The Hanging Tree - A Short Story

Written in 2021 | Rewritten in 2024 | 2,639 words

The story you are about to read is a “vomit draft.” This means that it is in its rawest form of writing and has no professional editing done whatsoever. But I welcome any corrections, grammatical or otherwise, you may find.

The sounds of a party were evident to any passersby along the dirt road. The only discernible path to Parker Manor were scattered cobble stones leading to the porch. As Savannah neared the house she stumbled on a stone, nearly losing her balance and falling to the ground. She glanced up at a nearly dead tree in front of the house, where a noose still hung. Seeing it brought back memories she thought she had forgotten. The sunset shone brightly on her caramel colored skin, casting a long shadow that reached the front porch. She looked back at the tree, the noose, and took a deep breath, ascended the porch steps, each creak sounding louder than the last. 

The front door was ajar, and Savannah could see people milling around as well as hear the sounds of laughter and old music coming from a record player. She continued to peek through the gap until she saw him. Bobby Binks. Her breathe quickened. She knew she could have written a letter or chosen a different day for this confrontation, but Bobby wasn’t who she came for.   

After what felt like an eternity of leaning against the house, a pair of women, laughing hysterically, burst through the door. They stumbled drunkenly down the porch steps, neither seeing Savannah at all.   

“Hey ladies, come back here. You’re too drunk to drive,” Alexander shouted to the girls who were already near the end of the road. He noticed movement near him on the porch. “Holy shit!” he screamed, stumbling backwards into the porch railing. The two girls heard him scream and stumbled back towards the house. When they see Savannah, they are equally mortified.  

There was no turning back now. What she came there to do had to be done. She gripped the gift-wrapped box she held in her hands and walked through the front door. Alexander and the two girls followed her inside at a safe distance. Savannah crossed the foyer and stopped in the center of the room. Someone by the record player lifted the needle, drowning the room in complete silence.  

Suddenly, Bobby Binks, the birthday boy, emerged from the kitchen holding beers, “Okay, who said they wanted a beer?” He noticed the silence and continued, “Hey, Mark, put the music back on, man.” Bobby could tell something wasn’t right. He turned towards the front door and saw her, instantly dropping all the bottles in his hand on the hardwood floor. Everyone but Savannah flinched at the sound.  

“Bobby, I --,” Savannah began but was stopped short by Bobby.  

“What did you call me? You come into my house, uninvited, and think you can just call me what my friends do? Get the hell out!” he shouted as he took several big steps away from her.  

“Bob -- I mean, Robert, I’m not here to argue or cause a scene.”  

“Too late for that. Why are you here? What do you want?” he asked. His eyes looked for an exit in case he needed one.  

“I wanted to wish you a happy birthday and bring you this gift,” she said, holding her wrapped gift out for him to take. Everyone in the room wore looks of terror. When she realized he wasn’t going to take it, she placed it gently on the floor in front of her 

“Listen, Savannah, you need to leave, now.” Bobby signaled for a of his friends to help him. Three of them moved on either side of him. 

“You’re not still mad at me, are you, Bobby?” She saw his eye twitch, and a smile escaped her lips. “Oh no, you’re still scared of me, aren’t you?”  

“What do you think?” Bobby said, his eyes finding the noose hung from the dead tree. Before she could answer they forced her back out onto the porch avoiding her box. She pulled free of them and reached behind her back, pulling out a handgun. 

“I didn’t want to have to do this Bobby. But I need to do this, you see? And, and, you left me no choice, you see? So, let’s all walk back inside and just talk for a little while. I promise I’ll leave once I say what I need to say.” No one moved. She pointed the gun in the air and fired off one round. Everyone flinched and ran inside the house, except Bobby who was so stunned and scared he remained glued to him spot. “Bobby,” she screamed, jolting him back to reality, “Inside please.”  

   Before she entered the house, Savannah turned and looked at the noose, smiled wickedly, then closed the door behind her. Everyone was huddled in the furthest corner of the room. Bobby stood alone in the middle of the room staring at Savannah.  

    “Shut up. Scatter now or Bobby, here, gets one in the head,” she said, her eyes fixed on Bobby. She winked at him then her face fell when she saw her unopened gift on the floor next to him.  

“What do you want, freak?” someone from the party shouted.  

“Who said that?” she asked, and walked a circle around Bobby, her gun pointed at everyone. “I asked you a question?”  

“Hey, Savannah,” Bobby whispered to her. She frantically turned the gun on him again, still looking wildly at everyone. “Over here Savannah, talk to me, don’t worry about them. Tell me what you want? Why are you here? How did you even know we’d be here?” She closed her eyes tightly, trying to think clearly. “Just tell me what you want, and we can all get back to normal, okay?”  

“Normal? You want to get back to normal? How can you get back to normal after what I did to you Tinkle Binkle,” she mocked the same way she used to when they were in high school. Bobby flinched and his heart quickened as he remembered that day. The worst day of his life.  

It was his sixteenth birthday and unfortunately for him, his parents thought it would be a good idea to invite his entire class to their house for a party. Little did they know they would also be inviting Savannah, his biggest and scariest bully. She never wasted an opportunity to tease and torture Bobby. And just because it happened to be his sixteenth birthday didn’t mean she would give her antics a rest and let him enjoy this one day. In fact, she felt she needed to do something even worse than her usual cruel games. She had heard that Bobby’s home was at one time used to house slaves and she thought it would be funny to make the school believe he still practiced and believed in those heinous practices.  

During his birthday party Savannah talks Bobby, who won’t admit it himself but had a huge crush on her at the time, into going outside with her, to talk. He agreed, thinking he was finally going to get lucky with her after she had been playing so hard to get for so long. He remembers telling his friends to keep everyone busy and away from the front of the house where she wanted him to meet her in exactly ten minutes.  

When he is able to sneak away and gets to the front porch she is nowhere to be found. Looking out towards the path leading down the road he notices she’s up on the bench under his favorite tree, climbing it the way he used to when he was a kid not too long ago.  

“Hey what do you think you’re doing?” he asks whispering loudly to her as he makes his way towards the tree. He stops just a few feet from the tree when he see, dangling from her neck, a rope, tied into a noose.  

“Bobby, so glad you could make it. You’re just in time for your birthday present,” she grunted down to him as she started to crawl out onto a limb that, at the time, was strong enough to carry her weight.  

“God damn it Savanah get the fuck down from there before you break your neck.”  

Bobby walks up to the tree and stands just below the limb she is currently balancing herself on. She bends over on her hands and knees and begins to tie the other end of the rope dangling from her neck around the tree, pulling it tightly every so often to check that it’s not going to come loose.  

“What did you think was going to happen between us when you came out here? Telling all your boys to distract everyone. Did you think you were gonna get in my panties Bobby?” she asks. “Whoa,” she said suddenly, gripping onto the limb tighter with both her hands as she almost fell over.  

“Savannah, I swear if you don’t get down from there!”  

“What? You’re gonna what? Push me off and be done with me? That’s what you want isn’t it? You want to hang me don’t you Bobby? I wonder how many of your people have hung my people from this very limb?” she asked, sitting on the limb next to the knot she just tied, her feet dangling down close to where Bobby is standing but just out of his reach.  

“None, you psycho bitch. This tree was planted when I was born by my father who was hoping to build me a treehouse when I got older,” he said as he jumped up trying to grab her legs to get her down off the limb.  

“Oh, you want me to come down do ya?”  

“Yes, for fucks sake. Before someone sees you. Shit Savannah. What goes on in that fucked up mind of yours anyway?”  

Suddenly her happy-go-lucky attitude while up in the tree changes. Her eyes grow cold and black. Her eyes were something Bobby would see for many years to come in his nightmares. She looked down at him and smiled the most menacing smile he’d ever seen as she began to sing “Happy Birthday” to him in a breathy voice, almost mimicking the way Marilyn Monroe sang it to President Kennedy. Bobby felt a cold chill crawl up his spine at that moment.  

“...Happy birthday to you…,” and as she sang those final words she leaned her entire body forward, allowing herself to fall off the limb down towards Bobby, who instinctively raised his arms to try and catch her before her neck would snap from gravity taking its course. He grabbed her around the ankle, trying with all his might to prevent her body from falling any lower as he could hear her making gurgling sounds high above his head.  

“Help!” he tried unsuccessfully to shout towards the house currently filled with all his friends from school having a good time, listening to loud music. Suddenly, the friends he had asked to keep everyone away from the windows at the front of the house, decided to take a peek for themselves and were stunned to see Bobby grabbing around Savannah’s ankles as she was dangling from the tree outside by a noose.  

Everyone came running out of the house to see what was happening and before Bobby knew it he was being yanked away by his mother abruptly as his father cut down Savannah, who was still alive, and laid her down on the grown. Bobby couldn’t hear what she was saying but from the way she was clawing at her throat, where the rope was still around her neck, with one hand and pointing towards Bobby with the other he knew his life was about to go from bad to worse.  

His parents never looked at him or treated him the same way again. Even when he was sent away to finish high school at a military academy rather than face the shame of him and how the town might treat him if he stayed.  

Now, ten years later, with four of those years spent in a Military Academy and another three on a tour those old feelings of fear are creeping back into his mind. Beads of sweat break out on his forehead as his military training fights to take over from the frightened boy he was so long ago.  

“Savannah,” says a mysterious male voice standing in the doorway of the house. She suddenly turns towards it, the hand holding the gun shaking a little at the sound of the voice. As if she recognizes it.  

“No. No. No. No. No. What are you doing here? How did you find me? Go away! I have to apologize to Bobby. So you go away now,” she says, beginning to whimper like a small child.  

“Savannah, it’s time to come back home okay? We’ve been worried sick about you. Why didn’t you tell us where you were going? You know you can’t just leave like that,” the mysterious voice says, walking further into the room until we see Dr. Young, a dashing gentleman of forty-two, in a suit and tie, sporting a brand-new shave and haircut. “Give me the gun child. Where did you get it from anyway?”  

Dr. Young holds his hand out to her. He’s not afraid and doesn’t flinch. He fully expects her to comply with his request without any incident, like they’ve practiced time and time again. Slowly her face contorts into frustration. Her instincts tell her to hand the gun over to Dr. Young but her head thinks that would not be a good idea. She takes a step back away from Dr. Young as she thrusts the present she had been clutching all this time in Bobby’s general direction.  

“Take it,” she says to him, but doesn’t turn her gaze from Dr. Young who is standing there smiling at her softly, still holding his hand out to her for the gun. “It’s for him okay? I’ll go with you but only if you let him keep his birthday present?”  

“Okay Savannah. He can keep it. Now let’s go home. You’ve had us all worried sick.”  

Savannah turns her gaze towards Bobby who has not moved a muscle.  

“Take the box Bobby. Don’t you wanna know what I gotcha?” she asks him. He shakes his head “no” and won’t take the box from her. “Fine,” she says with a smile and places it down in front of him. She had been clutching the box so tightly the wrapping paper has come loose and the lid of the box has opened slightly, almost revealing its contents.  

She then puts the gun down on the floor as well and with an eerie giggle to no one in particular she skips two steps to Dr. Young and takes his arm in hers.  

“Are we going to see momma today?”  

“Maybe Savannah. You know, you haven’t been such a good girl today,” Dr. Young said. As the two of them walk out of the house and down the two front porch steps Savannah turns one last time and looking Bobby right in the eyes she smiles and winks at him.  

“I been a good girl today, really. I wanna see momma!”  

Savannah, walking alone down the road, argues with a figment of her imagination as a huge gust of wind kicks up dust and dirt around her.  

And if we follow this gust of wind as it travels back up the dirt path towards the house, past the old tree that no longer has leaves on it and no noose on it either, it makes its way up the two front porch steps and blows into the house that has been completely empty for over a decade, and still is to this day, except for a box.  

The wind blows the lid open and we see the noose rolled up into a ball inside, where it will undoubtedly stay, forever.