Echoes in the Branches

They say the Oak at the edge of Briar Hollow can talk.

Not in the way a child might imagine—no mouths, no lips—but in shivers down your spine, in sudden chills, in voices you shouldn’t hear when you’re alone. I never believed those stories, not until the day I returned home for my brother’s funeral.

Ben had always loved that tree. As kids, we built forts in its limbs, carved our initials into the bark, whispered secrets into its knot-holes like it was some ancient guardian. I left at eighteen and never looked back. Ben stayed behind, rooted to the land, like the tree itself.

When the call came—“Accident. Fell from the Oak. Died instantly.”—I didn’t cry. I couldn’t. It didn’t make sense. Ben didn’t climb anymore. Not since...

No. That part wasn’t mine to tell. At least, I thought it wasn’t.


---

The house was silent when I arrived. Dust in the corners. Coffee still in the pot, cold and bitter. Everything exactly as he’d left it—except for a note on the kitchen table in his messy scrawl:

"She’s still there. You have to hear her too."

I stared at it for a long time.

“Who?” I whispered aloud. But deep down, I already knew.

I hadn’t thought about Leah in years.


---

She was our neighbor. Bright smile, honey-blonde braids, and a laugh that seemed to come from the sky. She was ten when she vanished, the whole town turning upside-down to find her. She was last seen playing near the Oak.

Ben never spoke much after that.

He’d been the last one to see her. Said they were playing hide and seek, that he turned away for a second, and she was gone. No trace. No footprints. No sound. Just... gone.

After weeks of searching, her case went cold. People whispered. Some blamed strangers, others blamed the woods. But a few—just a few—pointed fingers at my brother.

He stopped climbing trees after that. Stopped laughing too.

And now, fifteen years later, he was dead at the roots of that same tree.


---

I walked there just after midnight.

The air was thick with fog, the branches black silhouettes against the silver moonlight. The Oak was larger than I remembered, its bark cracked with time, but somehow... watching me.

"Ben?" I said to the dark, ridiculous as it sounded.

No answer. Just the rustle of leaves.

I walked around the base, touching the carvings we made as kids. M + B ‘97. And just below it, something I’d never seen before: a newer mark, barely weathered.

L.

I swallowed hard.

Suddenly, wind roared through the hollow, leaves spiraling around me. The branches above groaned like something alive, and in the hush that followed, I heard it.

A voice. Faint. Childlike.

"Help me."


---

I froze. My breath caught in my throat.

“Leah?”

No answer. Only that whisper, echoing again—“Please.”

I stepped back, heart hammering, when something caught my eye—behind the roots. A hollow, just large enough to crawl through. I hadn’t noticed it before.

The wind picked up again.

Against every instinct, I dropped to my knees and peered inside.

And there it was.

A small red ribbon.

Her ribbon.

My mind tumbled backward—Leah’s hair tied up in matching bows, one falling off as she chased us through the woods that summer afternoon.

I reached in, hand trembling.

And that’s when I saw it: not just the ribbon, but bones.

Small. Fragile.

Child-sized.


---

I don’t remember screaming, but the next thing I knew, I was on the ground, palms scraped, breath ragged.

The Oak groaned again. And this time, I didn’t imagine the sound—it was a sob. A child’s sob. Guttural. Broken.

The tree was crying.

A memory burst into my mind—Ben, eyes wild, sobbing in his room the night Leah vanished. “I didn’t mean to!” he’d cried. I thought he was scared. I thought he was mourning. I never asked what he meant.

He had known. All these years.

Not that he killed her—no, not directly. It must have been an accident. A game gone wrong. A fall. And fear had sealed her fate. He couldn’t face it, so he buried it—buried her—in the place they played.

And the tree remembered.


---

Back in the house, I called the police.

The discovery shook the town. Leah’s family finally had closure, though pain doesn’t expire—it lingers, like the wind in the branches.

They ruled Ben’s death a suicide. Said the guilt caught up with him. But I’m not sure.

I think the tree took him.

Or maybe… he gave himself to it.


---

Epilogue

I drive past the Oak sometimes, on quiet nights when the air is thick with memory. They’ve put up a fence, a plaque in Leah’s name. But the tree remains—taller, darker, somehow sadder.

They say the Oak at the edge of Briar Hollow can talk.

Now, I believe them.

Because sometimes, if you stand very still, you can hear two voices in the wind:

“I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay.”