The Hollow Tree

by James Brogden

  ‘Jesus Christ!’ whispered Tom, aghast. ‘What the fuck is that thing?’

  Rachel didn’t know and didn’t care. She grabbed the nearest heavy object to hand, which turned out to be the kettle – a wedding present of brushed steel with a hickory handle – and slammed it down on the creature’s head. It shrieked and tried to pull away, but had got itself well and truly wedged in the hole. She could hear its claws on the other side scrabbling for purchase as it tried to escape.

  ‘Oh no you fucking don’t,’ she told it, and brought the kettle down hard again. The animal snapped at her hand, whip-quick, and she nearly lost a finger to its jaws. Its breath stank of dead flesh.

  ‘You fuck!’ she screamed, and hit it harder, ignoring Tom who tried to intervene, and the creature kept shrieking and scrabbling and she kept hitting it until it stopped moving and all that was left was a badly misshapen and bloody mess with broken teeth and brain matter splattered up the door.

  She was panting and crying by the time she stopped. The silence in the kitchen was heavy with shock and the stench of blood. Tom eased the gore-clotted kettle out of her hand and dumped it in the sink.

  ‘Are you okay?’ he asked.

  Rachel’s response was to run out of the kitchen and into the small downstairs bathroom under the stairs, where she was violently sick.

  * * *

  When it grew light enough they shovelled the thing into a gravel bag so that Tom could take it out into the countryside and dump it. Rachel didn’t want to bury it in the garden; she didn’t like the idea of its unclean flesh rotting in the soil underneath her feet. Even in broad daylight it was impossible to tell which species it belonged to. They didn’t speak to each other as they worked; to have asked questions about what the thing was would have been to invite a reality into their lives which some instinct for survival, or at least sanity, told them to reject. All the same, Rachel knew what it was. It was the pushback for Smoky, the reaction that she had waited for on the stairs in the Merchant’s House after she’d brought him through and foolishly told herself she’d avoided. But there was no avoiding it. The world would not tolerate her interference. This creature had come out of the same place as Smoky to claim him back because she’d broken a law by taking him in the first place.

  But if everything else was real, including the weasel-badger, then the hollow tree that she’d dreamt it sniffing around must be real too, along with the woman trapped inside it.

  9

  THE MARY OAK

  ‘I THINK I’D LIKE TO GO FOR A WALK,’ RACHEL SAID.

  Tom paused in his planing of a banister spindle. ‘What, out to the playing field?’ He shrugged. ‘All right. I could do with a break.’

  It was a Sunday morning, the weather was behaving itself for a change and being more or less sunny, and they were enjoying the chance to open up the house to a bit of fresh air. Since the walls had been stripped back, repaired and then repapered there’d been a smell of damp plaster and wallpaper paste which they were both glad to be rid of. Tom was putting in a banister of plain wooden spindles up the staircase, after which they’d be able to seal the upper and lower hallway floors and the landing and argue about carpet colours.

  ‘No, not the playing field. I was thinking about the Lickeys.’

  He put down his plane and looked at her as if she’d suggested taking up circus skills. ‘The Lickey Hills? You? When did you join the beige anorak brigade?’

  Rachel sniffed. ‘Listen to yourself, Captain DIY. You know that toolsheds are gateway drugs for allotments, don’t you?’

  ‘All right,’ he laughed. ‘It’s a nice day. But why there?’

  ‘Used to go there with my dad before he got sick. It just seemed like a good idea. They have ice cream,’ she added teasingly. It’s also that I’ve been dreaming about a certain tree pretty near constantly since the accident and I’m sure that’s where it is, not that you need to know that. He was never going to refuse her a trip down memory lane for her deceased father’s sake.

  ‘Fair enough.’ He swept a pile of shavings onto the ground. ‘I’ll just get this little lot cleared away and put some decent clothes on.’

  When he reappeared, rattling his car keys, she was already sitting behind the wheel of her Megane with the engine running.

  She leaned out of the window and grinned. ‘I thought I’d drive, darling!’

  His face froze. ‘You’re kidding, right?’ Although it didn’t look like he thought she was joking.

  ‘Not even remotely. I’ve been practising all week – just to the shops and back. It’s really very simple.’

  ‘You’ve been what?’

  ‘Like I said. Driving. Shops. Back. Really simple. I’ve had quite a bit of time on my hand while you’ve been so busy at work.’

  ‘But isn’t that— Are you even allowed to— Why didn’t you tell me?’

  She frowned. ‘Not sure that I needed to run it past you first, actually. I’ve told the insurance people and the DVLA and got a letter from Yomi to say that I’m basically competent; they’ve said that I need to have a test but until then I’m fine as long as I don’t go on the motorway.’

  ‘But what if you’d had an accident?’

  She waved her stump at him cheerfully. ‘Been there, done that, lost the limb. Are you coming? Because I’d quite like you to come with me – it’d make me feel a lot safer – but I’ll go on my own if I have to.’

  Reluctantly, he got in. ‘So how does this work, then?’

  ‘It’s called an internal combustion engine. What happens is, a fine spray of petroleum gas enters a cylinder where a spark plug causes it to—’

  ‘Just drive if you’re going to drive.’

  ‘I love you too.’ She gave him a peck on the cheek. ‘Anyway, I’m still a better driver than you even with one hand. You know it, I know it.’

  He watched her every movement with the intensity of a sceptical audience member at a magic show determined to see the illusionist’s sleight of hand, wincing with every gear change, which she accomplished by crossing her right hand over her body to reach the stick while holding the steering wheel steady with her knees and her stump between the gaps of the wheel. She’d bought a steering wheel spinner knob to help her right hand, like the kind she’d seen truck drivers use. She could tell that Tom was annoyed; she hadn’t intentionally kept it a secret from him but what with the weasel-badger thing it had seemed like just one more thing that he hadn’t needed to worry about.

  She only made one mistake, going over a roundabout, when her hand slipped and she accidentally beeped the horn. A little old man wheeling his bicycle over the pedestrian crossing on the other side jumped and stared, nearly dropping his bike.

  ‘Sorry!’ she mouthed at him through the windscreen, holding her hands up in apology – and his eyes widened as he saw that she only had one. As they went past she caught the sound of him shouting something that probably wasn’t very polite. She laughed and turned to Tom. ‘Did you see the look on his face? I should have yelled, “Look, Grandpa, no hands!”’

  ‘Just – please – keep your eyes on the road.’

  On a Sunday morning the Lickey Hills Visitor Centre car park was packed, and the surrounding woodlands were raucous with families; small children and dogs chased each other amongst the trees while dads manoeuvred pushchairs along the paths after them and mums wandered behind, tapping away on their phones.

  ‘So you used to come up here with your mum and dad?’ Tom asked.

  ‘Mm-hm.’ She looked at him sidelong; there’d been something in his tone. ‘Why do you ask?’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know,’ he shrugged, doing a very bad job of trying to appear nonchalant. ‘Just seems like a nice family tradition to keep up, that’s all.’

  Maybe it was the cumulative effect of several broken nights’ sleep on top of the stress of everything to do with her injury, but the irritation boiled up inside Rachel seemingly out of nowhere, taking her by surprise and sweeping her words along with it so th
at before she even realised she was speaking she’d snapped, ‘Well you know what, Tom, if you want to fill me with your little babies you’re actually going to have to fuck me at some point, aren’t you?’

  He stared at her, open-mouthed. ‘Where did that come from?’

  Rachel didn’t reply, instead starting off at a brisk walk. He followed her at a diplomatic distance as she strode along the trail out along Bilberry Hill until it dipped down to cross the road that wound its way between the reserve’s three main hills. On the other side they climbed again, past the Old Rose and Crown Hotel and the golf club behind it. Then they were up into the thicker woods of Beacon Hill, where the paths became steeper, narrower, and labyrinthine. In places Rachel had to use her hand to steady herself on a tree trunk or branch.

  ‘Are you sure this is a good idea?’ Tom asked from behind her, concern in his voice.

  ‘It’s fine.’ She stopped to let him catch up. ‘Listen, Tom, what I said back there…’

  He waved it away. ‘Don’t. You were right. You don’t need that kind of pressure right now. I’m the one who should be apologising.’

  She let him hold her for a moment and then disengaged. ‘We used to come up here all the time. There’s a little toy castle up the top with a lookout. Let’s talk properly up there.’

  It would have required too much awkward explanation to tell him that she felt drawn to these woods by the dreams that were causing her so much trouble, because she was having a hard enough job trying to explain it to herself.

  Tom nodded and walked on.

  He was barely a dozen metres ahead of her when it happened. There was nowhere for another person to have come from unseen, but all the same a woman was suddenly standing on the path facing Rachel: young, slim, in a summer dress torn at one shoulder, her face deathly-pale beneath a layer of dirt and her dark hair tangled with leaves. The woman opened her mouth and a torrent of black beetles poured out around two words:

  ‘Not. Dead.’

  Rachel yelped and lost her balance. She slipped on a patch of leaf mulch, which skidded out from beneath her feet, and gravity carried her stumbling off the trail and down the slope, pin-wheeling her arms until her outstretched palm hit a trunk and she jolted to a stop. It was only once the first gasp of relief had subsided that she realised that it was the palm of her left hand that had arrested her fall, and that the trunk it was braced against wasn’t there. Her eyes told her that there was nothing but empty space in the middle of a small clearing, yet the touch of her dead hand told her that the space was dominated by a large tree. She regained her balance and pulled back, breaking contact. There was no sign of the woman.

  Rachel wanted to run after Tom, to tell herself that there was not something fundamentally wrong with reality. Even if she was losing her mind, that was at least plausible. But the blunt fact of the stump at the end of her arm reminded her that she was no longer allowed the luxury of self-delusion.

  She took stock of her surroundings, and realised that the trees all around the edge of the clearing had been decorated. Tied to one of the thin birch branches nearest her was a ribbon, either pink or red gone pale with time and exposure. There were other ribbons on other branches, of different colours and materials, along with bits of coloured string and strips of plastic, the foil from chocolate wrappers, feathers, scraps of lace, and pieces of paper; some were new and vivid, others so old they were faded to a ghostly white. There were dolls’ clothes, crude mobiles made out of sticks and grass, and even small bones. She saw the skulls of rodents, and a large one that might have been that of a hare.

  ‘Jesus,’ she whispered. ‘What is this place?’

  She took a step forward and reached out, feeling with the imaginary fingers of her dead hand, concentrating on its phantom sensations. A breath of breeze where there was none. A coolness, as of being in the shade, even though she stood in an open woodland clearing under the sun.

  There.

  She felt leaves in front of her, in the empty air. She pinched one at its base and pulled, gently at first, then harder until it snapped and it felt so real that she almost heard the branch rustle as it sprang back. She brought her living hand up; she was holding a large bronze leaf – unmistakably that of an oak. She followed the branch she’d plucked the leaf from, her hands exploring the bole of the tree. It was large and ancient, she could sense that. The bark was not smooth but deeply corrugated, with patches of moss and dry pieces crumbling away at her touch. She explored tangles of ivy and something with thorns that pricked.

  ‘Rache?’ Tom scrambled down the slope from the path to join her. ‘Are you okay? I heard you shout something and turned around and you were gone. Did you fall?’ Then he saw the decorated trees. ‘Whoa. What’s this all about?’

  ‘I was just wondering the same thing.’

  ‘Looks like some kind of shrine, but to what?’

  Not what, she thought. Who. A young woman in a torn dress, trapped in a dead tree. I’ve been dreaming about her since the accident, darling, didn’t I tell you?

  Tom started moving around the clearing, examining the rags and trinkets, and the sight of him passing back and forth over the space where the woman was trapped started to make Rachel twitchy. It felt like a desecration. ‘Can we go?’ she asked. ‘This place is giving me the creeps.’

  But something had caught his eye – a piece of standard printer paper in a plastic polythene wallet, smeared with rain and yellow with age. ‘Look, a poem,’ he said.

  ‘Tom…’

  ‘Her strong enchantments failing,’ he read.

  ‘Her towers of fear in wreck,

  Her limbecks dried of poisons

  And the knife at her neck.

  The Queen of Air and Darkness

  Begins to shrill and cry:

  “Oh young man, oh my slayer,

  Tomorrow you shall die.”

  Oh Queen of Air and Darkness,

  I think the truth you say,

  And I shall die tomorrow

  But you will die today.’

  He let the paper fall back to where it hung. ‘Fuck me that’s creepy,’ he murmured.

  ‘Tom!’ Rachel all but screamed.

  ‘What?’ he said, blinking as if woken. ‘Oh, sure.’ He returned, and his eyes were clouded with a strange expression she’d never seen before. ‘Let’s go back to the visitor centre and ask someone. The rangers will know.’

  * * *

  The visitor centre was a large open-plan building with a café area overlooking a steep slope down to a playground, a classroom area, shop, and a large collection of glass cabinets and display boards offering information about the flora, fauna and geology of the Lickey Hills. They found the poster describing the walks around Beacon Hill, and the trail that they’d followed, but couldn’t see any mention of the strange clearing. Nor was it mentioned in any of the leaflets on the history of the area, or in the many photographs framed on the walls. Eventually they found one of the park rangers, a wiry-looking young woman in hiking trousers, fleece top and a name badge that introduced her as Fiona, who was filling one of the leaflet dispensers, and asked her.

  ‘Oh!’ she said, as if they had confided a great secret. ‘That’s the Mary Oak. Not many people come asking after that. They either know where it is or they don’t.’

  ‘But there’s no oak tree,’ Tom pointed out.

  Rachel bit her tongue.

  ‘There used to be. It’s a bit of a grim story, so we don’t tend to publicise it. The oak in that clearing was cut down and burned over seventy years ago after the body of a woman was found in its hollow trunk.’

  ‘I can see why that wouldn’t be on the Family Fun Trail,’ said Tom.

  ‘Her murderer was never caught, and the police weren’t even able to establish the woman’s identity.’

  ‘So why is it called the Mary Oak, then?’ he asked.

  ‘Well,’ said Fiona, warming to her tale, ‘on the other side of Beacon Hill is the Lickey Monument; basically it’s a great bi
g obelisk commemorating an important landowner or soldier or someone like that. Anyway, three days after the police printed an appeal for witnesses in the local newspaper, graffiti appeared on the base of the monument; someone had painted Who danced with Oak Mary? in big white letters all around it. The name stuck, even though it left the police none the wiser.’

  I saw her, thought Rachel. I heard her voice. She was alive. No, she is alive, still trapped in that tree. Oak Mary.

  Fiona’s tale wasn’t done. ‘There are three main theories about who she was. Some say she was a victim of gypsy witchcraft, some that she was a German spy betrayed by her contacts, and some that she was a prostitute killed by a client.’

  ‘What do you think?’ asked Tom.

  ‘Oh, I don’t know enough about the case, although obviously I feel sorry for the poor woman. I don’t think we’ll ever know; she’s passed into folklore now. Spooky, isn’t it?’

  Rachel was beginning to feel light-headed. There didn’t seem to be enough air in the room, despite its size.

  In contrast, Tom was clearly fascinated. ‘So why all the ribbons and things?’

  Fiona shrugged. ‘Memorial, perhaps? The way people leave flowers by the side of the road for accident victims? And there is something of a wider tradition of decorating trees. There are rag trees all over Ireland and clootie wells in Scotland where they do the same thing; places where the old pre-Christian customs still survive. People leave rags for wishes, or to cure illnesses, or to beg favours of the dead…’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said Rachel, swaying a little and putting her hand on Tom’s shoulder. ‘Do you mind if I sit down? I’m feeling a bit weird all of a sudden.’

  A chair was found, and a cup of tea. By the time Rachel was feeling clearer-headed, Fiona had left to attend to other ranger business.