The Old Oak Tree (EPISODE 7)

The body didn’t fall quickly. It didn’t really fall once, at all. Its broken limbs seemed to grasp and pull at every twig as the torso slumped from branch to branch, the white skin scraping down the bark and scratching off in brutal, red welts. When the body finally reached the final branch, its neck slipped backwards as in a theatrical sigh, before the torso crashed against the ground in one, declarative statement of finality.
 
Liz watched the body fall from her bedroom window. She watched as Isaac’s parents half-sprinted, half-staggered towards their son’s broken form, a lopsided, frantic waltz of running steps and tiny, fractured falls. She watched as the monster lumbered up after them, skin sloughing off in thick, wet paste as it shuffled beside the tree. She watched Jack try to kill the monster, and then watched as another monster intervened, and then she watched as the first monster saved Jack from the second.

Jack limped away, carrying his dead son and awkwardly guiding his weeping wife. The two monsters remained, conversing in angry, inhuman tones. Liz began to sketch them on her pad of paper, experimenting with the uneven, strange outlines of their shapes, mesmerized by the shifting detail of their grotesque, abnormal features. Her fear – always detached in her mind – slipped further from its moorings, the reality of the monsters seeming more distant through the perspective of her art. Eventually, the monsters parted – one returning to its place outside the church, the other lumbering back across the Line – but Liz could remember enough detail to sketch out a hazy expression of their faces, enough to capture the innate wrongness of their beings. Her tongue poked out between her lips; her brow furrowed in concentration. She did the best she could.
 
Around her was commotion. The folk of Orlow had noticed the confrontation between Jack, Bridget and the monster. They knew that Isaac had returned, falling from the tree. Liz frowned. She had been friends with Isaac, impressed by his daring and physical skill. But, when he had disappeared, she knew that he was dead. She couldn’t explain it to her parents, but she had known. The old oak tree had taken him. It had taken him into its embrace, and it had shown him its true nature.
 
A group of adults started forming around the monster outside the old church. Liz saw her mother among them, screaming obscenities, pointing fingers. Liz wondered if they would kill the monster. She felt ambivalent about it. It was a monster, but, to Liz’s eyes, it hadn’t really done them any harm. It was like a grotesque, gigantic spider, lurking in the bathroom crevices between the sink and the toilet. Something to be feared, perhaps, something to be hated, yet, ultimately, just a creature. Liz knew that her hatred of spiders was just in her own head, not enough to justify killing another living being. She had always supposed that the same was true of the monsters, and no one had told her differently.
 
And yet, she didn’t really care if the adults chose to kill the spider. It made her feel better to know that it wasn’t there, after all.
 
She crept out, taking advantage of the distraction the adults were causing for themselves. She hoped that Michael had the same idea. She was pretty sure he was still Michael, even though he had no eyes and no mouth and no nose. She could recognise him by his small, round ears, his build, the way he sat cross-legged on the floor and let her draw him. Sometimes, if she wasn’t looking at him properly, she thought she might see his features before the change: the sheepish smile, the inquisitive eyes, the tiny triangle of a nose. Liz assumed that was just her memories creeping in. It didn’t matter, anyway. Liz liked to draw the faceless thing. It had scared her at first, but then she saw it was weird, not threatening, and then she had found it fascinating. The smoothness of the skin where a nose should be. The blank flesh where eyes should be peeping out at her. Liz was pretty sure Michael could still see her, anyway.
 
Sometimes, she wondered where he was hiding his eyes.
 
Liz tiptoed towards the Line, forcing herself into the shade of the old oak tree. It leered down at her, and she stuck out her tongue at it, treating it with as much derision as she could.
 
‘One day they’ll chop you down and burn you up,’ she said, and to that, the tree had no answer.
 
Liz smiled when she saw Michael waiting for her, cross-legged and playing at a loose thread on his trousers. His blank face shifted upwards as she approached, as if in recognition, but he said nothing, as always. Liz didn’t mind. She told Michael about what had happened, how Isaac had gone into the tree and it had murdered him, how the adults blamed the monster that had come and sit outside their church. Michael sat there patiently, seeming to listen, but Liz could never be sure. Not anymore.
 
‘Sit still,’ she ordered. ‘I’m going to draw you.’
 
The boy-monster obediently went still, letting go of the loose string on his trousers and directing his featureless face at the young artist. Liz felt her tongue poke out again. She started by drawing the outline of Michael’s head. It had always been very round, and even though the outline hadn’t changed, it seemed as though the blankness added a symmetry to Michael’s shape. She diligently sketched out the small circles of his ears and the smudged vagueness of his hairline, before leaning closer and trying to catch the way the light fell against his nothingness face. Without his nose, there was no shadow across where his mouth should have been. Liz ignored the sound of screaming behind her.
 
It was probably just a spider, being killed.