On an early October morning, Jason was on his way to school; the air was fresh after an evening rainstorm. It was chance that when he walked past a stand of oak trees in the park that his gaze fell upon several limbs that had fallen during the storm. He’d been searching for weeks for that special branch. He approached and carefully surveyed one bulky limb that had fallen across the sidewalk. Turning it over, his eyes grew large. He did a little joy dance and sang out, “Yes! Yes! I finally found you.” On the limb was a branch that contained the ideal Y shape he needed for a slingshot. The limb was big, so he dragged it under the trees. After school, he hurried home and got a bow saw from the garage and went back and sawed the Y branch from the fallen limb. Ecstatic with his find, he ran home and placed the Y branch on top of the heating vent in his room to dry it out. Two days later, on Saturday, satisfied that the Y was hard and dry, he went to the garage and used his jackknife to carve notches on the top of each arm of the Y. Luckily, there was rubber tubing hanging over his father’s workbench, left from when his dad installed a new humidifier. He cut the tubing, bent it around the notches and fasten it to the Y with dental floss. He then attached a leather pouch to each end of the tubing, making a cradle for his ammunition.

After school each day, on his way through the park, Jason collected rocks for ammunition, dropping them into his backpack. At home, he dumped the rocks into a pile and practiced his aim, shooting at the big, old hickory tree in the corner of the backyard. For a week, he shot the rocks at the tree. He delighted when his shots ripped off pieces of bark, causing amber colored sap to run down the trunk. After a few days, severed shards lay lifeless at the base of the tree. Jason continued to assault the tree until one day he thought he heard a deep groan and then the word, “Enough!” The word echoed off the back of the house and throughout the yard.

Jason lowered his slingshot, looked into the corners of the yard and back toward the house, but saw no one. He shrugged his shoulders and went back to abusing the tree. Jason pulled back the slingshot bands to his ear, aimed at the tree, and fired. He heard another groan as his projectile knocked off another piece of tree bark. A branch swung down, plucked his slingshot from his hand; two other branches scooped Jason under his arms and held him tight. He yelled, “Hey, what the heck?” More branches descended and enveloped him in a leafy shroud. Twigs and leaves closed over his nose, his mouth, as air died in his lungs. Suddenly, he was being lifted and pushed against the trunk of the tree. “Stop! Please stop! You’re hurting me!” But the tree didn’t stop. Jason tried to scream, but it only sounded in his head. Volcanic fear erupted in his heart as he felt himself being sucked into the tree. His heart began pumping sap, his arms and legs locked into the shape of an X. Branches spouted from his extremities. An eerie silence descended over the yard. Six feet up in the center of the tree trunk, there appeared a rounded disfigurement in the bark.

The quiet in the yard was broken when Jason’s mother, Elizabeth, called from the back door for him to come in for supper. She worried when, upon repeated calls, Jason failed to appear. Elizabeth told her husband, Tim, who was reading the evening paper at the kitchen table, that Jason didn’t come when she called. Tim went out and walked about the backyard. The only thing he noticed was Jason’s slingshot dangling from a branch with five finger-like tendrils up in the oak tree. He thought it strange that his son would throw his prized slingshot up in the tree. He then left the yard and scoured the neighborhood, but Jason was nowhere to be found.


In the meantime, Jason’s mom called his friends, but to no avail. When Jason failed to appear, after another hour, his father, Tim called the police. Two officers came to the house. Elizabeth told them the last time they saw Jason; he was in the backyard shooting rocks with his slingshot. She said in a watery voice, “That was over three hours ago. Please find him.” Harry Thompson, one of the officers, said, "Don't worry, Mother. Kids sometimes just lose a sense of time."  However, at 1:00 am Officer Thompson returned to the house and reported that they failed to find a trace of Jason, but he quickly said they would resume the search in the morning.

A year after Jason disappeared, Tim, Jason’s father, sat in the shade of the old hickory tree. He liked to sit there on Saturday afternoons and read under the tree’s spreading branches. He didn’t know why, but for some reason, it made him feel closer to his son. A breeze blew slightly, rustling the tree’s green, pointed leaves. He glanced up from his book and noticed a deformity in the shag bark part way up the trunk. The thought occurred to him that the defacement appeared to look somewhat like a boy’s terrified face. He shook his head and cast the thought from his mind. He smiled to himself and reasoned perhaps he had been reading a little too much Stephen King.