old before her time

I walk in the woods on coal mountain leeds to dire and mysterious consequences

They warned us to never walk in the woods on coal mountain.

               If they’d just left it at that then maybe we would never have gone in there. The things they made up to stop us going inside though, that made it irresistible.

               “Time ain’t welcome in there.” Auntie Tess explained when once we questioned her. “Things happen any damn order they please in that forest. Stay out of it, if you know what’s good for you.”

               That relative was well known for making things up so we didn’t put much faith in those words. Grandpa didn’t hold with lying though so his warning was much more chilling.

               “You walk in those woods and you’ll come out mad or you won’t come out at all.” He chewed the stem of his unlit pipe as he gave this advice. Quitting tobacco never came easy to him. “You ask me they should have burned the whole place down years ago. Or built a wall. That daft grandma of yours got addicted to time travelling. Haven’t seen her these past five years, that blasted forest ate her whole.”

               After that and a dozen other rumours we had to go in. Was it all folklore? Some elaborate prank? Only a walk in the woods would answer the question.

               My sister’s name is Jenny. She’s not as smart as me, everyone says so. She’s always smiling and making jokes. Plus, she’s twice as brave as me so don’t you go saying nasty things about her or she’ll have you.

               We were holding hands as we entered the trees, me struggling to keep up with her quick eager stride. We had the same long brunette hair and her brown eyes were looking around us eagerly, hoping for adventure. I suppose my blue eyes must have been more cautious. I wasn’t too scared though, not with my big sister there.

               “What do you think we’re going to find Tom-Tom?” She whispered to me excitedly. “Do you think there might be wild horses in here?”

               “No one ever said anything about horses.” I rolled my eyes. “Don’t you listen? All they talk about is time. Sometimes they mention grandma, who went missing.”

               “Yeah, but that’s just grown-ups, isn’t it?” She dismissed my words. “Adults always lie.”

               That is true. They’re always lying, deciding what you are and aren’t old enough for. I was starting to suspect they had been concealing the truth about this place as well.

               “There’s nothing unusual here.” I complained. “It’s just willows and birches.”

               “Who’s Willow?” Jenny seemed confused.

               “Willow is a type of tree stupid.” I explained. “They’re the ones whose branches look sort of like skirts. Pouring down from the top of the tree into the ground.”

               Instead of thanking me for teaching her something new she punched me on the arm.

               “Don’t call me stupid.”

               I pulled away and turned around angrily, ready to go home without her but the road back through the trees startled me.

               “Look,” I whispered to my sister.

               She turned around and gasped.

               We had been walking for a few minutes at most, maybe passing a dozen trunks or so on the way in. Now though, the wooded path seemed to stretch for miles behind us.

               “What happened?” She sounded scared. I don’t like it when someone twice as brave as me is afraid.

               “Time.” I thought out loud. “That’s what they said, isn’t it? It runs differently in here. So, we were walking for five minutes but the forest thinks we’ve been travelling inwards for hours.”

               “Let’s go home.” She brushed her hair out of her eyes. “It’s no fun in here.”

               We started to make our way back down that long, long trail. I regretted taking my hand out of Jenny’s, it would have felt safer if we had still been hanging on to each other. I couldn’t reach out for her though, otherwise she’d know how terrified I was.

               We must have been trudging for an hour when we met someone on the route. It was an elderly lady, sat with her back to a tree trunk. She was staring into the distance with sad eyes. There was something awfully familiar about her.

               “Grandma?” Jenny asked. I would not have wanted to talk to this woman, at school they taught me to be scared of strangers. No one ever managed to teach Jenny to be afraid of anything though.

               The lady looked startled, as if she had not expected her thoughts to be interrupted. She looked at us with great surprise.

               “Jenny?” She asked my sister. “You’re Jennifer Harrow, aren’t you?”

               “Yes.” The girl replied awkwardly. She had known my grandmother better than I did and she squinted at the mysterious person suspiciously. “You don’t look a lot like my grandma. Just a bit like her. How is it you know my name?”

               The woman looked at my sister with deep brown eyes. There was something familiar about her, there was no denying it. Grandpa’s wife had been a plump woman though and this individual was thin. She swept her grey hair out of her eyes before replying.

               “It’s a funny old crowd of trees in here. There’s no knowing who you will meet.”

               That was no kind of explanation and I opened my mouth to say so. The stranger spoke first.

               “Tom?” The old woman actually stood up so she could stand closer and look me in the eyes. “You’re Thomas Harrow, aren’t you? You’re much, much smaller than I remember you being. That makes sense I suppose.”

               “We should go.” I tried to whisper to Jenny, doing the best I could to shut this person out of the conversation.

               “Yeah.” Thankfully Jenny agreed. She held out her hand for me to take and spoke to the woman. “We’ve got to be going now. It was very nice to meet you.”

               “Wait!” That old crone reached out and touched Jenny’s face. She locked eyes with her.

               “What are you doing?” Jenny asked angrily.

               “I’m sorry.” The lady whispered. “I’m so, so sorry.”

               She seemed to be crying but all at once she closed her eyes and collapsed.

               “What did she do?” I asked my sister, staring down at this odd person’s unconscious body.

               “Never mind.” There was something strange in the tone of Jenny’s voice. “We need to go.”

               I stared back at that grey-haired old form lying sleeping on the leafy earth as Jenny pulled me away. Something horrible and strange had just happened, I was sure of it. I felt that if we could only go back, we could perhaps undo it.

               Jenny was having none of it though. She held my hand firmly and walked us all the way out of that magical place back home.

               

               We got in a lot of trouble for going into the forest. A grounding for both of us and sweet treats were out of the question for the foreseeable future.

Unusually, Jenny accepted her punishments gracefully. In fact, that wasn’t the only strange thing about her since leaving that place.

Over the following weeks I felt that my sister had changed. She seemed a little less fond of playing than she had been before. She did all her chores and did them well. Even chores we had never been taught how to do.

               These differences made me afraid. Our parents of course heaped praise on her but I was starting to suspect that that the old creature we had met in the forest had climbed right out of her own body and into Jenny’s heart.

               As the weeks went by my suspicions grew worse. Jenny had forgotten many things that she should have known. She could not recall jokes that we shared or even what her favourite meal was.

               What was I to do? How could I trick this new girl into walking back into the forest to rescue my sister?

 

               I was troubling over this very problem on my way to school one day when I realised that she was following me.

               I was horrified. She went to a different place than me to learn her lessons, she was older and had moved up to a secondary school. Why was she pursuing?

               I did the only thing I could think of, I ran.

               Spending all your time reading books in the library does not make you into a fast runner. I was gasping for breath after only a very short space of time. I could hear her footsteps behind me but I was too afraid to look back.

               She grabbed me in a lane where no one could see. Clasping a hand over my mouth she dragged me into the bushes.

               “Stop it.” I tried to say through her palm but all I could do was cry in fear. She tied a rag around my face to gag me and started using my shoelaces to tie me to the branches of the bush.

               “Don’t worry.” She said soothingly. “Don’t worry Tom-Tom. You’re going to be okay.”

               That startled me. Only sister called me Tom-Tom. I wanted to ask her questions but she just kissed me on the forehead and left me there.

               My imagination is something I had always been praised for by grown-ups but now all it could do was torture me. Why had the strange creature tied me up? Or was it in fact Jenny, just under some strange woods-enchantment?

               I could not escape the bonds that she had placed on me. Halfway through the day I heard a terrifying rumble, louder than thunder and a thousand times more horrifying. There were screams and shouts of alarm all over the area.

               Afterwards, she came back and untied me. She was covered in dust and mud. I learned from all the people nearby that that was the day that the coal storage container above our school had collapsed.

               The entire building had been buried underneath black rocks and stones. Apparently, the school was empty that day. Jennifer Harrow had walked into the school and calmly explained that they had been ordered to evacuate the entire building.

Jenny had been a bit of a trouble maker in her time at that establishment so it had taken her quite some time to persuade them to leave the area.

Afterwards, she was hailed as a hero in the whole village, though there were those who called her a witch.

When I asked her why she tied me up she just shrugged and said she was not sure she could persuade them to leave the school.

As the years went by, she showed her uncanny ability to see the future every now and then. Mum’s strange illness when we were in our twenties was not only expected but also dealt with expertly. The doctor’s say that Jenny saved her life. Lots of other little things were predicted and made life easier. I missed the laughter though. Jenny couldn’t tell a joke to save her life anymore.

It was not until we were very old that she confided in me her sin.

“It was the woods.” She whispered. “After you died in school all those years ago nothing could keep me out of those trees. I spent years in there, searching for us. Life passed me by but I found her. Me as a child. I knew all I had to do was touch her and all of me would go pouring into her heart. I had to do it; don’t you see?”

So that was the secret then. My sister must have been in her eighties when she put all of her memories into that young body. Forever lurking in the forest waiting for a twelve year old self who she could murder. Take a frightened girl and put her in an old and broken body. Steal her way through the footprints of time to cheat the day of death.

That is why she stopped smiling and making jokes. The sadness and caution in her eyes made sense.

She was old before her time.