island), for reading the first draft and offering comments and proofreading; Byron White, for more things than I can mention; and the staffs of the Peace Dale Public Library, Providence Athenaeum, Providence Public Library (Central Branch), the URI College of Continuing Education Library, and the Robert W. Woodruff Library at Emory University. And, most of all, my partner, Kathryn A. Pollnac, without whom I’d have stopped writing a long time ago.