The Hollow Tree

by James Brogden

  The Dark Man snorted with contempt. ‘I like how you stood back and waited to see what would happen.’

  ‘Who would have thought our colleague would find her so quickly? That was almost an utter disaster.’

  ‘So close,’ the Green Man growled. ‘She changed. She was mine.’

  ‘So close?’ sneered the Small Man. ‘Look at you. That woman nearly ripped your arm off! And do you know why? Because you’re weak.’

  ‘You too, and him,’ the Green Man replied. ‘Weak because we are three. Split. Diluted.’

  ‘Pah. You thunder about like a god of tree stumps but you’re just an implausible bit of folklore. Oak Mary the gypsy witch is a pretty enough fairy story but don’t seriously expect anyone to believe it. And as for being a Nazi spy,’ he looked the Dark Man up and down disparagingly. ‘Only a cretin would believe such tripe…’

  ‘You talk altogether too much,’ snarled the Dark Man, and drew out his revolver and shot him.

  The Small Man yelped and clapped his hands to his ears, dropping his knife. At such close range there was no chance that the Dark Man could have missed, yet his target remained standing as the echoes crashed through the trees and dissipated.

  The Small Man turned and looked at the tree directly behind him, which sported a fresh, splintered bullet hole. ‘That,’ he said through gritted teeth, ‘was wholly unnecessary, not to mention futile. We cancel each other out, you fool. We are mutually exclusive. Each one of us precludes the true existence of the other two. Therefore we cannot take direct action against each other, you must know that.’

  ‘Indeed we do,’ agreed the Dark Man.

  ‘Then why on earth did you try to shoot me?’ The Small Man sounded decidedly peeved.

  ‘Because you annoy me,’ the Dark Man replied. ‘And I find that I enjoy watching you flinch.’ He shot him again. The echoes rolled back and forth between the hills like bowling balls.

  ‘Will you stop that!’

  ‘As much as it sickens me to admit it,’ said the Dark Man, ‘it is evident that we have misjudged our situation. Our triumvirate nature would suggest that Mary’s soul comprises three distinct and divergent identities, and is moreover protected by someone who possesses an unaccountable talent to reach beyond the physical state. I propose that we pool our resources and find Mary first, deal with the woman who guards her most severely, and then settle the matter of ownership afterwards.’

  The Small Man raised an eyebrow at the Green Man, who thought about it for a moment and then gave a cautious nod and a grunt. ‘Very well,’ sighed the Small Man. ‘So, when shall we three meet again? In thunder, lightning or in rain?’

  ‘Ach, hou je smoel,’ the Dark Man muttered, exasperated.

  The Green Man suddenly raised his head, sniffing. ‘Someone…’ he murmured.

  ‘You see?’ The Small Man waved an accusatory finger at the Dark Man. ‘You draw attention to us with your childishness. And where are you going?’

  The lesh was dissolving back into the background foliage. His voice was a dim rustle of leaves and branches. ‘Following.’ Then he was gone.

  ‘Well you just be careful!’ the Small Man yelled after him. ‘Or she’ll rip your arse off and feed it to you!’ After a moment of silence while the woodland settled around them he turned to the Dark Man. ‘He is correct, though. We are diluted.’

  ‘I know. See to it. I’ll find us a vehicle.’ And he too left, heading for the car park.

  The Small Man lit a cigarette and puffed an irritated little cloud of smoke. ‘See to it,’ he muttered. ‘See to it, the man says.’

  Rachel, that was what Mary had called her. It seemed that this Rachel had a talent that was prodigious to say the least, and he wasn’t about to chance his arm against that – especially not with only a third of the strength he should have had. He took himself for a stroll back through the woods, nodding and smiling politely to the couples and families he passed, and returned to the monument. He read the graffiti on its base: Who danced with Oak Mary? and stroked the handle of the knife in his pocket. ‘Why I did, of course,’ he told the monument, and grinned. ‘And I shall dance with her again before long.’

  For eyes that could see past the living world this message was imbued with power. He stepped through the railing and close to the stone, trailing his fingers across the ghosts of the letters. They tingled. It was belief, that power – no, it was myth, something far stronger than simple, dumb belief. It was the same power that invested the offerings in the clearing, and was similarly weak with age and faded with forgetting. To be of any use it would need to be refreshed, and the Small Man was intimately familiar with the ingredients necessary to accomplish this.

  He headed towards the large play-castle on Beacon Hill, busy with families and strolling couples, toying with the knife in his coat pocket and looking for someone who could supply both:

  Fear and blood.

  20

  THE SIGHT

  ON THEIR WAY BACK TO KINGFISHER HOUSE, RACHEL found an obscure spot in a side street near the hospital where she would pick up Annabel later that evening, then walked her to the front door and into the care of the nurses, with waves and smiles all round. The prospect of acting as getaway driver for an escaped psychiatric patient didn’t daunt Rachel half so much as the conversation she needed to have with her husband first.

  She tackled it over dinner, which they ate at the table instead of in front of the television, so he knew from the start that something was up.

  ‘Tom,’ she said. ‘You remember that time when Tracey from work got her phone stolen and she tracked it to that pub, and you and some of your dad’s lads went round and got it back, and there was that big fight?’

  Tom grunted, scowling. ‘Arseholes. Remember it? I’m not likely to forget.’ He’d needed four stitches and spent an hour in a police cell. ‘Why?’

  ‘Well, I have this… friend, and she needs my help.’

  ‘From work?’

  ‘An old friend.’

  ‘School?’

  ‘Kind of. Her name’s Annabel. She’s having trouble with a fella, and she needs somewhere to stay, and I wondered if she could stay in our spare room for a bit.’

  ‘The nursery, you mean?’

  ‘Tom, please—’

  He put his hands up, grimacing in apology. ‘Sorry, that was unnecessary. Look, I’m not saying no, but this place is not exactly fit for guests, is it? Plus it’s been a busy month what with one thing and another; I was kind of hoping for a bit of a break for us to catch our breath before the next life-or-death emergency.’

  She bit her tongue at his unintended irony. ‘I know, I’m the same. It’s just that the man in question is, ah, a bit nastier than those kids in the pub.’

  ‘Surely if he’s that nasty a piece of work she’d be better off going to the police?’

  ‘Come on, Tom, you know how useless the police are. The news is full of stories about women who report stalkers and the police don’t do anything and then they get attacked, or even killed. One poor girl in Sussex had her throat cut – and the only help she got before she was killed was a fine for wasting police time. It would only be a temporary thing. Just until Annabel gets herself sorted out.’

  ‘Well,’ he said, his wariness plain. ‘If it’s that serious, I suppose so. Of course she can stay.’

  ‘Thank you.’ Rachel leaned forward across the table to kiss him. ‘You’re my white knight.’

  He ignored that. ‘But she goes to the police first thing tomorrow, and I’m going to want the full story when she gets here. I don’t want any nasty surprises coming through my back door wearing balaclavas.’

  ‘Full story,’ she agreed, and took a big gulp of water without quite meeting his eyes. ‘No nasty surprises.’

  * * *

  Despite telling Tom that she was only going to be gone a little while, Rachel had to wait in the car for two hours before Annabel appeared, becoming increasingly paranoid that something had gone wrong. The suburban str
eet where she was parked was narrow and curved, with large plane trees planted at intervals in front of steeply gabled older houses and their well-established gardens; she’d chosen it for the cover it provided, but it was a breezy evening and as nightfall deepened the streetlamps threw furtive, rustling shadows through the foliage. She kept catching glimpses of movement in her rear-view mirror, convinced every time that it was the lesh that had somehow found her again, and becoming even more frustrated when it turned out to be a branch or a cat instead of Annabel.

  Another shadowy waving movement caught her eye and her breath. But it was just a branch behind a row of three wheelie-bins, which themselves were little more than squat shadows against a hedge.

  ‘Come on, where the fuck are you?’ she muttered.

  Wait – hadn’t there only been two bins before? She checked the mirror again. Yes, there were only two bins. So why had she thought there were three?

  She twisted her head around to see through the car’s rear window directly instead of using the mirror – because even mirrors weren’t necessarily to be trusted – and could only see two bins. But now that tree next to them; had it been that thick before? Had that branch, which right now looked so much like an arm, bent in that direction? She was peering at it so closely that her neck muscles twanged like guitar strings, and when someone rapped on the passenger window she screamed and twisted back so violently that a sharp pain flared in her shoulder.

  Annabel was at the window with a bundle slung over one shoulder, bouncing up and down and casting nervous glances all around. She rapped on the window again. ‘Open up!’

  Rachel unlocked the doors. ‘Jesus!’ she said as Annabel tossed her bundle into the back and jumped into the passenger seat. ‘You scared the shit out of me!’

  ‘Get us out of here!’ Annabel demanded. ‘Seggo! Quickly!’ She smelled of smoke.

  Rachel started the car. ‘How did you get out?’

  ‘Chucked a couple of matches into the kitchen bin. When the fire alarm went off they herded us outside. I had to climb over a wall. I don’t know if they’ve noticed I’m missing yet.’ She was craning her neck around, trying to look in every direction through the windows as Rachel pulled away. ‘Have you seen it?’

  ‘The lesh?’

  ‘No, Father Christmas! Yes, the lesh! I’m sure I smelled it out there.’

  ‘I don’t know. Maybe. Look, let’s just get home, okay?’

  As they pulled out onto the dual carriageway a fire engine swept past with its lights strobing, but Rachel calmly steered them in the opposite direction, doing her best to control her nerves and stick to the speed limit, and hopefully doing nothing that would draw unwelcome attention to them. She had an uncomfortable feeling that she’d already drawn enough.

  * * *

  Tom was on his hands and knees in the hallway, draught-proofing the skirting board with a tube of silicone sealant when Rachel walked through the front door. ‘Hello,’ he said, looking up. ‘You took your time, didn’t you? Oh, sorry!’ he added, seeing Annabel behind her. He straightened up, brushing the dust off his knees. ‘I’m Tom.’ He held out his hand. ‘You must be Annabel.’

  Annabel gave him a small, cautious smile and a duck of the head.

  ‘Tom was just going out, weren’t you?’ said Rachel.

  ‘I was?’

  ‘Yes,’ she replied, giving him a big, tight hug. ‘You were going out to the Black Cross for a couple of drinks with your mates and leaving me to settle Annabel in so that we can have a nice girlie talk without feeling awkward having a horrible great clomping man around, weren’t you?’ Her hug turned into a gentle shove towards the front porch and his coat.

  Tom sighed. ‘When you put it like that, of course I was.’

  * * *

  ‘Where’s your man’s tool kit?’ Annabel asked.

  ‘In his van,’ said Rachel. ‘Why?’

  ‘Chalk. String. Torch. Has he got those things?’

  ‘More than likely. And again I ask: why?’ Annabel hadn’t relaxed a bit since arriving, and her terseness and distraction put Rachel’s nerves on edge.

  ‘The lesh is still out there, and it’s coming for me. We need to defend your home.’

  Fortunately Tom had walked to the pub, leaving his work keys behind, and Annabel found what she needed in the back of his van. The first thing she did was chalk a large, many-spoked circle on the front door, filling the spaces between the spokes with strange marks that looked like astrological symbols.

  ‘I thought you couldn’t read or write,’ Rachel said. She would never have described herself as a suburban curtain-twitcher, but caught herself casting anxious glances up and down the street and wondering what the neighbours would be thinking if they were watching this.

  ‘This isn’t writing,’ Annabel replied. ‘At least, not in the way that you would understand it. These are patrin.’ In her accent it sounded like patreen. ‘Romani signs. Here,’ she added, pointing to one of the marks. ‘Warning threats, protections, prayers to saints and so on. We put one on the back door too, and then we make patrin out of sticks to hang in the windows.’

  They foraged in the bushes of the nearby playing field by torchlight for the twigs and feathers she claimed to need; Rachel found herself shoving through clumps of brambles and undergrowth littered with plastic bottles and crisp packets. ‘No way does this look dodgy,’ she muttered to herself. ‘This is what they call hedgerow magic, is it? Dog shit and needles. It wasn’t like this in Charmed.’

  Back inside, Annabel began assembling a series of crude mobiles out of the scraps, while all Rachel could do was watch and make supportive cups of tea, since she lacked the manual dexterity to make anything else.

  ‘Holly,’ Annabel explained. ‘The autumn is only young so the lesh will still be oak until the year turns, but holly is a winter wood so it will sap his strength. Ha. Sap. That’s a witch joke, you know.’ She winked, and carefully bound two holly sticks together in a cross with a feather at their junction. ‘Birds are air and fire, trees are earth and water. It’s not foolproof but anything that weakens him makes it easier for us.’

  ‘Also it’s a cross,’ Rachel pointed out. ‘Like against vampires.’

  Annabel grunted. ‘I used to have faith, back in the day. Not for any particular reason, just because you did; the Romani are a very religious people. Being trapped in the oak put paid to that.’

  ‘Why?’ asked Rachel. ‘You know that there’s something after death. Surely that would prove that God exists or something?’

  ‘Because it isn’t really death. It wasn’t really life, either. It was…’ She stopped, trying to put into words something that must have felt, at best, like a nightmare. ‘There’s a word: limbo. You know it?’

  Rachel nodded.

  ‘Like that, then. I didn’t see heaven or hell. I certainly didn’t see God. There was only the tree, and nothing outside it. Just cold, and dark, and not being able to move, forever. Then all of a sudden a hand appears in front of me, so I grab it and hang on like – well, like grim death, so.’ And she laughed.

  ‘So what I was touching,’ said Rachel, ‘it wasn’t, you know, oh God it sounds stupid just saying it.’

  ‘Then just say it,’ Annabel said lightly, working at another twig cross.

  ‘The land of the dead?’

  Annabel mulled this over. ‘When you put it that way, yes, it does sound stupid.’ Then she nudged Rachel with her elbow and grinned.

  ‘Piss off!’ Rachel laughed. ‘Just answer the question. Did I touch the place where dead people go?’

  Annabel’s grin sobered to a frown, and Rachel found herself struggling to keep up with her rapid shifts of mood. ‘Truthfully I don’t know. I’m not dead now, so I don’t see how I could have been dead before; not properly dead, at any rate. As far as I know, dead means dead.’

  ‘Maybe you were improperly dead.’

  Annabel chuckled – a throaty, dirty sound. ‘Well I was bloody improper when I was alive, I tell you th
at.’

  ‘Really? Do tell.’

  ‘No chance!’ She laughed. ‘You’ll think I’m an absolute slut.’

  ‘Honey, I dreamed how you died. I’m already there. Brian was a very obliging young man, wasn’t he?’

  ‘Now you piss off!’ Annabel blushed, and changed the subject. ‘You’ve got an unfair advantage. I don’t know anything about you. What about you and Tom?’ she asked. ‘How did you meet?’

  ‘At the Highways Agency. He used to do maintenance and clean-up. If a lorry shed its load or a barrier needed mending, he was one of a team that dealt with the mess or made repairs. I worked, still do, in the control centre at Quinton. My job is to watch a stretch of the motorway and if anything like that needs sorting, I call out a team. So one day, a really hot summer’s day three years ago, a scrap metal merchant’s truck loses its load all over the northbound carriageway – there’s bits of tricycle and washing machine all over the place – and I call out a team and it’s Tom’s. And it takes them a while, because there’s a lot of mess, and like I say it was a very hot day, and he’s wearing the standard hi-vis jacket, and it must have been sweltering. Oh God…’ She broke off, and it was her turn to blush.

  ‘What?’ Annabel leaned forward, intrigued.

  ‘This is awful. It’s like one of those bloody Diet Coke ads.’

  ‘I have no idea what that means. Keep going.’

  ‘So they take a five-minute break, and they go up on the grass verge for a drink of water and he takes his jacket off and lies back in the grass, sort of propped up on his elbows, you know? And he’s just got this t-shirt on and he’s absolutely wet through with sweat, and he’s just so fucking hot, you know?’

  ‘I’ll bet he was, in that weather.’

  ‘No, I mean… never mind.’

  ‘And you’re watching all of this on your cameras?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You’re spying on him, being all hot and sweaty.’