Crankwood Part 1

The man they found hanging from a willow tree that in turn overlooked the river. It seemed a secret place of green and tall grass. To judge by the man’s blackened and bloated face, no one had been around for a while.
A little way downstream they found the remains of a fire, cold, old and wet.
Maybe, they thought, he had built a fire whilst he contemplated carefully whatever it was he had to consider. Fatalistic thoughts burning away with the flames.

No one came to claim the body. He was eventually identified as one of the old walkers. These were the tramps that at times infested the area. Bearded and dirty, apparent down and outs. People who had opted out of the system they were at odds with and spent their time walking the lanes, sleeping rough.
Of course there were apocryphal stories about these beggars. Most where stinking rich. Each had a vast fortune hidden away brought back from or stolen from who knows where. Mythical treasure and always gold. In these frugal times gold was the only thing to keep its value and these dregs of humanity did not trust banks, investments or moneylenders. Many a local had wished for half the fortune they said.
Yet these were the times when our leaders, who had no apparent concept of what life was really like, told us we had never had it so good. This was our Golden Age.

In the case of this particular unfortunate, the local constabulary had at one point, and for a brief time considered foul play. But as this was a golden age, and a time when everyone from the smallest toddler to the oldest still ambulant could walk the highways with nary a thought for personal safety, the idea was soon dismissed as a passing fancy of youth.
This was well before the horrific child murders in the place not too far north of here.

A suicide this was, officially and as such it would remain. Murders just did not happen in this place they said. Not until much later anyway.

The body when cut down was removed to a small incongruous, Victorian red brick building that stood at the end of a magnificent avenue of poplar. This, rather quaint building, served a dual function as both occasional mortuary and pumping station for the local sewage farm. Acquiring by such, a blush of romance that would otherwise not have touched it.

The willow from which the body hung also gained notoriety in the minds of small boys and courting couples. The river continued to flow and became all the more lonely.

Of course a strange death such as this became a talking point for the entire community. The first and second houses where alive with it.
The victim/suicide, was originally of eastern European descent, come over some twenty years before as a refugee. According to one story they said.
In another, or as maybe part of the same fable, a wife and single child had run away. These were, in the view of all that heard them, the understandable reasons for giving up and opting out. The horrors of war and the loss of a family, who could blame him? Then to finally end it all, this all made sense.
It was romantic said the community gossip. It was a shame and such a one. The hearts of over the fence maunderers reached out.
Sources had no idea of the present location of wife and daughter. But the inefficient constabulary searched in a self admittedly cursory manner. The spouse and offspring had inherited the fabled fortune however and it was this rather than the reasons for suicide, which seemed now self evident, that became the paramount topic of conversation.
Exactly what was going to happen to all that money? Who would get it? It would probably disappear into some bottomless subterranean vault and never see the light of day again they thought. What was the use in that?
This and far more fanciful theories were memawed over countless back fences between they and them.

But then, what did the poor man have to spend his money on? It must indeed be a pretty penny by now, they said because everyone and his dog had allowed the poor beggar something at some time. Even if it was just that, a penny. He didn’t spend, any amount, anywhere on anything. Unless it was gold. This from the shopkeepers who obviously thought they knew about this sort of thing.
In fact all this gossip was on very good authority, as sure as I’m standing here, they, said.

The gossip flowed around the village; they always had an opinion. Up and down, eddies and currents of conjecture and supposition passing obviously unnoticed and unconcerned across the still blue corpse that was laid out on a concrete slab in the Pumping House.

It was in a similar way that rumour floated and buzzed unknown around our innocent and largely unconcerned hero’s head.
The boy had always liked birds. For as long as anyone could remember he had the strangest hobby of any child in the village. If it comes to that, he had the only hobby that could be called such, of any child in the village. He was the boy that liked birds; he was the boy who had trained a hawk.
Ornithology was the word he used, when he talked of it, which wasn’t often, or Falconry. Hoity toity little bastard. Everybody seemed to remember that and hold it against him. It was like the word homosexual, something that did not enter into the lives of most.

He did like to keep himself to himself. He was very queer; the older one’s said. He was queer the younger one’s said not meaning the same thing.
He didn’t mix with girls, said these same young contemporaries. It was early days yet, said his elders but he was showing all the symptoms. What of? Of being a pansy, of course. He was certainly funny, peculiar. He would bear watching. But with a father like that, what could you expect? That Mother was never there as well. Who looked after him? He was beaten at home they said. He was beaten up whenever we get our hands on him others said.

At least he was clever. He would do well, provided he did not burn himself out, young.
Everyone knew of someone, a brother, cousin or friend, either sadly no longer with us or wasting away grey haired and drooling in a wheel chair. Dead at seventeen a sad but inevitable victim of brain fever. That was what studying and reading too much did to you.
As bad in its way as playing with yourself. Not that they would talk about that. That was a sin and the surest way to the drooling wheel chair they knew.
But then, so was being queer. Or funny peculiar. Anyway, they said, contradicting themselves, it was a good job his mother loved him. Perhaps a little too much, since you ask. Nothing wrong with that of course. With a husband who drank all the money and was never in what else could you expect?

All this speculation would be discussed, formulated, graded and cross-referenced across garden gate, back fence, in corner shop. Wherever two or more where gathered together in anybody’s name.
Minor connections would be made and afforded a status by this that common sense and plain interest would have denied.
Gossip would be mimed, articulated and exaggerated using nothing more than a brief conspiratorial whisper. A technique developed in the mill weaving rooms for communicating across the racket of Mule and Jenny and now used to communicate secret news of import. “You’ll never believe this, but you know what he’s got up to now?”

In pursuit of his solitary hobby, it was observed that the boy spent a lot of time sitting in a small hessian hide at the bottom of the sewage farm. Near to the effluent outlet that pumped a steady stream of filth and rubber Johnnies, untreated into the river, to hang, like suicides on the overhanging branches of the trees.
He was watching birds, presumably. Why the sewage works, no one seemed to know.

Two old men, ex miners, kept the sewage farm running. Two old archetypes in flat caps with clogs and white mufflers.
These two spent most of their time making mugs of scaldingly hot tea and smoking extra strong unfiltered cigarettes and reading pornography from two old green lockers piled high with mouldering magazines.

Tommy and Albert, their names, as old, it seemed to the boy, as the building itself and just as unchanging.
Occasionally they would invite him in for a cup of tea. They would show him, as a treat, the pornographic photographs in the magazines and attempt to judge his reaction by looking at him askance.
The boy and his latent sexual preferences had been a topic of conversation here also.

“Here, young un, hast a seen this? By Christ, that ud make thee badly eh?” Everything was strangely a statement and a question.
The boy would dutifully and politely study the hand-coloured photograph of a young woman with beach ball or occasional hose pipe.
This show was usually accompanied by a sly wink and a nudge to the ribs, spilling scalding tea. Tommy would look at Albert, knowingly.

“Ee, ah bet that ud make thy prick stand up on its own. Make thy pants favver an Indian tent, eh?”
Again the boys reaction would be observed, minutely as he held the magazine at arms length.

“Eee, ah don’t know Albert, what does your think?”

So would the boy’s as yet ambiguous sexuality be discussed? Across him, over his head. But once the preliminary ritual had been observed, it would be forgotten.
If indeed he was a pansy, what did it matter. He would not last long round here.
Tommy would light his pipe and Albert would disappear with one of the magazines, to the outside toilet. A toilet on sewage farm. Something vaguely symmetrical about that. It was a thought that pleased the boy.

The entrance to the mortuary side of the building was through a side door kept hidden behind a shiny sick yellow curtain. The boy knew all about this side of things. Tommy had invited him in once when Albert was at the toilet. The boy was still unsure about what had happened. Tommy had started sweating and asking very strange questions. Once he had heard Albert’s whistling return he had herded the boy out into the main room again. Strange suspicions were beginning to form in the boy’s mind. Loosely to take shape.

Now, behind that door was the body. Lying on one of the slabs. Presumably staring sightless at the underside of a sheet.
The boy found himself wondering, peculiarly, if the tongue protruded from the blackened mouth. It was said, that hanged men were prone to spontaneous erections. He found he quite liked the concept as it passed equally spontaneously through his mind and out again. Or was a spontaneous erection, (savoured once again, a minor déjà vu) was only a symptom of the freshly hung. This silent mental wordplay amused briefly, causing Tommy to look around at the startled giggle. Surprising in its rarity.

“Tha’art boggerts lad!” was the comment as he went back to mashing his tea in a large brown pint sized mug.

Committing suicide, oh, oh, the boy allowed the thought. This was something else entirely. A man who had killed himself. Gathering around a yet unidentified centre his thoughts floated loosely. An island, a rock in midstream as he shifted the currents by passing the thought around.
This was the first dead man he had known, apart from Grandfather. It was an experience to savour, certainly.
What was this apparently pathetic creature thinking about? Why did he do it? What was so bad about his life that it would cause him to take such a drastic and irrevocable step?
He would certainly be in hell now for doing such a thing. His mother and Pastor McBride had told him just what a heinous sin against God suicide was.
I wonder if I will ever get to that state, thought the boy. Deciding almost immediately with the unquenched optimism of youth.

Given a chance, he must look in the mortuary room. Given a chance, he must look at the body. The first really dead man he had known. (Daffy, Grandfather was not quite dead when he last saw him, unless you count the ghost.) The first dead body he had yet to see.
He tried to grasp the importance of this thought. He was almost aware that it had infinite significance for the rest of his life. His head pricked with it. He was hot and it was not just hot tea.

He left the pump house and moved down to the hide. Here he kept a desultory watch. What did he see? Who knows? Something happened, of course. It could not be said that he sat in complete stasis. Or perhaps it could and he did.
Maybe a heron flew in to land in front of the hide, frog hunting. Plunging bill, one foot and a statue. Ok a flock of loud lapwing spinning and corkscrewing. The odd duck or two, landing, feet splayed on the water. What does it matter. He saw nothing but a dead old man. He saw a man he had spoken to. Someone he had exchanged ideas with.

Now was that not strange? Ideas that were no longer there. They no longer existed. Ideas needed to continue. They should be immortal. These things were precious.
This was a mind gone and worse, memory. Thoughts, fresh and alive a few days, weeks ago, passed on and gone forever from the source.
Maybe that’s what it meant to pass on. If the old man had deliberately looked for someone to pass on to. He committed suicide.

He knew he was going to die. Before he spoke to the boy, under that very willow. He knew he was going to take this way out.
There was no doubt about it now. The boy had to see him. To see him would be to know. I was, the boy thought, with a frisson of pride, the last person to see him alive. I was a bag for his last vital thoughts. What did he want to give me? This last musing struck home with some considerable force. Before they had spoken the old man had spent some time looking. He had needed to in order to find him.

When the boy did not wish it, he was never found. The old man had judged and searched in his last hours. He had spent some of his precious time looking. Did he know who he wanted? Did he know what he wanted?
As far as he knew, the boy had never set eyes on the old man before the conversation they had beside the river and later by the tree. This the boy had forgotten. This eluded; this was the fly that could not be caught. This was the irritation that could not be scratched.
The boy knew he had been told something of import and had been shown a tree. A special, important tree. Something significant had happened. The precise sequence of events slipped and fell even as he attempted to catch and hold them.

Coolness, the lack of something. The absence of a spark. Plastic and old plastic at that. Cracked and broken, empty. Yellow and old, a doll.

A sheet that had been gingerly pulled back. Dirty and yellow. A smell, a pricking at the back of nostrils and neck. A coldness to his back that was the wall and the tiles.

Old grey hairs that curled on the chest and weirdly up the nose. The nostrils that where very wide. Foreshortened like the body in ‘The Rout of San Romano’, a picture in his children’s encyclopaedia. The body was observed from the feet upwards. He could see the grey, yellow, hard, cracked soles of the feet in minute detail. He could see up across the chest and into the nostrils, like two dark symmetrical caves that seemed, strangely to be growing larger as he watched. Taking up now most of the room. Grey curly hairs as thick as cables and darkness leading downward into even more and deeper darkness from which there was no escape. The boy collapsed.

Chapter 2 What Happened Before.

It was always warm in those years and on the day that begins this tale. Insofar as any story can start. As if anything can simply begin with a knife cut across time.
Warmth associated in some strange way with texture. Warm and light.
There was dappled light on the dappled skin of the smaller than average boy standing under a tree, a willow, weeping, by a river.
Warmth from a summer sun. Light that in turn fell from tree to river before disassembling itself in tangled rotting root caverns. Disappearing down deep submerged pits and into inaccessible gothic recesses.
Or it was by direct contrast warm and light in the high air around and above, sparkling with golden mote insects.
The boy had thought at one time that all these particles were evidence of the Divinity. That all was God. The large and the ultimately unknowable. This is what they told him. That God was all around and everywhere. That He could see and feel everything and He was very easily upset. Omnipotent was the word that had been used when they had told him with switch and harshness. When they had beaten God’s love into him. It was, the boy peevishly thought, a particularly petty divinity that required such undivided and unquestioning attention.
These dust motes (that were God) then are the insects in his clothes and in his hair, falling bright and shining green gold up from the river.
This was air with texture and form, woven, in fact, as a carpet of the Orient. The kind of air that interrupts, becoming atmosphere with tangible textile complexity.
Green surrounded this boy as he hid from prying enemy eyes. He hid from searchers who could now be heard faintly moving, (he hoped away), from his hiding place down the riverbank.
He sleepily watched in the water itself a small whirlpool hypnotically spinning river detritus up into spiral innards.
There was a breeze, sparse, hot and restless, like a panting dog.
Cattle with splayed cloven hoof had recently come down to this place to drink; Large stinking, splattered brown had added further to the muddy embankment.
White and orange butterfly dipped and floated on invisible strings. Bees hummed and Damselflies copulated.
It was not silent.
Landing on the ears only, it seemed after a suitable lapse in time, the sounds of a morning farmyard. The faint crying of a farm dog chained and miserable, a cock crow answer, someone hammering and a blackbird calling frantic staccato alarm from between the hedges. A single lark, high and singing.
Unburdened and soft, the boy dreamed. Leaning lazily against the willow by the edge of the river.

A profusion of green surrounded. Green enclosed the clearing he had made for himself. This was something the boy did often in avoiding others. The children of the valley that came upon these called them his camps. They knew full well who had made them.
Except for the river edge the clearing was roofed and walled with green.
Overhead and to three sides spread willow. Mixed with the tree and almost as high stood strangely scented flowers with bright magenta and white blossom. This ‘balsam’s had strange exploding pods that tingled like an electric shock when touched.
In the hot, green space cleared out by the boy, hung various groups of luminous dust motes, sparkling golden.

The boy watched them intently.

We shall for the sake of expediency continue to call him the boy. He has a name of course. The name that his mother and family call him, usually with regret in their voices. The name that came with water and singing and his Mother’s belief. But a name has power and as this is not yet pertinent.

At the mid point of the valley, running parallel with the river for about half a mile was the street. A double row of houses formed the village, incongruous in such a sylvan agrarian setting.
Two parallel lines of alternate terraced and detached in red brick with multi coloured doors. This was Crankwood.

Besides the river called Ay that flowed at the base of a small, rather neat linear valley; there was a hill that rose some 500 feet above the north edge of the valley with the name of Winter.
A village of a single street in two groups, some seventy houses and hovels, a church and combined vicarage, two stables, a blacksmith’s, two shops, one of which was simply a shed, and three public houses, ran parallel with the valley on the south side of the river and Crankwood,. The woodland that caused the name, surrounded and fungus covered the valley heights beyond the village, gardens and fields along one side.
As a matter of chance most of the seasonal sunshine that the village enjoyed came up over the valley rim at one end of the village and ended its all to brief display beyond the rim at the opposite end as the valley ran almost exactly east to west. This made for a rather permanent and depressing atmosphere on most days as the sun did not rise very far when the sky was even more rarely clear. If you could see Winter hill, so the old saying went, it was going to rain, if you couldn't it was already raining. It was mostly raining.
One rutted and unrepaired road ran in, (or out) along the valley, crossed, one would think rather irritatingly, a bridge. This, although made of stone and carved, had seen better days.

The rutted road ran out, (or in) again along the valley bottom, although someway from the river this time on the opposite bank.
The inhabitants of our village were vague on the ultimate destination of these, as they understood it, two roads, calling them rather intelligently Eastbrow (pronounced brew) and Westbrow respectively. To say they were uninterested would be an understatement. To say they felt it not right to know would be nearer the mark. As far as they were concerned that way (both) was town and eventually beyond that was anyway, something to be avoided.
Outside news filtered in occasionally via these conduits courtesy of peddlers, tinkers, vagabonds and the odd, unwelcome black preacher.
The only other building of note in the valley aside from street, church and sewage farm was an old, rather large and ornate farmhouse called ‘Leeshi’. This also was situated about the centre of the valley but this time on the ridge that everyone called Winter Hill. Leeshi or Lightshaw Hall had been built in the 15th Century as a combination, fortified manor and way station for the mule trains of wool that came across the Pennines.
The industrial Revolution and the coming of the canals and railways put an end to all that with the remnants of a moat giving the only clue to the farms original use.

Leeshi was now derelict. The farmer had gone blind and hooligans had burned him out. These people came from the street and were the same who now searched for our hero, the boy. He decided it was time to move.

The boy moved off downstream. He could no longer hear voices. Once more he was alone.
This absence did not bother him. He preferred to be alone most of the time understanding the real difference between being alone and loneliness.
“They can all bugger off,” he said to himself rather peevishly. He was still in temper and the hectic and random journey through the undergrowth had not served to cool this by much.
His idea was to remain out of sight for as long as possible. He had not given much thought too much else. He knew that to return was to receive two possibly more beatings. One from his drunken Father, it was the weekend after all and one from his erstwhile ‘friend’s, the gang, the burners of farms. The characters that diligently searched even now. The boy wished only, as usual, to be away from all and everything.
This would be peaceful if he could control himself. Lying down in the long grass of yet another clearing. Closing eyes may help. In his boyish fashion, he had begun to think of all others as grotesque. He was embarrassed to know them and ostrich fashion if he ignored them, perhaps they would eventually go away forever.
He was tired, suddenly, achingly very, very tired. And yet even this fatigue irritated.
The young boy lacked the intellect to rationalise, his anger was therefore unreasonable. Perhaps someone somewhere was concerned about him. But that very concern was contemptible. He would learn through his solitude. This childlike truth calmed somewhat. He would eventually return with enough secret and arcane knowledge to beat them, if not at their own game then at his own.

The boy knew instinctively that this thinking was clumsy, dreamy. Conscious thoughts became few. Like the river or the breeze through the trees, he crept into trance. Silent of intruders now in Ophelia’s private world. Contemplating strange archipelago's in murky water.

It was a ritual. Almost a legacy, almost, indeed, a summoning.

Jumping into an awareness that he was drifting into a sleep he could not afford heavy eyes where opened. And shut again quickly as a shaft of sunlight shot across the river.
Tears ran down dirty cheeks. A whirring sound, insectlike behind his eyes.

Through his misty vision the boy became aware of a shape pulling itself away from the shadow of one of the trees. It resolved itself into a manlike shape seeming to flow outwards and up from darkness. A mixture initially of solid and liquid, of fog and tree. Green and gold and quicksilver but with an unmistakable menace.

Chapter 3 A Meeting and an Explaination of Sorts

A manlike shape dressed from head to foot in earth colours pulled away from the old willow. Trousers, shirt and what appeared to be a sweater in various shades of green and brown. All these were obviously oversized as if this apparition had either borrowed clothing or had lost an awful lot of weight. The garments hung from a skeletal frame. Items of this clothing had patterns, dyed clumsily into the material. Trees, animals and spirals. The clothing was old. The patterns were richly detailed but faded. The man was old

As his eyes cleared the boy began to pick out strange details. The man’s face was brown, dark as teak, lined and textured as bark. Skin was pulled tight across high cheeks and odd creases appeared at the sides of eyes and mouth.
The skin of the throat, lizard like hung loose in grotesque folds. The prominent Adam’s apple moved up and down as the man opened and shut an amphibian mouth. A trickle of saliva dripped and bumbled down the chin. The hair was greying almost to white with streaks of dark in negative contrast.
Red rimmed and watery, eyes cast about constantly, searching, looking for something, an item of obvious importance.
Our boy was not quite sure whether he had been seen and identified in his hiding place or was being simply ignored.
Still casting about with dark eyes the man suddenly and without preamble spoke.
“ I have something precious, would you like to see it?” The voice was layered with rustle and depth, like wind in trees, strangely strong for such an ancient frame. As tight as the skin on the face. The voice was rich with both danger and meaning.
“It is an egg”.
“I don’t like taking eggs,” said the boy, still irritated, more angry that he had apparently been discovered. Although by whom he still had no idea. “Stealing eggs is cruel to the birds and I like birds” He continued.
The old man cocked his head to one side, Jackdaw fashion and laughed, croaking joylessly. The boy observed a certain and apparent fear. What would cause such fright, he had no idea. Why would this apparent ghost be frightened of him?
“So it is, are you going to tell on me?”
“I’ll tell the Constable” for all the good that would do the boy added silently.
“Will you?” This was almost a dare. There was a pause.
“What kind of egg is it” Vermin egg, magpie or wood pigeon would not matter so very much the boy mused. Aware that he was being backed into a corner he searched for a way out.
“Oh, I have no idea” The man was starting to look bored. Our boy began to get some inkling of mental state. These were not calming thoughts.
“I know most,” said the boy, honestly becoming curious as to what this lunatics treasure really was and where it had been stolen from.
“Oh you don’t know this one”, mimicking the high voice of the boy in some sad parody.
“Want to bet?” forgotten anger returned.
“I think you should fucking see what I’ve got before you start making stupid fucking offers like that” was the rather pompous answer.
The boy could see that the man/ghost’s gestures were becoming exaggerated a thought of possible violence recrossed his mind.
“This is stupid, not me” the boy retorted, “Fuckin, who are you?” returning obscenity for like, with a certain frisson of excitement “Have you come to get rid of me, I’ll go somewhere else?”
Voice raised, the strange old man retorted “Yes, I could tell you to go,” and then as if struck with a sudden idea, “All this is mine, fucking Cerunnos. All belongs to me. And you should not be here by your own right or any other. Where do you call home? That Street?”

He is right, I should not be here. I should be at home taking my beating at least from someone I know. This loony is dangerous. Temper left suddenly, the gap filled with stark cold fear as a flood of ice cold. Scalp pricked, his bladder gave warning and legs began to shake.
The old man reached deep into a pocket and pulled out a large heavy object. He covered it with both hands; careful the boy should not see he raised the object to his eyes.
Opening his hands slightly he peered inside.
“Ha!” was all he said. The apparently myopic eyes widened. At the same time the hands opened.
Holding the mysterious object up, the old man invited scrutiny.

It was an egg as the man had said. About the size of a large goose egg. It had been painted green at some point. It was old that much was obvious. In parts what had once been bright shiny green was now patchy, mildewed and brown.
Marked around the shell was a pattern of some kind. The boy took some time to work this out. Crudely painted it was a simple copy of the pattern on the man’s clothes. After discovering this the boy might then have dismissed it had it not been for the strange glass like protuberances that were arranged in geometric pattern around the egg. Obviously these would not have taken the disguising paint and so shone dully in the man’s outstretched hand. These glass like objects seemed impressed actually into the shell itself. How did they do that? It was a while before realisation came.
“You didn’t tell me it was pot,” said the boy now smiling, proud of this discovery.
It was the man’s turn to be angry.
“Pot!” he squeaked with all the menace such a high pitched sound could muster.
“You didn’t take it from a nest” said the boy placatory now. On the defensive, warned he had said just the wrong thing.
“No!” was the single sulked answer.
“No” the boy repeated, scared, unsure what to do next.
“It is not pot!” slowly and deliberately the old man confirmed what the boy now suspected.
“Can I see?”

A strange look passed not so much over as through the old man’s face. Features appeared to change in a subtle fashion as lunatic left them for a moment. Simply now an old man, the egg was returned to the depths of pocket.

A long moment passed. Several times the boy thought of speaking. Something kept him quiet, something told him to hold the moment. Something strange was happening. Only the buzzing of blue flies gave sound to the moment. So be it, wait.
The old man lifted his head.
“Come” he said simply.
With that he turned and walked away through the undergrowth. Because it was the obvious thing to do, the only thing to do, the boy followed.

Chapter 4 A Tree and further explainations

So they came, boy and man to a tree. A single, very old oak. Standing fine, thin and black against a storm darkening sky. Amongst the verdure of summer this was dead. It was starved. This tree would, should have a name. In this tree’s branches rustled no leaves, rather in this the old man found his perfect counterpart. The boy realised this with some sense of shock. Hackles rose once more, he began to sweat, fear rose like bile to the back of his throat.

It was an ugly tree. It rotted. Dinner plate fungus sprouted obscene from deformed limbs. The colour, although earth, was wrong. The eye turned instinctively away. The gnarled convolutions of its limbs had crippled beyond all hope. It was very old.
Stagnant black muck gathered around its base and discoloured the ground for yards around. Dead things hung in branches like savage fetish.

A fine spread of antler, a royal at least, attached to a rough tawny strip that was obviously intended as a headband. This hung within easy reach. Higher, hanging from the same kind of twisted hide the boy could see several parts of different animals. A bird foot, claw, talon of a hawk; a brush, red and dark. Little pieces of tawny fluff blowing and dancing in the wind. A Rabbit ear, several rat’s tails, a large skull, a horse? And what appeared to be an entire Hare.

These ‘decoration’s obviously had some meaning, some significance. But just what this might be the boy could not fathom. He only knew fear, stark and real. This feeling of heat and weight had been growing for some time. A feeling the man could see, a feeling that he tried unsuccessfully to control. This was spreading in hot red waves from the pit of his stomach. A knot of turgid bile lodged in his gut. A fear that would cause problems, one way or another.

Near to the antlers in the branches of the tree and again within reach, hung a box. A simple wooden green box. The wood it seemed, remarkably new.
A single branch about twice the thickness of a man’s arm had been roughly hewn, amputated from a young birch to judge by the smoothness of the bark. A rough lid had been fashioned by slicing the branch lengthways near the top. The whole of the inside of the branch had then been hollowed out. Inside this would fit the egg. Of this fact the boy had nor doubt.

Sure enough, the object was then placed reverently in its rough casket and closed with some evident satisfaction.

“Now” the old man said raspingly, “Sit”.
No argument was even considered. The boy sat immediately looking upwards at the old man.
From this angle it seemed as if tree and man had become one. Dramatic sunlight continued to shine through branches out of an increasingly cloudy, storm driven sky. Shadows seemed to fall directly onto the mans head. The tree looked to be touching his hair in something like benediction.. He stood, seeming large against the light and the tree. The old man nodded once, satisfied.

“ Now”, again, “I will tell you a story. This is not a normal story and you must listen bloody carefully because it could in the end, concern you,”
The boy noticed how strong the old man’s voice had now become. How tall he was standing and how carefully he chose his words”

“ You may think me mad, a lunatic escaped from God knows where but you are the first. The first person I have spoken to in a long, long time.” The man seemed to drift for a moment, lost in reveries.
“You are therefore the first person to see the talisman in an age. Consider yourself fortunate.” The boy was puzzled and this confusion must have shown because anger seemed to come to the surface once more.
“The egg, you bloody ignorant fool,” the man spat and then snorted blowing thick green flem out of horse wide nostrils.
“The first mind you. This is no slight thing. It is important. You must always remember. Even when you are older and do not believe, you must remember. Do not wonder about understanding, that will I’m sure come later. And do not be afraid, that will also have its time and place.”
The man closed his eyes. A rapt, peaceful expression, at odds with previous impressions, covered his face. For long stretched moments he was silent. His frog mouth moved surrounded by its dark bristle beard, forming words apparently. But saying nothing, as if the concern was how to start. How to pollute this innocence, now so rapt and hanging on.
Suddenly, so quickly the boy jumped nervously again, despite promising himself that he wouldn’t, the old man began.

“My name, or what you can call me, is Tawny. I’ve always been partial to that, yes.” Agreeing with himself. “Not quite what I am called, but near enough. A name like that will make what I have to say much easier. A good deal much bloody easier.”
“Now we are not just strangers talking, we have identities. Something we can work with. Well at least one. No, don’t say anything; your name is not important. I think I know what it is anyway.”
“ I know all I need to and when yours becomes important it will damn well not be that bloody silly thing you have got now”. He paused as if irritated, offended by something.

The boy failed to wonder he was already caught and held. Eyes wide, rapt, fascinated, loving what was happening, he was failing in many other areas also. Failing to notice, failing to use his senses, unable to appreciate the passage of time. Missing the myriad events, the happening of the world. Changes as they happened. The building up of thunder clouds. The lessening of the light, the arrival of the storm front wind.
He was entranced with no wish or hopes to break the spell.

“You know the peculiar magic held in a true name,” Tawny Frogmouth continued. “Knowing a true name is powerful knowledge, you know that don’t you? Of course you do, bloody well should” agreeing with himself once again.
“Just as you know Tawny or Tom, Dick or bloody whatever it is, is not my real name. That you cannot know”. Once again the nod, a punctuation, apparently satisfied, to some degree at least.
“Anyway,” He waved an impatient hand. “All this is not important, the word is”. As if to increasing importance of these words the veins on his temples throbbed redly, his eyes shone with tears of weakness not of sorrow.
“What do you know of the Word?” the capital implicit, “What do you think you know of the Word? What do you care about it? Do you even care at all? You should. You bloody well ought to!”
Another significant pause, a significant question.
“You do” Tawny continued “You do know about old ways, the Mother’s ways, the milk of the Moon… ah!” A gesture caught between infinite satisfaction and frustration.

Silence reigned. No natural sounds. No birds, no animals, no wind in the trees once more. It was dark suddenly and without notice. The light through the branches of this monstrous tree was now silver. No, more than silver, more than precious.
A full moon, larger than life, gibbous and round had risen and was approaching the zenith all without time apparently passing.

“The milk of the goddess, the power and the Word, the rank breath of the serpent, the worm!” The old man, no old no longer. Taw no longer. The man, the god, raised a hand and spoke the Word and time ceased to be. Words came, a gap between each but the sound did not fall away. The music of voice remained pulling into its web and holding the boy, controlling him, pinning his mind, all that he was, to the man and the tree. “Look!” he was urged. The boy looked.

Chapter 4. Death and some consequences

Not so much black, was this body, but grey and dirty and muddy purple, a green rope seeming to erupt out of a swollen neck and a simple knot tying the short rope to an elastic branch that waved up and down as the body moved from side to side as a grotesque pendulum. A bearded sloven of a man in dark contrast to the blond brightness of the boy and not simply because of the obvious differences, namely that one was breathing, now all unconcerned and one was not.
This suicide (?) had been hanging around it seemed for some time to judge by the condition of clothing, extremities and composition. Skin had wept and tightened, hair had been lost and flesh nibbled. A banquet table for the small and carnivorous, omnivorous and frankly opportunist. A dichotomy of decay with verdant growth
The fact that our unfortunate had remained undiscovered for so long gave evidence to the remoteness or rather secretness of this hiding place. Of this, tree where even the boy had not seen on first scrutiny a rotting corpse in apparent full view.

A hidden observer once he or she had recovered from the shock of discovery, would wonder whether these opposites, the boy and body, in such a sylvan setting, where known to each other, in happier times, of course. For no reason other than pure whimsy it would be decided not. No, they where not acquainted. Which of course would make the imminent discovery all the less shocking, perhaps. A first contact with death for our smaller and more vibrant hero would be all the worse if his deceased opposite could be instantly identified with past, perhaps pleasant memories. Or perhaps decomposition was such that recognition would be impossible after the immediate heart stopping shock of discovery.

The old man pointed a bony finger directly at the gently swaying corpse. The boy could hear now quite clearly the sawing creak of rope against branch. He felt sick. The bile lodged in his throat burned in a concentrated lump of indigestible fear.
"Ahhh...." was all he could manage as a statement of intent. This caused the old man no small amount of cackled amusement.
"Now, who do you think this is?" asked the older protagonist of this sick pantomime. In coughing voice and humour.
"Or," trying not to giggle inanely "To be more precise, who was he?" A disintegration followed, speech becoming wordless and liquid rumbles from a picket fence like chest. In cliché there was even a "He,He,He" that the boy thought in a moment of sanity, deplorable.
The boy shook his head from side to side, disbelieving. Failing once again to understand. What am I here for? what does this thing want? Can I get out? Where can I run? Who will believe me? Scampering thoughts salted with desperate, unthinking fear. A rodent in a wheel. Escape, only escape!

Chapter 5 Pastor and Curate an Introduction

“ I’m as open to the charms of sophistry as the next man,” opined the Pastor, whilst seating himself in his favourite calf leather armchair and liberally stuffing his pipe, packing it down with the bone hilt of a small blunt knife. “ Leaving aside the tenets of faith of course”.
His companion and apparently avid listener was Curate Simpkins, a rather sallow and insignificant young man of some twenty five years. Hanging on Reverend McBride’s every word, he sat mouth open and extremely small cup of milky liquid perched on his lap.
‘The tenets of faith’, what was that? the curate, aware, not for the first time that he was out of his depth. Aware that to say anything, anything at all would be to damn himself to the deepest halls of embarrassment hell.
As was normal therefore, he contented himself with what he thought was a sage nodding of the head.
McBride, of course was not looking, he never did, but the curate consoled himself with the idea that the esteemed Pastor did value his informed opinion, he had been invited. Whilst the Pastor’s unseeing gaze rested on the far meadows of self -congratulation.

A rude banging on apparently the front door brought Simpkins clumsily and cup rockingly to his feet and to the Pastor a look of beetroot outrage, followed quickly by a gargantuan bellow that fair rocked poor Simpkins back on his heels.
“ Mrs Boydell, find out who that is and tell them we don’t want any!”
“It might be important”; Simpkins ventured and instantly regretted. Pastor McBride rounded on him as a bull on a bullfighter, a terrier on a rat.
“Important, boy! What do you know of important?” Little flecks of spittle punctuated this across the front of the Pastors tight black pearl-buttoned coat. “Important is what I say it is in this location, not some beggarly disturber of peace or some moth-eaten, shiny cassocked simpleton!” Say what you like about the esteemed, (by himself) Pastor but he did have a way with language.
Simpkins shrank into himself at this last remark some small worm of dispute seething in his breast. Say what you like about Uriel Simpkins, Dr.Theo (Hons) (CB) he did not argue, for long anyway, and audibly with his superiors.
What happened in the privacy of his breast was another matter. He followed his superior out.

" Its Tommy from 'pumphouse" said the housekeeper, looking through the window. A Mrs Muriel Boydell. Thin, turkey necked and just as garrulous, normally. In this instance rather put out by the Pastors unchristian rudeness. 'Should expect it by now' she thought hard at Rev Simpkins who judging by the look on his face, understood every word she was thinking.
"Oh, well that's alright then, isn't it Simpkins?" said the Pastor holding out apparently innocent patronising hands in supplication.
'Die and go to a hell full of shit', thought the curate aware that he was himself acting in a most unchristian manner but feeling justified nonetheless.
"No need for that" returned Mrs Boydell, frightening the curate as a mind reader. "Yer might well find that what ol Tom has to say is important" fixing the Pastor with a basilisk stare.
An unsatisfied "Hrumph" was gained in return.
"We are not going to discover any nuggets of wisdom this personage has to divulge standing here waiting, are we Mrs Boydell? If you would care to open the door and ask then I would be more than grateful."
"An there's not need for that kind o' talk either". Mrs Boydell was not a woman to be trifled with. which was why she was working at the Rectory for a man like the Pastor. 'Personage indeed,' she thought whilst opening the door. 'I'll give him personage'.
"Well, Tom, what do yer want now?" Pushing her face beyond the door and raising her voice in an attempt to intimidate by proxy. "Come on, speak up" Say what you like about Mrs Boydell but she was a seasoned bully. Particularly since she lost Mr Boydell of lung sickness two years ago come February now. She failed to see why she should suffer anyone gladly, fools or no.
" Its yon lad" said Tom " Ee ad a look at yon body in't cold room, as ee shouldn't. Wi towd im both me an Albert, but ee'd ave none an ad fer see fer imsel, o'course. An now ee' taken badly. Can't do nowt wee im".
" Of course you will have to attempt a translation" said McBride. "Or perhaps you can make yourself a little more useful Simpkins and assist Mrs Boydell in whatever is concerning this gentleman so tremendously".
Oh you understand all right, thought Simpkins. You know what he says. You just don't want to get your hands dirty. Soon enough to get involved with the dead when they are decently coffined. And of course this being a suicide you need not get involved at all or only in the most peripheral manner. Beyond the pale. Of course I will deal with it and of course I know which boy we are talking about. Just as you do ,you sanctimonious appendage.
All this disappeared into Simpkins conscious without a trace of rebellion appearing anywhere on the calm mill pond of his face. A little tightening around the eyes that doubtless would be ascribed to fear, fear of superior, fear of death in its most violent form. Fear of making a mistake.
"Has the Doctor been called? asked Simpkins of Tom who replied in the affirmative. "Then give me a moment to get my coat and I'll be with you."
All this to a voluble and unecessary sigh of relief from the Pastor. For whom the event was now over and forgotten and who returned as quickly as he may to pipe and meadows of congratulation. After all his was the only opinion that mattered in this hole.

Chapter 6 The tenets of Faith.
Recent storms had left the road along Eastbrow slick with rain as Curate and Tom passed beyond the church.
"Tell me what happened, Tom" said Simpkins confidence returning somewhat with distance from his mentor and nemesis.
"Like I said Reverend. Bloody lad wuz peeping where ee shouldn't have an fainted clean away". A nerviousness in this repeated speech giving pause for thought in Simpkins now tightly controlled apperance. "But ee favvered alreet when Albert sent me fer thee. Just commin round ee wuz." Albert was obviously the charge hand in this relationship.
Dark skys scudded beyond the poplars that lined the lane to the pumphouse and drips seemed to echo as they fell from etched and windy branches.
"Who was it he saw, in what did you call it Coldroom?"
"Aye its wur we keep bodies, like yon poor sod we found up tree".
Simpkins was finding keeping pace with Toms rapidly thickening dialect increasingly difficult.
"Slow down Tom" he said in an attempt to alleviate the obvious nerviousness that was leaking quite obviously from every part of Tom. Although he was no more than a darker shadow in a region of shadows, his speech and what body language Simpkins could discern was showing an increasing distress as they closed on the pumphouse. A small wan light could be seen leaking out from under a door ahead.
"The suicide?" queried the curate now starting to put everything into place. "That must have been a real shock for the poor lad" he continued whilst thinking 'how trite a remark to make'. Tom did not seem to notice, wrapped up solidly as he was in his own concerns.
The thin light became sick yellow rectangle as the door was opened.