The Cursed Arbour by Spencer Keene
A placard, dancing in the winter wind like an oversized playing card, dangles from his neck by a taut coil of string. A message leaps from its cheap cardboard surface: You’re making a mistake. You’re killing something sacred.
Behind him, a withered elm leans over the boulevard, its naked branches reaching for a nearby nest of power lines.
“Move it, buddy.” Darren’s tone is firm, authoritative.
“I’m telling you, you’re making a mistake.” The man’s voice grates the ear, a piercing warble.
“C’mon, pal. Take it up with the city. We’re just tryin to do our jobs here.” Darren again.
“You don’t understand. A man’s life is on the line. My life.” Pleading eyes above a runny nose, ruby-hued and aquiline.
Another crazy coming out of the woodwork. This community is going to shit. “Listen, we’re sorry about that,” I semi-shouted over the rising gale. “But this tree’s gotta come down. It’s a safety hazard.” My neon-clad arm angles up to where a branch almost kisses a transformer.
His bleary eyes stay trained on mine. “You’re murderers.” I don’t hear the words, but I see them. “She planted it, nurtured it with curses and witchcraft. Our demises are tied.”
A twinge in my guts. Darren steps forward. The placard thwaps against the man’s nylon windbreaker that’s much too thin for this weather. His expression shifts. He knows he’s defeated.
The obituary, so brief it seemed disrespectful, was bland and wildly generic. Probably written by a lackey at the Times with nothing better to do. The photo accompanying it was of a sharply dressed young man, narrow-jawed and sickly. Staring into his weepy eyes, there wasn’t a doubt in my mind—it was him.
I chalked it up to a regrettable coincidence. I certainly didn’t feel any guilt about it. That is, until a handful of weeks later, when the dead man’s neighbour tried planting a rosebush in the roundabout’s bullseye. When it didn’t take, she tried again, this time with a rugged hydrangea. Five days later, the bush was nothing but a brown husk.
And that’s when the guilt set in; a cold and wracking guilt that undergirded my days, nagging at me incessantly. So, one day, I walked over to that barren roundabout. I dug a shallow pit in the ugly scrub and bramble and dropped in a stone marker I’d commissioned from a local mason. Etched into the stone’s face was an elm tree, above a simple line of jeweled cursive: Something sacred.
Spencer Keene (he/him) is a writer from Vancouver, BC. His poetry and short fiction have been featured in a variety of print and digital publications, including Dog Throat Journal, Lunchbreak Review, and MacQueen’s Quinterly. Find more of Spencer’s work at www.skeenewriter.com.
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