The Ladies of Horror
Picture-Prompt Writing Challenge!

The Phoenix Tree
by Alyson Faye 

Our village was many generations old. We followed the ancient ways- ploughing the land, sowing and consuming the crops, baking bread, brewing ale, stitching our clothes, worshipping in the stone built church around which we buried our dead in the rich, loamy earth.

We did have a problem with our dead, for they had a habit of resurrecting despite the iron nails hammered into the coffin lids.

No one in our village talked about the returning dead, nor admitted how afraid they were of seeing their loved ones faces at their front door; bone-white, blue-lipped, dark-eyed.

Every Sunday, Eli, our village leader, preached from the pulpit, banging the Bible with his fist, and we’d all listen or  . . . pretend to.

Rachel was one who pretended. She would sit, head bowed, eyes closed, outwardly compliant, but I knew different. I watched her as she worked in the mill, as she walked round the village, chatting, laughing, singing and swinging her hips, arm in arm with her best friend, Mercy Robbins.

Rachel and Mercy, they are both dirty, I would chant under my breath. My chest heaving with fury.

I knew that come dusk they’d be creeping from their family cottages, silent as cats, tiptoeing to The Phoenix Tree. There they’d dance and pray, trying to conjure familiars, obscene powerful beings, who dwelt beneath its tunnelling roots.

Local lore said that the Phoenix Tree’s root system stretched all the way around the village. At the culmination of every annual harvest it burst into flames, yet the branches and leaves did not die, oh no, like the legendary Phoenix, it was reborn.

The tree’s life force kept our fields fertile, but it also empowered our dead to walk again. What Rachel and Mercy were doing was both strictly forbidden and dangerous.

I wrote a note to Eli, disguising my script and, under cover of darkness, pushed it beneath his cottage door.

Mercy Robbins and Rachel Brewer are visiting The Phoenix Tree nightly. There they remove their clothing, untie their hair, and dance in a wanton fashion, chanting spells, asking the tree for gifts and familiars to be bestowed upon them.

I did not imagine that such terrible things would follow. How could I? Eli and the elders were good men, gentle men . . . or so I believed . . . then.

There was a meeting in the church, where, from outside the window, I overheard raised voices, shouting, ‘Witches!’ ‘Whores!’ ‘Impure!’

Eli, nodded along, a smile on his lips. I longed to go inside, but as a junior, of only fifteen summers, I had not earned my place.

My stomach tightened with fear, acid soured my mouth. I realised my note had started something terrible.

That night a group of  village men, met by the Lychgate, carrying iron bars, hoes, or spades and Eli blessed them before their ‘righteous mission’.

I followed them as they hiked across the first field of wheat, into the copse of trees where the youngsters play hide and seek in summer, and onwards to the Phoenix Tree.

I kept turning round, certain I heard rustling and thumping behind me, yet I saw nothing.

Our Mayor and village blacksmith were amongst the half dozen men who closed in on Mercy and Rachel. The girls were oblivious, dancing, waving their arms, singing, dressed only in moonlight. I hid in the long grass, fear sickening my belly, heart beating fast.

The men rushed at the girls, grabbing them, beating and kicking. I covered my eyes, but still heard the girls’ screams.

I smelled burning wood and strangely, the stink of rotting meat. I was too afraid to look. I felt bodies brushing past me, heard heavy footsteps stumbling, and I knew the dead were walking. That was who had been following me. I forced myself to look.

The Phoenix Tree was ablaze, every branch burning a vibrant, terrifying orange. Yet it was not harvest time. Worse than this I witnessed six of the dead, (including my Uncle who’d passed recently), raise a bruised, blackened fist and hit Eli full in the face, again and again.

I saw Mercy and Rachel huddled on the ground, whilst around them the dead fought with fury, in one-to-one combat, rotting limbs battling with living bodies, who one by one, fell bleeding, horribly disfigured, to the ground.

It was over in minutes. The flames roared, and the six dead men walked into the inferno that was the Phoenix Tree.

I knew that there they would be reborn and back in our village at cock crow.  This is the gift and the curse of our village.

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Fiction © Copyright Alyson Faye
Image courtesy of Pixabay.com

More from Alyson Faye:

The Lost Girl & Spindleshanks

The Lost Girl
A nailed-up door. An inheritance which comes with a ghost. A missing girl. A fifty-year-old mystery. Parapsychologist Berkley Osgood is hired to investigate. What he uncovers reveals secrets the living want to hide and the dead will never forgive.

Spindleshanks
Adam is having nightmares about a skeletal shadow figure, who he calls Spindleshanks. Soon his whole class are sharing the same nightmare. Adam’s dad, Rob, knows that Spindleshanks can’t be real. But is he? One terrible night Rob has to face his son’s nightmare creature and fight for his son’s life. What would you sacrifice to have your child back safe?

“A decent two-for-one. Alyson Faye brings the engaging and eerie in equal measure.” CC Adams – horror / dark fiction author

Available on Amazon!