“When is the funeral?”
“It’s on Monday.”
“Ah,” said Fred. “Well I have to make the alterations. How long are you going to be in town for?”
“Wasn’t planning on stopping.”
“Could you pick it up on Monday, first thing?”
Dad sighed. “I should think so. We’ll come back then.”
“Okay, thank you Trevor. Good to see you again. Send my regards to the missus.”
We left and Dad shook his head. “Monday? All that time to turn up a pair of trousers. Probably charge the earth for it too.”
“So, did you know him then, Dad?” I said, trying to change the subject.
“We went to secondary school together. He was a twat then and he hasn’t changed.”
“Oh.” I said.
“Come on, boy, let’s get home.”
But before we got to the car park, he stopped walking. He put out his hand and stopped me too.
“Wait here a minute,” he said, then he turned around and he was gone.
He’d left me outside the haberdashery. Mum sometimes went in there to get a bit of material. It always took ages because she’d get speaking to the woman behind the counter and they’d go on and on and on for ages. I think they knew each other from school too. I guess no one moves far from Little Mosswick.
It seemed like ages before Dad finally came back. He was carrying a bag from the tailor shop. When he caught up to me, he pushed it into my chest, and I had to quickly reach out and grab it before it fell to the ground. It was my suit. Dad’s face was red. He put two fingers into his collar, and you could almost see the steam bursting out.
“I thought it wouldn’t be ready until Monday.” I said.
“I had another word with him to see if he could speed it along.”
On the way back to Little Mosswick, Dad had me get a sweet out of his glove box for him. They were those horrible Fisherman’s Friends.
“You can have one if you like,” he said as I fished into the packet and took one out.
“They’re yucky,” I said.
“Suit yourself. You won’t get nothing else.”
They reminded me of the time we found the empty packet of them and that magazine. I peered into Dad’s glove box as I put the sweets away. If that’s where he’d shoved the magazine it was gone now. I poked about among the oily rags in the foot-well with my feet. It wasn’t down there either.
As we got close to Little Mosswick we had to go around the new roundabout. Soon, you’d be able to go straight over and drive all the way around the village without going in. At the moment there were some cones blocking people from driving down that way, but that was all that was there. It would be easy enough to move them out of the way and get down there. Most of the work was finished. The road was complete. There was a police car just the other side of the cones, and further down the road I could just about see two policemen walking down the road, but then we were around the roundabout and heading into Little Mosswick I couldn’t see them anymore.
Instead of turning down our drive, Dad kept going. I daren’t ask where. We left the village, and a minute or so later, he turned off the road, and I knew where we were going: Greater Mosswick; I had no idea why we’d want to go there though. Dad took the turning that led to the river, and pulled over by the pub, The Merry Maidens.
“Wait here,” he said, and left me in the car.
Two minutes later he was back.
“Thought Rodney might be here,” he said. “I needed to have a word with him.”
“The man in the suit shop said there are real monsters out there,” I said to Will who was busy filling out his Italia 90 World Cup wall chart. We didn’t buy the TV times, probably because Mum and Dad always used to watch the same programmes anyway, so there was no point, but Will had seen that this one had the chart in it and had asked Mum to get it for him. He had to forfeit his ice-cream that day, but he said it was worth it.
He’d not kept up with it since early in the tournament, but he’d put all of the results in, and was writing in the teams for the quarter finals.
“You’ve made me smudge it now,” Will said.
He was right at the bottom of the quarter final teams. It was ‘ENGLAND’ that he’d smudged.
“If they don’t win now,” he said, “it’s all your fault.”
“Real monsters, Will. That’s what he said.”
“He can’t have meant real monsters though, can he? That’s all made up stuff to scare kids.”
“Or is it?”
“Why don’t you go ask Mum what she thinks.”
As I was heading for the door Will said, “And pass the Tip-Ex.”
Mum was sitting outside on one of the patio chairs. We didn’t have a patio, just patio furniture on the lawn. She was looking out across the fields. I thought she was staring at the tree.
“Mum,” I said.
She kept staring dead ahead. It was like it was hypnotising her or something.
“Mum,” I said again.
She turned her head and looked at me.
“Are you okay?”
“Do you think the bypass will ruin the view?”
I looked out, past the tree. I could see two policemen out there, probably the same two I’d seen at the top end of the bypass.
“Listen to how quiet it is.”
I listened. I could make out a lorry rumbling down Main Street.
“It’ll never be this quiet again once that road opens.”
It had been noisy for months though, when they’d been working on the road, and I figured it would be the same traffic as goes down Main Street, only now it would be going around the village instead. But all of that was distracting me from the reason I’d come down to talk to Mum in the first place.
“Mum, do you believe in monsters?”
“No, don’t be daft.”
“It’s just, Dad was talking to the man in the suit shop, Fred, and he was said there were some real monster out there.”
Mum stared at me. “Did he say that to you?”
“No. I was getting changed. I overheard him say it to Dad when they were talking about John.”
“What he meant, honey, was that some people could be monsters.”
“So, there aren’t real monsters, but people can be monsters? That doesn’t make sense.”
“Don’t worry about that. How’s your suit? Can I see it on?”
“Okay,” I said and ran back upstairs to put it on. When I came back down Mum wasn’t sitting outside anymore.
I wandered into the yard to see if she was out there anywhere, maybe talking to Dad. He was out there, she wasn’t.
“What the fuck are you doing out here in that?”
I looked down at my suit.
He was marching towards me. “You’ve not had it five minutes. Do you want to get it covered in dust and dirt? Do you want to get grease and oil slarred all over it?”
He grabbed me by the head. His hands were that big that he could do that. They felt like they could wrap around my entire skull and crush it in an instant if he wanted to. He turned me around and guided me back into the house. “Now what in God’s name are you playing at?”
“Mum wanted to see.”
“And what made you think she’d be standing in the middle of the yard?”
“She was outside before.”
“Before what.”
“Before I got changed.”
“Get out of that suit before it gets wrecked. I don’t want to see you in it again till the funeral.”
As I slinked back through the kitchen towards the stairs mum popped her head out of the utility room door. “That looks nice, dear.”
I remained upstairs for the rest of the afternoon. I didn’t want to look at either my mum or my dad. I picked up The Secret of the Scythe, and remembered where I’d left it previously, having discovered the secret way to enter the Underworld. I read on and was making good progress through the book until a series of p
oor dice rolls left me very weak after a battle with a creature called a ‘dead-eyed wanderer’. It was all getting a bit intense, and when I put the book down Will was fiddling with the TV. I looked at my watch. It was time for the first of the quarter matches. It was another excuse not to leave the room. Argentina versus Yugoslavia wasn’t a brilliant match, there were no goals at all in normal time or extra time, but something weird and wrong happened during penalties. Maradona, one of the best players in the world, one of the footballing magicians, one of the superstars of the game, the man who claimed to have God on his side, missed. His penalty didn’t go in. I looked at Will and he looked as puzzled as me. It was more proof, if more proof was needed, that there was something wrong with the balance of the world, and it was quite possibly because of the evil emerging from the tree I could see out of my bedroom window.
Sunday 1st July 1990
The more I read of The Secret of the Scythe, the more convinced I became that the old oak tree was also a link to the Underworld. The description seemed to be almost identical, though I was going from memory, as it had been a while since I’d studied the tree closely.
“Will,” I called. He was still under the covers, though I knew he was awake.
“What?” he groaned.
“Wanna come for a walk with me?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“We won’t be allowed to go anywhere.”
I could barely hear him as his mouth was muffled by his blankets. I got off my bed and moved over towards his. “I only want to go out to the field. I need to look at the tree.”
“Why?”
“I need to check something.”
Will pushed the covers away from his mouth. “What do you need me for?”
“This is going to sound stupid…”
“What else is new?”
“Listen, Will. Something’s wrong with the tree. I think it might be a pathway to the Underworld.”
“You’re right, it does sound stupid.”
“It’s all linked: Granddad’s eye, the wasps, John, the thing that chased me the other day.”
“If I go along with this, what’s in it for me?”
“Don’t you want to be the hero? Don’t you want to solve the mystery?”
“No, I want gold and riches.” Will jumped out of bed.
“I don’t have any of those.”
“Okay, but if I come with you will you stop all of this fantasy crap?”
“If you see what I think you’ll see, will you start to believe me?”
“Tom, I…” Will rubbed his forehead. “I don’t think this is going to turn out as some great fantasy.”
“What do you think then?”
“Someone kidnapped John. They kidnapped him and tortured him. Somehow, he got away, and he ran, but he couldn’t make it. Some evil bastard as good as killed him. That’s what I think, Tom.”
“What just a man?”
“Just a man.”
“A madman?”
“Maybe.”
“Like Shaky Jake...?”
“Maybe.”
“So maybe it was just a man, but maybe he’s involved in the Underworld…”
Will sighed. He looked at the clothes strewn around his half of the room, then selected an appropriate pair of shorts and a t-shirt.
I found the page in my book with the description of the demon tree and slid a bookmark in place. If this was the same tree, what would we do? And who would believe us?
“Take Chappie,” Mum said, when we told her where we were going. “And don’t go any further than that field, you hear me?”
Chappie barely raised his head when I picked up his lead. He used to go crazy the second he heard the metal hoops clicking together, but if anything, he buried his head further into his basket to try to avoid coming with us. He did perk up when Will started to stroke him, and he arched his neck to try to lick Will’s wrist, and when the lead was around his neck he did hop out of his basket quite enthusiastically, but by the time we got to the door we were practically dragging him.
The fresh air seemed to do him good, and he took advantage of the opportunity to pee on a few weeds, but when we got close to that awful tree he stopped. He didn’t want to go near it any more than I did.
“So, what did you need to show me?” asked Will.
I fumbled with the book, eventually opening it on the right page, but I daren’t look down at the page in case the tree did something while my guard was down. I held the book out for Will to have a look.
Will looked at the passage.
“Read it out,” I said.
Will held the book in both hands. “After emerging from the thick brambles, you see a tree in front of you, and a feeling of intense dread surges through your body. Its thick trunk is scarred by a great scorch mark which runs from one side to the other and looks like a cruel mouth. Above it, two sunken knotholes which appear to have no end make eyes, and on one side, between the eyes and mouth is a tiny broken branch that looks like a wart.
Do you:
Wait in the bushes to see what happens 359
Put your finger in an eye hole 24
Stick you knife in the mouth 234
Twist the wart 112.”
“It’s the same,” I said.
Will looked from the book to the tree. A wrinkle formed on his brow. “I just don’t see it.”
“What do you mean you don’t see it? It’s exactly the same!”
“If you squint, maybe.”
“It’s close enough though, right?”
“Close enough for what?”
“In the book, the tree is a gateway to the underworld.”
“So?”
“Maybe that’s why it’s all going wrong. We have to find a way to block it.”
“That’s ridiculous.”
“No, it isn’t. Don’t you see, with everything that we’ve found out, that it all makes sense.”
“Why can’t you see this for what it is? Someone killed John because they’re crazy.”
“What’s inside the tree made them crazy. Ever since it first tasted blood, maybe when it took Granddad’s eye, its power has been building. We have to stop it.”
“You have to stop it, Tom.”
“I can’t do it by myself.”
“No Tom, you don’t have to stop the tree, you have to stop talking like that. It’s time you grew up and stopped making up silly stories.”
“That’s not you talking. That’s Dad. That’s what he’d say.”
“Well maybe Dad’s right. I’m going back.”
I didn’t turn to watch him go. I stood looking at the tree. The upper branches shook, though there was no wind. I stared into the eyes, long and hard, even while Chappie started whining and pulling away until it stopped shaking. There was a single tear running down my cheek. Fucking cry baby. That’s what Dad would say.
I turned to walk back to the house, Chappie glad to be hurrying away from the tree. I could see a figure on the drove, walking slowly and turning his head from side to side. Shaky Jake. I wanted to go over to confront him, to stop him from getting near the tree to get more orders from the underworld, but then he’d see my face and know I’d been crying. He’d know I was weak, and he’d use it against me. I couldn’t have that.
Instead, when I got in, I watched him from the bedroom window. There was a moment where I swear he looked up to me and I’m sure he was laughing.
I’d managed to avoid Will for the rest of the morning and afternoon by reading The Secret of the Scythe. It took a couple of play-throughs, but I got all of the way to the end. There were monsters in the Underworld worse than in any of the other books I had played through. I solved the mystery of the dead-eyes wanderers, who were said to slip through from the Underworld and possess the bodies of the living, their purpose being to bring fresh souls to the Underworld for the demons to feast upon. The book also featured the cruellest trick in the series. Often you would meet a fellow traveller who wou
ld help you overcome some obstacles, such as Sym in The Crypt of the Sorcerer, but Kyle, the traveller that you meet in The Secret of the Scythe, turns out to be possessed by the dead-eyed wanderers, and if you trust him, then, when you are confronted by another dead-eyed wanderer, he stabs you in the back. Literally. There are no friends to be found in the Underworld, and no one you can trust.
Eventually I made it through to the end, and gambled for the life of my master, but the game doesn’t end there. The Grim Reaper honours the deal but sets the rest of his demons on you. You are first of all forced to fight the chief demon, who is one of the strongest enemies in the series, and the only one I’ve ever found with the ability to heal himself by sapping your stamina. After beating him his skin peels off and he turns into a fire demon, an even stronger enemy, and I used all of my provisions to get my health up enough to be able to beat him. After that you have to flee the underworld, testing your luck to avoid being consumed by a fast-spreading fire, which the fire demon spreads with the last of his strength. But I was lucky, and I escaped. The fire chased me all of the way back through the entrance to the Underworld and then, just after I burst through, the tree is engulfed in flame, and burns down to nothing, closing the door to the Underworld forever.
I didn’t want to go down and watch the football with the rest of them, but Dad made me. “Waste of bloody electricity,” he said. “You watching it up here, all on your own, like some kind of demented hermit, when we’ve got it on downstairs.”
I was tempted to say that I didn’t want to watch it, but I did, and if I said that there would be no way that Dad would let me watch it.
I came downstairs as one of the reporters was talking to a man standing outside a mud hut. He was wearing a grass skirt and had a big mask over his face.
“That’s a witch doctor from Cameroon,” Will said.
I stared at the TV just as he said, “Cameroon will win, 2-1.”
“Bloody mumbo jumbo,” Dad said.
Part of me wanted the witch doctor to be right, just so I could rub it in Dad’s face (in my head), but only for a second. I needed England to win the game. They had Gazza, and his magic was surely more powerful.
Dead Branches Page 21
