The Curse of Deadman's Forest

by Victoria Laurie

  Once the Polish girl was resting peacefully under the leaves of the tree, he peered over the side of the bridge and saw that Theo was struggling with Carl, trying to coax him into the basket. Ian debated going down the ladder to help her, but that would require another arduous climb up, and he knew he didn’t posses the strength. He settled for watching anxiously while Theo patiently half helped, half persuaded Carl into the wicker basket. The moment he was inside, Ian got to the hoist and began to pull and push on the crank.

  The progress was painfully slow, even slower than it had been with Eva, and Ian quickly ran out of strength. Luckily, the hoist locked itself on the upward rotation, so after several turns, he was able to stop and lean over the crank to catch his wind. He felt a hand on his back as he was ready to try again, and he jumped only to realize that Theo had come up the ladder and was now standing next to him. “Might I lend a hand?”

  Ian gave her a small smile. “Of course.” Together they eased Carl up to the top, and Ian tipped the basket the way he had with Eva. Carl managed to crawl out of the cramped space on his own, and he stared up at them with such sadness that Theo kneeled down and asked him what was wrong.

  “I’m not going to make it,” he told her.

  Ian stared at him, his heart sinking as he took in Carl’s desperately pale complexion. “Don’t talk like that,” he said firmly.

  But Carl shook his head. “I’m really sick, Ian,” he said, shivering in the cold, wet rain, his blue lips quivering against his chattering teeth. “I don’t think I’m likely to last through the night, mate.”

  Theo looked gravely at Ian, and he noticed with a pang that her hand was wrapped tightly around her crystal. “Let’s get you to some shelter,” she said to Carl, fighting back her tears. “We’ll need to see to Eva as well.”

  While Theo helped Carl along the bridge, Ian struggled to carry Eva’s limp form. It had been easier when she was still conscious and somewhat rigid. He found that he had to stop every other step just to prevent her from falling through his arms.

  They eventually reached the first small house, built right into the cradle of branches, which supported it and that section of the bridge. Ian set Eva down gently and knocked on the door. There was no response, so he tried the handle. It turned easily and the door opened with a loud creak. “Hello?” he called into the dark interior.

  No one replied.

  “Let’s go in,” Theo said, trying her best to support Carl’s weight. Ian wriggled the knapsack off his back and fished around for his torch. He clicked it on and shone the beam around the interior.

  The small tree house was one room, much like the cottage where Eva and her grandmother lived, but the interior was chock-full of so much clutter that it was hard to gauge its actual living space. Theo sighed impatiently behind Ian, and without waiting for his permission, she pushed forward, half dragging, half carrying Carl inside. She found a space on the floor and set him down, then looked up expectantly at Ian. “You coming in?” she asked.

  Ian couldn’t explain his trepidation; there was obviously no one home, if anyone lived there at all. All the things piled within the interior had clearly been there for quite some time, as they were coated with dust, and the place had that old, musty odor of being shut up for a long while without any fresh air. Still, he found that he was unsettled by the idea of trespassing. Then again, all he had to do was look down at Eva and he knew he had little choice.

  He bent low and lifted her one last time, then carried her into the dry room and set her down next to Carl. Theo was already on her feet and moving about, inspecting their environment as she rummaged through a pile of odds and ends. “What are you doing?” he asked her in alarm. “Theo, what if the owners come back and see you going through their things?”

  Theo pulled out a large quilt with a look of triumph. “We’ll simply explain that our friends were in desperate need of their hospitality.” She then brought the quilt over to drape it across Carl and Eva and grabbed the torch out of Ian’s hand when something else caught her eye. After sifting through another pile, she retrieved an ancient-looking oil lamp which, by some miracle, still appeared to contain some oil. “Do you have any matches?”

  Ian went to his knapsack, brought it inside, and handed over a box of matches from one of the interior pockets. Theo lit the lamp and the whole room was illuminated. The pair of them stared about in wonderment.

  From floor to ceiling, and all around them, trinkets, toys, and knickknacks gleamed in the lamplight. Ian had never seen such an assortment and was at a loss as to why anyone would posses so much clutter.

  “Have you ever seen anything like it?” he asked her.

  “Only the professor’s house can compare,” she replied, and Ian remembered what a pack rat Professor Nutley was. Yet even his hoard couldn’t match the assortment crowding the room.

  A tremendous thunderclap rattled the contents of the house and sent tremors along the walls. “The storm is getting worse,” Theo whispered nervously.

  Ian looked at Eva and Carl. They might be out of the rain, but they certainly weren’t out of danger. “We need to find them some help,” he said. “Perhaps I can go fetch Eva’s grandmother.”

  As if in answer, the dark atmosphere outside lit up for a split second and a terrible boom resounded off all four walls. The wind had picked up, and the floor swayed and creaked. It felt like being within the hull of a ship crossing a rocky sea. “You can’t go out in this,” Theo advised. “And we’ll never get Eva’s frail grandmother all the way through the woods and up here.”

  “Then what should we do?” Ian asked, exasperated by the many obstacles and few options.

  “We must find the Healer.”

  Ian’s eyebrows rose. “The Healer?” he repeated. “How are we ever going to locate the Healer in all this muck?”

  “She’s close by, Ian,” Theo said, and her eyes held that faraway look that told him she could sense the Healer’s presence.

  There was another flash, and a horrendously loud clap of thunder drowned out all noise for several seconds. When it cleared, he said, “Yes, but how are we going to discover where the Healer is exactly, Theo?”

  “Leave it to me,” Theo told him. “I can sense that the Healer is near, so I know I could bring her back if I had to.”

  Ian wanted to laugh. If Theo thought he was going to let her out of his sight again, she was sorely mistaken. “You’ll do no such thing!” he yelled over yet another boom from the sky. “What if the Germans came back and found you again? They’d kill you for certain.”

  “We can’t just stay here and do nothing, Ian!” Theo yelled in return. “If we don’t get help for Eva and Carl, they’ll die! And we can’t both go. One of us has to stay here and watch over them, and since I’m the only one with the means to find the Healer, I should go!”

  Ian ground his teeth in frustration. And then he had an idea. He quickly pulled out the sundial, which he’d tucked into his trouser pocket, and held it up to the lamp. “Sundial,” he said, his voice quivering with excitement, “point the way to the one who can heal our friends—the Healer from Laodamia’s prophecy.”

  For two heartbeats nothing happened, but then a dark shadow formed along the face of the sundial, and in another heartbeat, a second, more opaque shadow formed as well.

  Theo peered down at the face of the relic. “Two Healers?” she gasped.

  Ian stared down in surprise. “I suppose there are,” he said. “One seems to be close by,” he added, indicating the thicker, darker shadow, which was pointing directly behind him. The fainter one pointed off to the side. Ian looked up, his eyes passing over Carl and Eva to the far wall. “The other Healer must be located beyond the forest.”

  “But which one is correct?” Theo asked, clearly troubled.

  “Both,” Ian said simply. “Or either.”

  Theo stared down at the surface of the sundial, her hand toying with the crystal about her neck. “Very well,” she sighed reluctantly. “You go i
n search of the Healer while I stay with Carl and Eva. But at least wait a bit to see if the storm clears, all right?”

  Ian agreed, reasoning that he couldn’t very well see the shadow on the dial in this gloom, and the rain was coming down so hard that if he attempted to use the torch, it would surely get wet and quickly become useless. “With a little luck, this tempest will sort itself out in a bit,” he assured her.

  As it happened, luck was not at all on their side. The terrible rainstorm that had soaked them to the skin continued to rage for hours. Heavy droplets pelted their small shelter, and the tree that it was held in was whipped by the wind so hard that both Ian and Theo found themselves shielding Carl and Eva from clutter shaken loose from the piles all around them.

  They managed to clean and re-dress Eva’s wounds with fresh bandages and rainwater that Ian collected in a tin pot he found in the house, but Carl’s fever continued to rage and soon he was hallucinating. When thunder reverberated across the sky, Carl shouted at Ian, “You have to get to safety! They’re bombing us!”

  Ian laid a wet cloth across his friend’s forehead and attempted to calm him, but Carl was convinced they were under attack. Clutching Ian’s shirt, he begged him to see Theo to safety. “I’m trapped,” he said to Ian. “There’s a boulder on my legs, mate! I’m stuck here, but you and Theo can still get away! Save yourselves!”

  Ian couldn’t help glancing down at Carl’s legs, which were rigid, his knees locked. Curiously, Ian tapped on Carl’s shin. “Do you feel that, Carl?” he asked. Carl lay on the ground and shook his head. “There’s no pain,” he said. “The boulder’s cut off my circulation. Save yourself, Ian! Save yourself!”

  Ian’s eyes met Theo’s, which he noticed were filled with tears. “He can’t feel them,” she whispered.

  To make matters worse, Carl began to cough again, the sound deep and wet, and it wasn’t long before he stopped his ranting and his breathing became a continuous gurgle. Ian could clearly hear the moisture rattling about in Carl’s chest.

  Finally, several hours into their vigil, when the owner of the tree house had not come back and Carl’s breathing had become more and more challenged, Ian knew he had to go. “I’ve got to find help,” Ian said. “He might not last much longer if I don’t.”

  The patter of rain still sounded against the roof of their shelter, but Ian went to the door and opened it. Night had fallen. He’d lost track of time long before. Outside, the tempest still raged, and wind heaved the small house to and fro, and still there was no sign of the owner. Ian wondered if perhaps whoever had built the structure had done so only for recreation, or to provide extra storage space for their many collectables. Perhaps no one lived in the house up in the trees but only visited every now and again. He decided that if that was the case, they certainly wouldn’t come round in this kind of a storm.

  Ian pointed the beam of his torch at the bridge just outside. It bucked and swayed in the storm and he found it rather miraculous that it still held together. Tentatively, he stepped onto the wooden platform, and no sooner had he done that than a gust of wind sent him sprawling. In a panic, Ian grabbed for something to hold on to, felt the rough bark of a branch in his fingers, and gripped it tightly. But in the next second, there was a snap, and he was sent sprawling again.

  His chest hit the wooden planks and the wind was knocked right out of him. He struggled to find something to grip, and the torch he was holding flew out of his hands and was lost. At the same time he felt his legs tumble over the side of the bridge, and knew he was about to fall to the earth some twenty feet below.

  In that instant a hand gripped his shoulder so roughly that he yelped in pain, but he was pulled back before he slipped away over the side and then the hand holding him let go. Rain pelted him from all angles and the wind howled mightily. From inside the tree house, Theo called his name, and while he scrambled back to the center of the platform, he couldn’t for the life of him figure out who had prevented his fall. It didn’t look like anyone was on the bridge aside from him.

  He wasted no time pondering it, however, as he gripped the wooden planks until he’d caught his breath, then scuttled on hands and knees back into the house.

  “What happened out there?” Theo asked him. “I heard you cry out.”

  “The wind knocked me nearly over the edge,” he admitted, wiping the rain from his brow. “And I lost my torch.”

  Theo looked terribly worried. “We’ve no choice, then,” she said softly. “We’ll have to wait until morning to look for the Healer.”

  The storm broke an hour before dawn. Ian and Theo took turns watching over Carl and Eva, and to their great dismay, both patients appeared to be getting worse.

  Carl’s breathing was labored and wet, and he was no longer conscious. His fever continued to rage even though he shivered underneath the quilt they’d covered him with.

  Eva became paler by the hour, and when Ian felt her pulse, he could tell it was growing fainter. They had to continually change her bandage, and the wound was beginning to appear mean and infected.

  To make matters worse, the pain in Ian’s arm had not subsided even though he was taking care to rest it. In fact, it was beginning to worsen, and he could see that a fair amount of swelling had returned to his hand.

  He remembered the voice from the first night he’d spent in Eva’s cottage saying that the venom still coursed through him and would come back with a vengeance within a day or two.

  Impatient to get them all the help they desperately needed, Ian got up and went to the door. Pulling it open, he looked outside. “It’ll be light soon,” he said. “And I’ll be able to look for the Healer then. She’ll fix them. You’ll see, Theo. She’ll help us.”

  Theo sat and stroked Eva’s hair but said nothing, which Ian found most distressing of all.

  Finally, the first gray threads of dawn broke through the darkness. Ian stepped carefully onto the platform, noting that the rain had finally subsided, although the morning was still gloomy and overcast. Holding the sundial up, he was dismayed to find it still too dark to see the shadow, and cursed himself for his folly in losing the torch.

  “What have you there?” asked a craggy, weathered voice right next to him.

  Ian jerked with a cry of surprise. He whirled around and stared into a face so ancient and wrinkled that it was hard to detect if he was looking at someone human.

  “Who are you?” he gasped when he found his voice again.

  The ancient one’s cheeks seemed to move a bit and a hoarse-sounding laugh gurgled out of her. “Has no one taught you simple manners, lad?”

  Ian blinked, realizing he had just been quite rude. “I’m terribly sorry,” he said quickly. “It’s just … you startled me.”

  The old crone nodded, and then she peered down at the sundial in his hand. “What trinket have you brought to me?”

  Ian stared down at his palm and quickly closed his hand over the dial. “Sorry,” he said again. “This isn’t for you.”

  The old crone’s eyes moved back up to stare quizzically at Ian. “No?” she said, and he shook his head. “Ah, but I thought you had come here looking for a Healer.”

  Ian’s jaw fell open. “You’re the Healer?” he whispered. And then snatches of memory came back to him. He remembered the first night he’d spent at Eva’s cottage and the weathered old voice that had hovered over him as its owner made him better.

  “I am,” she confirmed. “But I heal no one without payment, lad.”

  Ian realized she wanted the dial, but he wasn’t sure he could part with it. “My friends are very sick,” he explained. “We had money, but the Germans took it from us. I know how to get more, though,” he added. “And if you’ll just come back with us to the keep where I live, we can pay you a handsome reward!”

  The crone tilted her chin and laughed merrily. “What use have I for paper money?” she asked him. “No, paper is paper. It holds no value to me. I delight in things, objects, trinkets and such. Pay me in that a
nd we shall see to your healing.”

  Ian looked back at the sundial in his hand. He considered what else he had to offer the crone, and he knew there were very few choices and only one other thing she might accept. Finally, he decided that he had no choice. He had to get medical attention to Carl and Eva or they would die. It was an easy decision in the end.

  Ian opened his palm and offered up the sundial, noticing that there was now just enough light to see the two shadows on its surface, and one indeed was pointing straight at the ancient crone. “This is a magical dial,” he told her. “It works much like a compass. If you ask it to find something you’re looking for, it will point the way.”

  The crone reached out with greedy fingers to take the relic, but Ian closed his hand around it before she could claim it. “Will you take this dial as payment for your services?” he asked carefully.

  She nodded eagerly. “Yes, yes,” she said. “I will consider the debt paid in full.”

  Ian opened his fingers and stared down one last time at Laodamia’s gift. He felt a wave of sadness at having to part with something so special and useful, but he reasoned that he would much rather have Carl well again than a thousand magical objects.

  He handed over the relic and the crone snatched it quickly out of his palm; then she did something quite curious. She reached forward and placed her other hand on his injured arm, and Ian was so caught off guard that he simply stood there for a moment, wondering if she might be trying to steady herself. But in the next instant, a cooling sensation traveled from her hand all the way down to his throbbing fingertips. And what was more, the fatigue and weakness he’d been struggling against seemed to flow right out of him. He closed his eyes as these feelings intensified, and he relished in the rejuvenation coursing through him. Ian felt light as a feather and electrified with energy.