Devil Forest

by Jack Lewis

  I nodded. “Yup. I’ll fish them out.”

  As I walked toward the door, someone knocked on it.

  Three knocks, each one sending a shudder through me. I really hated the sound of knuckles on wood.

  “Who could that be?” I said.

  Jeremiah shrugged. “I’ll have a look through the peephole.”

  He leaned toward the peephole on the door. As he did, I heard him gasp.

  Then, before I could react, I noticed something in the room, on the wall to my right.

  -14 – Felicity-

  Felicity hated driving. It was a real pain in the arse. The problem was that she couldn’t give it up because people would assume it was because of her age. Most of the things that she did wrong, or any bad things that happened to her, were put down to her age now.

  She could see it in people’s eyes. That knowing look, that she’s getting grey behind the ears expression. If someone in their twenties forgot a name for a second, people wouldn’t even think twice. If Felicity did, they’d assume it was the onset of dementia or at the very least a sign that her brain was starting to rust.

  Still, if someone actually said that to her, she’d grab Victor from the wall in her living room and load a bolt on him and ask that they take it back.

  That was why she drove from her house earlier that morning, rather than booking a cab. She loaded a rucksack into her boot, and she put Victor, her crossbow, in next, and put a dozen bolts next to him. After pulling out of her neighbourhood quietly since it was still early, she waited until she hit the motorway before putting the White Stripes on full blast.

  After parking her car at the station and paying for the weekend, she caught the five to five train that ran from Esleden to Yuelside Caves. As it pulled out of the station, Felicity settled into her seat, put on the headphones her grandson had bought her, and let the music lull her to sleep.

  Not long afterwards, crippling pain flared in her hand.

  She’d had it on the arm rest, and some bulky oaf had swung his rucksack straight into it. She heard him saying sorry to her, but Felicity was just trying to stomach the pain without crying out.

  It was the story of her life these days. First it was the tendons in her arm, then her finger joints. Her body was falling apart bit by bit, and a day with only a slight amount of pain was rare.

  And today had been a rare day, until now.

  She prepared a furious tongue lashing in her mind and then, ready to unleash it, she faced the man. Her stomach clenched. No, it couldn’t be.

  It was Jeremiah Lasbeck. How long was it since they had seen each other? Thirty years? He’d been at university, and she’d been with the Effigia for a decade already.

  This could get ugly if he recognized her. She wished that Victor wasn’t stowed away in his special case. Not that she’d have shot a man with a crossbow while on a train, but Victor made her feel safe.

  But no. She wouldn’t need him today. When Jeremiah spoke to her, it wasn’t with words of recognition.

  “Sorry, love. Are you alright? I have painkillers in my bag if you want? I have some muscle heat rub, too, but it’d stink the whole carriage out.”

  Seeing him, she had so many questions. It would have been so tempting to announce herself to him. Tempting, but stupid.

  Although the pain sent throbs through her hand, she pushed it back. “You should be more careful,” she told him. “You fat oaf.”

  He arched his eyebrow and then laughed. “Suit yourself. Wish I’d known Queen Victoria’s nursemaid was catching the train today.”

  Queen Victoria’s nursemaid.

  Funny that Jeremiah called her that now. But when he was eighteen, he hadn’t been able to take his eyes off her. If she’d ever decided to give him more than a passing glance, he’d have leapt on her.

  Now, she was an old crone. Time had a way of slipping through your fingers like sand, but when you tried to grab it, you let even more sand slip through.

  When Jeremiah turned away from her, she was glad. Hopefully he’d go into the next carriage, and then she…

  No. He was sitting in the seat across from her. Great.

  It wasn’t that she was scared of him. After the night at Lester’s house all those years ago, he’d seemed more scared than any of them had. At first, anyway.

  Fear didn’t make her cast wary glances at Jeremiah now as he shuffled papers in front of him, peering at them closely. It was more the idea that coincidence didn’t exist. Or if it did, it avoided Jeremiah Lasbeck.

  It wasn’t just an accident that rumors had spread about them finding one of the wells in Blaketree, and then she had found herself on the same train as Jeremiah.

  He wanted the same thing as she did. She was sure of it.

  She closed her eyes. The music from her headphones became background noise as she tossed the problem around in her head.

  She must have fallen asleep, because when she woke up she saw a pretty redhead sitting with Jeremiah. Where Jeremiah’s hair was the same color as a pumpkin, hers was a flaring red, obviously a dye job but still enough to make someone look twice.

  His daughter, maybe? He was old enough to have an adult daughter.

  Then again, his personality was enough to drive away any would-be romantic partners. Besides, Jeremiah had always been more interested in studying and things like that.

  This posed a double problem for Felicity. She was sure now that Jeremiah was headed to Blaketree, and that he was headed there for the same reason as her.

  Luckily, things were already in place. Eric would get to the well after the Window of Solitude, and he’d make sure to keep in sync with the rest of the Effigia at all the other wells.

  Felicity just had to keep Jeremiah away long enough to let Eric work.

  By the time the taxi turned off the road and passed the Welcome to Blaketree sign a couple of hours later, she hoped she’d thrown Jeremiah off-course enough that Eric had finished.

  It was easy enough to do. All she had to do was hint that she hadn’t bumped into him on the train by chance. That she knew he was getting on this train, and she’d caught the same one so she could speak with him.

  “You really don’t remember me, do you?” she said.

  He looked at her like she was an insect specimen he had to catalogue. She could almost hear the pages of his memory turning. “Can’t say I do.”

  Felicity rolled her sleeves to show him the Effigia tattoo on her wrist. “Do you still have yours?” she asked.

  Jeremiah rubbed his sleeve, but didn’t show any skin. “So you’re with them,” he said.

  It was working. She could see the flinch of anger in him. They’d already missed the Blaketree station, now it was a matter of how long she could keep him on the train. The longer she kept Jeremiah out of Blaketree, the more time Eric had to work undisturbed.

  “I’m not with them, as such,” she said. “I haven’t been to a meeting in years. I’m more of a consultant now. You know how it is; they need young blood.”

  “Literally. I guess getting naked and rolling around in blood is less appealing when your tits start to sag.”

  She felt a shock of blood rush to her cheeks and she almost unleashed a volley of verbal fire back at him, when she realized what he was trying to do. It was the same thing he always did, even back then.

  She remembered that when he was eighteen and he first joined the ghost hunting front of the Effigia, Jeremiah was shy. He didn’t act it, but he was. He used rudeness to push people away if they wanted to get to know him.

  Even years later when he joined the second echelon, after his invitation to Lester’s house, getting naked with the rest of them, learning their rituals. Even that hadn’t been enough to make him open up. If a naked occult ritual doesn’t get you talking, nothing will.

  Luckily, Felicity knew how to deal with him. Over the years she spent in the Effigia, she learned how to deal with people like him. Misogyny even ran deep in occult groups where the female form was seen as part of t
he gateway to another realm.

  “I would say that coincidence put us on the same train, but neither of us believe in that, do we? I suppose I should be honest with you.”

  This was the tricky part. Would he believe her?

  “This should be good,” said Jeremiah. “Let’s hear it.”

  “I wanted to talk to you about Lockpit. About the ritual.”

  He flinched. She could tell he’d almost lashed out and shoved her, but he kept his control at the last second. His cheeks were cherry red now.

  “You don’t know what you’re getting into.”

  “I do, Jeremiah. I was there. I might have missed the ritual, but I saw the aftermath.”

  The train pulled into another station now. She just needed it to leave this one, and then she could end their conversation. That’d put Jeremiah far enough away from Blaketree that Eric would be done by the time he got back.

  “I’ve got feck all to say about Lockpit, the Effigia, or anything like that. If you’ve got the early train just to meet with me, then you’ve wasted some precious hours of beauty sleep that you definitely need.”

  She actually smiled at his insult now. She was getting to him. And the train doors had slammed shut and it was pulling away from the station. She’d done it.

  If Jeremiah had tried to push by her back in Blaketree, or if he’d refused to talk to her, she was going to use Lockpit as a way to blackmail him. She’d have come clean about what the Effigia wanted from Blaketree, and she’d warn Jeremiah to stay away, or secrets would spill out.

  Never mind that doing that would ruin thirteen lives, including her own. It was just a threat, and if threats were scary enough, they didn’t need to withstand a logic test.

  But she hadn’t needed to do that. They were two train stations away from Blaketree now.

  “Have it your way,” she told Jeremiah, and she went to leave the carriage so she could take a seat in the next one. As she reached the door, he spoke to her.

  “Felicity.”

  She smiled. “So you do remember me, then?”

  “The girl I was with. Leave her out of whatever this is, eh? She’s had nothing to do with any of it. She’s a good lass, and doesn’t need to get wrapped up in any of this shit.”

  “You’re getting soft, Jeremiah,” she said, and pushed the open button and walked into the next carriage.

  Now, she was in Blaketree, standing in the village centre. It was the kind of place she and Gerard had talked about retiring to. They hadn’t named this exact village, but something like it. Country pubs, lots of green pasture and woodland, the kind of place where things moved at a slug’s speed. The fewer trappings of modern life, the better.

  Visiting a place like this alone, she couldn’t think of anything worse than living here. All the plans she’d made with Gerard had taken on a sour taste now that he was gone.

  She took out her mobile phone. She dialled Eric’s number, and the phone only rang for a minute before it cut out completely. She tried again, getting the same thing.

  “You won’t get a signal out ‘ere,” said a man wearing a shirt with the sleeves rolled up, despite it being November. “You’ll have to drive out to Follop or Baslebrook.”

  At first, hearing this made her grip her mobile phone hard enough that it might smash. This would make getting in touch with Eric difficult.

  She’d learned long ago that anger was one of the most useless emotions a person could have, unless they were in a brutal fight for their life.

  Anger clouded the mind. It bent logic, it made thoughts less rational.

  Letting the logical side of her brain click into place, Felicity slung her rucksack back over her back, and she held Victor’s case in her right hand. Looking around for a second, she saw what she needed.

  The woods were east of the village, about five minutes' walk away. Eric might still be there.

  -15-

  As Jeremiah opened the bedroom door, I couldn’t stop looking at the wall decor. While most of the walls in the Slaughterman’s Inn were left in their bare stone state, the surface behind the bed had been made into a feature wall, plastered over and then covered in wallpaper.

  There was no accounting for taste, and the decoration wouldn’t have looked out of place in an old folk’s home, but it wasn’t the decorator’s taste that grabbed my attention.

  “Hello?” Jeremiah said.

  The door was fully open, and a woman was standing in the doorway. I had to double take when I saw her.

  She had long hair and a time-worn complexion. Her skin had either seen a lot of sun, a lot of stress, or she was a smoker. Maybe all three. But she had a welcoming smile, one I had seen earlier that morning before she had glanced at my laptop, seen a photograph of the boy on the screen, and then kicked me out of her café.

  “I see you’re not pointing at me now,” I said.

  She was still wearing her apron from the café. I wondered if she’d closed it, or if there was another staff member keeping things running.

  “You,” she said.

  “Yep, me.”

  “Jeremiah,” she said. “Can we talk alone?”

  It was hard to choose between two emotions; feeling insulted she wanted to talk without me there, and mad she’d kicked me out of her café and then took part in the Window of Solitude thing.

  She looked at Jeremiah. “Can I…”

  “Sure, love. Come on,” said Jeremiah, in as nice a voice as I’d heard from him. Why was he being so friendly to her? How did she know his name?

  He stepped aside, and the woman walked in. She touched my shoulder, but I moved away.

  It was only after I brushed her off that I realized it was too late. After I’d already acted like an ass to her, the truth hit me.

  This was Ashley’s mother. That was how she knew Jeremiah. That’s why he was so nice to her.

  “I’m sorry about what happened earlier. When I saw a picture of my boy on your laptop, I assumed you were a journalist or a tourist,” she said, looking at me.

  “A tourist?”

  “A grief tourist. A true crime busy-body. Some people, when they read about what happened, they come all the way out here. They visit places, like Ashley’s school, the woods, our house…”

  “Are you his mother?” I said, to make sure.

  She nodded. “I didn’t know you were with Jeremiah. I’m sorry.”

  Jeremiah shut the door. The room felt a little too small with all three of us in it. I wondered if we were technically violating the inn owner’s ninth rule of no large gatherings. It depended what counted as large in a place like this.

  “Sit down,” said Jeremiah, nodding at his bed.

  I could see now that her carefree manner was just for show, just for paying customers at the café. Shut away from all of that, she was more awkward. Her movements were slower, and her shoulders sagged like there was a weight on them. Her cheeriness had left her, as if she woke up with a set amount each day and she used it up pretending to be happy while she was serving customers.

  “Mind if I use your loo?” she said.

  “Go ahead,” said Jeremiah.

  As she locked herself in the ensuite, I looked at Jeremiah and tried to gauge how he was feeling. As ever, unless he was angry then it was impossible to guess.

  “How did she find us?” I said.

  “Maybe she saw me come back from the woods, and she could have followed us. Or she knew I was coming today, and there aren’t many places to stay in Blaketree. Just the Slaughterman’s Inn and a bed-and-breakfast across town.”

  “She kicked me out of her café earlier,” I said. “She saw me Googling her boy.”

  “She seems fragile. Better leave the talking to me.”

  “You must be joking.”

  A banging noise came from the bathroom. Then, it sounded like she was scraping something from the floor.

  “You okay?” said Jeremiah.

  “Sorry, out in a sec,” came the muffled reply.

  Jeremi
ah arched an eyebrow. “Strange.”

  I agreed, but I was also trying my best to give her some slack. Next to what had happened to her, anything in my life seemed tame. She might have kicked me out of the café but in her position I might have done the same. I was just a stranger to her; I couldn’t imagine how I’d feel to find a stranger poking around the internet looking for pictures of my missing son.

  Jeremiah leaned toward me. “Think she has a bad stomach?” he said.

  I shrugged. She’d been in the bathroom for a while now, but it seemed rude to say. “Some advice. Don’t comment on how long a woman spends in the bathroom.”

  “Another rule to add to the list. Who’d have thought I spent my entire life being socially inept, until I met you?”

  “Everyone who has ever come into contact with you. Oh–I wanted to show you something,” I said. I walked over to the bed and pointed at the wallpaper that had gotten my attention earlier. “What do you make of this?”

  Jeremiah sucked in his cheeks. “What about it?”

  “The eyes.”

  The wallpaper was minty-green and covered in drawings of birds. There were sparrows, tits, and crows. Dominating most of the wall space was a giant peacock. The bird spread its plumage wide, and on each of its wings there was a pattern of purple, shaped like an eye.

  That wouldn’t have been all that peculiar, except the eye on its right wing had been drawn on by pencil. The patch of wallpaper it covered - no bigger than two feet squared - differed slightly from the rest of the wallpaper.

  “Someone tore off the old wallpaper and then replaced it,” said Jeremiah.

  “Remember what the ferryman said? Follow the eye. Do you think that someone-”?

  The bathroom door opening interrupted me. Marion breezed out, holding her shoulders straight, and took long strides across the room. Her eyes were wide and sharp, and she was wringing her hands. There seemed to be a buzz about her now; while before she’d been lethargic, now she was manic.

  It was such a dramatic change that I felt suspicious. I’d been to university, and although I’d never been crazy about parties, it was difficult not to encounter drug use. Her locking herself away and then coming out and behaving so differently…