The Treeyard

This is a short story for the ChallengeCorner  Halloween Vault 3D prompt/contest. The prompt is:

A couple who frequent the woodlands went missing after a stormy night on Halloween. Strange creatures have been rumored lurking in the area. The only clue they left was the engraving of their initials on a 100-year-old tree.

#####

I watched from my rain-streaked bedroom window as men in suits carrying clipboards and flashlights carefully plodded their way around the outskirts of the treeyard, centering their attention on one of the tallest and oldest Douglas firs that stood high and mighty at the forest edge. The silent sentinel of the woods.

After search and rescue workers combed the small, uninhabited forest over the past few days, a moment of excitement was reached when one of the workers found a fresh engraving of Teddy and Johanna Big's initials on the hundred-year-old tree. A perfect TB and JB with a heart drawn around it.

My parents had been interviewed about their disappearance several times, and probably would be again. We knew them well. They'd been coming to our treeyard once a week for the past ten years, ever since they lost their daughter to Leukemia. This was the only place where Mrs. Johanna Big would ever smile.

"How dare you," my father said to me after the investigators left. "You carved that tree, didn't you?"

"I'm sorry, father."

"What is the one rule we must abide by?"

"Never harm a tree," I said, looking down.

"How can I be trusted as the caretaker of this treeyard if my own daughter is putting blade to bark?"

I couldn't look at him, not when he sounded so disappointed in me. I shrugged, looking at my feet.

He crouched down and gently put his hands on my arms. "I know you meant well, Rachael. It was a kind thought. But they felt your knife."

I cried then. That was not what I had intended.

"What's done is done," he said, gathering me up into his arms. "But you must promise me never to do it again."

"Will you get into trouble?" I asked. "I'm sorry if those men are here because of me."

"No, my sweet. It's no trouble at all. They're just doing their jobs. They think something bad has happened to Mr. and Mrs. Big. But we know better, don't we?"

I wiped my eyes and pulled away from the crook of his neck. He was smiling at me.

"We do," I said.

"And you can go visit them anytime you like," he said. "They'll be very happy to see you. As long as you're not holding a knife."

I continued to watch the investigators walk the area, hunched over, looking for tracks or other clues. They wouldn't find anything. The only reason they were even here, at our treeyard, is because it was well known the missing couple visited often. But that was all they had to go on, aside from my vandalism.

Ten years ago, a year before I was born, the Bigs had arrived carrying their gravely ill eleven-year-old daughter, from what I was told. Brianna was given to the forest, and I grew up knowing her very well.

Most people in the area were terrified of the treeyard. Rumors swirled around town, carried on the winds that swept by our tiny cottage. A few of my friends asked if the rumors were true.

"Did the trees come alive?" they asked me. "Did they speak and stare at you with mossy green eyes? Did they command all of the spiders and beetles to attack you if you dared to walk through it?"

But others knew better, like the Bigs. They saw it as a lovely place where they could spend time with those they loved.

A few nights ago, a vicious storm raged on Halloween night. There was an unexpected knock at our door and when father opened it, he found Mr. Big standing in the downpour, holding his wife in his arms. She'd had a heart attack, he told us. She wasn't going to make it.

"Do you know which tree?" my father asked, taking Mrs. Big out of his arms and into his own.

"The big one, next to Brianna," he said.

My father carefully placed Mrs. Big on the stretcher we kept for times such as this, and my mother checked her pulse.

"She's still with us," she said. "We should hurry."

Father and mother carried the stretcher, and Mr. Big and I followed, down the old path slick with mud to the forest edge. The wind moaned through the trees and thunder crackled in the distance.

Mr. Big ran ahead, straight up to the massive Douglas fir.

"This one," he said. "This one right here."

My parents put the stretcher down and my father picked up Mrs. Big, and then carefully placed her at the base of the tree. That's when the truly unexpected happened. Mr. Big suddenly clutched at his heart, cried out, and then fell over.

"Oh, Mr. Big!" my mother shouted. She tended to him and then looked up at father, shaking her head.

"It was meant to be," my father said.

They placed him next to his wife and we all took a few steps back. The empty tree groaned and the soil beneath it loosened. Roots and tendrils reached through the ground and wrapped themselves around Mr. and Mrs. Big, dragging their bodies down into the mud. The ground settled, the rain washing away any traces of what had happened.

The majestic tree shook and waved back and forth, its branches thrashing. And then it stilled.

A moment later, its branches reached for the tree next to it. To Brianna, their daughter. And she reached back.

They're right there, I thought to myself while watching the investigators. And there they'll stay. A happy family of three, just like us. 

It's not a graveyard. It's our treeyard.