THE WITCH TREE

A hanging tree used to hang witches is haunted by their ghosts

         The class of year ten, eleven, and twelve students had been wandering around the forest outside Glen Hartwell, in the Victorian countryside for a couple of hours, and the students well getting bored and tired.
         “Why are we wandering around this jungle on the first Friday in March?” asked Dandelion, ‘Dandy’, McKenna, a tall, honey blonde, fourteen-year-old.
         “Yeah, summer is over already,” said Caitlyn, ‘Katy’, Lawson, also fourteen, a raven-haired beauty.
         “You know teachers, their mind are a foreign country,” said Morticia, Tisha, Waitlynn a tall leggy redhead, “I think it was Aldous Huxley who first said that.”
         “Hello, my three future brides,” said Boris ‘Pizza-Face’ Anderson, a tall geeky boy who fancied all three girls.
         “Ooh,” said Dandy, as Katy and Tisha stuck a finger into their mouths simulating gagging.
         “Ah, you may tease me,” said Pizza face, “but you are all so hot for me.”
         “Ooh!” said Dandy and Tisha.
         “So, are not,” corrected Katy.
         “You say that now, hotties, but when I’m a tech. billionaire you’ll all be sharing my bed.”
         “Ooh,” said Tisha and Katy.
         “I think I really am going to chunder,” teased Dandy.
         “What’s the hold up, kids,” asked Joseph Garbarla, a tall handsome half-breed Aborigine, in his late sixties, who taught indigenous history and nature studies in TAFE classes.
         “We were wondering why we’re bush walking on the sixth of March, Mr. Garbarla?” asked Dandy.
         “It was either now or over Easter,” teased Kayley Hoffman, the high school’s head art teacher, a tall, powerfully-built, Amazonian brunette, who looked more like a builder’s labourer than the talented artist that she was.
         “What?” demanded a shocked Dandy: “Easter is school holidays.”
         “Our chance to relax from the grind of school for four days,” said Katy.
         “And the one time of the year when we allow ourselves to scoff down lots of chocolate,” insisted Tisha.
         “That’s what we thought you’d say,” teased Garbarla.
         “Which is why we are nature walking today,” finished Kayley.
         “Just be grateful that March has warmed up after the cold February that we had,” added Pizza Face.
         “Only Pizza face pronounces the second ‘R’ in February,” complained Dandy.
         “Tease me now, but when I’m a tech. billionaire you’ll willingly be my harem.”
         “Ooh!” said the three girls before sticking a finger into their mouths to simulate gagging.
         “Aren’t you a little young, Pizza Face, to be talking about having your own harem?” teased Kayley.
         “Not at all, they’ll come begging to share my bed when I’m so rich, that I make Bill Gates look like a pauper.”
         “Well you can’t fault him for confidence,” said Garbarla, making them all laugh.
         “What’s the hold up?” asked Len Lonsdale, forty-something, a tall, lanky Maths teacher, holding hands with his fiancé Eloise Mawson.
         “We thought you’d discovered something interesting,” said Eloise, thirty eight, an English teacher and a tall, busty redhead.
         “We did,” teased Garbarla: “When Pizza face becomes a tech. billionaire, Dandy, Katy, and Tisha are going to his harem.”
         “Ooh,” said the three girls before simulating gagging again.
         “Only part of my harem,” corrected Pizza face: “I also fancy Suzie and Ester Carmichael, Adelaide Donadin, Lizzie Chong, and Libby Whyte.”
         “We’d better go warn them,” said Dandy, and the three girls took off after the rest of the students.
         “They’ll come running back to me when I’m meta-rich,” insisted Pizza face.
         “Well, I admire you confidence,” said Garbarla.
         Geraldine Lewis a tall, extremely thin, fifty-something woman with long raven hair, head of the science department came back to say:
         “You’d better come see what Shelby and I have found.”
         “Something interesting?” asked Garbarla as they all started at a run after the three teenage girls.
         When they caught up, they found Shelby Zhau and the sixty or so teenagers standing around looking at the ugliest tree anyone could ever imagine.
         “Yeech,” said Joseph Garbarla, “what is it?”
         “Well, it’s made out of wood, has branches, and roots,” teased Dandy McKenna, “so I’m guessing that it’s a tree.”
         “Very funny, Dandy,” said Shelby, forty-something, a tall, rusty-haired woman: “But unless I’m mistaken, it’s a hanging tree.”
         “A hanging tree?’ asked Adelaide Donadin, seventeen, a half-breed Aborigine, and top of her class.
         “Where they hanged people as witches!”
         “We had witches in Glen Hartwell?” asked Katy, eyes wide in expectation..
         “No, just demented old women who were accused and hanged as witches because they were ugly old crones,” said Shelby.
         “Then it’s a good thing my Granny Mabel wasn’t alive in those days,” said Dandy: “They would have hanged her for sure.”
         “Dandy!” cried Shelby as all of the teenagers laughed: “That’s a dreadful thing to say!”
         “It’s true though,” said Tisha, “you haven’t seen her Granny Mabel.”
         The teachers all shook their heads in dismay as the teenagers laughed so hard that they almost wet themselves.
         
         “So how did everyone like their first week of spending a day or two out at Morecambe Street?” asked Terri Klein, a tall beautiful ash blonde and the Senior Sergeant of the local police.
         “We hated it!” chorused everyone except Colin and Terri, who had spent time out at the tiny police station in Lenoak Township.
         “It’s freezing out there for one thing,” insisted Alice Walker, a tall Amazonian body builder.
         “Yes,” agreed Sheila Bennett, a thirty-seven-year-old Goth chick, and Chief Constable of the local area: “As your designated drive, Tezza, I was expected to be exempted from spending time out there.”
         “Instead she got me to drive the Jeep for your two days out there,” said Colin Klein, Terri’s husband, a tall, redheaded Englishman.
         “It’s nepotism!” protested Wendy Pearson, a tall forty-something honey blonde: “She excuses her hubby, but we get stuck going out there.”
         “You only spent one day out there, same as me,” said Hilly Hindmarsh, a tall, Nordic blonde in her late fifties: “And March seems to be warming up after the unseasonably cool Feb that we had.”
         “Nepotism, I say!” cried Wendy.
         “Calm down everybody,” insisted Suzette Cummings, a short eighteen-year-old with long raven hair: “Morecambe Street has to be manned ... Although as the only Tech genius working for the police force, I expected to be excused, since the force’s PC is here in Mitchell Street.”
         “I don’t hear Stanlee Dempsey, Jessie Baker, or Donald Esk complaining,” pointed out Terri.
         “No, because, wiser than us, they didn’t come to Glen Hartwell today, in case you tried to stick them out at Morcambe Street again,” insisted Alice.
         “All right, I’ll get heaters for Morcambe Street,” said Terri, “so you won’t all freeze out there.”
         “And we could always set up our own Intranet system,” suggested Colin: “Then Suzette could use a laptop at Morcambe Street to access the main computer.”
         “What?” demanded the teenager, soon joined by everyone except Colin, Terri, and Hilly.
         “Actually,” volunteered Hilly, “as long as you do get two new heaters and an air conditioner for Morcambe Street, I’m happy to be there permanently.”
         “Say what?” asked Alice Walker, and the ululation of protesting voices started up again.
         “Plus you have to send Mrs. Morton around each day with tea, coffee, and treats,” added Hilly.
         “Certainly,” agreed Terri, then clapping her hands to get everyone else’s attention: “Children, children, quieten down.”
         “Calling us children,” said Sheila sulkily.
         “Hilly has volunteered ....”
         “Under certain conditions,” reminded the Nordic blonde.
         “To stay out at Morcambe Street permanently ... Who else is willing to do that?”
         “No one!” shouted Alice, and again the ululation of protests commenced.
         “Oh well, honey,” said Colin, giving his wife a comforting hug, “one out of two is a bare pass, as they say.”
         “Sheila!” shouted Terri, to get her second-in-commands attention: “It wasn’t too bad out in Morcambe Street when you and I were there permanently, was it?”
         “Yes!” insisted the Goth chick, and again the rage of angry voices threatened to deafen.
         
         Over at the hanging tree many of the teachers and children were using their mobile phones to photograph the ugly tree, while some of the boys were making half-hearted attempts to climb it.
         “Don’t go too far up the tree,” warned Joseph Garbarla.
         “Why, what’s it gonna do, throw me off?” asked Rex Hunter, seventeen, a tall lanky blond boy, whose family owned the Hunter-Smythe Hotel in Harpertown.
         “You really should come down, Rex,” suggested Garbarla.
         “Yes, that tree was used nearly two hundred years ago to hang people,” said Shelby Zhau: “But it could be hundreds of years older than that.”
         “It looks at least a thousand years old,” said Kayley Hoffman, “it’s not safe to be climbing.” Then to the others, “He never can do as he’s told, he’s my worst student in art class.”
         “And in my class,” agreed Shelby.
         “Thankfully he doesn’t take my TAFE course,” said Garbarla.
         “It’s a good thing his family own the Hunter-Smythe in Harpertown,” said Eloise Mawson crossing her hands across her ample chest: “Or else he wouldn’t have Buckley’s of getting a job when he leaves school.”
         “Yes, and the sooner the better,” said her fiancé, Len Lonsdale.
         “Who wants to see me do a swan dive?” teased the blond climber, making as though he really were going to dive.
         “Come down at once, before you really do a swan dive!” ordered Garbarla.
         “Ah, I’m safe as houses up here,” said the seventeen year old.
         Seconds later, his foot slipped, and screaming, he plummeted to Earth.
         “Oh God, I really am going to be sick,” said Dandy.
         Along with a dozen or more class mates she raced away to throw up, while Garbarla and the teachers raced across to the boy to see if he was alive. However, the angle of his broken neck told them all that they needed to know.
         “Stupid bastard, but you can’t feeling sorry for him,” said Eloise.
         Taking out his phone Garbarla rang Triple-O.
         
         Taking out her mobile phone as it rang, Terri Klein covered one ear with a hand to drown out the carry on, while holding her phone to the other ear. After a moment, she disconnected and shouted to Colin:
         “There’s been a death at a tree outside the Glen. Sounds like a simple case of a lad showing off and falling, but we’d better go check.”
         “Anything to get out of this din,” Colin shouted back.
         “We’re going out,” shouted Terri: “Are you driving us, Sheila, or would you rather spend the day at Morcambe Street.”
         By way of answer, the Goth chick raced across, beating the Kleins to the door to Mitchell Street.
         When they arrived at the Witch Tree, the crowd of teachers and school kids had backed off, and an ambulance and crew were waiting to take away Rex Hunter after Sheila took the death scene photos.
         “So what happened?” asked Terri, going across to the schoolies.
         Joseph Garbarla quickly and concisely explained what had occurred.
         “So, just high jinks gone horribly wrong?” asked Colin.
         “I don’t want to talk ill of the dead,” said the handsome Aboriginal man; “but he was a notorious show off. I think the fact we ordered him to come down, egged him on to climb higher.”
         “He musta been a hundred metres up, when he fell,” said Dandy McKenna.
         “Don’t exaggerate, Dandy,” chastened Eloise Mawson, “but he would have been at least fifty metres.”
         “Okay Derek, Chezza, you can take the poor bugger away,” called Terri.
         “Not much need for us to even be here,” said Sheila.
         “Well, it got us away from the ruckus at Mitchell Street,” pointed out Terri.
         
         Later that evening, over at the Hunter-Smythe in Harpertown, Lyndon Hunter, a huge, muscular fifty-something blond man was fuming. He and a dozen other people stood around in the solid oaken-walled reception area:
         “That bloody witch tree has taken my poor son from us!”
         Beside him, his wife, Sybilla, a short obese brunette in her fifties, stood crying, hanging onto Lyndon for support.
         “That bloody witch tree!” agreed István Benedek, a huge, muscular man, who looked like an Olympic weight lifter, but was really the hotel’s chef; a Hungarian known for his temper and strong opinions..
         “Someone should burn the bloody thing down!” insisted Duncan Wayne, a tall, balding bricklayer’s labourer.
         “Long since bloody time,” agreed Brunhilda ‘Bruno’ Schneider the maid-come-waitress, a huge Amazonian redhead of Germanic descent.
         “I’ve got some Jerry cans of Petrol in my ute outside,” offered Duncan.
         “Then let’s go burn the bloody murdering tree,” shouted István, and a dozen or so enraged people raced outside to climb into the rusty pale green ute.
         Nearly an hour later they were at the base of the Witch Tree, István and Duncan emptying the two Jerry cans upon the roots and base of the Ancient tree.
         “Kill my son will you, you evil, fucken bustard!” shouted Lyndon, shaking his fist at the tree.
         For a while the tree seemed to be burning, while the mob cheered and sang as though partying, not getting revenge for a young man’s death. Then the flames suddenly went out for no reason.
         “What the fuck?” asked Lyndon going across to investigate.
         Then, with a loud whoosh, the flames suddenly returned and leapt across to engulf the mob of people, setting them alight.
         “Jesus, help me, I’m burning!” shouted Duncan Wayne.
         “Lord save me please!” cried Bruno Schneider, continuing to pray, until the agony of immolation became too great and her praying turned to dying screams of terror and pain.
         Soon everyone was racing around hysterically screaming, praying, crying as one by one they burnt to death, to fall upon the dried pine needles and gum leaves that carpeted the forest floor, soon reduced to little more than ashes.
         Who can avenge my poor lad now? Lyndon thought, just before dying.
         Back at the Hunter-Smythe in James Matra Drive, Sybilla Hunter waited until a quarter to midnight before dialling Triple-O.
         
         An hour or so later Terri, Sheila, and Colin were standing around the Witch Tree, trying to make sense out of the pile of ashes which apparently used to be a dozen or so angry human beings.
         Seeing the empty Jerry cans, Sheila said, “Well those tie in with Sybilla’s story. Maybe the careless bastard spilt the petrol all over themselves.”
         “And then set themselves on fire?” asked Terri.
         “Well, if they were drunk enough ....”
         “According to Sybilla they were stone cold sober,” said Colin: “Only drunk upon rage and desire for revenge.”
         “Then how the aitch do you explain it?” demanded Sheila as they heard sirens as two ambulances wended their way toward the Witch Tree.
         “We bloody well can’t,” admitted a frustrated Terri.
         As the ambulances arrived, after yawning widely, Colin said, “Anyway we’d better get back to bed until the morning.”
         
         By the next morning, all sign of the previous night’s conflagration had been removed, and a young courting couple were seated upon a Freemantle Dockers Football team’s purple and white blanket having a picnic breakfast.
         “Harley, I mean, Harleen,” began Gerard Kennedy no relation to the famous actor.
         “Why does everybody call me Harley Quinn like that vagabond loafer who hangs out with the Joker in Batman?” demanded Harleen Quincy, twenty-eight, a tall beautiful blonde.
         “The fact that your name, Harleen Quincy, is similar to hers, Harley Quinzel, the fact that you’re a beautiful blonde with a perfect bubble-butt and a more than ample chest like her, are factors,” said Gerard.
         Sighing Harleen admitted: “And the fact that I do go to Fancy Dress Parties dressed as Harley Quinn probably doesn’t help.”
         “Oh, gorgeous, you’ll always be my favourite Harley Quinn,” teased Gerard, before giving her a long passionate kiss.
         As they were kissing, Gerard suddenly heard a loud female voice say, “Rape the cunt and then kill her.”
         Startled, he broke off the kiss and asked, “Did you say something, honey?”
         “How could I with your tongue so far down my throat,” she teased.
         They started to kiss again, and once more the voice told him, “Rape the cunt and then kill her.”
         “No, I won’t, I love her!” cried Gerard in distress.
         “Love who?” demanded Harleen.
         “Rape the cunt and then kill her. Rape the cunt and then kill her,” repeated the voice over and over.
         Finally, cracking, Gerard punched Harleen in the face to knock her out, then ripped away her light voile clothing and began rutting upon her, with no pretence of making love. After ejaculating inside her, with the voice still inside his head, the raven-haired man, rolled her over, spread apart the cheeks off her perfect bubble-butt and slammed his penis in through her sphincter.
         Awaking, screaming in shock and agony, Harleen started to struggle, so still obeying the voice, Gerard reached around to take her neck into his hands, to strangle her to death, even before he finished sodomising her.
         “Now kill yourself!” ordered the female voice.
         “What?” asked Gerard, staring down in shock at the remains of Harleen Quincy.
         “Now kill yourself!” ordered the female voice: “You’re a rapist and a murderer, with no right to be alive.”
         Still obeying the unseen female, Gerard returned to his blue and white mini minor, climbed in, backed up more than a hundred metres, before speed forward crashing full pelt into the Witch Tree.
         “Now die,” the Witch Tree gave him his final command, and Gerard obeyed almost immediately.
         
         An hour or so later Terri and her officers, plus two ambulances and various medics were on the scene trying to make sense of the two deaths.
         After Sheila took the crime scene photos, the two corpses were taken to the basement morgue at the Glen Hartwell and Daley Community Hospital for examination.
         A short time later Sheila asked, “So what’s the verdict Docs?”
         “It would seem that Gerard raped and murdered Harleen, then killed himself,” said Jesus Costello, a tall fifty-something dark-haired man, administrator and chief surgeon of the hospital
         “But why would he do that?” demanded Terri.
         “Remorse for what he had done to Harleen,” suggested Tilly Lombstrom, an attractive middle-aged brunette; Jesus’s second in command.
         “No, she meant, why would Gerard rape and murder her?” asked Colin.
         “They were childhood sweethearts going all the way back to kinda,” pointed out Sheila: “They were engaged and were going to be married in May.”
         “Maybe he got impatient, if she wouldn’t give him sex,” opined Elvis Green, a mid sixties man with long black sideburns, the local coroner.
         “That doesn’t make any sense,” protested Sheila: “Gerard was a nice bloke, I’ve known him all of his life, he wouldn’t rape and kill the woman he loved and wanted to spend the rest of his life with.”
         “No way!” agreed Alice, Colin, and Terri.
         “He wouldn’t rape or kill anyone,” said Suzette: “As Sheils said, he was a nice bloke.”
         “Was he drunk or doped out on anything?” asked Colin.
         “Nope, no trace of anything in his stomach or blood,” said Jesus.
         “Then it doesn’t make any bloody sense,” insisted Terri.
         “Gerard was a good, decent, God fearing bloke!” insisted Sheila.
         “We’re as puzzled as you,” admitted Tilly: “But the semen in her vagina are anus are his.”
         “And his fingerprints are around her neck, proving that he strangled her,” insisted Elvis.
         “It doesn’t make any sense,” repeated Sheila as they returned to the Jeep outside: “Gerard would never have done that to Harleen!”
         “No, of course not,” agreed Alice Walker.
         “He loved Harleen,” insisted the Goth chick as they climbed into the Jeep.
         
         By the time that Briony and Cally Earnshaw reached the Witch Tree all trace of the rape-murder-suicide was gone.
         “So what’s the dealio, Sis?” asked Cally, fourteen, a short redheaded girl, with large-apple-sized breasts.
         “I’m going to prove that this oversized piece of firewood isn’t haunted, by climbing it all the way to the top, then climbing safely back down,” insisted Briony, sixteen, a tall raven-haired girl with cupcake-sized breasts.
         “But remember what happened to Rex Hunter!” insisted Cally, “the tree threw him off to his death.”
         “Nonsense, Rex Hunter was a moron and deserved to die!” insisted Briony, as she walked across to the ugly, gnarled tree which did indeed look a thousand years or more old: “You don’t scare me you old pile of woodworm!”
         “Just wait and see,” said the Witch Tree inside the teenager’s head.
         “Did you say something, Sis?” asked Briony, looking back at Cally.
         “Nah-ah.”
         Briony hesitated for a second, so the tree said, “Afraid, little girl?”
         “I’m not afraid of anything,” boasted Briony looking back at her sister, whom she half thought was trying to scare her out of attempting the climb.
         “That’s the problem,” said Cally: “If you knew fear, you’d never consider climbing that death trap.”
         “Do you think it’s haunted or something?” teased Briony.
         “Maybe,” said Cally, not wanting to seemed stupid, but also not wanting her sister to take needless risks.
         “Don’t listen to the little cunt,” instructed the Witch Tree inside Briony’s head.
         “Yeah, I’m not listening to you, you little cunt!” called down Briony as she continued climbing the ancient tree.
         “What the Hell brought that on?” asked a hurt Cally.
         “Tell her to mind her own fucking business,” instructed the tree.
         “Mind your own fucking business,” repeated Briony, starting to enjoy telling off her troublesome younger sibling.
         “What the Hell brought that on?” demanded Cally: “I’m just worried about you.”
         “Tell her to fuck off, you can handle yourself!”
         “Fuck off, Cally, I can handle myself!”
         “If that’s how you feel, I’m going home to tell Mum and Dad,” said Cally.
         “Good riddance to her!” said the tree.
         “Good riddance to you!” shouted Briony.
         Crying at her sister’s taunts, Cally turned and started home.
         “This is easy peasy,” said Briony, a little surprised at how easily she was scaling the ancient growth.
         “Easy peasy,” repeated the voice inside her head: “Keep climbing, you’re doing it easy peasy.”
         “I’m doing it easy peasy,” agreed Briony.
         She was perhaps two-thirds of the way up rthe towering tree, when she encountered the image of an old hag’s face.
         “Yeech she is ugly!” said Briony, stopping to examine what she assumed was a carving done centuries ago when the tree was much smaller: “Why would anyone want to carve such an ugly face into it?”
         “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder,” said face of the crone, suddenly opening its eyes to glare at her.
         “Holy fuck, you’re alive,” said a startled Briony backing away from the witch’s face.
         “All trees are alive,” said the old crone, laughing as Briony started to plummet to Earth.
         “Help meeeeeeeeee!” shrieked the teenage girl as she fell nearly a hundred metres toward the forest floor.
         “There’s no helping you now, girlie!” taunted the crone face before starting to cackle like one of Macbeth’s witches.
         
         Cally was crying as she walked slowly away from the tree. Then hearing her sister shriek, she turned and raced back to the Witch Tree where she saw her sister broken and unconscious at the base of the tree. From high up the Witch Tree the teenager could hear inexplicable cackling.
         Crows? wondered Cally as she checked for a heartbeat. Finding it strong, but erratic, she took out her mobile phone and rang Triple-O.
         Ten minutes later an air ambulance helicopter arrived. After checking the girl carefully, the paramedic carefully placed a neck brace upon the unconscious teenager, then gently lifted her onto a stretcher and placed her into the helicopter.
         “Sorry, we can’t take you with us too,” apologised the paramedic, Daniel Pakenham, “but we need room to move around to treat your sister.”
         “But what about ...?” asked Cally, stopping as she heard sirens approaching.
         As the chopper was taking off, the white Jeep Cherokee arrived and Terri and the others piled out.
         “Come with us honey,” said Suzette leading Cally toward the rear of the Jeep.
         “Hey, wait a minute it’s moved,” said Alice staring at the Witch Tree.
         “What, the tree?” asked Terri turning to look at it: “It can’t have.”
         “It has though,” seconded Colin: “It used to be level with those blue gums on either side of it; now they’re a metre or so behind it.”
         “And those two huge roots weren’t sticking up out of the ground the last time we were here,” pointed out Sheila.
         “Jesus, you’re right,” agreed Terri: “That’s it then, I’m declaring a quarantine around this bloody tree. First thing tomorrow, I’m calling Building and Works to get George and Eunice duBois to erect a tall chain link fence around it.”
         When they arrived at the Glen Hartwell Hospital, they found Briony in the operating theatre along with Jesus and Tilly. Outside the theatre sat her parents and older brother, all looking distressed.
         Seeing her family, Cally raced across to huge her mother so that the two could cry together.
         “I’m sorry, Mum, I couldn’t stop her,” said Cally.
         “Don’t worry, love, we all know how headstrong she can be,” said Maisie, forty-four, a short stocky raven-haired woman.
         “It’s that bloody demon trees fault,” said Magnus Earnshaw, forty-nine, a tall redheaded burly farming man: “Someone should bloody cut it down.”
         “Why don’t we go do it right now?” demanded Parnell, twenty-one, a tall, burly farmer, wearing coveralls.
         “Because we’re hoping and praying that Briony pulls through,” pointed out Maisie, starting mother and daughter crying again.
         “Besides it was already tried,” said Terri: “With disastrous results.”
         
         Over at Bateman’s Hotel in 127 Lawson Street, Glen Hartwell, the regulars were getting drunker and drunker and moodier and moodier, they had just heard the news of the latest victim of the Witch Tree as everyone was now calling it.
         “That poor little girl will probably be in a wheelchair for the rest of her life,” said Rian O’Hagan, a huge forty-something redheaded Irishman, and a lumberjack since the age of twelve.
         “If the poor little blighter even lives,” said the landlord, Adrian Bateman, a tall bear of a man: “I hear it’s still only a fifty-fifty chance at the moment.”
         “Innocent little girls should be safe from demon trees!” cried another drinker.
         “Damned right they should!” said Rian, deciding that it was up to him to do something about it.
         Staggering to his feet, the lumberjack weaved his way around the tables to almost fall out into Lawson Street in his determination to avenge Briony Earnshaw. He staggered around the corner into a small lane where he had parked his cobalt blue Ford ute. Going to the tray, he pulled back the canvass to check that his extra-large chainsaw was there, and that it was full of fuel.
         “That fucken tree won’t be killin no more innocent girls while I’m alive!” declared Rian as he staggered around to the cabin of the ute: “Or my name isn’t Rian Declan O’Hagan!”
         Almost falling twice on his way from the tray to the cabin, Rian finally did fall into the cabin where he passed out and snored for fifty minutes or so. Then, awakening he sat up, dropped his keys, which he had to hunt for, whacking his head on the dashboard in the effort.
         “Blasted tree, trying to witch Rian Declan O’Hagan even from this distance,” said the drunken lumberjack: “Well, your evil magic won’t stop me from getting justice for that poor little Earnshaw girl.”
         With grim determination, he finally got the key into the slot, started the Ford ute and headed toward the Witch Tree.
         In his drunken state, it took Rian nearly two hours to find the Witch Tree, not helped by the fact that it had again moved, this time a good fifteen metres closer to Glen Hartwell. Like the pandanus tree, the Witch Tree’s roots were now all above ground, holding the gnarled, ancient tree nearly a metre above ground level.
         “Trying to escape the wrath of Rian Declan O’Hagan by climbing out of the ground, you monster, girl-killing tree,” declared the lumberjack.
         “The evil cunt deserved to die!” said the Witch tree inside Rian’s head.
         “Sweet Jesus, I must be even drunker than I thought,” said Rian, crossing himself despite being an Irish Protestant.
         “The evil cunt deserved to die!” repeated the Witch tree.
         “No little girl deserves to die!” protested Rian, uncertain whether he was talking to the Witch Tree or his imagination.
         “The cunt got what she deserves and so will you, Rian Declan O’Hagan, if you try to interfere with me!” warned the tree.
         “Ah, so it’s a challenged now is it?” asked Rian: “The Irish have never backed down from a challenge ....”
         So saying Rian staggered around to the tray of the ute, took out his tree climbing spikes and harness, which he attached to his leather work boots, then lifted out the heavy duty two-stroke chainsaw with twenty-four-inch bar.
         “A climbing we will go, a climbing we will go!” taunted the lumberjack as he started toward the giant root system of the ancient tree: “Don’t know what kind of a tree you are; but soon they’ll be calling you firewood.”
         Almost falling three times, Rian managed to climb three quarters of the way up the tree before starting they chainsaw.
         “This looks like a good place to start,” he taunted the tree.
         At first the wood seemed to cut readily, then suddenly an excruciating agony burst through his left arm at the shoulder.
         “What the fuck?” asked Rian, too drunk to realise what had happened even as he saw the blood spurting from the stump where his left arm had been.
         Trying his best to ignore the agony for Briony Earnshaw’s sake, the lumberjack kept sawing. Again the chainsaw seemed to easily cut through the tree. Then, screaming from agony, Rian almost dropped the chainsaw as his left leg mysteriously was amputated at the crotch.
         “Inflict all the pain upon me that you like devil tree,” slurred Rian, both from alcohol consumption and from blood loss: “But you won’t stop Rian Declan O’Hagan from reducing you to kindling.”
         So saying he continued sawing, shrieking aloud as his right leg mysteriously fell off at the crotch also.
         “I don’t know what divilment this be, Witch Tree, but you won’t stop me from avenging that poor crippled girl.”
         With his last moments of life, Rian kept sawing at the Witch tree until his head mysteriously fell off, along with his right arm, causing the limbless, headless corpse to plummet to the carpet of dried pine needles and gum leaves beneath the Witch Tree.
         “So end all who oppose me!” declared the Witch Tree before cackling like an old crone.
         
         It was barely eight AM the next morning when Terri Klein rang the Department of Building and Works Depot in Riordan Street, Glen Hartwell. Between yawning, George duBois the foreman, agreed to go straight to the Witch Tree to erect a strong fence around it.
         Terri, and the others had barely started patrolling Glen Hartwell in Terri’s Jeep, when George rang back to tell them what they had found at the base of the Witch Tree.
         Twenty-five minutes later Terri and the others were standing in front of the tree alongside George and Eunice duBois, staring in amazement at the limbless headless remains of Rian O’Hagan.
         “He’s still holding the chainsaw in his amputated right hand,” said Terri.
         “In theory he could have bent his right arm back enough to amputate it at the shoulder,” opined Colin: “But then how did he decapitate himself?”
         “Your guess is no more insane than ours,” said Eunice, who, despite being a huge Amazonian brunette, was clutching her husband’s arm for support.
         “It doesn’t make any bloody sense!” said Sheila.
         “So what’s next, Chief?” asked Alice Walker.
         Leading them away from the tree for fear of it reacting, Terri whispered, “Now, we forget about fencing it off, we need more desperate action.”
         “Our witchy friend, Magnolia McCready?” asked Sheila.
         “More desperate than that,” whispered Terri: “Sheila, ring for Stanlee, Jessie, Don, and Wendy to come here to help guard this fucken tree, while I see if I can stop it.”
         Taking out her mobile phone, she started to ring.
         An hour later the police were seated in a semicircle in front of the Witch Tree, along with Rabbi Levi O’Shane whose family were Irish Protestants until coming to Australia where they converted to Judaism; Father Thomas Montague, and Imam Muhammad Husayn.
         “Are you ready to commence Father Thomas?” asked Imam Muhammad Husayn a tall, swarthy man of fifty-something.
         “Yes, my dear friend, Imam Muhammad,” answered Father Thomas, a tall, thickset man with short blond, greying hair: “Rabbi Levi?”
         “Yes, my dear Father Thomas, I’m ready.”
         “Then let us begin the exorcism ritual.”
         “Isn’t it amazing that Father Thomas is close friends with a Jewish rabbi, and a Muslim Imam,” said Sheila Bennett: “Yet he’d let the Witch Tree kill us all, rather than work alongside a Protestant Priest.”
          “Sheila, please settle down,” chided Father Thomas.
         “Yes, we must have absolute silence from the spectators for the ritual to have any chance of success,” agreed Imam Muhammad Husayn.
         Finally the ritual began:
         “Foul spirits inhabiting this decrepit old tree, depart from this Earthly abode, and go down to Hades where you belong!” cried Father Thomas with Imam Husayn and Rabbi Levi chanting prayers from their different religions.
         “How dare you!” shrieked the tree: “We were murdered by the so-called upstanding citizens of Glen Hartwell! They are the evil ones, not us!”
         “Was Rex Hunter a seventeen-year-old boy evil?” demanded the priest: “Was Briony Earnshaw, an innocent teenage girl evil?”
         “No!” cried Imam Husayn and Rabbi Levi.
         “They were innocent children harmlessly climbing a tree as a childish lark! Yet you killed poor Rex and crippled poor Briony.”
         “All Glen Hartwellians are as guilty as their ancestors who hanged innocent old women from this tree in the 1840s and 1850s!” insisted the Witch Tree.
         “No!” cried the three religious leaders.
         “Doesn’t your own bible, in Exodus 20: 5-6 say, ‘I, the LORD your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children, on the third and the fourth generations of those who hate Me’?”
         “Yes,” admitted Father Joseph: “But the sins against you were committed a hundred and sixty years or more ago. That is way beyond three or four generations!”
         “Nonetheless,” insisted the Witch Tree: “All Glen Hartwellians shall perish for the murders that their ancestors committed using this tree.”
         So saying, the Witch Tree lifted itself up another half of a metre and started walking toward them upon its massive roots.
         “Holy shit!” said Sheila, and all of the police started to back away from the advancing tree.
         “Stand your ground everyone, do not be afraid!” ordered Father Thomas.
         Then while Imam Husayn and Rabbi Levi began sprinkling holy water onto the Witch Tree, Father Thomas engaged in a long exorcism prayer which was meant to remove demons from living human beings, but which he had modified to refer to the ghosts of the murdered old crones which had long resided within the hanging tree.
         “Get thee hence from this tree, spirits of the innocent murdered by our ancestors, despite your crimes over the last few days, move on to the Heavenly Abode where all murder victims may enter.”
         “Thank thee!” muttered the old crone, as one by one dozens of ghostly images of elderly women rose up from the tree to soar one by one upward toward the firmament.
         At that moment, Terri’s phone rang. She talked on it for a couple of minutes then said: “That was Tilly Lombstrom. Briony Earnshaw will survive, she’ll be in a wheelchair for years, but at least she isn’t a quadriplegic.”
         “Tetraplegic is the correct term,” pointed out Colin.
         “Boy is he ever sleeping on the bedroom floor tonight,” teased Alice.
         “Yeah, Tezza just loves it when you correct her in front of everyone,” added Sheila Bennett, making everybody laugh.
         

         THE END

         © Copyright 2026 Philip Roberts

         Melbourne, Victoria, Australia