Dead Branches

by Benjamin Langley

  Alan helped me off the bed, and then sat with me in the waiting area. “Liam said it was all your idea. What were you thinking?”

  “Is Andy okay?”

  “He’s has a bump on the head, but he’ll be fine.”

  There was no point in asking about Will. We all knew he was dead long before the ambulance arrived.

  “How’s the foot?” said Uncle Alan.

  I looked down at the four stitches. “It itches.”

  “I just don’t understand what you were doing out on the road at almost midnight?”

  I couldn’t explain it. Maybe Will had been right all along, and bad stuff just happens. In the back of my mind was this idea that Will had only been killed because of the powers of the Underworld. That they’d made the car appear there, and that they planned to take Andy. Will saw it just in time and pushed him out of the way, but as a result was hit by the car himself. Will would have said that that was ridiculous. If I’d have listened to him, and stopped going on about The Underworld, we never would have gone out there, and he’d still be alive. It was my fault.

  Uncle Alan passed me a tissue.

  “It was my fault,” I said. “I had this stupid idea, and now Will’s dead.”

  “No, no,” said Alan. “It was an accident, that’s all. You didn’t make that car hit him. Whatever you did do, you can’t blame yourself.”

  “Where’s Mum?”

  “They’re with the police. You’re going to come home with me once they give Andy the all clear.”

  Liam wasn’t speaking to me. He didn’t make a big show of it or anything, but he didn’t let himself get drawn into conversation. Andy was better. He made me feel the bump on his head, and he said he couldn’t really remember anything that had happened the previous night. I sat around feeling lousy and thinking of Will.

  Aunt Anne came in. She’d been nice to me. She gave me a hug when she saw me and pulled me to her and gave me a kiss on the forehead. She offered to cook me anything I wanted, but I wasn’t hungry, and made do with a bit of toast. “The police are here to speak to you,” she said, and sat down.

  P.C. Wade followed her into the room. He didn’t have that normal chirpy grin on his face from the road safety awareness days. “How are you feeling, Thomas?” he said.

  I shrugged. “Horrible.”

  “I need to ask you a few questions to get to the bottom of this.”

  I nodded. “It’s my fault,” I said. “It was my idea to go out there.”

  “Why were you out on the bypass?”

  “We weren’t meant to be. It was the tree in the field.”

  “What about it?”

  “We were going to destroy it.”

  P.C. Wade held his pen close to his pad but wrote nothing. “Why did you want to destroy the tree?”

  “I had this idea,” I said, but I wasn’t sure how to explain it to an adult. “The tree is evil.”

  “Go on.”

  “Chappie died there. It’s near where I found John.

  It took Granddad’s eye, and we’d seen Shaky Jake hanging around, looking at it…”

  “And you thought all of these things were related.”

  “Yes,” I said. I didn’t want to talk about the portal.

  “When you say Shaky Jake, you mean Jacob Radford?”

  “Yes.”

  “And how is he involved in this? Been telling you boys stories?”

  “He’s the murderer.”

  “What proof do you have of that?”

  “We sent you a box! It had John’s P.E. kit in, and a map…”

  “Ah, so that was you.”

  “It was. Did you arrest him?”

  “I shouldn’t be telling you this. We checked with Mrs Glover. John’s P.E. kit was at home.”

  “So, it wasn’t John’s?”

  “No. But let’s get back to the events of last night. You arranged for your cousins to sleep over, so you could sneak out and attack the tree?”

  “It was only supposed to be Will and me,” I said. “But when Liam and Andy were stopping over to watch the football, we changed our plans.”

  “Why last night?”

  “It was stupid. I was certain that if we didn’t get rid of it, something else bad would happen.”

  “Something bad did happen. Why didn’t you tell anyone about this?”

  “I tried! People said I was being silly.”

  From the hall the phone rang. Aunt Anne started to get up but heard Uncle Alan answer.

  “So you didn’t listen to them?” said PC Wade.

  “They wouldn’t tell me what was going on with John. They kept on saying that sometimes bad things happen. I was looking for the reason why.”

  “I see,” said Wade. “It’s a terrible tragedy, and we’ve had too many in the village.” He stood up and as he got to the door, he turned back to look at me. “I’m sorry for your loss.”

  After seeing Wade out, Uncle Alan beckoned Aunt Anne out of the room. More whispered secrets.

  Aunt Anne came back in and took my hand. “That was your Mum on the phone. She thinks it would probably be best if you stayed here tonight. Is that okay?”

  NOW

  Ipractically run into Liam in the doorway. I push past him and suck in the clean air.

  “Hey Tom,” he says, oblivious to the state I’m in. Some things, some people, never change. “Some parents are searching the area, looking for Jessica.”

  What’s the point? She’s probably already dead.

  “I figure, who knows these old droves better than you and me?”

  Even his grin is exactly the same as it was when he was ten.

  “It’ll be like old times,” he says.

  Like those old times we actually thought that we could make a difference? That we searched the droves like a bunch of idiots, led by some bullshit cards thinking we’d be heroes? Those old times where my stupid plan killed my brother?

  I glance over at the ditch I found John’s body in. I look over to where we found Chappie’s body, but that field is now covered by solar panels. I wonder if the tree stump is beneath them. I look over to the bypass, now a constant stream of traffic and see Will’s trainer, the pool of blood, and his lifeless body. Then I think about what’s beyond that if you follow the droves for long enough.

  “Come on,” I say to Liam. “I know where she’ll be.”

  I start down the drove, with Liam following behind me. I glance into the drove and see discoloured crisp packets, crushed cans of beer, and sweet wrappers. I don’t remember all of the litter being there in my childhood.

  We keep going until we pass the bridge. I gaze into the water, and what used to be a constant stream is a dirty trickle. I look further down to where the ditches used to drain into the river and see a couple of old tyres. I look over the other side to see a stagnant pool, trapped by a wall of sludge. The bridge creaks beneath my feet. I kick at the posts at the edge of the bridge, and rotten wood flakes off and sinks into the dirty water below. It’s all tainted, and rotten. I know I won’t find any good here.

  Friday 6th July 1990

  Aunt Anne ran me home in the middle of the morning. She was quiet in the car, and I had nothing to say either.

  Mum was waiting for me in the kitchen. “Hi, love,” she said. “How are you feeling?” Her voice sounded forced and she looked really grey and had big bags under her eyes. Her hair was all over the place.

  I shrugged. I could feel the tears coming again, and I tried to fight then back as I ran to meet her.

  She pulled her to me, and I could tell that she was crying too by the jerky breaths that she took. She let go of me, then bent down to my level. “We’ve had to… make some changes.”

  “What?”

  “Your dad wanted to keep Will’s bedroom the way it was.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “We’ve made a bed up for you in the spare room. Your new room.”

  I went upstairs. The door was closed to my bedroom, my old bedroom t
hat I’d shared with Will, but the spare room, my new bedroom, was open. All of the boxes had been stacked up on one side, uncovering the bed that had been in there, unoccupied, for years. Clean bedding had been put on it. As I went in, I sneezed. Dust hung in the room from where so many boxes had been for so long. This was junk that Granddad had put there when he lived in the house. There was room for nothing else other than the bed and the boxes. On the bed was the box that I’d recovered from Granddad’s house that contained all of the photographs, and on top of that someone had placed a book from my bedroom, the only one of my possessions that had been recovered. It was The Secret of the Scythe.

  I wanted to go and look at some of Will’s things. I left my room and approached my old door. Inside I could hear sobbing. I pushed the door open a crack, and could see Dad in there, sitting on the floor.

  “Dad,” I said.

  “Keep out!” he cried.

  I pulled the door closed, but not before I heard him mutter, “Why did it have to be you Will? Why you?”

  I wished it was me too. I couldn’t take that horrible feeling anymore, knowing that I was responsible for Will’s death. Dad knew it too, and he was practically wishing me dead instead. Even the way that Mum had held me suggested that she didn’t love me as much anymore.

  I went back into my new bedroom and picked up The Secret of the Scythe. I was going to tear it to pieces. It was that book that had given me the idea about the Underworld. Without that book, and its stupid tree I would never have come up with such a ridiculous story. I grabbed the book and tossed it onto the bed, where it struck the box of photographs. I gave it a shove, hoping to push it to the end of the bed, out of the way, but I failed at that too, and the box tipped over.

  Pictures of Dad, Aunt Anne and Uncle Rodney spread over the bed. In some of them I could clearly make out Granddad Norman, and I vaguely recognised Nanna Betty. Among the photographs were various news clippings. A single column story headlined ‘Hero teen runs away from home’ told the story of Uncle Rodney leaving Little Mosswick to join a travelling theatre company, just as Granddad had told. Another story told of the ongoing suffering of ‘kidnapping victim, Jacob Radford’, and I started to sympathise with him. Maybe what he’d been through as a youngster had made him the way he was.

  Then I found a large A3 sheet of paper, folder in two. It was yellow with age, and I feared it would tear as I unfolded it. There was an image of a tree on it with partially faded ink on the branches revealing plenty of names on it I knew. At the top it said, ‘Tilbrook Family Tree’. Norman Tilbrook was written roughly in the middle, and his children beneath that. My name and Will’s were on the bottom row. Enid Tilbrook was on there too, on the same level as Granddad’s. So, she must have been his cousin, but there was another name beneath hers that I recognised too, Jacob Radford. I was related to Shaky Jake? I remembered all of the things that I’d written about him in my book of investigation, and I remembered that my book was still in my old bedroom, right beside where Dad was weeping. I had to get it back, but I’d have to wait for the right time.

  I delved deeper into the box. It was full of decades old paperwork and letters. Enid Tilbrook, it seemed, had had a relationship with a young man from Little Mosswick, who had later been called up to fight in the Korean War. There was a child, and Enid died giving birth to him. This child, born outside of marriage was taken into care, and given up for adoption. His adoptive parents gave him a new surname, and he became Jacob Radford.

  Looking at the picture of the family tree again it struck me as odd how much death there was in it. Many of the branches had died, and not many men with the Tilbrook name still lived. There was Uncle Rodney, but he didn’t have children, Granddad, Dad and me. I was the only one of my generation. How weird was that?

  “Thomas,” there was a shout from downstairs. It was Mum, her voice cold and lifeless.

  I trudged down the stairs, unsure whether I could bear her judgemental eyes on me again, but when I opened the door there was a kind voice.

  “How’s Tom?” Granddad said. While he looked upset, he still had some of his old colour. He sat down and rested with one arm on his walking stick. His other arm was open and welcoming me in.

  I shuffled over to him, and he wrapped his big arm around me. As he hugged, he exhaled loudly, and sounded in pain. I leant back and could see him grimacing.

  “You okay, Granddad?”

  “Finally got around to finishing off those pheasants. I think it was past best. How are you doing, anyway? Tough day?” he said. He was always the master of the understatement, when he wanted to be. He knew when to play up a story, and when to play it down.

  “I’ll make some tea,” Mum said, still struggling to hide how hard it was to stop her voice from breaking.

  “Listen Tom,” Granddad said, quiet enough so that Mum wouldn’t hear. “You mustn’t blame yourself for this.”

  I tried to squirm away. I didn’t want to hear it.

  “You’re a good lad.”

  I wriggled, and tried to shrink into myself, cover my ears with my shoulders.

  “But you’re like me, Thomas, that’s the problem.”

  I stopped struggling. I was ready to listen.

  “You love a good story, and you want others to share in it. You know how I lost my eye?”

  “The tree. The tree tried to take it.”

  “Farming accident. That’s all. An unfortunate incident.”

  I nodded.

  “But what kind of a story is that? No kind; that’s what. You get caught up in stories because it’s in your blood. If that’s anyone’s fault, it’s mine.”

  “No, Granddad, you weren’t there.”

  “But I’ve been planting seeds in your head all your life. No wonder you got caught up in your own fantasy.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Never be sorry for that, Thomas. Your Dad don’t understand you. He was never one for stories and don’t understand how they work. But I understand, and I say don’t ever change. Okay?”

  He let me go, and a little bit of the shell around me broke.

  “I think your Dad needs me. I understand he’s been in Will’s room all night.” He pushed himself up using his stick, and then made his way up the stairs, grunting all of the way.

  Later, Granddad managed to talk Dad downstairs. He convinced him that he needed some fresh air. It was my chance to get back into my old room and destroy my book. This story had gone on far enough.

  “Thomas,” Mum said, as I was about to go up the stairs. “We do love you, you know.” She opened her arms.

  We cried. We spoke, though I doubt either of us could remember what about, and eventually the book went out of my mind, and a tremendous tiredness spread through my body.

  “I need a nap, Mum,” I said, and we parted. When I got to the top of the stairs, I saw my old bedroom door open, and I remembered what I had to do. I went inside, picked the book off the bedside table, and started to flick through it. It was a story. Fiction. Full of ideas that we’d come up with together. Crazy theories. As I was going to take it to my new room a shadow fell in front of me. Dad was blocking out the light from the hall.

  “Stay out of Will’s room,” Dad said. He grabbed the book out of my hand. “What’s this?”

  “It’s nothing.”

  “Where did it come from?”

  “It was on my table…”

  “In Will’s room?”

  “It was mine.”

  “It stays in his room.” He started to flick through the pages. “John’s killer? What’s this?”

  “Don’t look at it, Dad.”

  “I asked you a question. What is this?”

  “We had ideas about who killed John, and how his body ended up where it did…”

  Dad continued to flick through the book. “You blamed a tree? That’s what you were doing out there?”

  “It’s stupid. It was an idea we had.”

  “What this tells me, is that if you weren’t fooling
around, Will would never have died.”

  “I’m sorry. It wasn’t supposed to happen.”

  He turned back another page. “What’s this about Shaky Jake?”

  “If it really was him, the police would have arrested him.”

  Dad froze. He was staring over my shoulder. “The bastard. Returning to the scene of the crime. I’ll show him.” He darted down the stairs.

  I turned around and looked out the window. Walking along the drove, peering into the ditches was Shaky Jake.

  “Thomas?” called Mum, and I followed quickly down the stairs. “Where’s your Dad going?”

  “Call the police,” I said. “Quick.”

  Dad had Jake by his hair. He was dragging him across the field. Over his shoulder he had a coil of rope, and in his other hand the red petrol canister.

  Granddad Norman started out across the field after him, with Mum behind him, and me following. I was immediately hit by the heat of the day. After the rain of the last few days the sun was back with a vengeance.

  “Trevor,” Granddad said. “Come back in the house.”

  Dad didn’t even turn around. He kept pulling Jake across the field, dragging him over divots to keep him stumbling along.

  The whole time Jake was making this low-pitched whining sound, like something inhuman. With his hands, he was gripping on to Dad’s hand; whether he was trying to free his hair from Dad’s grasp or simply trying to stop his scalp from being torn off, I don’t know.

  Granddad Norman stopped moving and leant on his stick, gasping for breath. Mum reached him and placed a hand on his back to support him. He let the stick go and put both hands to his stomach, before collapsing onto his knees.

  I kept moving beyond them as Dad hurled Jake towards the tree. All of the air rushed from his body and he turned around. “No,” he said. “I never… I never…” but he couldn’t get the words out. Even from a distance I could see that he was shaking worse than ever.

  Dad wrapped the rope around him and the tree.

  “Dad, don’t!” I said as I continued across the field.