My Fears Realised

At the bottom of the garden stood a sycamore tree which looked to be even older than the house. I was amazed at how unchanged it was. I had grown up, gone on to pastures new, but the old sycamore still stood, wise, warm, almost friendly in its appearance.

I think it's a rites of passage for any child to have a place to hide things. It's often their first experience with independence, something removed from any authority figure. For me, my 'stash' was half way up the old sycamore. I'm sure I must have looked like a fool, but I happily and gleefully climbed the tree with abandon. The configuration of the branches had changed in places, but overall the happy memories of playing amongst the limbs of the old sycamore, of having a little piece of the world to myself away from everyone else, seemed vivid as it was remarkable how much remained unchanged.

Half way up I caught my breath and smiled to myself. In the central trunk of the tree lay a hollow. Whether it had been created by an animal, or perhaps the tug of a gale on a weakened branch long ago, I do not know, but it was where I kept things. If I found something which I was sure would be taken from me for being 'inappropriate', into the hollow it would go. The truth is though, that the majority of the items inside were not very interesting, mostly just toys and rarely exotic pieces of contraband like a slingshot or some smoke bombs. I had no reason to hide the toys, but when I was young it felt adventurous to have a secret.

The hollow was dark and filled halfway with rotting leaves, no doubt deposited there from countless autumns, nevertheless I reached deep inside to see what remained. I couldn't believe it! I had found a toy that I had hidden there before we moved, all those years ago! I could feel the plastic in my hand, it's sharp edges unmistakable, but the leaves and darkness of the hollow obscured its view from me as I struggled to remove it from the thick,wet mixture of rotting leaves and rain water. It seemed to be caught amongst a collection of small twigs.

The reason I was so excited was that I knew when we moved that I had left one of my favourite toys behind; a small plastic First World War British Soldier. It may not sound like much, but I had grown up on my family's stories of my Grandfather's adventures during both wars, and while he had passed away before I was born, I would often act out exaggerated versions of the stories with this small soldier in the role of the hero: My intrepid Grandfather. At the time I thought a hollow the perfect hiding place for a soldier.

My delight, however, quickly turned to horror. I felt sick to my stomach, for as I pulled the soldier out, I realised it was not my toy, but something else entirely. Stuffed into the back of the hollow amongst the sludge, and now in my hand, was the skeletal remains of a small animal. The bones crunched together in my grip as the few small flakes of hair and flesh left on it putrefied between my fingers. I almost lost my balance as the rotten and potent smell of death escaped through my moist grasp, invading my senses.