Free Dead Willow by Joe Sharp

their beakers, Doctor Crispin’s mind seemed elsewhere. Finally, she took a nibble on the bait that Jess had thrown out.
    “Anything I might have read?”
    “What?” asked Jess, enrapt by the beaker in her hands.
    “Anything of yours on the internet I might have read.”
    And they were back. Just two ladies talking over drinks. Time to set the hook. “Have you ever heard of the Paranormal Investigator ?”
    Another beat, then, “Those ghost hunter people?”
    “Ghosts, psychics, pretty much anything supernatural … or just plain weird.”
    “Hmm …” Doctor Crispin took her wire spectacles from her nose and looked up at Jess. “So, what are you looking for here in Willow Tree?”
    Time to reel her in. “What have you got?”

Willow, 1865
     
    The woman came without a pine box.
    A strong summer wind stirred up clouds of dust in the nearby fields, but the Willow’s field was too green to be bothered. For over an acre in every direction, whatever seeds and pollen the winds and flying insects sprinkled on its fertile soil grew wild. The soil under the Willow’s sheltering leaves was as soft and black as moist coffee grounds. Beneath this canopy, the Willow grew the only thing it could grow.
    It was the garden of the dead.
    Under this dark umbrella, the oddly shaped stone markers leaned to and fro like a mouth full of mangled teeth. It had been a while since men had come with their offerings. But it was a warm, sunny day, and the men often came on sunny days. Their sharp implements entered its soil more easily on warm days. They would more often linger, walking from stone to stone, perhaps remembering the deaths beneath the markers. The Willow had to wait patiently for them to leave. It never explored the pine boxes until they had gone.
    But the Willow had little interest in the boxes anymore. It had opened every box they had planted in its soil, and the results littered the Willow’s roots, clinging like desperate babies to their mother’s breast. Sadly, the only milk the Willow had to offer could do nothing to nourish these lost children. They lay dead in the soil, roots and curls of vine sprouting from around their decaying masses as they hung like leeches from smooth healthy flesh.
    One by one the Willow had withdrawn its unearthly fluid from these tumors, and allowed them to rejoin the soil. It took back what it could, the soil absorbing much but giving little. A few stray nutrients and minerals fertilized the dirt … and, of course, the building blocks of life. This the Willow had in abundance, but it was an empty purse.
    The delicate double helixes circled around each other in a dark dance that the Willow could not comprehend. It entwined the twisted ladders, severing then reconstructing each bond, each strand. The results were always the same.
    It was the garden of the dead.
    The Willow gripped the earth in frustration. Against the odds, it had thrived. It had endured the hostile elements which often bordered on the extreme. It had endured the acrid smoke from cannon blasts and musket fire. The starving and the injured had trampled through its field on their way back home to lick their wounds.
    Then, came the dead.
    At first, the pine boxes were intriguing, and a plan had formed within the Willow. It had seen these creatures come and go at will, season after season, while the Willow stayed here, immovable and unmoving. It had traveled the breadth of space, and for what? To be shackled in an open field, caretaker of corpses? To never roam this world as these unthinking creatures could? Or, to someday be destroyed at the hands of the elements, the scorching from the sun or lightning from the sky or from a funnel of wind that could rip it from the earth?
    Or … by the implements of these men?
    These looming threats the Willow could not abide. It must escape the confines of this field if it were going to survive.
    Then, it had been presented with a possibility, and so it had entered the first pine