Occasionally a ray of faint light would pierce the dense gloom and the creaking branches would glimmer like bleached bones.

Drums with single blows merging into a volley, resembling a creaking branch.

Nothing but the wind rustling among some creaking branches.

Dark masses of leaves overhead swung fretfully to and fro, their creaking branches giving voice to their torment.

Alhana fell back, fearing that the hideously deformed tree above Lorac's grave might be reaching to grasp her in its creaking branches.

She lay in the shrubbery, cradled on her back by the creaking branches and surrounded by gently glowing leaves.

The darkness was endless, the trees mocked her, their creaking branches laughing horribly.

The fall of Mrs Thatcher seems to leave Britain's neo-conservative think-tanks out on the end of a creaking branch.

Feeling as if the massed ranks of houses had cast out both her and Sam, she grasped a creaking scaly branch to help her step over a fallen tree into the woods.