The Jack in the Green

by Lee, Frazer

  Lying on one side and curling up into a fetal position again, Tom tried to slow his racing mind, tried to make sense of what he had dreamed—or thought he had dreamed. Then he caught sight of a familiar shape lying on the nightstand next to the bed. He picked it up, examining it with incredulous eyes. The screen was covered in scratches and the casing smeared with dried mud, but it was unmistakably his.

  His cell phone.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  “You found it then?” Holly said as she brought fresh toast and more coffee to Tom’s breakfast table. “Your phone?”

  Tom looked at her, eyes blank.

  “Found it on the bar last night so I popped it up to your room.”

  “On the bar? How in the hell did it get there?”

  “Someone must have found it. Honest folk in Douglass,” Holly said, smiling, “Despite what others may say.”

  “Darnedest thing,” Tom mused, checking for messages and finding none.

  As his night terrors had given way to a crisp, clear day, the conundrum surrounding the reappearance of his mobile phone had proven to be the least of Tom’s concerns. Dieter was still nowhere to be seen, his room had remained untouched, with his belongings still in there—undisturbed by human hands. With no local bus service in and out of the village, the only possible theory Tom had come up with was that Dieter had hitchhiked out of Douglass, still under the influence of one too many malts. But even if that were the case, it was still out of character for the big man not to have phoned The Firs to let Tom know he was okay. Or, if Dieter was bearing a grudge about having been summarily dismissed, at least to call Head Office to arrange a flight home. Neither, it seemed, had transpired thus far but there was little Tom could do about the situation. He had considered taking a hike through the woods again, in case he and the Laurel and Hardy Show cops had missed anything, but he felt sure they had scoured the surrounding area to the best of their combined abilities. Tom left his cell number with Holly, in case anyone called with news about his partner, and set about clearing the rather severe backlog of corporate paperwork that had mounted up since he’d last opened his laptop screen.

  One of the emails required that he fact check a couple of the claims made in Monroe’s original research spec for the biofuels plant proposal. He sifted through the subfolder on his desktop until he located the original field report Monroe had uploaded to the encrypted, shared network drive before he had taken his unceremonious nosedive off of the Executive Level. Scrolling through Monroe’s PDF, containing the first recce photos and blueprints Tom had seen from Douglass before being assigned, he caught sight of something he had overlooked before. There, amidst a lot of very dry data about seasonal rainfall, slope gradients and risk of flooding, was a photo of a grove. Tom remembered the strange, chilly feeling the photo had stirred in him when he’d seen it the first time at his and Julia’s apartment, in the kitchen.

  He used the magnifying glass button on his PDF viewer to zoom in a little and his suspicions were confirmed; it was the same grove that had featured so prominently in his nightmare the night before. He shifted in his seat, feeling uncomfortable all of a sudden. Making sure he was not being watched by Holly, he zoomed in closer on the leafy scene. There, slightly left of center, were the huge Jack and Jill Trees, their shared roots identifiable at the bottom of the frame. But it was what stood between the trees that irked Tom. Jutting out from behind the Jack Tree was a shadow form—a figure. It had long talons for fingers, its face too dark to see in the shadows. Tom felt his pulse quicken. His mouth dry, he took another slug of hot coffee without even bothering to add any creamer, burning his tongue in the process. Zooming out, he rationalized that the figure could just be a trick of the light and shade, and that the talons were in fact the sharp branches of a smaller fir tree; perhaps even the wingtips of a bird caught and frozen in time within the frame.

  Sudden laughter jolted him from his thoughts, and he glanced up at the window. Tom felt his stomach leap as a half-dozen bobbing heads passed by outside; their features horribly contorted through the uneven glass of the old leaded windows. He gripped his coffee cup tight, spilling the scalding contents onto his hand. Breathing heavily, he realized he was seeing a procession of manmade creations—scarecrows—as their makers carried them down the main thoroughfare into the village. Rising, he walked closer to the window and peered out. Villagers were carrying the scarecrows in an impromptu procession; some were slung over their shoulders, some in wheelbarrows. Some creations were so large, and so elaborate, that four people were needed to transport them down the street.

  Neglecting the remainder of his breakfast, and his emails, Tom put his laptop to sleep and went in search of his jacket. He encountered MacGregor, making a rare appearance at the Reception desk at the foot of the stairs. The wiry old man was bent like a willow over the desk, repairing what looked like a fishing net covered in fake leaves of various shades of green and brown.

  “You’ll be off out to see the scarecrows then?” the old man muttered in that rising musical voice of his, without looking up from his work. His apparent argument with Holly the previous night, unless he had dreamt that too, must have cleared the air. These were the first words the landlord had uttered to Tom since the unfortunate incident with Dieter and the protestors.

  “What’s going on out there?” Tom asked.

  His own voice sounded foolish to him somehow, excited as a schoolboy’s.

  “Samhain,” MacGregor sighed, world-weary.

  Tom climbed the stairs, two at a time.

  Chapter Thirty

  All around Tom, the sleepy little village of Douglass was in the process of transformation. He walked the main thoroughfare, marveling at the sudden explosion of life and color the length and breadth of the village. Pumpkins, turnips and squashes of every shape, size and hue lined doorways, windows, porches and walls. Makeshift stalls had sprung up outside several dwelling places; tables heaving with cakes, pastries, jarred preserves and other homemade produce for sale or to be raffled off. A large, hexagonal wooden tombola took pride of place on one such table next to a plastic-wrapped ham; apparently the grand prize in some wager to be had later in the day. And at every turn; the scarecrows.

  Each household in the village had created one or more of the stiff figurines, and they were now being lashed to gateposts, assembled on front lawns and on the little patch of green outside the post office and general store. Some were cruder than others, either because they were fashioned by the clumsy hands of children, or concocted by the lascivious minds of adults. One or two scarecrows wore masks of celebrities, cut out from magazines. Tom was unfamiliar with the faces; perhaps they were television personalities known only within the British Isles. The children who had made these scarecrows had poked little eyeholes in the masks through which the straw stuffing that made up the football-sized heads was poking. The effect was a little disconcerting; even more so due to the fact that Tom did not recognize the faces on the masks. Another scarecrow, presumably some cheeky old granddad’s masterpiece, was busy assaulting a blow-up sex doll from the rear. The locals and passing tourists seemed to find the risqué tableaux amusing, but Tom could not help but wonder if it was appropriate for a family gathering.

  Tom walked on, past a sign on a gatepost that read The Auld Abattoir. The gate gave access to the garden of a retired butcher, which had become the recreation of times past when the house and outbuildings were in use as an abattoir and retail outlet for cuts of fresh local meat. Two butcher scarecrows, man and wife, stood proudly in their bloodstained aprons over a little flock of scare-sheep. Tom stopped still in his tracks when he saw the daddy scarecrow was holding a real-life meat cleaver aloft in one straw fist. The scare-sheep were crudely fashioned from rolls of chicken wire and yet more straw, dressed in real woolen skins with bright buttons for eyes. They were crouched low on the lawn, as if desperate to evade the swing of that butcher’s cleaver, which looked like it could topple at any moment. Tom made a mental note to keep h
is distance from the bizarre, and potentially dangerous, scene.

  Farther on, and the scarecrows on display continued. In pride of place on the post office green was a scarecrow on scare-horseback. The steed wore a mane of dried flowers, mounted on strands of trailing ivy, and the rider was dressed in a chain mail tabard of fairy lights that glimmered even in the daylight. Tom marveled at the effort that had clearly gone into the creation and stood agape as tourists and villagers took snapshots with their phones and digital cameras.

  “Brilliant, aren’t they?”

  Tom had been so engrossed in admiring the rider and steed, he had not noticed Holly standing at his side. She was perspiring and out of breath, using the spectacle of the scarecrows as an excuse to take a breather. At her feet was a wooden barrel, big enough to contain at least a gallon of booze.

  “Did you carry that all the way out here?”

  “Rolled it.”

  “Where are you taking it?”

  “To the yew tree in the churchyard. One of our many traditions.”

  “Need a hand?”

  Holly smiled at him, still a little out of breath. She nodded and gave him a grateful smile.

  “Come on, everybody, it’s time to process to the churchyard,” Holly announced.

  Hoisting the sloshing barrel onto his shoulder, Tom walked with Holly up the lane, then right through the wide wooden gate and onto the track that led to the churchyard. A procession of villagers and tourists followed behind them, amongst the excited chatter of the few children in attendance.

  “So why the barrel—and what’s in here? Weighs a ton?” Tom asked, breathless.

  “That’s why I roll it usually,” laughed Holly. “It’s cider, made from the first apples of the summer. The Greysons make it, up at the farm. They keep the first barrel that they make aside until autumn, for the Samhain celebrations.”

  They reached another wooden gate at the end of the path. This second gate was older than the first, and warped with several seasons in the sun and rain. Lichen, the vivid yellow color of a sunburst, adorned the weathered stone gateposts either side. Holly led the way through the churchyard, toward a lone yew tree that stood at the perimeter of the gravestones, beyond two large, rectangular stone tombs. She gestured to Tom that the larger of the tombs was a good surface on which to set the barrel of cider down for now. He did so, trying not to damage the barrel by allowing it to slip from his sweaty hands. He knew now, in no uncertain terms, why Holly rolled the damned thing up to the churchyard. It would take an age for sure, but would mean a lot less perspiration.

  “So,” he asked, panting, “you all gather around a yew tree and drink this stuff?”

  “Kind of.” She smiled. “Look like you could do with a nip yourself, but we can’t open it, not until everyone is here.”

  They waited for the others to catch up to them, a crowd of some forty people or more. Tom spied Joe Greyson at the back of the throng flanked by his two big-shouldered lads; Rory, the kid who had been working on the rental car, and the other his younger sibling. Tom wondered if one of the swarthy women walking nearby was Mrs. Greyson. He would have to find a sensitive way of wording that question if he was to get Greyson on-side during the Samhain revels as Holly had suggested. Holly was looking into the crowd, searching for someone in particular.

  “What’s wrong?” Tom asked.

  “The old man, he’s supposed to be dressed as our Jack in the Green today to officially start the revels…”

  Tom remembered the fishing net covered in fake leaves he’d seen MacGregor struggling with earlier; so it was his costume.

  “He complains every year, but every year he wears it.” Holly continued, lowering her voice to a conspiratorial whisper. “Old fool enjoys it really—loves it, in fact.”

  One of the older men from the village approached Holly, asking what was up with the delay. A young lad, in his early teens with fiery curls, was dispatched to The Firs to see what was keeping old man MacGregor. The old villager exchanged a few more words before Holly nodded in agreement with the man and turned to Tom.

  “Would you mind cracking that open, Tom? We’d better get started. We still have the tombola to do; and the scarecrow judging.”

  Tom got to work on the cork. It was as big as a fist and had been wedged into the barrel by stronger hands than his.

  “Fergus, this is Mr. McCrae, our guest from the United States. Give him a wee hand with that cork before he does himself a damage…”

  The old man smiled a partially toothless grin before stepping in with a penknife he had whipped from his back pocket. He said something unintelligible to Tom before getting to work on the cork as the crowd looked on. As it turned out, the delay was a useful one; old MacGregor was seen hurrying up the path as fast as his bony legs would carry him, accompanied by the boy.

  There were hoots and whoops of delight as MacGregor made his entrance into the churchyard. He was dressed head to foot in the green leaves of his bizarre costume. His face was no longer visible, the net-like mesh beneath the leaves allowing him to see outside of his costume. Tom had never seen anything so bizarre. Well, not since the fornicating scarecrow he’d encountered back in the village. MacGregor looked like a walking Christmas Tree, minus the decorations.

  The redheaded kid led the old man to the front of the throng. MacGregor leaned on the boy’s shoulder awhile, huffing and puffing. When he finally got his breath back, he stood atop one of the rectangular tombs and made his address.

  “Samhain is upon us, lassies and ladies, and as the veil grows thin between one world, and one season, and the next, we prepare to give thanks to our old friend the Jack in the Green!”

  Right on cue, the cork popped from the barrel and the crowd cheered as one. Tom helped Fergus to right the barrel and avoid spilling its precious contents while the old villager knocked the faucet into the hole with the aid of a cube of loose rock marker from the foot of the tomb. Disposable plastic cups appeared as if from nowhere and Fergus got to work pouring enough measures to go around.

  The landlord bellowed on. “We gather under the yew tree, symbol of life everlasting, as one season bleeds into the next. Just as each year the Holly King slays the Oak King, and vice versa, the yew branches fall. And up springs new life! The wood of the yew is said to have magical properties and the berries are poisonous. In times long gone, seers and mystics used the yew to see into the other world and bring back wisdom from those dear departed…”

  MacGregor seemed to be enjoying his role as festival orator, hiding beneath his leafy canopy. His musical tones made a sweet lullaby of the words as they rolled from his tongue. Tom glanced at Holly as she watched her husband performing. She had love in her eyes, but could barely hide the yawn that was forming upon her lips. Tom wondered how much of an act she put on for the sake of appearances. He could not help but recall the arguments he had heard thus far via the thin walls at The Firs, and could not shake the suspicion that MacGregor had struck his wife during the last one. Holly was perhaps more like her elderly husband than she gave credit to. She was a performer, just as much as he was, putting on a front for the community at large.

  His speech at an end, the landlord’s arm appeared from a fold within his leafy garb. Fergus passed him a plastic cup, which MacGregor then held aloft in a toast to the crowd.

  “Wassail!” he exclaimed.

  “Wassail!” the crowd roared back at him.

  Tom had no idea what “wassail” meant, but soon guessed the base meaning of the expression. The cider went down quickly. Tom followed suit and glugged down his cupful, welcoming the bittersweet opportunity to slake his thirst after having sweated all the way to the churchyard beneath the weight of the barrel.

  His cup empty like everyone else’s, Fergus muttered another unintelligible sentence and he and MacGregor lifted the barrel, holding it aloft. A number of menfolk moved to the front of the gathering; Joe Greyson and his boys among their number, and each gripped a corner of the barrel too. Then, with anot
her cry of “Wassail!” the men swung and heaved the barrel at the trunk of the tree. It cracked open on impact, drenching the tree with foaming cider. Tom watched as the frothy bubbles fizzed and popped around the roots of the tree.

  “The dead will be drunk tonight,” the younger of Joe’s lads said.

  “Aye, and they’ll not be the only ones who are dead drunk!” said the other.

  Laughter rang out all around, and Tom added his voice to the mirth. Maybe it was simply the hit of the strong cider, but he felt now that he was blending in. He could see the camaraderie between the locals and tourists, promoted by the simple symbol and ritual of the tree and the shared alcohol. How many smiling faces the yew had witnessed during festivals, and how many sad ones during burials, Tom could only guess; it had to have stood here for at least a couple of centuries. At least as long as the church had been standing there, maybe longer. It felt good to be part of the revels, warm inside and ruddy-cheeked on a cold autumn day.

  As the crowd began to disperse, MacGregor had one last announcement to make.

  “May I remind you, lads and lassies, The Firs will be open for business in just an hour, so come sing your songs, fill your bellies and wet your whistles with us!”

  Tom searched the dissipating throng for sight of Joe Greyson, and found him ruffling his lads’ hair; giving them a pep talk not to get too drunk, no doubt. Seizing the moment, Tom strode towards them, lunging in with an outstretched hand.

  “Mr. Greyson, Tom McCrae again…”

  The atmosphere became frosty in an instant. The smiles fell from the faces of Joe and his boys, and they each regarded Tom with cold stares.

  “Aye, I know who you are. Run along, boys,” Joe finally said. His lads paused a moment, then headed off after the others, back into the village.