The Hollow Tree

by James Brogden

  Long after he had gone, her dead eyes remained staring upwards through the hole, the only horizon available to her now being the great shadow of the barrage balloon that hung in the sky and blotted out the stars, straining to fly, but tethered to the hard earth.

  16

  NIGHTMARES

  ‘RACHEL! RACHEL, COME ON, WAKE UP!’

  She was shoved out of sleep and into consciousness – panicked, thrashing, covered in sweat. The echo of an unremembered scream still stung her throat. She fumbled for the bedside lamp, knocking over a cup of water and rattling bottles of sleeping pills.

  ‘Whuzz…?’

  Tom was sitting up beside her, the hand that had awoken her still on her shoulder, now comforting and reassuring. Slivers of the nightmare scattered like frightened fish.

  ‘You were having a nightmare,’ Tom said.

  ‘Really,’ she muttered. ‘And it felt so warm and fluffy.’

  ‘Sounded like a nasty one, too.’ He yawned, half-asleep himself.

  Rachel checked the bedside clock. 1:47. Christ.

  ‘You were yelling your head off,’ he added.

  She grimaced with embarrassment. ‘Sorry. What was I yelling?’

  ‘It sounded like someone was trying to kill you. Can you remember anything?’

  ‘No!’ she lied. ‘And I don’t bloody want to!’

  She shook his hand off, got out of bed and went to the loo. When she came back to bed with a towel to mop up the spilled water, he was watching her with a wariness that made her feel guilty for having been snarky, but that just made it worse. Whatever was going on in her head was bad enough without having to deal with him giving her wounded puppy looks.

  She’d been a gypsy… or a spy… or a prostitute… she couldn’t remember. Someone had throttled her to death… then something even worse had come for her…

  Wordlessly, she cleaned up the mess, refilled her glass and popped another Nytol.

  Tom frowned. ‘Are you sure you’re supposed to be taking another one?’

  ‘Relax,’ she said. ‘It’s not like you can overdose on this stuff.’ She switched her light off, but in the darkness she could hear him staring at her. Eventually the tension was too much to bear. ‘What?’ she demanded.

  ‘Well, it’s just that I thought those things were supposed to help you sleep, not give you nightmares.’

  ‘It’s just a one-off. Nothing to do with the tablets.’

  He laughed shortly.

  ‘What?’

  ‘A one-off? Hon, the last few nights it’s been like sharing a bed with an epileptic octopus, and it’s getting worse.’

  ‘Well why didn’t you say something then?’

  ‘Because you’ve been on edge, that’s why, and I didn’t want to make things worse. I’ve been hoping that whatever’s going on would sort itself out, but it obviously hasn’t.’

  There was a protracted silence. Rachel could feel from the tension in the long muscles of his legs that there was more Tom wanted to say. ‘Oh for God’s sake just say it,’ she sighed.

  ‘Say what?’

  ‘You think I should see a shrink. You think I’m going mental.’

  ‘I think,’ he replied carefully, ‘that you losing your hand and then my infection coming on top of that has all been a lot more stressful than either of us has realised. I don’t for one second think that you’re mental. I think you might benefit from talking to someone about it, that’s all.’

  It was funny, she thought, how in the darkness a lie like that could burn so brightly. She got up, clutching her pillow. ‘I think I’m going to sleep in the spare room, you know, to save you from another broken night.’

  ‘Oh no, Rache—’ he began, but she shut the bedroom door on her way out, cutting him off. At least he had the sense not to come after her.

  * * *

  The pre-dawn chill had yet to lift from the clearing where Mary’s Oak had once stood when Rachel arrived, at nearly seven in the morning. The density of the surrounding trees and the northward-facing slope of the hillside conspired to keep light and warmth at bay for as long as possible, as if they were unwelcome. The votive ribbons and scraps of paper hung motionless, and even the birdsong seemed muted. The clearing mocked her with its false emptiness.

  ‘What do you want from me?’ she demanded, not knowing whom or what she was addressing. ‘What the fuck is all of this about?’

  She pulled off her stump-sock and a tumult of undammed sensation flooded into her ghost hand – it was like plunging her fist into a blender full of razor blades and a candy-floss tumbler and the backwash of a jet-ski and a bucket of worms and a hundred other tactile hallucinations and it only stopped when she stepped forward and placed her palm against the invisible Mary’s Oak, and then it was just bark. Rough. Unyielding. Real.

  She braced her weight against her palm, head down, breath heaving. I can’t do this. Whatever it wants, I can’t do this.

  It was definitely the tree from her dream. Exploring, she encountered the curving shoots of branchlets emerging straight from the trunk and, stretching up to the limit of her reach, confirmed that this was because it was broken about seven feet from the ground – whether by fire or storm she couldn’t tell. Here the ivy and regrowth was thickest. She traced it, walking a wide empty circle as she explored fissures in its bark and the bulbous swellings of cankers. Her fingers brushed something smoother, warmer, and slightly yielding which branched into several drooping…

  …fingers.

  Hand.

  It was a living human hand.

  She recoiled, stumbling backwards until she collided with something else, which dropped long arms over her shoulders, and she screamed and whirled around, but it was only a normal birch tree on the fringes of the clearing.

  It couldn’t have been a hand. It must have been a leaf, or a particularly smooth patch of trunk that had just happened to feel like a human hand.

  Except her nightmares had taught her otherwise. Stepping forward again as gingerly as if the clearing were seeded with landmines, she reached out into the empty air.

  The hand was still there. Warm and alive, not a corpse’s hand. It protruded through a fissure in the trunk, as if its owner was reaching out for help.

  You know who this is. Oak Mary. The Queen of Air and Darkness, just like in the poem.

  The hand closed on her wrist.

  ‘Shit!’ Rachel pulled back instinctively, but Mary’s grip held with the strength of desperation. The more Rachel pulled, the tighter Mary gripped, and Rachel was seized with the sudden certainty that Mary would drag Rachel into the hollow oak with her, into the claustrophobic darkness where there was only mould and swarms of black beetles, and the two of them would be trapped cheek to cheek for eternity like dead twins in the womb of a corpse.

  ‘No!’ Rachel moaned. ‘Please God no…’ She brought up her right hand, thinking to pry the dead woman’s fingers from her wrist, and forgetting in her panic what had happened every other time she’d brought her living and dead hands together with something held between them. The tension snapped like being on the winning end of a tug of war, and she fell backwards with the weight of another human being across her legs. She kicked out, shoving the body off her, and scrambled away with her heels and elbows to the edge of the clearing, panting, waiting for the figure to move, to attack her.

  It lay still. One arm flopped to the side, and a voice whispered, ‘Not… dead…’

  Mary. She’s a person, remember? Her name is Mary. Or Annabel. Or Eline. Or Daphne.

  ‘Oh Christ,’ said Rachel, appalled. ‘What have I done?’

  At the sound of her voice, Mary’s head turned. Hers was the same face that Rachel had seen in her dreams, in the mirror box, and on the trail above the clearing. A slightly square face with dark hair and blue eyes.

  ‘You were trying to bring me down here, weren’t you?’ Rachel asked her. ‘You wanted me to rescue you.’

  ‘Please…’ whispered Mary.

  Rachel
shook her head, not just denying Mary’s plea, but her very existence. ‘I can’t help you. I don’t know what’s happening. I don’t know what you are.’ She picked herself up and backed away from the clearing, past the encircling cordon of offerings, and her eye caught sight of a Barbie doll hanging from a branch; whoever had put it here had made the doll a dress which was an exact miniature of that worn by the woman who lay with hand outstretched, begging for help.

  Which one of them are you going to abandon? Rachel asked herself. The brutalised wife, the traumatised refugee or the slaughtered prostitute? Which are you going to leave at the mercy of whoever else happens by?

  None of them, was the answer. Reluctantly, as if approaching a wounded animal that could turn and bite her at any moment, she went back into the clearing and took Mary’s hand. It was warm with life, but pale and weak. Perhaps the last shreds of her strength had been spent clinging on to Rachel. ‘Can you walk?’ Rachel asked.

  A faint nod, and a whisper: ‘I think so.’

  ‘Then let’s get you up and find you a doctor.’

  HER STRONG ENCHANTMENTS

  17

  THE HOSPITAL

  Extract from Preliminary Medical Report re. ‘Mary’ by Dr Philip Jackson, Heartlands Hospital:

  The patient is a white Caucasian female in her early twenties. She is of slight build, 157cm tall and weighing 46kg, giving a borderline underweight BMI of 18.6. Multiple minor abrasions to her face, neck, shoulders and arms, with more severe injuries to her right hand: swelling and bruising of the knuckles and the loosening of fingernails on the index and middle finger. Several splinters of wood were removed from the nail beds.

  No evidence of physical or sexual assault; however perineal scarring suggests at least one vaginal delivery.

  Blood work shows borderline anaemia (12.6gdl) and vitamin-C deficiency; these indications of malnutrition tally with the low BMI. Lack of viral antibodies suggests that childhood inoculations against TB, polio, MMR, or meningococcal B or C were not carried out, possibly due to parental preference or social isolation. Given the patient’s presentation in old-fashioned clothing, the concern is that she may have delivered into the same environment one or more children who are in need of medical attention.

  ‘She’s asking after you,’ Nurse Moran said.

  Rachel looked up from her phone. There were three missed calls and a clutch of increasingly terse texts from Tom wanting to know where she was; her single response of Am fine, went for walk to clear my head obviously wasn’t cutting it. After three hours sitting in Heartlands’ Accident and Emergency waiting room under fluorescent lights that flickered at a frequency just short of migraine-inducing, her eyeballs felt like two sandblasted marbles. Nurse Moran looked like she felt, but to be fair Nurse Moran had already been six hours into her shift when the ambulance had brought in Rachel and her mysterious companion.

  ‘Not that she knows who she’s asking for, mind you,’ she added. ‘But she’s asked for you all the same.’

  Rachel got up, not realising until that point how painfully numb her arse had become, and followed the nurse towards the examination rooms.

  ‘All she can tell us is that her name is Mary,’ said Moran as they walked. ‘Beyond that she apparently has no memory of who she is or how she got here. We’re going to schedule a CAT scan to check for a head injury, but her condition could be psychological, caused by whatever trauma she was running from when you found her.’ Rachel had told the paramedics that she’d found Mary unconscious in the woods, which nobody had cause to question. ‘She’s going to be up on a ward while we try to work it out, so best to see her now before she’s moved.’

  The clinical surroundings of the hospital bed and gown in which they’d put Mary accentuated how slight she was and made it impossible for Rachel to tell her age. She could have been anything from a teenager to an early thirty-something. There were cuts and bruises all over her arms and face, cross-hatched with surgical tape. Her right hand was more heavily swathed; she’d lost three fingernails trying to claw her way out of the tree, though there was no way Rachel could explain that without sounding insane. There were so many questions she wanted to ask Mary but couldn’t with Nurse Moran standing right beside her. Will you all please just fuck off! she screamed silently. She just wanted five minutes alone with the woman she’d pulled out of the dead oak.

  The woman in the bed gave her a tired smile. ‘Are you Rachel?’

  ‘Yes. Hi, Mary.’

  ‘Yes. Thank you for saving me.’

  Rachel shrugged, embarrassed. The clarity of Mary’s eyes was a little unsettling when they were fully focused on her. ‘I’m glad you’re okay.’

  ‘“Okay”. That’s peculiar. You sound like an American.’

  Rachel didn’t know what to make of that. For her part, Mary had an accent she couldn’t place. It sounded vaguely European.

  ‘May I please hold your hand?’ Mary asked.

  Rachel and Nurse Moran traded a brief, bemused glance. ‘Sure.’ She held out her hand.

  ‘No, not that one,’ Mary pointed. ‘The other one.’

  Rachel flushed. ‘Sorry to disappoint you, but I don’t have another one.’ She showed Mary where her left arm ended, but Mary didn’t seem to understand.

  ‘I mean the bright one,’ she said. ‘The one you used to pull me free. You know.’

  Nurse Moran drew Rachel gently aside. ‘I’m sorry. Obviously she’s more confused than we thought. I think it’s probably best if we leave her to get some rest.’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘The police have her clothes and they’ll be doing everything they can to work out who she is and get hold of any relatives who might be looking for her.’

  ‘And what if they can’t?’ Given where she’d come from, Rachel had her doubts that the authorities would find anyone.

  ‘Well then she’ll either go into sheltered accommodation or, depending on her needs, somewhere she can be treated by specialists.’

  ‘An asylum, you mean.’

  ‘Perhaps a psychiatric unit.’

  ‘Same thing.’

  Nurse Moran’s long-suffering smile thinned ever so slightly. ‘Not remotely.’

  ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to be snarky. It’s just that, well, you’ve seen her. She’s so…’ Rachel fished for the right word.

  ‘Vulnerable?’

  ‘That’s it. I hate to think of her being caught up in all that. What if I were to give her a place to stay? You know, a friendly face, a bit of stability to help her remember?’

  ‘I’m sorry, but I’m afraid it just doesn’t work like that. Mary needs the care of trained professionals. The best I can do is to make sure they have your contact details so that if she asks for you again they can get hold of you.’ Nurse Moran patted her arm reassuringly. ‘She’s going to get the best possible care. Trust me.’

  And Rachel did trust her. It was just the rest of the world that couldn’t be relied on.

  * * *

  Rachel was in a twitchy state all the way home, preoccupied by the morning’s events, and more than once her right hand slipped while crossing over to change gear or use the indicators, earning her some beeps and headlight flashes of irritation from other drivers. Fuck you, she thought. She was just about in the mood to face off against some road-rage dickhead so she could see his expression when she showed him her hook. My very own Furiosa. Tom could fuck off with that and all. As if her disability existed so he could live out some film dominatrix fantasy. She knew she was being uncharitable but right now she didn’t care. She’d come so close to getting answers about what was going on with her hand, and they’d been snatched from under her nose.

  ‘And there we have it, ladies and gentlemen,’ she said aloud. ‘The holy trinity: Pettiness, Bitchiness and Self-Pity.’ She was on a roll today.

  Underlying all of this, of course, was fear. Leaves and cats were one thing, but her stomach churned at the thought of what the fallout might be for bringing an entire p
erson through. The weasel-badger had been bad enough.

  When she pulled into her drive she sat in the car for a long time, listening to the engine tick as it cooled and scrutinising the house as if there might be snipers behind the curtains. It all seemed perfectly safe. Tom’s van was gone. Impossible as it seemed, it was still only eleven in the morning; he would have been at work for hours by now.

  She unlocked the front door and tiptoed around the house, listening at the door to each room before she entered and checking all the locks and bolts. The silence felt like the indrawn breath before a scream.

  She dug out her phone with trembling fingers and dialled Tom.

  ‘Where the bloody hell have you been?’ he demanded. ‘I’ve been worried sick!’ She’d never been so relieved to hear him annoyed. His voice was raised above the racket of something like a chainsaw or a wood chipper.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she replied, hoping that she sounded like she was. ‘I just had to get out for a bit of a walk. The same four walls were doing my head in. Are you okay?’

  ‘I’m fine. And what do you mean a bit of a walk? You’ve been gone for hours. I was really worried.’ His voice softened, and the background buzz grew fainter, as if he’d cupped his hand over the phone or moved away. What is that thing? she wondered. Jesus, Tom, be careful. Unlike her mother she’d never been the fretting sort, but now all she could see was Tom stumbling while talking to her, losing his balance and pitching into some piece of machinery, all grinding wheels and clashing teeth, his flesh pulped, his blood bright crimson, his screams…

  ‘I’m fine now,’ she lied. ‘Much better. The walk really cleared my head.’ I pulled a dead woman out of a hollow oak tree and took her to hospital where she’s recovering nicely. ‘I’m going to take a couple of happy pills and have a lie down, try to catch up on some sleep. I’ll make an appointment with Yomi first thing.’