The Boy In The Branches A Story By James Sargent (Aged 11 years old)

My 11 year old son James during lockdown, started writing short stories all from his imagination. He received no help with his short pieces just sat quietly and put them together, he wanted me to share a couple of teasers from his stories this one is called “The Boy In The Branches” all in his own words and exactly how he has written them. As a parent I’m immensely proud of him, hopefully this could be his vocation as he gets older? Who knows? Perhaps Leigh, Greater Manchester has its very own “Stephen King” in the making?

The Boy In The Branches

My name is Kyle Jones, and I am a firefighter in the state Ohio, and this is one of my traumatising story’s I had in my career. For a quick disclaimer, the story will contain gore…

I was sat in my truck in the station slouched fidgeting with a rubix cube waiting for a call. You might think that not having calls is fun and you get money for playing with a cube. Well to make it clear, you are very wrong. Suddenly, I sprung up from my chair when I heard the echoing, ear-piercing ring tone.

Rapidly, I sprinted towards the phone and called on the radio to get ready. The person on the line said ‘’Come quick! There is a boy in the tree, and he is not answering or moving a muscle. Come quick!’’ I was very confused because as weird as it seems the person had an almost calm tone in their voice. But anyway, I politely said ‘’Help is on the way.’’ Then I passed the person into the call centre.

Quickly, I got my gear on, started the engine and called my team to get in. The sirens were so loud one of the guys had to cover their ears to muffle the sound that was almost deafening us all. A few minutes later, we got to the site where the boy was.

Cautiously, I climbed up the tree, I was thinking how could a kid get this high? If you do not know the tree was about 30-40 feet tall. At this point, I was almost scared for my life! It took a while but when I finally got to the top, I saw the kid, but he was partially covered by trees and branches. I screamed his name over and over. Then I just muttered ‘’screw it’’ to myself and lunged to a branch towards the kid. Suddenly the branch I was just on just fell off the tree, and it fell on the moist soil below us or should I say me…

Carefully I tapped his back and he just sat there stiff. When I turned his whole body around, I almost screamed. His intestines were hanging out of his body, they were like Swiss Cheese I tell you. His eyes were completely gone, his hair was wiry and dry. I saw a part of his internal organs scattered all over the tree. It was horrific, almost like a Christmas tree but with parts of an innocent boy.

A loose stick was next to me, so I poked his body down the tree and I closed my eyes when I heard screams of the parents. I should stop for a second, there was parents and a few rescue officers down there comforting the neighbours, parents and grandparents. I almost lost my job for pushing his body down.

When I got down, I walked over to the rescue officers and they said to me ‘’Thank you for getting the evidence down.’’ I just stood there thinking over what he just said ‘the evidence’ like he did not have a life, a family I remember that exactly. This case really made me feel uneasy for a while. I had to take a full 2 weeks off work.

Please everyone, there is monsters unimaginable out there what happened to this boy was horrific.

Stay safe everyone.”

James Sargent aged 11 years old