Silent Riddle

Neighborhood kids always avoid that tree. “It’s bumpy and ugly and leaks maroon sap. All the bumps are on one side so it looks like it’ll fall over on top of us,” they chorused in fear.

But the tree was perfectly fine – just hungry and wanting to grow in its girth. Usually, it was all right with rainfall and the nutrients of the earth and sometimes, even a little fertilizer. But occasionally, it was absolutely starved and that’s when the mayhem started.

It was a tall tree with long crooked branches capable of reaching across the street where the children played. However, the gnarled tree was quite willing to wait until just one child walked by alone, lost in his own world. Snatching the unsuspecting child, the limbs would carry him back to his big knothole in the trunk which would open wide and swallow the child with a sucking sound that resonated in the air.

“What is that slurping sound?” the neighbors asked each other. Somehow, they never connected the noise to the missing children. It was a mystery which neither they nor the police were able to solve. “It must be a sexual predator snatching the children,” they surmised, as they all peeked out their windows to try to catch the perpetrator.

The mystery was never solved until one day the tree caught a bad cold. “Achoo,” it sneezed, expelling little bodies all over the sidewalk.

If only the townspeople could have read the tree’s silent riddle before it was too late!