Devil Tree

by Vernon, Steve

  If only the winter would come.

  If only the snow would fall.

  If only. If only.

  6

  Lucas dreamed of the tree, and of the boy beneath it. He couldn’t see the boy’s face because he stood behind the boy’s eyes. All he could see was the boy’s small naked form and the tree towering above them.

  The boy was staring at a thick plate-like growth of lacy white fungus that rimmed the base of the tree. Lucas had seen such growths many times before and whenever he saw them he thought of his goiter, thick and purple, clotted about his neck.

  And as they stared, boy in man, the fungus stared back with great pale eyes, spiraled rims that reminded the boy of ripples upon the water and reminded Lucas of the growth rings within the tree’s mighty trunk.

  The boy broke off a piece. It felt warm, alive, and as tender as a slice of Christmas pudding. He put it into his mouth. Don’t do that, Lucas shouted, but the boy did not hear and he ate of the fungus and in eating he saw.

  The rings began to spin, drawing him downwards into a twisting maelstrom, worlds within worlds, eyes within eyes, sucking, pulling and dragging him down.

  And then when the boy looked it was as if from a very long tunnel or a pit, and above him was the tree. He could see upwards through its maze of roots and branches, heaven and hell towering above him and beyond the stars and the spaces between the stars.

  On one side of its trunk the tree was covered with fungus and moldered with evil gray corruption and the decay of ages without measure, rotting eternally while the other side stood whole, pulsing with a vigorous green life blood, rattling its needles like an endless arsenal of sabers, wreathed in the darkly glowing splendor of an unholy immortality.

  And then the boy climbed upwards using the tangled web of rootlets, up into the hollow of the trunk, climbing upwards into the darkness, and Lucas felt the tree turning end over end, raising itself and spinning like a great baton until they came to the end of the trunk, staring downwards towards the ground, towards the pale upturned face of a dead man who stood upon a single leg of twisted pine.

  7

  Hunter’s moon.

  Harvest moon.

  Duvall sat in the dark, watching, waiting, wanting to kill.

  I will have her, he thought.

  Again and again, I will have her.

  She will be mine.

  Chapter Eighteen

  There was a time before sundown when the trees of the forest grew stark against the twilight sky. They separated and stood a little taller, looming above the forest like great dark gods.

  Lucas stole from the cabin and made for the forest. He didn’t hurry. There was no room for haste in this dangerous game he undertook. He wore a blanket wrapped about him in a manner that he hoped would resemble a dress.

  He was sure Duvall was watching from the woods. Hopefully he’d only see what would look to be Tamsen moving across the clearing, perhaps to relieve herself, perhaps for some fresh air.

  In addition to the robe, Lucas brought his pipe, his axe, the boy’s clasp knife, a sack full of raw potatoes and a skin full of water, as well as the noose and rope slung neatly over his shoulder. He made for a bulky Tamsen, to be sure, but perhaps the poor lighting would fool Duvall, at least until Lucas made it across the clearing.

  Lucas held his breath as he walked. He felt the unguessable weight of an evil eye sighting down a long musket barrel, bearing down upon his unprotected back.

  “Yea though I walk through the valley,” he whispered.

  Praying didn’t help much but it reminded him to breathe.

  2

  Duvall hunkered down behind the shelter of a stump, staring remorselessly into the clearing. He kept his musket aimed at the cabin door. It had to be a clean kill. He didn’t want the man to suffer. He bore him no ill will.

  Lucas was just in his way.

  He’d seen Tamsen leave the cabin. He hadn’t yet seen her return. Maybe she’d gone to the river to bathe, or perhaps she had gone to gather roots.

  What was that?

  A foot step?

  The creak of a branch?

  Duvall shot a quick glance about himself before deciding it was just the wind. He shook his head slowly. He wasn’t worried. Sooner or later the godsman would leave his hole like a rabbit thinking itself safe from the wolf. He had nothing but time to watch and wait.

  “Time to kill,” he whispered, with a chuckle.

  A rock struck Duvall’s arm as he turned in reaction to the sound of a figure crashing through the bushes towards him.

  His arm numbed.

  He caught a glimpse of flashing steel glinting in the morning sun, swinging downwards. Duvall rolled, catching the haft of the axe across his shoulder still bruised from Tamsen’s heavy cauldron. He howled with pain, telling himself to hang on, but he dropped the damn gun anyways.

  Lucas grunted with the effort of the swing, lost his balance and toppled forward across Duvall’s back. As he fell he grabbed for the musket, seeing it slip from the other man’s grip. Duvall caught hold of Lucas’s good leg, pulling him back from the musket. Lucas kicked out with his wooden leg, catching Duvall squarely in the teeth. Duvall spat out a tooth and pulled his knife. Lucas froze, torn between reaching for the axe, the rifle or his knife.

  Duvall snarled, drove inwards and upwards, a solid swing to the gut. Lucas grabbed at the knife, feeling the blade hissing wetly between his fingers. Duvall kicked him away and went for the musket.

  Lucas got to his feet, still searching for the stomach wound that had surely disemboweled him, spilling potatoes from the sack that had caught the blow, slamming headlong into the back of a surprised Duvall, who’d been equally certain he’d gutted the man.

  Duvall dropped a heavy fist across Lucas’s back. Lucas grabbed at Duvall’s crotch. Duvall kicked, catching Lucas in the belly.

  Neither of the men had said a word as of yet.

  Duvall tucked his arm about Lucas’s exposed head then deliberately fell backwards. Lucas tried to bite him but it was a futile attempt. Momentum carried the two of them over, driving the top of Lucas’s skull into the hard packed earth.

  Lucas lay stunned. His left hand scuttled like a spider, independent of thought, searching for some kind of weapon.

  Duvall grabbed up the musket.

  Lucas caught hold of a stick, probably dead and rotten. He swung it all the same. The stick was sound and cracked against Duvall’s shin. Duvall howled, almost dropping the musket. Lucas clambered to his feet. Duvall, sensing defeat, turned and ran. Lucas stared into the forest, praying that the next sight he saw wasn’t Duvall taking aim.

  He thought he saw a deer, the black buck again, standing behind the concealment of a clump of evergreen, nonchalantly chewing on a strip of bark. It was strange, he thought, how the deer seemed to be higher than it should have been, as if it were standing upon a small rise, or perhaps as if its four legs were supported by nothing at all.

  He bent his head, shook it, trying to clear it of the notion.

  When he looked again, the deer had vanished.

  3

  Duvall headed straight for the tree.

  Lucas figured he had to get there first. It wouldn’t be easy on one leg, yet he couldn’t take the chance of letting Duvall get away.

  He wrapped a bit of cloth, torn from the gutted sack of potatoes, about his wounded hand, trying not to stare at the lacy red rivulets slithering down along his forearm. He dropped the water as well as what was left of the potato sack. If he were out overnight he would have to forage. He picked up the axe and jammed it down his belt and headed off for the tree.

  After a few minutes of hard running his breath burnt within his lungs. Nearly there? It was hard to think. He was sweating. A branch reached for his eye. He ducked, stumbled, grabbed for a breath, and hobbled onwards.

  Half-a-step, half-a-step, half-a-man.

  The rough open grain of the wooden leg chafed the skin upon his stump. There was no time to stop or re
st.

  Let the wood drink what blood he could spare.

  He was nearly there.

  He was wheezing like his lungs had transformed into a pair of worn out bellows. He forced himself to slow down.

  Duvall was waiting there for him. Standing beneath the tree, as still as death, the musket casually hanging in his right hand.

  “You have come a long way to die, godsman.”

  Lucas took a step back, too late, and Duvall fired.

  For a moment Lucas was back in the river. Time slowed and even reversed itself. He took his first step backwards, wanting to take so many more, looking for a rock or bush or leaf to hide behind.

  But there was nothing.

  He saw Duvall raise the musket to his shoulder, taking aim.

  He squeezed the trigger and then vanished in a cloud of black powder smoke.

  Lucas took a second backward step. He tried to outrun death as the musket ball hurtled towards him. It was the root that saved him; the root that he would swear had not been there when he had first approached. Halfway through his second backward step, the wooden snare snagged his false foot, twisting it sharply as his momentum carried him crashing towards the ground.

  He felt, rather than heard, the musket ball strike the trunk of the tree that saved him; felt it reverberating through the very fiber of the tree, singing through the sweet blessed agony of his gashed hand, assuring him he was still alive.

  He heard the forest howl in pain and indignation or maybe he just imagined it. He reached up, caught hold of the trunk and used it to raise himself to a standing position. Duvall would not wait forever. Lucas attacked, gambling that Duvall would be busy reloading.

  Strangely, Duvall did nothing. The musket was nowhere to be seen. Duvall stood writhing in some bizarre sort of semi-pirouette, digging his hands about his throat like a man who had swallowed a fish bone. Lucas approached carefully, breathless and wary of some new trick, his axe held before him like a shield.

  What was Duvall up to?

  As Lucas drew closer he saw.

  Duvall clutched two spiky branches, pressing them about his throat, pushing them into his flesh, blackening his face. It was the tree catching hold of Duvall’s throat like a great arboreal strangler. The tree was hanging Duvall, just what Lucas had envisioned when he’d first wove the noose.

  Only the tree couldn’t quite manage the trick. As soon as it raised him from his feet, Duvall struggled fiercely, toe-dancing across the shifting roots that churned like hungry waves trying to trip him up.

  Or were they holding him up? Drawing out the torment?

  Lucas couldn’t decide.

  He stepped closer.

  It shouldn’t be this hard, should it? Something as strong as the tree ought to be able to snap Duvall’s neck.

  Duvall raised his hands imploringly.

  Was he begging for the axe or a merciful shot?

  Then Lucas finally understood.

  The tree wanted him to end it. He noticed the shovel, leaning by the tree, as if it had grown there. Perhaps Duvall had brought the shovel here to bury Lucas with. Perhaps the devil tree had magicked it up.

  It didn’t really matter.

  Lucas dropped the axe to the ground. He stepped around Duvall’s twisting form and picked up the shovel. It was heavier than the axe. It felt good in his hands. Somehow right.

  The blood from his knife-sliced palm soaked and bonded into the wooden handle. Lucas cocked his head, ever so slightly and turned towards Duvall, examining him like a cat might study a helpless mouse.

  And then Lucas smiled and laughed softly.

  He swung the shovel in a low, stooping arc. It made a soft meaty chunking sound as it bit the first spade full of dirt from beneath Duvall’s feet. Duvall kicked at the shovel in desperation, unable to reach Lucas. His struggles only choked him further. He opened his mouth wide in protest.

  Lucas heard nothing, save the wind that whispered deep inside his brain.

  He took a second shovelful.

  A root slithered sideways, clearing Lucas’s path.

  It took a good quarter hour of toe dancing and digging before Duvall’s feet no longer met the earth. The last few minutes passed quickly, because Duvall no longer had the strength to kick back.

  Lucas stood and leaned on the shovel like a crutch. His breathing was heavy and slow. He licked his lips as he studied Duvall’s final jig.

  He was tired.

  It was taking far too long.

  More, the tree whispered. I want more.

  “You shall have it,” Lucas answered.

  He studied the man, kicking and squirming like a fly upon a pin. With a carpenter’s eye he gauged the distance between the two of them.

  He let the shovel drop.

  Then, all at once, he leaned forward and allowed himself to fall, grabbing and snaring Duvall’s legs, coming down upon them with his full weight.

  The fall hurt.

  It was the third or fourth time that he’d fallen today.

  He scraped his lip on the bark of the tree and a lucky kick caught him soundly between the eyes. He almost blacked out but his pain and sacrifice was rewarded with a small, sharp crack, the barest whisper of a sound like the breaking of a distant twig.

  He released Duvall’s legs and lay upon the ground, kowtowing to the dead wonder of the man hanging upon the devil tree, nearly burying his face in the roots of the tree.

  He breathed quietly.

  He felt calm.

  It was nearly over.

  He rose slowly. His leg pained him and his hand still bled. He carefully rewrapped the bandage, picked up the shovel and began to dig.

  4

  Lucas almost crossed himself after arising from Duvall’s freshly dug grave.

  It was a reflex, really. He halted the gesture in midair. Instead, he lowered his hand, masking the reflex by beating the dirt from his clothes with slow and careful movements as if someone were watching him with disapproving eyes.

  He stared upwards at the tree and then down to the stump of a leg nestled snugly in its wooden cradle and then to the freshly turned soil. He let his gaze rest there, and then let it rise again until he stared at the tree.

  “Are you real?” he whispered, surprised by the sudden invasion of his own voice.

  There was no answer.

  What was he doing wrong?

  “The boy said the tree needs blood,” he said to himself.

  Lucas stared at his wounded hand. The knife wound had begun to scab over. The cloth he’d wrapped about it stuck to its stiffening surface. He splayed his palm open against the rough bark of the devil tree. With a sudden angry movement he dragged the gash across the bark. He hissed softly, gritting his teeth, biting back a scream. It would not have been proper to scream here, beneath the devil tree.

  It would have been too much like screaming in a church.

  He dragged the open gash about the tree, ringing and wreathing its trunk in thin crimson splendor.

  “Are you real?” he asked again, louder still.

  Like a dead leaf caught in an updraft his gaze drifted upwards, until it settled upon the very place Cord fell from, so very long ago.

  “Can you give me what I want?”

  Lucas placed his other hand on the tree. He moved it upwards until he found a convenient handhold, a sharp-toothed broken branch.

  “You know what I want,” he whispered excitedly. “Give it to me.”

  He began to climb, tentatively at first, awkwardly because of his wooden leg but then something changed. He felt the wood moving within the hand-carved stump. The fibers of the pine probed into the muscles and tissue of his amputated leg. He clambered up the tree with the itchy furtive eagerness of a young boy at play.

  5

  Tamsen thought it was Duvall standing in the doorway behind her. She felt his heavy presence and piney stink. She turned slowly, unsure of her feelings. She was surprised to see Lucas standing there.

  The musket tucked beneath his
arm, told the tale.

  “It is finished?” she asked.

  “He is dead.”

  She came to him slowly, unsure of how to deal with this new creature before her. He looked like he’d stepped from the grave. His clothes were torn, tattered and stiff with dirt. His right hand was wrapped in a dirty pitch-streaked rag and his arm was caked with dried blood.

  “How?”

  “It isn’t important, is it?”

  It wasn’t. Life had turned and she would adapt. She turned back to the fire.

  She trembled at the sound of his approach.

  When he touched her shoulder she almost screamed.

  “I want you,” he said.

  He gently but firmly pulled her around to face him.

  She stared fearfully into his deep cold eyes. Had they ever been so piney green?

  He pulled her to him and kissed her hard.

  “I want you,” he spoke into her lips.

  She looked with distaste at his grubby hands, lined and cracked with grime, dirt pushed beneath his nails, stained with blood. But worst was the high sweet aroma of the pine, assaulting her senses.

  “Lucas,” she protested. He silenced her with a harder kiss. The longing she’d dammed up for so long pushed away all fear and distaste and she returned his kisses, loving the dirt and the filth, the pure and pine heavy stink of the man.

  He tore her dress open. She pulled his shirt away. They joined together in the dirt. It was mating, not love. Just a meeting of meat, their flesh hammering together, slamming into her, up against the rough wooden walls, driving deep, the piney stink, until she screamed in fearful passion.

  Afterwards he seemed sheepishly guilty. He found his pipe and lit it. He studied the edge of his axe in a contemplative manner. Would he kill her now? Cut her up like kindling?

  He took up his stone and spat upon it. Even his spit was dirty. He stroked the already sharp blade. He looked towards her, straight through her, as if he’d forgotten her existence.

  “Go to sleep,” he said. “You are tired.”

  And suddenly, she was.

  6

  Later that night Tamsen lay awake, listening to the steady sawing whisper of Lucas’s snores as he slumbered obliviously beside her. His sleep seemed dreamless and she thanked God for that.