Chapter 19
STEPHEN
Stephen watches Detective Williams move around the farmhouse-style kitchen, finishing preparing dinner.
It seems he had already cooked most of it before he arrived.
There’s a large wooden table in the centre that acts like the kitchen island, a perfect base from which to conduct his research, so Stephen sets his laptop up there.
Neither of them are particular outspoken individuals; both preferring silence to awkward small talk.
It works for their friendship if they don’t speak too much.
He doesn’t want to waste a single minute.
His mind races with endless possibilities as to the origin and background story of the scarecrow.
Weird cult. Strange pagan ritual. Practical joke.
Only time will tell, but the detective seems convinced it’s a prank, having been told that by the locals.
But if Stephen has learned anything in his time as a journalist, it’s that people lie when they have something to hide.
And this village certainly seems to be hiding something.
What exactly that is is still open for debate.
His fingers dance across the laptop keys as they fight to keep up with his whizzing brain.
He uses his knowledge of keywords to fine-tune his results using the search engine, but the detective is right about one thing; there isn’t a lot of information on the world wide web with regards to the village and its history.
It seems he has to search a little closer to home.
‘Here, have a look at this,’ says Detective Williams, chucking a small magazine at him. ‘Page fifteen.’
Stephen reads the front cover first, never one to jump ahead of himself.
The Bethgelert Oracle.
A few baiting headlines pop out, bringing a smile to his lips. Even out here in the sticks, the people love a good catchy headline.
He flicks through the first few pages. It certainly holds a vast range of information regarding the village, its history and the goings on. The yearly aubergine competition makes his lips curve into another smirk. Apparently, when it comes to phallic-shaped vegetables, size does matter.
He navigates to page fifteen, curious as to what the detective has found interesting enough to warrant his attention.
Death to The Hanging Tree by Anonymous
The infamous tree atop the hill in Bethgelert has long been the subject of many a legend, myth and superstition, but it has also bred a very brutal and real curse.
Those of us who have been around long enough, born and raised in the village, have grown up with the tree overlooking us, casting a gloomy shadow across the whole valley.
The time has come to say goodbye. There will be a petition going around the village over the coming months for those of you who wish to save the tree, but come December the first, if enough signatures are not collected, then The Hanging Tree will be set alight and burned.
The families of Bethgelert have lived with the curse for long enough.
Our beloved committee member, Frank Hammel, has suffered the most over the years, losing his whole family along the way.
He may wish to save the tree, but others may not.
I hope you will join me in supporting the removal and destruction of the tree that has tormented our village for most of our lives.
This will be the last year the tree stands high.
May the souls of the dead trapped within its roots be set free.
Stephen lowers the magazine. ‘Rather a morbid article for a village magazine, wouldn’t you say?’
The detective nods. ‘Indeed.’
‘I wonder who wrote it and why they’d want to remain anonymous.’
‘Your guess is as good as mine, but it appears that someone on the village council doesn’t share Frank Hammel’s views.’
‘You said that there was talk during the village meeting about its destruction?’
The detective nods. ‘Yes, but the majority of the village want to see it remain. Frank agreed.’
‘Who were the ones who wanted to see it gone?’
Detective Williams is silent for a moment. ‘No one in particular stood out.’
‘Hmm.’
Stephen continues to search through the magazine, jotting down the names of the village committee, those in charge of running all the functions, and those in charge when it comes to land planning and building regulations.
It even mentions the best person to ask for help with gardening, extensions and the local kids club, which runs on Saturday and Wednesday afternoons.
‘Hmm,’ says Stephen again, writing down the last name on the village committee list.
‘Found anything else interesting, Mr Mallow?’ asks Detective Williams, glancing behind him from tending the stove.
‘Nothing yet, but it seems to me that the village committee members hold a lot of power in this village. Nothing goes ahead without their say so. Is that normal for a small Welsh village such as this?’
‘Hard to say. We didn’t have anything like that in Cherry Hollow, unless you count the weekly coffee meeting in the village hall. But yes, I got the feeling that Frank Hammel was the guy in charge when I attended the meeting last night.’
‘It appears that the village committee members go back some way. The Hammel family have been members as far back as the 1900s and so have the Davies family. Do you know of anyone by the name of Davies in the village?’
‘The butcher’s shop is called Davies and Son.’
Stephen writes a note next to the name. ‘So, that would mean that John Hammel would have been a member back in 1925.’
‘I highly doubt that. He was just a kid. Twenty, I believe.’
‘His father then, perhaps?’
‘A likely scenario. Would you care for another whisky?’
‘Please.’
Stephen ignores the detective while he refills his glass with ice and whisky and turns to the laptop, setting the magazine aside for now. He decides to turn his attention to Sophia Hammel and see what he can find out about her and her possible disappearance ten years ago.
It doesn’t take him more than ten minutes before he runs into a problem. Quite a serious one.
‘It seems Sophia Hammel doesn’t exist on any social media sites. Not in the past ten years, anyway,’ he tells the detective, who stops cooking and listens as he continues. ‘She has an old Facebook account that hasn’t been updated in ten years, almost to the day.’
He doesn’t say anything else, and the detective doesn’t press him further. Often, Stephen likes to speak his thoughts out loud, making them easier to decipher and organise.
‘Hmm,’ he says a few minutes later. ‘It would be helpful if The Bethgelert Oracle published their articles online, but it seems they like to keep things very private. Too private. Would a small village like this hold physical records of old magazines they've published over the years?’
The detective shakes his head. ‘Hard to say, but I can ask Karen next time I see her.’
Stephen doesn’t ask who Karen is. He doesn’t need to know the details, but if she can possibly help them in locating older copies of the magazine from around the time that Sophia Hammel supposedly went missing, then it would be very useful indeed.
‘Ah,’ he says. ‘Here’s something.’ He leans closer to the screen. ‘Apparently, Bethgelert made one of the national papers in January of 2015. Well, well, well … looks like the village committee weren’t able to keep everything offline after all.’
Detective Williams reads over his shoulder.
Ten years ago, there was a spate of disturbances in the village. A group of teenage girls were cautioned for loitering in the park and bullying another girl of the same age. No names were provided.
Stephen knows all about girls like them.
When he was a boy, a group of four girls had picked on and tormented him from primary all the way through secondary school.
His parents (mainly his father) refused to accept there was anything different about him and couldn’t understand why he didn’t learn at the same rate as everyone else.
They called him disruptive, rude and lazy.
Stephen wasn’t any of those things. Quite the opposite.
But those girls had been determined to make his life even harder by constantly belittling him in front of people and laughing whenever he got something wrong or made a fool of himself, which was quite often.
Nowadays, thankfully, society seems to understand learning difficulties a lot more, but from what Stephen has seen in the news and on social media, it doesn’t mean people are any less sympathetic or accepting of it.
In fact, with the explosion of social media since his school days, the bullying and harassment has increased dramatically.
He’s glad he didn’t grow up in today’s society where everything is posted online for the whole world to see and share.
He’s grateful his childhood and teenage years had been spent relatively social media free.
The only reminders he has from that time are physical pictures hidden away at the back of his desk drawer. He didn't exist online before 2007.
‘Do you think any of those girls were Sophia?’ asks the detective.
‘Unconfirmed, but as I said, she doesn’t appear to exist online as of 2015.
For all intents and purposes, she truly has disappeared, which raises more questions.
The most obvious one being why is no one actively looking for her?
There’s nothing, anywhere online, about a missing girl from this village from that time. ’
Stephen clicks a few more links in the search results. ‘This could be something … it’s a local school competition from eleven years ago. Sophia’s name is mentioned and … it looks like she won. They have her winning entry right here and … Detective, you’re going to want to read this.’
The Detective comes round and stands behind him, leaning over his shoulder as they read together in silence.
Death in the Trees by Sophia Hammel
Trees have always fascinated me. I’ve decided to turn my attention to the oldest trees in Britain.
It’s a well-known fact that the oldest type of tree in the United Kingdom is the yew tree, but determining the age of a tree is often difficult.
This is because the trunks of ancient trees are usually hollow, so there’s no chance of counting the rings.
However, the yew tree is different in this aspect. They have a remarkable ability to renew and continue to thrive, living for thousands of years. A yew tree can live for around 900 years before they are considered ancient, whereas oak trees are considered ancient at around 400 years.
Therefore, it’s not surprising that most of the trees in the running for the oldest tree in Britain are yew trees.
However, there are also several oak trees that deserve attention, including one that stands in the very village I live in.
Situated atop a hill in the sleepy village of Bethgelert, in mid-Wales, is an oak tree, locally named The Hanging Tree.
This tree is somewhat of a mystery. It has a girth of just under 10 metres and is thought to be over 800 years old.
What sets it apart from any other tree is its stunning location, growing on top of a large hill on the outskirts of the village.
It towers over the valley below, like an ancient statue, guarding a secret.
Unlike some large oaks, its trunk isn’t hollow. It is an impressive beast of a tree.
It is named The Hanging Tree for a sad reason, but it’s only had the name for the past 90 years or so. Back in 1925, a young man named John Hammel was found hanging from the tree after tragically ending his own life. He was my great, great, great grandfather.
He was discovered by his sweetheart, Carys Griffiths, who mourned him for several months before dying in childbirth; bearing his child and therefore continuing the family name. It’s a sad story, but one that has moulded the village of Bethgelert for nearly one hundred years.
Old trees are usually symbols of strength, resilience and a beacon of hope in the surrounding community.
The same cannot be said for The Hanging Tree.
Since 1925, it has been left to its own devices, having even been struck by lightning in 1960, severely damaging the trunk and one of its thicker branches.
The land the tree stands on still belongs to the Hammel family, but hardly anything is known about John Hammel.
He’s now buried in the local graveyard with nothing but his name to show where he lies.
It seems as if he has brought shame to the family name for ending his own life.
Nothing is known about him, but his family have lived on until this day, including me.
The tree itself is over 100 feet tall; an impressive feat considering its location.
It’s a shame it has such a bad backstory.
The question is … why did John Hammel hang himself from the tree?
Perhaps one day, someone will be able to learn more about the events of what happened in 1925 and why such a happy farm boy, who had everything to live for, decided to cut his life short one day.
The Hanging Tree knows, but who will be the one to reveal its secrets?
Only time will tell. That’s the thing about old trees. In another hundred years, it’ll still be here, watching over the village, hiding the secrets within.
Unless someone can uncover them first.