Lincoln Hayes
His mind scrambles in desperate panic, but his limbs will not move.
He wants to scream, but all that oozes from his grotesquely gaping mouth is a shrill, formless whimper.
He is a flesh-and-blood gargoyle, frozen in terror.
Above him, in the green-misted gloom, a gnarled spectre looms. Its branches reach down like claws, groping at him, plucking him from the moist, loamy earth into its malicious embrace. His skin burns as knotted twigs scratch his arms and torso. Vines creep, enveloping him, twisting—squeezing—around his neck
Then he falls.
He plummets for what seems an eternity until the vines tighten and…
CRACK!
Milton wakes in a tangle of sweat-soaked sheets. Sitting upright, shallow, raspy breaths sting his desiccated throat. Cool morning air caresses his arms and shoulders, evaporating the rivulets of perspiration that evoke groping tendrils and lacerating branches.
This is the fourth time this week that the tree and its merciless embrace have haunted his sleep.
The luminous green display of his alarm clock blinks; it says 12:47, but he knows without needing to check that it is 5:12 am. Once more, the power has flickered off, and then on again, at precisely 4:25. Just as it did on Sunday, Tuesday, Wednesday and now, in the early hours of Friday.
He stands, his body screeching in agony, and stumbles to the shower. Pulsating streams of scalding water invigorate him enough to reach the kitchen, where a double-shot espresso awaits.
Dressed and caffeinated, he pulls the front door closed, zombie-shuffling along the street, allowing the fresh morning breeze to rejuvenate him on the half-hour trek to the library.
Entering the centuries-old building, he ascends a creaking spiral staircase to the mezzanine, where a row of microfiche machines glows soullessly in the gloom. At the far end of the room, Milton finds his alcove, replete with paper nests, sepia-toned photographs and a stack of microfilm cartridges, just as he had left them the evening before.
He pulls a chair out from beneath the desk. There is a box on it, a dust-coated archive repository from deep in the library’s bowels, where official town records are kept. He knows such boxes well.
A red-ink note, scrawled in librarian-hand, sits on top.
M.
This is the last one. Hope it’s what you’re looking for.
Pen.
Milton smiles in silent tribute to Penelope, the unrelenting archivist who has scurried back and forth to the dungeon for him over the past eight weeks, dusting off files and dossiers and cross-checking indexes for anything of use. His crusade has become her own: to piece together the story of the Pierce family, his paternal ancestors, a presence in this town since the late 1700s.
From early mornings and late evenings spent huddled together, breathing as one over faded manuscripts, Milton and Penny have become close. The occasional after-hours flurry of limbs in the staff lounge or sleepover at her nearby apartment have left him fantasizing that, in different circumstances, she could have been the one. But such thoughts are fleeting, for the same reason he has never been married: perpetual dread that his days are finite—their expiry preordained.
Lifting Penny’s note, Milton reads the label on the box: “Judge Henry Milton Pierce cases 1863-1871.”
Desperately, he hopes that this is indeed the final clue. Henry Milton Pierce, his father’s great-great-grandfather. In his months of searching, he has found almost nothing about this man. Other than name, dates and occupation, the record books, almanacs and archived newspapers have been silent. It’s almost as if he was erased from history.
Shuffling papers aside, he places the box reverently on the desk and removes the lid. Inside is a stack of fragile, yellowed paper, decaying around the edges. The top sheet reads:
Henry Milton Pierce, b. 1820 d. 1871
County Court Judge 1863-1871
Milton’s breathing intensifies, dusty air scraping his traumatised throat.
These are facts he already knows; these words, in their immaculate nineteenth century scrawl, convey the indisputable truth: dead at fifty-one. As was Milton’s father, and his father before him, and his father’s father, and HIS father, and so on … all the way back to Judge Henry Milton Pierce.
Each man was dead within weeks of his fifty-first birthday. Milton, who has spent much of the past five years searching for answers, needs to know why. And with the recent appearance of these recurring nightmares, his search has become frantic.
He needs to know NOW.
Tomorrow is his birthday.
He is turning fifty-one.
Pulling white cotton gloves on tremoring hands, he eases the papers from the box one-by-one, intently studying each word. They are court case summaries, with the charges, verdict and sentence printed at the bottom of each page, bearing the seal and signature of his ancestor, Judge Henry Milton Pierce.
April 9th, 1863. Robert Jones, horse theft, GUILTY, death by HANGING.
September 21st, 1864. Cedric Garstonne, larceny, GUILTY, death by HANGING.
February 16th, 1864. Mildred McIntyre, lewd and lascivious conduct, GUILTY, death by HANGING.
August 12th, 1867. George Fisher, cattle theft, GUILTY, death by HANGING.
And on it goes. Dozens of them. All found GUILTY. All sentenced to death by HANGING.
Mortified, Milton puts a gloved hand to his neck, feeling the stiffness imprinted by nocturnal terror. His blood stings as it pulses through his body. He wants nothing more than to sprint to the restroom and purge it all—the horror, shame and guilt—into the porcelain bowl and flush it all away.
Henry Milton Pierce, his ancestor—his namesake—was responsible for the deaths of more than 30 people. How many of these were actually guilty? Did they deserve such a gruesome fate?
Steadying himself, he removes the last page from the box to reveal a single, sepia photograph. Hands trembling, he picks it up and is engulfed by dread. An enormous banyan tree dominates the scene, gnarled and knotted branches chaotically sprawling in all directions. It is the monster of his nightmares—of flesh-tearing twigs and asphyxiating vines.
A crowd is gathered at its feet, posing rigidly in deference to its primordial power. From one of its mighty limbs, a hood-covered corpse dangles from a noose like an over-ripe fig, too putrid even for ravens to peck.
Turning the photograph over, he sees a crudely scratched caption in faded ink.
March 14th, 1871. Henry Milton Pierce, corruption and murder, GUILTY, death by HANGING.
Numbers chapter 14, verse 18.
The Lord is long suffering, and of great mercy, forgiving iniquity and transgression, and by no means clearing the guilty, visiting the sins of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation.
A wave of exhaustion washes over him, an artifact of a months-long crusade for the truth and sleepless nights hunted by arboreal demons. He does not know what this information means for him, but he feels relief that, one way or another, as Judge Henry Milton Pierce’s last living descendant, the hanging tree’s judgment would surely end with him.
Still clutching the photograph in his hand, he leans back in his chair and closes his eyes.
POSTSCRIPT
Penny arrives ninety minutes late, having spent much of the morning throwing up the flotsam of her paltry breakfast. Feeling flushed and unsteady, she ascends the rickety stairs to the mezzanine, to check in on her favourite client, eager to see what answers that final box might have revealed.
In the dim glow of green-shaded desk lamps she sees him, slumped in his chair, unblinking eyes fixed on the dark shadows of the ceiling’s recess. Fighting panic and horror, she steps forward, one hand—trembling uncontrollably—reaching out to feel for a pulse on his purple-streaked neck, the other instinctively guarding the nascent being in her belly.
Lincoln Hayes is a resident of Perth, Western Australia, where he works as a government policy officer. Although qualified as an archaeologist, his greatest discovery was a love of storytelling that outweighed his passion for digging holes and sifting dirt.
More amazing stories are waiting for you…
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