by Power, Max
It was clear that he was trying to work out if he could take to the trees again and cut them off. As Holly mimicked his skyward search, Rose looked about them. The water ran right to the edge of the undergrowth in most places. From where she stood, the only place that had anything resembling a bank was the small stretch where the two creatures waited. She craned her head and then let her daughter’s hand go to turn around. There had to be a way out of this place?
Holly and Benjamin quickly came to the same conclusion. Above, the trees of Darkly Wood still closed off the sky but the branches looked thin and weak, unlikely to hold the weight of this boy-creature. As they finished their canopy search, they both lowered their heads and their eyes met. Holly hadn’t considered this beast in great detail up until this point but as they stared at each other, she could see what he was in this form. There was no question in her mind now that he was a predator, pure and simple. All that he was and all that he knew, all he desired came from a place that would surely unleash his vilest, most cruel nature should he get the chance. He raised his head slightly and closed his eyes. The beast was sniffing the air, catching her scent. It was a tiny but terrifying gesture.
He turned again and then walked along the water’s edge, stepping over the whimpering Charlie-beast as he did so. Again he stopped. This time he looked down at Charlie with a more measured consideration. It seemed to anger Benjamin and he kicked out, connecting with Charlie’s head sending him tumbling to his side.
“Mum?”
Holly couldn’t take her eyes off the creatures but she feared something was about to happen. She could sense it.
“Mum?” She felt very much the child in that moment, in need of direction and reassurance. Rose took her hand and she turned to look at her. They watched as the Charlie beast leapt to his hunkers and roared a staccato screech at Benjamin.
“Shakak kak kak kak...”
Benjamin’s response was a louder, far more terrifying screech that made the other boy-beast cower into immediate submission.
“Wassseeeeeeech!”
The sound filled the clearing and echoed around them. There was no doubting which of the two they needed to fear the most. Having put Charlie in his place, Benjamin turned again to look at the two girls. He licked his lips, his vile tongue rolling across his upper then lower lip in turn. Benjamin-beast crouched a little as though planning to pounce but he was too far away for that to happen.
He could smell them. He could taste them in his mouth. His head was filled with the old familiar sound, the sound that drove him as a beast. Thump, thump it went and Woody was not going to be thwarted. There was no boy in him now. Whatever had held him back was gone. All that remained was desire. It drove him in the past and it drove him right there and then. Nothing else mattered. He would have his prey.
“What will we do mum?”
Rose wished she knew the answer.
“I don’t know.”
She told the truth. Neither Rose nor Holly could take another step. They were uncertain, afraid and could not make any decisions in their cloud of fear and uncertainty, but sometimes decisions are made for you. In that moment, in that tiny wet clearing, Woody or Benjamin whatever they chose to call him, made their decision for them.
He took one step forward and his right foot disappeared into the dark waters of the pond. He looked down at his missing foot and then he looked at the two girls. Oh yes, he could feel it now. Thump, thump went the noise in his head as he took a second slow, deliberate step forward. Again he looked at his feet and then at the girls. Charlie meant nothing to him anymore. He didn’t exist. All that mattered was that which he was hunting. Woody was not a pack hunter. He was a lone-beast that stalked his prey and then struck without mercy.
Behind him, Charlie watched him step into the water and cocked his head like a curious dog. He sprang to his feet and tentatively stepped close to the water’s edge. He looked at Benjamin and then at the girls. Now he too sniffed the air and licked his lips. Everything was about the moment for both creatures. What had gone immediately before almost forgotten. It was all about the now.
Their movements were as slow as they were horrifying. Benjamin lifted one foot out of the water and looked at it before very slowly taking another step. The sound of Charlie stepping into the water behind him made him turn. He looked at him as though seeing him for the first time. For Charlie’s part, it was as though his first reaction to the water had never happened. Both creatures crouched and the Benjamin-beast reached his claw-like hand into the water and brushed the surface as if testing it.
Holly squeezed her mother’s hand hard as panic and sheer terror set in. She could see what was happening. They were coming for them.
“Mum…Mum...MUM.?”
CHAPTER FIFTY – MY DARLING JAMES
The letter was addressed to James and Blenerhorn looked at Squelby ready to ask the question. Squelby knew he would ask so he answered before the question even came.
“Blenerhorn is not a name a mother would choose. It was your father’s choice. Your mother wanted to call you James after her father but…well, read on.”
My darling James,
I doubt he will ever let you read this even though it is at his behest that I write it. He says I am free to tell you whatever I like but again I am confident that this is true. There are so many things I could or would tell you, but in truth the only important matter is that you know how much I love you. From the moment I first felt you grow inside me until this day of your birth, our one and only chance to be together, I have loved you with all of my heart.
Today I must leave this world. Your father has instructed and so it must be. If there was any other way I would hold you close to my breast and never let you go but that simply cannot be. He has made me a promise you see my darling boy and it is a promise that means I must leave you now. It is a pointed, duel-headed promise and I have been trapped by it. By leaving you behind, your father has promised to treat you well. He has said he will honour you as his son through to manhood when you can make your own way. His word is true, I know this now and he will take good care of you my baby.
But the other side of his promise is my cause to leave you. He has given me a choice you see and it is a cruel trick of a choice for in truth there can only be one outcome. I have to forsake you this day or he will take you from me in the cruellest of ways. You will suffer and I will live and this is no choice. I leave you the gift of life and I hope not too much sorrow. He has promised neither to talk bad of me nor to leave you short of anything and so I must go.
We will never get to share the precious moments that a mother and son should but I know in my heart that one day we will be together again. I am today as I will always be,
Your loving mother
Helena
Blenerhorn had no idea what he had just read. He read it again. The delicate handwriting was small and beautifully crafted. It was the hand of a woman for sure, but his mother? What trickery was this?
“She was by all accounts a rather pretty thing, your mother. Your father despised her.”
“What?”
Blenerhorn was more incensed by Squelby’s words than before.
“I said she was by all...”
“I know I know I heard you the first time.” He simply could not conceal his growing rage. Squelby feared the young man might leap across and throttle him. “I mean what is this…thing… this letter? This is not from my mother. I’ve never heard such nonsense. I shall drag you to my father’s house and throw you to his feet to explain. The only question is who should take the honour of beating you for your…insanity.”
Squelby folded his arms.
“Take a breath Blenerhorn Wormhold. Sip some ale. Listen to my words carefully for you have yet to grasp the severity of your circumstance. I come as a messenger from your father sir. It was he who gave me the letter that you hold in your hand.”
Blenerhorn looked at the letter still in disbelief.
“There is more sir
and I will tell it to you as your father told it to me, but please, stay with me to the end, I do not wish to feel your wrath before you understand the message. May I explain?”
Blenerhorn looked at the scrag of a man and nodded his agreement. He wouldn’t kill him just yet. He had to know more.
“Your father met your mother and decided that they should wed and have a child. It was a very perfunctory arrangement for him. He wanted a child, she could bear him one and so he married her. For her part he tells me, she was madly in love with him. Why not I suppose, he is after all a handsome man, a man of means, a powerful man and what woman would not see such a man as marriage material.”
Squelby sat forward and lowered his voice, dropping his hands between his legs underneath the table until his upper forearms pressed against the wood of the table. He slid the pistol back into his right hand as he did so. Blenerhorn automatically mimicked his move as though expecting to share in his secret.
“She did not provide him with a child.”
Blenerhorn tilted his head like a confused puppy. He thought that he was her child.
“Not straight away I mean. In fact they tried hard for the first year and then the second and when nothing was forthcoming, he lost interest in your mother. He was honest with me in order for me to explain this story so forgive me as I recount what your father told me. May I?”
He was asking permission to tell Blenerhorn something unpleasant. It was acknowledged with a nod of the head.
“She began to despise him for he used her for this singular purpose and he was not kind or loving in his…method. In his own words he treated her badly, no more than if she were one of his hounds, a failed breeding bitch and he cast her to the side when she did not produce his heir. It was with great delight one might suppose that he greeted her swollen belly in their third year of marriage?”
He raised his eyebrow with the question and Blenerhorn leaned in even closer as his voice lowered again.
“Not quite so. Your father had stayed away from his wife for at least seven months having given up on her as a lost cause. Her pregnancy had to have originated from another source.”
“What did he do?” Blenerhorn was absorbed.
“What would any man do?” Squelby put the question to the gullible man before him.
“Thrash her within an inch of her life and find out who had dishonoured him. Then if it was me, I would find the cur and beat him to death!”
“Quite.” Squelby smiled a half smile. “But not quite in your father’s case. Your father is a very special man. He has become rich and powerful, not through rash choices but through consideration and planning.”
“This is true.” Blenerhorn showed his agreement by the expression on his face.
“Indeed, she could after all have the child that she so wanted, for she wanted to hold her baby so much that she begged him, pleaded with him to allow her to keep it. He threatened to beat her until the baby passed from her and she begged him until the point that she promised that she would do anything, literally anything in return for your father allowing her to keep her child.”
“Is this me we are talking about?” The penny was slowly dropping with Blenerhorn. Squelby ignored the question and carried on with his tale as though talking of a stranger when he referred to the child.
“He agreed to let her birth the child on two conditions. One he would apply after the child was born. This he would reveal after some consideration he said. But his first condition was she had to offer up the name of the dog that had impregnated her. Your mother was so desperate that she accepted on good faith that your father needed time to calm down and would impose a fair condition once the child was born. As for the father, she had fallen briefly for Fetchly Flintock their groundskeeper and her brief encounter was cut short once he had his way with her.”
“Why I never heard…” Blenerhorn was angered on his father’s behalf, wounded even but Squelby interrupted him, wanting to get to the conclusion of his story.
“She gave Wormhold his name and knew young Flintock would suffer at his hand but she did not care as long as she could keep her child. Mr. Flintock had not been a gentleman, indeed he fell far short of that status.”
“What did he do?” Blenerhorn became excited at the prospect of hearing about his father’s revenge.
“He asked Flintock to meet him in the barn and when he arrived he instructed him to strip to the waist. Flintock refused and your father produced a pistol demanding that the young man obey which he did.”
“What happened?”
“Your father had two men waiting in the shadows. He did not strictly need them but they were useful in the later disposal.”
“Disposal?” Blenerhorn knew as he asked the question.
“They tied him to a post in the barn and Mr. Wormhold whipped him for three days in a row. Each day, the men guarded him after your father left. They tended his wounds, fed him, gave him water and revived him for the next day’s whipping. After three days, they took him aboard the Sea Breeze, one of your father’s smallest ships at the time. He was taken below and bound again. Your father castrated him using an old blunted fish knife on board the ship and instructed his men to dispose of him at sea.”
Squelby paused and took a sip of ale.
“The ship sailed the very next day and he was never seen again.”
Blenerhorn wanted more.
“And what of my mother?”
“Helena? She was taken care of like a queen throughout her pregnancy. Whatever she wanted, your father made sure she had. Nothing was a problem. He allowed her design a nursery for you. He brought in the best craftsmen and paid them handsomely to build your crib and bought the finest of everything to prepare a room for her new arrival.”
“But why if the child was not his?”
He almost said “I” but the way Squelby told the tale he still had some doubt. He didn’t want to believe it anyway. Nonetheless he enjoyed the cruelty of the story.
“We are talking about you sir. You are the bastard of whom I speak, you do realise this?”
The word bastard reminded him that this skinny wretch was telling him that his father was not in fact his father. He was not Blenerhorn Wormhold, rather James Flintock if his mother had been allowed her way. It was insulting and another wave of anger immediately swept over Blenerhorn. He was quick to anger at the best of times, but this Squelby fellow was able to push all the right buttons. This time he could not contain himself. With a sweeping backhand, he slapped Squelby so hard he was knocked off his seat and onto the floor. Blenerhorn stood up rounded the table and picked him up by the scruff of his neck ready to pound on the little man. The wretch dropped his pistol from his lap beneath the table as he reeled backwards. He was at Blenerhorn’s mercy. Squelby pleaded with him.
“Enough, enough, forgive me I am but a poor messenger…please…I beg of you sir, let me finish.”
Filled with rage though he was, Blenerhorn wanted to get to the bottom of this peculiar day. For a moment he was torn and he held his clenched fist above Squelby for a few moments longer, still considering if he might strike him again. The coward of a man did not seem worthy of wasting the energy. In a demonstration of his superior strength, Blenerhorn picked him up and tossed him back onto the seat and returned to take his.
“Thank you sir, and forgive me I meant no offense…”
“Finish your story little man.” Blenerhorn had just about reached the end of his patience.
“Very well...” Squelby brushed his coat off and composed himself, leaping straight back into the point at which he had left off in the story.
“All was fine until the day of your birth. While your father had little to do with your mother during the time she carried you, he made sure she had all that she needed as I explained. Helena was led into a false sense of security, forgetting the second part of the commitment that would be expected of her when her child…you…were born.”
He hesitated not sure if referring to Blene
rhorn might evoke another reaction. Blenerhorn simply stared at him in silence.
“When Helena delivered her child…you sir…your father left her alone for several hours to spend some time with the baby she so wanted and adored. It was love at first sight for your mother, or so your father tells me.”
He watched Blenerhorn soften slightly as he recounted this part of the story. His shoulders sagged a little and there was a softness he had not previously noticed in his eyes.
“When he finally came to her room he walked up to the small crib beside her bed and picked you up. He held you in his arms and looked at your mother who he tells me, smiled a soft hopeful smile. He is a funny man your father. Then he reminded her of the promise that she had made…the agreement if you will. He would impose the second condition now you had been delivered.”
“What was it?” Blenerhorn asked the question in a hoarse, throaty voice.
“You have read the letter sir. It is there.”
Blenerhorn seemed confused. He reached for the letter and then stopped as he remembered what it contained. Squelby clarified regardless.
“He told Helena that he would take you from her and abandon you to the forest. He would leave you to cry alone in the dark night of the woods, to be preyed upon by the wildlife that stalked the shallows of the forest’s edge. Or perhaps he told her, he would raise you to a boy of seven, old enough to remember kindness and then sell you into slavery from one of his merchant ships. There were many takers for young pretty boys and there would be cruelty beyond belief and hardships that would make you curse your mother if you survived long enough to witness them all. Or perhaps, he told your mother, he would do something even worse.”
“My father would not…” Blenerhorn began to defend his father but Squelby intervened again.
“Oh but he did. Helena begged him to give her child back, to stop saying such cruel things but your father insisted. He told her what he had done to her lover and he promised that his wrath would extend to her beautiful new born boy unless she agreed to his second condition.”