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softened to a milky grey that failed
to provide the least shred of comfort to the small boy as he lay
huddled on the dew-sodden lawn, knees tucked tightly up into his
chest and knuckles thrust painfully between his clenched teeth.
    Ben had spent
the night in a fitful and interminable state of semi–wakefulness.
He was stiff with cold and lack of movement and had been staring
for some time through half closed eyes at an object that, perhaps
his eyes or mayhap his torpid brain, could not quite resolve. As
the cold early morning hue turned by degrees to the warmer tones of
incipient sunrise, so the image took on a clearer form. Slowly it
moved, by mere inches, to and fro, to and fro. Metronomicaly,
hypnotically it swung, whilst Ben’s sub-consciousness followed the
rhythmic motion, poised, as it was, midway between wakefulness and
sleep. Finally and with a great flourish, the sun entered its
domain and piercing shards of light brought Ben to cruel and sudden
wakefulness. At first he merely stared uncomprehendingly but then
he jumped to his feet and gasped in horror, for the moving shape
was none other than a large man swinging lazily by the neck up in
the Apple tree. As the body swung, so it turned until there could
be no further doubt; Ben found himself staring straight into the
bloated and hideously distorted face of Mr Smith.
    Instinctively
Ben fell backwards, away from the dreadful apparition, and crashed
through the shrubs at the rear of the garden and out through the
gap in the fence onto the road behind. The accumulation of that
night’s horrors had sent him mindless with terror and he ran back
towards the village in great stumbling strides, his only coherent
thought being to reunite himself with his parents and bring this
relentless nightmare to a close.
    After a couple
of minutes he came to the junction of the lower road and the main
road into the village. He stopped momentarily and stood gasping for
breath, but he knew not what nameless horrors still pursued him
and, though his legs would scarcely carry him, he turned left and
continued his desperate run up the gentle incline of the road into
the village, before careening sharply left up the garden path to
the front door of the house, where he fell to his knees in
exhaustion and hammered on the door with both fists, whilst
screaming for his parents continuously at the top of his voice.
     
    *****
     
    Mrs Smith sat
beneath the branches of her beloved Apple tree and gently swung
herself backwards and forwards on the home made swing that her
husband had made for their daughter Josie, twenty years before. The
swing had been a feature of the garden for so long now; that it
seemed it had always been there. It had hung unused through the
long cold winters only to be reawakened each spring by the
shrieking laughter of Josie and her friends as they rediscovered
the endless possibilities for play that the swing could
provide.
    Of course, as
time passed and Josie grew up, the swing had seen less and less use
and eventually it hung idly from its branch for most of the
time.
    Mrs Smith had
such fond memories of this Garden. As she swung gently on the swing
so she remembered the summer that Josie had arrived. She used to
position Josie’s pram in the dappled shade beneath the Apple tree,
whilst she went about her daily chores and sometimes she just sat
contentedly beside her baby and gazed in wonder at the little
miracle that brought her such unending pleasure.
    Later on, when
Josie was maybe two or three years old she began to help her mum to
gather up the windfall apples before they rotted on the ground and
when she was much older she helped her mother to harvest the apples
from the tree itself, climbing the ladder and leaning across to
reach apples that were almost out of her reach with an assurance
that made her mothers heart swell with pride.
    Mrs Smith had
always wished for a fruit tree and when she and her husband had
first set eyes on this house, with the apple tree in