Dead Branches Read online

  DEAD BRANCHES

  Benjamin Langley

  © 2019 by Benjamin Langley

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

  No part of this book may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means without the author’s written consent, except for the purposes of review

  Cover Design © 2019 by Don Noble

  https://roosterrepublicpress.com

  ISBN-13: 978-1-947522-23-7

  ISBN-10: 1-947522-23-X

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either a product of the author’s fertile imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  READ UNTIL YOU BLEED!

  For the friends we make

  when we’re young and innocent

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  So many people have helped to make this book what it is. It’s a product of many experiences over the years, since my youngest days. I’d like to thank my parents for making me believe that anything is possible, and for feeding my love of horror since the beginning. I mean, how old was I when I was terrified of ‘Stop Boris’, the game in which you had to shoot the giant spider with the laser gun? Was that an appropriate Christmas present? We loved it! Thanks for buying me ‘Scream’ comics, and of course, Horror Top Trumps.

  I have fond memories of watching horror movies with my siblings and with my mum and my nan on Saturday nights throughout my childhood (starting with the Hammer House of Horror classics), and that spread to a love of reading horror. We should have known it would come to this!

  I couldn’t do this without the support of my wonderful wife, Lisa, and my two girls, Malibu and Georgia. We’ve had some great times together, and you always give me the time I need and the encouragement to develop my writing projects. Lisa, thanks for listening to my ideas, reading my drafts, and helping to make this dream a reality.

  Huge thanks to my good friend Michelle Foster who gave me feedback on an earlier version of the novel. (Actually, she swore at me for what I did to one of the characters.) Our regular meetups keep me sane and being able to discuss and plot out ideas with you is so valuable.

  Thank you, Pete Kahle, for believing in this novel. I’m thrilled to be published by Bloodshot Books. You’re putting out some excellent work, and it blows my mind to think that I’m now part of that.

  Don Noble, thanks for the awesome cover.

  An early draft of this novel was part of my MA in Creative writing, so I’d like to that the staff at Anglia Ruskin University, particularly Colette Paul and Una McCormack. Thanks for the great advice, and all the recommended reading. I’ll get through them all one day.

  The first words of the novel (long since entirely replaced) were written on a delightful writing retreat at Le Verger in France. David and Michele Lambert are excellent hosts, and the opportunity to write in such a pleasant location really got the wheels turning on this one.

  I’d also like to thank everyone that has supported me in my writing and given me encouragement in the writing groups and workshops I’ve attended over the years.

  Finally, thanks to all the writers of stories out there that keep us filled with wonder, and all of the readers that are holding a copy of this book–hope you enjoyed it.

  - Benjamin Langley

  He’s dying.

  I read the words again to be sure.

  The doctor says he’s only got days left.

  “What’s wrong, Dad?” I look up, and see Charlie, already dressed in his school uniform. I hadn’t heard him come downstairs.

  “Hey, Charlie!” I pull him to me and into one of my inescapable bear-hugs. He’s two months from turning ten, the age I was when I last saw my dad.

  He squeezes free, proving my bear-hugs fallible, and looks at the letter in my hands. “Who’s it from?” he says, his inquisitive face scrunched together as he looks up at me.

  I won’t say that he takes after me. I was naïve; he’s a smart lad. But it’s a common misconception that children don’t know what’s going on. Some people forget how curious they were when they were young. They don’t remember that answers like, “It’s nothing,” or, “Don’t worry about it,” only encourage a curious child to seek their own conclusions. Sometimes the best answers are the ones that you find yourself.

  “It’s from my mother. Your grandmother.” I don’t remember the last time I let her see Charlie. It was never her fault, and it’s not fair for me to keep him from her, but she’s linked to too many bad memories.

  “Your granddad’s dying.”

  Charlie nods. He doesn’t know what to do with the information. I’d not told Charlie much about my dad. Had I told him that he was a bad man? I’m not one for stories. Not anymore. Now he’s older. I have to tell him. If I don’t, then I’m as bad as my parents were. Mum said that they were only trying to protect us, but what harm would the truth have done? Not telling us was the easy option. And look at the damage it did.

  It’s a long time since I thought of that summer. It’s a long time since I thought of Little Mosswick and its network of drove-ways and ditches that were our secret trails around the village. Don’t believe the myth that Fenland folk are somehow special, that they have an affinity with the soil and share some kind of secret knowledge.

  Don’t believe that there’s an inherent goodness in that place. I made the mistake of believing their tales and trusting that they’d keep us safe. But the biggest reason why I’d find it so hard to go back is that, despite years of running it through my head before I locked it away for my own sanity, I’m still not sure of how much of it was even real. And now I have to wonder, can a creature like that even die?

  PART ONE

  Tuesday, 12th June 1990

  Normally, you could hear the chickens clucking from a mile off. I don’t remember if that struck me as odd right away, but then I saw the flurry of feathers, small, soft, white under-feathers, stained red, and sitting in the mud and I knew that something was wrong. Chicken wire jutted out of the coop at an ugly angle, twisted and torn away from the wood and there was a strong pissy smell like a well-soiled cat litter tray left to fester in the sun.

  Reaching to open the door, I was most disturbed to find it cold. Heat used to radiate from the coop, but now it felt lifeless. I didn’t have to open the door far before what was left of one of the chickens fell onto my foot. It was mostly still intact: head, wings, legs, but its side was a bloody chasm. I could see bits of bone inside and pinky-purplish flesh, still wet, glistening in the early morning sun.

  Inside, the wooden panels were streaked with blood, and the straw was almost entirely lost beneath a layer of feathers. It wasn’t until I saw a broken shell and hardening yolk smeared on a nest box that I started to panic. What if I went back without an egg? I could see Dad’s face, puffy and red, and I could already hear the words “Useless boy”, and then he’d pull on his boots and go stamping off, swearing about me under his breath. I had to find an egg. I pushed aside some of the straw, looking in the corner where they normally laid. The straw was sticky, and shards of eggshell clung to it, glued with half-set egg. In the other corner was another dead chicken, this one with a wing torn off, but behind that I was sure there was something egg shaped. I pulled a mangled chicken aside by a cold, hard leg and in the corner, there was a speckled egg. Proudly I gathered it and hurried back to the house where the smell of melting lard made my stomach turn over.

  “You got some?” asked Mum.

  “Something’s happened,” I said.

  Dad was already glaring at me. “One egg? What good is one fucking egg?” He sneered, and then he looked me up and down, no doubt looking for something else to criticise, and as always, he found so
mething. “What’s that slarred all up the side of your top?”

  I looked at one arm, saw nothing, and then at the other and saw the streaks of red on my white, school shirt.

  “You’ve ruined your shirt. You must think I farm money. You must think I can just pull it out of the earth.”

  “Something’s happened,” I said again, but it was as if I had no voice.

  Mum dipped a tea towel in the sink and came over to me. She started to scrub at the blood, but only succeeded in smudging it, spreading it further along the sleeve. “Whatever is it?” she asked.

  “They’re dead,” I said, shaking my arm away from Mum. As I did so the egg shot out of my hand and smashed onto the floor.

  “What the hell are you playing at, boy?” Dad said. He was rising out of his chair.

  “They’re all dead!” I said again, and this time he seemed to hear me.

  “Who are?” he said, his brow furrowing, his eyebrows forming into one long hairy caterpillar.

  “The chickens! Something’s been in there. They’re all dead.”

  As expected, Dad went over to the door and pulled his boots on. “Why didn’t you say so in the first place?”

  “Go up and get a fresh shirt,” Mum said. “I’ll clean this mess up.”

  We both looked down at the egg. The sight of the orange yolk, broken and diluting with the transparent white made me think of the stiff egg yolk in the hen hut and the gored bodies of the hens, so I dashed through the door.

  My older brother Will was standing on the stairs. “What have you done now?” he asked, knowing it would wind me up.

  I rushed past him, jutting my elbow out, trying to catch him in the guts on the way by, but I missed. I was in no mood for his games.

  The chickens had been on my mind all day at school. I couldn’t concentrate and thinking about them had made me short tempered. After school, my concentration wasn’t much better. I’d just started my go on Super Mario Bros. when a knock on the door distracted me. I mistimed my jump and Mario landed in the open mouth of a piranha plant. Will laughed as Mario’s death tune played and he reached for the joypad but then seven rapid bangs on the door drew us out of our bedroom. As we were halfway down the stairs, Mum called my name.

  The door at the bottom of the stairs opened into the kitchen. Dad was sitting at the table chasing gravy around his plate with a piece of Yorkshire pudding. As usual, he had a smear of mud on his left cheek. Mum stood by the door, and outside was my friend John’s mum. She always insisted that I call her Barbara, rather than Mrs Glover, but it felt weird calling adults by their first names. Mum urged her in. She looked out of place in our kitchen in her red and white supermarket uniform.

  She came over to me. “Tom,” she said, and put her hand on my shoulder. The knuckles were red. “Have you seen John?” A string of saliva hung between her lips.

  “Not since school.”

  “Did he have any plans?” said Barbara.

  I shrugged. Had John said anything? With the mood I’d been in all day, I couldn’t remember. I’d gone home with my cousin, Liam, who had practically dragged me out of the classroom at the end of the day and was impatiently hopping around outside his brother Andy’s classroom. We had a gang, the Crusaders. It was me, Will, Liam and Andy. We were originally called The Muskehounds, but we argued over who was Dogtanian, so we changed it. John had been hanging around with us so much that we’d had a secret meeting about whether he should be allowed to be a full-time part of the gang. We’d decided that he could, but we hadn’t told him yet.

  “Did he leave on his own?” said Barbara. The saliva string broke.

  “I don’t know. Sometimes he walks with Chris Jackson.”

  “I’ve been there,” said Barbara. She took a huge gasp of air, as if she’d forgotten to breathe.

  “Did he get home and go out again?” asked Dad, looking up from his dinner plate. Before waiting for a response, he picked up a knife and cut himself a slab of bread.

  Barbara looked down at the tiles. She was never home when John got in. She worked in the new supermarket in Ely and John had the house to himself for a couple of hours. That was why he was always asking one of us over to play, so that he wouldn’t be on his own.

  “I’m sure he’ll turn up,” Mum said. She placed a hand on Barbara’s shoulder. “You know what boys are like.”

  I couldn’t pinpoint the exact moment that Mum was thinking about because there had been so many evenings when we’d been out all day, reinforcing one of our hideouts or trying to get a raft to float on the river, and then wandered home when it was already dark, but we’d never dare do it on a school night.

  Mum was looking at Barbara with a sad look on her face, her hand still resting on her shoulder. I could never imagine the two of them as friends. Everything about them was different. Mum looked like a proper mum should, but John’s mum looked more like one of those TV mums, with red lipstick and hair that didn’t move, and they lived in one of Little Mosswick’s new housing estates that Dad had sworn so much about when they were built.

  “I should go,” said Barbara. She stepped out of the door then turned to look back at me.

  “Does he have any other friends I could check with?”

  John didn’t have many friends. The trouble was that he was smart, and he knew it, and people didn’t like that. I shook my head and she turned away, her shoulders slung low. As Mum put her hand on the door, I said, “Wait,” and Barbara turned around. “Maybe Daniel Richardson? They hang out together sometimes.”

  Daniel and John were friends, but they’d fallen out when John had lent his imported Nintendo Gameboy to me and not him. But perhaps they’d made up. Perhaps John was over at Daniel’s house trading Panini World Cup stickers. Maybe John was swapping his sticker of the World Cup trophy with Daniel, the sticker that I needed so badly to complete the first page. More than anything I wanted Daniel to have that shiny world cup sticker, even if it meant that I never completed my collection.

  “Want us to have a bit of a look around? See if he turns up?” Dad said without looking up from his plate.

  “No, I couldn’t possibly ask you to…”

  “It’s no trouble. We’ll send him straight home if we find him.” Dad was already halfway out of his seat. He wiped his hands on his jumper and I wondered how he could even be wearing one in that heat.

  “If you don’t mind… Thank you.” She looked at me, “And this other boy, Daniel?”

  I told Barbara where Daniel lived, and she smiled before she hurried out of the door, catching her heel on the ridge, but not letting it slow her down on her way to her car.

  “It’s not right leaving kids that age home on their own,” Dad said, after pushing another piece of bread into his mouth which distorted his voice. “Mothers should be home with their children.”

  He swallowed noisily then reached for his boots and sunk back into the seat to pull them on. “Couldn’t very well leave her in that state though. Had to do something.”

  He stood up and called out, “Will!”

  Will thudded down the stairs and peered around the door-frame.

  “Come take a walk with me up along the drove, and down to the riverbank.”

  “Okay,” Will said and went to fetch his shoes.

  “You, boy,” he said, glaring at me. “Take a wander around the back field. Take Chappie with you. He could do with the exercise.”

  We named our dog after the brand of food we fed him. We thought we were being original by not calling him Spot or Patch or Rover or Shep. He was a border collie, black with a ring of white around his neck and over his shoulders, and a patch of white around his left eye. We got him from the animal shelter. He’d been abandoned, so we had no idea of how old he was, but in the last year he’d slowed down. He didn’t show any excitement when I fetched the lead, and he struggled to get to his feet.

  “Come on, Chappie,” I said, trying to muster some enthusiasm from him.

  He shook after he stood, then lo
oked at me with watery eyes, and put up no fight as I put him on the lead.

  Our house was a couple of hundred metres from the main road which ran through Little Mosswick and was connected to the various fields that made up our farm by a series of droves. It had been so dry that the stiff grey mud had cracked and looked like the skin of an ancient dinosaur. Granddad Norman knew all of the names of the droves, but I only knew them by where they led to, or the streets in the village they crossed. I looked up along the drove that led up to the river, the one that Dad and Will were on, but I could see no sign of them. They’d already disappeared behind the row of elderberry bushes.

  I gave Chappie’s lead a tug. “It’s me and you again.”

  He stopped to sniff the gatepost.

  “How come it’s always Dad and Will, hey Chappie?” I was almost dragging him along as I gazed down into the ditches on either side of the drove that separated the field of oilseed rape, which was alive with yellow flowers swaying in the breeze, from the potato field. “I’d rather be with you anyway.”

  I didn’t know what I was looking into the ditches for. There wouldn’t be anything down there. Those on the left were all bone-dry and had a bit of brown grass and a few bulrushes withering away in them. The other side was thick with nettles, with a few dock leaves sprouting at the very edges. At least if anyone fell in, they’d be able to ease the sting right away. I heard a rustling and pictured the horrible toad-like creature from the cover of the Deathtrap Dungeon Fighting Fantasy book that I’d been playing through. If anything was going to strike, it would have been when I was on my own. But John was strong, and he was smart; he wouldn’t have been taken by a beast like that.

  I wasn’t scared, but I didn’t want to walk along the ditches anymore, so a little way down the track, when we reached the entrance to the potato field, I decided to cut across it.

  Chappie was immediately lost under the large green leaves, and I could only tell where he was by seeing where his lead disappeared, and from the odd quivering of the plants. I headed towards the back section of the field which was never planted up. It was home to a rusting Ford tractor that hadn’t moved as long as I was alive. John was into old machinery, and liked to tinker with things, so I thought it was worth a look in case he’d wandered over there.