The Haunted Storm

by Philip Pullman

  “Shut up, Matthew! Shut up! Don’t keep talking, talking, talking! D’you think you’ll change anything? D’you think it’s a clever little exercise, the world, for you to get so many marks for solving? Oh, the waste of it… and it’s cold, and wet, and getting late. Don’t say another word. I don’t love this act of yours; you and your brother – you’re not men, either of you, you’re something else altogether – oh, it sickens me what you do with your strength. Just get on, that’s all…”

  She stood still, her voice coming intensely at him out of the darkness. He felt overwhelmed. The world was in flood, flooding at him, and all the emotion in the universe was streaming against him; his knees gave for a moment, and then he caught his balance again. He laughed.

  “What’s the time?” he asked.

  She held her wrist out…It was twenty to twelve. They were just halfway between the village and the woods. Matthew breathed in deeply, and they set off again.

  A quarter of a mile further on they came to a fork in the road. The main road continued to the right; the road to the left was much narrower and darker, overshadowed by trees, and this was the way they took. A little way along it there was a high wall on their right, and set back into it the entrance to a drive, overgrown and decayed. It was in complete darkness, and he had to switch on the torch.

  “The drive goes up to the house,” she said. “We take a path through the woods that leads to the lake. Matthew –”

  He stopped; something in her tone pulled at his heart, and he hesitated, and then flung his arms around her and kissed her forehead, her eyes, her cheeks, her mouth, like an unhappy child. He could not help it; the longing was too long for him. After a minute it subsided again.

  He let her go and swung the torch around to light the way. Directly inside the gate there was a car parked. It was the Canon’s Volkswagen.

  “Did you know he was going to be here?” he whispered angrily. His voice had dropped automatically.

  “No – yes – I suppose I did; yes, he went out earlier on, had the spade and things, I remember noticing; I should have said.”

  “So he’s after it too. He better not get in the way. I’ve got a feeling – but no, never mind.”

  He turned away and marched up the drive. His arm was aching from shoulder to wrist, and he had the idea it was swollen; the sleeve felt tight. He pushed it to the back of his mind, and looked around them.

  The drive was pitted with holes, and all of them shone black in the torchlight, gleaming with water. It was covered in weeds, and the trees on either side of it seemed to lean forwards over it. Their leaves dropped thickly with rain, and a constant muffled rustling filled the air, as if the wood were alive with ghosts. Elizabeth kept close beside him, nervous at the darkness outside the light of the torch. As they went farther up, he found himself getting tense and claustrophobic, and fought against it. The world was too wild for that sort of silly reaction…

  Up the drive for a hundred yards – two hundred yards – it was hard to tell. Then there was a gap in the trees on the right. Elizabeth said “That’s it. It’s along there.”

  “Does this go straight there?”

  “No, it goes to the lake, and then there’s another path all the way round, but –oh Matthew,” she caught his arm, and made him gasp with pain.

  “What’s the matter with your arm?”

  “Nothing, nothing. What is it?”

  “I’ve got a better idea – if we just go straight to the lake and find the boat we can go across much faster, and the path’s all overgrown anyway; l probably wouldn’t find the way through.”

  “Well, all right. I don’t care how the hell we get there, as long as we do. What’s the time?”

  Her watch said ten to midnight.

  “Sure you can find the boat?”

  She nodded, and they turned off into the trees. He couldn’t think clearly; the questions were crowding at him now like Odysseus’ ghosts in Hades, straining wordlessly for the blood in the ditch, the false life that would let them speak… The blood was his own doubt. Let them gibber; he could hold them off for a while yet.

  The undergrowth was thick, and the ground underfoot soggy and yielding. They said nothing, but concentrated on forcing a way through the clutching brambles and the mud. After a minute or so he went in front and she held the torch from behind, and he tore at the twigs and smaller branches that got in the way, cracking them savagely and leaving them hanging broken. They were losing time, he thought, and cursed under his breath. He wasn’t thinking at all; all his energy was occupied in battering at the physical world holding him back, and fighting his tiredness, and ignoring the pain in his arm. He stumbled over roots, and scratched his hands on his face, and plunged knee-deep into a sodden depression of mud and dead leaves, and struggled out again.

  An owl screetched suddenly in the trees above them, and flew away silently. He paused for a moment and wiped his forehead, and turned to help Elizabeth past a patch of thick trailing brambles.

  “I thought you said it was a path,” he said. He kept his voice low. They must have been making more noise than a mad bear, but voices were naked, somehow.

  “The rest’s even worse,” she replied, out of breath.

  After a few minutes the undergrowth thinned out, and then without warning he fell forward on to his knees, up to his thighs in water. It was bitterly cold; he gasped with the shock of it, and said quickly “Stay there, don’t move for a moment.” He got to his feet. He was ·only a yard or so in front of her, and in water up to his knees.

  “Is this where the lake should be?” he said, trying to see ahead of him. “Can I have the torch?”

  She handed it to him, and said “I suppose it’s flooded, with all the rain – I should have thought.”

  He shone the torch ahead. It was all water; twelve or fifteen feet in front of him the trees and bushes stopped suddenly, and he supposed that was the edge of the lake, or what would be normally. So the boat must be there too somewhere. He shivered with cold.

  Yes; there it was. A flat-bottomed thing like a small punt, very low in the water, floating just at the edge beyond the trees. He turned back to her.

  “We’re going to get soaked, but that doesn’t matter. Hang on to my hand.”

  He gritted his teeth and held out his left hand. They felt their way forward, up to their calves, then their knees… A thought struck him, and his heart sank.

  “The boat – it must be full of water. Supposing it doesn’t hold us?”

  He was right. When they reached it, up to their thighs in the water, they saw that the boat was nearly full. A single paddle floated inside it. Fifteen inches of water, and nothing to bail with.

  He untethered it, and gave her the torch. He saw with a slight start of surprise that she was crying.

  “Hush, Liz,” he said; “hush, hold the torch, there’s a good girl.” He spoke calmly although he felt like weeping with frustration himself.

  “I’m – so – sorry,” she said. “I honestly thought it – it would be better.”

  “Never mind. Look, hold the torch and hold the paddle, too.”

  He gave her the paddle.

  “I’m going to try and turn it over. It’s not too big; it can’t weigh all that much.”

  He took a deep breath and braced himself before his arm could begin to ache in anticipation, and bent over and felt for the bottom of the boat. It was smooth and slimy, but there was a slight flange where the side met the bottom that gave la fair grip.

  He got his fingers underneath it and heaved up with all his strength. His feet slipped, and he lost his balance for a moment; but he’d shifted it a little. It was swaying, and the water inside it was slopping from side to side.

  “Rock it,” she said. “Get the water rocking and tip it over.”

  He found a foothold and did as she suggested, heaving the boat back and forth until the water was rocking violently; then, when it reached the top of its swing away from him, he gave an extra shove and almos
t laughed with satisfaction as most of the water shot out of it. But when it fell back, it was still too full.

  He rocked it back and forth again. It was easier to move this time, but less water was lost when he tipped it up. At last he came to a point where the water he got rid of was balanced by the water that came over the far side of the boat as it swung under the surface.

  “That’s it; that’ll have to do. In you get.”

  There was about four inches of water still in the bottom of the boat. His arm was bleeding; he saw the flash of red on his hand in the light of the torch, and dipped it under the water to wash it off. He took the torch from Elizabeth and Hung the paddle in the boat, and held it steady as she climbed in. It didn’t settle too deeply; it might be all right, after all.

  She took the torch, and he got over the side and picked up the paddle.

  “What’s the time?” he said softly.

  “Two – three minutes past,” she said. “We’re doing all right. Now it’s straight across from here –”

  “Can you see the other side now? Because if not we might be going in circles for hours – look, switch the torch off.”

  She did, and they sat still in the boat waiting for their eyes to adjust to the darkness. After a few moments she whispered:

  “I know it seems crazy to do it like this – but the path that goes to the well is even worse. It would have been impossible in the dark. And this is much better.”

  He nodded. He was thinking of what would happen when they reached the well, and wondering what the Canon was doing, and whether he’d try and prevent them… the thought brought with it a surge of anger so violent that it made his head swim, and he saw absolutely clearly, for a second, into his soul. It was like a complicated network of caves, inhabited by demons, aboriginal demons who had to be propitiated by the newcomers to the caves: by man, that new kind of monkey, and acquired habits, and things like restfulness and peace – they all had to pay their price, their demongeld, and they were paying heavily tonight. He sat with his elbows on his knees and looked at the sky until his eyes got used to the light.

  The other shore was not far away. The lake was totally enclosed by trees, and roughly oval, from what he could see of it. They had to cross the shorter diameter. As she had said, it probably looked in daylight like an ornamental lake in a landscaped garden, wild and overgrown though the garden might be. There was an atmosphere of decay over it, of rotting vegetation and age and corruption. His impression of it was so acute that it was almost as if it was a person: it was as if the lake had been conscious and perhaps was conscious still, and emanated a field of powerful primitive emotions, which he felt as a combination of nostalgia and masochistic lust. He hadn’t had time to notice it before, struggling to empty the boat, but the instant he sat still and relaxed his concentration it swept over him. The most curious thing was the total objectivity of it: it stood out in his perceptions as clearly as a range of mountains, as evidently out there as the trees themselves.

  He was a little disconcerted by it; already he could feel it beginning to affect him. A mood of dreamy sensuality was tugging at him.

  Elizabeth sat facing him, her head thrown back to the sky and her hands on the sides of the boat. Neither of them moved for a second or two, and then she said, sighing, “I could go to sleep now look, it’s stopped raining. Matthew –” she looked at him, and leant forward, and took his hands; “Matthew, I love you!”

  There was something so poignant in the way she sat and in the tone of her voice that he cou1dn’t help being moved by it; a lump came to his throat, and he felt the desire to take her in his arms and let the boat drift out on to the lake, and to caress her gently; because she was naked – under her clothes, she was naked – that soft white body of hers held all the mysteries in the world in the curves of it and the folds of its flesh… she was impregnated with sweetness, a moral and spiritual sweetness: she was angelic, she was more than human; she was the well –

  The recognition of it rose from his loins, and stirred his heart and his belly with a profound impulse of sexual joy. The sense of penetrating, of entering the very source of good, sweetness, love, filled his whole being; and he leant forward and kissed her on the lips.

  And he knew, simultaneously, that it was a trick. He’d been taken in by the atmosphere of the lake. As soon as he realised it, the sense of stagnation and decay swept over him again, and he sat up abruptly. In the sudden tautening of his will he felt something else, cleaner and clearer… time was getting on. Elizabeth looked hurt and puzzled.

  “Don’t worry,” he whispered. “I’ll tell you later.”

  He took the paddle and manoeuvred the boat around to face the opposite shore. It was sluggish and heavy, hard to get moving and hard to keep on course. The depth of the emotions he’d just felt left him weak and lightheaded; he felt open and defenceless, at the mercy of every chance wind of feeling.

  He must be having delusions as well, he thought, because he felt the boat moving.

  He stopped paddling and sat utterly still; he was afraid to move. The boat was drifting steadily forwards, straight to the opposite shore.

  There was a current in the water.

  A thousand notions of ghosts, fate, elemental spirits, swept at him out of the empty air… empty, was it? It was full, charged, thronged with them. Eddies and whirlpools of meaning circled around him, and he sat limply, trying to get his bearings in the confusion.

  But only one thing was clear: their movement forward.

  She’d noticed it, too.

  “Is it a current?” she whispered, frightened.

  He nodded, and looked around at the trees. They were halfway across by now, and still moving.

  “It’s never been here before…”

  He made an effort to throw off the feeling of hallucination. It was a current. It must have a cause. But whatever the cause, the effect of it was to take them across the lake, so it was a good thing. Think of the well; you’ll be there in a minute, he thought.

  The sense of being haunted vanished slowly. His mind stopped racing. Elizabeth had seized his hand in her fear, and her hands, tight and warm around his, made him want to lay his head in her lap and go to sleep. He was impossibly tired. He yawned, and shook his head to clear it. The boat grounded suddenly; in an instant his senses were alert again.

  The sat still for a moment, peering at the bank. He didn’t want to use the torch if he could help it; it made everything else too dark. He tried to rock the boat, to find out if it was really stuck or only wedged against a sunken branch, but it didn’t move.

  “Any idea where we are?” he whispered.

  “I think so,” she said. “We’ll have to use the torch.”

  “I suppose we will.”

  He stepped over the side of the boat, balancing clumsily. He’d forgotten how cold the water was, even though he was wet through. The current was hardly noticeable now. He found a steady foothold and helped her out; the water was up to their calves. They held hands and made their way forward.

  He switched the torch on, half expecting to see Canon Cole watching them. The knowledge that the priest was somewhere nearby made him nervous, and he didn’t know whether to make a lot of noise and flash the torch about so that he’d know they were there, or go quietly in the dark so he wouldn’t. He wished he knew what the man was up to.

  The trees were even thicker on this side of the lake, and they had to force their way through a stiff mass of twisted, tangled undergrowth. Most of it was brambles. After a few feet they were scratched, sore, and nearly stuck fast; the bank rose more steeply here, so they were soon out of the water, but the innumerable thorns and prickles held them back like a million tiny claws, and tore unmercifully at their clothes and skin.

  After picking his way carefully for a minute he said “Jesus, this is impossible. We can’t stop to pull all the thorns out now, we haven’t got time – look, I’ll have to barge my way through, love, and you follow where I go; which way’s the well? It
’s not far, is it?”

  “It’s a little – to the left –” she panted; “shine the torch over there.”

  He did so, and saw nothing but the wet tangled confusion of bramble and tree-trunk wherever he looked. He moved the torch around; nothing but the dark dripping wilderness on either side. A wave of depressed exhaustion came over him.

  “Over there,” she said, “there it is – no, to the left a bit more. Where the ivy’s come away from that tree – that’s it –”

  He held the torch where she was pointing, but saw nothing. Then his eyes seemed to focus, and he saw it: a regular shape in the mass of knotted, twisted twigs and leaves, surprisingly small and insignificant.

  “I’m going to go straight towards it – just follow – what’s the time now?”

  “Ten past, just gone. Oh, Matthew, do you think it really will?”

  “It had better, hadn’t it? Never mind that now. Let’s just get there first. Take the torch again.”

  He tore at the brambles with his bare hands. He was covered in scratches from head to foot, and his levis were torn. She was probably no better off; and she had the raincoat, too, to impede her. He forced his way into it, leaning against the tangled bushes and pushing with his legs, his chest, his arms. He heard her gasp; he’d let a branch go too soon and it had swung back at her – go carefully, he thought. Don’t be stupid about it. Just get through this bit and you’re there. He wished they’d thought to bring a hatchet with them. His foot caught on a thick root and he fell forward, but the mass of bushes held him up. It was like the ram caught in the thicket: he couldn’t move, his clothes and his flesh were snagged at so many points that the more he tried to push forward the more securely he was caught. Elizabeth was in the same state. They struggled furiously, gaining hardly an inch at a time. His whole body was itching madly as the cuts and scratches inflamed his skin. As he’d fallen forward a hanging strand of bramble had torn at his cheek; he hadn’t noticed it as he struggled, but when he was standing up again he felt the blood run warmly down his face, and the cut began to sting.