Sorry for the publishing delay- I suddenly got the chance to go camping!
6. Root of Evil- part two
In the darkness, Lisbet, her eyes still closed, knelt before the tree, and she waited. She sat back on her heels with her hands by her sides. In her hands, she held the small figurines fashioned from the tree's twigs. Dwarfed by the hugeness of the tree, Lisbet's tiny kneeling silhouette rested amidst the surrounding crosses, low shrubs and old stumps of long-dead trees. There was no breeze on this night, no motion of any kind. She spoke again to the tree, muttering in gasping rhythm, her lips contorting with the expression of her desire. A chorus of night crickets sung above the low whisperings of Lisbet's words. The crickets sang on and on. Their song, growing louder and louder, became excited beyond nature's designs. For a long while, time passed without significance. But then there came a movement. It was not a visible moment but an unnoticed one-the movement of Lisbet's soul. Lisbet's soul carried her desires down and into the soil, soaking into the ground and flowing between the graves and the dried bodies and the tree's tangled roots. It spilt first into her husband's grave and then into the tree, reaching into the spirits of both, infiltrating, mingling and conspiring to do her wishes, at the tree's bequest. The crickets' song began to rise higher, reaching a fervent crescendo and then, in an instant, came a great silence that filled the cemetery. The angry seeds of desire were released.
A long, heavy silence followed. Lisbet remained on her knees with the dolls beside her whilst her soul stretched down into the ground, into the corpse and into the tree. Lisbet's eyes were tightly closed, her mind transfixed, her thoughts waiting for her dream to transpire.
At first, the tiny creaking sounds were hardly noticeable, but gradually they became apparent, and slowly Lisbet's eyes opened. Her head rose slowly as her eyes searched the old tree. Directly in front of her, amidst the tangled branches, Lisbet saw the strange new shape that had not been there before. There was no wind on this night, yet, from the lowest of the branches, there swayed a peculiarly fat bough as long as a man. It had several scrawny limbs that branched out like arms and legs. It moved with subtle, barely noticeable, writhing motions, quivering and gyrating. With each muscular spasm there came a tiny transformation. A bending, curving and reshaping, slowly took place. Next were the sounds of creaking, snapping, and the hissing of glistening sap spitting from wooden wounds. The shape swelled and transformed. Slowly there formed the resemblance of dark arms and dark legs, with the extremities of the most slender twigs curling like fingers and toes. Lisbet watched in excited silence. Metamorphosis was underway.
Very soon, there appeared in the tree, a half-formed torso of a long-dead man. From the torso sprouted bizarre limbs and the shape of a bulbous head. The weight of the new growth slowly lowered the body, feet first, towards the ground. Dark, anatomical shapes slowly appeared; ribs and a chest expanded, a head grew, a face evolved. The arms and legs stretched and began to bend. One leg became crooked at the knee and its foot, with freshly formed toes, stretched towards the waiting soil. To the continued sounds of snapping and creaking timbers, the limb bounced under its increasing weight. Quickly the final grotesque details had formed. As the second leg lowered downwards to the ground, the bony arms, with hands and fingers, swayed and danced with a rhythmic motion. The creature was near complete.
Lisbet's unblinking eyes stared in awe and wonder, her heart pounding. She watched as both feet of the new creation touched with the ground. The tree man wriggled and twisted to free itself from the tree. The head pulled away, the hair tugged and stretched until finally the man broke free and rose up to stand tall. The creature's newborn face- part tree, part man and part corpse- turned to Lisbet to show her the familiar features she had once loved.
Darkness moved across the graveyard as a lone cloud had crept across the face of the low moon. The dark shape of the ebony thing stared down at the kneeling woman. Lisbet rose and turned. She walked out of the cemetery and it followed her close behind.
When Lisbet and her creature had returned to the sanctuary of her small home, the night was only half over. Once inside her house, she lit the hurricane lamp, and in the half-light, she admired her returned husband remodelled from dead wood. She did not like the strange half wood half flesh texture to his naked body, and so she wrapped him in cotton cloth from the empty children's bedroom. She held his arm and drew close to him, speaking softly to him in a voice of both authority and affection. Lisbet relished telling his empty, hideous head of her plan and how she would become his younger brother's wife when her goal had been accomplished. She then used the dolls to show how he would strangle his brother's wife. It did not and could not respond. She reached up to him and held his head in her hands. He was cold to the touch, and this she did not like. She left the creature standing alone inside while she went outside and relit the small pile of wood under the cooking pot which she then half-filled with water. When the water was hot, she took the pot into the house, covered it with a lid, and placed her husband's doll on the lid. She took her husband by the hand and led him to the bedroom, where she lay with his warming body for one last time. She could not sleep for fear of daylight coming before her plan could be finished, but sleep was not what she desired.
When the time was right, Lisbet took her tree man to the door of her house and quietly ordered him to go and do as she had asked. When alone, she closed the door and sat inside on the floor in the darkness, listening to the night.
The creature crossed the open sandy ground between the two houses and entered the other house through its one door, and there it stood in the silent darkness of the empty living area. For a brief moment, it waited in the dark, perfectly still, and then it turned and walked to the parent's room and quietly entered.
Lisbet used her dolls to reinforce what she wanted to happen, and within a few short seconds, she heard cries and commotion from the house opposite. This was how she had imagined it would happen. A large male figure, strong and insane, would strangle that woman. It would fight with her husband and defeat him. Then, his escape would be witnessed by the children and by Lisbet. The local villages would quickly hear the story, and no lone wandering male would be safe from suspicion for months to come, but eventually, the story would fade, the grief would fade but, before then, it would be perfectly natural for Lisbet to care for the orphans and for the widower and, soon after, the past would be gone and the future's path would be changed; Lisbet would remain vanquished and triumphant.
When the cries and screams grew, Lisbet went outside to sit by her fire and to wait for victory. Meanwhile, the woman's husband first recognised the strangeness of the assailant, his inhuman features and rare strength, and then, whilst he wrestled, he saw through the window opening of the bedroom, his sister-in-law outside her house sat by her night fire. He cried out to his children and told them to take the fire from outside and to run to the old tree in the cemetery and burn it. The oldest girl took hold of the broom and ran outside to the fire.
Lisbet saw the girl running towards her and her fire but Lisbet's head was too crowded to realise what was about to happen. The girl thrust the broom into the fire- the broom made from the tree and tied with Lisbet's twine. Lisbet, still holding the two dolls, screamed out as the broom ignited in her own fire. As both the broom and she were engulfed in flame she dropped one doll, the small doll. The other doll, clasped in her hand, immediately caught fire, and so too did the avenging creature that wrestled with her brother-in-law in the other house. The two flaming figures wrestled through the house, setting fire to whatever they touched, and eventually, they collapsed together by the door of the house, too late to be saved.
The two funerals were held, one after the other. The two charred bodies were buried in the village cemetery close to the tree. Lisbet's sister-in-law and her two girls moved out from their destroyed house and into Lisbet's now empty house. There, the sister-in-law lived on to mourn and to grow old with the memories of what she had done and what had been done to her in revenge. In the chaos of that night, the tree, dead as it had been for many, many years, had not been set afire but had remained as always to tower over all.
Next publication in 5 days' time.
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God of Odd
Paranormal'At the time, we assumed it was all fun and trickery arranged for the occasion- several sessions later, we learned otherwise. The creepy events we were to witness in that old house were indeed very mystical, and I might add, for us, life-changing. T...
