Bramble Man, by Simon West-Bulford

Thorns gouged jagged lines into Arnold’s palm with each desperate yank at the vines. He paid no attention to the bloody stains smeared across his overalls, or to the ever-increasing burn of protest from his muscles as he continued his rescue attempt. But with every root he tore from the soil, and with every sinuous branch he pulled away from the man’s body, there seemed to be another piece of foliage clinging to him like barbed wire to a blanket. And Arnold was too old for this.

He took a step back, resting his red palms on his knees, wrestling his aged lungs for enough breath to speak. “Look, fella… I haven’t got the right gear to get you out of this. All I got is these old wrinkled hands. I’m gonna get some help, okay?”

There was no reply, only the tremble of splinter-ripped fingers and a quivering movement from the man’s lips, and Arnold feared the man was falling unconscious. If he was trying to say something, Arnold couldn’t hear it. All he could hear was his own rasping breath, the drumming of his heart in his ears, and his spaniel as it scampered amongst the overgrown bushes barking at them as if a deadly predator was lurking amongst them.

It was a mystery how anyone could get into such a terrible state. Arnold was walking his dog through the forest when he found the man. It was a new route; the east side of the woods which he thought he’d try, despite the warnings from his neighbors. They’d told him that the woods weren’t right. That that’s where the ‘Bramble Man was’, and that newcomers to the town like Arnold ought to talk to a few more people before being stupid enough to go in there. Arnold had ignored them of course, passing off their ghost stories as rural myth, but he felt the change in the atmosphere as soon as he stepped over the first few stiles. He’d smelt a powerful stench in the air too, like peeled onions left out too long in the sun, and heard the nervous whining of his dog as they pressed on. But it was only when he heard the wind through the hollows that he began to wonder if there was any truth to the stories; it sounded like the desolate moaning of someone near death. So just to be sure, Arnold went to investigate.

That’s when he came upon what his superstitious fear told him might be The Bramble Man. The poor victim was almost naked. Obviously a vagrant, he was an ugly sort – dark, oily skin, an explosion of warts across his face and a nose like a flattened vegetable. Just a few ragged clothes patterned like autumn leaves torn like newspaper through a shredder, covered him. Those and the impossible tangle of bramble and vines festooned across his body. With his limbs planted into the soil near the roots of the tree, and the thorny plant wrapped around him like mossy rope, he looked as though he’d been the victim of a hate crime. That and the blood.

Noon day sun burned through the canopy, almost sizzling the sweat on Arnold’s balding head, and he wondered if it was the heat causing him to feel so tired, or just the effort and stress of trying to free this unfortunate man. Or perhaps it was that pungent onion smell. It seemed to be coming from a pollen-like substance in the air, produced by small, pumpkin-like fruit nestling like miniature Halloween lanterns amongst the brambles.

Shaking himself out of his growing fatigue, Arnold tilted his head and looked into the man’s half-closed eyes. “Just getting my breath, fella. Like I said, I’m gonna get help. I’d use my phone, but the no signal’s weak in this valley, see?”

If he were a younger man, he would have stayed to help. Ripping those plants away would have been easy enough for stronger arms, and maybe he could do that if he tried for a little longer, but he was so very tired, and there was no way he would have the strength to carry this man back into town all by himself. No; as much as he feared that this man might actually die if left too long, and as much as he was wrestling with his own desire to sit and rest, he knew he had to go back and get someone.

“I’ll be back in a jiff, you’ll see.”

Struggling upright, and calling his dog, Arnold made his way back to town.

—

“You big city types never bloody listen, do you? Or didn’t anyone tell you them woods is haunted, Arnold?”

Keith Manning slammed down the bonnet of the car he had been servicing, and snatched an oily towel from a hook on the wall.

Arnold said, “They’re just stories aren’t they?”

The mechanic shook his head ruefully as he rubbed the cloth around his black fingers. Two of the garage’s engineers – boys no older than seventeen – glanced at each, trying to conceal grins provoked by the prospect of getting involved in a town drama.

“Whatever!” Keith said. “Stories or not, ghosts or not, there’s no denying that people have died in there, and there’s probably truth in the rumors that the missing people met there end in there too.”

“One of my mate’s cousins went in there,” said one of the boys, “and he reckons he saw something.”

“Thing is, Arnold,” Keith went on, ignoring his worker, “you’re new here, and you don’t know the history –”

“Look, I really don’t give a shit about ghosts.’ Arnold stepped forward. ‘You heard what I said – there’s a fella in the woods needs help, and your garage is the closest place. Are you coming or not?”

Keith was already grabbing a pair of bolt croppers from a workbench before he answered. “Alright, alright, Arnold. I didn’t say anything about not helping, I was just saying it’s dangerous in there… Steve, Darren,” he said, waving the croppers at the boys, “go and get some tools from the shed out back, then come and catch us up… oh, and call an ambulance. Hurry.”

Arnold nodded with relief and followed Keith out the door whilst the boys obeyed their employer.

“So, you said he looked beaten up bad?” Keith asked.

“I don’t know if he was beaten. He just… well, he was all caught up in the brambles. Looked like he was on his last legs.”

Keith stopped dead. “Brambles?”

“Yes.” They stared at each other for a moment or two, and Arnold’s spaniel pulled hard at her lead, yapping.

“Was it the Bramble Man?” Keith asked, curtly.

“How the hell should I know? Like I said, surely that’s just a story, right?”

“Right.” But Keith pursed his lips and squeezed the handle of his bolt croppers a little tighter before speaking again. “You remember where this bloke was?”

“Dizzy does.” Arnold nodded at his dog who was still straining towards the woodland, barking.

It was then that the two boys joined them, breathless from their brief sprint.

“Will these do?” asked Steve, offering a long bladed knife and a loaded toolbox.

“It’ll do,” said Keith.

“Ambulance is on its way,” Darren added.

—

Twenty five yards from the tree, just as the rancid onion stench hit them, the mechanic halted and observed the man in the brambles as if he was a wounded lion. “I don’t know if we should do this,” he said.

Arnold and the two youths stopped too.

“What do you mean?” Arnold said. “Do you think he’s too injured to move? Think we should wait for the ambulance?”

Keith gulped, squeezing even harder on the handle of his croppers, not taking his eyes off the vine-covered man. “Uh… yeah, yeah, that’s what I mean.”

But Arnold wasn’t convinced. “What are you scared of?”

“Is it the Bramble man?” whispered one of the youths.

Keith straightened a little at hearing the question and blinked angrily, as if the boy had unmasked his fear before a ridiculing audience. “Shut up!”

“Give me the croppers,” said Arnold, yanking them from Keith’s grip. “Whoever the poor bastard is, he doesn’t look like the bogey man to me.”

“Wait!”

But Arnold was already striding over to the man, determined not to let the returning fatigue get the better of him, and reluctantly, the others joined him.

Even with the aid of their tools, it took over ten minutes to rip the man out through the thorny tangle of branch, vine and stem. The poor wretch was almost unrecognizable as a human by the time they laid him several yards away in the dirt. His feet and hands were so gnarled and twisted, they looked almost indistinguishable from the roots that had got caught around them in the ground. And he didn’t look like he was breathing either.

“Is… he still… alive?” Arnold panted, waving a cloud of pollen away from his face.

The four of them lay next to the victim, all too exhausted to do anything but talk.

“Don’t know,” said Keith. “Just need to… rest… a minute.”

Arnold struggled to breathe, and regretted each gulp of air as the onion smell from the pumpkin fruit tainted each lungfull. “I think that plant’s poisonous. We shouldn’t be this tired.”

And through blurred vision and muffled hearing, he caught the scuffling of boots and urgent voices just before he passed out.

—

“You’re lucky to be alive, Mr. Emerson,” said a blurred face.

Two gentle hands nudged him upright against a soft pillow. “But just relax, you’re absolutely fine thanks to the wonders of private healthcare.” Arnold saw a smile somewhere through the haze. “No lasting damage. If you’re feeling up to it, the doctor will be along in a few minutes to talk to you.”

The doctor arrived fifteen minutes later, and it took ten of those for Arnold to assemble his thoughts and memories into something meaningful.

“Hello, Mr. Emerson,” said a tall, balding man with a goatee beard and a clipboard. “How are you feeling?”

“A little light-headed. What happened? Where are the others?”

“Mr. Manning, Steven Frame and Darren Hardwick are fine, don’t worry. They’re all here receiving treatment.”

“There were five of us. What happened to the other man, the one we rescued?”

“I’m afraid he didn’t make it.”

“Oh God! That’s terrible. Was it the plant that killed him?”

“We don’t know yet, but the circumstances of his death has raised a number of questions, some of which the police need your assistance with. Do you feel up to talking with them?”

“Of course, yes, of course… Oh, what about dizzy, my dog?”

“I’m afraid nobody found a dog, Mr. Emerson.”

“But she’s still out there,” Arnold sat up. “I have to go and find her.”

The doctor pressed him back down onto the bed with a smile. “I am afraid you’ll have to stay in here a further twenty-four hours under observation, the police should be able to help you, though.”

The police interview didn’t take long, and after a making a clearly evasive commitment to search for his dog, the police went on to ask him a series of unusual questions about what he had seen in the woods, whether he had told anyone else about his experience and if he had heard of the ‘Bramble Man’. Arnold knew a cover up when he saw one. Upon asking them about the dead man and if he had family, all they would tell him was that the body had been taken away to some other hospital for ‘tests’. All their questions were geared to find out how much he knew rather than getting anything useful out of him, and they had left him some non-disclosure agreements to fill out by morning.

As a retired political journalist, Arnold knew his rights, but he also knew they’d never let him leave the village if he didn’t make his mark on their dotted line. Whatever was going, he was as much a fan of conspiracies as he was of ghost stories, and before the uniformed men had even left the ward, Arnold had already made his mind up that he was going on his own personal crusade to expose all of it, whatever it was.

Finding and securing his clothing and belongings was no easy task, but rather than cause a scene and arouse suspicion, the nurses on the ward let him leave. Arnold knew the locals would be all over him soon enough, but he also knew that if he called the right people, they’d have a hard time keeping him down. He called in every favor he knew from his days of working in the city as he hurried back to the woods. He’d called his old editor at The Country Herald newspaper, several tenacious journalists from rival papers, his doctor at St Bartholomew’s Practice, a barrister he’d known for twenty years, and several more influential contacts he’d forged relationships with since his retirement. There was no way they were keeping this quiet.

—

“Dizzy!” Arnold yelled as he got closer to the woods. “Here, girl, I’m over here. Come find me, girl.”

He hesitated when he reached the first few trees, a slow chill creeping through his limbs as he peered into the silent woods. “Dizzy!”

He waited a minute more, hoping that she would come bounding through the trees any moment. But she didn’t. He’d have to go in there.

Steeling himself, Arnold was about to head into the woods when the loud chirp of his cell phone sent a spike of adrenaline through his chest.

“God!” he swore into the mouthpiece as he answered it. “Who’s this? You scared the –”

“That you, Arnold?” came a whisper at the other end.

“Yes, it’s me. Is that Kirstie?” Arnold started walking and pressed a finger against his other ear to blot out the sound of his shoes crunching on dry leaves.

“Yeah, listen, I’m on the director’s PC. It’s the only way I could hack into the hospital database to find out about this John Doe you said they’d transferred.”

“That was fast, thanks, I really appreciate –”

“Forget it, Arnold. Just tell me what the hell’s going on? What’ve you got yourself involved with?”

“I already told you, they’re trying to-”

“Because that body isn’t a body.”

“What?”

“I said it isn’t a body,” she hissed.

“Isn’t a body… what… what do you-” Arnold struggled over a stile, smelled the stench of onions again and knew he was getting closer to where he first found the Bramble Man and lost Dizzy.

“It’s a-”

“Hold on a minute, I’ll call you back,” said Arnold, suddenly alarmed by a mournful groan nearby. He heard her say “no” as he pocketed the phone, then stood very still, listening to the silence of the woods, hoping for a repeat of the sound.

Nothing.

“Dizzy!” he yelled.

Then came the moan again. The same moan he heard earlier that day before all this trouble began. “Hello?” he called.

The phone rang again sending Arnold’s nerves into a momentary frenzy. Cursing, he fumbled the phone from his pocket and answered it. It was Kirstie.

“Damn it, Arnold, don’t cut me off, I was trying to tell you something important.”

“Well, what?”

“I was trying to tell you. That body wasn’t a person, their preliminary report says the cell structure is all wrong. They’ve got cellulose or something.”

“Cellulose? So…” Arnold started walking towards the direction of the moaning.

“Yes, cellulose, there’s been a mix up, it’s a bloody plant, Arnold, not your man. And the report says something about the sample being completely covered with spores.”

“What?” His eyelids were getting heavy.

“A plant.”

Arnold tried to waft away the fetor from his nose as he approached a particularly tangled area of bushes. “No. I saw him, he was definitely a man.”

“You might have thought he was but –”

“Oh God!”

“What? What is it, Arnold?”

As if a crucifixion had been set up in a wild garden and then forgotten, a man – exactly the same man as earlier – almost naked apart from a covering of leaves, was hanging amongst a scribble of thorny vines. The same nose, like a flattened vegetable and the same scattering of warts covered the vagrant’s oily, pleading face. From the bloated fruit that surrounded the man, tiny jets of pollen streamed outwards in sulphurous clouds and Arnold coughed as some of it stung his nostrils.

“Arnold? Are you still there? What’s up?”

“He’s bait,” said Arnold, sounding shell-shocked. “The Bramble man… he’s bait. Like a Venus fly trap or… or an angler fish with one of those little lights on the end of its jaw… except… the Bramble Man… he’s that little light…”

“What the hell are you talking about? Listen, this story’s huge, I’m taking it to the editor. The whole village will be crawling with journalists by nightfall, so make sure you’re still there, okay? I want the exclusive.”

“No, no! You can’t send anyone. The spores!” Arnold knew now why the village was covering everything up. “I made a mistake.”

“Too late, Arnold, we’re not letting this one go. I’ll see you later.”

The phone went dead, and as the pumpkin-fruit fumes continued to clog his throat, he sank to his knees, losing his fight against the fog that was rapidly overtaking his mind. He managed to punch redial, but feeling his movements grow sluggish, he dropped his phone amongst the brambles. More pollen puffed around him as he fumbled through the dirt and then his fingertips touched something. An empty dog collar.

“No,” he whispered. Tiny roots snaked across his fingers. The lure of sleep drew his face into the soil. Night came.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Simon lives in Essex England earning his keep as a Clinical Trials scientist. He is currently working on his fourth novel – “The Soul Consortium”

www.simonwb.com