Tag: beneath cold boughs

Chapter 4 of Beneath Cold Boughs

< – Down Among the Worms | The Upside Down->

Chasing the Tree

(Set before part 1 of Down Among the Worms)

As Diana and Jane headed for home after speaking with Suleiman, Morris instead decided to keep an eye on the Tree as it was cut out of the shell of Willowgate. Morris found himself at home in the dark, easily lurking out of sight of Hank and his crew as they continued their work. It took until after 2am for the Tree to be removed and placed carefully under the tarpaulin of a flatbed truck, and once there swiftly driven away. Hank and his crew headed for some much-needed sleep and Morris gave chase, like it was the old days driving with Big Jimmy.

The truck lead him east into the grim underbelly of Morganville, nearly losing him twice as it caught the last moments of a green light and almost leading to him getting T-boned when he ran a red to keep up, but he successfully tailed it to a warehouse near the old harbour overlooking Sauton Point. It was a dingy looking half-forgotten place that looked like it should have been knocked down decades before, watched from all sides by modern security cameras. Morris parked his car a block away, close enough to the nearest cluster of vagrants to maybe tempt one to try something just so he could hurt them for it, and stalked closer through the gloom. Around him the glaur and decay of the swamp reached out and ruined the cameras one by one, and he slipped inside under the cover of comfortable darkness.

Voices carried down from a gantry-mounted office above, two men talking about a football game and complaining about referees, while the truck sat beside ancient-looking crates and pallets that had been dragged out of the way for it. Morris paid the old crates little heed, heading straight for the truck and slipped under the tarpaulin to check on the tree. Overhead the men’s conversation wound down and once started making his way down to check on his load. Seizing the opportunity handed to him, Morris waited for the driver to reach the tarp before grabbing choking him into unconsciousness, the better to question later.

It was when he started looking for the other man that Morris be realised there was something else in the still, silent warehouse beyond the tarpaulin. A rumbling, rasping sound echoed through the darkness, and something moved out of sight accompanied by the sharp sounds of claws on concrete. Whisps of dust outlined a suggestion of an emaciated, predatory frame, sharp edges glinted in the air and the rasping rumbling sound cohered into a voice that rumbled a command to flee into the back of Morris’ skull.

Morris responded with violence, raining blows that would have felled men or cracked concrete into the thing and it responded in kind, his blood revealing razor fangs and rending claws as it torn into his flesh. The creature shrugged of blow after blow, only being stunned for a moment when Morris started shattering crates and barrels against the thing, but it was too much for him. Bleeding from multiple wounds and barely keeping the thing from his throat, he felt something. A surge of warmth welling up around him, a protective, all-encompassing, hungry love that whispered in the back of his mind that not every fight need be won. With the last dregs of his strength, Morris reached out to the tangled maze of the Basement, dragged himself and the driver across the threshold between worlds and fell into unconsciousness.

Consequences

The next thing Morris knew was hunger. Raw aching Hunger, like a pit had opened in his heart and everything with any measure of value had fallen into it. He was face-down in the boxing ring in his gym, it was night but he could not tell any more than that. His phone was dead, stinking of swamp mud and salt water, and his car was back in Morganville. So he started walking, anything to distract himself from the Hunger. After a few blocks he spotted the swastikas and the Hunger rose in pitch.

Neonazi punks, wannabe badasses, it would feel so good to break them down and remind them how weak they were. So he did just that. Walked into Jack’s and found every excuse he could to start beating on the punks. The Hunger still gnawed and roared and the punks soon went for weapons when they couldn’t stop him with fists, so he pitched a scrawny one into the cluster trying to surround him and stalked out. Then for good measure, as they tried to pile out after him, he scooped up one of the cars parked outside and threw it into the bar.

Still hungry. Still so damned Hungry. Over the next few hours Morris carved a path of violence across the city toward Morganville, breaking every petty little shithead or wannabe tough he crossed paths with, along with any poor bastards who happened to cross his path at the wrong moment. It was not enough. It felt like it would never be enough. Then he found where his car had been, where it wasn’t any more, and he became actually angry. He unleashed his wrath on the nearby vagrants until one them coughed up a name, and he finally had a target to vent his rage upon.

Following Threads

(Set after Down Among the Worms)

Diana spent the evening after she and Jane visited to Presidents Row digging into research. Nothing she could find about the Row suggested it was anything important, just another faded little neighbourhood ripe for redevelopment into something actually useful. She found herself going over what Suleiman had said about having a hand in the Alabaster Building. Some cursory research revealed the building had been built by Coulter & Matheison, a prestigious firm responsible for a number of Blackmouth’s more distinctive buildings, but no-one resembling Suleiman appeared anywhere connected to the firm. The old school they had met in was easy enough to mind once she put her mind to it, retracing the trip there and the view over the city identified it as Gilchrist College, an old private school on the hills overlooking the city, though it appeared far less dilapidated and ill-used in photographs than in person. And again, no traces to Suleiman, nor to Coulter & Matheison.

That would have to do for now. It was time to start driving down property prices in President’s Row, and she knew just the person to do what was necessary. She braced herself and dialed the number. Carter picked up after the third ring, his oily charm seeping through the phone as he greeted Diana by name. By a diminutive of her old name, just like he used to. Of course, he would love to meet up with her. It was late but he was always happy to make time for an old friend. They met in the shadows of Lockham, in the alleyway they used to smoke in, out of sight of anyone who cared, and Diana laid out her plan. Carter was to go to the Row and do what he did best, with an aim to make people want to leave and be more willing to sell up. He was hesitant, he didn’t really want to cross the Patriots but money and a little white lie about getting back together, just like old times, sealed the deal. And maybe some sort of terrible accident would happen to Carter later, if the Patriots didn’t.

She was on the subway back to her apartment when she overheard a pair gawking at footage of an incident in Ormwood. The angle was poor and the footage worse but it almost looked like a car thrown into the front of a building. The gawkers were deep in discussion about whether it was viral marketting for a film or an ARG, but Diana recognised that hideous strength. Morris. She stepped out of the subway at the next station, barely feeling the world shift around her as she walked through the empty station. The twisting pipes of the Basement rose and fell and she found herself on the remnants of harbour where Morganville met the Atlantic, and saw Morris dunking a mass of chains wrapped about a squirming, pleading figure. She demanded he let the man go, and Morris did just that, throwing poor Jimmy Fingers into the icy waters of the Atlantic.

This had to stop. First Jane and her indiscretion at the Ormwood Development soiree, and now cars being thrown into bars and this. Morris shrugged at Diana and didn’t deny it. Jimmy’s fate had been enough to finally fill the hole in his soul and he could think about more than Hunger. In his eyes they were neo-nazis and deserved worse, but maybe things could be less open. He made no promises except to try to keep her name out of it, because that was what she was really concerned about.

People Appearing

• Morris Mayfair – bit off more than he could chew and carved a swath of revenge to make up for it.
• A truck driver, beaten unconscious by Morris then lost in his Lair
• Several members of the Aryan Legion, assaulted by Morris.
• Diana Graves – sought information and leverage to aid her climb to the top.
• Suleiman (Mentioned) – information and leverage over him proved hard to find.
• Carter (First Appearance) – Old “friend” of Diana’s. Enlisted to instigate trouble in Presidents Row.
• The Patriots (Mentioned) – gang operating in Presidents Row.
• Jimmy Fingers (First Appearance) – Morganville vagrant, stole Morris’ car for meth. Drowned in chains.

Locations

• Jack’s – bar on the edge of Ormwood and Manton, frequented by local Aryan Legion types. Where Morris started his night’s rampage.
• The backstreets of Lockham.
• A worn down warehouse in the really bad part of Morganville, where Morris tailed the truck carrying the Tree to.

Chapter 3 of Beneath Cold Boughs

< – In Bloom | Seeping Through the Skin ->

Discoveries

After some final discussion with Suleiman, the three left the unsettling silence of the abandoned school. The lights and life of the city bloomed about them as they drove through the gates, leaving a very ordinary looking building behind, nothing like the abandoned relic they had met Suleiman in.

The next morning, Jane had her first day of work at Condor Acquistions and was privy to Diana’s grand plan to find whoever owned what throughout the city so that she could leverage and buy them out, climbing to the top rather than “scurrying in the dirt and ruins” as she saw ‘fools’ like Suleiman doing. To that end, Jane was set to work finding suitable property to acquire in Harton, Lockham and Manton and she gladly interpretted that as an excuse to get out of te office.

It was in the breezy, boho streets of Harton that she smelled it. The sharp-sweet tang of suffering hung in the long shadows cast by the great sycamore in the heart of Moth Park and as Jane drew closer a half-seen mirage found her – two figures, low and loping between two and four limbs, chased a third, a woman, through foliage and hedgerow until they set savagely upon her. Unsettled by the experience, Jane caught the eye of a concerned passerby, a congenial older man who introduced himself as Peter Grey, who had seen nothing of Jane’s vision but listend to her words without judgement. He grew quiet when she asked about strange thing happening in the park, before telling her about a girl who had been found dead in the culvert a couple of years previously. Such a tragedy, dying so young.

After the conversation died and they parted ways, Jane continued into Harton, noting buildings and wondering how exactly she was supposed to find places for Condor to buy when she caught sight of a bookshop. Something about it caught her eye and called to her, and she stepped inside. Within was an eclectic mix of academia, literature and esoterica, a scattering of browsing customers, and a tall woman who Jane knew was like her. After letting Jane call in Diana, the woman – who introduced herself as Nicole Morgan, owner of the White Raven – spun a tale about being “monsters, beasts of nightmares and legends wrapped in human flesh”, of Hungers and the need to control them lest be rules by them, and of a Dark Mother who they were all Children of. Jane was interested but Diana was nonplussed, having no time to waste on superstitions when she was running late for a meeting.

Welcome to the Row

That meeting was with Megan Roth of Ormwood Development to discuss a contract for Condor involving properties in Presidents Row. Ormwood Development had interest in the area as part of a later phase of the Ormwood Development Project. Officially, the project was for management of several properties in the Row, but if people in the area were to happen to sell their properties to Condor then Ormwood Development would be happy to buy them in turn for a suitable markup. After Diana’s expertise in handling things in Willowgate, it was felt that such talent for closing would be well suited to this contract.

Sensing a chance to twist things to her own advantage, Diana took advantage of her new gifts to squeeze further details and a far better deal out of Megan. If she could acquire the commercial properties in the block within a month, Ormwood Development would buy them back at 45% above market value. Diana dismissed Megan once the deal was agreed and luxuriated in the sense of power she had exerted. Feeding on the weak felt good.

That afternoon, Jane and Diana took their first excursion to the Row to get a feel for the area Condor would have to acquire. It was a worn down stretch of Ormwood on the far side of the Interstate from Willowgate, full of cheap retail and cheaper housing decorated with Stars and Stripes gang signs. The block ODP wanted was one of a dozen that formed an impromptu retail strip, backed by unimportant tenements and duplexes and dotted with empty lots.

They started with the dingy bar on the corner and immediately felt the air sour when they appeared. Out of place with too much money for somewhere like this. The barkeep tried to talk to them but was crushed into silenced by an empowered glare from Diana. Attempts to find weak points to attack only soured things and earned glares from a stern-faced old man proudly wearing a MAGA hat. They moved on, trying the pawn shop instead and found Diana’s planned patter getting called bullshit by the brutish man behind the counter.

The barber was the only one to listen to Diana’s proposal. A young man with a perfectly trimmed beard who was interested in the idea of selling so that he could set up shop somewhere with more money than the Row. That would have been enough to count as a good start if Diana’s inhuman senses had not seen something other to the man, a hint of sanguine chains about his neck and the copper tang of blood on his breath. What was happening in the Row?

People Appearing

• Jane Barrows – Encountered strange experiences and people in Harton.
• Diana Graves – Explored new opportunities in Presidents Row for Ormwood Development.
• Peter Grey (First appearance) – Genial older man met in Moth Park. Concerned by Jane’s reaction to something he could not see.
• Nicole Morgan (First Appearance) – Eerie bookstore owner. Encountered by Jane by chance when she stumbled into the White Raven, told Jane and Diana something of themselves.
• Megan Roth – Formalised the Presidents Row contract with Condor and was squashed under Diana’s Hunger.
• Joe Halligan (First appearance) – Owner of Halligans bar in Presidents Row, shocked into silence by Diana in an effort to force a sale later.
• Jayden Green (First appearance) – Employee of 5 Circle Couriers, resisted having a wedge driven between himself and his boss by Diana and Jane.
• Tom Paulsen (First appearance) – Pawnbroker in Presidents Row. Talked big, made implied threats and called Diana a bullshit artist.
• Emanuel Farelli (First appearance) – Barber in Presidents Row. Pleasant fellow, ameanable to selling to expand business.

Locations

• Moth Park – worn-down inner city park dominated by an immense sycamore, where Jane saw afterimages of a woman hunted and met Peter Gray.
• White Raven – independent book shop in Harton, large selection of classics, academia and “esoterica”.
• Garcia’s – hipsterish sandwich house in Harton.
• Presidents Row
  • Halligans – dingy corner bar
  • Paulsen Loans – study-built pawn shop.
  • Farelli’s – family barber shop.

Chapter 2 of Beneath Cold Boughs

< – Things Fall Apart | Down Among the Worms ->

The End of an Era

Four weeks have passed since the incident with the tree and Willowgate Arcade is experiencing a final hurrah before closing. Most of the stores within running closing down sales to allow them to make as much as they can before they have to leave businesses that have been their only livelihoods. A notable exception is Mayfair Tobacco, which closed several weeks ago when Morris Mayfair had a sudden change of heart about selling up, took Diana’s offer and thus forced the rest of the Arcade to sell for a pittance or risk losing everything. His name is mud, but a quarter million dollars in the bank assuaged the guilt. Among the bargain hunters, gawkers and occasional tourists are people who came back to see the Arcade for one last time before it is demolished. They spend much of the day sitting about the atrium under the stone tree, chatting among themselves, trading stories of the old days and sipping expensive Pequods coffees.

That evening the 18th floor penthouse of the Alabaster Building plays host to another party celebrating the arcade – a celebration by Ormwood Development upper management of the largest hurdle to completion of Phase One removed, on time and under budget. Diana is the toast of the occasion for her excellent work, praised before the assembled VPs by the president of Ormwood Development himself. Her new perceptions easily sense the greed and lust that drive him, enabling her to charm him with ease. More worryingly she also senses a faint ethereal thread descending from the sky, Coleman dancing like a puppet to its every movement.

As the evening draws on, Diana is finally able to make time for Melanie Roth, who congratulates her and makes an offer of further work for Condor both through gritted teeth. A minor matter, site management for a location in east Ormwood intended for Phase 2, and if others in the location were to decide to sell up then there would be bonuses. They arrange to do lunch to discuss things before escaping each others’ company. Diana is partway through a bland conversation with an equally bland VP when things begin to go wrong.

Unexpected Visitors

It begins with the hedgerows in the roof garden, neatly groomed and equisitely kept borders begin to grow wild and tangled as roses grow toothsome and wail. Confusion spreads through the party, followed by unease and then fear as a gaunt and alien figure steps from behind one of the hedges with a razor-edged sickle in one hand. Coleman’s security hurry him out and the room follows suit as they realise something very wrong is happening. Jane has arrived, unannounced and unintentionally, and the party is very much over.

Elsewhere, that evening, Morris is directing some of his new employees to put the finishing touches to his gym. It was Big Jimmy’s idea, really more of a suggestion between friends, that he should use the money from selling up to open a gym. Hire someone else to manage day to day and Morris doesn’t have to do anything except get in the ring when he wants to. A lot of Jimmy’s guys are planning to sign up, many of them more than once and even those not planning to use the facilities. Jimmy takes a cut off the top, Morris keeps the rest and both turn a tidy profit. It’s nearly the end of the day when there’s a knock at the door, a wiry looking student asks if he does lessons. Morris takes a look at her, something in him stirs – she smells of adrenaline and moonlit nights, of family – and he figures she can get a free lesson today and maybe more. She says her name’s Krystal and doesn’t need to say more. The way she carries herself, the need to fight to defend herself and the bandages under long sleeves all say enough. “They had a dog” is about all she says, and knows he knows the rest.

Questions and Answers

Later on, as he’s mulling things over, Diana calls after the unscheduled end of the party. The three of them need to meet to discuss things, set some ground rules and not cause any more problems. To the Arcade, the basement calls to them all and demolition doesn’t start until tomorrow. Except when they get there, the place is lit up with halogens, a flatbed sits outside waiting for something big and the sound of cutting stone is audible from the street. They spot Hank among the work crew and ask what’s going on. There’s a work order to remove the tree tonight and ship it to a warehouse in the east of the city, all signed off and correct with an offer of triple time overtime.

Diana tells Morris about Jane’s stunt once they are somewhere secluded, an alleyway has to do when the basement is gone. He is less concerned with her worries about what happened, says wierd stuff happens all the times and it will be written off as a conspiracy or fake news or a movie and that’s exactly what the comments on the video say. That doesn’t placate Diana but before she can properly answer her phone rings. It’s Mel, finally replying to four weeks of missed calls and texts. They meet her in Sebastian Park and find her quiet, subdued and smoking, all of which are new. She apologies for being incommunicado, there were apparently things that had to be done after the incident with the tree, and now her master wants to meet the three of them.

Mel drives the three outside the city, up onto the hills to an abandoned school or college where they meet Suleiman for the first time. A quietly intense man, he wishes to know what the three saw when they encountered the Tree and offers to trade information for information. In exchange for their descriptions of the dreams and the beach, he gives them several warnings – that the world is home to many strange beings, most of whom try to keep their existences secret for various reasons and may be upset if approached the wrong way, and that they should beware vampires for they are real, territorial and the city is rife with them. He also expressed an interest in Ormwood Development and Willowgate, suggesting he would be willing to trade knowledge for knowledge if the three happened to come across such things.

People Encountered

• Alan Coleman (First Appearance) – President of Ormwood Development. Present at Ormwood Development cocktail party to celebrate completion of Willowgate Arcade purchasing.
• Megan Roth – Ormwood Development VP, Present at Ormwood Development cocktail party to celebrate completion of Willowgate Arcade purchasing.
• Krystal Garner (First Appearance) – Sought boxing lessons for self-defence at Morris’ gym.
• Hank Torres – leading the work crew removing the tree from Willowgate.
• Mel – finally answered Diana’s calls, brought the three to meet Suleiman.
• Suleiman (First Appearance) – Mage, Mel’s teacher. Wished to know more about the three, warned them about some dangers of the world, talked about souls.

Locations

• Willowgate Arcade
• Alabaster Tower, 18th floor penthouse – location of Ormwood Development soirée gatecrashed by Jane.
• Sebastian Park – small inner city park in west Ormwood.
• Abandoned college on the edge of Blackmouth – location where Mel brought the three to meet Suleiman.

Chapter 1 of Beneath Cold Boughs

– | In Bloom ->

Knowest thou how to cut? Knowest thou how to rule?
Knowest thou how to win? Knowest thou how to tempt?
Knowest thou how to ask? Knowest thou how to bleed?
Knowest thou how to kill? Knowest thou how to sacrifice?

The words of the tree

The Dead Man and the Tree

It began with the dead man found by the great stone tree that forms the centerpiece of Willowgate Arcade. Shocking to encounter and sad to consider that someone was forced to break into the Arcade to find some shelter from the autumn cold, but a sad fact of life in a city such as Blackmouth. No-one even knew his name. Some put flowers at the base of the tree in memoriam but life moved on, but not for all. Three of those who found the body – Morris Mayfair, brusque tobacconist and man’s man, Jane Barrows, hurrying to open her parents’ convenience store before class, and Diana Graves, present in the Arcade see it torn it down – remember something differently: that the man was found hung from the branches of the stone tree by chains of wrought iron, that it had taken three people and a pair of bolt cutters to bring him down, and that his lips had moved soundlessly when they found him, spelling out alien words without the breath to voice them.

Things began to fall apart then. First came the dreams. All three had often suffered through troubled nights, dreaming of old fears and sins buried but not forgotten, but now they came with renewed intensity and interspersed with images of the hanged man and the tree. Diana suffered the worst of it, unable to sleep because of the stink of rot that permeated the home she had made of her office in the Arcade. She turned to nocturnal exploration of the Arcade to find and stop the stench, found the building had more structure than the plans she had and irritations grew into obsessions.

Then the visits began. First were the Save Old Ormwood protestors who assiduously avoided doing anything that could have allowed Diana to have them removed, their leader Layla Spenser chatting pleasantly with the Blackmouth PD patrol officers who came by when Diana tried to have them ejected. Then came the nocturnal visitor, a young woman who was fascinated by the tree and equally so by Diana. She introduced herself as Mel and offered help investigating and resolving the strange happenings, yet avoided giving any details.

Beneath the Roots

Problems began to spin out of control. Voiceless whispers echoed in the central atrium of the arcade in the quiet hours. Diana felt herself being watched even when alone. Layla Spenser returned, this time with cryptic warnings and a plea for Diana not to go ahead with plans to demolish the Arcade. Research uncovered a dark history to Ormwood and the Willoughby family, and investigations revealed the presence of a basement not on the current plans, sealed up 30 years prior, and Diana became obsessed with unsealing it. All while trying to charm, cajole or strongarm the remaining businesses into selling up, and being defeated at every turn by Morris.

The basement was opened with a yawning silence and Diana quickly descended into it, volunteering Hank to come with a light to cut through the gloom. Beneath the arcade lay a tangled maze of access corridors and the remnants of heating ducts, many of their pipes torn out and repurposed into an attempt at a circle that filled the room that lay beneath the atrium. Rusting remnants to one side showed it had been a boiler room but now it was dominated by a complex branching network of stone roots, as if the carved tree above had grown down into the void below. The broken pipes had been formed into circle of copper and lead about the outer edge of where the roots grew, while the air was thick with darkness and a susurrus of voices whispering unknown words. Jane quickly began recording them, having followed Diana into the darkness with Morris, before things went wrong. Unnoticed by anyone, Hank had begun mouthing the words, eyes staring at the tree as he began trying to carve open his wrists with the edge of a chisel. Morris’s quick actions stopped him from doing so and retreat from the darkness was decided to be wise.

Truths and more mysteries were revealed in quick succession. Mel returned, bringing a friend and was horrified at what had happened and what lay beneath the Arcade. She spoke of abysses and verges, of ley lines and of the complex but amateurish binding that was woven around the tree, and of magic. Her friend Carmine called the three sleepwalkers because he could not find a better term for them. The tree was unknown but obviously dangerous, and it was calling to the three of them, Diana in particular. The words the whispers had spoken were Old Norse and had been the same ones the hanged man had tried to speak with his last, breathless moments.

Into Nightmares

Mel and Carmine advised caution with the unknown, that they would seek further information before any rash actions were taken, but a moment of madness threw such caution to the wind. Diana knew the tree was offering something and almost paid its price for it before hestating at the last moment, at which point Morris saw a chance to be rid of the meddlesome realtor and offered her to the tree. Jane found herself pointing a gun at a man who was almost family and as ambition, betrayal and disgust filled the air the world fell away into frozen moment, then darkness and nothing more.

Each of the three found themselves lost deep in their nightmares – Diana in the burning tenement, Morris drowing in the mire and Jane lost in the screaming, thorn-filled garden. Unlike before, these nightmares did not end and instead repeated in lucid eternities of torment, while they could feel others caught in that eternal moment and suffering with them. After a timeless age, each turned from their personal pain to the others lost with them and in doing so they faced their nightmares. They saw that they were mirrors without a reflection, as hollow and incomplete as they were, wishing to be whole. In that moment of completeness and of reaching out to others, the three awoke but not to the world they knew.

The three awoke on a broad beach of black sand beneath alien stars, while far out to sea something resembled the tree was slowly sinking into the still, black sea. It must have been immense for it seemed to be descending achingly slowly, almost as if the sea is savouring the consumption of the fallen thing. The beach itself was calmingly still, blown only by a gentle sea breeze that carried scents of forgotten days until the wind shifted and a familiar scent of stone and smoke, the smell of city, blew over the three from a yawning cave mouth set back from the sea. Confused and disorientated, they walked to the cave and stepped through as they felt something call to them.

Awareness of the world returned and they found themselves back in the basement of the Arcade, confused and yet at peace. The thing in the tree was gone, the basement was silent and nothing would be the same.

---

People Encountered

• Hank Torres (First appearance) – head of Ormwood Development work crew.
• Fred Spears (First appearance) – Custodian of Willowgate Arcade, has no fucks left to give.
• Layla Spenser (First appearance) – leading Save Old Ormwood protest, knew things about the Tree.
• Daniel Matthews (First appearance) – PI hired by Morris to investigate Diana.
• Mel (First appearance) – Encountered by Diana when poking around the Tree.
• Carmine (First appearance) – Contact of Mel’s, asked by her to help.

Locations

• Willowgate Arcade (First appearance) – 19th century shopping arcade targetted for demolition, noted for the unusual stone tree decorating its central concourse.