The Old Cottonwood

The events of Halloween, 1973 scar a boy’s psyche so profoundly that he finds himself returning to their locus decades later, in the hope of finding resolution. But the mystery he finds waiting for him is darker still.

***Content warning: This episode deals with themes of familial estrangement, child death, suicide, racist violence, and murder. Listener discretion advised.***

Transcript

[Darker Pastures Theme - Intro]

NARRATOR

Sometimes wounds are physical, and sometimes they are buried deeper within us. So often we forget this, and thinking our words and looks are only given in harmless jest, or sometimes not thinking about it at all, we deal fresh wounds and open old ones of the unseen kind. For we never know what hidden scars anyone bears, whether they be stranger, lover, or closest kin.

And sometimes those secret wounds can be utterly devastating… especially in these darker pastures, on the weirdest of nights.

[Darker Pastures Theme - Intro - Continues]

NARRATOR

Episode Twenty: The Old Cottonwood.

(Sounds of horse whinnying, galloping nearer)

NARRATOR

Landon sits under the old, twisted cottonwood, playing with twigs and waiting as patiently as he is able. He looks up at the tree which his father has always claimed is the oldest in the whole county, though Landon has never known how his father could know that. His sister Becky, three years older than Landon’s ten, is perched in the hollow between three thick, high branches which they call the crow’s nest. Landon has seldom dared to climb so high, afraid of falling, or worse, of getting stuck up there with no clear way down. Becky and their older brother Harold both mock him all the time for this, but only twice has this mockery galled him into making the climb.

And it is not only the heights that frighten him.

Harold and Becky have told him many times about the phantom rider that can only be seen from the crow’s nest, riding toward the tree from the west; about how it can only be seen in the late summer, first as a mere shadow or a hazy outline, then growing more and more defined and solid as the year ages and autumn deepens.

They have related so many differing origins for the phantom, saying sometimes that he was a most horrible criminal in life, hung during the days of the frontier cattle drives when so much of the land was lawless and wild. Other times they say he was a hangman who took sickly pleasure in his work, and is now damned to wander the earth, or that he was an innocent punished for the sins of another and his spirit now seeks justice for that wrong. Each version seems to vary a little with every telling.

Most of the time, Landon doesn’t believe any of it at all, knows that they are just trying to scare him in a typical display of elder sibling mischief. But when he is near the tree, that dreadful suspicion that there might be some truth to their awful tales begins to bleed into his mind, and he finds himself ill at ease, glancing periodically up toward the western prairie to make sure no spectral interloper is approaching unseen.

But the few times he’s been in the crow’s nest, he’s never had the courage to look that way, too terrified by the prospect of actually seeing something. And his siblings mock him for that too.

Feeling unsettled by reflections upon all of this, Landon looks up toward his sister and asks if it isn’t time for them to head home now. Becky doesn’t answer at once, and after a few moments of silence, Landon repeats the question more loudly and a little testily.

In response, Becky begins to sing in a soft, high, slightly off-kilter tone that the hangman is coming for him, coming to string him up.

Nice try, he says to her, then insists that it’s late and they’ll be in trouble if they are late in getting back for the evening chores and for supper.

Becky only continues to sing that song, the melody slightly atonal and haunting.

Then she suddenly stops singing and stares in wide-eyed horror at some vague point in the west. Landon asks her what’s wrong, but she doesn’t reply. Three more times he asks her before she points and begins to shout that he’s coming, he’s coming for real this time.

Landon yells at her to cut it out, but the edge of panic in her voice is so authentic that what starts as a demand devolves into a shrill plea midway through.

Becky goes silent just as abruptly as she started screaming, her eyes no longer directed toward the west. At first Landon thinks incredulously that she has for once heeded him, but then he turns and follows her gaze to find their father striding toward them, his face dark.

As he draws near, he asks what the hell all the commotion is for, glowering first up at his daughter in the tree, then at his son below. When neither of them offers an answer, he lowers his voice and says that he’d best not need to use his belt to get one.

Becky said she saw the ghost rider, Landon caves to the threat.

His sister looks down at him in outraged disbelief, and Landon flushes and studiously inspects his worn boots. Their father growls impatiently that there are no ghosts, and that he won’t hear anymore of this foolishness. Then he tells them both to get back home and start their chores, or he’ll give them something to shout about.

Nimbly, Becky descends the tree, and the children walk home together, cowed by their father’s stormy temper. The man, however, lingers a moment, looking westward into the distance. A cool breeze whispers through the slumbrous yellow grass, moans in the boughs of the cottonwood.

The sun is dipping below the horizon when he turns and walks the way his children have gone.

[Short pause]

NARRATOR

For about an hour as they lay in bed that evening, Harold, who heard all about the afternoon from Becky, teases Landon about the horseman. From his place on the top bunk, Harold has a better view out the small window of their shared bedroom, and he keeps saying that he can see him riding up to the place, that he can hear a horse’s hooves pounding outside.

When Landon says that he’ll tell their father if Harold doesn’t quit, that finally shuts his older brother up, and with a surly and sarcastic goodnight, Harold rolls over and soon falls asleep. Landon, though, lies restlessly for a long time afterward, listening to the cold wind moan against the windowpanes and starting with each unexpected sound in the outer night.

[Short pause]

NARRATOR

The next few weeks, between school and work on their father’s small farming and ranching operation, the three of them have little time for play, and do not venture out to the old tree. For this, Landon is secretly grateful, even though the thankless toil and confounding schoolwork wear on him. Even without further goading, the fear of the horseman keeps him from falling asleep easily at night, and his nightmares frequently feature the protean specter in an array of shifting forms.

Then October comes, and while the workload remains heavy with the harvest, their father allows them an hour in the evenings to run free and play as they see fit. Harold, fifteen and deeming himself now too old for childish things, often simply walks along the roadside by himself while his siblings play.

Becky, of course, always wants to go to the old tree, even when Landon suggests going to the little creek canyon instead. That’s too far away, Becky insists, and it’s chilly this time of year anyway – both of which are true – and so Landon ends up acquiescing, no matter the fact that he knows what will come when they reach that familiar place.

So it is that Monday evening, only two days before Halloween.

And it starts just the same as all the other times, with Becky climbing into the tree and taunting her little brother as he plays pretend at being a knight or a cowboy or a mountain man, a hero like those from the adventure novels he loves so much. And as always, this ruins his play, and he tries unsuccessfully to convince her stop.

Then Becky goes quiet very suddenly, becomes frozen in her perch high in the tree, staring wide-eyed at some undefined distant point.

Landon tells her he’s not going to fall for it, that she’s used this trick a few times too many. She maintains her motionless silence. With a disdainful dismissal of her acting, Landon decides to take advantage of her speechlessness and go back to his play, ignoring her. Several minutes later, though, when Becky still hasn’t shifted or made another sound, he becomes thoroughly unnerved, and looks back up at her.

Her mouth is open now, forming a small O, and she looks pale and sickly. Even from this distance, he can see that she is trembling slightly in her seat among the branches.

Calling her name, he gets no response.

[Tense music fades in]

NARRATOR

Landon turns to try and follow her fixed gaze, and sees only the open prairie, a few cattle scattered on a distant hilltop like raisins on a bun. But then he does see a few rising puffs of dust, like those that might be turned up by the hooves of a trotting horse. Only there is no horse to turn them.

Landon calls his sister’s name again, and at the same instant, she begins to scream to her brother to come up, to get away before he gets there.

Who is it? Landon asks, twice, not getting any answer but only further repetitions of her frenzied pleas. He’s not even sure if she hears him over her own cries.

He begins to climb, as quickly as he can. If she is playing a trick on him again, a small sour thought runs through his mind, he will push her out of the tree. But her cries and her fright seem so genuine, that he doesn’t even hesitate to climb toward the place that has always been the center of his fear.

Only halfway up does he pause and look back down, hearing faintly what sounds like hoofbeats on the ground below. And when he does, he thinks he sees a nebulous and very deep shadow with no apparent source moving near the baste of the tree, one all too like a man on horseback.

Whimpering, he hurriedly climbs the rest of the way up, holding tightly to his sister as she helps him into the crow’s nest. Huddling there in each other’s arms, they wait in terrified silence, she watching whatever is happening below and he too afraid to dare look down again, pressing his face into Becky’s shoulder.

The sound of the iron-shod hooves upon the dusty earth are much louder in his ears now, somehow, even though he is further away. Strangely, though, there is no other sound: no horse’s snorting or whinnying, no call from its rider. Other than the hoofbeats, it is deathly quiet. Even the sounds of the wind and of the open prairie seem to have receded in deference to some uncanny intrusion.

Then the hoofbeats suddenly stop, and gradually, the whispering of the wind in the grass, the buzzing of a nearby fly, the faint lowing of a distant cow all return to audibility. His sister’s trembling subsides, little by little, and Becky at length whispers that she thinks he’s gone.

[Tense music fades out]

NARRATOR

Only then does Landon pull back and look down. He cannot see any sign of prints in the soul from this height, but he doesn’t dare look for long.

Very softly, Becky says that she’s sorry. She repeats it three times, beginning to cry, then says that she never thought he was real, she’d just thought it was all harmless.

Landon hugs her again, and they cry together until they hear their father calling them home. They descend as quickly as their still shaky nerves allow, and quietly agree as they walk homeward that they will say nothing of this to their father, before they both swear they will never play by the old tree again.

[Short pause]

NARRATOR

Landon does make the mistake of mentioning the event to their older brother, though, as they are lying in bed after supper.

Harold begins to laugh, says that Landon’s an idiot and that Becky really got the best of him this time. Angrily, Landon replies that it wasn’t a trick, that something was really there, something awful. That just makes Harold laugh even harder.

Wanly, Landon says that Harold wasn’t there, that he can’t understand how horrible those moments were, how scared Becky was.

Yeah right, is all Harold offers by way of further words, and he continues to chuckle occasionally as he slowly drifts toward sleep.

Landon remains awake, listening for any hint of hoofbeats outside and wondering if Becky is doing the same in her little bedroom, all alone.

[Short pause]

NARRATOR

When Halloween comes, Harold still hasn’t had his fill of antagonizing them. Becky and Landon are donning their simple homemade costumes for the evening, she going as a ghost he as a cowboy, when Harold begins asking them if they aren’t afraid to go trick-or-treating, if they aren’t afraid the ghostly horseman will get them.

Becky tells him to shut up, her voice faint. Harold seems not to take the subtle warning in her tone, or perhaps he simply doesn’t care. He begins to mock them more ruthlessly, saying that they both still act like babies, afraid of the dark and playing dress up like little kids.

Becky’s face has gone hard, and she points out that Harold went trick-or-treating with them just last year.

That wipes the smirk off of his face, and he weakly retorts that he at least had a good costume, a truly scary one. Remembering the strange space alien costume Harold had put together, Landon says that he looked like a carsick lobster, and both he and Becky snort in laughter.

Harold fumes a moment, and then he says darkly that he’ll show them that he’s bigger than they are, that he’ll spend the whole night in the crow’s nest and prove that they’re both whiny, lying little fools.

With a contemptuous shrug, Becky tells him to do whatever he wants, and then says to Landon that they’d best not make their father wait any longer, or he’ll lose patience and not bother to take them out.

[Short pause]

NARRATOR

The haul is good that year, the few neighboring farms and ranches and the people of the little hamlet they hit up being very generous with their treats. Even their father seems to be in a good mood that evening, joining in the spirit of the holiday in a way he seldom does. So by the time Becky and Landon come home, pleasantly sick on chocolates and gummies and candied apples and slightly drowsy, they have forgotten about the argument before they left, and about the phantom of the tree.

But when they enter the house and Harold is not inside, it comes back to them. Their father goes outside and calls for him, checks the barn and the pens and the chicken coop to make sure no trouble found Harold while he did the last chores of the day, but he finds no sign of the boy.

When he returns to the house, their father sinks into his favorite chair, grumbling about young men and the mischief they get up, swears he’ll tan the boy’s hide if he’s off with some girl.

Becky blushes at that, but Landon is only disgusted by the thought of his older brother smooching a girl, and even more so by the thought that any girl could ever want to kiss Harold.

They put away their costumes and their candy and get ready for bed. As the two younger siblings part for the night, standing in the darkened hallway in their pajamas, Landon asks if they shouldn’t tell their father to check at the old tree.

No, his sister says emphatically. They’ll have to explain why, she says, which is sure to bring down their father’s wrath on them, and if Harold isn’t there, they’ll have gotten into trouble for nothing.

Besides, she says, it’d serve him right to have to spend the night in the tree.

But what if the horseman has got him? Landon asks.

If that is the case, she answers, there’s nothing they can do for him anyway.

Landon finds he can think of no convincing counterargument to that, and they go to their separate bedrooms.

All through the night, though, Landon barely sleeps, listening intently for the sound of the door opening, for any hint of Harold returning home. And by the time the night relents to the gloomy blue-grey of the predawn hour, Landon is out of bed and dressed, walking as stealthily as he can on the old timbers of the floor.

He meets his sister in the hallway, also dressed and apparently of the same mind as he. They nod in wordless understanding and agreement, and sneak out of the house together.

A wind has risen in the night, out of the northwest and very sharp. They huddle into their light jackets as they walk out toward the old tree. By the time they are halfway there, there is enough light in the sky to plainly make out the silhouette of the old tree.

And there is something new there. Seeing it, Landon simply goes still and stares in utter disbelief. Beside him, Becky screams and falls to her knees, her scream only broken by heaving sobs that come a few moments later.

[Sorrowful music]

[Long pause]

NARRATOR

It is about all of this that Landon thinks, sitting on his plane nineteen years after the fact. He thinks about it as he lands in Amarillo, as he collects his rental car, as he drives out of the city and into the sere canyon country, as the landscape slowly transitions into broad, parched plains.

This, and all he has learned since.

But it is only within the last few weeks that he has thought of the tree and its phantom much at all. Harold’s suicide cast such a shadow over that Halloween, over the years afterward, that he no longer had to seek darkness in tales and legends – it lived there in the house, with them.

And when he graduated high school, he could not get away from it fast enough. He wandered between jobs for a few years before he fell into studying computer programming, such a new and exciting field, and ended up going back to school and getting a formal education. Aside from calling his father and Becky on holidays, he has given little thought to his family, none to returning to the house where he grew up.

Then, in the first week of October, he had the dream. It started as many of his worst dreams do, with the dark silhouette dangling from an old cottonwood, taller and more grotesquely twisted than any real one ever was. But in this dream, as he’d looked up at the body of his brother, he had heard thundering hoofbeats bearing down on him from behind. As he turned, he had seen something so utterly appalling, he had woken immediately in a cold sweat, but upon waking up he could not remember what it was, only the feeling it had instilled in him.

And it was then that he remembered with sudden, vivid clarity those few days before that awful Halloween, and the childhood fear that had been the last thing he and his brother discussed.

He glances over at the satchel resting on the passenger seat beside him, filled with books, clippings, and photocopied materials. What began as mild curiosity has turned into a bit of an obsession – perhaps a full-blown one.

It was only through his recent research that he learned that the site of his father’s homestead saw two prior deaths by hanging, from the very same tree as his brother. At first, he had thought it merely coincidence, and that it must have been some nearby location, another tree. But it didn’t take him long to realize that there were very few trees so large in the remote northern county, and that the claim his father had made years ago about it being the tallest was likely true. And through meticulous study of maps and surveys and old public records, he has come to realize that it was likely indeed that same cottonwood.

One was a wandering grifter and gambler named Guthrie Sykes, who in 1897 had bilked a few locals out of their hard-earned wages at a game of cards in a saloon. The town where this had happened, Cleave, had dried up and blown away in the thirties. The very next morning, Sykes was found hanging from the tree. It was ruled a suicide, but many suspected it was an act of vengeance, and that the investigation required to find a culprit had simply seemed too messy for the sheriff at the time to bother with, especially for the sake of someone so little loved and of no communal standing.

The second was a woman named Thea McArthur, a farmwife who had been found hanging there in 1935, only a few weeks after her husband died of dust pneumonia and barely more than a year after their first child, Rupert, had been stillborn. It too had been ruled a suicide, less dubiously.

It was only by accident that he came across the article about Thomas Claye, who had served as an infantryman in Europe during the Second World War and twice been honored with Silver Star Medals. He had returned home, though, to find his family had fallen into financial ruin. His father passed away from a heart attack only a matter of months after his return, and his mother soon afterward began to display signs of early dementia. Less than half a decade later his younger brother was killed during service in Korea. Near the end of his rope both financially and psychologically, Thomas had taken to wandering across the country, finding work where he could as long as he could stand it, and then moving on again, sending most of his money back home to support his mother and the sister caring for her.

Sometime in the hours before dawn of Halloween of 1954, while passing through the county, Thomas Clay apparently tried to hang himself from the bough of the old cottonwood. A local rancher had by chance found Thomas and saved him from death, though the injuries to his neck and his oxygen-starved brain would never fully heal.

That rancher had been Landon’s father, when he was still a young man.

After reading that, Landon had though about calling his father, but they have spoken so little all his life, and his father has never been one to share what’s going on inside him, to divulge his deepest memories either happy or terrible. And so he had not made the call. Nor had he called Becky, the gulf between them seeming unbridgeable ever since that Thanksgiving argument when he asked if she knew more than she had told him about Harold’s death, if she’d had any inkling of how troubled their brother was. Becky had been so hurt and so angered by the question, that he thought she might never speak to him again.

Knowing what he does now, Landon regrets those words even more.

It had taken a lot of digging to find out about the impromptu execution of four bandits, murderers, and horse thieves in 1878. Three had been hung successfully, but the third, their leader and seemingly the most depraved among them, had escaped his bonds and run away toward a small canyon, even after one of the panicked shots of the posse struck home.

It was only hours later that they found him, gut-shot and dying in the scrub. From where he lay, he must have watched his fellow outlaws swinging for those awful, pain-drenched hours as he slowly bled his life into the dust.

That man’s name had been Allistair Gundry, and he had died the evening of Halloween.

Nineteen years, Landon thinks again, staring across the flat expanse of darkening plains before him. He hadn’t been able, in all his searching, to find any record of any event in 1916, but the rest of the dates are all separated by a period of nineteen years. He wasn’t sure what the significance of that might be – the only thing he came across in his studies was something to do with lunar phases, some cycle that he doubted had any relevance.

Now he wonders if he should have looked into it more deeply. None of this makes sense to his highly logical mind, and perhaps he should have been more ready to embrace the uncanny, as he was that evening in the crow’s nest almost two decades ago.

It is only an hour before he reaches home. The house looks only a little changed since the last time he visited, the paint peeling and chipped and more of the windows dark. Parking his rental and walking toward the front door, he regrets not swallowing his pride and his discomfort and picking up the phone, calling his father, calling Becky.

He has no idea how the old man will greet him now.

There is no answer to his knocking, not on the first try, not on the fifth. Finally, he tries the door and finds it open. He calls out as he walks into and through the house, receiving no answer. For a moment, the thought crosses his mind that his father is taking Becky’s daughter out trick-or-treating, just as he once did his children, but Becky lives in Georgia now and seems to visit as seldom as Landon does.

Another, more chilling thought occurs to him, and he finds a flashlight in the closet beside the door and goes back outside. The moon is a narrow crescent, just as it was that Halloween night before the awful morning discovery, and it provides just enough light for him to walk by. He only turns on the flashlight as he leaves the familiar homestead and wanders out towards the old cottonwood. As he walks, one of the stranger details of his research resurfaces in his mind – that in all the deaths, the same tattered, seemingly very aged, rope had been used. The night breeze gusts, and he shivers.

Landon exhales at last a breath he did not realize he was holding when he sees that there is no dark shape hanging from the tree. But as he draws near, the pallid flashlight beam falls upon the thin, aged form of his father, half-crouched at the foot of the tree with his back resting against the thick trunk.

Landon softly calls to him, his voice coming out hoarse and choked. At first the older man doesn’t seem to hear him, but before Landon can muster up another call, his father slowly turns his head towards him and says that Landon shouldn’t be here.

Landon takes a few long strides, closing the distance between them. Trying to speak as quickly and as convincingly as he can, Landon says that he can’t explain it, but he thinks that it is dangerous to be here tonight, that they need to come away.

In a voice bespeaking both deep sorrow and absolute exhaustion, his father replies that he knows, and that he’s not going anywhere.

Landon takes a deep breath, trying to gather himself. His ears are pricked for the slightest sound coming from the western pasture behind him, and he feels not at all the calm he attempts to project.

He repeats that they cannot stay here, that death will find them here, and maybe something worse than death.

Again, his father says that he already knows. There are tears in his eyes when he looks up at his son, and that alone is enough to silence Landon. He has never seen his father cry before, not even when Landon’s mother died.

Slowly, the old rancher explains that he knows what took his oldest boy, what has taken so many lives here over the years. He explains that he held onto this land because he thought he could contain it somehow, but that he was careless and stupid, and that this weakness killed Harold.

Then he slowly says that he learned of it from his own father, who in 1916 had been part of a lynching mob along with his grandfather. Their victim, accused of a crime that it later turned out had never even occurred, had been taken by force to the old cottonwood, but somehow then everything had gone strangely awry. The innocent man had somehow managed to escape with his life that night, but Gundry had still gotten the death he craved from Landon’s great-grandfather. The remaining lynch mob had buried him quietly on his own land, covered up all trace of his true death, and vowed never to speak of that night again.

And then, Landon’s father says that he is tired of it all, and he is ready to let Gundry complete his vengeance with a fifth and final death, and that death might as well be his own.

Stunned by the words and by these sinister revelations about his own heritage, Landon only stands and stares in silence for a long moment. When he finally finds his words, he begins to ask his father how he could have kept this from them, but halfway through the question, he starts another: he asks, what if Gundry isn’t trying to take revenge? What can they know of such things, after all?

His father looks up at him sharply, seeming disconcerted, as though this thought had never occurred to him. Somewhat stiffly, the older man begins to rise, but at that very moment, the sound of a galloping horse in the dark pasture reaches their ears, and they exchange a brief, searing glance of absolute terror.

Seemingly against his volition, Landon begins to turn then, to look upon the dread thing that bears down upon them, as he has never dared to look before outside of dreams.

And the thing that rides in the wan moonlight is so much worse than anything he had ever imagined or dreamt.

It is a single, skeletal being, horse and rider fused and naked like some deranged corruption of a centaur. Both the twin skulls, one almost human, one almost equine, have the protruding, long-fanged grin of a mandrill, and their bulging, dead-white eyes are like outsized and colorless rolling marbles. The spine of the legless rider melds into that of the steed like a malformed outgrowth, and both of them begin to shriek a thin, keen, hellish harmony as they run down their chosen prey.

That single glance seems to last longer than any single moment in Landon’s life, and then all goes dark.

[Short pause]

NARRATOR

When he wakes, Landon is sitting in his rental car, and the ruddy light of the dusty, chilly dawn is slanting across his eyes. Stirring stiffly in his seat, he begins trying to rub the soreness and the cold out of his arms, shoulders, and thighs. Then, all in a flash, he remembers the last conscious moments of the night before, and forgetting all about his discomfort, he opens the car door and runs out toward the tree, calling for his father.

But he has only moved a few yards when his father steps out of the house, and waves languidly at him.

Turning, Landon walks toward him, but with each step he feels a growing disquiet. His father seems changed somehow, less stooped and more alert. And he has not made a single sound.

It is only when he sees the eyes, bulging and pale, that he stops completely.

Slowly, a sharp grin spreads across the features that were once his father’s, now only a cruel mockery of them. And now he sees the large Buck knife stowed in his father’s belt, the coiled length of old rope in the man’s hands, and the livid mark around his neck.

As Landon turns to run back to his car, tears blurring his vision, his father – or the possessed remnants of his father – offers his first utterance: broken, coughing laughter, sustained and utterly cruel.

Despite his terror, despite his tears, Landon manages to get into the rental and start, turning the car and driving away far too quickly and twice almost fishtailing out of control on the dusty roads. He spares only a single glance in the rearview mirror to see the thing that is now the vessel for a man more than a century dead standing just as it was when it had waited with dreadful patience for Landon to come near.

As he drives back toward Amarillo, Landon cannot stop crying. And he wonders how he will call Becky to tell her what has happened, or at least to tell her that their father is not who he was and should never, ever be contacted or visited.

But every time he tries to think of words that will convince her, all he can see are those two demonic faces, impossibly clear in the thin moonlight, racing toward him as he stands frozen in the dark, wide shadow of the old cottonwood tree.

[Bleak music]

[Darker Pastures Theme - Outro]

NARRATOR

Story, narration, and arrangement by Lars Mollevand. If you enjoyed today’s story, please rate, review, and share. Thank you for listening. We’ll meet again… in darker pastures.

Happy Halloween!

[Darker Pastures Theme - Outro - Continues]