The Red Tree

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.