Next to the old tree grew no grass. There were spots, here and there, where a couple of green threads could be seen, but those were partly wilted. Next to the old hanging tree no life approached.

“Hang her! Hang the witch!” had been heard in these hills 300 years ago. The villagers didn’t know they were going to suffer for it, more than the witch ever did. Blood had seeped into the dark branches of the tree as the tortured had spilled their life fluid before ending the circle of life. It grew black and twisted, without leaves. Boughs were sturdy enough to support the weight of all the dead they had seen.

There had been lightning strikes that hit the hill. There had been deaths in that fire. It burned everything except…the old hanging tree. Where the blood of the witch had fallen, not even animals would pass by.

Any newcomer would be warned to stay away from the grand black oak tree. Those who did never woke up.

He knew all of those stories. The witch had placed a curse on the villagers. Men had died; others could never see or speak again. All were mutilated. Blood flowed down their neck, between their fingers and they knew it wasn’t going to heal. None went deaf. They would have to hear the children screaming as they saw them come in, the fast footsteps of scared women as they entered their houses. The cries of those who saw them remained in their memory more painful than any death.

He didn’t care. His brother had been killed by that tree. Men wouldn’t even go next to it to get the body. To them it was another death to another fool. To him it was the final straw. His only relative had been killed by a curse. He had to carry him to a place outside the village. They wouldn’t accept the body into the cemetery. It had started to smell and rot when he finally found another place to bury him.

He started to walk up the hill where the tree was. They were facing each other, like ultimate adversaries. Behind him the scared whispers of the women gave him strength. He would do something they never did. Destroy that tree. Burn it, chop it, smash it, render it to splinters.

An axe was being supported on his strong shoulder. His demeanor was frightening. Like before, the skies were crimson. Lightning struck and then the inevitable thunder shook the ground beneath him.

His fury, his sadness turned anger prevented him from feeling the soreness he felt as he climbed. The tiredness the tree induced.

He left his weapon down and sat, facing the tree trunk.

He took the knife and carved a cross in it. From the tree, blood seeped through. His maniac induced mind made him grin and he grabbed the large axe. He hit it for the first time. Spots of deep purplish-red covered his face, his hands, and his white shirt as he carved cruelly into the tree. Tens of hits after and he started to see that even though the blood was falling his nemesis was cleaved, and impossible to break.

Insanely he began to dig at its roots with his bare hands. Dirt and his own blood mixed in a thick crust. His sweat plastered his hair to his scalp and his bloodshot eyes were rolling in their orbits crazed.

He again grabbed the axe and started chopping again.

Lightning stroke. A black cat perched on the thickest branch was looking at him. Its eyes were hollow and almost translucid. It opened its mouth and the canines, white and sharp had spots of crimson on the tips.

He looked at it. His breath was caught in his lungs. He felt like he was choking. He grabbed his throat with his large hands and he was struck by the facts that he couldn’t stop from strangling himself. His ear-piercing scream echoed in the tempest. His eyes fell on the hole he had dug. It looked like a grave…an open grave.

He fell into it. It felt bottomless and he kept on falling and falling and rain washed his face, but instead of soothing it burned like a hot iron.

--

“Hello, lad. What can we do you with?” Roger, the baker, asked a young man that entered his shop.

“Good day, sir. I was wondering about the tree on that hill over there. Can I take pictures? Everyone I asked looked too frightened to answer”

Roger’s face darkened. He wiped his bald head from the sweat of the hot oven and sat down on a three-legged stool.

“Ya see lad, that tree over there…is cursed” he sighed it all out, as if the calamity was his alone to bear.

“It’s surely just an old superstition” the young man smirked knowingly, like all city folk tend to do.

“Be there as it may…many died there. Mutilated otherwise. No one goes there anymore. Too scared ya see”

“Why won’t you cut it then? Destroy it? It’s a wonderful work of nature, though. I may go there just to see the village from the high view”

“No, boy! Listen carefully. I'll tell ya what I know. There was this…man. No one remembers his name anymore. It was a long time ago. He tried to chop it. Said to everyone he was going to rid us of the threat. To go into the village history books, to revenge his brother, or something of the sorts. Proud fool, he was. He fell at the trunk, asleep or unconscious. He was tormented for three days, there, asleep. When we finally approached it and tried to drag him away…there was a knife wound in the shape of a cross on his chest and axe wounds on his legs, arms. The whole part of a leg was only holding on tendons. The whole hill top was red with his blood. The men were so frightened that he still screamed, dead as he was, they ran and never returned. A day later he was gone. No one knows where or how. The man was wiped out of the village book of records too”

He was disgusted, but a hint of fear was in his eyes. It was as if the whole scene had been replayed in his eye's mind, as if the seeping blood was his and he shared the pain through an empathic bond.

“You…don’t know where it went?” the stranger swallowed hard.

“I can’t say for sure, boy, but the old women say he was taken to hell by the witch itself, others say he was burnt, as there was lightning that night, when he disappeared. We don’t know. We don’t ask. I was just a wee half-pint. But it’s as if Death itself lives in that tree.”

“It surely c-can’t…be a-a curse?” he stammered.

The old man got up and wiped his hands on his shirt.

“That tree is bad news, whether or not it’s a supernatural aspect. Don’t go near it, if you cherish your life” he disappeared in the back room. The warning hung in the air, cold and terrifying, like undesired fog in a late winter’s day.

The visitor went out, dismayed. Outside a black cat was looking at him intensively.

“Hello kitty…are you the only sane person here?” he asked affectionately. He petted her once and rose.

The stickiness on his fingers made him look at his hand. It was covered in blood and the soft skin was scorched in the shape of a lightning.