The Green Man

by Lee Mather

  I stare out my study window, and outside the night is so black I cannot see much beyond the glare of my lamp on the pane of glass. In truth the images I see are of pandemonium and terror, and I have to focus to reference the second time my mother saw the Green Man so that you have a complete mythology detailed here.

  She was in her early twenties and four months pregnant. My parents rented a small house in those days, near the great brick viaduct that intersects the center of the old town in Stockport. It was another couple of years before my father’s printing business really took off and they could afford to move farther south to the affluent suburbs of Wilmslow. She had been alone that day, carrying some light shopping bags home from the local market. She suffered badly with morning sickness, and the aches of childbearing were increasing by the day. She had paused to take a breath and to straighten her throbbing back, the dirt track so empty it felt like she was the only person in the world. She claimed to have sensed something then, and suddenly he appeared. It was the same deal, a hug from another world.

  After a couple of silent minutes in his uplifting aura, he left and she was alone on the dirt track again. This time she walked home with a heavy heart, knowing that something bad was about to happen, just as when her grandmother had died. Two days later she miscarried and lost what might have been my older brother.

  My mother insisted that these visits were not sinister or a punishment of some sort. She firmly believed that in coming to her, William was trying to let her know that death was not the end. He was there to give her hope beyond tragedy, to keep her faith alive.

  As someone who didn’t believe in anything, I found this hard to digest, particularly in my adult years.

  It is worth understanding my father’s reaction to the Green Man stories. He was as perplexed and as disbelieving as I, but perhaps more affectionately amused. On reflection I have wondered how much of his mild cynicism played a part in my own attitude towards my mother’s beliefs. He would always gently follow my mother’s story by pointing out that she hadn’t mentioned seeing the Green Man until years after the miscarriage. In fact, the first time she spoke about this was when I was a toddler.

  I pause again, stand and suck in a breath. The next bit is not easy for me to write, so I stretch my legs by trotting a couple of wide circles around my desk before numbly resuming my position by the notebook. I am not some hack without any emotional involvement in these words, and my chest constricts and pressure swells inside my skull. I briefly feel very low, similar to how I used to feel before one of the panic attacks I often suffered and was forced to combat with Temazepam for some two years after the crash. I steel myself and the pain subsides. I’m ready to continue.

  I recall a short delay before the plane began its surge. Although the ascent was quite smooth, this didn’t soothe me. As each second passed, I remember believing more and more that what my mother had feared was about to pass. Normally I would find the rocketing climb to altitude the worst part and then I would start to settle, but on this occasion the controlling tension didn’t leave me. I felt like the only piece of me not made of wood was my ice-cold intestines. Seb was still enjoying himself at this point, laughing and highlighting every flinch I made.

  The plane leveled, but not for long. It started as a creak that lasted a few seconds. I remember feeling a cloying dread, both mischievous and sickening, and it was unbearable. The plane creaked again and this time it was much louder, like a groan from deep inside the belly of the beast. I noticed Seb look up from his Filofax as he made notes for our lunchtime meeting. I glanced at Samantha, seated by the emergency door, and she had a faraway look in her eyes. To her this was another day at the office, and she was having one of those moments when she would rather be anywhere else in the world.

  Suddenly we hit an air pocket, or at least that’s what I prayed it was. She looked startled, and the effect on me was like a bullet to the gut. The plane dropped sharply, and my stomach was surely about to burst from my mouth. Suddenly I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t speak. Then came the noise. There was a blast from one of the engines. A defiant roar as some afterburner kicked in, but then there was a loud bang. The engine suddenly sputtered and then died. The plane dipped harder.

  “My God!” Seb shouted.

  More people screamed. All I could think was that I wanted to see Hannah again. I wanted to see Evie. I wanted my daughter to know her father.

  There was another hideous bang, and the emergency floor lighting kicked in while the oxygen masks each jerked down from the ceiling like hanged men. We were plummeting suddenly, and the screams were so loud they distorted.

  I was in a vacuum. Time slowed and the world outside my bubble did not make sense. I don’t think Seb spoke again. He had succumbed to his own terror, and no amount of rationality, no amount of hip snide could have helped him as we fell.

  The chaos peaked as we were on the verge of smashing down. Overhead lockers flung open, and a cyclone of litter and bags began to fly past me.

  I know it is the mischievous portion of my mind working, but the crumpled pieces of paper are so vivid in my memory tonight that I can recall the electronics offers from the in-flight magazine, and I see torn pages from Seb’s Filofax rushing past with details of the meeting that we never did make. In truth I was far too terrified to have noticed these things.

  I think it was then that my brain’s coping strategy failed, because I thought of how my death would hurt Evie. My daughter would never know her father. Every birthday, every Christmas, every parents’ evening without me. Who would she bring her first boyfriend home to meet, who would give her away at her wedding? Not me, not her father. Her life would always be an incomplete jigsaw, and because of this I truly despaired. It had killed me to know that my father would never see his granddaughter, and likewise she would never see him. This was worse. All I could think was that my daughter would never hear the last words of love and advice I could offer her. I would have welcomed a fireball just to end that feeling.

  The tin can began to rattle like a rocket entering the earth’s atmosphere, and as I write I imagine a shield of fire between the fuselage and the skies outside. My stomach wrenches as I remember that we dipped even faster. Death was coming quickly. The screams were real again; my bubble had burst.

  I used to dream after the crash, every night for months, and in one of the more vivid, a red-hot fireball engulfed the plane and raced along the compartment like an ignited fuse. I would sit there helplessly as fire washed over me like the tide. I burned over and over again, my flesh melting as flames devoured me, my skin curling and blackening like charred paper until my bones blackened and then cracked. I screamed as I roasted alive in my seat. Seb was next to me in those dreams, one minute smiling that smug, shit-eating grin, the next— I shudder to think of it.

  I didn’t have much more time to think on the plane. We hit the ground fast and there was the wretched sound of crunching metal, the screams now mechanical. We buffeted and bumped and something hard hit me from behind, and I was thrown forwards. I don’t know how much time passed before cries of pain pierced the dullness of my perception.

  I gradually became aware that I was pressed firmly against the seat in front, the torn seatbelt digging into the flesh around my stomach. I felt so dizzy that I could barely see, but I was aware that the plane itself had stopped. It was hot around me and thick smoke billowed through the cabin. My skin felt scorched with the heat although I could not see any fire.

  I recovered enough to look at Seb. I wish I hadn’t.

  Seb, formerly so full of life and mischief, was a broken marionette. One arm was pointing rigidly but grotesquely against the joint. It had been snapped with considerable force. Worse, his head lolled to one side, a severe gash not quite decapitating him but at the same time not leaving his neck with enough stability to maintain any weight, and through his shoulder blade and chest was a twisted piece of proud metal. Blood pulsed slowly from the wound in his neck. He was oblivious, staring through
me into the terrible future of the damned. On some rare and unwelcome occasions when I close my eyes, I can still see him like this.

  I stop writing and allow myself a few quiet tears, careful so as not to sob too loudly and disturb my sleeping family. Five minutes of painful inertia pass before I am able to continue.

  Sometimes in my grief and anger, I have wondered whether I should have checked for a pulse or tried to move him. In rational moments, such as this one, I know my friend was dead some minutes before I regained enough composure to look at him. I have missed Seb a lot these eight years. He was someone who helped keep me sane, knowing when I needed a lighter touch to get me through the day. I miss his jokes at my expense most of all.

  Surprisingly my rescue is almost a blur, one of the few parts of the crash that I cannot absolutely recall, and it is a sickening reality that my last clear memory from the plane is of my butchered friend. It was Samantha who saved me. The young one, the pretty one, and the one most men would stare at and underestimate without a second thought. I’d looked to her as we dipped, and she had been lost in the same terror as everyone else, but in those moments after we hit the ground she was reborn, focused and determined like some warrior woman. The one thing I do remember is her hands on me, surprisingly strong, as she herded me out of the plane and into the pale light of the dreary Manchester morning.

  I only once saw photographs of the crash that claimed Seb and twenty-three more lives, but the images are branded into my brain forever. I am astonished that I and twelve others walked away from that snarl of broken metal. Whenever I remember the dead I am reminded of the fragility of all this, of how very small we are in this universe and that perhaps we have less of a say in our destinies than we think. There are so many unanswered questions, so much that we do not know for certain.

  Astonishingly the plane was damaged even more than I had realized. Reports said that a failure with the onboard computer just after takeoff had caused the Jet to lose power, and the pilot had bravely fought to return her to the airport to land. We had hit in the fields adjoining the runway and then ploughed through into the airport itself. Part of the undercarriage had become partially lodged beneath a wave of earth, and machine had merged with nature before we hit tarmac. The impact had ripped the plane apart and it lay in two pieces, dismembered at the center, and I remember that the torn edges nearest the nose glinted like jagged shark’s teeth. The shattered remainder of the fuselage had overturned and travelled maybe a thousand yards further on to the edge of the runway. What was left of the wings was a crumpled mess, and black smoke billowed from one engine in particular as two fire engines were captured with crews teeming over the site. Steam from their hoses made the wreckage look like it was surrounded by mist. Only those in the front of the plane survived, and in the photograph they spilled from the exit nearest the cockpit so that it looked as if the plane was hemorrhaging blood from its throat.

  It felt strange when I saw this, as if it hadn’t been real or maybe I hadn’t been there. I don’t remember what it looked like in the flesh, and I was oblivious until some time later in the terminal. This was when shock’s steely grip on me began to falter.

  The first thing I did was to borrow a phone from the paramedic examining me, as my own mobile lay burning with the rest of the hand luggage. He left me alone to place a call to Hannah. I was fretful, pacing like a caged wildcat as she took a few rings to answer.

  “Hello.”

  My heart fluttered.

  “Hannah. Is that you, honey?” was all I could manage, even though I knew it was her. My wobbling voice sparked her immediate concern.

  “Pete? What is it, babe? You sound dreadful.”

  I could hear the sound of Evie gurgling in the background, and it was the most beautiful noise I could ever have imagined. I gulped back a sob of relief, my spare hand cupped against my brow. I pressed my back against the wall to stop myself from keeling over.

  “I’m fine, honey. I love you so much—but…” I cracked, sobbing suddenly, and as my disembodied tears floated down the telephone line, I was helpless in the woeful knowledge that my capitulation would hurt my wife. My legs buckled and I slid down the wall onto my backside. I broke down.

  “My goodness, Pete, what’s happened?” Hannah said as calmly as she was able.

  I was silent. It was impossible for me to describe such horror.

  “Peter, talk to me. Let me help you.”

  I stopped crying for long enough to speak. “Seb is dead.”

  Hannah gasped. “What? No—oh God—what happened?”

  My head rolled back; it remained upright only thanks to the support of the wall, my face a mess of just about every fluid it could produce. It hurt like hell to breathe.

  “The plane crashed,” I whispered. “I’m alive. So many are dead—I’m lucky, so lucky—”

  Hannah cried then, and I shuddered.

  “I’m alive. I’m alive. I’m—”

  We were silent until Hannah found her strength. I sensed a change in her, her resolution before she spoke.

  “Come home, my darling. Come home to me.”

  “Seb”—I sobbed—“he’s—” I stopped. I couldn’t say the words again.

  “Come home, Pete. I love you—and Evie does too. We’ll get through this. It’s going to be okay.”

  I made her promise that it would be. Finally I found the strength to stand. I couldn’t see a way back. I was damaged goods. Now I understand that the mind or maybe even the soul has an astonishing ability to self-repair. Time heals eventually; each grain of sand slips through the hourglass until enough crosses over to bury the pain.

  I may have stayed longer at the airport if a scramble on the other end of the line hadn’t lifted me. I could suddenly hear another gurgle and some heavy breathing, which was the best my daughter could manage in those days. I was rewarded with flowing strength, as unexpected as it was humbling.

  “I love you both. I’m coming home.”

  Evie made an anxious noise—she did not like being held up to the phone. I remember thinking that my baby didn’t have a clue why the plastic thing made a noise that sounded a bit like Daddy. I knew then I needed to get home.

  I told Hannah I loved her again and then signed off, my limbs still trembling like a dragonfly’s.

  I returned the phone to the paramedic, who encouraged me to visit Manchester General for an X-ray on my side. I politely declined, as I did the offer of a visit to the grief counselor from an airline rep who interviewed me to confirm both my details and my fragmented version of events. I made one phone call to my company and a driver was arranged. I would be home within the hour.

  * * * *

  The drive back was excruciating. My brain was a sponge that absorbed too much water, and I couldn’t focus on one thing for more than a couple of seconds, my thoughts instantly switching to a variety of topics like a honeybee floating from one flower to the next.

  Mikey or Mickey (I’m not quite sure which) was the name of the young man they sent to collect me, and he’d only been with the company for a couple of months. I remember he looked so fresh in his face, and he had that unspoiled exuberance young people bring into their working lives. As I recall, he questioned me about the crash with excited eyes. I cut this from him quickly. The reality saw me crushed, conflicted and afraid, the numbing anesthetic of shock and the promise of being reunited with my family the only things keeping me from breaking down completely. I told him that one of the twenty-four mangled bodies being lifted from the plane was my best friend. Mikey, suitably embarrassed, did not speak again until I addressed him. This allowed me enough space to start thinking, if only in a fractured, surreal kind of way.

  As I calmed I began to consider my mother’s warning, and for the first time in years I regarded her story without prejudice or anger.

  In boarding that plane, I realized then I could have condemned her to a lifetime of guilt. I should have believed her but I didn’t. I had no faith in her because I had no faith
in anything. I thought the Green Man was all just made up, her way of coping with the bad things which happened to her in her life. Now I could not be sure. Either way, she needed me to support her after my father died. I realized then that I had been wrong. Even if she hadn’t been right about the Green Man, at the very least I should have accepted it as her way of coping. I remember thinking that maybe I deserved what happened; maybe this was the only way for me to see the truth.

  This was a bleak, sickening way to find some belief.

  As we neared Stockport I felt increasingly troubled. My world was no longer black and white. There was something I needed to resolve before I could go home.

  “Mikey,” I said, my voice that of a calm stranger.

  Mikey looked in the rearview mirror. He appeared surprised, as if I’d woken him from a daydream. “Mr. Jones?”

  “I need you to drop me off at my mother’s.”

  He raised a curious eyebrow and then nodded. “Sure, no problem. You want to phone home or something first?”

  I shook my head. “No. Come off at the same motorway junction and I’ll direct you from there.”

  * * * *

  I waved dismissively to Mikey and watched him pull away from the drive. I was hurting then, physically as well as mentally, and although it took me a few days before I visited the local Emergency Department to be diagnosed with a couple of broken ribs, I knew that I was injured. Maybe I should have gone straight to the hospital or even straight home to Hannah and Evie, but a nagging unease had instead brought me to my mother’s house.

  It was dark and the house seemed still. I couldn’t put my finger on exactly why, but I felt nauseous, as if something was wrong.

  I plucked up the courage to approach the front door, fear like a poison in my blood. As I reached for the door handle, I felt the world spinning.

  It opened with a heavy creak.