The Old Oak Tree (EPISODE 8)

The blows rained down upon him from every direction. The Others had been afraid, once. Now they were incensed. They punched and kicked him, too many to count. Too many at once to make sense of them as individual strikes. Peter imagined his body as a series of concentric, red circles – air strike warnings across a map – the circles pulsing and expanding until they merged to form one red welter of pain. A boot slammed into his side and Peter felt the crunch of a rib breaking on the impact. Someone was stamping hard on his ankles, snapping them. Someone was punching him to the head, again and again and again, making it difficult to think, difficult to see. Peter wasn’t sure what he was doing: he thought he was prone, vaguely covering his head with his arms, but thoughts didn’t form into words, concepts wouldn’t form, just pain, pain.
 
Then, a thunderbolt to the forehead, and blackness.
 
Peter woke where they had left him, on the gravel path beneath the shadow of the pale, white church. He lay there without moving, pain arcing through his body with every stuttered wheeze of breath. He couldn’t see out of one eye, but what he saw with the other made him dizzy: spinning, blurry gravel-stars, expanding out into an infinite nothing.
 
He lay still, not cognisant of time. It took a while for his mind to form words, to make sense of where he was and what was happening. He felt dizzy. Woozy. When he slowly angled his head towards the sky, the spire of the church seemed to sidestep left to right, leaning forwards as if to bury him beneath mortar and stone. He felt cold, a dangerous, icy cold that bypassed his skin and flushed directly through his veins.
 
‘Are you dead?’
 
Peter groaned at the words. With heavy effort, he flopped over onto his back, gritting his teeth as pain spasmed along his spine. Blinking, he saw a little girl staring back at him, holding a pencil and a sketching pad. He tried to smile, but all he managed was a grimace of broken teeth and cut lips.
 
‘Hello, Liz,’ he wheezed.
 
‘Are you dead?’ she repeated. A strand of her dark hair crept at the corner of her mouth, and she chewed on it thoughtfully. Peter watched as she began to sketch him.
 
‘No,’ he said, each breath a stuttered gasp. ‘At least, I don’t think so.’
 
‘You don’t look dead,’ Liz replied helpfully, ‘But with you lot it’s hard to tell.’ She frowned, more absorbed with her drawing than the conversation. The tip of her tongue poked out of her mouth, releasing the loose strand of hair.
 
‘What… what do you see?’
 
She shrugged. ‘You talk weird, and all your skin is falling off. And you’re all black and blue and lumpy.’
 
Peter laughed, cringing as his broken rips flared agony. ‘You look normal to me,’ he said. He paused, vaguely registering the importance of his words. ‘You look normal to me,’ he repeated.
 
‘Of course I do,’ she said. ‘I’m not a monster.’
 
‘You think… I’m a monster?’
 
Her frown deepened. ‘Uh huh. You talk weird, and all your skin is falling off. Now stop moving.’
 
Peter laughed again, resting his head against the gravel. Above him, twilight clouds found the colour between purple and grey. He felt a spatter of rain against his face, cold and soothing against his skin, and closed his good eye.
 
He wasn’t sure how long the child sketched him for. When Liz spoke again, she surprised him, as if he had been abruptly woken from a feverish sleep.
 
‘Did they hurt you because of Isaac?’ she asked.
 
Peter swallowed slowly. ‘Yes,’ he managed.
 
‘That’s stupid,’ she said. ‘You didn’t hurt Isaac. The old oak tree did.’
 
‘Did… did you see?’
 
‘Kind of. Isaac told me he was going to climb the tree. When he went missing, I knew he was up there, even though I couldn’t see him when I tried to look. I told mommy but she didn’t listen.’ Liz sighed dramatically. ‘She got cross.’
 
Peter tried to nod. He struggled to follow her words – they kept stumbling into each other, blurring in his mind. ‘The tree is evil,’ he said.
 
‘Yep.’ Liz paused. ‘Is no one going to come and get you?’
 
‘They probably think I’m dead.’
 
‘Is that why they left you by the graveyard?’ the child asked. Peter laughed again, gasping in pain.
 
‘You know,’ he told her. ‘The others… the people on my side of the Line… they see you as monsters.’
 
‘Oh.’
 
‘Don’t you see?’ Peter asked, suddenly insistent. He tried to pick himself up to a sitting position, scrambling in the dirt before his arms gave out and he crashed back against the gravel. He coughed a bubbling spit.
 
‘You probably shouldn’t do that,’ Liz said.
 
‘Don’t you see?’ Peter pressed. ‘None of it is real. None of it…’
 
‘Oh. Do you want to see my drawing?’
 
Peter sighed. ‘OK.’ He watched as the little girl approached him. She didn’t seem afraid. Peter stared at a fuzzy sketch of wet, slopping skin, welts and bruises. He frowned, feeling the motion form a headache that started in the centre of his forehead and reached round to his temples.
 
‘My skin isn’t like that,’ he said. Falteringly, he lifted his arm and reached out to the child. ‘Touch my hand and see.’
 
Liz hesitated, sensing a trap, but her curiosity won out. She placed her hand against his, pushing and pulling with her fingertips against his skin. She bit her bottom lip. ‘That’s weird,’ she said.
 
‘You… does it feel normal?’
 
She shrugged. ‘I guess so. I thought it’d feel slimy, but it isn’t.’
 
Peter smiled, letting his arm fall against the ground. ‘That’s good,’ he said, feeling unconsciousness swell up within him. The purple-grey sky blurred into an all-consuming black. His good eyelid fluttered. He knew now that even if he tried to lift his arm, he wouldn’t be able to. He let out one, long breath.
 
‘That’s good.’