Darkly Wood II

by Power, Max

  There was always some story or rumour about Darkly Wood and most folk who were superstitious, believed it was inhabited by some kind of evil spirit or ghost, but they were wrong. When the first Lord Darkly came to Cranby and built his mansion at the edge of the wood, he was not to know his name would be inherited by the forest nor that the things that happened there would give it added significance.

  Of course as each event, each terrible event was separated for the most part by enough time to allow the last rumour or story to fade, no one completely believed that there was something as deadly and dangerous as Woody in that place. Besides, there were usually enough suspects or explanations to tell them it was safe to go there and for the most part, it was. Woody had no interest in most folk.

  He watched Holly and Charlie build their little nest on the forest floor from high in the canopy above and he sat back on his hunkers. Woody felt a tingle and the old familiar sound returned to haunt him. Thump, thump it went in his ears and it was very unpleasant. He raised his head towards the invisible sky and felt the breeze on his face. There was not normally a wind blowing so deep into Darkly Wood and he knew it meant something. Woody loved the feel of the air blowing on his cheeks.

  Thump, thump, thump. There it was again only now it was getting louder. He covered his ears but the sound was in his temples and the pain began to sneak across his forehead. Oh how he wished it would stop, but he knew deep down, instinct told him, that the sound was associated with something coming. Perhaps it was the girl below? It didn’t seem like it was. He couldn’t recall how he felt when Daisy had come to the wood because he couldn’t bring her to mind, but there was something he had to do. This was familiar and familiar meant he had to do what he did and old thoughts began to swim through his mind. They were actual thoughts and Woody missed thinking.

  Darkly Wood was a lonely place. Those that visited stayed clear of Woody but not through choice. They didn’t know he was even there but the wood protected him, it kept them out and that was good. Luckily Woody was a simple creature and as time had lost meaning to him, one day was much like the next, or at least it was until the time came to think again, until the time came for him to do…something.

  Their voices drifted in the air, stifled by the breeze and Woody made his way swiftly, silently through the trees to the forest floor and stopped when he was no more than a few feet away from their little den. He crouched low and ran his fingers through the fallen leaves and glared into the inky black night that had descended. Woody didn’t need the light. He waited until the torch that flickered inside their little nest went out. He waited until all was quiet. He waited, for that is what he did and the only distraction was the thump, thump, thump in his head.

  Charlie was fast asleep. Holly listened to his gentle snortle and it annoyed her. She wanted to thump him and was about to when he moved slightly. With the torch switched off she couldn’t see a thing but they were lying against each other, so she knew he moved a little. At first, Holly thought he was just adjusting his position but then he moved away from her, sliding away towards the entrance of their hide.

  The wind picked up and a roll of thunder grumbled in the distance. It felt familiar to Holly but that didn’t make sense. It was like déjàvu but it was not possible that she could have experienced such a moment before. Had she known her grandmother, Holly would know that she too had experienced a night just like this one, as she clung to the boy she loved deep in Darkly Wood. But this was different. Holly wasn’t Daisy May and Charlie was never going to be her love.

  She reached across to feel for the torch beside her and then she was seized by a moment of terror. Without warning, Charlie Callous Colson was whipped away from her as he disappeared through the entrance of their shelter and all she heard was a stifled cry as he vanished at high speed into the night. On his way out he clattered against the supporting branches of their shelter and it collapsed about Holly, and thunder roared directly overhead.

  Holly didn’t scream. She was not a girl that screamed but she flicked on her torch and hauled herself through the shelter into the open of the forest night. Left and right she swung the torch, her beam meeting noting but woodland.

  “Charlie?”

  Holly called his name over and over. She hoped that he was joking. Something told her it was no joke. In her mind she imagined some wild animal had grabbed Charlie and dragged him off into the night. But she knew there were no wild animals in Darkly Wood, save the odd badger or fox. There were certainly no creatures that she knew of big enough to snatch Charlie like that.

  “Charlie, where are you?”

  The wind whipped up into a mini-storm. It came from nowhere and all around the leaves and debris swirled and blew about Holly’s face. She was forced to cover her eyes against the dirt and grit but as suddenly as the maelstrom arose, it swiftly fell away, descending into a gentle breeze again and Holly swung her torch left and right repeatedly, determined to find Charlie.

  Something moved to her left and she spun, pointing the beam of light from her torch into the blackness. She heard another sound, a soft rustle and she adjusted the direction of the beam a little. In the night, the dense forest around her made it difficult to make out the thing that was camouflaged between the sapling hazel growths, but there was something there, of that she was sure. Holly squinted and that something moved.

  “Charlie?”

  Her voice trailed off a little. Holly was afraid it might be him and afraid it might be something else. Though not one tale from her book came into her head, every single fearful emotion that it evoked began to consume her and she felt truly helpless for the first time in her life. Whatever was there moved again, but only barely and the beam of her torch was too weak to fully expose the thing that seemed to be trying to creep away in the dark. Or was it creeping towards her?

  “Char…”

  She barely began to call his name again when the creature, for she felt sure it was a creature rather than a person, not a who but an it, moved very suddenly and there was a rushing, whistling sound almost directly above her head. The darkness and the speed camouflaged the thing that moved and almost knocked her back it was so close. Leaves and twigs rained on her and Holly was forced to cover her eyes with her forearm. Whatever it was that rushed past her up into the trees, moved too fast for her to react and before she could swing the torch skyward, something came falling back towards her from the trees. The thing that came falling from above landed with a thump on the ground in front of her. When the beam of her torch illuminated the fallen object, Holly covered her mouth in horror. It wasn’t a thing that tumbled from the sky, it was Charlie.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN – COMING HOME

  Daisy May Coppertop looked at the small bed against the wall of Holly’s bedroom and all the old memories returned as if it was only a few days that had passed since she had slept in that very room. It was like she had never left Cranby. The walls were a different colour and the furniture was new, but her old house was very unique and although she had only lived there for a short time in her life, it felt more like home than anywhere else, and that was a very strange realisation. It had never struck her before that she might consider this place her home.

  “Home is not a place,” her father used to tell her, “home is a feeling.”

  The journey back had been made comfortable only by the fact that Rose and Daisy had driven in separate cars. There was so much distance between them now; the thought of such a long drive in each other’s company was uncomfortable for them both. Daisy May loved her daughter and Rose loved her mother but they were not friends.

  Some say time is a healer, but time can corrupt and their relationship had been infected by the hurt that deepened with each passing day. Their own versions of reality and how they had parted were completely at odds with the actual truth, but neither wanted to be in the wrong.

  Unfortunately they were in a crisis. While they had to work together, they needed to avoid the inevitable confrontation that opening up the
past would bring. Rose was so angry with her mother that she found it almost impossible to contain but she needed Daisy May. The very obsession that had split them in her mind was perhaps the only thing that could save her daughter now. Daisy May’s almost encyclopaedic knowledge of that place on the hill, was something she hoped might help her in her desperation. More importantly, Rose knew that her mother had a secret, a secret about the wood. She knew more than she had ever revealed and Rose was determined to mine that secret to save her daughter.

  For her part, Daisy May clung to the hope of reconciliation but she too was stubborn and it wouldn’t be at any cost. What she did know however, was that if her granddaughter was in Darkly Wood, she was going to have to face a veiled reality that she had skirted around for all her adult life. Despite knowing more about that place than most, Daisy May was terrified of the madness that returning to Cranby might induce.

  “Why did you come back here?”

  Daisy May asked the question but didn’t really want to start an argument. She just couldn’t help herself.

  “I didn’t come back. This was your home. I never lived here.”

  Her answer was true but they both knew what Daisy meant. Rose dropped her eyes to avoid the look that she knew her answer would evoke. She conceded before they developed an unnecessary argument. Rose needed her mother’s help.

  “OK, I know what you mean, I just couldn’t resist.”

  Daisy wanted to strangle her. It was typical. Her daughter seemed to go through life on a whim without a damn for the consequences. She couldn’t resist? But like Rose, she wanted to avoid more conflict so she bit her lip as Rose continued.

  “I wanted to buy a house and hey, when I went searching and found your old house, I had to come and look.” She finally looked at her mother. “I know you hate this place, I do I genuinely know, but I never understood why, not really. You had an accident, you ended up in hospital and you went a little weird right? But that’s not got anything to do with the house and I know about your obsession with the stories about the wood, but really Mum that’s all they are.”

  Daisy May had begun to feel her blood rise with the dismissal of everything she had experienced, especially in the circumstances, but then Rose called her Mum. She hadn’t heard that word used about her in such a very long time and the effect it had on her, surprised Daisy. Rose took the stunned silence as a chance to continue.

  “It was cheap Mum.” There that word was again. “It was and I love this house, I can’t believe granny moved you out of here after your accident. It is so beautiful here and everyone is so nice, there is no traffic, the…” Daisy May couldn’t let her continue.

  “Rose…Holly is missing. You don’t know what you’ve done by coming back here.”

  “What? What have I done Mum? Tried to make a life for me and Holly? I haven’t done anything.”

  Daisy May sat down on Holly’s bed and smoothed out the quilt with her right hand.

  “Why did you come to me Rose?”

  Rose looked at her mother with a face that suggested she was insane.

  “What?”

  “You heard me Rose. Holly is missing and you come to me. Did you call the police? I know you didn’t. Why not? Your only child is missing and you drive all the way to my house when we haven’t spoken in years to look for help. Why is that Rose? How come you came to me if there is nothing in what I believe about this place?”

  Rose had her bluff called and she knew it. For a moment she still tried to believe she could wriggle her way through, get her mother’s help while still denying she actually needed and wanted it.

  “The police won’t go looking for a teenager until they have been missing for a least a couple of days. They think every teenager is as likely to come running back as soon as …”

  “You know that’s not true.”

  Daisy May knew they were wasting time and she decided to concede some ground for her granddaughter’s sake. The truth of the matter was that Rose had been waiting for her daughter to do something like this for a long time. They had been through a troubled few years and with each passing day she saw her relationship with her daughter, descend into what she felt was the worst place it could go. She saw their relationship turning into the disaster that she now had with her own mother. Rose was repeating the sins of the past as if she wanted it to happen. Even though she could see it, Rose felt powerless to stop it.

  Holly had only gone out for a few minutes, but when she didn’t come back, Rose knew instinctively that something was wrong. She went to her room and searched for something. At least that’s how she justified it in her own head. It wasn’t something that she searched for. It was a very specific thing and she found it. Rose read her daughter’s diary, skimming pages at first, seeing only the negative and reading only the worst into every unclear sentence.

  She had lain on her daughter’s bed and stared at the ceiling and it was then that something happened. It made no sense but she knew that something was wrong. Rose had heard a voice, she was sure of it. Something moved outside in the hallway near Holly’s door and Rose went to see what it could be.

  In her head it was a glimmer of hope that made Rose jump up and open the door. The hope was that the sound was Holly returning home but she wasn’t. There was no one there. Rose heard the voice again. It was barely a whisper but that whisper carried something that had led her to seek out her mother. She went to the bedroom window and looked out at the meadow across the street. She had followed its curve to the top of the hill until her eyes settled on Darkly Wood.

  The whisper drifted to her again and every hair on her body stood to attention. There was someone there at the edge of the wood. It was a fair haired boy and while from the distance she couldn’t make out his features, she remembered at least that part of her mother’s story. In her stories, it was a small fair hair boy that had led her to the wood. He was the harbinger of danger. It all began with him.

  Rose had clasped her hand to her mouth and the whisper came again. The voice softly called her mother’s name, “Daisy May” it called and the boy disappeared into the tree line. She knew in that moment that she had to go and find her mother. But she didn’t want to tell Daisy any of that. Rose was still hurting so much and she didn’t know whether she hated or just didn’t like her mother. Daisy May sensed her daughter’s dilemma and it was a relief when she stopped digging.

  “Look, forget all that. Let’s just put this debate to the side. We both know you called me because I know what’s up there.” She looked at the window as though she could see the wood from where she was sitting. “The problem Rose my darling, is that I don’t really know what to do.” She looked again at her daughter and she could see the despair in her eyes.

  “Tell me what happened mum. You only ever told me stories, half-truths. I know that place haunts you. I came here because I’m afraid that whatever happened to you, might be happening again. I need to know. Tell me what really happened to you back then.”

  “I wish I could Rose,” Daisy answered, “I really do but it is all a mixed up mish-mash of dreams and half-truths. I’m not even sure if I know what was real and what was not.”

  “But you do Mum, don’t you.”

  It was strange to hear someone, especially Rose believe her for once. She had spent all of her life working to avoid telling anyone what she remembered, burying herself in research, always avoiding her own history. It was a shock to think someone else might believe what she thought she might have only dreamed was true.

  “I spent a long time in a coma Rose. Something happened to me that doesn’t make sense.”

  “But it has to Mum. Why else have you devoted your life to that…place?”

  Rose referred to Darkly Wood as though it was a person to be jealous of, for she was jealous of the thing that had in her eyes, taken her mother away from her.

  So Daisy May did something, she had not done for many years. She recalled the time she spent in Darkly Wood. For the first time, she told someo
ne, someone very special, what had happened to her or at least how it seemed in that dark place on the hill above Cranby.

  She told Rose of meeting Benjamin Blood when she was about the same age as Holly. Daisy smiled as she talked about her first kiss with him in Darkly Wood. She darkened as she recalled the boy creature that stalked them and who they had named Woody. Daisy’s eyes filled with fear when she recalled the terrible things that Woody had done and she cried, surprising even herself, when she spoke of Benjamin’s death. At the end of her story, Daisy May told Rose that she couldn’t ever be sure of what part of her journey was real and what part was imagined. She had been stung by a bee and her allergic reaction left her comatose for days. When she woke up, there was no Benjamin, no Woody, no death, fear or carnage in Darkly Wood, only her father Archie reading to her from the little book by her bedside, ‘Tales of Darkly Wood.’

  That was the beginning of a life of obsession and while no one would believe her, could believe her, Daisy May Coppertop knew that what she had felt, that what she had experienced was real. Rose had never heard the story told like this before and she listened to every word. It made as little sense to her as it did to Daisy May but Rose knew one thing for sure. It was something that she had always known. Something terrible had happened to her mother in Darkly Wood and now that Holly was missing, there was only one place she could be. They both knew it.

  Before the sun had fully peeped its shine above the horizon and while the rest of Cranby slept, Rose and Daisy May Coppertop were halfway up the great meadow with the tree-line of Darkly Wood growing larger in their sights. A soft drizzle fell in the distance as they made their way to the forest’s edge and a gentle breeze carried a sound that Daisy May Coppertop knew only too well.