Triskellion by Will Peterson Read Free Book Online

fell silent.
    The man in the leather coat approached the limp, panting figures, and began to speak; his resonant voice audible even from Rachel and Adam’s hiding place.
    “Gary and Lee Bacon. You have broken the Code of the Green Men, and it is they who make the law in Triskellion.” The man paced up and down, coming closer to the hooded head of one of the youths. “The Green Men decide who stays and who goes,” he spat. “Not snotty-nosed chavs who attack anything they don’t understand. You will live and die by the Code of the Green Men. Have you anything to say before sentence is carried out?”
    One of the Bacon boys whimpered from beneath his hood. The sound of his undiluted terror turned Rachel’s stomach to water. The man spoke again.
    “Which of you punched the incomer?”
    “Gary done it,” came the muffled yelp from inside the hood.
    “Loyal, too,” said the man with the beard, trudging back to the camper van. “Do them both.” He nodded to another ofthe forest men – a huge figure, his face black with charcoal, and what looked like a fox pelt mounted with a deer’s skull strapped to his head.
    The man walked towards the prisoners. The other figures tensed and drew closer, while, anticipating what was about to happen, the Bacon boys whimpered and moaned beneath their hoods.
    Up in the tree, Rachel felt her lip tremble, and hid her eyes as Adam’s fingers dug into her arms, unable to tear his gaze away from the terrible ritual unfolding below.
    The man stepped up close to one of the captives. He grasped the neck of the boy’s T-shirt and tore until the pale flesh of his back was exposed. He walked round the stump and ripped at the shirt of the second boy. When he had finished, the man stood back, allowing two of his fellow Green Men to step forward. Each clutched a long, flexible stick, and, on the nod of the man in the leather coat, they began to beat the Bacon boys.
    Rachel and Adam clung to each other, huddled together in a ball as the screams of Gary and Lee Bacon tore through the silence of the woods. The thrashing seemed to continue for an age, with each cry of agony making Rachel and Adam flinch as if they were being beaten themselves. Finally it stopped and Adam ventured an eye back up to the peephole. Through the slit in the lookout, he could see the bodies of the two boys hanging limply from the roots. The single back he could see clearly was raised with angry, red welts.
    Then, another leaf-covered figure moved forward towards the punishment tree. His face was blackened like the others, but on his head he wore a battered, black top hat. Ivy trailed round the brim, and, from the crown, sharpened twigs stuck out like spines. As he turned to face the nearer boy, Adam could see that he wore a long leather apron. He lifted something heavy from his side.
    In his hand was a chainsaw. The man pulled on the starting cord…
    Adam had seen enough. Using the noise of the chainsaw as cover, he grabbed Rachel and hurtled out of the tree house, dropping down on to the lower branch.
    Rachel found that her vertigo had disappeared as she bounced back along the rope bridge. She followed her brother, stumbling in her haste, ignoring the sting of the branches flicking back into her face and catching in her hair. Propelled by adrenaline, they arrived back at the original knotted rope in seconds, throwing themselves back down on to the forest floor and tearing off together towards the line of trees.
    Some fifty or sixty metres away, its crackle deadened by the thick woodland, the chainsaw continued to splutter and buzz…
    In the clearing, the man with the chainsaw had cut through the ropes that were holding up the prisoners. The Bacons sat on the earth, nursing their wounds while other Green Menbegan to disperse back into the forest and into the tree houses above. The door of the camper van slid open again, and the bearded man in the leather coat walked over and pulled off the hood from each boy’s