The Witch's Tree

By Vasudev Patel

'A thought. That is how it starts. That is how anything begins. A thought leads to uncountable possibilities. It is a thought that leads people to more thoughts, to more possibilities. It starts as a thought but it transforms- snowballing- into something else, something beautiful or something....

It was a thought, a thought to visit the lightening split banyan tree just beyond the lake at the edge of their little town that came to one of the boys who found themselves standing on the playground at the same edge. None of them were at that age where they still played while visiting a playground and I don't think even if they were, they would have played anything at the time they happened to be there. The ground was not so big that you could play any sports as they should be played but it was big enough. On the edge opposite to the lake was their little hideout. It wasn't much but the four of them liked that place. They had been enjoying the little getaway it gave them from their life. We all need it every once in a while. Ravi, the youngest of them had turned eighteen last month and was at the time of his life when he felt, when we all felt, invincible. It was him, to whom the thought had come. It may have been curiosity, courage or just plain old stupidity, but by the time he would have carefully considered it, the thought had already made its home. "Hey idiots" Ravi said to the rest of them, Sandeep who was Ravi's classmate and just a month older said, "What Lavi", with a lisp and they laughed. Ravi continued, "We should visit the tree", between his laughs. Saket who was almost a year older than Ravi laughed and said, “Ravi’s gone mad boys" and they all laughed again. The tree Ravi wanted to go to was a banyan tree that had been struck by lightning and got split in the middle as if someone had cleaved it with an axe and yet it still lived and grew despite the splitting. He would not have been called mad for visiting that tree had it not been for the time they were on that ground. It was night and not just any night it was the night of Amavasya. The night when the moon wore a black veil and hid itself. The night said to be for the things that no one wanted to see. The banyan tree Ravi wanted to visit had a story. It was said that the tree was sown by a witch and that was the reason it still lived even after it was struck by lightning. Ravi always thought that nobody remembered this story when it was daytime and visited the tree almost gladly but as soon as it was dark that story came alive. Once he had mentioned the tree to his mother just as they were preparing to go to sleep. He had never seen his mother so furious. The mere mention of the tree at night cost him two slaps. But that was a few years ago. He was a man now, and a man cannot be scared of puny stories of trees and witches. "Not gone mad you idiot", Ravi said, “I just want to see the place”, “We could go tomorrow morning, can't we?", said Sandeep. The other two, Saket and Anil were intently listening to their conversation which seemed to be heating up. Ravi argued why they should visit the tree now and prove that there is nothing to be afraid of and Sandeep said that it was not a good idea to do that.

"We don't have to prove anything", said Sandeep. “Admit it you're just scared", replied Ravi, but even as they were arguing one by one, they got up and started toward home, slowly but surely. Even Ravi who was still intent on going to the lightning split banyan tree. Ravi could have turned right instead of left on the dirt road that led to the more permanent one leading home, but he didn't. It may have been that deep down he too was scared, just like Sandeep was, just like all four of them were. Saket and Anil were talking on their own while Ravi and Sandeep argued through the whole walk home, neither of them budging. Saket could have interrupted them and said that it didn't matter who was right, that they were already on their way home, but he didn't, because he knew that the minute he took the side of any one of them he would become a target just the same. He knew this as surely as he knew that it would have been a not so good idea if they had gone to the tree.

Anil has had enough of the petty jabs Ravi and Sandeep were taking at each other for the sake of the unsettled manner in which the fight was progressing. He just wanted to have a pleasant walk home with his friends, but that tree was making it difficult. He wanted to just run home but he couldn't just leave Saket. He could see on his face that Saket wanted to stop them but didn't, for whatever reason, Anil didn't know.

Ravi could see that even though Saket and Anil were irritated by how stubborn Sandeep was being, so he decided that the bickering has gone far enough. "Ok, fine, you are right, it was a idiotic thing to suggest that we do something adventurous once in a while", said Ravi, in the most polite way he could. “Thank you, and next time you would like to be adventurous, choose a time other that eleven in the night", said Sandeep as the three of them were waving their byes to Ravi as he pretended not to understand the meaning underneath Ravi's hollow politeness.

Ravi was not happy about how he acted as they said their byes but he was not feeling bad. He did not many thoughts that concerned how he felt about the heated exchange he had with his friend. For the most part he was still thinking about the tree. He wanted to go to it. He did not know why, but he wanted to go to the lightening split banyan tree. It may have been to prove courage, or to debunk whatever story had come to be known about it. Perhaps it was just curiosity. As Ravi was walking down the little dirt path that forked from the road he was on towards the big front gates of his house, he thought about turning back and going to the tree, alone if necessary. But he didn't. The big gates were creaking open on the old hinges that attached them to the green painted walls. His father was coming out and saw Ravi, "I was just coming to see if you boys had decided to sleep in that playground", he said as the distance between Ravi and him shortened. “Come on, go inside and have some food, your mother was worried", Ravi's father said as hi tussled Ravi's hair as he always did. Ravi liked it as long as no one saw it. It made him feel like a child and he did not want anyone else to see him as a child anymore. Ravi saw his father smile. Ravi could feel the warmth of his father's hand and as he went into his home to have dinner with his mother, he forgot all about that tree.

That night after he had his dinner he went to his bed and covered himself with the blanket and was about to sleep the thought crept back like a spider, planting the roots again which never really disappeared. The thought of visiting the tree. Ravi knew he can't go now. It was not the lack of intention it was the lack of convenience. The front gates would be locked and his grandmother, who slept in the room next to his, is a light sleeper, a single noise and she would be wide awake. Ravi dismissed the thought of visiting that tree as he felt sleep slowly seep into him out of the dark.

Ravi was walking the familiar dirt path he and his friends took to their spot on the edge of the playground. Ravi could see the lips of his friends moving but he could not hear anything. ‘What?', he asked as they laughed about something. Ravi tried to touch them with his hands when they didn't answer him but his hands would not obey him. He tried to stop and turn back towards his house but his feet had a mind of their own. Ravi tried as hard as he could to take back the control over himself but it was like he was trapped. One by one he saw his friends dissolve into the starry background. But he was still walking. He was in the playground now; he thought his body would take him towards their spot but he crossed the ground and kept trailing along the edge of the lake till he reached the end of his little walkabout. When he stopped and could move his limbs as freely as he wanted to, he saw where he had come to. He saw two trees, as enormous as the elephants his father used to take him to ride. There roots hanging from the branches like trunks of a great big ill-formed elephant, more then he would have cared to count. But he knew that those were not two trees. He knew that those numerous serpentine roots came from only one tree. A tree that had been struck by lightning a long time ago. A tree that should be just a husk now, that should be as empty as the darkness that had surrounded him now, and yet it lived. The lightening that had split it in two, the lightening that should have been the cause of it being devoid of life had somehow given life to it. It was only him and that tree now, encased in darkness....

It was the coolness of the sweat on his face that made him realize that he was awake. He couldn't remember much of the dream but it had felt as real as air he breathed. He looked at his sonata wristwatch he had put down beside his pillow. The hands were just about to show 2'o'clock. He got out of his bed and went to the kitchen to drink some water. His throat felt like it was about to grow cracks like the soil they show on the news when there is a famine. When he had drank all the water he wanted. His dream came back to him in vivid detail. He was at the tree. But what was he doing there. He couldn't remember.

He returned to his bed dismissing the dream and tried to go back to sleep but he couldn't. The dream had reawakened the thought of going to the tree. This time he let the thought guide him. He got out of his bed and decided to sneak out of his house and go to the tree. He quietly slid the keys to the front door lock off the nail it was always hung on and made his way to the front door. He put the key into the lock and slowly opened it. The lock opened with the sound of rust metal of rusty metal. He opened the doors just enough to slide past.

Once he was out in the cool night air, any opposing he had to his little break out was long gone. The street lights illuminated the path he was going to take right up to the last turn he had to make for the playground. He walked down the path one street light at a time. One by one the street lights slid into the corner of his eye as he walked. As he approached that last turn and saw the darkness beyond, he thought about why he was there. He couldn't remember why. It was like seeing someone through fog. The reason was just out of touch of his mind. He could faintly make out that he saw a dream but not what he saw.

A few steps before Ravi made the fateful turn into the playground and out of his last reprieve from darkness he stopped. He was preparing himself. He didn't know what for but he wanted to prepare himself. He took a deep breath and made the turn. Whatever he was preparing himself for seemed to have hidden itself. He was glad that whatever it was, wasn't there.

Ravi could see their spot from where he was walking. He could just go there, sit for a while and sneak back into his house, no one would know. In that moment, he wanted to do exactly that. But his feet didn't turn. His eyes, which were looking at their spot just then, turned forward toward the lake and the tree beyond. The lightening split banyan tree, the bottom end of the split seemed to be touching the edge of the lake from where he was walking, giving it the look of a titanic mouth opened up to devour whatever unknowing prey that happened to wonder near it in the night. It reminded him of a story his grandmother told him when he was just starting school. It was about a asur, he couldn't remember the name, that asur had a huge mouth and it used to open his moth as wide as it can, until its mouth became a huge circle and flat like a carpet on the floor, and the it used to lie on the ground waiting, waiting for children, men, women, whoever was unlucky enough to pass through his mouth thinking it was just a hole in the ground, and then that asur closed it, trapping its prey. The tree reminded him of that but it was just a tree, it cannot open its mouth, even if it had any, and just eat him. Trees don't eat people. That was what Ravi thought, but a flicker of doubt sparked in him. Trees don't eat people?

As the lake drew near Ravi started to calm down. Slowly but surely. Only it was not the lake that was calming him down and he knew that too. It was the tree. As the tree was drawing closer and closer, his heart was getting calmer and calmer. The chill of the night air did not seem to bother him. The chill seemed to go away just before it touched his skin. Once Ravi was on the edge of the lake, he started to walk on the narrow path on the top of it towards the tree. The tree was almost on the opposite side of the direction he just came from. When he reached the part of the edge facing the tree he started to climb down.

When he reached the gaping mouth of the tree, he placed his hands on the bark, it seemed to calm him down further. "Why have you called me here?", he whispered to the tree. Ravi was starting to think he may be losing his mind. He saw a dream, a nightmare, and came to the tree the nightmare was about. If he told his parents about this, they would surely lock him in his room, and yet the question didn't feel wrong. Ravi felt like the tree has called him here. He didn't know why yet, but it did, the tree did.

"What are you doing here boy, go away", a voice said as if to answer Ravi's whisper. It startled him. The tree answered him back. In a gruffy old voice but it did answer him back. As he was preparing to repeat his question the actual owner of the voice came out from behind the tree. In a way he surprised Ravi even more. The voice came from a man in rags of clothes that were clearly a size smaller for him. The rags were just a shade lighter than the night sky; it may have been the color if the clothes but the patches of red and white on the suggested otherwise. The man in the rags repeated his question with a mouth on a face that was more hair than skin. Ravi's voice was caught in his throat and suddenly he was feeling all the chill in the air. The man in rags took a step towards him and Ravi turned and started to run but was caught in the hair like roots of the banyan tree. He tried to move them out of the way and one of them must have had broken halfway somewhere. He felt a sharp pain at the edge of his right palm. He looked at it and saw that the cut was shallow but blood was flowing out of it. He saw the blood but he didn't stop running. The man in rags was just behind him. He felt if he stopped for just a moment, that if he relaxed just a hair, the man would get him.

He ran all the way to his house and when he was safely back inside his house in his own room, inside closed doors, he felt like he could relax. He was surprised that nobody heard him come in. He wasn't trying to wake anyone up but he also wasn't trying to be particularly quiet. Anyway, he was back in his home, he was safe and if no one in his house heard him come back from his little escapade, it was all good. All that running seemed to have made his throat dry. He went to the kitchen and poured out water in a glass for himself. As he drank the water, he remembered that he had nicked himself on one of the roots. His parents must not have heard him but they would surely notice blood on his sheets. He looked at his right palm to assess the damage. He needed to remove any piece of wood that might have still been there before he could bandage it up or the cut might not have been as shallow as he thought. He half expected his hand to be spewing blood like a fountain but he surely would have felt it if it was. Instead, there was no cut whatsoever at the place he saw the cut. There was no pain, no blood, not even a scratch. But there was a little mark in the place the cut should have been. Ravi thought it must have been dirt sticking to his skin. He tried to wipe it away with his other hand but the mark seemed to be a part of his skin like a mole. A small black seed shaped mole, just beneath the skin. Ravi didn't remember it being there. Ravi thought back to the moment he saw blood coming out of his palm. It may have been pure panic but he remembered seeing blood. But he didn't remember ever seeing that seed shaped mark on his palm. Ravi thought it might be that he just never noticed it till now, but it didn't feel right to him. But nothing could be done about it now so he decided that he was too tired and too sleep deprived to worry about a mark that could have been on him his whole life.

The next day Ravi's father woke him up. Once he was awake, he saw his father's face. It betrayed a sadness pointed towards him. "Ravi, get ready, we have to go", his father said to him in a calm voice. "Where?", asked Ravi, still waking up. His father looked at him one last time before going out of his room, “Just, get ready and come out", his voice was still calm but Ravi couldn't help feeling an undertoned chill from it, like his father was hiding something. He got out of his bed, as he started to support himself on his right hand, he felt a jolt of pain go up from his right palm. The events of last night came flooding back into his mind and he thought he must have been really sleep to mistake a cut for a mark on his skin. He laid back on the bed and brought his right palm just above his face, this time he was sure he would see a small cut spewing trickles of blood, but there was nothing of the sort, instead of it was the seed shaped mark. The mark looked exactly the same as last night except for little tendrils of black coming out of it, just like an actual seed would have roots coming out of it. Ravi must have missed those last night, just like he mistook a birthmark for an injury. There was no cut there but he was feeling the pain, just a faint sensation now. It was originating from that seed shaped mark. What could it be? was Ravi's first thought. But he couldn't come up with an answer. His father was calling him from the outside. So, he put aside the matter of the mark and went to the bathroom to fresh up. By the time he came out he had forgotten all about the mark and the pain. Then he went to his father to ask him about where they were going. His father was reading the newspaper on their front yard. As Ravi closed the distance between them, his father looked up from the paper and said, "Your friend, Sandeep," Ravi paused at the mention of his friend, his father continued, "He is no longer with us", and there it was again, the chill Ravi had felt in his father's voice when he was waking up. Ravi was not expecting something like this. He wanted to scream and yet there was no voice to scream with, he felt tears falling from his eyes but they were bone dry. It was just yesterday he was arguing with Sandeep and now he was gone. Before he could ask how in whatever voice was left in him his father told him to come with him to Sandeep's house and he just nodded and went with him.

The way to Sandeep's house was a little hazy. Ravi's mind was blurred by the grief, and his eyes by tears. On the way to Sandeep's house Ravi was thinking that this was just a joke. A joke Sandeep was playing on him because of their argument yesterday. How Sandeep got Ravi's father to go along with it was a mystery. But Sandeep had done it. Ravi thought that when they would reach Sandeep's house, he would find Anil and Saket there along with Sandeep to surprise him. They were there but Anil and Saket were crying, just like he was. That was the moment the realization dawned on him. This was not a joke. His friend was gone. He saw Sandeep's father sitting in white clothes, beside him was Sandeep, lying down like he had just gone to sleep, covered in white. But Ravi knew, it didn't matter how much he had wanted it to be a joke, he knew, that his friend was gone. He walked past the crying faces of his friends, through the crowd of Sandeep's relatives, he walked past Sandeep's father to where Sandeep was lying. He sat down beside his friends now marble face, expressionless and pale. He placed his right hand on Sandeep's cheek and cried. He cried till his eyes ached; he cried till he couldn't anymore. When his eyes were dry and couldn't cry anymore, he started to get up. That was when he saw it. Around Sandeep's neck, there it was like a tattoo, only Sandeep never had a tattoo. If the others had noticed they never told him about it, and he was certain that Sandeep's death is not treated as murder. And yet there it was, clear as day, on Sandeep's neck were marks like someone had strangled him. But the marks didn't look like those made by someone’s hands. They looked closer to marks made by ropes but not quite that too. Ravi leaned in a little closer to Sandeep's face to see those marks. The others may have thought he was saying his last words to Sandeep because no one came to stop him. Once he was close enough to almost touch Sandeep's face it became clear to him what made those marks. He got up quickly and went to Anil and Saket. "Meet me tonight, at our spot...at 11, okay", before they could agree or say no to him, Ravi walked away from them.

He decided to walk home and told his father as much. On the way he kept going back to the marks he saw on Sandeep's neck. The almost rope like make of them, the way they were tangled in each other. Those were not rope marks, those were root marks. Somebody had strangled his friend with the roots of a tree, but who? The only tree he could think of was the lightning split banyan tree, the witch's tree. He thought maybe the man in the tattered clothes did it. He clearly lived under that tree. He could have seen them in the ground and decided to follow them home. Sandeep was just unlucky; it could have been any of them. Unlucky or not his friend was dead. If the man in tattered clothes was responsible, he had to pay.

When he got home, he told his mother about Sandeep, his father had not told her yet. Ravi left out the part about the tree and the marks. He didn't want to worry his mother for nothing. That day seemed to go by slower than a turtle to Ravi. He couldn't wait to go to the man in tattered clothes and find out the truth. The more he thought about it the more he was convinced that the man in tattered clothes was responsible. When the clock pointed eleven that night, he snuck out of his house just like he did the night before and went to their spot. He found Anil and Saket waiting for him. He told them about the mark on his hand, his visit to the witch's tree, the man in tattered clothes, the mark on Sandeep's neck, everything. They didn't seem to believe him, at first. But when he showed them the mark on his right hand their faces showed the expression of reluctant trust. The mark still looked like a seed sprouting roots but the roots seemed longer than they were this morning.

Anil and Saket had not seen the marks on Sandeep's neck even when they got close to him. That made Ravi think that he was the only one who saw the marks on Sandeep's neck. Why was it so? It was not important now. What was important was finding out how their friend died. Anil was told by his father that it was a heart attack that had taken Sandeep. Ravi, however, thought that the reason behind Sandeep's death might be far more sinister. After an hour of discussing the possibilities of involvement of things ranging from a witch to a loose murderer, they got to the conclusion that they would find out nothing until they went to the tree. It was the only clue they had. So, they decided, however reluctant they were, to go to the tree that could have killed their friend.

The idea to go to the tree would have been an agreeable one had it been only done during the day. But however much they felt they were prepared. The three kids from this small town were not. They wanted to feel brave but their feet betrayed them. The pace was slow but they were slowly closing up to the tree. For every step any of them took they slowed just a little. If anyone had asked them, at that particular moment what they were afraid of, they would not have been able to tell, they probably would not even had admitted that they were afraid. But everything in their bodies except for the words coming out of their mouths indicated otherwise.

When they reached the tree, they didn't find the man Ravi had described. But under the hairlike roots of that banyan tree, they didn't need the man in tattered clothes to be afraid. As Anil and Saket were looking at the tree something slipped around their necks and started to tighten. Just like they are tightening around yours', the man in the tattered clothes said to his unfortunate prey tonight.

By Vasudev Patel