STEPHEN
Leaving the detective to root around and study the scarecrow some more - something he’s happy to avoid - Stephen makes his way up the hill again. It’s a much easier task than it had been last night with the surrounding darkness closing in and trying to take his breath away. Now, in the late morning light, his trip up the hill is a delightful experience, enabling him to see across the valley below, as well as the village and neighbouring houses and farms. He feels as if he’s climbing to the top of the world, the tree a large welcoming beacon ahead.
His head is still a little fuzzy, but the pain and dizziness comes and goes. Forgetting simple words is a new symptom though. Quite discon … discon …confusing.
Whatever he had seen earlier under the tree isn’t there now, but how could it have been there at all? He’d seen a person standing at the base of the tree, staring down the hill at him, calling to him, beckoning him closer. He’d been too far away to make out any recognisable features, but the figure had been male, young, dressed in old farmer-type clothes. A local, perhaps?
He thinks back to the farmer who’d stared at him in the village and the eerie feeling of being followed as he’dwalked along the road with the detective towards the farms. That farmer had been older, not young.
Detective Williams hadn’t noticed the farmer boy under the tree, but then again, he hadn’t been looking, had he? An odd sensation warms his chest as he thinks back to the moment.
Could it be …
Stephen reaches the top of the hill and the base of the tree. He scans the ground, littered with fallen acorns, not quite sure what he’s looking for. He won’t know until he sees it.
There’s a fallen part of a large branch, which is perfect for a make-shift bench; a few beer cans and crisp packets discarded in the area. He hadn’t noticed them last night. He picks them up and puts them in a pile, ready for when he heads back down to the cottage. There’s nothing he despises more than littering. It’s an insult to the landscape, to the beauty of the world. Those who litter, who discard their rubbish without a second thought, are as bad as petty criminals in his eyes.
Stephen circles around the tree twice, ensuring he checks further afield too, approximately twenty feet in every direction. Not only is he searching for rubbish, but for any clue he may have missed. He reaches the point where he’s going to give up, but then notices a piece of wood sticking out of the ground, almost invisible behind a patch of long grass and a small thorn bush. The grass is fairly short up here, which means that sheep must graze regularly, but he can’t see any close by.
Crouching, he grasps the wooden post and pulls, but for his troubles he comes away with a scratch across the back of his hand from an errant thorn. He yanks his hand away, cursing under his breath and tries again, this time using his foot to stamp on the thorn bush. The wood buried inside isn’t coming out easily. In fact, it’s buried deep in the ground too. Possibly a fence post, but there is no fencing or wire around to indicate that.
It takes the best part of five minutes before Stephen releases the post from the ground and frees it from the thorn bush it has been trapped inside for God only knows how long. The post is snapped at the base, close to the ground, clearly rotten and weak.
For his effort, all he has in his hand is a post, but near the top is a random nail stickling half out of the wood. It seems, at one point or another, another piece of wood has been attached to the post, like a make-shift cross. Perhaps this is a grave marker of some sort. Or, if not a grave, then a marker to commemorate someone. Sophia, maybe?
Using the post to stamp the rest of the grass and thorns away, Stephen searches further, eventually finding a second plank of wood, approximately two feet long, buried in the earth. It’s rotten and covered in dirt, so he does his best to remove the grime.
The plank has certainly been attached to the post at one point or another, as it has a large crack down the centre,where the nail would have pierced it. There doesn’t appear to be any engraving, but it’s so filthy that it may indeed be hiding an inscription, so Stephen places it on the ground ready to take down to the cottage and clean.
He’s not finished up here yet.
The tree has been pulling him in the whole time he’s been close by. He can’t explain it. It wants him here. The longer he spends around the tree, the better he feels. His headache is lifting, his head clearing. Words make sense again.
Stephen steps closer to the tree and places a hand on its rugged bark, closing his eyes. He takes a deep breath, listening, feeling the coarseness under his palm. He swears he can feel a heartbeat. He looks up, into the browning leaves and branches above, wondering if by some ridiculous miracle, the scarecrow is back hanging there.
It is not.
If only this tree could talk. It’s Stephen’s job to speak for it. There are a hundred or more stories waiting to be told, trapped within the trunk, its branches and leaves, yet bound to remain silent forever. Trees cannot talk. People can, yet they are the ones who willingly hold secrets and refuse to say a word.
Wait …
There is something up there, among the leaves.
Stephen awkwardly grasps a large knot in the trunk and hauls himself up a few feet, just enough to reach wherehe needs to be. There’s a hole inside the trunk, which isn’t unusual for a tree of this size and age. It’s full of holes, nooks, crannies, dark crevices …but he wants to know more.
Reaching inside, there are damp leaves and goodness knows what else, but then his fingers brush against something familiar. Solid, yet soft. Alien.
He pulls it out and jumps back down to the ground.
It’s a sketchbook, wrapped in plastic.
Despite its protection, when he removes it, the book is worn and soggy at the edges. Too new to belong to John Hammel with its printed logo, but definitely not left here last week either.
He flicks through its delicate pages, smiling as he sees the drawings inside.
The initials S.H. are written in the corner of every page.
The sketches are delicate, breathtaking. Far too detailed and mature to have been drawn by a sixteen-year-old girl. She must have had an extraordinary talent. This is a refreshing new outlook on Sophia Hammel. A girl who loved to draw, to sketch the beauty around her, immortalise it on a page. He can relate to that. It’s the same with his writing. It’s not only scenery on the pages, either. There are a lot of sketches of women’s bodies; their hands, breasts and curves of their bodies.
