It was wet that Christmas Eve on Wimpson Hill. A bone-numbing wind tore across the valley, driving rain up the escarpment, lashing the tough grasses and stunted shrubs that dared to grow there. Any walkers foolish enough to set foot in the valley on that dreariest of afternoons might well have spied a slight figure picking its way towards the summit: a slip of a girl, named Charlotte Cummins. Somehow, the inclement weather seemed to pay particular attention to her.

The young woman’s raincoat was tightly drawn at the hood, yet the body of the garment billowed wildly around her. Indeed, any walker out that day might have perceived the girl’s indistinct form as a shapeless phantom─the one said to haunt the high ground thereabouts─and perhaps mistaken the howling wind as its cry.

Eventually, Charlotte approached a circle of majestic pines on the crown of the hill, their branches swaying, surging like an angry sea. The girl came to a halt at the circle’s edge, seeming to contemplate whether or not to continue further. Moments later, however, she stepped forwards and vanished into the swell.

She had to see if it was still there.

With a convulsion of needled branches, Charlotte was expelled into an open space bound by the ring of conifers. A dramatically different atmosphere awaited her within the little clearing. Protected, now, from the wind and rain, the girl suddenly felt disconnected from the world outside. The enclosed space had a holy air about it, as if she had entered an ancient chapel and found a sanctuary from all her earthly troubles.

And it was still there: a little Christmas tree, stood alone in the centre of the clearing. A bonsai Norway spruce, planted so long before. Why hadn’t it matured over the years, that little memorial to her father? Barely two feet high, it didn’t seem to have grown an inch since the day she had helped her uncles plant it.

Charlotte made her way over to the tree, her gaze fixed upon the tiny upper branches. As she knelt reverently before it, she chanced to spy a curious ivory structure, down through the needles─like a milky white glove. Motionless, it was, as if it had somehow frozen solid while struggling for release from the earth. Charlotte swiftly averted her eyes.

Unzipping her raincoat, the girl tugged out a flat wooden box. She lowered it to the ground and flipped the lid open. A number of objects gleamed inside: a silver identity bracelet, a pair of dog tags on a chain, a stainless steel wristwatch and a gold ring with a large clasped garnet.
“It’s time to have them all back,” she said.

One by one, she carefully removed the baubles and hung them on the tree. All except for the ring. Trapping the gold band between her right thumb and forefinger, she raised it for closer inspection.

And it was then that Charlotte saw him.

In the vision he was clutching her, one arm raised high. It was the last time, she remembered, that he had touched her. She could see her uncle Jim, too, stood in the background, his hand over his mouth. Knelt in the clearing, the girl’s own hand had slipped up her back to trace over the blemished skin where the ring had once scarred her.

Charlotte suddenly drove her other hand down through the branches, plunging the ring over the longest ivory digit. The vision winked out.

She rose to her feet and, without a backward glance, sliced her way out through the ring of conifers.

Outside, the wind had dropped to a refreshing breeze. The rain had ceased and the clouds were thinning. Pale sunlight filtered through with a promise of fairer weather to come.

BACK TO TOP