Beneath the Ancient Oak Tree

by Victoria Penny

As soon as darkness fell, the children were screaming.

Gleefully they ran ahead of their parents to the next house with a porch light blazing, a pumpkin grinning menacingly on the doorstep. They would knock like a hammer on anvil, sing trick or treat like a choir and smile greedily as their bags bulged with the spoils of the night.

She watched them all from the shadow of an ancient oak tree. These tiny beings gone wild. Made a game of spotting the store bought factory made costumes and the more elaborate and thought out homemade ones. And the ones thrown lazily together at the last minute. The bleached white sheet with holes cut out for the eyes. A little girl's face painted toxic green with a black pointed hat upon her head. The less traditional superheroes of the era's current obsession. A kid wearing a football kit, lugging the ball under one arm and struggling to keep a hold of his candy in the other. Another - she could not tell if it was a boy or a girl - with their dad's shirt torn and bloody and pulled over their head as they carried a paper mache head, red paint dripping like blood from a torn neck.

Winners were picked from her silent contemplation, never to be awarded a prize. They all took home prizes tonight anyway. This odd tradition of demanding sweets from neighbours you had never met. Being rewarded for mischief that would only be frowned upon during daylight.

"Who are you supposed to be?"

The haughty voice came from somewhere below, somewhere far out of reach. A dull distant thing that struggled to be heard.

She looked down and blinked in surprise at the small child, head barely reaching up to her hip. A girl, perhaps six or seven. Her costume was a pink ballet tutu with sparkling silver wings stapled to her back. A tiara glittered upon her head.

The fairy princess was staring up at her accusingly, eyes assessing every inch of her.

"That doesn't look like a costume," the girl said disapprovingly.

She looked down at herself. No, it didn't. Her nightgown was a thin silk, the straps across her shoulders slinking worms that held it in place. Looking at it now, she realised how inappropriate it was for the time of year. Autumn was meant for thick woolen pajamas and blankets. Hands wrapped around mugs of steaming hot chocolate.

"It's-" she began, but the words became lost, drifting away beyond her and the girl.

"Aren't you cold?" the girl wondered. "Mum wanted me to wear my jacket but I said no."

It was only now that she noticed the fog pouring from the girl's mouth with each breath. The girl wasn't quite shivering yet as she hopped from foot to foot to keep herself warm.

Her own skin was pale, but smooth of goosebumps. Yet she felt cold. Colder than she had ever been. Her limbs so stiff she didn't think she could possibly take another step.

"Cold," she said, like the concept was new to her. A thing she had never before experienced.

"Do you want some chocolate? I've got plenty and I don't like the one with nougat."

A chocolate bar was suddenly produced, like a magician pulling a coin triumphantly from an unsuspecting ear. She stared at it, at the small fist that clung to it. Had she ever been that small? Ever been that generous to strangers? She could not remember.

When she did not take the chocolate, the girl only shrugged and dropped it back into her bright orange candy bag. An offering for later, if she could not find something more to her tastes to trade it for.

The other children moved along the street, one by one knocking on doors. Only one house stood still and silent and dark. It was on the corner of the cul de sac, opposite the park with the ancient oak she found herself and the girl beneath. One brave boy, dressed in the bright red of some superhero, silver cape trailing down his back, ventured up the garden path as his friends watched from the street beneath the relative safety of a lamppost, its orange light making them glow. Shouts of encouragement got the boy as far as the porch where he abruptly halted, staring up at the seemingly empty house.

It was old, this house. The new developments had been built around it, leaving its old brown bricks out of place amongst the stark white of the new builds. And of course children were children. Tales of hauntings quickly spread until the house grew infamous. During the day it was just an old place that brought some character to the neighbourhood. At night, however, it loomed out of the shadows, big and strange and so terrifying people hurried their steps if they had to go near, averted their gaze in case their eyes saw something that their minds could not explain.

Nothing about the house seemed to have changed in the last few moments, yet the boy in the red costume and silver cape ran back towards his friends. Their taunting cries of wuss might have turned his cheeks red if he hadn't been so pale. Something had frightened him. Enough to hold his tongue and send him home early despite his bag only being half full of sweets.

Beneath the ancient oak tree, the fairy princess tutted loudly. "Boys," she said with narrow eyed disapproval as she watched the fleeing group, their shouts and taunts heard all the way up the street.

What had the boy seen? She found herself fascinated by the house, yet there was nothing remarkable about it. Sure, it was old, but it had been built for function not for display. There were no gargoyles looming from the sky, no elaborately decorated archways leading to bright and colourful walled-in gardens. It was plain. What was once an old farmhouse now abandoned as the neighbourhood grew around it. She stared and as she stared, a light flickered on in one of the upstairs windows. It blinked once, twice, then darkness once again.

She looked around, but the fairy princess had not seen, too busy munching on a piece of candy, the group of boys now too far down the street and pretending the house did not exist, that they were not scared of brick and mortar.

"I used to live there," she said and it was true, yet she could not remember it being true. She could not remember those walls, those rooms filled with things to make up a home, a life. Yet all the same she knew it to be true.

The fairy princess looked at her with a frown. "Mum said the lady there died."

"Yes," she agreed.

I died.

Deep night, startled awake and a cry choking upon her mouth. She had been dreaming something awful but the nightmares always became real upon waking. He was home. Clattering about downstairs, uncaring of who he woke; her, the baby, the neighbours. A door slammed and the shrieking began. Then the shouting. She wanted to hide, pull the covers over her head and shut out the world. But they would not shut him out. Nothing ever would. Shouting now. Shut up shut up SHUT UP he screamed at the baby, only a small thing who did not understand, could only cry out in fear and confusion. No no, not my baby. She would not let him. Do what he liked to her, but not the baby. She got up, the fear suddenly gone. Her baby was in danger. Caution fled her as abruptly as sleep had and she rushed into the baby's room. Crying, shouting, screaming. She tried to reach the baby but he would not let her. Hands around her wrists, the shackles she had stupidly put on herself when she had agreed to marry him, spend a life with him. She could feel the grip tighten, felt the bones break beneath her flesh like he was snapping something as flimsy as a stalk of celery. She cried out, kicked, screamed, but he was bigger, stronger and the blows came. Kept on coming, coming until blackness darker than the night fell upon her.

Now, beneath the ancient oak, she looked down at her torn and bloodied nightgown, her skin pale grey and bruised and beginning to rot. She was in the ground now, far from here, far from her baby. The baby whose cries she heard every night as she walked the empty rooms of that now dark and empty house.

It was the screaming of the children that had brought her to the street, their hyperactive glee mistaken for real fear.

I died, she remembered and howled into the night for her baby was forever lost to her.

The fairy princess shivered from the sudden howling wind. Perhaps she should have listened to Mum and worn the coat after all. But it didn't go with her costume and she would have been unable to show off her wings. If she kept moving like the other kids then she would be able to keep warm. She turned to say goodbye to the lady beneath the tree and found her gone. Only the fallen leaves, red and brown and dying where they lay undisturbed.

With a shrug, the fairy princess tightened her grip on her well earned bag of candy and skipped over to the next house with a porch light blazing and pumpkin grinning in welcome.