Graham stands under the enormous canopy of the tree and looks up, squinting as debris and brown leaves flutter down onto his face, caused by birds landing and taking off from higher in the branches.
Yep.
A body. There’s a body hanging from the tree.
Holy shit.
He takes off his flat cap, readjusting his angle so the glare of the morning sun isn’t in his eyes because, from where he’s standing, the dazzling light is beaming through the leaves and branches, causing the body to glow around the edges.
Wait …
He’s wrong.
No, it’s not a body.
Relief sweeps over him, almost making his heart stop. The shock to his central nervous system causes a surge ofadrenaline, which his aging body isn't used to. He places his hand on the rugged trunk and leans against it, sucking in air as he attempts to get his breathing under control. If there really had been a body hanging, he wouldn’t have been able to get up to help them, not fast enough to save their life, anyway. It’s impossible to tell how long it’s been hanging here.
The point is, it’s not a body, so he doesn’t have to rush to save anyone.
But what the hell is it doing up there?
What evenisit?
He stares up among the branches once again, determined to work out the origin of the body-shaped object. It isn’t a real person, but itishumanoid in shape. Almost like a scarecrow, but crudely made, having no proper shape to the head, arms or legs, but enough of an outline to trick his eyes into thinking it was a person from far away. Just sticks, straw and possibly hay is stuffed into an old overcoat to pad it out. A rope wraps around the top part of the structure.
It looks like …
The scarecrow is hanging from a noose.
Graham scans the immediate area, almost expecting to catch whoever did this hiding and sniggering at the crude joke. Is that what this is? A joke of some sort? Perhaps it’s a group of local kids having a bit of fun, but whoever they are needs a hard lesson in what’s considered funny. Halloween is only a few days away, so perhaps it has something to do withthat. Whatever happened to good old trick or treating? Now, kids go above and beyond with practical jokes and jump scares, determined to get the next viral reaction on their damn phones.
His mind races back to Cherry Hollow and what had happened tothosekids from twenty-odd years ago. They had also started out just having a bit offun. It hadn’t ended well for them, had it?
Death. So much death.
Lives destroyed in a single moment that could never be taken back.
Graham shakes his head, forcing the old memories and dark demons out of his mind; the same ones which keep his mind active in the dead of the night when he’s supposed to be asleep. It never bodes well to dwell on the past, and Cherry Hollow is most certainly a part of his past. This isn’t like that, he’s sure.
Not every small town is full of secrets, lies and twisted human beings …
Then again …
He looks up once more. He can't very well leave it here, can he? What if a poor unsuspecting dog walker or child comes along and spots it? He’s surprised the dog walker he ran into earlier hadn’t noticed it. Although, it seems to only be visible at certain angles. It’s fairly well camouflaged otherwise.
It needs to come down. Graham’s made of tough stuff. He can handle a bit of a fright, especially after spending so many years in the police force, but he isn’t twenty years old anymore and climbing trees is a thing of the past.
He instantly thinks back to his childhood when he used to climb trees with his four best friends, only one of whom is still alive today.
Olivia Willows.
She’s not able to travel and visit him anymore, so he makes the long trek to the Lake District every month to see her instead. Thankfully, he doesn’t have to step foot into Cherry Hollow, as she now resides elsewhere. He stays the full two hours he’s allocated during visitation time, and they speak about everything from the weather to what the latest news headline is, never running out of topics. They once spent the entire one-hundred-and-twenty minutes swapping their thoughts on the latest political catastrophe going on in the States. There is one topic of conversation they never speak about, and Graham is glad about that because his stomach turns and he feels physically ill whenever he even so much as thinks about it. So, they avoid it.
It’s always bittersweet saying goodbye to Olivia. He knows she struggles with the isolation and being away from her family, but her daughters visit regularly with their husbands and children. When her husband, Frank, died last year, she’d coped surprisingly well, but Graham knew she wasputting on a strong front like she always did. She has friends where she is, but having inmates as friends isn’t the same as having a close childhood friend.
If Olivia could see him now, contemplating whether to scale a tree at the age of fifty-five, she’d laugh her socks off. He knows if he attempts to climb up and bring down the strange scarecrow, he’ll most likely fall and injure himself, or worse, break his neck. But he can't very well leave it up there. However, there’s a problem: even if he had springs for legs, he wouldn’t be able to climb the trunk to reach the more climbable sections. There aren’t any footholds. Maybe for a young spritely youth with strength and flexibility on their side, but not for him, someone who struggles to bend down and put on his slippers some mornings. Fifty-five isn’t old, but Graham feels as if he’s aging quicker than the average person of his age. Perhaps that’s what the police force has done to him over the years: slowly caused his body to break down. He just hopes his mind stays intact.
There’s no doubt about it. He needs a ladder.
