The white oak.

The white oak.

Summer 1848.

For 100 years, Sea Watch Hall had stood atop a tall cliff overlooking Exeter Cove. It was the ancestral home of the Edmonds dynasty, who had held sway over the surrounding lands for centuries.

Below, swirling water hurled itself against the rock, sending clouds of white mist into the pitch-black night. The wind roared in from the ocean, driving the rain against the windows and fascia of the property. It was not a night to be outdoors.

In one of the front rooms, Dr. Nathaniel Edmonds bent low over the small bed beside his desk. Tears blurred his vision, his face pale with dread. Scattered around him lay open textbooks, tangled among the medical tools of his profession.

In the bed lay his six-year-old daughter, Louisa, wrapped tightly in a pink blanket. She looked uncomfortable, her small face twisted with unease as her life ebbed away.

He was entirely alone in the house. He had sent the rest of his family away, insisting he needed silence and space to treat her. Dutifully, they had obeyed, leaving to stay with relatives in the nearby town.

This was the second night she had been like this—completely unresponsive, yet bearing no outward signs of injury despite having been found unconscious beneath the towering white oak on the cliff top.

He was at his wit's end. He had tried everything in his power, scoured every page of his textbooks, and in sheer desperation, had even turned to prayer.

Nothing had worked

There was a noise, from inside the room, distinct from the storm raging outside.

The room shook. Instinctively, he reached out to shield his daughter as the entire house groaned and shifted. An earthquake? No—none had ever been recorded in this area. Just as abruptly as it began, the shaking stopped.

In the sudden silence, a heavy bang echoed behind him. He spun around. A door in one of the bookcases had sprung open, and a thick, leather-bound volume now lay open on his desk.

It was one of many books his father had left behind when he died. Nathaniel had never bothered to read them; they were filled with his father’s obsession with ancient magic and mystical powers. As a man of science, he had always dismissed them out of hand.  

He moved to the table looking at the book. It was a translation of ancient Mesopotamian ritual practises translated into English. What caught his eye, and took his breath away at the same time was the sketch of a tree. An exact copy of the white oak that stood tall at the cliff top. Underneath who’s branches his daughter had been found. Unconscious.

The caption read … Quercus alba, the white oak.

Carrying the heavy volume back to his desk beside his daughter’s bed, he pulled the lamp close and began to study the text:

To counteract evil omens. Defensive or legitimate magic in Mesopotamia (āšipūtu in Akkadian) comprised incantations and ritual practices intended to alter reality…

He read on, unable to tear his eyes from the page. The translator provided explicit examples of how the ancients attempted to gain salvation, immortality and cheat death—offering sacrifices to appease wrathful spirits or confronting evil face-to-face.

the following morning, Nathaniel pulled open the heavy satin drapes, letting pale sunlight flood the room. The realization had taken hold—he knew what he had to do. A sense of cold dread warred with relief. Twenty-two years practicing medicine, grounded in a millennium of science, suddenly felt utterly pointless. He brewed coffee, his mind racing as he stood over his daughter’s bed. Still, there was no change.

“To save you, I must lose you,” he whispered. Tears blurred his vision as his fingers brushed her cold cheek. “You are saved, and we have suffered loss.”

How is that possible? To save her, must I sacrifice her? He forced the thought from his mind, terrified of where it would lead.

Wrapping his daughter in the thick woollen blanket, he stepped out of the house. The air stung with salt as he took a deep breath. Last night’s storm had cleared to reveal brilliant sun and a blue sky dotted with skittering clouds. The rage of the sea had subsided into quiet, the roar of the surf replaced by the squawk of seabirds wheeling overhead. Despite the uncertainty waiting ahead, a deep calm settled over Nathaniel Edmonds—for a brief moment, everything felt strangely normal.  

At the foot of the giant oak, he looked up at the great branches stretching overhead like reaching arms. Low on the trunk, facing the house, sat a deep split in the bark he had never noticed before—wide enough to fit a man's leg. Driven by instinct, he gently rested his daughter's body within the hollow. As he did, the tension melted from her face. Her features settled into peace, almost curving into a smile. It defied all logic, but it gave him pause.

He turned his back and walked away. Before a faint sound stopped him, a voice? He spun around, heart pounding, but saw nothing. You’re imagining things, he told himself.

Then his eyes drifted back to the oak. He froze. The deep slit in the bark was completely gone, sealed shut. So was his daughter. Above, the thick branches—the ones that had looked like arms—were now raised high, pointing straight toward the house.

Was he losing his mind?

That night, unable to sleep, he sat at his desk for hours, desperately recording every detail into his diary before his mind could convince him it was a dream.

On either side of his late father's portrait hung a brass lamp. Behind one was a hidden compartment carved into the lath and plaster wall. He re-wrapped the journal and placed it back into its space.

By the second afternoon, the family had returned to the windy peak and Sea Watch Hall to pay their final farewells. Tears were shed, comforting arms reached across trembling shoulders, and quiet eulogies were whispered into the gale. Standing slightly apart from the rest, Nathaniel watched the casket lowered with an eerie composure. He alone understood the terrible reality: the box was empty, and the person they were mourning was still out there somewhere. Yet as his wife wept against his chest, he kept his jaw set and let the lie remain buried.

February 2016.

James Holloway groaned as he stepped down from the helicopter. At sixty-eight, he was getting too old to be traipsing across the country—a reality made no easier by his extra weight and the pack-and-a-half of cigarettes he smoked a day.

The chopper had landed on the cracked asphalt of the car park at Sea Watch Hall a sprawling coastal estate his company had recently acquired.

His first observation was the huge oak tree that sat in front of him, then the remains of what once was a grand residence. Neither of which concerned him one iota.

James Holloway was a developer. Vacant houses and trees meant nothing to him. The 50 hectares of land they sat on did. Especially the two kms of cliff top that bounded one side with magnificent uninterrupted views. Million-dollar views.  

The house and tree would soon be gone.

Michael Lawrence had been James Holloway’s site manager for long enough to know how the man operated.

“I want the tree down first, then the house,’ he ordered, looking around him, pleased with his new acquisition.

“God, it’s sweltering.” Holloway commented, he wiped his glistening brow and snatched up a bottle of water. His mind was clearly miles away, already sitting at the country club bar. “Right then, got to dash. Meeting in the city.”

Of course you do, Lawrence thought.

Within five minutes, the helicopter was airborne, spiralling up into the sky and carrying its master off to his next distraction.

Michael waited until the chopper vanished into the distance before turning to face the house. He set off up the once-elegant, sweeping staircase that led to the forecourt, picturing the space long before it had fallen into neglect. In his mind's eye, ladies in sweeping gowns and gentlemen in formalwear glided past, stepping from horse-drawn carriages—while nearby, footmen scurried about to take reins and open doors under the faint, sharp scent of paraffin lamps.

He pushed open the huge carved twin oak doors that were edged in brass, and although faded, he could still see the massive hinges and the copper nails, that held the entrance together.

Inside, it was bare. Dust and leaves had made there way in and lay where they’d fallen.

Lawrence walked to the first room on the ground floor, to the left of the entrance. The space inside the room was cavernous, empty, and like the entrance, dusty.

On the outer wall, a ghost of the room's past, a mark where a painting had been removed. On either side, two pieces of polished timber remained—lamp mounts, standard for a grand home of this era. He peered closer and tapped the wood; it sounded hollow. Intrigued, he pulled a screwdriver from his backpack and gently pried around the edges. To his surprise, the square of timber gave way and fell off, exposing a cavity carved deep into the wall.

Shining his phone's light into the gap, he spotted an object wrapped in green felt. A draft of stale, musty air escaped the hole—foul breath trapped for God knew how long. He reached in, pulled out the shape, and carefully peeled back the fabric.

"It's a bloody diary," he muttered.

In the top right-hand corner of the red leather cover, three initials were embossed in gold: N.S.E. Below them, the year: 1848. He rewrapped it, slipped it into his backpack, and decided he would inspect it properly when he had more time.

After finishing dinner that evening, he grabbed the half-empty wine bottle and headed upstairs to his room, eager to examine his discovery.

He pulled off the felt wrapping and opened to the first page: Nathaniel Stevenson Edmonds. January 1, 1848.

Curiosity driving him, he leafed through the yellowed pages to the final entry. Dated Thursday, July 18th, 1848, it was written in jagged, dark red ink:

‘The oak is not a tree; it is a seal. Do not break the bark. Do not sever the roots. What lies beneath feeds on the quiet, and if disturbed, it will wake with an insatiable hunger.’

He set the diary down gently, as though it were alive, and reached with a trembling hand for his wine glass.

"What the hell does that mean?" he muttered.

The following morning when Holloway returned in his helicopter with two investors in tow, Lawrence took him to one side and showed him the diary.

He scoffed at it, dismissing the journal as the superstitious ramblings of a 19th- century nobody.

Eager to stay on schedule for the beginning of his planned project he ordered Lawrence to ignore the warnings and bring on the heavy machinery and chainsaws.

As the first chainsaw blade cut into the thick bark, it bleeds a heavy, black, viscous sap that smells faintly of copper and ozone. The engine instantly seizes and sparks leaving the crew unsettled, but Lawrence insists they use an excavator to pull the roots straight out of the earth instead.

That night, after the root is torn apart, the ground around the property settles with an unsettling, hollow thud. The nearby township experiences a sudden blackout, and every animal within a five-kilometre radius falls completely silent—no crickets, no barking dogs, no night birds.

Deep beneath the churned soil where the ancient taproots once anchored, a vast cavity opens. Thick sap pools upward, seeping silently into the local water table, as pale tendrils—resembling human fingers woven from fibrous wood—force their way through the floorboards of Sea Watch Hall.