Dead Branches

by Benjamin Langley

  “Why didn’t the police arrest him?” I said as we started walking again.

  “How do you even know he did anything wrong? The police have questioned a lot of people.”

  “But Mum, he’s a weirdo!”

  Mum stopped walking and put her hands on my shoulders. “Thomas Tilbrook, you do not speak about people in such a way. Jacob Radford may have his problems, but you can’t go around accusing him of being a child murderer without any kind of evidence.”

  “But Mum…!” I didn’t have an argument, but I knew there was something wrong with him. He was an agent of evil, and all I needed was proof.

  Aunt Anne was already waiting on the playground for Liam and Andy. I moved over to the door to Andy’s classroom in order to catch him first. When he came out, I said to him, “Don’t you think it would be a good idea to go see Granddad today?”

  “Brilliant!” he said. “Let’s go.”

  “You have to ask your mum. She’ll definitely say yes.”

  So, Andy dashed over to Aunt Anne while I strolled back with an innocent look on my face.

  “Andy wants to go over to see Granddad, is that okay with you?” Mum said.

  Perfect. We could talk through some of our ideas with him, and he could help us come up with a plan to get rid of the portal to the Underworld and bring Shaky Jake to justice.

  Granddad was in his garden with trowel in hand.

  “Hi Dad,” said Aunt Anne. “The boys wanted to come over and say hello.”

  “Hello boys, you can go now,” Granddad said.

  “No!” cried Andy, and Granddad laughed and opened his arms for Andy to run into.

  “You can leave us here, if you like. Granddad will walk us home later,” Liam said.

  “Oh, will I?” Granddad said.

  “If that’s okay, I mean,” Liam said.

  “Of course that’s okay.”

  “Well if you’re dropping them back, why not come in for dinner?” asked Mum.

  “That’s an offer I can refuse,” Granddad said, and then he got up and went to talk to Mum and Aunt Anne quietly.

  Will started prodding around in the ground with the trowel Granddad had left on the ground, and Liam and Andy were peering into the holes he made, looking for worms.

  “Now,” Granddad said, looking directly at me as I bent over the border, “that’s not your school uniform. You better step away from the dirt or your mum will have me hung, drawn and quartered.”

  I stepped back, just as Andy spotted a fat worm and plunged his fingers into the black mud to grab it. “It was John’s funeral today.”

  “I see. Well, you scrub up pretty well.”

  I moved closer to Granddad. “Why do some people get cremated?”

  “Some folk prefer it that way.”

  “It seems wrong to burn the body.”

  “No, there’s nothing wrong with that. He’s at peace now, and they can scatter his ashes someplace nice.”

  “Will you be cremated when you die?”

  “When I die? What makes you think I’m going to die?”

  “You’re not… but.”

  “I’ve already got a spot in the graveyard. Next to your nan. Couldn’t leave her by herself.”

  “I saw the police today. Outside Jake’s place. How come they didn’t arrest him?”

  “Why should they?”

  I sighed. I was going to have to explain the whole thing. “You know that tree that took your eye?”

  “Of course I know it. Damned thing.”

  “It’s a portal to the Underworld. Maybe when it took your eye it got this thirst for blood, or it might have been before. Do you know about anything else that happened with the tree before that?”

  “Well this is a tall tale,” Granddad said. He straightened his back and then bent down to my height again. “Nothing before that I know of, but it was a fair old tree then, and I don’t know its entire history. Tell us the rest of this tale.”

  “It’s not a tale, Granddad, It’s true.”

  “That may be so but let me hear it.”

  I told him about the dead-eyes wanderers, and how they possess regular people and force them to bring healthy souls into the Underworld for the demons to feed on. Will, Liam and Andy had stopped playing with worms and were listening in to my story.

  “And that’s why that poor boy’s body was found not far from the tree?”

  “Exactly.” I said. “He escaped and was coming to me for help. So how do we stop it.”

  “You’ve got a good imagination, and that’s normally a healthy thing, but you’re getting yourself all tied up in knots. There’s nothing so complicated going on here. There’s no Underworld. Someone killed that boy, that’s right, and we might never know why. It was a nasty, evil thing that was done, and we’ve all got to live with that.”

  “But the evil’s got to come from somewhere, right? People don’t just murder people for no reason?”

  Granddad couldn’t answer. “Let’s rewind a bit. You said something about old Jakey, what’s he got to do with this?”

  “I think it was him that took John.”

  “Oh, you can’t go around accusing people of things like that. That’s up to the police to do.”

  “The police were at his today.”

  “That don’t mean a great deal. They’ve been down to speak to Teddy a couple of times lately too. They’ve been back here more than once. Jake’s got enough to worry about without you spreading rumours.”

  “So, what can we do?”

  “You don’t need to do nothing. Soon enough the police will work it out, and things will go back to the way they were.”

  “But the tree, there’s something wrong there.”

  “You’ve got some imagination; I’ll give you that.”

  “There’s more. I think it’s taken Rodney.”

  “Rodney? What’s he got to do with this?” Granddad appeared to be shaking.

  “Dad was looking for him and couldn’t find him anywhere. Said he might have disappeared off the face of the Earth.”

  “I think it’s time I walked you boys home.” He looked round at Andy. “Go wash your hands under the tap before you go, or your mum will have me strung up.”

  Granddad walked beside his pushbike, the box of photographs I’d found the other day in the basket at the front. “You have a look through these,” he’d said as he picked them up. “That’ll take your mind off the underworld and murderous trees.”

  The road was strangely quiet as Granddad first dropped off Liam and Andy, and then walked up to ours. When our house was in view, we realised why.

  “Bypass is open then,” Granddad said, as we looked at the stream of traffic on the new road. It was far enough away to not be able to hear it well, unless you really concentrated on it.

  Mum and Dad were sitting outside on a couple of kitchen chairs when we arrived home, looking out at the bypass.

  “Bloody glad I stood my ground about my land,” Dad said when he saw Granddad. “Any bleeding closer and we’d be choking on the fumes.”

  I couldn’t even see any exhaust smoke from the cars, they were that far away. They never sat out here anyway and were only doing it to have something to complain about. I wished it was closer. I wish Dad had sold the land to the developers. They would have flattened the tree and closed the portal. John would still be alive. Or when they tore it open the creatures inside might have flown out and consumed us all.

  Granddad stopped outside with Mum and Dad, the three of them looking out at the road, and Will urged me to follow him up to our bedroom.

  “Look, Tom,” he said. “You have to stop all of this talk about the Underworld. People are going to start thinking you’re weird.”

  “Will, I don’t care if you don’t believe me. There are two ways you can look at this. Either someone killed John, because that’s what people do; they go around killing each other when they feel like it. Or people do bad things because some kind of evil being overtakes them, but i
t’s something you can stop. I know what I’d rather believe.”

  “But we’re not going to bring John back.”

  “Don’t you think I know that? I saw his coffin go through the curtain. His body was in there, and it was going to be burned into ashes. I know more than anyone that he’s not coming back, but shouldn’t we be doing all we can to make sure the person who did this to him gets caught?”

  “What can we do though?”

  “Nobody is going to suspect that we’re investigating this. I’ve seen Shaky Jake come backwards and forwards to the tree. We might be able to see something that no one else has seen yet.”

  “Okay,” Will said. “We’ll do something, but please, just give it a rest for tonight. You’re driving me crazy. Go have a look at those photographs or something. Take your mind off it.”

  Will had agreed to help. That’s all I needed. Maybe the distraction would be good for me. I went back to the box, and the newspaper article I’d glanced at the other day was still tucked down the side, where I’d left it. I looked again at the headline, ‘MISSING BOY FOUND BY LOCAL TEEN’, and stared at the picture. It was definitely Uncle Rodney.

  It was hard to make out all of the words on the paper as it was so badly faded, but it turned out that the boy had been missing for a couple of weeks. I moved it closer to my face as I tried to make out the name. There was a rot hole right in the middle of it, but it left ‘Jac ord’. The boy was found close to death, with heavy bruises on his neck. Further in the article his forename was repeated. Jacob. Could it have been Jacob Radford? Shaky Jake? Skimming through the rest of the article as best I could I saw words like ‘deeply traumatised’, and ‘hasn’t spoken since the incident’. The article finished with the phrase, ‘police are still investigating.’ Was this the moment that Shaky Jake was enlisted by the Underworld? He had to be stopped.

  Tuesday 3rd July 1990

  We had a plan. We’d need Liam and Andy to help out, and we wouldn’t have long to pull it off, but it was a chance to start checking things out. Before school I had another look through my investigation notes. So many ideas had been crossed through. All of the possibilities where John was still alive had been crossed out. Anything that involved his body being destroyed (such as spontaneous human combustion) was gone. We’d put the idea about alien transition to bed. There were a couple of persons of interest listed, but most of those were based on the fact that they looked like Top Trumps. The only idea that added up was the one about the Underworld, and the only person who we had serious suspicions about was Shaky Jake. I stuffed it into my bag and set off for school.

  The plan was simple. Me, Liam and Will had to sneak out of school after lunch and go snoop around Shaky Jake’s until we found evidence that he was some kind of psycho-killer. We’d be back in school before the end of the day, or close enough for Andy to be able to blag us enough extra minutes. It was a perfectly constructed plan.

  After lunch, just after Mrs Palmer had got us started on some maths problems Liam grunted.

  “What is it Liam?” said Mrs Palmer, clearly annoyed to be distracted from working with the kids on the blue table.

  “It’s my stomach Miss,” Liam said. He scrunched up his face in feigned agony.

  “Well I suppose you’d best go to the office to see Miss Harding,” she said. Miss Harding was secretary, school nurse, and occasional dinner-lady all rolled into one.

  “I feel so dizzy,” Liam said. “I’m not sure I can stand.”

  “Oh Liam, that doesn’t sound good,” Mrs Palmer said, and dashed over to him. She put a hand on his forehead. “Oh, you do feel hot.”

  Liam groaned.

  He was over-doing it, I though. She wouldn’t trust me with him if she thought he was seriously ill. “Do you want me to take him to Mrs Harding?” I blurted out.

  “No, I think it’s best if he gets some air.” She moved over to the window and pushed it open. “Come sit here, Liam.”

  “I think I’m going to be sick,” Liam said, clutching his stomach.

  “I’ve seen him like this before, Miss.” I said. “He’ll projectile vomit.”

  “Well you better go then,” she said and ushered him towards the door. “Are you sure that you’ll be okay with him, Thomas?”

  “Oh, I’m used to it Miss. I’ve been on holiday with him when he’s eaten too many donuts.” This wasn’t a lie. It was gross.

  “Okay, but you hurry back to class once he’s at medical, okay Thomas?”

  Once we were outside the door and a little way down the corridor Liam straightened up. He pulled the prepared note out of his pocket, then knocked on Will’s classroom door. He sheepishly put his head in, and then looked at the note. “Sorry, Miss, but could Mr Inglehart see Will Tilbrook in his office please.”

  A few seconds later the three of us were in the corridor together, where we saw Mr Jenkins. He wasn’t part of the plan.

  “What are you boys doing out of class?”

  “We were sent to find you, Mr Jenkins,” Will said.

  “Whatever for?”

  “There was a small boy stuck in the toilets by Mrs Harding’s office.”

  Mr Jenkins shook his head and went marching off, leaving the path to Andy’s class clear. There was an exit down to the field and swimming pool beside it. Carefully I pushed open the door, and Liam did the secret knock, quietly on the window. This was Andy’s cue to put his hand up and ask for help. His teacher, Miss Norris, bustled her way over to him, and while she was bending over his work, we ducked down past the classroom window and hurried along, as best we could, to the fence that surrounded the swimming pool. We took a moment to catch our breath, knowing that we were out of sight, and then continued along the edge of the field. If we were caught, we were going to be in huge trouble. They’d phone home, for sure, and that would be worse than any punishment the school could come up with. I looked back over my shoulder at the monkey puzzle tree that we’d planted for John. That was why we were doing this. The risk had to be taken.

  At the bottom of the field we scrambled into the ditch between the two elderberry bushes and jumped across the trickle of water at the bottom of the ditch. We were then on the drove, not far from where we’d found the sweet wrapper and the magazine. If we followed that around, we’d come out not far from Downham Close, and Shaky Jake’s house.

  The road was clear. That was the advantage of the bypass - we wouldn’t have to stand for long at the side of the road. Of course, the only people driving through the village were likely to be villagers, people we knew, and more importantly, people that knew our parents. There wasn’t a single car to be seen on our way to Jake’s house. First of all, we followed his fence around to the back. It was five-feet tall all around the back of his property, but there were a few knotholes in the wood. Peering through, I saw that his garden was surprisingly tidy. There was a slab path in the middle of it, and either side grass which had been recently cut. In the corner, was a shed. Jake was in there.

  “Maybe that’s where he’s hiding something,” Liam said.

  “The police might not have looked there,” I said.

  “Liam, go knock on his door. When he goes to answer it, I’ll jump over the fence and have a look what’s inside,” Will said.

  We heard the doorbell from where we were. Shaky Jake started muttering to himself, and then closed the shed door. As soon as he was through the back door, I gave Will a boost up and he was over the fence. He dashed over to the shed and peered inside.

  “How’s he doing?” I looked round, and Liam was beside me.

  “Aren’t you delaying Jake?”

  “I did a knock door bunk. I didn’t want him to see me.”

  “Will, hide.” I called out in a loud whisper.

  He emerged from the shed and then slipped behind it.

  “Go back and knock again. Give Will time to get out of there.”

  Liam went back round to the front of the house and rang the doorbell again.

  Shaky Jake had just
stepped onto his back garden again. “Rotters!” he cried when he heard the bell, but instead of going straight back out there he went to his grass pile and picked up a pair of shears from the top of it. “Bloody rotters,” he said and went back into the house.

  “Will, quick!” I said.

  Will popped his head into the shed again, and then pulled out a thick blue rope, and a dusty white t-shirt.

  “I’ve got to warn Liam,” I said, “Can you get back over okay?”

  Will nodded. He dropped the rope on the floor, but stuffed the t-shirt half in his pocket, and started running towards the fence.

  I ran myself around the side of the house towards the front, and almost ran into Liam.

  “Thank God,” I said, “I didn’t want you there when he opened the door.”

  “I saw him through the front panel. He was holding some kind of knife, so I scarpered.”

  “Bloody rotters. I’ll have you. One day I’ll have you!” we could hear him shouting at the front of the house. We made our way round to the back where Will was dusting some of the grass from his school uniform.

  “What is it?” I said.

  Will took the t-shirt and held it out. We could all see the Little Mosswick Primary School logo on it and recognised it immediately as a P.E. top.

  “We better get back,” I said.

  “No,” Will said. “Let’s see what he does.”

  We were all peering through the knot holes when he returned to his back garden. He saw the rope on the floor and dashed over to it then fell to his knees. He picked it up and cradled it in his arms for a minute. He then got up and went to the shed. He threw the rope inside then looked from side to side, He checked behind the shed, and then looked over his shoulder again. When he was sure there was no one there he went over to the grass pile. He grabbed his rake and pulled the whole pile to one side and dusted away some of the mud. He lifted the slab it had been hiding and pulled out a pair of gloves. Mopping the sweat from his forehead with the back of his hand he called out again, “Rotters. I didn’t do nothing. Why do you punish me?” He buried the gloves again, pushed the grass-pile back into place, and sat rocking on the ground.