Pictures in the Earth

 

 

I’m turning the Yale lock on the back door as slowly and quietly as I dare. Grandma’s in the shop, and she’s got sharp ears. I’m not allowed out on my own after dark, which means I’m not allowed out at all in the evenings now.

I pull the door open; quietly, quietly. Someone laughs in the shop and I slide out under their noise, pulling the door shut behind me. Free!

I’ve got a torch, and the spare key in my pocket. And I’m not going far. I just want to leave my Christmas presents for my man – just in case he came back.

 

The moon is out over the hills, pale and thin, with a huge, frosty ring. The sky is a deep, dark blue. I’m not frightened. There are shimmery beginnings of frost on the grass and a sort of witchy-magic in the air and sky, which fills me up with excitement. It’s the sort of night me and Mum like best.

His house sits low and mysterious under the dusky sky. Like it’s hiding a secret. My heart starts beating faster. He couldn’t have come back, could he? Just in time for Christmas?

No. He couldn’t.

The barn is empty. The oak tree looms over the floor and out of the hole in the barn roof, branches reaching out for the open air. I go and touch it. It’s cold. The wood is dry and dark.

Is it dead?

I don’t know.

I put my presents down and sit on a bag of concrete, I rest my head on my knees and wrap my arms around my legs.

“I wish you’d come back,” I say. “From wherever you are.”

Nothing happens.

I scratch around in the earth with the sharp end of a bit of rock. I try and draw a full moon but it just looks like a circle. I make it a head and give it horns and round eyes.

It looks stupid.

I turn the horns into leaves, growing out of the head. I draw long twigs shooting out of where the person’s nose would be, if he had a nose.

Above my head, the branches of the oak tree rustle.

I draw a gravestone around the person. Underneath the grave, I draw a woman with long hair. I make the hair longer until she’s buried underneath it, like Sleeping Beauty.

She looks like she’s been scribbled out. Or like she’s buried alive.

“Can dead people come back and visit?” I say, out loud.

The oak tree shivers. The branches move in complicated welcome, or warning.

A hand reaches forward and covers mine.

“Who’s dead?” he says.