The Hollow Tree

by James Brogden

  The shock made Rachel lose her balance; at the next shove the door crashed open and sent her sprawling to the floor as the Dark Man stood at the threshold.

  ‘She’s mine!’ he bellowed.

  ‘So you see,’ murmured the Small Man into Eline’s ear. ‘It wasn’t you, was it? You’re not her. How could you be? Nobody shot you, you weren’t a spy, and your name isn’t Eline Lambert, is it?’

  The gun hung from her trembling fingers for a moment more, then tumbled from her grasp. ‘No,’ she whispered, and she wasn’t Eline any more. Rachel saw it leave her as clearly as a candle being blown out. Without a hair on her head changing, she seemed to become smaller, and her features less clearly defined. She was Oak Mary again, the stand-in, pale and indeterminate. The Small Man’s face split into a victorious grin as the taller version of himself in the doorway unravelled in the air like ink dissolving in water. Even the gun that Eline had dropped disappeared as if it had never existed.

  ‘My God,’ whispered Rachel, appalled. ‘What have you done?’

  ‘Dispelled another myth,’ the Small Man said, smiling. ‘Don’t tell me you actually believed that she was a Nazi spy, did you? Or a gypsy witch?’ He tutted. ‘Honestly, the things you people read. No.’ He stroked Oak Mary’s hair, and she shuddered a little. ‘Spy, witch or whore – there really is only one option left for you now, isn’t there, my dear?’

  ‘Mary, don’t listen to him!’ Rachel pleaded.

  But it was already too late. ‘I’m not Mary,’ said the woman, her eyes dull and defeated. ‘I’m Daphne.’

  ‘That’s my girl,’ said the Small Man, stroking her hair. She shuddered again, but still didn’t move. Why didn’t she fight him? Why didn’t she just run? Rachel’s head was pounding with sick rage.

  ‘Fuck you!’ spat Rachel.

  ‘Oh no,’ he replied with a leer, and his hand crept down to cup Daphne’s left breast. Her face clenched as if she was about to vomit. ‘But she will. Fuck me, that is. Fuck me and let me kill her, over and over again, forever.’

  Rachel got to her feet and clenched her fists – both of them. She was damned if she was going to let him do this unchallenged. ‘Leave her alone!’

  ‘Or you’ll what?’ he barked, his sudden vehemence catching her by surprise. Daphne flinched. ‘You should be grateful! I’ve taken her off your hands and she’ll be at peace now she knows the truth; don’t be so selfish as to deny her that.’

  Rachel appealed directly to Daphne. ‘But it’s a lie, can’t you see that? Just like the others!’ Daphne was standing with that same terrible listlessness she’d had when Rachel had first pulled her from the tree, similar to the way Bill Heath’s ghost was still sitting on the edge of his cot, clenched and unmoving. ‘This can’t be all that’s left! This can’t be true! Why did he say that the last thing she said was Stephen? That’s my grandfather’s name!’ She grabbed Heath by the shoulders and shook him. ‘What did you mean?’ His head just lolled.

  The Small Man shrugged. ‘Lies, truth, at best they’re just… what’s that phrase? Ah yes, alternative facts. Only the living have the luxury of time and energy to bother about the differences. When you’re dead you’ll be thankful for whatever pitiful remembrance there is, before even that fades and you’re left like these pathetic shades, trapped in the crumbling remains of a nightmare that you can’t let go of because at least it’s something. There is nothing after this. No heaven or hell or pleasure or punishment. Just a whimpering echo of existence maintained by the fading memories of whoever’s left to remember you. You brought her back into a living world that had made a legend out of her, only it couldn’t decide what that legend should be. You did this!’ He laughed. ‘You’re even responsible for me! I didn’t exist, nor did my brothers, until you broke her out of the umbra and forced death itself to intervene. Action and reaction, crime and consequence. She was nothing in that tree, and if she’s nothing more than the ghost of a dead whore now, that is your fault.’

  ‘No.’ Rachel shook her head. It was unthinkable that she was responsible. ‘I didn’t ask for this. I did everything I could to stop it. But she forced herself on me. Mary… Daphne… whoever you are – why did you choose me?’

  ‘Visiting hours are over, I’m afraid,’ said the Small Man. He let Daphne go, shifted the knife into his other hand and lunged at Rachel, but by then she was already running.

  * * *

  She had no idea where she was going; she took corners at random and dodged around piles of debris and threw herself down a flight of stairs three steps at a time and jumped over holes in the floor and ducked under sagging doorways, her lungs bursting with panic. When the Small Man caught up with her, she was halfway along a creaking wooden balcony, which ran around the upper level of the great central hall. There was that strange sense of the darkness folding itself inside out and then he was standing in front of her. She skidded to a halt.

  Beneath her feet, something cracked, splintered and fell away to the ground floor with an echoing crash, and the whole balcony lurched.

  The Small Man didn’t seem concerned, however. He’d taken his jacket off and rolled up his shirtsleeves. With his belly and knitted sleeveless jumper, his slacks and shiny shoes, he looked like he should have been on a seaside pavilion. ‘I told you,’ he said. ‘This is my place. My rules.’

  ‘Fuck your rules.’ Desperate, Rachel lunged to the wall, and pushed with her left hand as hard as she could, enjoying the fleeting look of surprise and panic on his face. Something ripped free from the wall and the balcony lurched. He tottered, then came at her with a snarl and his knife upraised and she pushed again, harder, and the rotting wooden balcony came away from its anchoring points in the brickwork with a horrific groaning, splintering noise, and the entire framework collapsed down into itself and sideways in a tumbling chaos of timber and masonry, taking both of them with it. Plummeting, she had just time enough to think, Well that was —

  * * *

  Tom heard the collapse and knew instantly that his worst fears had been realised.

  ‘Rachel!’ he yelled, and sprinted in the direction of the noise.

  When he reached the main hall and saw the wreckage of the balcony, his guts twisted with the certainty that she was dead. Beams and planks jutted at crazy angles from a cloud of dust, and fragments of plaster continued to rain down. He waded into the wreckage, tossing it aside and calling her name.

  An arm…

  He heaved away several bricks and a table-sized section of floorboards which had fallen across her, and found Rachel lying on her back, covered in dust. Blood trailed from one nostril, showing starkly against the white.

  ‘No,’ he moaned. ‘No-no-no-no-no…’

  He checked for breathing or a pulse, and nearly burst into tears when he found both – weak, but there.

  ‘Hang on, honey,’ he begged, as he dug out his phone and dialled 999. ‘Hang in there, just for a bit, please.’

  Presently, there came the sound of sirens.

  THE UMBRA

  31

  NEAR DEATH

  RACHEL WAS IN THE BOW OF A SMALL SAILING BOAT, in bright white fog. Almost motionless, with just the faintest suggestion of a breeze for the sail to catch.

  Her father was at the tiller.

  She stared, dumbfounded. He wasn’t looking at her, but peering past her, into the fog.

  ‘Daddy?’

  His gaze shifted to her and he smiled.

  ‘Hallo, Trub,’ he said. ‘Want to take a turn steering this thing?’

  She couldn’t reply. She couldn’t do anything except stare at him. He didn’t look sick, or pale, or tired, as he’d done in those last months. He sat easily, his face unlined, his curly brown hair full where chemotherapy had once made him bald. He saw her staring and raised an eyebrow.

  ‘Try not to drill a hole right through me, okay?’ he said.

  One of the clearest memories she had of her father was sailing on Edgbaston Reservoir. There was a youth sailing club that met
every Sunday morning and Thursday afternoons after school, and he would potter around in a canoe while the instructors taught her how to steer one of the little Picos. Her mother never came to watch, saying that she was worried sick that there’d be an accident and couldn’t bear to be on edge while her daughter was out on the water. Rachel knew it was because she was an only child, but at the age of eleven didn’t yet have an inkling of the frustrating and expensive IVF treatment which had made this so. She heard her mum and dad arguing about it sometimes – Mum found it incomprehensible that he was prepared to risk Rachel’s life, while he wasn’t prepared to let his daughter grow up wrapped in cotton wool. Being the astute politician that all eleven-year-olds are, Rachel said nothing for as long as the status quo held in her favour and enjoyed her sailing for as long as she could. It was the control she loved. The sense that she could take the apparently random movements of the air and instead of having to put up with whatever it threw in her face, trap it, control it and make it work for her.

  All of that stopped the day he died – not just the sailing, but the notion that if the world really chose to get in your face there was anything you could do about it. The narrowboat holiday with Tom had been the first time she’d set foot on any kind of boat for years, and look how that had turned out.

  She looked down at herself – she was still an adult, not a child, so this wasn’t a memory, and her left hand had returned. She recalled the sensation of falling, her body being hammered by huge, heavy objects.

  ‘Am I dead?’ she asked him.

  ‘Good heavens no!’ he laughed, then cocked his head to one side and frowned slightly, as if listening. ‘Maybe halfway.’

  Halfway dead. She knew she should be freaking out – panicking, crying, something – and yet the news passed into and through her without causing a ripple. She felt a strange, drowsy numbness, as if the blankness of the white fog had entered her and laced itself through her blood like a dull opiate.

  He patted the tiller. ‘Seriously, come and take this thing. It’s your turn. We’ll get back to the boathouse and be home in time for eggy bread.’

  Eggy bread. Dad’s guilty pleasure breakfast choice of old. White bread soaked in beaten egg and fried until crispy golden-brown and dripping with oil, eaten with brown sauce and a mug of builder’s tea. Everything her mother detested about food in one meal.

  ‘I don’t want this,’ she said, a little surprised at how small her voice sounded. ‘Daddy, please. I’m not ready.’

  ‘Nobody ever is, Trub, that’s the truth of it, not even if they live to be a hundred. But don’t worry, I know what’s best. Everything will be fine. All you’ve got to do is come over here and take your turn at the tiller.’

  ‘You’re not my father,’ she said, and the horror of it unfolded inside her like dark wings.

  ‘No,’ conceded the being that looked like him. ‘I’d rather thought that went without saying. In my defence,’ he added hastily, seeing her tense, ‘what I am is partly based on your own memories and feelings for your father so I’m not like those others you met. I’m nice.’ He smiled hopefully, and despite every nerve screaming at her that this was Death, she was in a boat with Death, she felt the corners of her own mouth curving up in response because it was her daddy’s smile.

  She forced them back down again.

  ‘What are you then? Death?’

  He laughed. ‘No, I’m not Death. That’s like asking a farmer if he’s Agriculture.’ He sighed. ‘Okay then. I suppose it can’t hurt. I’m a psychopomp.’

  ‘A what?’

  ‘I know,’ he grimaced. ‘It sounds like a bad seventies prog rock band. Blame the ancient Greeks. I’m here to make sure that you get to the next place safely.’

  ‘What is the next place?’

  ‘That depends.’

  ‘On what?’

  ‘Oh, all sorts of things. You won’t know until you get there.’

  ‘That’s not very helpful, for a guide.’

  He shrugged. ‘I just guarantee safe passage. The destination is up to you.’

  ‘But I’m not done! Mary is out there in the umbra, and she still needs my help!’

  ‘Does she? She has a death that all parties are satisfied with.’

  ‘How can you say that? She thinks she died a prostitute, at the hands of a client! And it’s bullshit – just another story like being a witch or a spy. Are those all the options she has? Which one would you pick for me, Dad?’ She threw every ounce of sarcasm she could muster into that word. ‘Which bullshit misogynist fantasy would you like to see your little girl spending the rest of eternity living out, over and over again?’

  ‘Trub, listen to me very carefully. Your actions on her behalf, laudable though they may have been, have got you noticed – and not by simple bully boys like the three that came after her, but by… other things. If this boat we’re on now were an ordinary human soul, they would be like aircraft carriers in comparison. You do not want to piss them off any more than you have already done, trust me. Cut your losses, accept your death and take this tiller.’

  ‘If you knew anything about my father you’d know that he would never say such a thing.’

  ‘Ha!’ He shook his head, more exasperated than angry. ‘Oh my dearest baby girl, how certain you are. Your mother obviously never told you, did she?’

  ‘Tell me what?’

  ‘That she was in the middle of divorcing him when the cancer was diagnosed. That once they knew it was terminal there didn’t seem any point in carrying through with it, and they decided to let you have what little happiness there was left. That your cosy image of Mummy and Daddy is just another bullshit fantasy, as you put it. Your happy little family tree is hollow right to the core, Rachel, and has been for generations.’

  The fog seemed to have got into Rachel’s throat, because she couldn’t speak. She could barely even breathe.

  ‘You’re lying,’ she whispered.

  ‘Sorry, Trub, but only the living lie. The dead have no need of it; death is the final, absolute truth.’

  ‘Shut up!’ she screamed, and jumped to her feet, making the boat rock violently. ‘You’re not my father!’

  ‘Watch out!’ he warned, holding out a hand to steady her. ‘You’re—’

  ‘Get the fuck away from me!’ She recoiled, overbalancing as the deck rocked like the floor of a fairground haunted house, and toppled over the side.

  Freezing black water closed over her head, crushing the breath from her lungs. She flailed, panicking, unable to tell which way was up or down, and big flowers of colour grew and burst in her oxygen-starved brain, swelling faster and brighter while her lungs screamed for air until everything was a burning brightness behind her eyelids and

  * * *

  Bed.

  She was in a bed.

  In hospital.

  Tubes: going in, coming out.

  The nerve endings in her shredded left hand buzzed and jumped like a dying light bulb.

  She’d dreamed about going home and discovering how to touch the limbo world on the other side of reality and rescuing a dead woman and fighting with death itself which had come to claim her threefold but that was ridiculous, wasn’t it? The crazy dreams of a brain shocked by the trauma of having her hand first crushed and then amputated. It could never have happened.

  She moved her mouth, trying to make sounds, trying to ask somebody where she was.

  Am I dead?

  A nurse’s face swam into view: young, pretty, dark-haired. ‘Now then, lovely, of course you’re not dead,’ she said, smiling and tucking the blankets around Rachel’s body, her hands sure and capable. ‘You’re getting the best care possible. Soon have you fighting fit.’ Her face went away, but before it did Rachel caught the impression that she was wearing more make-up than was normal for a nurse, and the starched cap on her head was like something out of an old film.

  The light bulb buzzed, flickered, and went out, taking her with it.

  32

  GHOS
TS

  ‘WE HAVE TO STOP MEETING LIKE THIS,’ SAID TOM, putting a bag with some fresh clothes for her at the foot of the bed. ‘People are starting to talk.’

  Rachel struggled into a sitting position. ‘Déjà vu sucks,’ she groaned.

  ‘You can say that again.’

  ‘I just did.’

  He laughed. ‘We’re here all week, folks. Try the peppered steak.’

  She’d broken both bones in her lower right leg, her collarbone, cracked four ribs, and the doctors wanted to keep an eye on a nasty concussion. Lucky, in other words. The painkillers they had her on were old friends – they pushed the pain to the other side of that wall of dense white fog which allowed just enough recognition of how badly she’d messed herself up again. To paraphrase Oscar Wilde, to hospitalise yourself through one dumbass accident may be regarded as unfortunate; to do it twice looked like carelessness. Something like that, anyway. At least they hadn’t cut anything off this time.

  He passed her a bottle of water and she swallowed down two small orange pills. His forearms were covered in plasters and a large dressing swathed the last three fingers of his right hand where he’d suffered some cuts and scrapes trying to dig her out.

  ‘Are you okay?’ she asked.

  ‘Don’t worry about me. If I was any fitter I’d be dangerous.’

  She looked around to make sure that they weren’t being overheard, and said, ‘Tom, when they brought me out, was there any sign of Mary?’

  ‘You need to rest,’ he said, patting her hand. ‘Your priority now is to get better. Just focus on that.’

  ‘But what about Mary, Tom? Did you see her?’

  ‘I’ll be back in a bit with something for you to read – you know, to keep you occupied, stop you worrying about things. The Guardian, yes?’

  ‘Tom—!’

  He stroked her hair away from her brow and kissed her on the forehead. ‘Back in a bit,’ he repeated, and was gone.

  She stared after him. He’d never kissed her like that. Even when she’d been in hospital the first time for her hand, he’d never kissed her like she was a child or an invalid. Nor had he met her eyes when she’d asked after Mary.