The Doom Tree of Arach
by Graham Swanson
Far from the green river and its steamy valley shacks twists the lost roads once fabled among exiles and bandits to a place of dark clouds and sharp hills. Behind the white trees on the hiss crest are muddy fields occupied by mounds of machinery and salt. Goats wander among trenches dug by large fog moles while families of vultures rest on the radio tower. As the sun breaks the shield of clouds, they raise their wings over the roofs and shadows of Arach town. Quiet. Deserted. Except for the lone quiet street leading to the Doom Tree.
Roots and cracks in the earth contorted the ancient brickwork. Boots flexed as feet paraded down its narrow path. Ivy and hanging branches veiled the hooded faces joining the moving shadows. The trees along the path curled up and died long ago. Before the floods and fires came there had been nothing. Then one wild summer, thunder and tornados buried even the ruins under the hills. With the black clouds came a red lightning. Where it struck the clay, a pillar arose, and as time went on, it took on the properties of the trees around it.
The surviving people stepped over the holes in the street. Haggard elders watched on from their porches as pale children looked on from windows. They stayed quiet and avoided looking at each other. The beginning of the old street of the tree looked like any except for its size and the shape of the branches. It could be a thousand years old. The tree limbs themselves seemed to grow towards the ground, away from the light, but its branches then pointed up like stakes. The holes where limbs trickled with protoplasm. The bark that covered the tree changed color depending on the light. In the dark it looked like cool glass, in the sun it looked like crisp flakes of bronze. Beneath the thin paper bark was hard, wet, green cells. Beneath those bubbling cells, jaws and crowns of human skulls protruded.
The blindfolded maiden was hauled off the cart by masked members of the procession. This one was the youngest yet. 6 years old. The girl belonged to the disgraced Sydow clan. Her father was in jail during the naming ritual. Osmond Sydow, detested by the society of the town, got sent there to sober up. It didn’t matter, in a week he’d be out, and find a new substance. Clever man, they all knew he smoked it and cooked it up, even sold it along with guns and stolen knives, but they never caught him in the act. He was a smart man, he just used those smarts for evil. He fumed in his cell and pounded his head against the concrete. He rapped the cage on the window and kicked until the bench fell to the floor. The other silent men in the jail with him gave him space and left him in silence. Not in fear of his wrath, but in respect for his reaction. They paid no interest to the idea of escaping. The world had changed too much for them, and they had been transformed by the cramped darkness of the dungeon. They preferred the confines of their jail, laying where they last rested, their ribs housing nests for rats.
“They’ll pay for this!” Sydow vowed to skeletons shackled to the drain rack in the next cell. He almost collapsed from exhaustion, hanging to the bars, his stomach dropping. Acid and backwash pumped up into his mouth. Heavy plague covered his remaining teeth already so he didn’t notice it. Abscesses bled on his gums. His fingernails chipped off, and he had dropped his glasses. He sank and rested on the stone cold floor. All he could do was watch out the window as the hooded procession was swallowed by the enchanted lane of dead wood.
Sydow understood the brotherhood and their magic worship of the Doom Tree. As a boy he watered its roots and tended to its fallen branches just as had the other children, sons of lords and peasants alike. However the masters of the Arach insisted they made their selection by lottery. Those who counted the lottery made a little profit by excluding certain names. When they determined his daughter’s name in the drawing, he smoked all the glass he had, and tried to burn down the court house. Police tackled him, bruised his face up and tore his ear. He had fought the police officers many times, they knew him by first name and even knew what his kind of pop he liked to drink since he spent so much time in their custody. All night he waited for the sacrifice to commence.
The procession gathered in rings and rows. They took the girl out of the cart by her delicate arms. They covered her face in a white shroud, and guided her to the mantle of roots. Heavy branches swayed and moaned. Sap bled from the eye holes in the bark. Pieces of teeth and bit of jaw bone stuck out from depressions in the wood. Knots and creases where branches once grew wept with a stinking sap. A thick hide of flesh grew over the wounds on the tree. The slender branches on top almost seemed to have thick tendrils of gray hair hanging from them.
They had one masked spectre stand behind her with a shotgun. Another spectre stood at her shoulder bearing a long knife. Both wore black coats and covered their faces from the rest of town. The spectre with the knife guided the girl by the shoulder to the spot where the sun light reached the doom tree. Sensing her presence, the hairs lifted and a hiss escaped from the tree. The longest hairs descended from the highest boughs while the smallest ascended. When they couldn’t reach anymore they created a strange vibration that created a high pitch whine that made all the animals flee, while people’s pets desperately tried to escape their ropes and chains.
The spectre with the knife brushed the girls hair off her shoulders, held it up high so not to tarnish her locks, then held the blade against the side of her throat. With three clean slices the skin opened, blood drained, her spinal cord separated from her head, and the muscles peeled from the vertebrae of her skull. Blood washed down his hand, arm, and feet. He held her small head by the hair, one eye semi closed, the other bulged out and turned wet and purple. He set it in the empty empty gap while other hooded spectres began chopping her body apart and disposing the pieces into the mulch bed where the roots twisted and curled around her remains. The hairs of the tree went from gray to red. The branches lifted to the torch light. Thorns protruded from the trunk. Thorns so robust and sharp that other smaller thorns grew from them sprouted and impaled her limbs and head. A veiny film developed over the bark of the tree. It grew like a pulsing crust over the wounds of the trunk, then it reached the branches and the ground below. It grew around the thorns and the remains of the dead girl.
All evening long the tree exhausted hot air. Storm clouds cycloned over the falling sun. Some trees in the gallery combusted and burned. Some strange creatures the likes of which on one had ever seen emerged from the pond to lay eggs in their front yards. All night long the wind howled, and as the procession removed their hoods and sought shelter in their basements. A convention of hideous creatures emerged. They gathered around the tree and wailed into the night. Scales, utters, and wings fluttered aloft. The moon itself shined silver light upon them. The beauty of the midnight hour was magnified by the everlasting splendor of their suits and weapons.
The people of Arach huddled in the safety of their hovels. Deep basements nailed shut and boarded up. The cars on the street melted as their computers spat out sparks. The monsters of the tree devoured any living thing they caught in the street. People covered their ears from the terrible songs the abominations sang into the night, for the beauty of their voices caused human ears to go deaf. Smoke and chemical vapor filled the air. Amid floating candles, the brotherhood of darkness swarmed the streets. The bloody knife in hand, the hooded spectre walked alone. A heavy torrent of freezing rain fell upon him. The streets flooded, the fields flooded, the sacred grove flooded.
In the morning the sun rose and its golden light sparkled in the early fog. Heavy drifts of moisture sank back into the mud. Only scant echoes of the creatures remained in the early hours. The rest of the town awaited the signal. The spectre with the knife stood in the orchard until the light reveiled it to him. All the blood had washed from his robes, he bared witness to its deformities and its adornments. A groan of relief escaped from the mask. The spectre smiled as it developed in the exposing sunlight. A young branch emerged.
In the past so many folk of Arach lost their lives by a sudden and terrible transformation. Fruits grew in their bodies like tumors as their flesh hardened. In an agonizing and slow process, they twisted around, lost their eyes, their voices, as hard amber formed in their blood. Contorted, arching in ways the human body mustn’t bend, their heads split, their legs curled, thorns grew in their throats and mouths. Oozing sap from their eyes sealed their faces and blinded them.
They discovered that when a branch broke off, someone who breaths the oxygen of the tree is claimed by this fate. But as long as they provided the tree the flesh and blood of a young maiden, a new branch would appear. The old crones of town who sat on heaps of hidden gold, the ancient farmers that carved apart the land, the witches who had been in their estates since time before the hills formed, they all lived longer days in the comforts of their bedroom apartments.
When the guards came to release Sydow, they found the drain rack broken open. The cell flooded during the bewitching. It poured in from the cell door, the windows, and the drain on the floor. Black mud covered the walls, the floor, the bedding.
“If he went down the pipe he’s a goner.” they recovered blueprints of the town’s waterways and pipe routes and canvassed the woods until they found where the drainage pipe exited the ground. They crawled inside until they lost daylight. They corkscrewed and climbed as the pipe narrowed. They squeezed in until one man got stuck, and the only way he could breath was by breaking his ribs.
“He’s not in here. If he is, he’s dead.”
“We have to find him.”
“Oh my GOD!” Someone screamed around the grove.
They ran to their car, and drove there. When they got out they fell to their knees and turned so white that their constricted throats choked on their own tongues. They only made baffled groans like the primitive neanderthal they descended from. The spectre with the knife lay slain in the orchard. The tree trunk lay on the ground amid debris and chunks of heartwood. An axe covered in red carnage stuck out, lodged in the jagged ridge of stump.
