by Power, Max
For Holly there was no hesitation. Before he could even respond, she had swung her rucksack onto her back again and was already descending into the inky hole below. She was nuts, but Charlie followed. There seemed to be little choice. They descended in silence and the ladder went on and on. The descent was about thirty feet in all and the ladder rattled, creaked and shook with the weight of them both, as they made their way down. Finally they reached the bottom and Charlie was very relieved to have made it in one piece. Holly was already ahead of him and she shone her torch around the cavern.
It was very eerie. There wasn’t a sound or a breath of air and it was freezing. She shone the torch around until its beam fell upon an arch. There was tunnel underneath the mansion. Holly held the torch beneath her chin so Charlie could see her. She was positively beaming. This was what she had come to discover. This finally felt like the adventure that Holly seemed so desperate to discover.
“Well Charlie?”
“Well what?”
He knew what she was asking and he was a little bit afraid. How she could be so cool and calm was beyond him. Charlie didn’t want to let her know that he was afraid so he answered the unclarified question when she didn’t answer.
“Come on then we might as well.”
Holly didn’t wait another second and they headed straight through the arch into the tunnel. Charlie stayed as close to her as possible. It was pitch black and he could only see what her torch highlighted in the space in front of her.
The floor of the tunnel was a little muddy, but apart from that it was dry. The walls curved around them and were made of big thick stone. Holly and Charlie both wondered what it had been used for, but they walked in silence. After about one hundred yards, a shard of light appeared from the top of the tunnel up ahead.
As they drew near, it was clear that the tunnel had caved in and it was blocked. The light came from a hole in the roof and when they looked up they could see the sky above peeking through the trees once again. There was a huge tree growing as if directly from the hole in the tunnel and its roots were perfect climbing rungs which they used to ascend back out into the forest above.
Once at the top, the disappointment hit Holly. She was still dreaming of something much more exciting. They looked around and the remains of the old manor could just about be seen through the surprisingly dense woodland. Charlie was getting bored and wanted to go back. He was about to express his opinion but when he turned to look at Holly, she was squinting, focusing on something in the wood and she had her hand held out, finger in the air. Holly wanted him to be quiet.
“What is it?” Charlie whispered, knowing that she had spotted something and didn’t want him to scare whatever it was away. Perhaps it was an animal. He turned to look at the place he thought she was studying so very carefully, but Charlie couldn’t see anything. Holly could see it though. There was a shadow. Something moved in the distance between the trees. It was small and fast but it wasn’t an animal of the wood she felt sure of that. It moved in a very strange way.
“Ssshh,” she insisted. “There, beyond that line of trees with the pale leaves, do you see him?”
Charlie stared but still saw nothing.
“Someone’s watching us.”
The thought was a little bit scary but only a little. Charlie wasn’t easily frightened but there was something about the wood that unnerved him. Then he saw it. Charlie saw a dark spindly shadow and it send a shockwave of fear through his body. He completely froze. The movement was only tiny. The thing that he saw was impossible to make out as it moved so fast and Charlie wasn’t sure if it was a creature, a human, or just a shadow. One moment it looked like there was nothing and then the very trees seemed to move.
The uncertainty frightened him, but the thing that really made him feel afraid was how his brain deciphered the fleeting image. It seemed impossible but it looked like a pointed stick man, all long fingers, thin and bent and moving fast. He knew it was impossible. His mind was playing tricks on him but that didn’t ease his fear. Holly appeared to see something different in the shape.
“It’s a boy! Come on!”
Holly’s declaration, half put Charlie at ease and half worried him. She may have seen a boy and he could well be wrong, but what if he wasn’t. She was already chasing off in the direction of the shadow man and he was running in her wake. Holly was fast and Charlie struggled to keep up in the thickly carpeted, uneven floor of the forest. As she darted forward, she called to him, encouraging Charlie to keep up.
“Come on, this way.”
She seemed to have whatever she was chasing in her sights. Indeed she did. Up ahead, always just too far away to get a good look, always moving too fast and darting in and out of the tree line so quickly that Holly couldn’t get a fix, she chased what she was sure was a boy with a head of thick, blonde hair. Every time he cut across into the open, she saw him but only for a moment and then the trees and undergrowth diluted her view.
The only problem for Holly was that it wasn’t true that the thing she chased in Darkly Wood was in her sights. It was quite the opposite. The thing that she had stirred in the wood, the thing that was remembering, the creature Holly’s grandmother once called Woody, was in control.
His memory may have failed him, but his instinct was perfect. Woody knew what he was doing. With Holly and Charlie on his trail, Woody took to the trees and scurried silently up into the canopy above them. There he sat and watched and waited. Below, Holly came to a stop as she realised that the boy she chased had vanished. She looked all around and Charlie finally caught up. They didn’t know it yet, but they were lost. Darkly Wood had conspired with Woody and he knew that whatever ancient desire he had and whatever urgent want it was that surged through him, needed to be satisfied.
The memories were not there just yet, after all how could he remember something new to him like Holly? But there were memories lurking just out of reach, waiting for the connection to be made. For now it was something else that entered his world, something also familiar but altogether far more unpleasant.
Thump…thump. It was more than a sound and it filled his head. Thump…thump…thump. The beating, throbbing pain of that familiar noise, made him clutch his paper thin temples to stop the pain. Thump…thump. It was back and it was back for a reason. Holly wasn’t the cause of his pain. Someone else, someone very special caused the pain and soon he would realise the significance of its return. Daisy May Coppertop was coming.
CHAPTER NINE – WORMHOLD RETURNS.
Caroline and Cathecus took turns watching their dear children and Doctor Healy returned later in the day, still baffled as to the cause of their malaise. He left again after checking that they were still for the most part healthy apart from the obvious strange condition, promising to return again in the evening.
It was growing dark and Caroline was watching over the children, when Cathecus went to sit on the seat that he had made himself at the side of his vegetable patch in order to smoke a pipe and think. He was drained and worried. Cathecus had prayed and begged the Lord to bring his children back, but he was even starting to doubt that his prayers were being heard.
He didn’t see Wormhold at first. So he puffed on his pipe, rubbed his tired eyes and looked across his little garden. Wormhold was standing in the half-light by the gate, wearing the same hat and scarf he had worn when last Cathecus had set eyes on him. Cathecus felt a sense of pure fury instantly grow inside and he tossed his pipe to the ground. He strode at speed straight across his prized crops and stopped when he was three feet away from the strange man, with only the gate between them. Beneath the scarf a smile crossed Wormhold’s mouth. Cathecus wasn’t sure that this was the work of Wormhold, but in his heart he knew there had to be a connection.
“Get away from my house.”
It was the first thing he thought to say as though his very presence was causing the spell that his children were under. Wormhold coughed and ignored the implied threat.
“Have you start
ed to make the headstones that I requested?”
“What! Are you mad man? Go before I take a stick to you.”
Wormhold remained calm and still did not move.
“How are your lovely children today? I hear they have been unwell?”
The words sent a boiling rage into the head of a normally calm Cathecus and he ripped the gate open intent on doing Wormhold harm. Wormhold took one step back and raised his gloved hand, palm facing outward in a gesture for Cathecus to stop. He half shouted his next demand.
“Stop!”
His voice was firm and Cathecus felt compelled to stop. There was a tightening in his chest and his head felt light.
“You have until Sunday. I will return for my headstones.”
He turned and began to walk away but paused, to toss a parting, terror-inducing comment to Cathecus.
“Your wife needs you I fear.”
Cathecus stood rooted to the spot for a moment as the words sunk in, but it struck him as such an odd thing for Wormhold to say. Panic gripped him and he ran back to the house. His head was still light and his chest grew tighter but Cathecus had to be sure. He called out his wife’s name as he burst through the door but he never slowed.
“Caroline…Caroline.”
There was no answer. When Cathecus entered Petunia’s bedroom, Caroline lay still on the floor. At first he thought she might be dead. His fear was that great. But when he checked, she was in the same trance as his children. Cathecus held her in his arms and pulled her close to his chest. He was a man who never cried, but tears rolled down his face and he could not bear the pain that he now had to endure. To lose everything, his wife and children to a stranger’s will for no apparent logical reason, was beyond comprehension.
Outside, Wormhold wrapped his scarf a little tighter around his neck against the cold and coughed once more. He carefully removed his top hat and brushed the thin layer of red hair back across his head from left to right. It was barely there at all. His almost bald head bore scars with pustules scattered across the entire surface. Wormhold coughed once more, placed his hat back on his head and smiled.
CHAPTER TEN THE DARKENING
At first they caught their breath, scanned the forest with their eyes and listened out for a sound that might give away the position of the thing they were chasing. When they realised it was pointless, they decided to head back the way they came.
Charlie quizzed Holly, for he wasn’t quite sure what he had seen and all she could tell him was that it looked like a boy with blonde hair. But it pretty soon became clear, that it wasn’t the boy that was their most pressing problem.
“We’re lost Charlie.”
Holly’s statement was not something that surprised Charlie. After they had failed to catch up with whoever or whatever they were chasing, they had turned back, or so they thought. Darkly Wood was a very confusing place. There were no discernible landmarks and once they had lost sight of the ruin, every tree and bush looked the same. The ground rose and fell in what looked like small, gently sloping gradients, but once in a hollow they would lose sight of the horizon and on return to the higher ground, each time the wood around them looked different somehow. But being lost wasn’t the only problem.
“It’s getting dark Holly.”
Charlie was looking skyward and while he could barely make out the sky through the thick canopy overhead, there was no doubt that the light was fading fast. It seemed too early to be getting dark and he checked his watch. It had stopped. Holly was looking skyward and must have read his mind.
“What time is it?”
“My watch has stopped, but we haven’t been out that long have we?”
Holly climbed up on top of a fallen tree to get a little bit of extra height and looked around. There was nothing recognisable and no sense of which direction was which. They were truly lost. The light was fading as they stood there trying to make a decision and the air temperature dropped. Both Charlie and Holly felt it and looked at each other for reassurance that they would be alright.
Neither one wanted to admit that a creeping fear was growing in their minds, but they had to do something. Holly was ever the pragmatist.
“We either keep going or we make camp. I think it’s just a shower of rain brewing or something. It really can’t be that late yet so I say we keep moving.”
Charlie didn’t answer. He simply held out his hand as if to say ‘after you.’ On they went, with Holly in the lead, becoming increasingly annoyed at her inability to find her way back and worried that her mother would kill her. Charlie had no such concerns. He had stayed out overnight more times than he could care to remember. His father wouldn’t even notice.
Unfortunately for Holly, her pragmatic inklings only brought them deeper into Darkly Wood. Night was impossibly falling and she had to resign herself to the fact that they would have to stop and find a safe place to rest for the night. As the thought struck her, Holly spotted what looked like a man-made shelter at the base of a huge tree.
“Look at that Charlie. I think we’re going to have to make camp.”
“Looks like someone had the same idea before us. It’s not great.”
Charlie ran over to the fallen branches and scattered ferns. Someone had indeed constructed a shelter around the hollow at the base of the tree and it had clearly fallen down, but the bulk of the shelter was intact and they could see the idea was sound. In the failing light it was better than nothing and they were running out of time. They had no idea how old the broken shelter was nor of its significance. In a way it was reassuring to know someone else had tramped the same ground. They felt less isolated by the very presence of the broken shelter.
“Tell you what Charlie, let’s get this thing reconstructed and then I’ll tell you the rest of Zachary’s story.”
So it was with some reluctance and quite a bit of trepidation that they set about rebuilding the shelter that some previous visitor to the wood had constructed, long before they had even heard of the place. Neither of them wanted to stay the night in the forest, for despite their bravado Darkly Wood still had a frightening reputation. What they didn’t know was that high above in the canopy, the shadow-man that Charlie had seen, the small blonde boy that was in Holly’s imagining, was watching them. Something crept across the thin pale skin of his face. It was a centipede. But the crawling, slithering creature didn’t even register with Woody. Something else crept across his face. It was something that he hadn’t felt in such a very long time before that day and now it seemed he couldn’t help himself. He smiled again.
Below him was a scent, a feeling and a memory. This time there was substance to his memory. There on the forest floor was a hint of something from the past. But it wasn’t just what he saw. Woody could taste it. The taste filled his mouth. These intruders were rebuilding a shelter that helped him almost recall something very special.
Woody didn’t know that he had led them to this place on purpose. It was completely subconscious, but this place held nostalgia for a creature that possessed no memory. There was purpose behind what went through his head. Woody needed to draw a very special person back to Darkly Wood and Woody needed to find those memories and draw them out if he was to bring her back. It was all beyond his control but he was a creature of destiny and his part had to be played.
Daisy May…the name was not yet on his lips or in his head, but she had been here in this very place. It was a long time ago but what Holly Coppertop didn’t know, what she couldn’t know was that as she nestled beneath the makeshift shelter of fallen branches and ferns to keep out the elements, she was recreating a moment from Woody’s past. More importantly, she was rebuilding the shelter that her grandmother had first build in similar circumstances all those years ago. All that was missing now was a storm and a storm was surely coming.
As he sat on his haunches, gently bouncing and sniffing the air, Woody raised his face skyward. There was a rustle in the leaves, a chill in the air and the sky darkened towards black. A slow rumble g
rew in the belly of the storm that was coming and Woody’s long tongue, slid across his purple lips. He smiled as the sound began once more grew louder in his head. He hated that sound but it meant something familiar was close, something nice. Thump…thump it went and despite its discomfort, Woody smiled an even broader smile.
CHAPTER ELEVEN – THE SECRET OF DARKLY WOOD
Daisy May Coppertop’s recollection of the time she lived in Cranby was nothing more than confused fragments of things that only felt real but never truly could be as she remembered. When she returned back home after her short stay in Wickby hospital as a little girl, she found it hard to cope. She became withdrawn and wouldn’t go out. Every night was interrupted by terrifying nightmares. Eventually her stress became too much. It was the main reason why her mother eventually sold up and moved away from Cranby.
Daisy tried to piece together the events that led up to her time spent in a coma, but she depended on her mother and father to fill in the blanks. They had told Daisy that she had been stung by a bee, had an allergic reaction, combined with an asthma attack and by the time they found her she was barely alive. But that’s not what she remembered. The things they told her seemed like dreams, while the things she was told that she had dreamed while in the coma, felt like memories.
Two things stuck with her most of all. Daisy recalled the terror she had felt up in Darkly Wood. She remembered the thing that stalked her in the night but most of all, she remembered Benjamin. How could her first love be untrue? He had kissed her and even now after all the years that had passed, she could feel his love whenever he came to mind. He came to mind often. Benjamin was her obsession. He was her secret.
It was Benjamin Blood that brought her back to Darkly Wood at least in spirit. Daisy had never gone back to Cranby, nor had she any intention of doing so. But she had spent the last twenty years of her life and more, researching and reading every last thing that she could about that place that had changed her.