Haggopian and Other Stories

Nonetheless, my friend climbed those fences and ventured deep into the haunted heart of the place, to the very water’s edge, where he dug in the rotting earth before leaving with my prize. Within twenty-four hours the thing was on its way to me, and after seeing it I could readily understand his haste in getting rid of it. I could not even give the thing a name. I doubt if anyone could have named that shrub for it was the child of strange radiation, not of this world, and therefore unknown to man. Its leaves were awful, hybrid things—thick, flaccid and white like a sick child’s hands—and its slender trunk and branches were terribly twisted and strangely veined. It was in such a poor state when I planted it in my garden that I did not think it would live. Unfortunately I was wrong; it soon began its luxuriant growth and Old Cartwright often used to warily prod it with his cane when he came visiting.

“What was you burnin’ t’other night?” he asked me one morning in the garden. “I seen t’glow from me winder. Looked like you was burnin’ old films or summat! Funny, silver lookin’ flames they was.”

I was puzzled by his remarks. “Burning? Why, nothing! Where did you see this fire, Harry?”

“’Ere in t’garden, or so I tho’t! P’raps it were just t’glow from your fire reflected in yon winder.” He nodded towards the house and spat expertly at the shrub. “Seemed to be just about there where yon thing is.” He moved a pace closer to the shrub and prodded it with his cane. “Gettin’ right fat, aint ’e?” Then he turned and looked at me curiously. “Can’t rightly say as I like yon.”

“It’s just a plant, Harry, like any other,” I answered. Then, on afterthought: “Well, perhaps not quite like any other. It looks ugly, I’ll admit—but it’s perfectly harmless. Surprises me you don’t like it! You don’t seem to mind my Death-Masks or the other things I’ve got.”

“’Armless, they be,” he said. “Interestin’ toys and nowt else—but you wouldn’t catch me plantin’ yon in my garden!” He grinned at me in that way of his which meant ‘I-know-something-you-don’t-know’, and said: “Anyhow, can you answer me this, Mr. Bell? What kind o’ bush is it what t’birds don’t settle on, eh?” He glanced sharply at the plant and then at me. “Never seen a sparrer on it yet, I aint…” He spat again. “Not as I blames ’em, mind you. I shouldn’t fancy sittin’ on that thing myself. Just look at them leaves what never seem to move in t’wind; and that lepry-white colour of the trunk and branches. Why! Yon looks more like a queer, leafy octypus than a shrub.”

At the time I thought very little of our conversation. Old Cartwright was always full of strange fancies and had said more or less the same things about my conches when he first saw them. Yet a few weeks later, when I noticed the first really odd thing about the tree from the heath, I thought of his words again.

Oh, yes! It was a tree by then. It had nearly trebled its size since I planted it and was almost three feet tall. It had put out lots of new, greyly-mottled branches and because its trunk and lower branches had thickened, the weirdly knotted dark veins stood out clearly against the drowned-flesh texture of the tree’s limbs. It was that day that I had to stop Old Cartwright from pestering it. I had thought he was going just a bit heavy with his cane, for after all, the tree was the show-piece of my collection and I did not want it damaged.

“It’s you, aint it, what glows at night?” he had asked of the thing, prodding away. “It’s you what shines like them yeller toadstools do! I come over ‘ere last night, Mr. Bell, but you was already in bed. Tho’t I seen a fire in your garden again, but it weren’t a fire—’twas ‘im!” He prodded the tree harder, actually shaking it. “What kind o’ tree is it?” he asked, “what t’birds don’t sit on and what glows at night, eh?” That was when I got angry and told him to leave the tree alone.

He could be petulant at times, Old Harry, and off he went in a huff in the direction of his cottage. I walked back towards the house and then, thinking I had been perhaps a bit too gruff with the old boy, I turned to call him back for a drink. Before I could open my mouth to shout I noticed the tree. As God is my witness the thing was straining after Old Cartwright like a leashed dog strains after a cat. Its white leaves were all stretched out straight like horrid hands, pointing in his direction, and the trunk had literally bent towards his retreating figure….

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