by Power, Max
Somewhat deflated, they carried on with their hopeful plan and walked hand in hand up through the meadow towards the wood. They set out their picnic at the very edge in the shade of a great oak tree. It was such a beautiful place and regardless of their now seemingly failed venture, they felt happy that they had chosen to visit such a lovely spot.
Below, the village looked tiny in the distance. They could see the village folk go about their business as though they were spying on them from above. It was quiet though and only a few busy souls moved about. The heat of the day was slightly oppressive and they were glad of the shade. Neither noticed the figure in the shadows watching them and it was only when Wormhold emerged from the wood that they saw him.
Hugo stood to greet him and immediately noticed a peculiarity. Despite the heat of the day, Wormhold wore a heavy coat, an odd tattered top hat and a long, heavy scarf which was wrapped around the lower half of his face. He coughed a harsh cough as he approached and stopped short of their picnic spot.
“Ah Mr. Wormhold.” It was a greeting of sorts. In his surprise and anxiety, he wasn’t quite sure what to say. There was an element of embarrassment almost in his movements. Hugo suddenly wondered why they had come up to Darkly Wood on such a whimsy. Wormhold tucked his gloved hands into the folds of his rather large coat. His appearance surprised them both as the last time they met, he had seemed so well groomed. Now he looked more like a vagrant. Penelope stood and linked her husband.
“It’s good to see you both again.” His eyes sparkled from over the top of his scarf. It was such a lovely day, it seemed odd for him to be so wrapped up. “Forgive my appearance.”
He explained that he was under the weather and he began to walk slowly away as he spoke. Unbeknown to them, Penelope and Hugo mirrored his slow steps along the edge of the wood without thinking. There was anxiousness about them both. While each one wanted to ask the same question, they didn’t share this need or desire and they followed Wormhold in the desperate hope that he might elaborate on what he had said when last they met.
“I was wondering if I might see you both again.” He was going to play with them a little. “It is such a nice surprise to see you took my advice to visit our beautiful little woodland. Isn’t the view spectacular on a fine day like today?” He kept walking as he spoke and his pace quickened a little.
Penelope and Hugo had only one reason for their diversion and while neither one dared admit it openly, they most certainly hadn’t come to see the view of Cranby from Darkly Wood. They quickened their pace to keep up with Wormhold. Their desire was almost unseemly.
“I have travelled the world you know and I’ve yet to find a more beautiful place.” Wormhold slowed slightly and moved closer to the saplings at the edge of the wood. The air was heavy and all was quiet except for the sound of his deep voice and the noise of their tromping legs as they coped with the long grass.
“Mr. Wormhold, I...I was curious.” Hugo couldn’t hold back and Penelope exchanged a knowing glance with her husband, happy that he had spoken up.
“Ah the thing that killed the cat...”
“Yes…yes…quite.” Hugo replied a little irritated.
“You implied when we last met, well more seemed to know really, I am not quite sure how to put it.”
Wormhold stopped dead in his tracks and turned to face them. For several seconds he just looked at them as though slightly shocked, but it was hard to tell from only his eyes just what he was thinking for sure. He seemed bigger somehow, larger, rounder, a more imposing physical presence.
“You speak of the child?”
Penelope felt a lump in her throat. It was true she knew it. Some instinct drew her hand to her belly and she gently cradled herself. Hugo was rendered speechless. Wormhold stepped forward and took something from his coat pocket. It was a silver necklace, with a charm on the end. The necklace had three hearts, two large ones almost cradling a smaller one in the centre. Wormhold asked,
“May I?” He indicated that he wanted to place it around Penelope’s neck. She simply nodded, unsure of what to do. Penelope bowed her head and he gently lowered it over her head until it fell about her neck. She touched the three hearted charm smiling, knowing what it meant. What else could it mean two large hearts and a small, baby heart? Wormhold stepped back again.
“Look to your wife sir.” It was a simple instruction and Hugo turned to face Penelope. She was positively glowing. A smile had erupted across her face and her cheeks bore a fresh colour. There was joy in her eyes. She took her husband’s hand and squeezed. This was all too good to be true. That such happiness could fall upon them when they were already happy beyond their expectations seemed unimaginable. They turned to Wormhold, but he was gone.
No it only seemed that way. The strange bearer of good tidings was standing perhaps 100 yards away in the shadow of the wood. He was waiting. Like fish to a lure, they followed him out of the long grass, across the debris of the forest floor, out of the light and into the cool shade of Darkly Wood. The ground was uneven and they had to watch each step carefully to avoid tripping. It seemed that every time they looked up, Wormhold was still no closer and when they finally did reach him, Hugo and Penelope were deep beyond the delicate edge of the wood. A lingering light glowed in the distance but the trees above shared little light.
“Sit.”
His instruction was followed without question and the happy couple sat on an old fallen tree beside the increasingly sombre Wormhold. They watched him as he paced back and forth in front of them, waiting for him to further develop his wonderful prediction. The uncanny silence didn’t bother them because it went unnoticed. Finally he turned and faced Penelope and Hugo and they knew something had changed. There was no smile left in his eyes. Penelope reached across and hooked her bare arm under her husband’s.
They realised they had made a mistake in coming to Darkly Wood when the first creature appeared. He was vile and slithering in posture and he simply slunk around into view from behind the mighty Wormhold as though he’d been there all along. In a way he was a slight boy but in another, he was a loathsome snarling creature, with a menace beneath his lean body. It moved silently to their right and they watched it transfixed. When it finally stopped moving, crouched by a nearby rock, the second beast emerged from the undergrowth to their left. Penelope clung to her husband and Hugo tried to stand to protect his wife, but he couldn’t move.
He looked at Wormhold, who had his gaze fixed upon the poor man and it was as though those eyes held him in place, helpless against the vile creatures that were now just a few feet away, sniffing the air. The nearest one licked his purple lips and revealed his saw-tooth mouth excited at the prospect of a fresh victim. There was no question in Hugo’s mind that they would die in this place and sadness overwhelmed him. When he turned to look into Penelope’s eyes, he saw his emotions mirrored. She seemed stoic, unafraid, resigned to their fate.
They were together and that made the difference. Wormhold found it hard to watch them. Their apparent bravery in the face of what was clearly before them took away some of his pleasure and he needed to destroy the bond that held them up.
“Your child? It has brought you even closer in your love?”
They never took their eyes from each other but Wormhold noticed with pleasure, how Penelope touched her tummy.
“You fools! There is no child. There never was!”
He laughed and coughed and his eyes danced while he waited for the crush of disappointment as he took away the joy that had brought them to seek him out in Darkly Wood. But it didn’t come. Hugo didn’t care. Penelope didn’t care. The snarling beasts hunkered down at their feet, waiting for their master to give them permission, fidgeting in their desire for flesh. They knew their love would endure no matter what.
“Kiss me my love”
They were Hugo’s last words according to legend and when Wormhold’s anger got the better of him, when he could stomach the resilience of their love for each other no more, he d
ismissed their lives with the flick of his wrist and the angry mouths filled with teeth and glee went about their deadly work.
Neither Penelope nor Hugo were ever found, all that remained of their existence, the only evidence that they had ever been to that place above Cranby, was a trail of blood and a lingering misplaced anger in Wormhold’s already cold soul as he reconsidered his final words to Penelope and Hugo. One of the few regrets he had in his life was that he hadn’t told them the truth. In hindsight knowing his vile minions would destroy the life of their child also on that day would surely have been a far harsher end to their lives.
There was little pleasure in Wormhold’s existence. He sought it at every opportunity, often through cruelty. Time was not something that mattered, so he planned and connived with a luxurious amount of space to develop his ever more twisted ideas. But they were not without purpose. There was a hole in his heart, a void that needed to be filled. He was an angry, hate filled man with a purpose beyond that which others could understand. One day he knew his destiny would be fulfilled, but until that day he sought out the pure of heart, the innocent and the loving to exact his retribution for what had been done to him.
Only in pain could he feel relief, but like an addict, each hit was less and less effective. He lived on measured doses, knowing the importance of not drawing too much attention to himself or to Darkly Wood. Darkly was his only remaining pleasure. Only there did he feel in anyway whole, but he never truly felt whole.
The pain and hurt he had suffered went beyond the normal for any man. He was so absorbed in his relentless search for happiness that he had begun to feed his habit a little too often. Wormhold was no fool. His understanding of what he was and who he was, how his destiny was entangled with a stupid, foolish girl, was all too clear. His love had turned to hate and the spiteful, vile, twisted lust for retribution helped him pass the time.
When Penelope and Hugo dismissed his loathsome menace by turning to their love in their final moments, it was as though they had stolen from him. It was a moment he would hold onto in order to ensure he did not make the same mistake again.
A long time had passed since the events occurred in that particular story. The present was all that mattered. Wormhold once again found himself waiting in Darkly Wood, in that place of infamy on the hill above Cranby.
When Wormhold heard that familiar sound, when the pain crossed through his skull, he recalled that moment of disappointment with a clarity that told him to be careful. Thump- Thump it went, reverberating in his head. Thump- Thump it called him to action and drove him on. His excitement grew with every aching pound and in the wood, things began to change. He was preparing, his divine creatures were waiting and Darkly Wood itself was getting ready, waiting, looming large above the small village of Cranby, as Daisy May Coppertop once again drew near to its very heart. This time there would be no mistakes.
CHAPTER THIRTY SEVEN – WHEN CHARLIE MET BENJAMIN
Sometimes spectacular things happen. They can be of slight importance to others, but for one person, on occasion a truly momentous event occurs in their life and it happens in the blink of an eye. For Charlie Callous Colson, that moment came when he met Benjamin Blood for the first time.
He had forgotten almost everything. Charlie had no notion of where he had come from, who he was or what lay in store for him. In the moments before he met Benjamin, all he knew was the familiar thumping sound in his head. He had no idea why it was familiar, only that even though it was deeply unpleasant, it was the only thing that mattered. It was the sound and feeling that drove him and he sensed his hunger would be satisfied once he caught the girl in front of him.
His hunger was so great, it seemed impossible that it could be satisfied. That it drove him was all that mattered and he had not expected to deviate from his task. However when he suddenly came across what he could only believe to be another version of him in the wood, the hunger vanished.
Benjamin Blood for his part felt precisely the same. Neither boy was aware of their own hideous appearance for appearance was not a concern. Their only concern was whatever drove them and that was something they didn’t think about. Thinking was a hindrance. Being driven, acting on an automatic drive was much easier. However, both boys did recognise that the mirror image before them was somehow a reflection of the other. They circled each other, suddenly losing interest in the girls who fled. That was no longer a concern. They sniffed the air and the scent was familiar. It was as familiar as their own scent, an exact replica in fact and it confused them both. Each step, each flinching movement was replicated by the other, even a twitch of the eye was repeated and they were caught in a spiral of copycat uncertainty.
By the time the girls returned, they had softened. Both creatures had straightened their curved backs; they were standing taller, more boy than beast and the remnants of their shoddy clothes hung about them giving them the appearance of very peculiar street urchins. But as they softened, their differences became re-established and Benjamin’s fine hair appeared for the first time in a very long time. Charlie’s slightly skewed nose, set him apart from his twin and as they changed so did their mood. They still circled, but now as they sniffed the air, there was an unfamiliar scent greeting them and their still jagged teeth, snapped and their lips curled in threat.
Daisy, Holly and Rose watched confused and frightened. It was Daisy who saw it first. When they first encountered Woody, she had quickly recognised that it wasn’t her Benjamin. Now seeing the two creatures, she recognised him right there in front of her. She hadn’t looked close at first because she assumed neither one was Benjamin, but when she did; she saw the glimmer of Benjamin, a hint of the boy she had met and fallen in love with when she was a young girl on her first visit to Darkly Wood. Her fear forgotten, her heart was young again and it raced with a new excitement. Could it really be true? After all her years of self-doubt, Daisy May Coppertop could barely believe it herself. In a half-whisper she said his name.
“Benjamin?”
It was barely audible and while her daughter and granddaughter didn’t even notice her whispered word, one of the creatures froze. He listened to the sound that drifted softly to his ear. She said it again, only this time louder and to Rose and Holly’s horror, she took her first steps towards the creatures at the centre of the clearing. Rose reached her hand out to try and stop her but Daisy May shrugged her hand away.
“Benjamin?”
Now both creatures turned towards her. They were a hideous mix of boy and beast but there in his eyes, Daisy saw the boy she once loved. He had turned to face her, ignoring his new found identical partner. This was the beast she once called Woody and the boy she knew as Benjamin all rolled into one. She had pursued and later run from Woody hand in hand with Benjamin and it all seemed so impossible that it couldn’t have been true. All the confusion from her past returned.
When she escaped from Darkly Wood the first time, Daisy ended up in hospital and her last memories were the confused muddle of Benjamin and Woody all blending together in her mind. This was the reason she had spent her life chasing the story. Here in front of her was the fear she didn’t want to face. If it was true, Daisy May knew her suspended heart-break would return for real. How could the beautiful Benjamin be Woody? She had always struggled with the notion but not knowing how much of her experience was real, somehow exonerated her from the pain that facing the truth would bring. Although she wanted the dream to be real, Daisy also used the possibility that all she had gone through as a young girl may have been a dream to cover over the cracks in her story. In many ways she needed a get out clause to maintain her grip on reality.
Her mind raced but Charlie didn’t care. He too had been distracted from his twin. Now his focus was on Daisy May. The crazy woman was walking straight towards them and the thump, thump, thump took over again. The hunger, the desire, the ravenous lust for flesh began to take control and he moved slowly towards her.
He was a hungry beast again, a careful, stalking cre
ature of the wood. Benjamin didn’t move. He only twisted his neck, a confusion of familiarity beginning to creep into his head. There was no thumping in his mind. He knew this woman. Nothing was ever familiar save the wood, but somehow she was and he sniffed, watched, turned and straightened, and he felt something he had not felt for a long time. She had spoken his name. The word was familiar and he tried to repeat what she said.
“Benshamen.”
It came out wrong but when he said it Daisy May smiled. She was oblivious to the other Woody, moving to her left, closing in. Rose and Holly didn’t know what to do. Rose wanted to go after her mother but she had to protect her daughter and she stepped in front of her, looking around. In her head she was planning to make a run for it. It felt cowardly but what else could she do.
“Mum?” she tried to call to Daisy to tell her to watch out for the creature closing in on her.
“Mum!”
Daisy ignored her. Rose pulled Holly behind her. The first instinct was to run but watching her mother almost blindly step towards danger kick-started something else and Rose couldn’t just stand by and watch this happen.
“Stay here.”
She grabbed Holly by the shoulders.
“If I say run, you run and don’t look back.”
Holly shook her head. She was terrified but she couldn’t imagine that she would run and leave her mother and grandmother behind. Rose turned and ran towards her mother, all the time watching the beast that was once Charlie and it hissed and snarled, angry at her intervention. Daisy remained oblivious. She stopped and looked at the beast she knew to be Benjamin and smiled. A tear formed in the corner of her eye. She didn’t know why but her tears were for herself. In that terrifying circumstance, there was a connection and Daisy May Coppertop was vindicated in her belief that what had happened to her was indeed real.