The Tree-Short read

This book will be out in a few days. I thought I would treat everyone with a short read.

 

Five year old Ana BuFaye refuses to stay in her own bed or on her side of the room she shares with her big sister Helena. The phantoms of the night have spooked her. Stories about town are that the ancient house is haunted. But Ana didn’t need anyone to tell her that. She knows it’s haunted. Because one of the haints is looking right at her. She doesn’t need anyone to tell her it’s haunted. She sees it. She sees an evil red-eyed man standing in the shadows under the ‘tree’ at night looking up at her window.

It’s the year of 2469, she thought the science’s folk  said things like that didn’t exist anymore. They were never real. They say it’s all superstition and anyone who believes it is plain stupid or suffering mental illness. People say the old people, a long time ago invented a bunch of things to scare you. They saw ghosts every where because back then, people didn’t have electricity nor nuclear energy to light up the nights. She knows they knew what they were talking about because she can see them and they can see her. Well, there goes one right now there under her window. Howling like a crazed banshee. But can a guy be a banshee? She guesses he can for that one definitely is one. He has been staring at her all night. His glowing red eyes tell her he’s evil and wants to kill her. She hugged her teddy bear closer and swallowed hard and does her usual stint when scared. Run and jump in the bed with her big sister’s and cover her head.
                                                                                        TT
It was early October but still hot in the deep South. The three year old girl who shared a room with her older sister threw her doll down and bolts out the room. From the upstairs window, she saw her father driving the hover harvester out the field toward the storage. The straining sound of the engines’ gears shifting and clouds of tan hued dust signaled he was coming home. She was so excited she ignored her shoes and ran down stairs as fast as her skinny little legs could carry her. Her mother yelled from the kitchen telling her to stop running before she falls down the stairs again. But she knows she didn’t fall the first time. Something or someone pushed her. But she obeyed and slowed down, holding onto the years of hand gliding over them smoothed rails. Her brother Jack was already outside running ahead of her. He would get picked up first and tossed in the air. She liked to reach dad first after he debunked from the cabin of the harvester and be the first one Daddy picked up and tossed in the air.

Finally making it outside pass the squeaky screen door as quiet as possible; crossing the wide, hot porch to the steep steps as carefully as doable, she picked up speed when she was one step from the last step and leapt to the ground and hit it running. She was flying around the corner of the large antebellum southern house in a patch of cool grass on the west side of the house; a rare find on a hot Fall day. She slowed up a little as she passed the knobby, thick grey barked ancient fir tree she detested. She doesn’t know why but she hates that cursed tree.

Turning her mind back to the task at her, she saw her brother up ahead. She sprint across the yard toward the harvester. Jack was older, he could run faster but she was gaining on him.

The hired farm workers and her father were harvesting for the market at the end of the harvest season. The bright, hot sun beat down on her dark bronze skin, drawing tiny beads of sweat from her smooth forehead and determined upper lip. She is a beautiful child from what she heard the adult say when they weren’t looking at her like she was a new bug specimen they had never seen before. She raced passed her parents cars. Jack was two years older, he could run faster but she was gaining on him. If only she pushed herself harder she believes she can catch and pass him. With her two auburn pigtails sailing behind her she pumps her little legs harder.

She abruptly stops. Her dark amber eyes rose with the levitating of the pitchfork that appeared before her. A very angry man is holding it. His top lip is curled and snarling like an angry dog. At least she thinks it’s a man?? Where did he come from? In an instant, she saw her very young life flashed before her eyes as the man pitched the fork at her. It moved faster than she could see. Headed, flying straight for her face. It moves so fast her reflex to shield her tiny face is futile. Suddenly a hand reached out of a blinding light on her right and quickly knocked the fork downward, toward the ground. It impaled her foot instead of her head as intended. The man from nowhere glowered at her as she screamed loud enough to startle the dining crows still out in the pasture. Her eyes widen with fear when she looked down and saw blood gushing from her foot. She tried to pull pitchfork out of her foot, out of the ground but couldn’t. She was feeling dizzy from the heat and mounting fear. She could feel her panic escalating. “If I don’t get my foot free he’ll kill me.” She thinks, sobbing and pulling the handle with all her might. The light is standing between him and her but she can still sense him watching her. Watching her with a burning hate hotter than the sun beating down on her well-oiled headed. Her heart is beating a hundred pulse per second. She knows this thing wanted to kill her but why? What have she done to him?

“Baby, leave it alone.” She heard her father’s voice say. It sounded like he was speaking to her from a long dark tunnel. The hot sun was making her feel worse. She didn’t know when her mother came out nor, when her dad reached her but when her vision was clear again her mom was on the ground with her. She was sitting in her lap and her dad kneeling in front of her slowly removing the fork. The workers and her siblings were standing around, all wearing worried expressions.

Once it was out and her mother was carrying her to the car, Jacob BuFaye turned and angrily asked the hired farm workers who left the damn pitchfork in a place where the baby should step on it? But everyone swore no one left any tools out.

From the front seat of their teal green family car with blood all over the floor mat Ana sat patiently as her mother used a tubal skin draft solution to curb the bleeding until they reached the hospital. “Daddy, no one left it out.” she said from inside the car. “The pitchfork appeared out the thin air and a strange man threw the it at me and another strange person made of light blocked it.” She felt she needed to tell exactly what happened. She felt sorry and bad for the men whom her father was angry at. Falsely believing they somehow hurt her. She believed telling the truth would rectify the accusation.