Dead Branches

by Benjamin Langley

  “How do you know no one saw him on Main Street?” Will asked.

  “Police came to my door and asked if I’d seen him. Showed me a picture.”

  “So how do you know one else hasn’t seen him?”

  “Do you think I don’t talk to my neighbours? What do you think I do all day now your dad won’t have me help him on the farm?”

  Dad had always said that it was Granddad’s choice to give up working, and he often complained about how hard it was on his own. What Granddad was saying didn’t quite add up.

  “Anyway, I’m not doing a thing more until I get some grub in me. I’m famished.”

  After eating the sandwiches that Aunt Anne had prepared for us, we set off along the bank of the river. Granddad was telling us the names of all the droves and where they (eventually) led to.

  “Would it be possible to track someone along here?” asked Liam.

  “If you had the skills,” Granddad said.

  “Don’t you have the skills?”

  “Well in the winter anyone can follow footprints in the mud. This time of the year it’s dry and cracked. You might make something out in the dust, but chances are the wind would blow it away.”

  “I saw this programme where they could tell from the way the grass was broken or flat that animals had walked by.”

  “Well why don’t you keep an eye on the grass then and tell me what you figure out.”

  And Liam did exactly that, staring intently at the ground until we arrived at a spot sheltered from the sun by a couple of weeping willows. It was there that Liam beckoned us over to the water’s edge.

  “What’s this, Granddad?” He pointed at a spot on the edge of the bank were the grass was flat. All the way down to the water the grass the grass was parted as if something had gone in there or crawled out.

  “Well I can’t see any footprints, hoof-marks or anything of the like down there,” Granddad said.

  “What could have caused it then?”

  “I dunno. Small animal going down for a drink? Maybe someone was here and rolled something down the bank?”

  “Like what?” Will said.

  “I’m not a psychic. How about we cast in here and have a ponder on it?”

  We had much more luck with the fish there, and Andy even got the hang of putting maggots on the end of the hook – though the worms were still more liable to wriggle away.

  Once we all had our lines in the water I looked over at Granddad. “Has anything like this ever happened before?”

  “What, a handsome old fella fishing with his four grandsons? I should think so.”

  “No, I mean, like John. A kid going missing.”

  “You hear about it from time to time on the news.”

  “And what happens?”

  “Well sometimes they turn up, and well, sometimes it’s not so good news.”

  “But has it ever happened here?”

  “What in Little Mosswick?”

  “Yes.”

  “Lots have things have happened here.”

  “But to kids? How about when you were young?”

  “Well I suppose there have been one or two accidents. My eye. Teddy Barnham’s brother drowned in the old pit which has been filled in now, though he weren’t exactly a kid at the time.”

  “But nothing like this?”

  “Well I don’t rightly remember. It’s not my place to give you a history lesson, is it? Now keep an eye on your float or you might miss a bite.”

  After about an hour or two, with us all having caught a fish apart from a Granddad who kept missing his float go under, Granddad got up and peered into the water again at the point where something had been rolled in.

  “Clamber down and have a look to see if anything has been dropped in there,” he said.

  “No way. I’ll slip,” Liam said.

  “I’ll do it!” Andy said, jumping up and dropping his rod to the floor.

  “I think it needs to be one of the bigger boys,” Granddad said. “Though you are awfully brave for volunteering.”

  “Let me,” Will said.

  “If we make a chain – Will at the front, then Liam then Tom then me then Andy we can keep a hold of Will and make sure he don’t fall in. His Mum’ll have my guts for garters if I bring him home soaked.”

  “Mum! What about Dad, what’ll he say?” I said.

  “He’s not the one to be scared of; I can tell you that for nothing. He thinks he’s the big man, but I remember when he was just a little boy.”

  “Did you take him fishing?” asked Andy.

  “Yes, but he never had the patience for it. Always thought sitting around was a waste of time.”

  That sounded about right; he was always going on about how sinful time-wasting was.

  We formed our chain and Will headed down the bankside. Liam had his fingers in Will’s belt loops, and I had hold of the back of Liam’s pockets. Granddad had a firm hold on me, and Andy was somewhere behind. Will kept edging forward until he was close to the edge.

  “Anything?” called Granddad.

  “I can’t see. It’s too dirty.”

  “Okay, let’s back up.”

  We took a couple of steps backwards when Will shouted, “Stop.”

  “What is it?”

  “I found something.”

  “What?” we all cried.

  “Sweet wrapper.”

  “A sweet wrapper? That’s not what we were looking for!” Granddad said. “Come on up.” He continued to back up.

  Will grabbed the wrapper and showed it to us when he got to the top. Fisherman’s Friend.

  “Bloody litter bugs,” Granddad said.

  I starred at Will, urging him to say something about the sweets we’d found before. I couldn’t find a way to put it into words.

  “Boys,” Granddad said, “why don’t you pack the rods away?”

  “But it’s still early!” Andy said.

  “It’s probably nothing, but the more I look at it the more it looks like something was dumped in there. It’s probably a load of old rubbish, but I want to let someone know so they can check it out.”

  “I saw them by another bit of the river the other day,” I said, remembering the police cars up on the bank.

  “They’ve got divers and snorkels and all sorts of things, so if there’s anything down there they’ll find it.”

  “Is it John? Could someone have chucked him in the river?”

  “No, nothing like that. He would have flattened the reeds. Probably just a fisherman getting rid of some broken tackle, but we have to keep our eyes open.”

  All the way home I was thinking about what might have happened. If John had gone that way what reason would he have to dump anything in the river? He wouldn’t get rid of his clothes or any of his possessions, unless he’d done something bad and was trying to get rid of the evidence. And the sweet wrapper didn’t add up there either. That certainly wouldn’t have been John’s. I remember we tried some once and they made us gag. I don’t remember where he got them from, he always had loads of sweets given to him, so we were going to share them, but they were so disgusting it was like a pebble that dripped acid on your tongue. We both spat them out in the bushes then ran to his house and downed a pint of water. We figured that if they were the kind of sweets that adults bought it would explain why adults didn’t eat as many sweets as kids.

  I thought about what had been lurking in the ditch the other day and what had chased me. Could that have been some kind of amphibious creature that came and went into the water and that point, but could also survive in the dykes?

  “Liam, can I have a look at your cards?”

  He got them out of his pocket and handed them to me. I was sure there was nothing in the original set, but I didn’t know the new ones well yet. There were a couple which caught my eye; Terror of the Deep with Killing Power of 72 and a three-pronged trident, Creature from the Black Lagoon with Killing Power of 73 and clawed fingers on webbed hands and The Slime Creature with
Killing Power of 68 and a spear and some kind of weird trunk. None of them filled me with fear, in the way that The Fiend had.

  Granddad hurriedly threw the fishing equipment in his garage and then said that we should be okay making our own way home from there. We stopped a little distance form Liam and Andy’s house.

  “What do you think it was then?” Liam said as I gave the cards back to him.

  “There were some under-water ones, but I’m not sure.”

  “Add them into your book and we’ll see what evidence comes up.”

  “There’s no point thinking about monsters and stuff like that,” Will said. “John probably just ran away. He might even have already come home.”

  “What about the sweet wrapper?” Liam said.

  “It doesn’t even mean it was the same person who ate it as the ones at the school.”

  “But not many people can like them. They’re disgusting. It’s got to be some kind of evidence.”

  “Evidence of what?”

  “That someone was spying on the school, and kidnapped John,” Liam said. His face changed after he said it, as if suddenly understanding the implications of what he was saying.

  “That’s why it’s stupid talking about monsters. Monsters don’t eat cough sweets, even really, really gross ones.”

  “But what about aliens?” said Liam.

  “Where’s your Granddad?” Dad said as he saw us walking down the drive.

  “Home,” Will said.

  “What, he left you to walk back here all by yourself?”

  “We’ve done it thousands of times Dad.”

  “You might have done in the past, but that was before.”

  “Before what?

  “I’m going to have to have a word with that daft old sod,” he pulled the keys to his Land Rover out of his pocket, got in and revved the engine hard. He barely gave us a chance to get out of the way before he flew past and off towards Granddad’s.

  All the noise brought Mum out. “You’re back early boys,” she said. “Where did your dad go in such a hurry?”

  We told her what we’d seen and what Granddad was doing.

  “Oh, I know what I was going to give to you!” Mum said and she urged us to follow her inside. From the cabinet under the sink she pulled out a Burrows Bookshop paper bag. She handed us a book each. As soon as I saw the familiar green spine of the Fighting Fantasy series I smiled. I’d played through all of the books I had so many times the pages were worn. Will took hold of Battleblade Warrior, which had some kind of lizard monster riding a pterodactyl, and Mum handed me The Secret of the Scythe. Will wasn’t as keen on the books as I was and he cheated, skipping the fights and using bookmarks to alter his choices.

  I dashed up to the bedroom and studied the book in more detail. The cover had a dark-hooded skeleton on the front with a huge scythe. It looked more like the Top Trumps Devil Priest rather than Death, but I knew it was supposed to be the Grim Reaper from reading the back cover:

  I looked at the cover again. The Reaper stood in a dark forest, where only the tree trunks were visible, each of which had a glaring pair of red eyes. Off to the left was an orange glow, a hint of fire.

  I grabbed my pencil case and pulled out a pencil, and then had to search for a dice. As usual they turned up under my bed. That’s what you get for playing Fighting Fantasy at night. I also found another set of Top Trumps down the side from the Super Top Trumps series. Tractors. I’d never played them.

  I rolled the dice onto the book and scored terribly. You roll one dice for skill and one for luck and add 6 to each to give you a score out of twelve. I got nine skill, and eight luck. For stamina you roll two die and add the score to twelve. I only had one dice, so I rolled it twice, scoring six overall to make my stamina only eighteen.

  I didn’t get far into the book at all on my first play-through. I encountered a goblin after a poor luck roll meant he spotted me hiding in a bush. I beat him, though he did quite a bit damage to me and I was down to thirteen stamina. I came across a cottage on the road and decided to rest there to recover some of my strength after being invited in by what was described as a ‘kindly old lady’. I should have paid more attention to the witch-hazel shrubs growing up beside her house; that was a huge hint that I shouldn’t trust her. Anyway, she poisoned me, and I fell into a deep sleep where I was confronted by a nightmare demon which I nearly beat, but a run of bad dice rolls meant that I lost. I don’t think I’d ever been beaten by a Fighting Fantasy book so early. At least this one would be a challenge.

  Will had already lost interest in his (though I spotted several torn pieces of paper on his bed that he’d used for bookmarking) and had switched on the TV to watch the build-up to the Egypt versus the Republic of Ireland game, which was in England’s group. Every match in the group so far had been a draw, so if either team won, they would be top of the table and probably go through to the next round. It wasn’t a good game and before half-time I’d picked up The Secret of the Scythe again.

  Will interrupted me at some point during the second half. “Granddad was acting weird today.”

  “How?”

  “Normally when you ask him a question there’s a crazy story to go with it.”

  “Granddad’s stories aren’t crazy.”

  “That’s not what I meant. Over the top. Exaggerated.”

  “Like the story about the terrapins?”

  “Exactly. There were probably one or two which were thrown into the water, but not ‘hundreds’.”

  “Don’t you believe him?”

  “It’s not that. Sometimes he likes to make them more exciting.”

  “So?”

  “Don’t you think it was odd when you asked if any other kids had gone missing?”

  “What about it?”

  “There was no amazing story.”

  “Maybe there was nothing to tell?”

  “Or they don’t want us to know.”

  “They?”

  “The adults. Can’t you see they’re not telling us what’s going on?”

  “With John?”

  “With everything. They tell us it’s wrong to lie, but they do it to us all of the time.”

  I could see that Will was really upset. Tears were welling up in his eyes and he kept rubbing his forehead as he was talking.

  “Let’s go downstairs and ask them if there’s any news about John,” he said, shuffling off the end of his bed. He waited by my bed for me to move, but I could imagine Dad getting angry if we asked questions.

  “See?” Will said, as if reading my mind. “There’s no point. They won’t tell us anything. They’ll change the subject.”

  “We should ask at school. See what our teachers say.”

  “They’ll do exactly the same thing, I bet.”

  NOW

  What was the point of those Fighting Fantasy novels? Until the summer of 1990, I couldn’t get enough of them, and I would have told you that it was because it gave you choices and made you feel like you were in control of the story. Since there was only one good ending, you might have to play it through a dozen times or more before you got there, which I suppose made it a challenge, but learning the path through the book wouldn’t be enough either, because you were forced to battle monsters by using dice rolls, so you could know exactly what you were supposed to do, and still fail. Much like life in many ways.

  I drive slowly through the village. I pass the playing field where I spent so much time kicking around a football without ever developing any level of skill. There are so many new houses in this part of the village, that I can hardly recognise it. Row after row of identical houses. I’ve never been a fan of these kind of housing developments, and they seem utterly out of place here in Little Mosswick.

  I pass a new building on my right and am surprised to see it labelled Little Mosswick Primary School. What happened to my old school? I’m surprised to find that I feel as if I have been slighted by this in some way.

  As I approach the post office
, I see another police car parked outside it. I also notice that it’s grown an extension – a Chinese take-away that also sits askew to my memories of the village.

  Continuing through the village, I notice change, with no further housing developments, leaving the Little Mosswick that I remember. It feels as though the old Little Mosswick has been left behind, as if they’ve tried to move the heart of the village to one end, but all they’ve done is turned Little Mosswick into a Frankenstein village, held together with the ugly stitches of new roads. Maybe the whole place should have been left to die. I’m glad I was taken away in 1990. I’m glad I didn’t come back sooner. Maybe I’ve returned too soon?

  If I had a die, I’d roll it and let that decide if I should stay or go.

  Monday 18th June 1990

  Will was right.

  “The police are still investigating,” Mrs Palmer said when Liam and I approached her when the rest of the class went out to break. “I’m sure they’re doing all they can.”

  “Do you think he’ll be okay?” Liam asked.

  “You boys go and get some fresh air. When there’s news to tell, you’ll be among the first to know.”

  “Don’t you want us to stay in and tidy your cupboard?” asked Liam, nodded towards the locked door.

  A wrinkle appeared on Mrs Palmer’s brow. “Why? Whatever would you want to spend your time doing that for?”

  “To be helpful,” I cut in, as Liam looked lost for words.

  “That’s very kind of you, but it’s all perfectly square in there. Off you go.”

  “She’s definitely hiding something,” Liam said when we were out in the corridor.

  I wasn’t so sure. Mrs Palmer seemed way too nice to be an alien.

  “She’s definitely an alien,” Liam said. “How do we even know she’s not involved?”

  We stopped off in the toilets, and on the way out of the school we had to pass Mr Inglehart’s office. We could hear Mrs Palmer in there with him, along with a couple of other teachers.