The Hollow Tree

by James Brogden

  ‘Wait,’ she said. ‘You died in this building?’

  ‘Of course – why do you think I’m still here? It was quick; there was a growth,’ he shrugged again. ‘You don’t want to hear the details. My Ruthie was there, and my boys. They wanted me in a hospital but I’m a stubborn old bird and I wasn’t having any of that. I was given this place on Wake Green Road when I was demobbed and me and Ruthie lived in it for over thirty years, and if you’d grown up in the slums I grew up in you wouldn’t want to leave neither.

  ‘So I’m lying there and it doesn’t even really hurt that much any more and that’s how I know I’m close, and there’s Ruthie and Nick and Peter and a doctor whose name I forget, and behind them…’ He laughed shortly, shaking his head at the memory. ‘Sister Margaret,’ he said. ‘Black Meg, we used to call her in school, dressed in her nun’s clobber like a big black crow, and with that look on her face, the one she had when she was beating you for whatever little thing you’d done wrong. Like she was hungry and about to puke both at the same time. She looked at me with that look and said, “Are you about ready now, Oliver?” as if I’d been keeping her waiting for something more important and I said, “Yes, Sister,” so she sort of reached past my family without moving and took me by the hand and I got up and left myself behind and that was that.’

  ‘So Sister Margaret was your Redcap?’

  ‘Yes she was. That was the first and last time she ever touched me. She wiped her hand on the front of her habit like she’d touched something filthy and said, “Well come on then if you’re coming.” So I went with her and she took me to the front door – same front door you came in by just now – and there was something outside, something that she’d brought with her, that I just wasn’t ready for. I was in the Normandy landings, did you know that?’

  Rachel shook her head.

  ‘Sword Beach, Third Infantry. Coming off those landing boats into German machine-gun fire was the single most terrifying experience of my life, next to my wedding day, but I’d have done it a hundred times rather than face what was on the other side of that door. I looked back at my family and my home and I turned to Black Meg – or the Redcap that looked like her, anyway – and I said, “Begging your pardon, Sister, but if it’s all the same to you I think I’ll stop here for a bit.”’

  ‘And what did she say?’

  ‘Well you could tell that she wasn’t happy. She said, “Are you sure that’s what you want, Oliver?” with a kind of sneer like I was eleven years old again and too thick to decide which nostril to pick first. I squared myself and said, “Yes, Sister.” She gave a sniff like it was nothing to her one way or the other. “Suit yourself,” she said. “But just you mind my words, boy. Not everyone gets offered this, and rarely more than once. You’d better be damned sure.”

  ‘The thing is, I knew I should have left, but Ruthie was still crying over my body and the lads were having to hold her up. “I’m sure,” I said.

  ‘Then Black Meg was gone, and whatever she’d brought with her was gone too, and outside it was just the road. When my estate came to be settled nobody wanted to keep this place so it got sold and moved and I came with it. Ruthie passed a while later, and I really thought she’d come here with me, but she didn’t. That broke my heart, and I came this close to calling for Black Meg and asking if whatever had been on offer was still there.

  ‘But then Amy – that’s my eldest boy Nick’s daughter – turned up one day with her children. I don’t know how she found it, out here in the middle of nowhere. She was telling them stories of how their granddad had fought in the war and how their own dad had played in this house, and I watched them playing in this kitchen where their dad used to watch Ruthie baking cakes, and I knew why I was still here. Am I making any sense?’

  ‘More than you know,’ said Rachel.

  ‘I saw them all joined together, sort of in a line, like. I’d heard the word bloodline, but never really thought about what it meant. Or more like a ribbon. Everyone joined to everyone else, and I knew that as long as they kept coming and remembering me, then I’d be here. Because there’s nothing stronger than that line. It doesn’t matter how far it stretches or how thin it gets, it doesn’t break.’

  Oliver gave a little shudder, as if coming back to himself, then saw the rapt way Rachel was staring at him and ducked his head, reddening. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘Wittering on like that. Like I said, it’s been a while since I’ve actually talked to anyone – least, anyone that could hear me.’

  ‘Please,’ she said. ‘Don’t apologise. This is exactly the sort of thing I’ve been desperate to find out for ages now.’

  He shrugged. ‘I can’t claim to be an expert. You might want to be talking to a priest. What do you want to know?’

  ‘Well, about your vegetable garden, for a start.’

  He laughed in surprise. ‘You want to know about my broad beans?’

  ‘In a manner of speaking. How can they be there? I mean, the place where you are – the Redcaps call it the umbra – as far as I can tell it’s a shadow of the world; the world that’s dead and gone. I’m pretty sure there wasn’t ever a vegetable patch where this building is now, so how can there be one on your side of things? How can something be growing?’

  ‘I put a lot of work into that garden,’ Oliver said proudly. ‘You don’t think I was going to give it up that easy, do you?’

  ‘So it exists because you want it to strongly enough.’

  ‘Maybe. So did the Redcaps get your friend, then?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Ah now, that’s a shame.’

  They sat there for a while in silence, the living and the dead. Finally Oliver cleared his throat. ‘I saw everything that happened, that night,’ he said. ‘Heard everything you and your friend said. I want to help if I can. Those Redcaps are bastards. Always have been.’

  ‘That’s very kind, but I don’t think you want to get mixed up in this business. You’ve been more than helpful as it is.’

  ‘No, but see, I can help you look for her. On this side. It can be… unpredictable. You could do with a guide.’ There was an edge to his voice that was more than just the desire to help; he was tapping the side of his mug with one fingernail, and it made a nervous little tik-tik-tik noise. ‘I just…’ he faltered, swallowed, and tried again. ‘I know you brought her back. And I just thought, if I helped you find her you might, in return…’

  ‘Oh no,’ said Rachel, suddenly realising what he was getting at and shaking her head firmly. ‘No way. You don’t know what you’re asking.’

  ‘Not permanently!’ His desperation was naked now. ‘I’ll go back, you have my word! Just for a day, maybe not even that. Just so I can talk to my boys properly, one last time. Please!’

  ‘No.’ Rachel’s heart twisted for him, but there was nothing she could do, and it made her refusal brutal. ‘Black Meg will come for you, and she’ll carve her way through anyone and anything to take you back. I’ve seen it happen. I won’t do it. Please don’t ask me.’ She drained the last of her tea in a hasty gulp and stood. ‘I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have come. It’s not fair on you.’

  ‘What’s not fair is that you’ve got this wonderful gift and you refuse to share it!’ he retorted.

  ‘It’s not a gift,’ Rachel said. Memories of the emaciated shades at the asylum hovered around her like shadows. Oliver seemed nice enough, but she didn’t want to see how far his desperation might push him. ‘It was an accident.’

  ‘Please! You don’t know what it’s like! You don’t know what—’

  Rachel withdrew her Sight from the umbra and tugged her stump-sock back on to deaden her Touch, cutting off the sight and sound of him instantly. She was standing in the prefab’s dingy kitchen with nothing but sunlight and birdsong for company. All the same, she knew that he was just on the other side of the bright air, probably still pleading. It wasn’t fair. He had no right to ask that of her.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she repeated to the not-empty room, kn
owing that he could hear her but not respond, and feeling an utter shit about it. ‘For what it’s worth, I am grateful though.’

  * * *

  Rachel stepped out of the prefab and flicked up her hood, wondering how long she’d have to wait for a taxi to take her home again. She was so distracted that she didn’t spot the Peugeot that must have pulled into the yard while she was talking to Oliver. Then she heard an ‘Ahem!’ and a man walked out from around the side of the prefab.

  Tom’s dad Spence did not look happy.

  36

  SHUFFLING OFF

  SPENCE’S PEUGEOT WAS FULL OF TOOLS AND REEKED of dog, and the air in the car was thickened by the tension as Rachel’s father-in-law drove in silence. Finally, however, it became too much.

  ‘For God’s sake!’ he burst out. ‘What was I supposed to do? Leave you in there talking to yourself?’

  ‘I suppose that’s what it must have looked like,’ Rachel agreed.

  ‘Must have looked like? Your mother and Tom both think you’re having some kind of breakdown, do you know that?’

  ‘No, but it doesn’t surprise me.’

  Spence peered at her so intently that Rachel began to be afraid that he’d forgotten he was driving. ‘Well they might think you’re going wampy,’ he said. ‘But you’re not fooling me.’

  ‘I’m not trying to fool anyone. I just want people to stop interfering in my business.’

  Spence hmphed. ‘Business, she calls it. Men with guns on my property and she calls it “business”. Guns! In my yard! And that’s the best explanation you can come up with?’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she whispered.

  ‘Sorry,’ muttered Spence, scowling at the road. ‘She’s sorry.’ He drove one-handed as he took out his phone and called his son.

  * * *

  Rachel shouldn’t have been surprised to see Tom’s van and her mother’s Audi in the drive, but there was a third strange car – something small and powder-blue. When Rachel let herself into the house she found out why: Ms Korovina from psychiatric liaison was sitting on the sofa in the living room next to her mother, while Tom was doing something with a screwdriver to one of the kitchen cupboards, which was a sure sign that he was agitated.

  ‘I’ve got her,’ said Spence, as they entered. Her mother rose from the sofa and Rachel saw with wry amusement the restraining hand that Korovina put on her arm. Tom stopped fiddling and came over.

  ‘Is she okay?’ he asked.

  ‘I’m fine, thanks,’ Rachel retorted. ‘Busy day at work, darling? Oh wait, it’s only lunchtime. Must be the drugs.’

  Her mother winced at the word. Good.

  ‘She was at the yard,’ continued Spence. ‘She was in the prefab, talking to herself.’

  ‘Is this true?’ asked her mother.

  ‘Actually, no,’ said Rachel. She pulled off her stump-sock, balled it up and tossed it to Tom, who caught it in surprise. ‘I was talking to a very nice, sad man called Oliver Sewell. He’s been dead for some time so his social skills aren’t quite what they were, but then whose are, eh?’

  ‘And have you spoken to him before?’ asked Korovina, in the calm and non-judgemental professional voice of a mental health worker talking to a paranoid schizophrenic.

  ‘No,’ Rachel replied. ‘But it’s not the first time we’ve met. The first time, he woke me when I’d fallen asleep so he probably saved my life – mine and Annabel’s. That was the night her deaths tried to claim her back and shot up the prefab. But Tom knows all about that, don’t you, dear? You were there, after all.’

  All eyes in the room turned to Tom. ‘Rachel, I—’

  ‘What? You what, Tom? You agree with me? You admit I’m telling the truth? You’ve finally decided to man up and talk to me about all of this?’

  ‘I thought,’ he replied carefully, ‘that if I went along with it and said I believed you, I could find a way of making you see that it was all in your head.’

  ‘Oh no!’ Rachel laughed, wagging her stump at him like an admonishing finger. It also had the effect of getting the pins and needles going. Waking up the phantoms. ‘No, you don’t get away with it that easily. It was your idea to go to the library, remember? You weren’t just humouring me, you were actively encouraging me. You know that everything I’ve said is true and that everything that’s happened is real. It put you in hospital, remember? It came through the cat flap after Smoky. You told me about the ghost that saved your life, that night on the motorway. So why are you lying?’

  Maybe it was her scornful laughter, or the accusation of lying, or the weeks of bottling up what he knew to be true, but something snapped in her husband.

  ‘Because I have to protect you!’ Tom yelled. ‘That’s what I do! I’m the one who’s supposed to stop all this shit from happening to you, not cause it!’

  ‘You still blame yourself for the narrowboat, don’t you?’

  ‘Of course I do! I was driving the bloody thing, wasn’t I?’ She saw the way his eyes darted to her mother, and a second sharper realisation stabbed her.

  ‘And you do too, don’t you?’ Rachel asked Olivia. ‘You blame him. Did you threaten him with going to the police after the asylum?’ She turned back to Tom. ‘Is that why you stopped talking to me about all of this? Did she get to you?’

  ‘Get to him?’ said her mother. ‘Listen to yourself, darling.’

  ‘I know exactly what I sound like, thanks. You’ve all done a very good job of making me out to be some kind of mental case. And I know,’ she closed her eyes and breathed deeply, trying to calm herself. ‘I know that’s how it comes across. But he knows differently,’ she added, opening her eyes again and pointing at Tom. ‘And that’s what really hurts.’

  ‘You want to know what really hurts?’ he shot back. ‘Seeing you sitting around here like a junkie – you don’t wash, you don’t get dressed, you don’t do anything around the house except stare at that fucking tablet of yours googling death and ghosts and your own bloody family tree, and what’s that about anyway?’

  Olivia turned to Tom. ‘I thought you said she was getting better.’

  She glared at him through slitted eyes. ‘You’ve been spying on my browsing history? You dick!’

  ‘Rachel,’ interrupted Korovina. ‘I don’t blame you for feeling stressed and angry, and I want to help. Do you accept that?’

  ‘Yes,’ Rachel sighed, suddenly bone-weary. There was no point fighting any more. They’d left her with only one option.

  ‘Perhaps it would be best if you could have a timeout for a couple of days, somewhere away from the people and the places that are upsetting you. We can go in my car right now. Would you like that?’

  ‘Yes,’ Rachel repeated. ‘I would like that very much.’

  Her mother clasped her hands together and gave a little tearful cry. ‘Oh my darling, that is so good to hear!’

  ‘Do you mind if I pop upstairs and get some things first?’

  ‘Of course not, darling, of course not. Let me help.’

  ‘Thanks, Mum.’

  Taking her handbag, Rachel let her mother follow her upstairs. ‘I’ll go and get a suitcase from the back bedroom,’ she suggested. ‘Can you just pick me out whatever you think would be useful? Nothing with too many laces or buttons, though.’ She held up her stump with a rueful smile. ‘Bit tricky these days.’

  There was actually nothing tricky about them at all, but it had the desired effect of making her mother’s eyes tear up. Now she would focus on finding exactly the right clothes, and not for one moment would it enter her head that Rachel might be more capable than she’d been before the accident. Her mother folded her into a hug, stroking her hair, and for a moment Rachel almost let herself enjoy it.

  ‘It’s going to be okay,’ Olivia said, her breath hot against Rachel’s ear. ‘It’s all going to be okay.’

  ‘I know, Mum. I know.’ She pulled away.

  While her mother went into the main bedroom at the front of the house and started opening drawers, Rachel
went into the back bedroom, closing the door very quietly. She crossed to the old sash window which overlooked the kitchen extension and opened it, wincing at the squeak of unoiled pulleys, and eased herself over the sill and onto the flat tarpaper roof, pulling her crutch after her. Her leg cast clattered against the wood, and she expected someone to come running to stop her at any moment. She limped to the far end of the roof and peered over the edge at the patio, the garden tubs, the jungle of untended lawn and shrubbery that had become overgrown in the last month, and finally the back fence. If Tom was looking through the kitchen windows he would see her drop down and she would be screwed. She had to hope that he, his dad and Ms Korovina were in the living room talking about her.

  This was going to be awkward, and quite likely very painful.

  She turned her back on the drop, knelt on her good left leg with her cast sticking out, and eased herself over, bracing her left elbow on the edge and gripping with her right hand. It made her hang diagonally and when she dropped to the patio with a grunt, the impact shot a jarring pain up her injured leg and into her groin.

  Move! she yelled at herself. Stop being such a baby! They’re going to see you!

  She dragged her crutch off the roof with a clatter and set off at a lurching stride up the garden path and through the back gate, sparing one quick glance behind her, but the reflection of the sky and trees on the kitchen window meant that she couldn’t see whether or not she’d been spotted, and so she pegged it along the alley to the road, where she dug out her phone and called for a taxi.

  * * *

  When Rachel arrived at Providence Nursing Home, Gigi was snoozing in her chair by the window, spectacles hanging at her chest, a book in her lap, hands folded over the top. Rachel could see how the old skin had sunk into every hollow, showing the sinews, veins and knuckles, like something vacuum-packed for storage. She wore a plain gold ring on her right hand; something about it was familiar but Rachel couldn’t spare the time to puzzle it out now when there was much more important business to take care of. Gently, Rachel laid her own hand over Gigi’s and squeezed.