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The Old Oak on Grunty Fen Corner
The fact that it was dead only made the oak on the corner at Grunty Fen more frightening. Three years previously a lightning bolt disfigured it considerably and had the duel effect of both killing off the last of the life in the roots, and giving birth to a legend. The lightning strike severed a thick branch and left a deep gash in the bark beneath, giving it a stubby nose and blackened mouth. The intertwined branches pointing up to the sky looked like the hair of a madman, completing the effect.
We’d all spoken about it, how it looked as though it was alive. We made up stories of how it would try to attack you if you got to close, and pull you into its mouth, eating you whole. We came up with theories as to why that branch severed – that it had been used for public hangings many years ago. We told tales of how when the road was initially build the tree attacked the workmen. We used to laugh about it. That was until they found the body. David Feltwell. Eleven years old. Same as we were. Found naked in the ditch just a few metres from the tree. It was a telephone engineer that found him. We’d had horrendous weather, storms and high winds. One boy at school, Johnny Mackintosh, told us that his barn roof blew off. But the wind had brought down one of the cables servicing Peachy Farm, right by the tree, so the engineer had to go out and fix it. My uncle new him. The engineer, not the boy. No one knew the boy. But everyone had a friend who did. Gregg said he was mates with his cousin, Paul who lived in Waterbeach. Peter reckoned that his brother’s mate knew him when they were younger. And by my association with Peter and Gregg, I could say I kind of knew him too, that he was a friend of a friend.
“What happened to that boy?” I asked my Mum at the dinner table. She put her knife and fork down and pushed her plate away. She looked into my eyes and gently lay a hand on top of mine.
“You’re a sensible boy,” she said, her voice breaking and tears welling in her eyes, “aren’t you? I mean, you wouldn’t talk to strangers, or go off on your own without your friends.”
“No, Mum,” I said, and she smiled. I didn’t want to take that away from her, so left it there.
The school held a special assembly, and we thought we were finally going to find out what happened. The headmaster, Mr Rivers stood at the front, at first just watching us.
“I’m sure you have all heard by now about the terrible tragedy of young David Feltwell,” he started. All we knew that there was a dead body. Nothing more. “and it is in these sad days that I feel I must reiterate the school safety policy to you.” And there it was again. The same old message. Stick in groups, get home before dark, don’t speak to strangers.
Walking home from school with Simon and Peter we were stopped by some older kids.
“The kiddy-fiddler’s coming for you!” they shouted at us, all laughing. Back then we didn’t really know what they meant by it, but we were sure it had something to do with the boy. They’d come up with their own stories, and our parents and the school had fobbed us off, so it was inevitable that we’d do the same.
Our parents refused to drive by the oak.
“I need to grab something from Ely,” they’d say and stop off to buy something pointless. Anything to avoid driving down Grunty Fen Road. I don’t know if they were doing it for our benefit or their own. It was the school that took us past it again though. We had a school trip, a day at Shepreth Wildlife Park to see the tigers. The coach driver had no hesitation in turning off Witchford Main Street onto Grunty Fen. Our rendition of ‘Ten Green Bottles’ stopped suddenly as we approached the demon tree. We all leaned over to look out of the windows on the right.
“Back in your seats, class,” said Mrs Bradshaw, but we blocked her out, we had to see it again.
“Funking Hell,” said Simon. Normally we’d all be shocked to hear swearing in front of a teacher, but she’d seen it too, and she wasn’t saying a word.
Its mouth had opened wider. Its head was tilted back. It had tried to eat the boy. Must have grabbed his clothes and he wriggled free, only to die of his injuries in the ditch.
We all came to that same conclusion, the only feasible conclusion together. At first we just stared vacantly into space, but a glimpse in the eye of anyone confirmed they knew it too. The whispers started at the back of the bus and became a collective murmur as we gave words to our beliefs.
“Stop this, children!” said Mrs Bradshaw, “trees don’t eat people. It’s an old tree, the heavy winds have just knocked it about.”
Her face was so white though, we didn’t believe her. So was a gob-smacked as us when she saw the oak and we figured that she was just doing the teacherly thing, making an excuse to try to save us from the truth.
The tigers didn’t get much attention that day. We followed Mrs Bradshaw’s lead as she told us about the endangered species, but they just didn’t seem important. Not when we had a killer tree just a mile or two from our doors. They sat there in all of their magnificent beauty, and we didn’t give a damn. Every time I’ve seen a tiger since I’ve been hypnotised by them, watching for countless minutes as they prowl around their enclosure, as if I’ve been trying to recapture something I lost that day.
We returned to the bus early. Mrs Bradshaw had given up on trying to get us interested in the wildlife. The driver sighed loudly, pulling his feet from the wheel and throwing his paper into his back. Mrs Bradshaw spoke quietly to him, and again he sighed before urging us all into the bus. We took the long route back home.
We were banned from speaking about it at school. If anyone was heard speaking about the tree, or the boy it was instant detention, and letters sent home stating that we were making fun of the dead. All they were succeeding in doing was increasing the mystery around the events. Left alone we would have talked the tree to death and moved on to another subject, but in keeping us from it we figured that there was some truth hidden behind it, something that simply wasn’t fair to keep us from. After all, it could have been life or death information. We had to do something, find out what was going on. There was no one we could talk to, parents and teachers kept us out of the loop, so we had to go it alone, and there was only one thing we could do. Go and see for ourselves.
It was Simon, Peter, Gregg and me, a foursome ready to seek the truth. I’d known Peter since before starting school, as back then he lived just a few doors down the road from me. We were in nappies together. Our mums took us to the same mother and toddler group, and until that day we rarely spent more than a couple of days without seeing each other. Gregg joined us when we started school. He lived at the other end of the village, so was almost a foreigner to us as first, but we soon accepted him. It’s funny how small your world is when you’re eleven. Simon we’ve only known for a few months. He was the new kid in school, all the way from Cambridge. His parents had split up and he’d moved with his mum to Witchford.
“It’s the school project,” I said to my mum at around the same time as my friends were telling theirs, “we need to work together over at Simon’s house.” It’s the first time I can remember lying to my Mum. Well, the first biggie. “No, I’ve not eaten the chocolate,” when your face is covered in it doesn’t count.
I don’t think it was a convincing lie, but they wanted to believe it. It wasn’t that they didn’t want to believe we’d lie to them, they wanted to think that we’d found something else to concentrate on rather than a demon tree and a dead boy. But it was all we could think about.
The weather held us up. Three wet November days passed before the rain stopped and we were able to go. Rather than riding straight down Main Street and onto Grunty Fen we decided to keep off of the main junction, didn’t want prying eyes to spot us and call our folks. So we rode through the school field and carried our bikes over the ditch at the end, then followed the drove towards the road.
The sun was setting as we came to the corner on which the tree had sat all of our lives. Without a prompt we all pulled on our brakes together, stopping in a line to look at its fiendish shape. The oak stood there looking more manacing than ever. Its nose pointed higher than we’d seen it before, and as a gust of wind blew through it, it looked as if it was laughing at us.
I looked across the line. Peter nodded first. Then Gregg. And finally Simon. We moved slowly forward then came to a stop again. We’d made no plans on what to do when we got here, but we needed to come. The longer we stood and watched, the larger the tree appeared to grow.
“Hey, look,” said Gregg, pointing to the verge a few feet from the tree, “people have left flowers.”
“Should we leave something?” I asked as I put my hands into my pockets trying to find something suitable. It didn’t matter that we never knew him, he had become a part of our lives. It was like he was one of us
“Yeah, we should,” said Simon, pausing for a second. His hand went to his head, “I’m gonna leave my cap. It’s kinda cool, so he probably would have liked it.”
I took my football cards out of my back pocket, and decided to leave those, not caring that some were rare and took me ages to find. Pete shrugged and pulled a bag of sweets out from his rucksack, “These okay?” he asked of us, and we all nodded. “Sure,” said Simon, “who doesn’t like Haribo?”
Gregg leant over the front of his bike and pulled off the small silver badge. “It’s all I could think of,” he said with a frown.
“It’s great, Gregg,” I said, and I meant it. Without looking at the tree we approached the pile of flowers together. Simon lay his cap down first, and I put my cards on top of it. Gregg tossed in the bicycle badge. As Pete bent over to lay the bag of sweets down a gust of wind caught him off balance. He quickly readjusted his feet, but as he turned his head he realised just how close to the oak we’d ventured. In a panic he threw the sweets down and stepped away. The bag of sweets hit the cap and carried it complete with all of our offerings into the ditch. We all gasped as one. Peter looked at us with his mouth open. After a pause that seemed to go on forever he moved over to the ditch. “I’ll get it.”
The rest of us let him go. He carefully clambered down the shallow bank. It wasn’t deep, his head was still above the level of the road He collected the things and lay them carefully in their place as we stood silently watching. He tried to climb back up at the point that he’d gone down whilst we still watched without action. Half way up he slipped back down. Then we moved. Together we went towards the ditch in which Peter stood, mud caked all over his school clothes. He’d carved up the side badly on the way down, making it far too difficult to be able to climb back up.
“Come further this way,” said Gregg, moving to the other side of the offerings. Gregg bent down and held out his hand. It really should have been me or Simon, we were much bigger and stronger than Gregg. As Peter moved slowly along the boggy ditch I could see what was going to happen, but I was unable to act. Again I just watched as Peter took his hand, and in trying to pull himself up and out only succeeded in pulling Gregg in.
Simon and I moved over too late. Gregg and Peter helped each other to their feet as Simon and I stood on the side of the road above them. The shadow of the tree loomed over us. Simon and I stood together at the top, I offering my hand, and Simon keeping hold of me. Peter held on, and Gregg gave him a strong enough push to catapult him out of the ditch. He was covered from head to toe in mud. Standing in the road, he tried to wipe it off, with little success, loudly expressing his disgust. Simon continued to hold on to me as I reached out for Gregg. I took his hand and pulled. He placed a foot on the bank, then yelped out, “My foot, my foot’s stuck!”
I looked down to see a root stretched across his trainer. Simon and I looked to the tree, which had appeared to be almost upon us. With the wind blowing around us and the tree rocking beside us we pulled harder than ever. Gregg continued to move his free foot higher up the bank, hoping to pull the other out. With a scream he came up, missing a trainer which sank into the mud beneath us. But the scream wasn’t Gregg’s. Before we had a chance to move away from the oak a screech pierced the air followed by a dull thud. We looked around to see a black Ford Escort at a forty-five degree angle across the road just a few metres from us. The smell of rubber hung in the air. The car door opened. “What the bloody hell are you kids doing out here?” said the man dashing towards the front of the car.
None of us realised that the thud was Peter at first. We looked round, wondering who it would be that would give an explanation, and it slowly dawned on us that there were only three of us standing there. In the road lay Peter, still filthy from the ditch, only now silent, motionless.
The oak was pulled out, carved up and taken away mere days after Peter was buried. People blamed the tree, another convenient excuse, and no one spoke of the lies and the deceit we’d been subject to. So the rumours live on, only they say the tree killed two, when really all it ever did was stood by us all, watching. And if words came out of its splintered mouth it would be the only one telling whole truth. It could tell us who dumped David’s body, it could tell us that the driver of the Escort was speeding. But no. It’s silent and we’ll live with the rumours forever.
The fact that it was dead only made the oak on the corner at Grunty Fen more frightening. Three years previously a lightning bolt disfigured it considerably and had the duel effect of both killing off the last of the life in the roots, and giving birth to a legend. The lightning strike severed a thick branch and left a deep gash in the bark beneath, giving it a stubby nose and blackened mouth. The intertwined branches pointing up to the sky looked like the hair of a madman, completing the effect.
We’d all spoken about it, how it looked as though it was alive. We made up stories of how it would try to attack you if you got to close, and pull you into its mouth, eating you whole. We came up with theories as to why that branch severed – that it had been used for public hangings many years ago. We told tales of how when the road was initially build the tree attacked the workmen. We used to laugh about it. That was until they found the body. David Feltwell. Eleven years old. Same as we were. Found naked in the ditch just a few metres from the tree. It was a telephone engineer that found him. We’d had horrendous weather, storms and high winds. One boy at school, Johnny Mackintosh, told us that his barn roof blew off. But the wind had brought down one of the cables servicing Peachy Farm, right by the tree, so the engineer had to go out and fix it. My uncle new him. The engineer, not the boy. No one knew the boy. But everyone had a friend who did. Gregg said he was mates with his cousin, Paul who lived in Waterbeach. Peter reckoned that his brother’s mate knew him when they were younger. And by my association with Peter and Gregg, I could say I kind of knew him too, that he was a friend of a friend.
“What happened to that boy?” I asked my Mum at the dinner table. She put her knife and fork down and pushed her plate away. She looked into my eyes and gently lay a hand on top of mine.
“You’re a sensible boy,” she said, her voice breaking and tears welling in her eyes, “aren’t you? I mean, you wouldn’t talk to strangers, or go off on your own without your friends.”
“No, Mum,” I said, and she smiled. I didn’t want to take that away from her, so left it there.
The school held a special assembly, and we thought we were finally going to find out what happened. The headmaster, Mr Rivers stood at the front, at first just watching us.
“I’m sure you have all heard by now about the terrible tragedy of young David Feltwell,” he started. All we knew that there was a dead body. Nothing more. “and it is in these sad days that I feel I must reiterate the school safety policy to you.” And there it was again. The same old message. Stick in groups, get home before dark, don’t speak to strangers.
Walking home from school with Simon and Peter we were stopped by some older kids.
“The kiddy-fiddler’s coming for you!” they shouted at us, all laughing. Back then we didn’t really know what they meant by it, but we were sure it had something to do with the boy. They’d come up with their own stories, and our parents and the school had fobbed us off, so it was inevitable that we’d do the same.
Our parents refused to drive by the oak.
“I need to grab something from Ely,” they’d say and stop off to buy something pointless. Anything to avoid driving down Grunty Fen Road. I don’t know if they were doing it for our benefit or their own. It was the school that took us past it again though. We had a school trip, a day at Shepreth Wildlife Park to see the tigers. The coach driver had no hesitation in turning off Witchford Main Street onto Grunty Fen. Our rendition of ‘Ten Green Bottles’ stopped suddenly as we approached the demon tree. We all leaned over to look out of the windows on the right.
“Back in your seats, class,” said Mrs Bradshaw, but we blocked her out, we had to see it again.
“Funking Hell,” said Simon. Normally we’d all be shocked to hear swearing in front of a teacher, but she’d seen it too, and she wasn’t saying a word.
Its mouth had opened wider. Its head was tilted back. It had tried to eat the boy. Must have grabbed his clothes and he wriggled free, only to die of his injuries in the ditch.
We all came to that same conclusion, the only feasible conclusion together. At first we just stared vacantly into space, but a glimpse in the eye of anyone confirmed they knew it too. The whispers started at the back of the bus and became a collective murmur as we gave words to our beliefs.
“Stop this, children!” said Mrs Bradshaw, “trees don’t eat people. It’s an old tree, the heavy winds have just knocked it about.”
Her face was so white though, we didn’t believe her. So was a gob-smacked as us when she saw the oak and we figured that she was just doing the teacherly thing, making an excuse to try to save us from the truth.
The tigers didn’t get much attention that day. We followed Mrs Bradshaw’s lead as she told us about the endangered species, but they just didn’t seem important. Not when we had a killer tree just a mile or two from our doors. They sat there in all of their magnificent beauty, and we didn’t give a damn. Every time I’ve seen a tiger since I’ve been hypnotised by them, watching for countless minutes as they prowl around their enclosure, as if I’ve been trying to recapture something I lost that day.
We returned to the bus early. Mrs Bradshaw had given up on trying to get us interested in the wildlife. The driver sighed loudly, pulling his feet from the wheel and throwing his paper into his back. Mrs Bradshaw spoke quietly to him, and again he sighed before urging us all into the bus. We took the long route back home.
We were banned from speaking about it at school. If anyone was heard speaking about the tree, or the boy it was instant detention, and letters sent home stating that we were making fun of the dead. All they were succeeding in doing was increasing the mystery around the events. Left alone we would have talked the tree to death and moved on to another subject, but in keeping us from it we figured that there was some truth hidden behind it, something that simply wasn’t fair to keep us from. After all, it could have been life or death information. We had to do something, find out what was going on. There was no one we could talk to, parents and teachers kept us out of the loop, so we had to go it alone, and there was only one thing we could do. Go and see for ourselves.
It was Simon, Peter, Gregg and me, a foursome ready to seek the truth. I’d known Peter since before starting school, as back then he lived just a few doors down the road from me. We were in nappies together. Our mums took us to the same mother and toddler group, and until that day we rarely spent more than a couple of days without seeing each other. Gregg joined us when we started school. He lived at the other end of the village, so was almost a foreigner to us as first, but we soon accepted him. It’s funny how small your world is when you’re eleven. Simon we’ve only known for a few months. He was the new kid in school, all the way from Cambridge. His parents had split up and he’d moved with his mum to Witchford.
“It’s the school project,” I said to my mum at around the same time as my friends were telling theirs, “we need to work together over at Simon’s house.” It’s the first time I can remember lying to my Mum. Well, the first biggie. “No, I’ve not eaten the chocolate,” when your face is covered in it doesn’t count.
I don’t think it was a convincing lie, but they wanted to believe it. It wasn’t that they didn’t want to believe we’d lie to them, they wanted to think that we’d found something else to concentrate on rather than a demon tree and a dead boy. But it was all we could think about.
The weather held us up. Three wet November days passed before the rain stopped and we were able to go. Rather than riding straight down Main Street and onto Grunty Fen we decided to keep off of the main junction, didn’t want prying eyes to spot us and call our folks. So we rode through the school field and carried our bikes over the ditch at the end, then followed the drove towards the road.
The sun was setting as we came to the corner on which the tree had sat all of our lives. Without a prompt we all pulled on our brakes together, stopping in a line to look at its fiendish shape. The oak stood there looking more manacing than ever. Its nose pointed higher than we’d seen it before, and as a gust of wind blew through it, it looked as if it was laughing at us.
I looked across the line. Peter nodded first. Then Gregg. And finally Simon. We moved slowly forward then came to a stop again. We’d made no plans on what to do when we got here, but we needed to come. The longer we stood and watched, the larger the tree appeared to grow.
“Hey, look,” said Gregg, pointing to the verge a few feet from the tree, “people have left flowers.”
“Should we leave something?” I asked as I put my hands into my pockets trying to find something suitable. It didn’t matter that we never knew him, he had become a part of our lives. It was like he was one of us
“Yeah, we should,” said Simon, pausing for a second. His hand went to his head, “I’m gonna leave my cap. It’s kinda cool, so he probably would have liked it.”
I took my football cards out of my back pocket, and decided to leave those, not caring that some were rare and took me ages to find. Pete shrugged and pulled a bag of sweets out from his rucksack, “These okay?” he asked of us, and we all nodded. “Sure,” said Simon, “who doesn’t like Haribo?”
Gregg leant over the front of his bike and pulled off the small silver badge. “It’s all I could think of,” he said with a frown.
“It’s great, Gregg,” I said, and I meant it. Without looking at the tree we approached the pile of flowers together. Simon lay his cap down first, and I put my cards on top of it. Gregg tossed in the bicycle badge. As Pete bent over to lay the bag of sweets down a gust of wind caught him off balance. He quickly readjusted his feet, but as he turned his head he realised just how close to the oak we’d ventured. In a panic he threw the sweets down and stepped away. The bag of sweets hit the cap and carried it complete with all of our offerings into the ditch. We all gasped as one. Peter looked at us with his mouth open. After a pause that seemed to go on forever he moved over to the ditch. “I’ll get it.”
The rest of us let him go. He carefully clambered down the shallow bank. It wasn’t deep, his head was still above the level of the road He collected the things and lay them carefully in their place as we stood silently watching. He tried to climb back up at the point that he’d gone down whilst we still watched without action. Half way up he slipped back down. Then we moved. Together we went towards the ditch in which Peter stood, mud caked all over his school clothes. He’d carved up the side badly on the way down, making it far too difficult to be able to climb back up.
“Come further this way,” said Gregg, moving to the other side of the offerings. Gregg bent down and held out his hand. It really should have been me or Simon, we were much bigger and stronger than Gregg. As Peter moved slowly along the boggy ditch I could see what was going to happen, but I was unable to act. Again I just watched as Peter took his hand, and in trying to pull himself up and out only succeeded in pulling Gregg in.
Simon and I moved over too late. Gregg and Peter helped each other to their feet as Simon and I stood on the side of the road above them. The shadow of the tree loomed over us. Simon and I stood together at the top, I offering my hand, and Simon keeping hold of me. Peter held on, and Gregg gave him a strong enough push to catapult him out of the ditch. He was covered from head to toe in mud. Standing in the road, he tried to wipe it off, with little success, loudly expressing his disgust. Simon continued to hold on to me as I reached out for Gregg. I took his hand and pulled. He placed a foot on the bank, then yelped out, “My foot, my foot’s stuck!”
I looked down to see a root stretched across his trainer. Simon and I looked to the tree, which had appeared to be almost upon us. With the wind blowing around us and the tree rocking beside us we pulled harder than ever. Gregg continued to move his free foot higher up the bank, hoping to pull the other out. With a scream he came up, missing a trainer which sank into the mud beneath us. But the scream wasn’t Gregg’s. Before we had a chance to move away from the oak a screech pierced the air followed by a dull thud. We looked around to see a black Ford Escort at a forty-five degree angle across the road just a few metres from us. The smell of rubber hung in the air. The car door opened. “What the bloody hell are you kids doing out here?” said the man dashing towards the front of the car.
None of us realised that the thud was Peter at first. We looked round, wondering who it would be that would give an explanation, and it slowly dawned on us that there were only three of us standing there. In the road lay Peter, still filthy from the ditch, only now silent, motionless.
The oak was pulled out, carved up and taken away mere days after Peter was buried. People blamed the tree, another convenient excuse, and no one spoke of the lies and the deceit we’d been subject to. So the rumours live on, only they say the tree killed two, when really all it ever did was stood by us all, watching. And if words came out of its splintered mouth it would be the only one telling whole truth. It could tell us who dumped David’s body, it could tell us that the driver of the Escort was speeding. But no. It’s silent and we’ll live with the rumours forever.
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Cheers Rickoss and FFF, thanks for taking the timne to read and comment. Always much appreciated.
Aye, really good. The group feelings between the kids were very well done.
Brilliant. Whilst not my favourite Meka story, I loved the ending. Only real fault I noticed was the spelling of 'knew' as 'new, but that will have been a typo.
Nice one :)
Nice one :)
English_Bloke wrote:
> Tis a good name indeed, but there was a travellers site on it last
> time I went there.
Oh yes,t here are. A couple, most of the time. Bits I tend not to pass on my drive through from village to A10 on the way to Cambridge (much as they do in this story).
Even though the pikeys are close, I block them out... ;o)
> Tis a good name indeed, but there was a travellers site on it last
> time I went there.
Oh yes,t here are. A couple, most of the time. Bits I tend not to pass on my drive through from village to A10 on the way to Cambridge (much as they do in this story).
Even though the pikeys are close, I block them out... ;o)
Julian, Dick, Anne, George and Timmy in "Five Go To Grunty Fen".
Tis a good name indeed, but there was a travellers site on it last time I went there.
Thanks for reading. Yes it is real, in Cambridgeshire. Near to where I live, actually, but it is a great name, and thought it worked here.
Well, er, I liked it. I realise that's not much of a comment. There you go, heh.
Edit: Is Grunty Fen actually a real place, then? It's a quality name, whatever. Like you'd find in a Famous Five book.
Edit: Is Grunty Fen actually a real place, then? It's a quality name, whatever. Like you'd find in a Famous Five book.
English_Bloke wrote:
> Grunty Fen really isn't a very nice place, so I'm predicting this'll
> be a scary story.
Not very nice in what sense? There's just not much there, apart from narrow roads, farm land, ditches and a recycling centre...
> Grunty Fen really isn't a very nice place, so I'm predicting this'll
> be a scary story.
Not very nice in what sense? There's just not much there, apart from narrow roads, farm land, ditches and a recycling centre...
Grunty Fen really isn't a very nice place, so I'm predicting this'll be a scary story.
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