Dead Branches

by Benjamin Langley

  Fen Tigers, black shucks and shug monkeys. Were they real? Where were they coming from? Where did they hide?

  “So how did you get out of the cage?” asked Liam.

  “Well, once that thing was gone, I was able to pick it apart, one branch at a time. Tore my trousers to shreds getting out of there though. When your grandmother saw me, she didn’t know what to say. A right state I was. Of course, I had to go back to finish clearing out those ditches, but let’s just say I didn’t jump into another ditch without making sure there wasn’t already something else down there waiting for me.” Granddad smiled at us, then laughed as he stood back up straight again.

  “You know you told us about the Duke and his little zoo,” Andy said.

  “Yes.”

  “It that where the Fen Tiger came from? One of the escaped pumas?”

  “You know what, young man, I think you may well be right.”

  That didn’t sound right to me. There was something much darker at work than that.

  Granddad pointed with his stick, “We’d better get a move on or your mothers will carve me up for dinner, and this old flesh won’t be good eating.”

  Granddad turned down what must have been Catchwater Drove with Andy following close behind him. Liam nodded at me.

  “What?”

  “Something else to add to the list.”

  “What list?”

  “Tom! Don’t you pay any attention? About what might have happened to John. Fen Tiger attack.”

  Liam trotted off to catch up with Andy.

  “I’ve asked Granddad about that scar before,” Will said.

  “And?”

  “He never said anything about a tiger. He said he couldn’t remember.”

  “Well… maybe he remembered,” I said.

  “It’s not the kind of thing you’d forget.” And Will set off to catch up with the others.

  We’d turned onto Long Drove and the farmhouse was in sight. I was trying to avoid looking at the oak tree, so was looking down into the ditches as we walked. The tree always made me feel weird when I was with Granddad because I couldn’t stop myself from thinking about what it had done to him. I kept seeing his eye go flying out of his skull, and no matter how hard I tried not to think about it the eye always ends up going into the tree’s mouth, and it chews it up and laughs. Of course, if it’s right that it wasn’t hit by lightning until after this point then it wouldn’t even have had that scorch mark on it that looks like a mouth, but I can never think of sensible things right away and end up thinking of it in the worst way possible.

  Because I was looking down, I didn’t see who was walking towards us. Liam had to drop away from Granddad’s side to poke me in the ribs.

  “It’s crazy old Shaky Jake, look!” he said, “Think if we go ‘Boo’ at the right time he’ll fall into the ditch?”

  Jake was paying about as little attention to us as I had been to him. He was looking down into the ditches on the other side and muttering.

  “How do?” Granddad said as he got closer.

  Jake looked up. He was blinking a lot, and he licked his lips a couple of times, as if he was trying to decide if he should say anything or not. In the end he decided not but nodded his head in a more deliberate way rather than one of his twitches.

  “What did you speak to him for?” Liam said when we were a little way clear of Shaky Jake.

  “Why shouldn’t I say ‘ello?” Granddad said.

  “He’s crazy. He comes out of his house and chases us down the road.”

  “And what do you do to make him chase you? I know how you boys go looking for sport.”

  “But this one time,” Andy said, “He had this knife and it was all bloody and if he caught us, he might have stabbed us to death.”

  “Don’t be daft.”

  “It’s true,” Liam said.

  “Will? Were you there?”

  “It’s true. Sort of,” Will said. “We were standing by his kitchen window, and I say he was cutting some meat.”

  “And why did he chase you?”

  “Tom was pulling faces at him.”

  “You were too!” I said.

  “Have you ever stopped to think that if you didn’t go out of your way to wind him up, he wouldn’t react the way he does, and then everyone wouldn’t say he was crazy? If you left well enough alone, he’d keep himself to himself and no one would be any the wiser to whatever his problems are.”

  Granddad stopped walking and leant on his stick. “Now you boys run on back to the farmhouse, and I’ll catch up with you in a minute or two.”

  And we left him there. We took a slight detour off the path to head to Moon Base One for a quick meeting.

  “So, what have we got on John so far?” I asked.

  “Nothing. We’ve got nothing,” Will said.

  “No. Not true,” Liam said, “We’ve got loads of people from the Top Trumps, and we keep hearing the teachers talk about transition.”

  “Rubbish. We’ve seen no sign of him. The police are probably doing better than us, and this is our village.”

  “But what about some of the stuff Granddad was talking about today?”

  “Like what?”

  “Bog slime. What if something pulled him into the river? There are cards which show water monsters. What about evil spirits attacking him? What about the Fen Tiger?”

  “You can waste your time on all that crap if you like,” Will said, “But I’m going home before Granddad beats us back to the farmhouse, because then we’ll be in real trouble.”

  Andy dashed to the base entrance and peered out, “God, I can’t see him. What if he’s already back?”

  We jumped across the bank and ran down the drove and back alongside the field. We were sure Granddad had dashed for the farmhouse and dropped us in it until we looked back down the path and realised he hadn’t moved at all since we left him. We went into the house. I could hear the television on in the living room, which was odd, because Mum never put the TV on during the day. I made some drinks of squash which we all downed straight away, so I made some more. Mum must have heard the tap running because I heard the TV switch off and then she came into the kitchen. She stuffed a tissue into her sleeve.

  “What were you watching?” Will said.

  “Anglia News.”

  “Why.”

  “Oh, no reason, someone I knew was going to be on there, that’s all.”

  “Really, someone you know is going to be on TV? Who is it?”

  “No one you know. Don’t worry about that. Now do you boys want a drink?”

  Surely, she could see the drinks in our hands?

  “Whatever’s wrong with your eyes?” she said, looking at me.

  They felt like they were burning now. My tongue was also sore from where I’d scratched it so much, and even the inside of my ears tingled.

  “They’ve been itchy all day.”

  “Hay fever,” she said. “I must make you an appointment with the doctor, get you some medicine.”

  Dad had just wandered in, with Granddad just behind him. He must have heard her.

  “He still whimpering on about having bloody hay-fever?”

  “I wasn’t,” I muttered.

  “Ain’t no good living round here having hay-fever. You better shake that off quick-sharp.”

  There was nothing I could say. My eyes were welling up. It was the hay-fever. That’s all.

  “Liam, Andy – make sure you’ve got all of your stuff and I’ll run you home.”

  I waited until they were gone until I snuck upstairs to the bathroom where I stared at myself in the mirror, leaning in close so that the only thing I could see were my eyes. My lower eyelids were puffy and bloated, and the whites of the eyes looked almost yellow, as if a thin layer of pollen had coated them. Thick red veins zig-zagged towards my iris. In the corner of my eye, the side by the nose, was a load of gunk. I dapped at it with the toilet tissue. This was the itchiest part. It was like a little red ball, and I thought
, if only I could pluck that out, it might get rid of the itching. It might get rid of the hay-fever. It might stop me from being a stupid little cry baby. There was a pair of nail scissors on the windowsill. I could just stick it in there, and pop that bit of the eye out no problem. I picked up the scissors and slipped my thumb and finger through the holes. With the back of my other hand I wiped at my eyes again. I scrunched my knuckle into the left eye, and could feel it pulsing inside, trying to push back away, but I didn’t care as it had stopped the itching. I was going to do it. Cut the bad part out and live a better life. I took by fist away from my hand, and everything through that eye seemed dull, and unreal. I moved the scissors towards the eye, but my vision hadn’t cleared enough.

  “Tom.” There was a knock at the door. It was Will.

  “What?” I said, annoyed.

  “Come on. You’ve been in there ages. I need a piss, and the football’s going to start in five minutes.”

  “Go downstairs,” I called through the door. The scissors started to feel awkward in my hand, the finger holes too tight around my fingers.

  “I can’t.”

  “Why not?”

  “It stinks. Dad must have been in there.”

  I laughed. There was no way he’d dare say that if Dad was home. I had to let him in after that. I put the scissors back on the windowsill and opened the door.

  I added to the page on the Fen Tiger, which I’d put alongside the shug monkey and black shuck, to my evidence book. It was just an exercise book from the stash we’d nicked from Mrs Palmer’s desk drawers one afternoon when she’d been called into a meeting and the substitute was late. I flicked back through and looked at some of the headings. RUN AWAY, HIT BY LORRY, ABDUCTED BY ALIENS IN SCHOOL, SPONTANEOUS HUMAN COMBUSTION. Underneath each I’d written EVIDENCE, but there was nothing but speculation under each. At the back of the book was a separate section to record evidence that we couldn’t put against a possible cause. The only thing I’d noted on there was FIESTA and FISHERMEN’S FRIEND, but they could have been there for ages so we couldn’t definitely say they were connected.

  I had West Germany versus the Colombia on in the background. It ended 1-1 to the Germans, but I didn’t see any of the goals except for in the replays at the end of the match. I was too distracted by my book and trying to pull it all together to make some kind of sense. Each of the Top Trumps creatures we’d talked about had a page, and some were linked to people in the village.

  “What do you think about John?” I said to Will after he turned off the TV.

  “He probably ran away.”

  “But don’t you think he would have said something to us before?”

  “Do you tell your friends every time something bad happens at home?”

  I looked down at my hand, which was almost back to its normal colour, but the skin was peeling off in some places around where the blisters had burst.

  “Well what about some of these other ideas?”

  “What? Aliens? Fen Tigers? It’s all bullshit.”

  “Isn’t.”

  “Yes, it is, Tom.”

  “But Granddad said…”

  “Don’t believe everything Granddad tells you.”

  “Why not?”

  “I mean, do you really think that if he had a parasite in his brain it would turn his hair white?”

  “So, what should we do then?”

  “Keep a look out. Listen.”

  Then the door creaked open and we both stopped talking and it made me think of the way Aunt Anne and Mum stopped talking the other day when we kept going into the kitchen. Mum was standing at the door.

  “Bedtime, boys,” she said and stood looking at us for a minute. “And don’t forget to brush your teeth.”

  She was talking to us like we were five and six again. I can’t remember when she last reminded us to brush our teeth because she knows we always do it. But she even watched us do it too, and then even went as far as tucking us into bed.

  A little while after she was gone, when I think Will had already fallen asleep, I heard the front door open. It was probably Dad going out to check something on the farm or maybe to let Chappie out for a wee.

  Wednesday 20th June 1990

  Iwoke early and took Chappie for a walk around the field. Mum insisted on keeping an eye on me and said I had to stay in view of the house at all times. It has rained overnight and as I walked slowly around the field with Chappie, we encountered several clusters of horrible brown slugs. They were that mustard colour which reminded me of Mrs Palmer’s cardigans, and, since Liam was constantly going on about it, alien creatures too. These were odd slugs. Why weren’t they black? Could it be that they were alien slugs? Chappie stopped to sniff at one of them, and, surprisingly for him, chose not to eat it. He’d eat anything, but maybe he drew the line at alien servants. The alien theory was beginning to sound like to most likely, given that nothing else we’d come up with made any real sense at all.

  I took a shortcut across the field both to stay in Mum’s view and to avoid going too close to the tree. I’d not forgotten how it laughed after it had tripped me up. I could see someone walking up along the back drove though. They must have come from up the end of Hereward Close. I squinted and looking at the way the man was fidgeting as he walked, I was sure it was Shaky Jake.

  “What’s he doing walking around there?” I said to Mum when I got back, pointing at the tiny figure almost out of view on the drove.

  “Who dear?”

  “Shaky Jake.”

  “Don’t call him that, Thomas. It’s not nice to call people names.”

  “But why’s he walking around like that?”

  “He can walk where he likes. The droves aren’t private property. Hadn’t you better be getting ready for school?”

  At school we were spending the morning at the church to sing some hymns and learn a little about the history of the building, which meant that we’d have to spend the morning with the vicar, Reverend Lloyd Meath. He came into school from time to time and brought his guitar with him and told us stories about Jesus and sang hymns. He had a habit of closing his eyes for a really long time while talking, and his hand gestures were really over the top. We often saw him after school outside the vicarage where he spent a long time tending to his garden. We didn’t like to get caught in conversation with him though because he was way too serious, so if we saw that he was out there we’d cross over the road to avoid him.

  The whole class had to walk together to the church, with Mrs Palmer leading the way and Mr Inglehart following us. It seemed a bit over the top considering we didn’t even have to cross any major roads.

  Liam and I were towards the back. I told him about seeing Shaky Jake acting weird this morning, and he said that we should probably try to investigate him a bit more. I don’t know how we were supposed to do that, but it seemed like a good idea. As we walked through the gates, I held back a little and looked at the dates on some of the gravestones.

  “Look,” I said to Liam. “There’s a girl there that was only nine or ten when she died.” I pointed to the gravestone and felt a hand on my shoulder. I looked round to see Mr Ingehart.

  “Keep moving boys,” he said, and urged us into the church.

  Liam and I managed to get on pews towards the back for the hymn-singing part, so we were able to mouth the words and continue our conversation. “1952 – 1962 it said. Surely Granddad would have remembered that.”

  “What was the…” begun Liam.

  Mrs Palmer was looking at us. A fraction of a second later we joined in with the hymn too until her attention was elsewhere.

  “The name?” Liam said.

  “Don’t know. Ingehart stopped me reading the rest.”

  After listening to the vicar go on about caring for each other and the tale of the good Samaritan we did some rubbings on various bits of stone inside the building.

  “Can we do a rubbing on the graves?” asked Liam.

  Mrs. Palmer quickly moved him to on
e side, where Reverend Meath couldn’t hear. “No, you can’t do a rubbing on a grave! How is that showing respect to the dead?”

  “Sorry,” he murmured, with his cheeks reddening.

  “Could we do some from outside the building though?” I asked.

  “Well I don’t see why that would be a problem. Do not step on any of the graves though!”

  “Of course, she said yes to you. She loves you,” said Liam, and stuck his tongue out.

  We carefully made our way around the church yard, pretending to take rubbings at appropriate spots.

  “Look,” I called to Liam, “Ernest Barnham. Must be Teddy’s brother that Granddad was talking about.”

  “How old was he?”

  “Fifteen.”

  “I thought Granddad said he wasn’t a child?”

  “I guess Granddad was wrong.”

  We continued to work our way around the graves.

  “There’s Nanna’s,” I said. Then one a couple of spaces down caught my eye. “Liam,” I said, “Who was Enid Tilbrook?”

  He shrugged.

  “June 1931 – May 1952. She would have been only twenty when she died.”

  “Was she Granddad’s sister?”

  After school it was Mum waiting by the gates. With so many parents there it was oddly quiet when we came out. I’d updated Will at lunch time when we were back at school, and he said there was no point asking Mum about it. I ignored him. “Mum. Who was Enid Tilbrook?”