Chapter 33
STEPHEN
Leaving the detective to root around and study the scarecrow some more - something he’s happy to avoid - Stephen makes his way up the hill again.
It’s a much easier task than it had been last night with the surrounding darkness closing in and trying to take his breath away.
Now, in the late morning light, his trip up the hill is a delightful experience, enabling him to see across the valley below, as well as the village and neighbouring houses and farms. He feels as if he’s climbing to the top of the world, the tree a large welcoming beacon ahead.
His head is still a little fuzzy, but the pain and dizziness comes and goes. Forgetting simple words is a new symptom though. Quite discon … discon … confusing.
Whatever he had seen earlier under the tree isn’t there now, but how could it have been there at all?
He’d seen a person standing at the base of the tree, staring down the hill at him, calling to him, beckoning him closer.
He’d been too far away to make out any recognisable features, but the figure had been male, young, dressed in old farmer-type clothes. A local, perhaps?
He thinks back to the farmer who’d stared at him in the village and the eerie feeling of being followed as he’d walked along the road with the detective towards the farms. That farmer had been older, not young.
Detective Williams hadn’t noticed the farmer boy under the tree, but then again, he hadn’t been looking, had he? An odd sensation warms his chest as he thinks back to the moment.
Could it be …
Stephen reaches the top of the hill and the base of the tree. He scans the ground, littered with fallen acorns, not quite sure what he’s looking for. He won’t know until he sees it.
There’s a fallen part of a large branch, which is perfect for a make-shift bench; a few beer cans and crisp packets discarded in the area.
He hadn’t noticed them last night. He picks them up and puts them in a pile, ready for when he heads back down to the cottage.
There’s nothing he despises more than littering.
It’s an insult to the landscape, to the beauty of the world.
Those who litter, who discard their rubbish without a second thought, are as bad as petty criminals in his eyes.
Stephen circles around the tree twice, ensuring he checks further afield too, approximately twenty feet in every direction.
Not only is he searching for rubbish, but for any clue he may have missed.
He reaches the point where he’s going to give up, but then notices a piece of wood sticking out of the ground, almost invisible behind a patch of long grass and a small thorn bush.
The grass is fairly short up here, which means that sheep must graze regularly, but he can’t see any close by.
Crouching, he grasps the wooden post and pulls, but for his troubles he comes away with a scratch across the back of his hand from an errant thorn.
He yanks his hand away, cursing under his breath and tries again, this time using his foot to stamp on the thorn bush.
The wood buried inside isn’t coming out easily.
In fact, it’s buried deep in the ground too.
Possibly a fence post, but there is no fencing or wire around to indicate that.
It takes the best part of five minutes before Stephen releases the post from the ground and frees it from the thorn bush it has been trapped inside for God only knows how long. The post is snapped at the base, close to the ground, clearly rotten and weak.
For his effort, all he has in his hand is a post, but near the top is a random nail stickling half out of the wood.
It seems, at one point or another, another piece of wood has been attached to the post, like a make-shift cross.
Perhaps this is a grave marker of some sort.
Or, if not a grave, then a marker to commemorate someone. Sophia, maybe?
Using the post to stamp the rest of the grass and thorns away, Stephen searches further, eventually finding a second plank of wood, approximately two feet long, buried in the earth. It’s rotten and covered in dirt, so he does his best to remove the grime.
The plank has certainly been attached to the post at one point or another, as it has a large crack down the centre, where the nail would have pierced it.
There doesn’t appear to be any engraving, but it’s so filthy that it may indeed be hiding an inscription, so Stephen places it on the ground ready to take down to the cottage and clean.
He’s not finished up here yet.
The tree has been pulling him in the whole time he’s been close by. He can’t explain it. It wants him here. The longer he spends around the tree, the better he feels. His headache is lifting, his head clearing. Words make sense again.
Stephen steps closer to the tree and places a hand on its rugged bark, closing his eyes.
He takes a deep breath, listening, feeling the coarseness under his palm.
He swears he can feel a heartbeat. He looks up, into the browning leaves and branches above, wondering if by some ridiculous miracle, the scarecrow is back hanging there.
It is not.
If only this tree could talk. It’s Stephen’s job to speak for it.
There are a hundred or more stories waiting to be told, trapped within the trunk, its branches and leaves, yet bound to remain silent forever.
Trees cannot talk. People can, yet they are the ones who willingly hold secrets and refuse to say a word.
Wait …
There is something up there, among the leaves.
Stephen awkwardly grasps a large knot in the trunk and hauls himself up a few feet, just enough to reach where he needs to be. There’s a hole inside the trunk, which isn’t unusual for a tree of this size and age. It’s full of holes, nooks, crannies, dark crevices …but he wants to know more.
Reaching inside, there are damp leaves and goodness knows what else, but then his fingers brush against something familiar. Solid, yet soft. Alien.
He pulls it out and jumps back down to the ground.
It’s a sketchbook, wrapped in plastic.
Despite its protection, when he removes it, the book is worn and soggy at the edges. Too new to belong to John Hammel with its printed logo, but definitely not left here last week either.
He flicks through its delicate pages, smiling as he sees the drawings inside.
The initials S.H. are written in the corner of every page.
The sketches are delicate, breathtaking.
Far too detailed and mature to have been drawn by a sixteen-year-old girl.
She must have had an extraordinary talent.
This is a refreshing new outlook on Sophia Hammel.
A girl who loved to draw, to sketch the beauty around her, immortalise it on a page.
He can relate to that. It’s the same with his writing.
It’s not only scenery on the pages, either.
There are a lot of sketches of women’s bodies; their hands, breasts and curves of their bodies.
If he knows anything about this girl, it’s that if she’d truly run away from home, she’d never have left her beloved sketchbook behind.
He’s the same with his notebook and pen.
He never goes anywhere without them. Most journalists, especially nowadays, prefer to use phones to take notes, either in written or audio form, but not Stephen.
There’s something about putting pen to paper that he likes.
Yes, he types his notes on his laptop eventually and writes his articles online, but if he’s on the ground, talking to people, then he likes to use a pad and paper.
It gives him a greater connection to what he’s writing.
He hasn’t used it recently though. Sometimes it’s easier to memorise details.
A sharp pain pierces him like a hot poker between the eyes. He stops for a moment and squeezes the bridge of his nose, taking a deep breath. It seems the tree hasn’t healed him after all. Perhaps it’s time to head to the cottage and sit down to recover until he has to meet Frank this evening.
No. There’s never time to sit down and recover.
At the sound of voices, he looks up, seeing a couple of walkers passing by along the path below.
They see him and give a wave. It’s odd. A lot of the people who live in the village are friendly, happy to give him a smile as a kind gesture, while others are the opposite, preferring to glare at him, as if daring him to do anything they wouldn’t be happy with.
He doesn’t return the wave, finding it very awkward.
Social interactions have never been his strong point, especially with strangers.
Putting him in a room full of strangers and expecting him to converse with them is like putting a lion into an enclosure full of lambs and expecting it to not eat them.
Stephen would happily spend time by himself, be totally alone and never say a word for the rest of his life than be forced into a conversation with strangers.
The only time he likes talking with others is when it’s a part of an investigation or part of his job as a journalist. Then, his mind switches into a different gear entirely and often goes the other way, where he’ll come across as brash or rude to the person he’s speaking to.
Again, it’s never his intention to cause issues or offence, but if difficult questions need to be asked, then he is the man who can ask them, something Detective Williams previously found out.
That’s why he must do his best tonight when speaking with Frank.
Sophia is depending on him. This tree has revealed a clue and it relates directly to her.
He grabs the planks of wood, the sketchbook and the items of rubbish and heads down the hill.
Reaching the yard, he deposits the rubbish in the bin by the garage, then checks his phone. There are several missed calls from Rachel. He calls her back, hoping there’s enough signal for a call to go through.
‘Oh, so you are alive then,’ she snaps as soon as the call connects.
Her rough voice catches him off guard and he flinches. ‘What are you talking about?’
‘No text. No call. No message. Nothing.’
‘I sent you a text last night saying I’d arrived.’
‘No, Stephen, you didn’t. I’ve been worried sick.’
‘But we have conversed via text message.’
‘No, we haven’t.’
Stephen frowns. ‘I have to go. Sorry.’
‘Stephen, wait! Don’t—’
He hangs up and checks his text messages. Rachel is correct. He has a string of messages from her, asking him to call or to ask if he’s arrived safe, but he has never replied to any of them.
What the hell is going on? He remembers, very specifically, that he’d replied. He wouldn’t do that to her; make her worry about his safety, especially after their disagreement before he left.
Something isn’t right.
Why is he seeing things that aren’t really there or imagining things that aren’t really happening?
He’s running out of time. In more ways than one.