The Red Tree

“All right,” she’d said. “But if I break my neck, you’re to blame.”

I think I told her to get bent, go fuck herself, something like that. Words that only made her laugh harder, her laughter echoing off the tu

Anyway, the memory of Amanda mocking me that day was enough to get me moving again and through the cellar archway, past that horseshoe, that rust hourglass. The temperature seemed to drop a good ten degrees, and the hard-packed dirt floor gave way to a somewhat muddy, uneven floor, with native rocks showing through, here and there. I shone the flashlight at the ceiling. It was a foot or so lower than in the basement proper, and countless roots and rootlets had penetrated from above, giving it an ugly, hairy appearance.

There was a rough-hewn stone threshold, too, dividing those portions of the basement to the south and north of the archway. It wasn’t granite or schist or phyllite or whatever, but some dark, slaty rock that reminded me of the older headstones I’ve seen in local cemeteries, the picturesque ones dating back to the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. I kneeled down for a better look, playing the incandescent beam over the stone. I’m going to have to go back with my camera and get some photographs. The damned thing is inscribed with an assortment of crude designs. At first glance, I thought I was just seeing graffiti. Maybe something Blanchard’s kids or grandkids had done, or something done, who knows, a hundred, two hundred years ago by someone else’s kids. But I quickly recognized a few of the symbols, that they weresymbols. Astrological, alchemical, Cabbalistic — really a nonsensical jumble, which put me in mind of the hexes you can still see painted on barns in Pe

I do not believe, at this point, that I was still searching for Dr. Harvey’s manuscript. I think, more likely, I was only trying to show myself that Amanda had been wrong all along. That day in Tavistock, and all those other days and nights. I was notafraid of the dark, or of the hunger of abandoned places, or, for that matter, of anything else that she might have accused me of. That she is dead (there, I’ve said it, I’ve writtenit), and so would always have the last laugh as regards all these little grudges and jabs, hardly seemed relevant. It was not in vain, because if I was proving something to Amanda, I was also proving something to myself. Jesus fuck, Amanda. No one we knew ever believed that there was anything between us but the sex and some virulent allure, my dirty dishwater circling the drain of you. Not a very pretty comparison, but maybe it’s the best we’ll ever deserve, either one of us. Anyway, I went into that stinking, muddy darkness because, once upon a time, she thought I was a coward. Two little girls bickering because neither of us ever learned to love, and this was my latest chance to give you the finger, Amanda, posthumous though it may be.

The ground made a soft, squelching sound beneath my sneakers, and I slipped once or twice, almost falling. I hastily looked over the contents of the shelf nearest the archway, which held very little besides row after row of ancient ca

It was taped shut, but most of the adhesive had dried out long ago, and I didn’t need a knife to get it open. Inside was page after page of the same onionskin paper I’d found in the Royal’s carriage, and so there I was, returned fucking victorious from my own personal katabasis, Hecate back from the bloody bowels of hell with rescued Persephone, what the fuck ever. I’d done the deed, and now I held the prize, and seeing it there, my fury quickly, calmly, melted away. Not caring that my dirty fingers would leave smudges, I lifted the first page from the box, and then the second, and then the third, reading over them as quickly as I could. After maybe ten or fifteen minutes, I finally had the presence of mind to get up and carry the box to the kitchen table, where, after half a decade, I reunited it with Harvey’s typewriter.

I got a beer from the refrigerator (because, already, the heat was feeling a lot less welcome than I’d imagined it would be while I was still in the basement) and then sat down to reread, more carefully, those first few pages. The first was simply a title page — THE RED TREE by Dr. Charles L. Harvey and all that. The usual. The second page was occupied by two epigraphs, one from Thoreau, the other from Seneca the Elder. Neither meant very much to me, but perhaps they will later, once I’ve had a chance to get through the manuscript. The third page was blank, but the fourth bore the heading — CHAPTER ONE: THE CURSED ACORN — only THE CURSED ACORN was crossed out , and a string of question marks had been scrawled in directly above it in red ink. I sat there, sipping at my beer, the amber bottle perspiring and growing slick in my hand. Despite the things I’d read online, nothing here,before me, pointed to Harvey’s unfinished book being a study of regional “fakelore.” Rather, it looked to be concerned with local traditions regarding a tree on the plot of land now known as the Wight place. What’s more, it quickly became evident that this tradition amounted to stories of murder, witchcraft, lycanthropy, ca