hanging its head in misery. Even its leaves were ugly – black and withered and lifeless. Really, the tree didn’t so much grow as squat at the end of our garden, like a dying troll with a skin condition. Mum said it was diseased. I’d say.
And there was no sign of Mr Grittysnit’s letter. I was about to give it up for lost when a fluttering movement at the base of the tree caught my eye. It had somehow got wrapped round one of the tree’s withered branches. I could just about make out the words Each child will be judged and one stick figure pinned underneath a bunch of shrivelled leaves. I felt sorry for it. This wasn’t the holiday of a lifetime, lying under a septic tree in a damp backyard.
‘I’ll take that, thank you very much.’ I lifted up the branch gingerly – reluctant to catch its disease, whatever it was – and bent down to pick up the letter.
ZING! The air took on an electric charge and vibrated with a terrible force. The sounds in the garden became exaggerated with a horrid loudness. The rustling dead leaves in the branches above me were a booming rattle. A pigeon cooed and it sounded like a chainsaw. But more frightening than all of that were the gaps of silence between the sounds. They were eerie and powerful and strong.
It felt—
I’VE BEEN WAITING FOR YOU.
I spun on my heels. Who said that?
My heart thumped so loudly I could barely hear anything. Yet the patio was empty.
Icy sweat drenched my skin. Everything was real and unreal, too loud and too quiet at once.
Come on, Sorrel, breathe in and out, nice and slow. I calmed down enough to try to think. What had just happened? I’d only bent down to pick up the letter. Had the tree poisoned me, sent a hideous disease to my brain which had caused me to start hearing things? Or perhaps I’d had a rush of blood to the head when I’d bent down? Maybe I hadn’t had enough to eat. Maybe I should go into the kitchen and investigate the snack situation.
But what is that, moving near my feet? Rats?
There it was again!
But as I peered around me, shaking with fear, I realised there wasn’t anything black and wriggly next to my feet.
The movement had come from under my feet.
As if there was a … thing. Underneath the concrete.
Turning over.
Down there.
‘Hello?’
I sounded like a baby lamb bleating alone on a hill.
‘Is anyone there?’
The windows in the house gave me blank stares.
RUN, I told myself. NOW!
I managed one step away from the tree when the patio slab under my feet moved up and down, as if something deep down in the earth was trying to shake the concrete – or me – off itself.
Is this an earthquake?
My mouth opened to scream but no sound came out. Gasping, I looked down again. Like a twig snapping, the slab under my feet cracked clean in two. The crack gained momentum, ripping its way through the patio all the way from the tree to the back door. It broke the patio as easily as a warm knife slicing through butter, leaving behind a trail of smashed concrete.
The damage was worst by the tree. The concrete round its trunk had shattered outwards in a crude circle of fractured slabs. It looked like it was trying to smile through a mouthful of broken teeth. I saw something, stuck in the cracked slab under my feet.
And I couldn’t look away.
YOU KNOW WHEN you go Easter egg hunting and you have a hunch where an egg is going to be right before you find it in that very spot? I had that feeling. Like someone had put a little treasure down there for me to find.
Not only that, but it had been there my whole life. Waiting for me.
I felt exhausted and terrified, as wrung out as an old sock stuck in a spin cycle for too long. Yet I sank to my knees and peered closer. The thing in the slab was brown and papery. I could only see the top of it, but it looked like a leaf.
And here was the weird thing. Even though the sensible part of me was jumping up and down with disbelief – what was I doing, trying to rescue a random leaf, when I should be inside, running for cover before another earthquake? – there was another part of me with different ideas. And it seemed to be winning the battle of wills, because there I was, sweaty and hot and obsessed with jabbing my fingers into a broken concrete lump so I could pull this thing out.
Then it glowed.
I stared at it. I rubbed my eyes. Engaged the old eyeballs again. But no – it was not glowing now. Yet for a second it had looked almost alive …
All of a sudden, I didn’t care about my homework. I didn’t care about my schedule. I didn’t even care about my school trousers getting dirty. I eagerly reached down. But my fingers were too wide and it was wedged at least fifteen centimetres too deep. My fingertips scrabbled desperately but touched only air.
I ran into the kitchen, yanked open a kitchen drawer and rummaged around with shaking hands. What I needed was something narrow and sharp to stick down the crack and fish out what was down there. Barbecue tongs? No, they wouldn’t fit in the gap. A cocktail stick? That could work!
I ran back outside, kneeled down on the paving slab and poked the cocktail stick down the gap. It fitted perfectly but wasn’t long enough. I could have cried with frustration. I didn’t know why it mattered so much. I was spellbound somehow.
I hurried inside, pulled open the second kitchen drawer and found a yellowing plastic wallet stuffed with paperwork and a roll of cling film. Great if you wanted to cling-film some paperwork; less great if you wanted to impale something inexplicable your patio had just thrown up.
Forget your little rescue mission. Just get back to your schedule and make up for lost time.
I went to retrieve Mr Grittysnit’s letter from underneath the willow tree and threw a final glance at the cracked paving slab. That was weird. The thing stuck down there seemed to have … moved.
I could see a brown corner poking out now. That would make it much easier to pull out. But hadn’t it been wedged so far down my fingers hadn’t been able to touch it?
At that point, I could have done the sensible thing. Walked back into the house and called the emergency services. Reported an Unidentified Brown Papery Thing and had it removed by the authorities. Lived off the excitement for a couple of weeks, and then got on with my life.
But I didn’t.
And that is something I have to live with for the rest of my life. And potentially, although it’s very unlikely,
