The Beginning Woods

by Malcolm McNeill

  Measures were taken.

  Procedures put in place.

  None worked.

  They tethered him to the bars of his cot. The tether was undone.

  They added a lock. The lock was never seen again.

  In the end the exasperated nurses bolted a lid onto the cot. From within this hutch he glared back at his captors, plotting his next move. On the third day the cot was empty. Three of its bars had been chewed through, as though by a wild animal. That afternoon a police helicopter spotted the baby racing across the common.

  The nurses were perturbed.

  None of them had seen anything like it.

  None, that is, except Frau Winkler, an ancient German from the forests of Bavaria. The rooftop escape had brought back a memory of a picture in a book of fairy tales she’d read as a child. It showed a moonlit, magical scene—a farmhouse encrusted with snow; perched by the chimney stack, a Kobold, his nose lifted to the delicious odours wafting up from the oven below.

  Er will den Stollen stehlen, the inscription had read. He wants to steal the Stollen.

  Seventy years this memory had slept in her mind, but when she saw the baby among the chimney pots it came back to her once more.

  The Kobold had escaped the story book, had he, and tracked her down at the end of her days?

  She would keep a close eye on his activities!

  Every afternoon at three o’clock sharp a bell would ring, and visitors would file into the dormitory with a view to helping themselves to one of the babies on display.

  The moment he heard the bell, the Kobold would roll onto his front and examine these Maybe Parents, his jet-black eyes staring fixedly. The couples would move round the room, bending now and again to coo at the bawling infants. Sooner or later they’d be drawn to the Kobold’s corner, sensing that something dwelt there, that it was a lair of some sort. By now the Kobold would be sitting up, his oddly squashed head held perfectly still, his long fingers curled round the bars of his cage.

  It seemed to Frau Winkler that of all the babies, only the Kobold knew what was at stake. When the Maybe Parents were close enough, he would stretch his arms through the bars of his prison. Smiling uneasily, they would bend closer to get a better look, and then—he could not help it—the Kobold would smile back, revealing his teeth.

  The brave would shudder and turn away.

  The faint-hearted would scream.

  The Kobold would shrink back into darkness.

  Later in the afternoon nurses would enter and remove several of the lucky babies, passing the Kobold with a look of admonishment.

  What did you expect?

  Why would anyone want a thing like YOU?

  And the Kobold would roll onto his side and face the wall, and not look round for some time.

  THE BALLOON AND THE MOULDY CORNER

  This wall the Kobold faced whenever he rolled away from the world was not blank plaster like the other walls in the ORPANAB Centre. It was decorated with a mural, painted years before when the ORPANAB Centre had been a government asylum.

  The artists had been the inmates themselves. Under the supervision of a local entertainer called Boppo the Colour Clown, they had been permitted to express their innermost feelings upon the wall of their canteen. Though the canteen was now a dormitory, and Boppo the Colour Clown was long in his grave, their masterpiece remained.

  If the ORPANAB babies had taken the mural to be a representation of the outside world, which most had never seen, they would have understood that the Taj Mahal, the Alps, a high street and a jungle all stood together in close proximity, and that the world was populated by braying, bucking donkeys pursued by policemen with red faces and stomping black boots. Most of the Maybe Parents found it a comical piece of work, but some sensitive souls couldn’t look at it without thinking the donkeys were too bewildered and the policemen too menacing. These people (like the Kobold) found themselves drawn to an almost invisible detail, added by a patient with an old soul, perhaps, who had stood at the top of a ladder while the others splashed about below, pouring pent-up longing and sadness into an image of heart-stopping beauty: a Hot Air Balloon, hanging high and away on the upper edge of the mural and therefore the world, about to drift free of the sky into some other unknown region.

  The Kobold spent hours gazing up at this Balloon and the two indistinct pilots in its basket. They never turned away like the Maybe Parents, never scowled like the nurses, or held him upside down by the ankles and rudely wiped his bottom. They looked right back, smiling and waving. Before long, the Kobold lost all interest in the Maybe Parents and never once turned to examine them when they entered in the afternoons. Instead, he gazed longingly at the Hot Air Balloon and the smiling faces—longingly and hopefully, then fearfully and anxiously, for the Hot Air Balloon was heading directly for the Mouldy Corner.

  This sinister patch of ceiling was never reached by the sunlight that streamed in through the sash windows of the old asylum. It remained always in shadow, and there the damp, vaporous breath of the babies gathered and became mould—dark, swampy mould. There was something about this Mouldy Corner that was truly monstrous, and the Kobold watched its growth in terror. Each day it crept closer to the Balloon, and its occupants only smiled and waved, unaware of the horror bearing down on them.

  Did they not see?

  Was there no way to warn them?

  There was not, and the Kobold was forced to watch as the mould passed over them with the slow certainty of an eclipse.

  And then they were gone.

  Only Frau Winkler noticed these obsessions. She wondered if the mould was a portal the Kobold used to escape the ORPANAB after dark. When she was alone on night duty, she would check his cot at regular intervals. Finding him asleep, she would stare at him mistrustfully. “Who are you?” she would whisper on those occasions. “Where do you come from?”

  Those questions were the only words ever addressed to the Kobold during his stay at the ORPANAB Centre. No kootchy-koos, no words of affection, no bedtime stories. Instead: “Who are you?” and “Where do you come from?” over and over again, repeated a thousand times and always in the deepest part of the night, when the soul is ruptured by sleep, when cracks appear, emitting dreams, but through which in the other direction outside impressions may also creep, becoming stowaways in the soul. At that time, at that soft, vulnerable time, who knows how those questions influenced the Kobold’s developing mind.

  Perhaps all our lives have been shaped by a strange old woman hunched over us in the night, and what she whispers…

  LIFTED, HELD HOOKED AND PICKED

  The next words the Kobold heard were: “Time to go!” and “Come on then!” and “Up with you!” Not Winkler’s words, but those of Mr Linklater, the ORPANAB director, and not whispered, but said in a business-like way with impatient clicks of a pen.

  Three months the Kobold had sat in his hutch. His official status had been downgraded from Unwanted to Unwantable, and it was high time he was shipped to the long-term depository in the countryside.

  So here was Mr Linklater saying “Let’s have none of this nonsense!” and “What the Devil’s he playing at?” and “Get me an aspirin, will you, Mrs Winkler.” The transfer forms had been completed, but it seemed the Kobold no longer wished to leave, and had fastened himself to a bar of the cot by means of biting it.

  After all his escape attempts, it seemed he no longer wished to leave.

  Tickling, nipping and prodding proving ineffective, Mr Linklater thrust his pen between the locked jaws, prised them apart and snatched the Kobold up. The hidden consequence of this action was to break the Kobold’s view of the Hot Air Balloon. He at once began to make a most unusual noise—a low, threatening growl like the snarling of a woodland creature.

  Frau Winkler and the other nurses, who had never heard the Kobold make a sound, hunched their shoulders in surprise, and all the babies burst into a chorus of screaming.

  “Erm…” said Mr Linklater, undergoing the sensations
people undergo when they are snarled at by small creatures.

  “Do not worry, he does not bite,” said Frau Winkler, knowing full well the Kobold very definitely did bite, and would at any moment. But she had a nurse’s courage and took the Kobold from Mr Linklater’s outstretched arms.

  “You frightened him, that is all,” she said. “He had settled in here so nicely he does not want to leave.”

  Holding the Kobold in front of her like a ticking bomb, she marched him out of the dormitory and down the corridor, Mr Linklater hurrying behind. But it was visiting hour, and the would-be parents were waiting in a long line for admission to the dormitory. Held out like this, the Kobold was presented to them for one last series of rejections, as if he had not quite absorbed his lesson and needed a reminder. One by one the visitors shrank back in horror, and each time the Kobold screamed louder.

  “You see?” Frau Winkler kept saying in her no-nonsense way. “Nobody wants you! Nobody! It’s for your own good!”

  But then, just as she got to the end of the line, a bearded mountain of a man stepped out, blocking her path.

  “I’m Forbes!” he boomed, brandishing a prosthetic hook under her nose. “Hand him over!”

  Frau Winkler screamed. The big black beard, the making-demands-and-introducing-yourself-at-the-same-time, the merry twinkle in the man’s eyes and, most of all, the hook could mean only one thing: he was a pirate. In her astonishment she loosened her grip and the Kobold, sensing freedom, made a break for it.

  A falling baby is no laughing matter, especially one doing so head-first towards a tiled floor. Mr Linklater immediately dropped his clipboard, which was a good start—it showed a gentlemanly sympathy and freed up his hands. But the sight of the clipboard falling next to the Kobold caused the word “Galileo” to flash into his mind, so for vital milliseconds he was trapped in a state of flop-mouthed speculation: Which one would hit the ground first? Baby or clipboard? As for Frau Winkler, she was frozen by a Witch trial instinct: Now we’ll see! If he really is the Kobold he will land on all fours. If not, he will smash his head open and that will be that!

  Fortunately the Kobold did not reach the ground to provide the hoped-for proofs. With lightning speed the pirate lunged forwards, his hook flashing down.

  “ARRGGGHH!” screamed Mr Linklater, thinking in a moment of pure terror the baby had been impaled and he would lose his job. But all was well: the pirate flipped the Kobold and caught him in the palm of his hand—he’d hooked him by his nappy.

  “Guter! Gott!” gasped Frau Winkler.

  “I think he likes you, Forbes,” said a quiet voice, and for the first time it became apparent that another person was there, a small, thin woman with wispy hair.

  “Alice, I think he does,” said Forbes, because the Kobold had gone quiet, and was studying him seriously. Forbes gave the Kobold’s ear a nip with his hook, causing a giggle, the first noise of pleasure the Kobold had ever produced. “What’s his name, nursie?”

  “Kobold!” Frau Winkler blurted out.

  “Kobold?” said Alice, her light eyes turning sharp and hard. “What sort of name is that?”

  Frau Winkler drew herself up and assumed a dignified expression. “It is not a name. There was a chimney in a book and he was sniffing it. He was trying to steal the Stollen!” she finished, unable to believe that none of these idiots understood.

  There was a silence, then the click of a pen.

  “Wait for me in my office, Mrs Winkler,” said Mr Linklater.

  Frau Winkler departed, Forbes and Alice remained, and Mr Linklater apologized, apologized, apologized: stress, pressure, staff shortages—no ORPANAB babies were given names until placed with a family.

  “And are you such a family?” he asked, bending sideways, for some reason, with an insinuating grin. “Have you come to view our collection? We have a great many.”

  They were not a family, at least not yet, they were a couple. And no, they didn’t want to look at any other babies: this one would do.

  Mr Linklater bent in the other direction. Ah, but this particular infant was due to be shipped, the cogs of bureaucracy had been set in motion by certain forms he’d filled in, he’d have to fill in others to stop them. Why this one, he wanted to know, when there were so many others?

  Oh, no special reason. Maybe because the little mite had gone quiet on Forbes’s shoulder and was nuzzling his earlobe. Or maybe it was the allure of the propitious rescue, of being there at the right moment with a quick hook. Fate had spoken. It was meant to be. Etc.

  So after the necessary documents were completed, the baby who had started the Vanishings was placed in the care of Forbes and Alice Mulgan, and henceforth disappeared into their arms, into their car and into their home—a natural progression, having already entered their hearts.

  Later that afternoon, the family Mulgan assembled itself on the living-room sofa.

  “He’s a funny little fella,” Forbes said, bouncing the Kobold on his knee.

  “I wonder what his parents looked like,” Alice said.

  “Doesn’t matter,” said Forbes. “We’re his parents now.”

  “Yes,” said Alice. “We are.” She snuggled up so Forbes could get his arm round them both. “What’ll we call him?” she asked, fondling the Kobold’s rather sharply-pointed ear.

  “He’s only a little thing. Let’s give him a little name. But with a bit of bite. Like what he’s got.”

  “What about… Max?”

  “Max Mulgan,” said Forbes, trying it out. “I like it!”

  “I like it too.”

  “That’s it then!” Forbes tapped the Kobold once on each shoulder. “I name you King Max of Bickerstaffes Road!”

  That evening King Max was shown his domain—a converted storeroom upstairs. As kingdoms go it was sparsely populated. There was a cot Alice had seen in the window of a charity shop and repainted. There was a set of drawers Forbes had found in the street and fixed up. On a shelf sat a magic lantern which, when lit at night and given a touch to set it turning, cast silhouettes against the wall—the shadows of birds, flying round and round and round.

  Best of all, by some miracle or coincidence, Alice had decorated the wall opposite the bed with a mural. The one in the ORPANAB Centre had been an amateurish effort, but this was a work of talent. It represented a country fair. There was a helter-skelter, a bouncy castle, a Merry-Go-Round, a coconut shy, a petting zoo, a jumble sale, a bakery stand, a candyfloss caravan and a donut wagon. With a touch of sinister genius Alice had painted a Wolf standing unnoticed on its hind legs among the playing children. But Max hardly noticed this masterstroke. Something else caught his attention, something far more important.

  In the background, between the prize vegetable competition and the pet dogs assault course, a Hot Air Balloon was going up, trailing ropes that drooped towards the ground. It was bigger than the Balloon at the ORPANAB Centre, big enough so the people in the wicker basket could be clearly made out. A thin man with round glasses. A woman with auburn hair. Still waving, and still smiling.

  He smiled right back at them.

  They had escaped the Mouldy Corner.

  They were getting closer.

  3

  THE DARK MAN

  A few months after Max’s arrival at Bickerstaffes Road the Vanishings began. Even as the Mulgans watched the hullabaloo unfold over the following years, they had no idea the small boy they packed off to school each day with sandwiches and a carton of milk was the cause of it all.

  Under the gentle strokes of their affection, he had shed some of his Koboldry. His ears were a little pointed, his skin stubbornly pale, and he ripped open bananas with his teeth—but the monstrous beginnings that spoke of spooky origins had faded with each passing year, until he was only a boy—small and quick as a thorn, with eyes that made the teachers falter in their lessons, but a boy nonetheless.

  The first annual Symposium press conference came and went. The second, the third, the fourth, the fifth. None meant much to
Max, or to any other eight-year-old. The Vanishings had always been around. There were educational puppet shows at nurseries, cartoons on TV, projects at school and Symposium speakers at morning assembly, who told you what to do if Mummy or Daddy “took off all their clothes and went away.”

  1. Find a safe person.

  2. Dial 000.

  But there were the same speakers, cartoons and puppet shows for Crossing The Road, Not Talking To Strangers and Not Playing With Matches. The Vanishings were just part of all that.

  People Vanished.

  It was something people just did.

  So the Vanishings were a bit like the Dark Man. They were always there, and always had been.

  Max saw the Dark Man almost every day. When Alice drove him to school in the morning, the Dark Man would be outside the gates. When Forbes took him to their local library, the Dark Man would be moving among the bookshelves. When they went on holiday to a caravan in the mountains of Wales, the Dark Man was sitting in a corner of the local pub, warming his hands before the fire. Lying in bed at night, Max imagined that if he got up and peeked through the curtains, he would see the Dark Man under a street lamp, staring up at him.

  And once he did.

  And he was.

  Even when the Dark Man wasn’t around, he probably was, really. He had a clever way of going from plain sight to nowhere in the twinkling of a moment. All he had to do was step back into the shadows and he was gone—and shadows were always close about him. In his rumpled black suit, with his jet-black hair and beard, he was half made of them already. Only his pale face, shining like the surface of the moon, and his eyes, burning with curiosity, weren’t so well camouflaged for darkness. And often that was all Max could see: the face, the eyes and the curiosity.

  He never confronted the Dark Man, or told anyone about him. The Dark Man was like the Squonk, a creature in one of his favourite library books—W. T. Cox’s Fearsome Creatures of the Lumberwoods. Squonks lived in the forests of northern Pennsylvania, hiding themselves away on account of their ugly, baggy skin.