The Wishing Tree

by James Buxton

Kingsmeade Close, on the edge of Epping Forest, is a nice community of ordinary people, but the rape and murder of a girl is only the start of a series of increasingly horrific events, as the Wishing Tree sucks in more and more souls in return for wishes granted.

Genres: Horror

352 pages, Hardcover

First published July 22, 1996

Reviews

[Jack Tripper · Rating 4 out of 5]

(Cover of the 1996 Orion hardcover, 330 pages)
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Who would have thought that fairies could be this damn creepy?* I originally read this two years ago and found it to be merely okay. But after reading Buxton’s Strange a couple weeks back and being pretty much blown away, I decided to flip through it again to see if I might have missed something, and I ended up devouring the whole thing. I’m glad I did, as it was an entirely different experience reading this late at night and the small hours of the morning as opposed to the middle of the day.

Taking place in a small wooded English village, mysterious murders are taking place deep in the forest, and rumors of malevolent, childlike creatures in the forest are spoken of in hushed tones. Caroline is worried her young son Marcus is somehow involved with these shadowy beings (if they really exist) and is terrified. Meanwhile Sergeant Willis is attempting to make sense of the murders, trying to take a rational approach, but he’ll soon learn that nothing in the forest is rational. Who’s leaving “gifts” to a specific old tree in the woods? Why do the murders seem to connect to young Marcus? The answers might go back centuries, and they could just drive a person mad.

This had a few of the most chilling moments I’ve experienced in horror recently, made all the more terrifying thanks to the excellent characterizations of the people living through these events. It’s a bit of a slow burn that takes a while to get going, but once the weirdness and terror start ramping up it almost never relents. That and the thick, foreboding atmosphere throughout kept me entirely absorbed.

Not quite a 5 star read for me due to a slow beginning, but much of the imagery is pure, undiluted nightmare fuel, and that makes it very much a worthwhile read in my mind.

*The fairies in Brian McNaughton’s stellar Satan's Surrogate aka The House Across the Way come pretty close, but not quite.

[Phil · Rating 4 out of 5]

Buxton gives us with The Wishing Tree a really creepy slice of folk horror that reminded me of Phil Rickman's work (although not set in Wales, but the Epping forest). Epping forest remains as one of the only really ancient forests in England and serves as a haunting backdrop to the story; interestingly, one Edward Buxton back in the 19th century helped save the forest from total enclosure (distant relative? Who knows?).

The story start with a brief prologue of a young, horribly abused girl seeing and speaking with some rather strange faeries or something in the Epping forest which her house abuts. Flash forward 30 years or so and the real story starts. Caroline (obviously the young girl from the prologue) now lives with her only son Marcus, supported primarily by her ex-husband. Buxton introduces us to the pair just about when Caroline starts looking for some work-- they need the money. About the same time this is happening, a young girl gets horribly raped/murdered in the forest and the story starts taking on a police procedural vibe, but that is pretty subdued. In any case, the lead detective on the girl's murder case, one Willis, meets Caroline and Marcus, as they both were the last two people to see the little girl alive...

While Willis investigates the crime, he becomes increasingly ill at ease. Following up upon the conversation he had with Caroline and Marcus, he wanders into the forest and keeps thinking he is seeing a child or something out of the corner of his eye. After blundering around, he stumbles into where the murdered girl was found, close to an ancient tree covered in strange things-- rags, shoes, coins imbedded in the trunk. One of the local cops called it a 'wishing tree', some sort of local folklore. The more he investigates the forest, the creepier the story gets...

I really dug this story, although it did start off a bit slow and the local idioms and slang take a bit to process (not as hard as Irvine Welsh, but still!). Once this hits its stride, however, it really takes off, with ever building dread and a quite foreboding atmosphere up the end (and what a denouement!). Highly recommended for fans of folk horror, or really any horror fan. 4 wishes (may you hope they do not come true!).

[Yvonne Hin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Scary as hell