Red Moon ~ Chapter 10 ~ The Treehouse

Chapter 10: The Treehouse

“Hey! Why all this rush?” I asked confused.

“You said you wanted to hunt. So let’s hunt.” She lowered her head to hide the guilty look on her face.

“This isn’t the reason you dragged me outside before I could say a word!” I gave her a long stare and forced to look up. Her eyes were wet, like she was about to cry. “Ness? What is it?”

“Not here.” Her voice cracked. “Can we talk somewhere more private?” she pleaded.

I nodded and followed her deep into the woods. She was looking around going from tree to tree like she was trying to find something. Finally, we stopped in front of a tall pine tree with thick trunk. A long rope ladder was hanging from the top of it. I followed the ladder with my eyes. Up there, nestled in the limbs of this massive tree was a treehouse. Nessie waved her hand to tell me to climb the stairs and she followed right behind me.

When I was on top, I started looking around, observing the details of it. On the front ‘door’ a piece of brown fabric was hanging. The treehouse wasn’t big, but it looked warm and welcoming. Inside, on the floor, was a carpet, cream-colored, with wolves and geometrical shapes in red, navy blue, dark yellow and brown colors. I bet Jake helped with the decoration of this place. Many pillows in brownish and beige tones with shapes similar to the ones of the carpet were adorning the floor. It wasn’t high enough so I could stand, so I crawled and sat on one of the pillows. Renesmee sat next to me pulling her knees to her chest and started crying and rocking back and forth. I patted her lightly on the back and told her everything is gonna be okay. She tried to tell me something but I couldn’t understand what it was. I waited for her to calm down…

Ten minutes… Twenty minutes… One hour… One and a half hours later…

She finally started breathing slower and turned to look at me. Her eyes were red and swollen.

“Are you better now?” I asked as I looked around and found a box of Kleenex and handed some to her.

“Calmer, yes. Better, no.” Her voice was unsteady, as if she could burst into tears again any minute. “It’s…It’s…” she couldn’t say it.

“What is it?” I asked, smiling trying to ease her pain.

“It’s…” She just looked at me and could not seem to form the words.

“Why don’t you show me?” I told her as I tried to lift her hand to my face but she resisted.

She hesitated at first. She stretched her hand and then pulled it back again. A couple of minutes later she finally placed her hand on mine so she did not have to look into my eyes but down at our hands instead.

* * * * *

I didn’t hear her voice like the last time in the woods. I saw the living room. Alice was talking. I saw me going upstairs to talk to Carlisle.

“I think we should go to New York someday soon. You need some new…” Alice stopped babbling. Her face looked empty. Like she was somewhere else and seeing something far away from here. She must be having a vision. After a while, her eyes focused back on me. (actually, not on me but Renesmee, whose point of view I must have been seeing everything from).

“I’ll be back.” She tried to hide that she was kinda panicked. “Esme? Esme?”

“I’m upstairs dear,” Esme’s sweet voice answered.

“I’m coming up. I want to talk to you.” She ran up the stairs at inhuman speed, almost tripping on the last step, ‘Since when does Alice trip?’ I heard Nessie's thought, and disappeared into one of the other bedrooms, the ones I hadn’t seen yet.

“It was awful Esme! Awful! I don’t know what we will do?! Where’s Bella? Edward? They have to come back now!” Alice was panicked and talking so fast it was hard to understand what she was saying.

“Wait, Alice! Hold still for a minute! What’s wrong? Did you see something?” Esme replied as she tried to put her hands on both of Alice’s shoulders to calm her.

Their voices were quick and low, I could barely understand them. My parents used to speak like that when I was younger so I wouldn’t understand them. ‘They underestimate my senses all the time…they thought I couldn’t hear…’ Nessie thought.

“Yes, yes! It was awful! I…I can’t…This can’t happen! We can’t let it happen!” Alice said through tearless sobs.

“What, Alice? What did you see? Calm down. It can’t be that bad. Alice! Look at me!” Esme said raising her voice for effect.

“Yes, it can be that bad! Worse than bad! They killed us all! We couldn’t do anything! They killed us! And then they took them! We died. We died,” she kept repeating as she sunk to the floor, pulling her knees to her chest and just rocking back and forth.

“Alice! Who died? Who are they? Whom did they take? Alice! Jasper! Can you come over here?” Esme shouted, the panic now filling her voice as well.

Jasper ran into the house and disappeared upstairs. Emmett gave me/Nessie a questioning look, shrugged and went outside again.

Alice spoke again. She sounded calmer. “They will come again. They will come and win this time. They will take what they want. We have no chance. No one comes to help us this time. They just kill us.”

“Who’ll kill us, Alice?” Jasper asked then his eyes widened as it registered who she was talking about.

I was afraid of the answer. I didn’t want to know.

No! This can’t be! Not them! “The Volturi” she confirmed my fear. NO! NO! NO! I don’t want to see anymore! No! Nessie stop! I don’t want to know! No! I was screaming in my head.

“Why? What did we do? Who do they want?” Jasper asked as he hugged his wife for dear life, trying to stay calm enough to calm her and keep things under control.

“Renesmee and Eshe,” Alice cried.

No! This is even worse! Let go Nessie! Let my hand!

* * * * *

I started shaking my head. “No. No. No. This can’t be. This is not happening. No. No. No.” I was shaking again. Badly.  I could feel me losing control. I had to rein it in. I did not even realize that Nessie had pulled out her cell until I heard the end of the conversation.

My worst fear is coming to life.

“Jake? Are you near the treehouse? Can you come? Please? Really you need to come.” There was a pause, then she said “Thank you,” and hung up the phone. “Eshe? I heard what Carlisle told you. You should not panic,” she said; her eyes still swollen and red from crying and not much better looking than I knew I looked like now.

I looked at her. “This all is a joke, right? It’s not true. Soon I will wake up and you will ask me why I woke up so early. Yeah. This is a nightmare. Just a little more real than the usual ones, right?” I was pleading with her, myself and anyone else that would listen to wake me up from this nightmare.

“No, Eshe. It’s all real. But we will find a way,” she assured me, not really even believing what she was saying, but slowly started accepting it. She knew they had beat the Volturi before and believed they could do it again, with preparation and prior warning.

I felt better in the thought that there was still hope, that we could still do something. “Okay,” I whispered.

We waited in companionable silence, holding onto each other for dear life. Soon, I caught Jacob's scent.

“Hey!” His head appeared from behind the fabric on the door. “Are you two okay? Nessie you didn’t sound good on the phone.”

He squeezed himself to get through the door and sat on the floor like we did. He looked huge. Even though he was sitting, his head touched the ceiling. He pulled Nessie near him and held her in his protective arms while she still held onto my hand for comfort. She placed her hand on his cheek and showed him what she had shown to me just moments ago. He looked furious when Nessie finished showing him her memories.

“How dare they! No! No! We won’t let them!” He howled.

“You can’t do anything. Alice said you died,” I said. “All of you…all of us…” she said as the tears started flowing again. Jake brushed them away with his thumb and kissed her hair.

“Alice can’t see us in her visions! She can only see what she was and what she is! Humans and vampires! Both of our kinds are completely out of her view. If we go help, the Volturi can’t take you,” Jacob said emphatically.

I felt a little hopeful. “But still. No one else came to help. You…you weren’t enough.”

“Ness what happened next? After they said the Volturi will come for you two?” He demanded trying to keep his temper under control so he did not phase and hurt either of us. 

He was obviously struggling, but he was able to keep calm as she continued talking.  Her voice seemed to help keep him somewhat under control.

She touched my palm with one hand and Jacob’s with the other and I was back in the living room.

* * * * *

“Are you sure about it?” Jasper asked.

“Yes, yes, they took them. I saw it…” Alice buried her head in Jasper’s chest and hugged him tightly for a moment to calm herself with his scent, inhaling deeply as if it would take away all the pain.

“You could see Renesmee? In your vision?” Jasper questioned as he pushed her back so he could look into her eyes.

“Not clearly. She was blurry. But it was her. And Eshe. I am sure of it.” Then Alice looked up at Jasper as a light bulb had went off above her head and she realized what he was asking.

“Go downstairs. Nessie will get suspicious. Go and keep talking. We will go find the others,” Esme said as she patted both of Alice and Jasper reassuringly.

All three came downstairs. Esme and Jasper left and Alice started babbling again, like nothing happened, about a perfect dress for Nessie that she saw in her vision.

* * * * *

“That was it, just that. And then we went outside” she said. We both looked at her.

“We should go back. See what the others are planning to do. You shouldn’t have left the house. Alice might have had a different vision while you were gone.  You know her visions are subjective, someone could have changed their mind,” Jacob said as if he was trying to convince himself as much as he was Nessie.

“How do I explain I know about Alice’s vision?” she asked as she started toward the curtain that led outside the treehouse.

“You just heard them. They were in the house; they should expect you could hear them,” he told her.

We climbed down the rope ladder and were back in the forest.

“I will phase to go faster. I could get one of you on my back. But both you are too heavy for me to run fast enough, even for me. You would slow me down,” he said with a frown. He hated being seen as possibly weak.

“Take Nessie. I will phase too,” I said without hesitation.

“Are you sure it’s okay? Shouldn’t we ask Carlisle before you try this again?” Jake asked, worry in his voice.

“I did it once, I can do it again. Go phase and I will go too. It is the only way and we need to hurry and find out what is going on.  Our future and lives depend on it. Quit worrying…or are you just scared I am faster than you?” I chuckled, trying to lighten the mood. 

Jake looked over at Nessie, then at me and got the biggest grin on his face as he took off into the woods and yelled behind him, “You’re on little fox!”

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