She didn’t answer. Which was an answer in itself.
Conor said it out loud anyway. “There aren’t any more treatments.”
“I’m sorry, son,” his mum said, tears sneaking out of her eyes now, even though she kept up her smile. “I’ve never been more sorry about anything in my life.”
Conor looked at the floor again. He felt like he couldn’t breathe, like the nightmare was squeezing the breath right out of him. “You said it would work,” he said, his voice catching.
“I know.”
“You said. You believed it would work.”
“I know.”
“You lied,” Conor said, looking back up at her. “You’ve been lying this whole time.”
“I did believe it would work,” she said. “It’s probably what’s kept me here so long, Conor. Believing it so you would.”
His mother reached for his hand, but he moved it away.
“You lied,” he said again.
“I think, deep in your heart, you’ve always known,” his mother said. “Haven’t you?”
Conor didn’t answer her.
“It’s okay that you’re angry, sweetheart,” she said. “It really, really is.” She gave a little laugh. “I’m pretty angry, too, to tell you the truth. But I want you to know this, Conor, it’s important that you listen to me. Are you listening?”
She reached out for him again. After a second, he let her take his hand, but her grip was so weak, so weak.
“You be as angry as you need to be,” she said. “Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. Not your grandma, not your dad, no one. And if you need to break things, then by God, you break them good and hard.”
He couldn’t look at her. He just couldn’t.
“And if, one day,” she said, really crying now, “you look back and you feel bad for being so angry, if you feel bad for being so angry at me that you couldn’t even speak to me, then you have to know, Conor, you have to know that it was okay. It was okay. That I knew. I know, okay? I know everything you need to tell me without you having to say it out loud. All right?”
He still couldn’t look at her. He couldn’t raise his head, it felt so heavy. He was bent in two, like he was being torn right through his middle.
But he nodded.
– • –
He heard her sigh a long, wheezy breath, and he could hear the relief in it, as well as the exhaustion. “I’m sorry, son,” she said. “I’m going to need more painkillers.”
He let go of her hand. She reached over and pressed the button on the machine the hospital had given her, which administered painkillers so strong she was never able to stay awake after she took them. When she finished, she took his hand again.
“I wish I had a hundred years,” she said, very quietly. “A hundred years I could give to you.”
He didn’t answer her. A few seconds later, the medicine had sent her to sleep, but it didn’t matter.
They’d had the talk.
There was nothing more to say.
“Conor?” his grandma said, poking her head in the door sometime later, Conor didn’t know how long.
“I want to go home,” he said, quietly.
“Conor–”
“My home,” he said, raising his head, his eyes red, with grief, with shame, with anger. “The one with the yew tree.”
WHAT’S THE USE OF YOU?
“I’m going back to the hospital, Conor,” his grandma said, dropping him off at his house. “I don’t like leaving her like this. What do you need that’s so important?”
“There’s something I have to do,” Conor said, looking at the home where he’d spent his entire life. It seemed empty and foreign, even though it wasn’t very long since he’d left.
He realized it would probably never be his home again.
“I’ll be back in an hour to get you,” his grandma said. “We’ll have dinner at the hospital.”
Conor wasn’t listening. He was already shutting the car door behind him.
“One hour,” his grandma called to him through the closed door. “You’re going to want to be there tonight.”
Conor kept on walking up his own front steps.
“Conor?” his grandma called after him. But he didn’t look back.
He barely heard her pull the car out onto the street and drive away.
– • –
Inside, the house smelled of dust and stale air. He didn’t even bother shutting the door behind him. He headed straight through to the kitchen and looked out of the window.
There was the church on the rise. There was the yew tree standing guard over its cemetery.
Conor went out across his back garden. He hopped up on the garden table where his mum used to drink Pimm’s in the summer, and he lifted himself up and over the back fence. He hadn’t done this since he was a little, little kid, so long ago it had been his father who’d punished him for it. The break in the barbed wire by the railway line was still there, and he squeezed through, tearing his shirt, not caring.
He crossed the tracks, barely checking to see if a train was coming, climbed another fence, and found himself at the base of the hill leading up to the church. He hopped over the low stone wall that surrounded it and climbed up through the tombstones, all the while keeping the tree in his sights.
And all the while, it stayed a tree.
Conor began to run.
“Wake up!” he started shouting before he even reached it. “WAKE UP!”
He got to the trunk and started kicking it. “I said, wake up! I don’t care what time it is!”
He kicked it again.
And harder.
And once more.
And the tree stepped out of the way, so quickly that Conor lost his balance and fell.
You will do yourself harm if you keep that up, the monster said, looming over him.
“It didn’t work!” Conor shouted, getting to his feet. “You said the yew tree would heal her, but it didn’t!”
I said if she could be healed, the yew tree would do it, the monster said. It seems that she could not.
Anger rose even higher in Conor’s chest, thumping his heart against his ribcage. He attacked the monster’s legs, battering the bark with his hands, bringing up bruises almost immediately. “Heal her! You have to heal her!”
Conor, the monster said.
“What’s the use of you if you can’t heal her?” Conor said, pounding away. “Just stupid stories and getting me into trouble and everyone looking at me like I’ve got a disease–”
He stopped because the monster had reached down a hand and plucked him into the air.
You are the one who called me, Conor O’Malley, it said, looking at him seriously. You are the one with the answers to these questions.
“If I called you,” Conor said, his face boiling red, tears he was hardly aware of streaming angrily down his cheeks, “it was to save her! It was to heal her!”
There was a rustling through the monster’s leaves, like the wind stirring them in a long slow sigh.
I did not come to heal her, the monster said. I came to heal you.
“Me?” Conor said, stopping his squirming in the monster’s hand. “I don’t need healing. My mum’s the one who’s…”
But he couldn’t say it. Even now he couldn’t say it. Even though they’d had the talk. Even though he’d known it all along. Because of course he had, of course he did, no matter how much he’d wanted to believe it wasn’t true, of course he knew. But still he couldn’t say it.
Couldn’t say that she was–
He was still crying furiously and finding it hard to breathe. He felt like he was splitting open, like his body was twisting apart.
He looked back up at the monster. “Help me,” he said, quietly.
It is time, the monster said, for the fourth tale.
Conor let out an angry yell. “No! That’s not what I meant! There are more important things happening!”
Yes, the monster said. Yes, there are.
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It opened its free hand.
The mist surrounded them again.
And once more, they were in the middle of the nightmare.
THE FOURTH TALE
Even held in the monster’s huge, strong hand, Conor could feel the terror seeping into him, could feel the blackness of it all start to fill his lungs and choke them, could feel his stomach beginning to fall–
“No!” he shouted, squirming some more, but the monster held him tight. “No! Please!”
The hill, the church, the graveyard were all gone, even the sun had disappeared, leaving them in the middle of a cold darkness, one that had followed Conor ever since his mother had first been hospitalized, from before that when she’d started the treatments that made her lose her hair, from before that when she’d had flu that didn’t go away until she went to a doctor and it wasn’t flu at all, from before even that when she’d started to complain about how tired she was feeling, ever since before all that, ever since forever, it felt like, the nightmare had been there, stalking him, surrounding him, cutting him off, making him alone.
It felt like he’d never been anywhere else.
“Get me out of here!” he yelled. “Please!”
It is time, the monster said again, for the fourth tale.
“I don’t know any tales!” Conor said, his mind lurching with fear.
If you do not tell it, the monster said, I shall have to tell it for you. It held Conor up closer to its face. And believe me when I say, you do not want that.
“Please,” Conor said again. “I have to get back to my mum.”
But, the monster said, turning across the blackness, she is already here.
The monster set him down abruptly, almost dropping him to the earth, and Conor stumbled forward.
He recognized the cold ground under his hands, recognized the clearing he was in, bordered on three sides by a dark and impenetrable forest, recognized the fourth side, a cliff, flying off into even further blackness.
And on the cliff’s edge, his mum.
She had her back to him, but she was looking over her shoulder, smiling. She looked as weak as she had in the hospital, but she gave him a silent wave.
“Mum!” Conor yelled, feeling too heavy to stand, as he did every time the nightmare began. “You have to get out of here!”
His mum didn’t move, though she looked a little worried at what he’d said.
Conor dragged himself forward, straining at the effort. “Mum, you have to run!”
“I’m fine, darling,” she said. “There’s nothing to worry about.”
“Mum, run! Please, run!”
“But darling, there’s–”
She stopped and turned back to the cliff’s edge, as if she’d heard something.
“No,” Conor whispered to himself. He pulled himself forward some more, but she was too far, too far to reach in time, and he felt so heavy–
There was a low sound from below the cliff. A rumbling, booming noise.
Like something big was moving down below.
Something bigger than the world.
And it was climbing up the cliff face.
“Conor?” his mum asked, looking back at him.
But Conor knew. It was too late.
The real monster was coming.
“Mum!” Conor shouted, forcing himself to his feet, pushing against the invisible weight pressing down on him. “MUM!”
“Conor!” his mum shouted, backing away from the cliff’s edge.
But the booming was getting louder. And louder. And louder still.
“MUM!”
He knew he wouldn’t get there in time.
Because with a roar, a cloud of burning darkness lifted two giant fists over the clifftop. They hovered in the air for a long moment, over his mum as she tried to scramble back.
But she was too weak, much too weak–
And the fists rushed down together in a violent pounce and grabbed her, pulling her over the edge of the cliff.
And at last, Conor could run. With a shout, he broke across the clearing, running so fast he nearly toppled over, and he threw himself towards her, towards her out-reaching hands as the dark fists pulled her over the edge.
And his hands caught hers.
This was the nightmare. This was the nightmare that woke him up screaming every night. This was it happening, right now, right here.
He was on the cliff edge, bracing himself, holding onto his mother’s hands with all his strength, trying to keep her from being pulled down into the blackness, pulled down by the creature below the cliff.
Who he could see all of now.
The real monster, the one he was properly afraid of, the one he’d expected to see when the yew tree first showed up, the real, nightmare monster, formed of cloud and ash and dark flames, but with real muscle, real strength, real red eyes that glared back at him and flashing teeth that would eat his mother alive. I’ve seen worse, Conor had told the yew tree that first night.
And here was the worse thing.
“Help me, Conor!” his mum yelled. “Don’t let go!”
“I won’t!” Conor yelled back. “I promise!”
The nightmare monster gave a roar and pulled harder, its fists straining around his mother’s body.
And she began to slip from Conor’s grasp.
“No!” he called.
His mum screamed in terror. “Please, Conor! Hold on to me!”
“I will!” Conor yelled. He turned back to the yew tree, standing there, not moving. “Help me! I can’t hold on to her!”
But it just stood there, watching.
“Conor!” his mum yelled.
And her hands were slipping.
“Conor!” she yelled again.
“Mum!” he cried, gripping tighter.
But they were slipping from his grasp, and she was getting heavier and heavier, the nightmare monster pulling harder and harder.
“I’m slipping!” his mum yelled.
“NO!” he cried.
He fell forward onto his chest from the weight of her and the nightmare’s fists pulling on her.
She screamed again.
And again.
And she was so heavy, impossibly so.
“Please,” Conor whispered to himself. “Please.”
And here, he heard the yew tree say behind him, is the fourth tale.
“Shut up!” Conor shouted. “Help me!”
Here is the truth of Conor O’Malley.
And his mother was screaming.
And she was slipping.
It was so hard to hold on to her.
It is now or never, the yew tree said. You must speak the truth.
“No!” Conor said, his voice breaking.
You must.
“No!” Conor said again, looking down into his mother’s face–
As the truth came all of a sudden–
As the nightmare reached its most perfect moment–
“No!” Conor screamed one more time–
And his mother fell.
THE REST OF THE FOURTH TALE
This was the moment when he usually woke up. When she fell, screaming, out of his grasp, into the abyss, taken by the nightmare, lost forever, this was where he usually sat up in his bed, covered in sweat, his heart beating so fast he thought he might die.
But he didn’t wake up.
The nightmare still surrounded him. The yew tree still stood behind him.
The tale is not yet told, it said.
“Take me out of here,” Conor said, getting shakily to his feet. “I need to see my mum.”
She is no longer here, Conor, his original monster said. You let her go.
“This is just a nightmare,” Conor said, panting hard. “This isn’t the truth.”
It is the truth, said the monster. You know it is. You let her go.
“She fell,” Conor said. “I couldn’t hold on to her any more. She got so heavy.”
And so you let her go.
“She fell!” Conor said, his voice rising, almost in desperation. The filth and ash that had taken his mum was returning up the cliff face in tendrils of smoke, smoke that he couldn’t help but breathe in. It entered his mouth and his nose like air, filling him up, choking him. He had to fight to even breathe.
You let her go, said the monster.
“I didn’t let her go!” Conor shouted, his voice cracking. “She fell!”
You must tell the truth or you will never leave this nightmare, the monster said, looming dangerously over him now, its voice scarier than Conor had ever heard it. You will be trapped here alone for the rest of your life.
“Please let me go!” Conor yelled, trying to back away. He called out in terror when he saw that the tendrils of the nightmare had wrapped themselves around his legs. They tripped him to the ground and started wrapping themselves around his arms, too. “Help me!”
Speak the truth! the monster said, its voice stern and terrifying now. Speak the truth or stay here forever.
“What truth?” Conor yelled, desperately fighting the tendrils. “I don’t know what you mean!”
The monster’s face suddenly surged out of the blackness, inches away from Conor’s.
You do know, it said, low and threatening.
And there was a sudden quiet.
Because, yes, Conor knew.
He had always known.
The truth.
The real truth. The truth from the nightmare.
“No,” he said, quietly, as the blackness started wrapping itself around his neck. “No, I can’t.”
You must.
“I can’t,” Conor said again.
You can, said the monster, and there was a change in its voice. A note of something.
Of kindness.
Conor’s eyes were filling now. Tears were tumbling down his cheeks and he couldn’t stop them, couldn’t even wipe them away because the nightmare’s tendrils were binding him now, had nearly taken him over completely.
“Please don’t make me,” Conor said. “Please don’t make me say it.”
You let her go, the monster said.
Conor shook his head. “Please–”
You let her go, the monster said again.
Conor closed his eyes tightly.