Silent Treatment

by David James

  Surprisingly, after nearly an hour's driving, he did indeed find a shop. Its bright lights looking like a beacon in the gathering gloom.

  As he pulled in and parked he was gratified to see that it was considerably larger than the village shop; he should have no difficulty getting what he wanted here.

  He decided to shop in a way he hated; walking up and down every isle and seeing what he wanted.

  As he stood in the checkout queue, he looked down at the items in the trolley. It was a mixture of tinned food, outdoor gear, torches, batteries, a small axe, some rope and rolls of tape.

  It made him look like a cross between a survivalist and a potential kidnapper.

  As he approached the car it was almost completely dark. He had been away from Sarah for nearly nine hours. He wondered how she was.

  He revved the engine hard and set off onto the roads as quickly as the combination of his limited driving ability and the limited ability of the car would allow.

  With a combination of lucky traffic signals and quite reckless driving, he made it to the clearing in less than an hour. He parked the car where he had left it before and clambered out.

  It took some time to pack everything from the shop into the rucksack. In fact he found himself saying to himself 'What the hell did you get that for?' several times as he transferred the contents of the car boot into the rucksack.

  The rucksack groaned under the weight of the contents; a groan that was matched by Ben as he hoisted it onto his back.

  He stood poised at the entrance to the woodland. Just as he braced himself to set off away from civilisation, he heard another beep on the phone. He realised that he hadn't looked at it since he had been back.

  He was astonished how quickly he had got out of the habit of continually checking his phone. But he realised that he wouldn't be able to check them at all once he set off. He scanned through the list of text messages.

  There were several from friends – he would get back to them. Several relating to his work, they could probably wait. But then his eye caught a series from the person he had promised the story to. She never contacted him just for a chat; she wasn't like that. He looked at the list and could see that she had sent several. He skim read them in order.

  Call me when you can.

  Me again, call, I have news.

  I wasn't joking, CALL ME!

  You had better be dead or have some other excuse!

  That was her alright.

  The rucksack was already beginning to feel heavy, so he slid it back onto the ground.

  He looked to see if there had been any calls from her, and it was no surprise there were several.

  He steeled himself and listened to them in order.

  They started out quite politely, for her. But by the end they were mainly swear words. He started to listen to the last message with some trepidation.

  She wanted her story.

  He knew he would have to say something to her. But he was too much of a coward to ring her; he decided to send her a text.

  Sorry haven’t contacted, but haven’t been able.

  But your story is developing, I just need a little more time.

  You will be the first to know.

  Ben

  It was very vague, even he would admit that, but he wasn’t ready to give her any hard information; not just yet. He suspected there was a lot more to come.

  He grimaced as he sent it and imagined her reaction as she opened it. He shut the phone down and headed quickly into the woods, already regretting leaving Sarah alone in the village for so long.

  Chapter Sixty Five

  Sarah closed the door behind Ben. She was relieved that he had left her here alone in the village.

  She waited enough time to be sure Ben would have left the village and she opened the door and left the house. She knew exactly where she was going.

  A few minutes later she was standing at the entrance to the building that they had found her father’s journals in. She wondered how many times her father had walked through the main door.

  'I wonder what was going through your mind,' she said. And she realised that here in this village, with all the reminders of him around, it was as if he was still here. The past year had never happened. At any point he would emerge from the entrance, smile and say 'What are you doing here Sarah?' in his kindly way, and welcome her into the building.

  And then he would take her upstairs and show her what they were doing. And he would enthusiastically tell her what they were going to achieve and by the end in his persuasive tone he would have convinced her that it was right and would all work out in the end. If only she would trust him. He would lean forward across his desk and say 'Maybe you can help me?' And she would feel the thrill of being invited to become involved.

  There was the sound of a bird landing roughly in the tree and Sarah's concentration was broken.

  She turned to the left of the building and clambered through Ben's makeshift entrance. There was so much she still wanted to ask her father.

  She made her way up the stairs and through the offices and into the manager’s office, or as she now knew, her father’s old office.

  She sat down in his chair, closed her eyes and imagined her father there with her.

  'What do you want me to do?'

  'I think you know Sarah.'

  'But I can't, it's not possible.'

  'You know it is the right thing to do. Besides, you know you are uniquely qualified. You can’t have forgotten when you were younger.'

  She slumped back in the chair. Of course she hadn’t forgotten, it was why the experiment had seemed so familiar to her and why the mention of the ‘monsters’ hadn’t completely surprised her. She had been there before.

  She opened her eyes and was almost surprised that he wasn’t there.

  She was reluctant to leave this room. Everywhere she looked she felt that her father was there. She watched as he wandered around the room, opening cabinets and reading papers. He would every so often turn to look at her and smile at her. And she felt twelve years old again. And life was simple. Everything felt right.

  She picked up one of the documents she had been reading before, and now her father sat down in the chair opposite her and they read the document together.

  She never wanted to leave this room.

  She wasn't sure how long she was there in the room with her father, but eventually she looked outside and could see the light beginning to fail and she thought of Ben.

  'I'll have to go now, I'm sorry,' she said.

  Her father put down the document and said 'That's all right, I'll come with you. I have a surprise for you.'

  Sarah liked surprises.

  They set off back to the house together.

  Sarah opened the door of the house, holding it open to allow her father to enter.

  'Sit down, I've got something to show you,' she said.

  She hurried upstairs and retrieved the documents she had brought from her father’s study at home.

  'Look what I found,' she said proudly.

  'I hoped you would,' said her father.

  They started reading through them together. Sarah felt as if he was reading a bed time story to her. She would stop and ask him precisely what he meant in the documents and he would explain it to her.

  Sarah found herself nodding as she understood what he had meant.

  It was hard to tell how long they read together. But by the end she understood what he had been trying to do and he had explained what he would have done if he had more time. It all made sense now.

  Only then did she realise that the sun had virtually gone down now. And only then did she realise that Ben was still not back. She had been so engrossed she hadn't noticed.

  She reached across and put the lamp on and the room lit up.

  This made the person sitting in front of the screens jump slightly. He had been used to the gloom in her front room. I mean, he should have expected it, it was getting dark, but he still jumpe
d. He had been on edge for so long that it was a way of life for him.

  He shuffled uncomfortably in his chair.

  There was a sound from outside the window and he jumped again.

  His eyes returned to the screen.

  He had watched her since she had returned and he had become more perplexed. She had arrived and sat there reading. But she had been talking away as she had read. He had presumed that she was just talking to herself as she read, which was not exactly unheard of. But she had begun to nod her head violently at times, as if she was in a heated dispute with someone. He had checked the camera to see if it was faulty. But it seemed fine. He couldn’t see anyone else in the room.

  Mind you, there had been faults with the cameras in there. And he had left the monitor room for a few minutes as well. And they certainly had blind spots in the room and one of them was opposite her. So he couldn’t be entirely sure that she was alone.

  But he had recognised the outer cover of what she was reading, he could see the emblem clearly enough.

  He switched to the outside view, the cameras were using their night time mode now so everything looked faintly like a horror film. But it still gave a clear enough view.

  And the view was clear enough for him to see the figures emerge from the woodland at the far end of the village, where he had first seen Sarah and the other man arrive.

  There were two figures and he watched them boldly head towards the house. They didn’t appear to be worried about anyone seeing them and they headed straight towards the house with Sarah in.

  They were standing outside the front door of the house.

  He zoomed the camera in to get a better view.

  As the camera focused in on the faces he stood up violently, placed his hands on his head and shouted ‘No, it can’t be!’

  His heart rate increased so strongly he felt dizzy.

  He looked back at the monitor. And now he really did know they were all in big, big trouble.

  Sarah heard the knock at the door. She jumped out of her seat. But then she remembered Ben, at last he was finally back with the provisions. She looked across to where her father had been sitting, but there was no one there. He must have heard Ben arrive and decided to make himself scarce.

  Strange that he was knocking at the door of his own house. But of course he was probably carrying too much to open the door.

  With a slight smile on her face she opened the door.

  'About time too I was….'

  She never finished her sentence.

  Her smile turned to shock and disbelief as she looked not at Ben, but at something that couldn’t possibly be real.

  'Welcome home Sarah.'

  Chapter Sixty Six

  Ben was now running as fast as he could through the woods. He found himself pitching wildly forward each time he tripped on the uneven path; but he didn't care, he would worry about the bruises later. He thought of Sarah alone in the village and what could be happening, and it spurred him on.

  The darkness didn't help and he found himself staring intently ahead, his eyes following the torch beam as it bounced in his hand. But eventually he had to slow down, it had been too long since his university days of regular sports. He sounded more like a keen smoker as he gasped and slowed down to a fast walk. Besides, it was difficult enough to find your way through these woods, and he didn't want to get lost.

  He was already exhausted, it was so much more tiring in the dark. On the rare occasions he looked away from the torch light, he could see the shapes of the trees on the periphery of the beam. If he had time he might have been alarmed at some of the shapes of the trees. But his mind was too busy concentrating on keeping upright.

  He recognised no part of the journey, even though he had been down here only a few hours before. He was trusting to luck more than judgement.

  Eventually he reached somewhere that he thought he did recognise. Even in this darkness, the fork in the road where he and Sarah had separated was unmistakeable. It meant he wasn't far from the place where Sarah had magically taken them off the beaten track and towards the village. He quickened his pace again. It couldn’t be far away now.

  At this point he was glad that he had the forethought to place a small pile of rocks near the hidden entrance way to the village. He would have virtually no chance to find it without that in this dark. It had only been thanks to Sarah that they had found it in the light. He was feeling relatively relaxed now, knowing that he just had to find the small pile of rocks.

  He walked for another half an hour and as he turned each corner of the path, he was convinced that his little marker would be there.

  But each time it wasn't.

  He hadn't remembered it being this far before. But with the dark, he supposed that it would take him longer. So he was still reasonably relaxed.

  After another half an hour of walking, he was no longer relaxed. In fact he was closer to desperate. Could he have missed them somehow? He couldn’t see how, he hadn't tried to be subtle in their placement.

  He stopped walking, he needed to gather his thoughts, was there anything else that was distinctive? He could worry about how exactly his marker had magically disappeared later.

  How he wished he had Sarah with him now.

  He pictured the first time he had followed Sarah off the track and heading towards the village. He had read that the mind remembers pretty much everything; it was just a matter of working out the filing system it used for storing it all.

  She had been wearing a green top and had on the hiking trousers that they had bought. Good, that's a start. What boots did she have on?

  Ben shone the torch down at his own boots; Sarah's had been pretty much identical to his.

  He pictured her boots as they started to walk off the track and into the woods towards the village. Anything?

  Not really, but he remembered that she had tripped slightly as she set off, what had she tripped over?

  He took a deep long breath.

  It was a tree root. He sighed, that didn’t help a lot. No, wait, it wasn’t a tree root at all. It was a strange stump.

  Okay, that was a start. But he needed more than that. There were plenty of stumps around.

  He pictured Sarah again.

  She was starting to walk into the forest, he had looked over her shoulder, he had wondered what on earth she was doing at the time. And over her shoulder was, what was it? He remembered that he thought it looked like a wooden troll to him. Stupid and a bit infantile of course, but it was the trigger he needed, he had something to look for now. The filing cabinet in his mind was now well and truly open.

  It still wouldn't be easy in the dark. He set off along the path, running the torch beam along the side of the path as he walked.

  There were several false starts as he thought he had found the entranceway again. He was beginning to doubt his own memory, everything just looked like a sea of trees and rocks.

  He shone the torch into the trees just off the path, desperately trying to see the last part of the puzzle. And as he strained to see into the gloom he tripped and pitched forward and into the trees.

  'Damn,' he said, rubbing his leg as he sat on the ground. He placed the torch on the rock that he had fallen over and took his boot off. His injury didn't seem to be too bad. He picked up his boot from the rock and froze.

  Instead of swearing at the rock that had just tripped him up, he bent forwards and patted if affectionately. He almost leant forward to kiss it, but he realised that was just a little too odd.

  It was the strange stump he had been looking for. And from his prone position he looked up and saw the troll staring back down at him.

  He stood up, the pain having already been forgotten, and pushed slightly into the trees and it started to look familiar. Pushing the branches aside he turned off the main path and headed into the trees towards the village.

  As he pushed his way through the undergrowth, trying to follow the faint path, he began to wonder if the village was trying to
stop him getting back, as if it wanted Sarah all to itself. Those rocks he had left had been pretty clear. They couldn't have just moved. He pushed forward as fast as he dared. He just hoped he wasn't going to be too late.

  Chapter Sixty Seven

  Ben's footsteps were becoming more laboured, each step seemed to be becoming harder than the last. But he pushed relentlessly on, he had no choice. But his exhaustion was beginning to get to him, each time he looked up all he could see was darkness; his torch was becoming more and more feeble and was barely penetrating the darkness now.

  He stopped walking, he tried to push his legs but they had reached the end of their tether and would no longer obey his commands.

  He leaned forwards and put his hands on his knees and tried to slow his breathing down. He could feel his heart thumping inside his chest as if it was bidding for freedom from its constraint.

  And then his torch slowly began to give out the last of its light, it seemed to mirror his own last efforts.

  He suddenly felt alone and scared. The adrenaline of rushing to the village to get to Sarah had kept him going. But now he could feel the last of his adrenaline ebbing away and he was just a shattered journalist standing alone in a dark wood.

  The torch beam finally faded to nothing and the darkness reclaimed the wood. He let out a sigh that seemed to come from his very soul.

  But as he looked up, there still seemed to be a faint glow of light. He looked down at the torch, but it was just a useless piece of plastic now. For a second he wondered if it was just the image of light still on his retina. He rubbed his eyes, but it didn't disappear.

  It was unmistakeably still there.

  He suddenly had something to aim for and his legs began to wake up.

  'I'll give you a rest if you can just get me there,' he reasoned with his aching limbs.

  And they responded and slowly began to move forward using the light and the path to guide him. His tired mind began to speculate what the light was. Maybe Sarah had left a light on for him, to help him find his way. This was the most comforting thought and he decided to use it to maintain his momentum.