When I was a kid I talked to trees.
I grew up on a farm, we had sheep for shearing and eating, and cows whose milk my parents sold to people who came and collected the vats in big white trucks.
I would smile and wave at the men who drove the trucks, but rarely got any acknowledgement back.
Much like in life, I was basically invisible.
Our farm itself wasn’t big, but it was located on bushland that went on for kilometres, or in my child’s mind - forever. There were no other homes in sight and it stayed that way until you got much closer to town, and then the few other farms around started to appear, and before you knew it you were in the main street of our small town.
At school, I didn’t have many friends. I was a loner and it was made worse by the fact we lived so remote. I never had the opportunity to join an after-school sports or hang out with other kids at the skate park.
My parents were always busy, always working. Some days I didn’t even see dad, and I would be lucky to catch a glimpse of mum as she pulled a casserole out of the oven and hurried out the front door to join dad in whatever he needed help with out on the farm.
I stuck to myself at school, and at home, keeping myself entertained with playing with my toys, drawing and colouring.
Mum made a big deal to remind me to always stay away from the dam, she was terrified I would drown.
So I mainly hung out on the other side of the farm, away from the dam, away from the shed where the shearing was done, and where the cows were milked.
Trees lined our driveway when we moved in, and dad set.to.work cutting them down almost immediately. Mum was upset, commenting on how lovely they looked, but dad shook his head and said they had to come down. A risk if we had a bad storm, he said.
Mum tutted.
When dad finally put down the chainsaw, all that was left were large tree stumps, tall, gangly, uneven.
I liked them.
The summer I turned 8 I was spending a lot more time outside, at the stumps.
I had taken my Barbie’s outside once, and they’d gotten so tattered that mum, tired from a days farm work and not in the mood, angrily threw away the doll in the bin, telling me that if I couldn’t look after my toys I couldn’t have them.
So I stopped taking my dolls out.
Instead, I gave the tree stumps names. I gave them stories, personalities.
I pretended the two biggest were king and queen, the two smaller ones huddled together were the prince and princess.
I would spend hours out in the stumps, entertaining myself, telling them my biggest secrets, my dreams.
I would pretend the tree stumps would talk back to me, my young imagination going wild.
We would hold full conversations, me answering their questions and them pondering their answers.
When winter came, so did the cold and the rain. I was allowed outside less, my time to play getting shorter as the days did as well.
I would drive past the stumps almost daily when mum drove me up the long driveway to the school bus stop, and I would feel bad for ignoring them. They were my friends. Even though they were just tree stumps.. they’d been there for me when no one else had.
Soon it was raining heavy every day, and mum pulled out my colouring books and paints and told me I was to stay inside, no playing outdoors until the big freeze was over for the year.
As most Kids, my attention span was flimsy, I soon forgot about my stump friends.
Until they began to visit me at night.
At first it was branches, shadows reflected in my window, scraping slowly against the glass.
I remember being so scared, terrified. I wanted to call for my mum but she would tell me off for waking her.
My heart was thumping wildly in my chest when I ripped open my curtain to see there was nothing there. I must have been imagining it, I told myself. 8 years old and already a wise old man.
But it kept happening.
Night after night.
And the scratching.. it started to sound like it was actually saying a word, my name.
“Leah.”
It sounded as if the scratch was calling for me, beckoning me. There’s no other way I can describe it.
Every night I would lay in bed, listening to the groans and moans of a tree.billowing in the breeze.
The actual scratches appeared next.
I woke up and couldn’t get up from the bed. It felt as if I was somehow stuck down to the sheets, my skin fused to the bedding beneath.
It took a few painful pulls before I was able to rug myself away from the sheet, revealing thin red marks all over, blood had seeped and dried, sticking to my back as I lay sleeping.
My body was covered, head to toe, in thin red scratches.
The marks too perfect, too thin and precise, to be made by anything other than a sharp stick.
My parents sent me to a shrink, thinking I’d done it to myself.
I tried to explain about the nighttime whispers and the reflection of branches in my window, but my parents hadn’t believed me.
Looking back, I don’t know if I’d have believed myself, either.
I was erratic, constantly between tears and anger and fear, lashing out at everyone and furious that no one seemed to believe me.
The only good thing was that I had to go and stay at an inpatient facility. The first night I was away from home, I slept soundly for the first time since the winter had begun.
The shrink did not believe me either, although I had almost stopped believing myself by the time id been an inpatient for a few days.
The shrink threw words at my parents - schizophrenia, depression, depersonalisation.
They paid the hospital a good chunk of their savings and took me home.
If it wasn’t for the painful, watchful eye of my mother, whose face had lined so very deeply since I’d been gone. I watched her tired eyes scan my body every few hours, checking to see if I’d cut myself, hurt myself.
I felt embarrassed and ashamed. Riddled with guilt at what id put my family through.
When I went to bed the first night back at home, I closed my eyes tightly as the whisperings began, closed my eyes so I didn’t see the branch shadows I knew were there.
I didn’t, but I wanted to - so,so badly - scream for my parents, cry into my mother’s arms and beg to be taken back to the hospital.
I sobbed softly and quietly instead, and when I woke up I made sure to cover the fresh scratches on the souls of my feet with thick socks, so my blood didn’t seep through and onto mums cream carpet.
The scratching on my window was more frantic,more desperate with each night that passed.
The moaning and groaning didn’t just say my name name, it was also pleading for help.
It’s hard to remember when it ended.
It had stayed the same for what seemed like a long time, the sleepless nights and scars taking their toll on me. I was falling asleep in class, failing tests. My parents didn’t know what to do and my teachers didn’t care too much to be able to offer any solutions.
Summer, spring.. I know it was warmer weather, when I started to feel better.
I don’t know whether I slept through the whispers, or of they just didn’t come one night. My eye mask prevented my from seeing anything but darkness and after a while I fell asleep without looking for shadows. Mum seemed more relaxed. Dad seemed to be busy again, meaning he was more relaxed too.
The sun had started to come out more, the paddocks dried up to muddy puddles and I went back out to the stumps, a little scared but curious.
I approached them with care, as if they would lash out and hurt me, but they had no branches to bend, in the daylight they seemed smaller than I remembered.
Or perhaps id just grown.
Had I truly gone through a break down and imagined it all?
I felt silly when I saw them again.
The stumps, and that’s all they were, were harmless hunks of wood, rooted to the ground.
I felt a light begin to lift of my shoulders, and I focused on how nice the sun felt against my skin.
I settled in to the same spot id always sat when I played here, the shortest stump that I called the throne, carrying on with my royal theme.
I settled in to get myself comfy, my 8 year old self feeling excited and looking forward to a weekend of touch football - we were moving into town and mum had said I could sign up to play with some of the kids from school.
I felt a little rush of appreciation then, even though the last few months had been horrible, some good things - like living closer to actual kids and getting to play sport on the weekend were coming out of it.
I spoke out loud for the first time since I’d arrived, for the first time in months since I’d played here. I said, “Thankyou.”
And a voice spoke back, and said I was welcome.
By the time id run back home, not even stopping for a much needed breathe I was terried whoever or whatever had spoken was right behind me. I swear I could feel their hot breath on my neck.
Mum was peeling snow peas when I ran in, dropping the glass bowl from her lap in horror and worry when she saw the state of me.
By the time the police came, the stumps were empty. But they did find the biggest stump
the one id named king, had a huge hole cut out of the inside.
A hole big enough for a grown man to crouch down and hide in.
The police didn’t find any evidence of who was hiding down in the tree stump on my families farm, but they did find the teeth of a little girl who had been missing for 18months, a couple towns over.
The police found no evidence of the man in or around our home, claiming that my second story window was too high for him to climb up and wave a branch across.
They didn’t say anything about the physical scratches, but their eyes told my parents they also thought it was Something I’d done to myself.
I didn’t tell anyone else, but I thought maybe it was the ghost of the little girl, trying her best to scare and warn me that there was someone dangerous around.
I’m grown now. Married.
They never caught the person hiding in the stumps,but it happened over 20 years ago and I’ve not lost sleep on it until now.
Today at the park, I lost sight of my daughter for a few seconds.
I was stressed trying to quickly reply to an email and when I glanced up, she was gone.
I started running around, screaming her name and then found her amongst some freshly cut tree trunks. My heart caught in my throat at the memory of myself playing in such things when younger, and instinctively I wanted to run over and pull her out.
But I knew I was being dramatic. I didn’t want to traumatise her by making a big deal of nothing so I just observed until I heard her mention king and queen, and then.. honestly, I lost it.
Grabbed her and took her home.
I put her to bed early, and just went to check on her Before. Shes sleeping soundly, but these weird scratches have just began to appear all over her body.