The Oak Tree on Meadow Lane

Chapter 1: The Oak Tree

Meadow Lane is a dark windy road, but it was not always like this. When I was a child it was much more life and action. Meadow Lane winds down to a single stump. Rotting away, just like everything else on the lane. All the houses were bland, boring, and abandoned. The only new thing was my own vehicle.

The bouquet of flowers I brought with me added the only bits of color to the lane. I set them down on the gravestone next to the stump. The final resting place of my hopes and dreams. I stare at it and it stares back. The words on the stone speak loudly to me though it does not make a sound. A black cat slinks around the houses, but is too cautious to come near me. I understand. My old frame and graying hair makes me look like a great horror villain.

Rotting fruit and dying grass. Dead bodies and smoking guns. The tragedies of Meadow Lane are still alive within my memory. I am dying, but my legacy lives on. I hold the knife in my hand, but I can not bring myself to use it. Do it, do it, do it. Not yet, yet, yet.

I stand there next to the old stump. I remember all the events that happened at this spot many, many years ago. I remember Old John and the three finches, the tire swing incident with Fredric, and the cat's eyes. But I am getting ahead of myself.

I sit on the old stump and more memories flash before my eyes. I was young again and the stump was no longer a stump and the gray gloomy gardens were now a great green.

There on Meadow Lane was the Oak Tree. Tall and sturdy like a wall in the wind. The Oak Tree watches Meadow Lane like a mother to her child. It was one day in February of '24 that all of this changed. One day that changed the history of Meadow Lane. Yet the real story does not begin then. The true story begins one year earlier. February fourteenth '23.