Chapter 3
GRAHAM
The more he stares at the old tree, the faster and harder his heart thumps.
His eyesight is far from being twenty-twenty, like in his younger days, but he’s certain he isn’t hallucinating and it’s not a trick of the light.
The eerie silhouette of the dark object swinging high among the branches is unmistakable.
He’s also sober, so can’t blame his delusion on alcohol.
Graham stands under the enormous canopy of the tree and looks up, squinting as debris and brown leaves flutter down onto his face, caused by birds landing and taking off from higher in the branches.
Yep.
A body. There’s a body hanging from the tree.
Holy shit.
He takes off his flat cap, readjusting his angle so the glare of the morning sun isn’t in his eyes because, from where he’s standing, the dazzling light is beaming through the leaves and branches, causing the body to glow around the edges.
Wait …
He’s wrong.
No, it’s not a body.
Relief sweeps over him, almost making his heart stop.
The shock to his central nervous system causes a surge of adrenaline, which his aging body isn't used to. He places his hand on the rugged trunk and leans against it, sucking in air as he attempts to get his breathing under control. If there really had been a body hanging, he wouldn’t have been able to get up to help them, not fast enough to save their life, anyway.
It’s impossible to tell how long it’s been hanging here.
The point is, it’s not a body, so he doesn’t have to rush to save anyone.
But what the hell is it doing up there?
What even is it?
He stares up among the branches once again, determined to work out the origin of the body-shaped object.
It isn’t a real person, but it is humanoid in shape.
Almost like a scarecrow, but crudely made, having no proper shape to the head, arms or legs, but enough of an outline to trick his eyes into thinking it was a person from far away.
Just sticks, straw and possibly hay is stuffed into an old overcoat to pad it out.
A rope wraps around the top part of the structure.
It looks like …
The scarecrow is hanging from a noose.
Graham scans the immediate area, almost expecting to catch whoever did this hiding and sniggering at the crude joke.
Is that what this is? A joke of some sort?
Perhaps it’s a group of local kids having a bit of fun, but whoever they are needs a hard lesson in what’s considered funny.
Halloween is only a few days away, so perhaps it has something to do with that.
Whatever happened to good old trick or treating?
Now, kids go above and beyond with practical jokes and jump scares, determined to get the next viral reaction on their damn phones.
His mind races back to Cherry Hollow and what had happened to those kids from twenty-odd years ago. They had also started out just having a bit of fun. It hadn’t ended well for them, had it?
Death. So much death.
Lives destroyed in a single moment that could never be taken back.
Graham shakes his head, forcing the old memories and dark demons out of his mind; the same ones which keep his mind active in the dead of the night when he’s supposed to be asleep.
It never bodes well to dwell on the past, and Cherry Hollow is most certainly a part of his past. This isn’t like that, he’s sure.
Not every small town is full of secrets, lies and twisted human beings …
Then again …
He looks up once more. He can't very well leave it here, can he? What if a poor unsuspecting dog walker or child comes along and spots it? He’s surprised the dog walker he ran into earlier hadn’t noticed it.
Although, it seems to only be visible at certain angles. It’s fairly well camouflaged otherwise.
It needs to come down. Graham’s made of tough stuff. He can handle a bit of a fright, especially after spending so many years in the police force, but he isn’t twenty years old anymore and climbing trees is a thing of the past.
He instantly thinks back to his childhood when he used to climb trees with his four best friends, only one of whom is still alive today.
Olivia Willows.
She’s not able to travel and visit him anymore, so he makes the long trek to the Lake District every month to see her instead.
Thankfully, he doesn’t have to step foot into Cherry Hollow, as she now resides elsewhere.
He stays the full two hours he’s allocated during visitation time, and they speak about everything from the weather to what the latest news headline is, never running out of topics.
They once spent the entire one-hundred-and-twenty minutes swapping their thoughts on the latest political catastrophe going on in the States.
There is one topic of conversation they never speak about, and Graham is glad about that because his stomach turns and he feels physically ill whenever he even so much as thinks about it. So, they avoid it.
It’s always bittersweet saying goodbye to Olivia.
He knows she struggles with the isolation and being away from her family, but her daughters visit regularly with their husbands and children.
When her husband, Frank, died last year, she’d coped surprisingly well, but Graham knew she was putting on a strong front like she always did.
She has friends where she is, but having inmates as friends isn’t the same as having a close childhood friend.
If Olivia could see him now, contemplating whether to scale a tree at the age of fifty-five, she’d laugh her socks off.
He knows if he attempts to climb up and bring down the strange scarecrow, he’ll most likely fall and injure himself, or worse, break his neck.
But he can't very well leave it up there. However, there’s a problem: even if he had springs for legs, he wouldn’t be able to climb the trunk to reach the more climbable sections.
There aren’t any footholds. Maybe for a young spritely youth with strength and flexibility on their side, but not for him, someone who struggles to bend down and put on his slippers some mornings.
Fifty-five isn’t old, but Graham feels as if he’s aging quicker than the average person of his age.
Perhaps that’s what the police force has done to him over the years: slowly caused his body to break down. He just hopes his mind stays intact.
There’s no doubt about it. He needs a ladder.
Sighing heavily, he plods back down the hill towards his cottage, grumbling under his breath as his knees niggle with the steep decline.
Nevertheless, he fetches an extendable ladder from the garage and a pair of clippers to cut the rope, then begins the arduous trek back up the hill, this time balancing the ladder on his left shoulder.
By the time he reaches the tree for the second time, his legs are on fire, his lungs feel like they may explode, and sweat is trickling down his back.
He dumps the ladder against the tree, takes off his cap and wipes his brow with it before stuffing it into his jacket pocket.
It may be late autumn but tell that to his body right now.
It takes several attempts to place the ladder in the right position.
The tree is uneven, and the slope makes it difficult to centre it solidly, so it won’t be at risk of toppling over when he’s on it, but eventually he finds the right location, ensuring its feet are dug into the ground, anchoring it.
The last thing he needs is for the ladder to slip either while he’s on it or when he’s up the tree.
The idea of having to call the local fire brigade to rescue an old man from a tree is laughable.
He’s pretty sure if it happens, he’ll make the local village newsletter headlines.
He takes a deep breath, cursing himself again, before slowly making the climb up the ladder, the shears in his pocket.
Damn it, the scarecrow is higher up than he first thought. How the hell did someone get it up here in the first place? Surely, it must have taken at least two people to do it.
He reaches the top of the main trunk where there’s a natural shelf to stand on, the huge branches stretching in all directions. Even standing on tiptoes, he can barely reach the bottom of the scarecrow, fumbling with the crudely made feet, attempting to get a grip.
He needs to climb higher.
This is ridiculous. A man of his age shouldn't be climbing trees. But he’s come this far. With a sigh, he continues.
Graham grabs a nearby branch and hoists himself up, wedging his left foot into a nook in the tree.
He is now level with the scarecrow. It’s an ugly-looking thing, that’s for sure.
Its face is made of sticks woven together and it has no eyes.
But why does it still feel like it’s staring into his soul? This is what nightmares are made of.
Graham holds onto a branch with one hand and reaches up with the other, holding the shears, stretching towards the rope.
Another two inches and he’ll reach the top of the rope that’s attaching the scarecrow to the overhead branch.
His muscles burn with the effort of stretching that far.
He’s almost there, but positioning the shears on either side of the rope is proving tricky, considering the rope is bound so tight around the branch.
He’ll have to settle for cutting through the rope below the branch instead, leaving a circle of rope wrapped around it.
Damn it, the shears are almost blunt. He hasn’t sharpened them since using them to prune the hedges around his cottage garden a few weeks ago. He uses every ounce of strength and effort to saw away at the rope; his arms stretched to the extreme.
The rope is beginning to fray. Then, with an almighty snap, it breaks, and the scarecrow plummets to the ground, hitting the branches of the tree on the way.
Graham’s shoulders sag with relief as he puts away his shears and starts the steady descent back to the ground. The scarecrow lays twisted at an awkward angle beneath, but the overcoat surrounding it holds most of it together, aside from an arm that’s broken off during the fall.
His feet touch the ground. He takes a steadying breath, straightening his own jacket before bending to take a closer look at the thing on the ground.
The overcoat on the scarecrow is a size medium and has a noticeable rip in the arm seam.
Whether that’s been caused by the sudden drop, or it was there before, Graham doesn't know. The overcoat is faded too; a very old design, like something you’d find in a fashion museum with garments from a hundred years ago.
There’s a dark stain on the right cuff and more staining around the collar.
He’s seen enough to recognise what dried blood looks like.
‘Shit,’ he mutters, standing up straight. He shouldn’t touch it anymore, but since the overcoat isn’t on a human body, he decides it’s safe to proceed with caution.
He checks the pockets.
In the left one, he pulls out two folded pieces of paper.
Holding his breath, he opens the bigger of the two.
It’s a faded drawing in pencil. It’s quite beautiful. It’s a sketch of the tree, but it looks different than in real life. Slightly smaller, not as many branches. In the corner of the sketch are initials and a date.
JH – Oct 1925
He turns the paper over, but there’s nothing else.
Someone drew this a hundred years ago, which explains why the tree looks different than it does today. How fascinating …
Graham opens the second piece of folded paper and reads the headline, his eyes widening.
At that exact moment, a cold wind sweeps across the top of the hill, rustling the brown leaves in the huge tree branches above. It sends a cascade of them upon Graham’s head, and a familiar icy tingle makes its home at the back of his neck.