Devil Forest

by Jack Lewis

  As I watched them through the window, she raised her hand and slapped Jeremiah in the face. Surprised, I knocked on her front door.

  A few seconds later, the door flew open, and she was standing there, her face red, bags around her eyes, sleeves rolled up to reveal tattoos covering both her forearms.

  “I was wondering when you’d show up,” she said.

  -26-

  We were sitting in her living room. Jeremiah and I on the sofa, and his sister Nadine on the chair adjacent. Jeremiah had a bandage around his leg and a set of crutches next to his feet. His face sported a wicked red mark from Nadine’s slap. It was lucky he was big enough to take it; if she’d raised her hand at me, she’d have slapped me through the wall.

  “I’ll get you both a drink,” said Nadine. “Then we need to go out looking.”

  Jeremiah nodded.

  She stalked out of the room, leaving us alone.

  “What was that?” I said. “I saw her slap you.”

  “That’s the second one I’ve had from her,” said Jeremiah, rubbing his cheek. “I deserved it.”

  “What did you do?”

  “She gave me a slap for every decade I didn’t get in touch.”

  “You haven’t seen her in twenty years?”

  “Families drift apart sometimes. There’s no big drama to it; our lives just went separate ways. Maybe I could have reached out, but I didn’t.”

  It made me a little angry, honestly. Growing up in several foster homes, I would have loved a real family. Not that I didn’t appreciate the people who took me in, it was just that I wanted real brothers or sisters. Whenever I used to see siblings arguing at school or heard my friends talk about how much they hated their brothers, I’d already think how ungrateful they were.

  “So you didn’t speak to her for twenty years because you were too lazy to pick up the phone.”

  Jeremiah crossed his arms, a sign he was getting defensive. “There was bad blood, years ago when we still lived at home. You know how these things go – hateful words hurt more when they come from a place of love. An argument turned into a feud, a feud turned into us not speaking. I honestly don’t remember what started it now; just that we were both too stubborn to end it.”

  “At least you’ll get your chance now.”

  “We have more important things to think about. What did the police say to you?”

  I told him about the interview, and then about the Slaughterman’s Inn. I showed him the folded-up note and the box I’d taken from the hole in the wall. Jeremiah grabbed for it, but I moved it out of reach.

  “You first,” I said. “What happened at the hospital?”

  “Detectives Laurel and Hardy came to visit me. What a pair of jokers. They thought we had something to do with Hannah, that much is certain.”

  “I got that impression too. What about the bolt? Is your leg okay?”

  “It missed an artery. I’m dosed up on painkillers right now, and it’s going to hurt like hell when they wear off. Otherwise, I’ll live. Now come on, what’s in the box?”

  I unfolded the note and spread it on the coffee table in front of us. It was covered in tiny writing. I opened the box and pulled out a Dictaphone.

  “This was in the wall in my room at the pub?”

  I nodded. “Follow the eyes, remember? I think the Ferryman must have put it there.”

  “Who the hell is this guy? Or girl, come to think of it. Forget it. What’s on the tape?”

  This was the confusing part. I’d already listened to it, and it had left me even more bemused. Then I had read the note, and things got even murkier.

  “Let’s hear it,” said Jeremiah.

  As I picked up the recorder to press play, Nadine trampled back into the room with three glasses and a bottle of whiskey. The sight of it turned my stomach.

  “Thanks, but-”

  “You’re having a drink,” she said, her voice telling me that was how it was going to be, and there was no point arguing. She nodded at the note and Dictaphone.

  “Explain.”

  Looking at Nadine, I tried to gauge how open to this kind of thing she was. Jeremiah was desperate to believe, but bent on disproving everything so that the things he believed were incontrovertibly true. What about Nadine? She looked like Jeremiah, she sounded like him, but did she think like him?

  I felt like I had at the police station, before I’d decided to tell the truth to the detectives. Like I was a kid making up a ridiculous story.

  “Everything I’m going to tell you is from the note,” I said. “Remember that. Doubt it all you want, but it isn’t me telling you this; it’s the note.”

  And with that, I held the note in my hand and I explained what was written on it.

  The note explained that the Effigia worshipped a demon called Viseth. That was no surprise; Jeremiah had already told me that. What he hadn’t told me – maybe because he didn’t know – was that they’d found a way to visit him, to commune in the presence of their demon. That way was the ritual.

  The Effigia knew about the wells that Jeremiah had told me about. They knew about how they had kept certain villages safe during events like the Black Death, only for disappearances and deaths to spike after the plague passed.

  What they had worked out, through decades of obsessive research, was that there were five of these wells spread around this area. If you flew overhead and marked the locations of them, the location of the wells would form a pentagram. That was no accident. There was a reason for the wells, for their placement…and for the things the Effigia had lowered into them, like the one we had caught Eric in the act of lowering.

  “The Effigia think that the wells act as a gateway to a different…I don’t know how to say this. Realm, maybe?” I said. “A gateway to where Viseth sleeps. It can only be opened every five years or so, and if the note isn’t a complete crock of shit, then there’s a very particular way of opening them.”

  Jeremiah took the note from me and studied it. “A sacrifice,” he said.

  Nadine leapt out of her seat. She was almost trembling. “What?” she said. She reached for the note, but Jeremiah pulled it away.

  “Careful, Nad. We need this.”

  “Jeremiah, you better explain what the fuck is happening, and then I need to speak to the detectives.”

  I could feel the toxic mix of fear and anger seeping from her. It was so real, so thick, it almost fogged the room.

  Jeremiah spoke to her as softly as I’d ever heard from him. “Nad, please sit down, okay? I’m going to do everything I possibly can to find Hannah.”

  She looked at Jeremiah, then me, and finally sat down.

  Jeremiah eyed the note again. “The Effigia think the wells open a gateway to where Viseth sleeps, and they can only open it by giving a sacrifice, and then speaking a spell-word into each well.”

  “What the fucking hell?” said Nadine.

  I could sympathise with her. Not fully; I wouldn’t pretend I knew what it was like to have a child go missing. Not even close, and even thinking about it made my heart pang.

  But I understood how it felt to try to take all of this in. It was like sitting on a waltzer at a fairground, spinning and spinning until you felt sick and couldn’t think straight.

  “Whoever wrote this,” said Jeremiah, “wrote down the whole ritual for us.” He rubbed his face. “Oh, Jesus.”

  “What?” said Nadine.

  “You shouldn’t have to hear this,” said Jeremiah.

  She reached for the note. This time, she grabbed it and read it. Her face paled.

  “At the mark of three, the child is his. Gone from our world and into Viseth’s. Explain that to me.”

  “The mark of three in this kind of context means the time. It means three o’clock in the morning.”

  “What are you saying?”

  “That the note says the ritual ends at three. After that, Hannah is gone.”

  Without another word, Nadine left the room. The front door opened and t
hen slammed. By the time I reached the door, she’d already gotten into her car and started the engine, and soon she left us alone in her house.

  “She’s going to the police,” I said. “We better go, too. They’re going to want to ask me where I got the note. I’ll have to show them the wall in the Slaughterman’s inn and try to explain this, because it looks bad, Jeremiah. First, they find us in the woods, then I have a note which is a thinly veiled declaration of when your niece is going to go missing for good.”

  I started pacing then. I felt cold. Not just a draughty kind, but a deep cold, one that sat in my bones. I didn’t know what to do. Go to the police. Go looking for Hannah. A part of me just wanted to hide somewhere.

  Jeremiah grabbed my arm and led me into the living room. “Sit down,” he said.

  I sat and waited for my head to clear. I felt him rest his hand on my knee.

  “Listen, Ella. I know you’re scared.”

  “Aren’t you? This is your niece, Jeremiah, and that crazy occult group have taken her!”

  “I’m terrified. If I could, I’d drink the rest of that bottle, but we need to keep our heads clear.”

  “We need to go to the police and help however we can.”

  “You read the note,” said Jeremiah. “You read the ritual; why they took Hannah, and what they do, and how they think it works.”

  “They’re a bunch of nut jobs.”

  “Perhaps. But what if this is all true?”

  I looked at him, unbelieving. “Really? You’re asking me to believe this, you of all people? What happened to doing everything we can to disprove something before we commit to believing?”

  “It’s easy to say that when we’re investigating poltergeists in some strange family’s house. When it’s your own blood, you find yourself wanting to take a leap of faith. Just hear me out, Ella.”

  I nodded. I picked up the glass and drank the whiskey, then poured myself another. “Okay.”

  Jeremiah cleared his throat. “The next time the police see us, they’re going to arrest us. It’s the only sensible thing; it just looks too suspicious. Let’s assume that the note is true. That Viseth, the ritual, everything is real. If that’s the case, we know that wherever Hannah is, she’s alive until 3am, when the ritual ends. After that, we can’t get her back.”

  “It’s bullshit,” I said.

  “I’d rather think it’s true and be wrong, then do nothing and then later find out it was real.”

  “What are you saying?”

  He handed me the note again. “Read the last paragraph out loud,” he said.

  “When the gift is procured, and the spellwords spoken into each well, Viseth’s gateway will open. To enter, the final spellword must be spoken.”

  “Spellwords are part of witchcraft,” said Jeremiah. “Part of a particular kind, anyway. Now, let’s pretend witchcraft is real. What this means is that to start the ritual so that they could visit Viseth, the Effigia had to do two things; get him a gift, which years ago was Ashley Webb, and today is Hannah.”

  “I can’t believe you can say that so calmly,” I said.

  “The best thing I can do for Hannah is to keep my head.”

  I nodded. I knew he was right; but knowing something and acting on it were two different things. “Fine. So they get Hannah.”

  “The second part, according to the note, is to speak a spellword into each well. There are five wells, and it looks like speaking a spellword into each of them opens the gateway. Now, if spellwords were real, then only a witch could say them. If I, for instance, knew a spellword, then speaking it wouldn’t make a difference, because I’m not a witch.”

  “So the gift and the spellwords opens the gateway. What about it?”

  Jeremiah picked up the Dictaphone, rewound it, and pressed play. The sound hissed for a second, and then an old, female voice spoke.

  “Meyla,” she said.

  Jeremiah rewound it again, and played the word again. “Meyla.”

  “I don’t get it,” I said. “Is that a spellword?”

  “There’s nothing else on the tape. Just that one word. Did you bring my stuff?”

  I nodded.

  “Go fetch my travel case.”

  Jeremiah opened up his suitcase. He had a change of clothes, a can of deodorant, and lots and lots of paperback books. He rummaged through them until he found one. It was thick, old, and the brown cover was printed to look a little like leather. The title on the front read The Spell Crone’s Grimoire.

  “This is a print of an old book,” he said. “A collection of witchcraft spells, rituals, myths from around the world. Not useful in a practical sense, of course. You can’t learn a spell to turn someone into a frog. For a scholar, it’s interesting. Can you play the tape again?”

  I rewound the Dictaphone and pressed play, hearing the old woman say meyla.

  Jeremiah flicked through the book, his tongue sticking out. “Meyla,” he repeated. “Meyla. Ah, here it is. ‘Meyla is a word common in myths of Slavic witches. Said to be the spellword for new beginnings, openings, and for uncovering truths and secrets.’”

  “What do you make of that?” I said.

  “First, we have the note with the ritual on it, then we have a recording of a woman saying a Slavic spellword. I don’t know, Ella. The only thing I can think of is that this was left for you.”

  “By the Ferryman, all the follow the eyes stuff. I get that. But how could he possibly have known in advance that you’d come to Blaketree, that you would stay in a room at the Slaughterman’s inn?”

  “They say people can get into your computer, don’t they?” said Jeremiah.

  “Hacking,” I said. “Or, if you use the same password for everything….”

  “Fine, fine. It’s all my fault. That settles it, though. Our Ferryman must have read my emails. However he knew we were coming here, the question is, why did he leave these things for us?”

  I shrugged. “To send you on a goose chase while we should be searching for Hannah?”

  “Or because whoever the Ferryman is, he knows the Effigia. He knew what they were going to do, and he knew that most people in the right mind wouldn’t have believed his warnings.”

  “And he must know you aren’t in your right mind.”

  “We can’t go to the police, Ella. We need to go to the well. We have the spellword on tape.”

  “What are we supposed to do?”

  “I think we need to go down into the well and play the tape. The word will open the gateway. Or, worst comes to worst, it’s bullshit. But if 3am rolls around and he haven’t tried it, I’ll never forgive myself.”

  -27 – Detective Cromwell-

  They had been searching the forest for so long that most people were ready to drop. Cromwell had led the search for the last few hours, directing the uniformed officers and volunteers around the well area for the most part, and then when it started to get dark, he plotted areas far away. He needed the area around the well to be empty now that night was coming.

  It had worked. Some uniformed officers ended their shifts, replaced by a small number of their colleagues. Blaketree really wasn’t the most resourceful station. As well as them, volunteer numbers dropped. They were tired, cold, hungry, and demotivated from finding nothing.

  Cromwell had known they wouldn’t, of course. He already knew where the girl was; he just had to hope everything worked out.

  Now he was alone. The forest used to make him shiver when he’d first transferred to Blaketree. It wouldn’t have been his first choice; he’d loved the city. But some things were more important than being able to go to 24 hours a day coffee shops and noodle bars.

  He checked his watch. Eight-twenty-nine pm. Still plenty of time, but if it were him, he’d have rushed here sooner. Maybe they were playing it safe, making sure the forest was empty. He just wished he’d been able to explain more, but he couldn’t risk being seen with them, so he’d had to improvise.

  Footsteps behind him caught his attention.
He turned around.

  “Withers,” he said.

  “Brad,” said Withers, nodding. He was wearing an all-weather jacket with a fur hood.

  “No sign yet.”

  “Nope,” said Cromwell. “I marked the forest into zones. This area is clear.”

  “I guess we better go join them, then.”

  Cromwell felt nervous now. He’d always tried not to show it, but knowing who Withers was, knowing what he did, always gave him the chills. Not for too long, though. Even with everything he knew, there was always some doubt.

  Maybe now was the time to settle it. To show him evidence of his guilt and see if he flinched.

  He walked over to the well. Darkness waited in its depths. It was like looking into the sea at night; fathomless, the idea that anything could be down there.

  “Come and look at this,” he said.

  Withers walked over to him. Just one look. He just needed to see Wither’s face when he looked into the well, and see if there was a flash of guilt. Withers would be good at hiding it, but Cromwell was better at spotting it. He’d been in the game too long to be tricked.

  “Did you ever have a nickname?” said Withers.

  The question was so out of the blue that it startled him. “In school, sure. Nothing crazy. A bunch of my friends called me Crommers.”

  Withers chuckled. “Nobody called you the Ferryman, then?”

  The word sucked the breath out of his chest. He looked at Withers and saw how resolute and cold his face was.

  And then he saw the knife in his hand.

  Before he could do anything, Withers plunged the knife into his stomach. The searing pain ravaged through him, so intense that he thought he’d pass out there and then.

  Withers pulled the knife out. Cromwell strained to make a fist, to punch Withers before he could stab him again.

  But Withers didn’t use the knife. As Cromwell fought the pain in his stomach, Withers pushed him against the well, and soon Cromwell felt himself falling into darkness.

  -28-

  It was nine o’clock. We wanted to go to the forest earlier, but we couldn’t risk being seen. Jeremiah had been so anxious that he’d barely sat down for even a second, and finally we decided we couldn’t leave it any longer. If the ritual note was true, then we only had seven hours.