Dark Woods

by Steve Voake

  He stopped struggling then and imagined the two of them going out into the world, living their lives, moment after precious moment.

  And as the timer beneath the floorboards ticked away the final few seconds, he closed his eyes and smiled.

  ‘Tansy,’ he said. ‘I’m coming.’

  *

  It happened as they reached the van.

  There was a deep thump followed by a bright flash and an orange fireball rolled up into the night sky. Seconds later the pressure wave knocked them both off their feet, rattling the windows of the van and rushing through the trees with a roar like a jet engine.

  ‘My God,’ said Eden picking herself up from the floor. ‘What was that?’

  It was then that Cal remembered the network of wires he had seen disappearing into the roof void, under the floor and behind the walls of the cabin. And he remembered the words Jefferson had spoken earlier that evening:

  I made provisions. Anyone comes around who I don’t want to be here, I got ways of dealing with them.

  ‘He never intended to leave,’ said Cal. ‘He knew all along he’d have to stay.’

  For a while they watched the flames consuming the place where the house had once stood, timbers turning to ash in the fierce, unforgiving heat.

  In the morning nothing would remain but the smoke and the dust, and the memories that would try to convince them, years later, that the things they had seen had been real.

  Forty-Four

  High up in the treetops, caught between two branches, a flat-screen monitor lay on its side. The force of the explosion had ripped it from its stand and – as the roof of the building had disintegrated outwards – lifted it skywards before lodging it delicately on a lattice of pine needles, almost twenty metres above the ground.

  Remarkably, the screen was still intact.

  Even more remarkable, however, was the fact that the screen was still flickering, as if lit from within.

  Scientists observing this strange phenomenon might have pointed out that the capacitors in some pieces of electrical equipment are capable of holding their charge for several minutes after the source of energy has been removed. The more adventurous might even have suggested that the recent thunderstorm was responsible, blaming electronically charged particles in the atmosphere for causing the strange light that sparkled across the screen.

  What they might have found harder to explain, however, was the image that appeared. At first it was simply a mixture of colours: greens and blues with the occasional splashes of yellow and red. But then, for a few brief moments, the blue become a summer sky and the greens and yellows turned into a meadow full of flowers.

  And in the centre of the meadow, beyond the river where the trout swam in silent pools, a man was running with his dog.

  But, of course, no one was there to see it.

  After a few moments, the image faded to black.

  Forty-Five

  The police were all over town, tyres screeching and sirens wailing as they tried to find out why two hundred pounds of high explosive had suddenly blown a hole in the side of their mountain.

  Cal and Eden sat in the bar of Bobby’s Bar and Grill watching the lights flash past and listening to Sheriff Jobert say, Well, I’ll be damned for the twentieth time that evening.

  ‘So let me get this straight,’ he said. ‘This Jefferson fella takes you up there in his van and you lift the keys, jump in and drive it down here. Twice.’

  ‘That’s right,’ said Cal. ‘The first time we were attacked by the guy who’d been following us, so we had to go back up there.’

  Sheriff Jobert looked at him doubtfully.

  ‘You know anything about this, Bobby?’ he asked.

  ‘Yeah, he was the guy I was telling you about,’ said Bobby. ‘The crazy guy with the scissors. He was trying to kill the kid.’

  ‘Which is why I shot him,’ explained Eden.

  Sheriff Jobert sat down and took his hat off.

  ‘You shot him?’

  ‘Yeah. I didn’t kill him, though.’

  ‘Well, that’s something. Where is he now?’

  ‘Don’t know. But he’s wearing, like, really old-fashioned clothes and he’s got a chunk blown out of his shoulder, so he shouldn’t be too hard to find.’

  ‘I saw him,’ said Frank Roberts, who was sitting at the bar with a bandage round his head.

  ‘Me too,’ said Jimmy Simpson, his voice distorted by the plasters taped over his nose. ‘Right before he kicked the kahoomas out of me.’

  ‘I don’t mean that,’ said Frank. ‘I mean I saw him afterwards. He was heading out after those other guys.’

  ‘Other guys?’ said Sheriff Jobert, scratching his head. ‘What other guys?’

  Frank shrugged. ‘Don’t know who they were but there was a whole bunch of ’em. Heading up towards the mountain.’

  ‘So he was with them,’ said Cal, remembering the figure he had seen outside the window moments before the hatch closed.

  ‘With who?’ asked Sheriff Jobert, trying to keep track of the conversation. ‘Who are all these people?’

  ‘They were after Eden,’ explained Cal. ‘They were trying to kill her. Which is why Jefferson did what he did.’

  ‘Hold on,’ said Sheriff Jobert. ‘So you’re telling me that the guy who abducted you blew up his house to save you from a bunch of people who were trying to kill you?’

  ‘Well, they weren’t exactly people,’ said Eden. ‘But you’ve kind of got the gist of it.’

  Sheriff Jobert didn’t believe any of it, of course. At least not the part about Cal and Eden being chased up the mountain by a bunch of psychos. He guessed it was some sort of – what did they call it now – Stockholm syndrome, where people who have been abducted imagine all kinds of strange things to try to make their captors seem like decent people.

  Of course, Frank Roberts said he’d seen them too, but then Frank had been drinking all night. If Frank had said he’d seen a bunch of little green men wearing space suits, Sheriff Jobert wouldn’t have been a bit surprised.

  ‘I guess you must be pretty tired,’ he said, thinking maybe he should take a look at the crime scene before the Fire Department hosed all the evidence away. ‘All right if we put ’em up here tonight, Bobby? We’ll be contacting their folks just as soon as we can, but the campground’s several hours’ drive away and these two look like they could use some shut-eye before their folks arrive. Whaddya say?’

  ‘Fine by me,’ said Bobby. ‘Been quite a day, huh?’

  Cal nodded, fighting to keep his eyes open. Tiredness was taking over and already the horrors of the last few hours were starting to fade.

  Now all he wanted to do was sleep.

  ‘Come on,’ said Bobby. ‘Let me show you to your rooms.’

  The bedrooms were part of a single-storey extension on the back of the bar, built to cater for weary travellers on their way to somewhere more exciting.

  ‘Just a place to get your heads down for the night,’ said Bobby, unlocking the doors to reveal identical rooms with tasselled lampshades and candlewick bedspreads. ‘We keep meaning to redecorate, but what the hey. I think you’ll find the beds comfortable enough.’

  When he had gone, Eden paused in the doorway of her room.

  ‘Cal, are you gonna be OK?’ she asked.

  Cal nodded.

  ‘Really?’

  ‘I will be.’ He scratched at the door frame where the paintwork was starting to flake. ‘No one will believe us. You know that, don’t you?’

  ‘Yeah, I know. Does it matter?’

  Cal shrugged.

  ‘I’m not sure I even believe it myself.’

  ‘It happened, Cal. You saw it. We both did.’

  ‘So what are we going to do?’

  ‘We’re going to go to sleep, Cal, that’s what we’re going to do. And in the morning, when we wake up, that’s when we have to decide.’

  ‘Decide what?’

  ‘On whether to tell the whole story and bec
ome part of some crazy circus, or whether to just tell the part they’ll understand so we can move on with our lives.’

  ‘But we’ll know the truth, won’t we, Eden? We’ll never forget what happened.’

  Eden came to him then, put her arms around his waist and rested her cheek against his chest.

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘We’ll never forget.’

  They stayed like that for a long time, beneath the pale glow of the corridor lights. Then Cal kissed the top of her head and let her go.

  ‘Well, I guess we should get some sleep,’ he said.

  Eden smiled.

  ‘Sweet dreams,’ she said.

  *

  Outside in the car park, Sheriff Jobert studied the holes that peppered the side of the van and concluded that they had been made when the girl fired the shotgun. If her story was true, it would be easy enough for forensics to lift some prints from it. Peering through the side window, he noticed broken glass on the driver’s seat and a mattress laid out in the back. Even if the place on the mountain was destroyed, there was enough evidence here to make some sense of what had happened. The abductor might be dead, but his DNA would tell the story and help Sheriff Jobert put this whole thing to bed.

  The main thing was, the kids were alive.

  Sheriff Jobert was quietly proud of the way he had dealt with such a major incident. It had only been a couple of hours, but the fire crews were busy dousing the flames and he was already starting to think up a little speech for the news crews who would come flocking in the morning.

  I think you’ll find we’ve pretty much got this thing wrapped up, he would tell them. There ain’t too much gets past Sheriff Jobert.

  Which, while generally true, didn’t reflect the reality of the current situation.

  Because, as he walked across the car park to his patrol car, Sheriff Jobert failed to notice either the dark figure clinging to the underside of the van’s chassis or the steady drip of blood that was already forming dark pools on the tarmac beneath.

  Forty-Six

  Although he was exhausted, Cal found it hard to fall asleep. The adrenalin rush of the last few days had left his mind spinning and every time his eyes were about to close, the images would return: the dark figures climbing through the window, Jefferson trying to close the hatch as they tore into him and – perhaps the most disturbing of all – the shadow of the tall figure and the glint of steel, glimpsed through the window moments before the glass shattered.

  Had he imagined it?

  He didn’t know.

  All he knew was that Eden had faced her demons and her demons had been destroyed.

  But what of his?

  As he stared at the shadows on the ceiling, cast by the night light that he couldn’t bring himself to turn off, he thought back to the evening before everything happened. Michael saying, You should let her make breakfast for you once in a while. Cal telling him he could look after himself. And Michael saying, I know, but you don’t have to. Not any more.

  Cal thought of Jefferson, of Bobby and his son, and of how it had been too late for them. He thought of Sarah, lying next to him on the bed as he woke from his nightmares.

  And Cal knew then that he had been wrong all these years, pretending he could walk through this world alone. He saw that he had been wandering in dark woods all of his life.

  But now he had been given a chance.

  A chance to walk out of the darkness into the light.

  Star light, star bright

  First star I see tonight

  I wish I may, I wish I might

  Have the wish I wish tonight

  Cal felt a stirring of hope and, for the first time in years, he didn’t try to shut it away. Because if bad dreams could come true then maybe – just maybe – there was some hope for the good ones too.

  Climbing out of bed, he pulled back the curtain to look at the stars. But the glow from the night light meant all he could see was his own reflection. It was the first time he had seen himself for a while and he realised how tired he looked. There were dark rings beneath his eyes and his shirt was stained with blood.

  But he was alive, wasn’t he?

  He was alive, and tomorrow was another day.

  It wasn’t until he lay down on the bed and switched off the light that he heard the soft tap, tap, tap at the window. Hardly daring to move, Cal turned his head and saw, standing on the other side of the glass, the silhouette of a man in a long frock coat.

  In one hand he held a top hat, covered in blood.

  In the other hand was a pair of scissors.

  As Cal watched in horror, the man slowly opened the blades, closed them again and tapped three times on the window.

  Then he smiled and mouthed two words through the glass:

  ‘Hello, Cal.’

  Forty-Seven

  Cal reacted fast, tiredness evaporating as he wrenched the door open and raced down the corridor. He knew if he could just get to the bar and find Bobby or Sheriff Jobert then maybe they would have their shotguns or whatever it was they carried.

  But when he opened the outside door, the bar lights were out and Sheriff Jobert’s car was gone.

  And standing less than ten yards away, in the middle of the car park, was the man with the scissors.

  ‘It’s over, Cal,’ he said, and Cal saw that he was no longer smiling. ‘Don’t you see? It was over the moment you brought me into the world. And now it is time for the running to stop. It is time for you to embrace the darkness.’

  Cal knew it was hopeless now, knew that by the time help came it would be too late. But in the last few moments he had caught a glimpse of the future, seen how things might turn out, and he couldn’t turn away, not now, not when it was so close.

  ‘No one loves you, Cal,’ said the man, walking towards him. ‘But that’s why you created me, isn’t it? Because I can take away the pain. The pain of knowing that no one cares about you, that you are all alone in the world.’

  ‘No,’ whispered Cal. ‘It isn’t true.’

  ‘Yes it is, Cal. In your heart, you know it is.’

  ‘Maybe I did once,’ said Cal, backing away. ‘But not now. Not any more.’

  The man quickened his pace.

  ‘Don’t you run from me,’ he said. ‘The game’s over, do you understand? It’s time to finish it.’

  But Cal was thirsty for life in a way he had never been before, wanting to unwrap the secrets that lay hidden in the months and years ahead.

  So he took a deep breath of sweet, life-giving oxygen.

  Then he began to run.

  ‘No!’ screamed the man. ‘No! No! No!’

  A light came on in the annexe.

  But Cal kept on running, across the car park and out onto the open road, running the way he had come, towards the mountains and trees and the path which would lead him back to the dark woods once more.

  The man was close now, getting closer. Cal heard how easily he ran, long legs striding across the dusty road as his shoes ticked out a regular rhythm, a clock counting down the last seconds of life.

  And as Cal ran down the slip road where the electricity pylons crouched beside the drainage ditches on the edge of town, he knew he could never outrun him. He saw the woods looming in the distance and realised he didn’t want to run in darkness any more.

  Life is dangerous. If you want to live it, you have to take risks.

  With a single leap, Cal crossed one of the ditches and ran beneath the power lines toward the ladder that Frank had left fastened to one of the pylons. There was a block of wood halfway up to deter any would-be climbers, but Cal was driven by fear and he quickly pulled himself over it before continuing his upward climb.

  In less than a minute he had reached the top of the ladder, but the man was already climbing after him. The gap between the metal stanchions was quite wide, but by pulling himself up on the central struts, Cal was able to make reasonable progress. As he climbed higher, the gaps lessened and he was able to climb more quickly.
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br />   He heard the regular clang of metal from below as the man continued to climb after him, but he didn’t bother to look back.

  He just kept on climbing, higher and higher, and as he climbed he saw the silhouettes of trees and mountains stretching up towards the very edges of space.

  As he climbed up and up his arms ached until the pain was almost unbearable, but it was nothing now compared to the ache he felt inside as he looked up at the stars. Because here, in these final few seconds, he was climbing out of the darkness at last, climbing towards the light, and in his heart he knew that this was what he had been trying to do all his life.

  ‘It’s no good, Cal. This is the end, do you hear me? It is time to finish it.’

  With a sob, Cal climbed out onto the arm of the pylon and then he was under the power lines that swooped away into the night, and there was nowhere left to go.

  Star light, star bright

  ‘That’s right, Cal …’ the man whispered.

  First star I see tonight

  ‘No more games now …’

  I wish I may, I wish I might

  ‘Look at me, Cal …’

  Have the wish I wish tonight

  ‘See how I make your dreams come true …’

  Cal felt a sharp pain in his calf and as he cried out the man gave a long, trembling sigh. Cal looked down and saw that the man had slashed at his leg with the shears and the blades were dark with blood.

  ‘You see how painful life is, Cal? How much suffering there is in the world?’

  Cal turned his head away.

  ‘No, Cal. Look at me. Look at me.’

  Cal felt the blades press against his cheek and saw that the man was level with him now, one hand gripping the metal struts of the pylon, the other holding the shears.

  ‘You dreamed me, Cal, remember? You dreamed me and that’s why I’m here.’ His voice was softer, almost tender now. ‘But you know that already, don’t you? I’m here to take your pain away at last, Cal. I’m here to make your dreams come true. All you have to do is hold out your hands.’

  Cal turned his face away and looked at the stars, more beautiful than he ever remembered.

  Behind him, he heard the creak of the shears opening.

  ‘Give them to me.’