by Power, Max
“I don’t believe this.” It was truly a difficult thing to imagine, but Blenerhorn knew something of his father that made this very plausible, despite his outward misgivings. Wormhold senior was a cruel and hard man. He offered little in the way of love and when he set his mind to something, there were no limitations. His father always did what needed to be done no matter what it took and he damned the consequences. His father was a man of his word.
“He offered your mother the rope in exchange for your safety. He gave her the day and a chance to write you that letter after which, she should hang herself from the yard arm of one of his ships. She took her final day, wrote the letter and then to spite him and so that all the world could see in one final act of defiance, she tied her bed clothing together, wrapped a cord around her neck and threw herself out of their bedroom window.”
Squelby watched Blenerhorn’s face. He aged before him and anger had been replaced with something else.
“And now I can fully clarify why I come to you and the reason I am here, the point of my visit as it were.”
Blenerhorn picked up and straightened in his seat. He knew now that this little man was telling the truth. He didn’t know why but for some reason, this had become real. Squelby was indeed acting on behalf of his father. Squelby enlightened him further.
“You were never wanted sir. I am afraid that is a simple truth. Much like your mother during her pregnancy, you have been tolerated. He promised to take you to manhood and he has done that and beyond. He has waited patiently for his final revenge on your mother and he wants to enact it today. He has waited long enough. As I told you already, you must hang yourself as your mother did all those years ago. Take your own life so that he might be satisfied. There I have said it.”
Unexpectedly, Squelby stood up dusted himself off and smiled.
“So, like I said at the beginning, indulge yourself for what is left of this day, but by midnight…” he paused for a moment before continuing in a low voice, “…the yardarm awaits.”
“And what if I don’t?”
Blenerhorn was seething and he glowered at Squelby from his seat. Squelby smiled and sat again, once more leaning in close.
“I see you no longer ask if this is your father’s wish. You know it now to be true?” He raised a questioning eyebrow but got no response.
“My authority is not great, only my word which I hope you now trust is great. So let me tell you what happens next.” He ruffled himself and carried on with a more autoreactive voice.
“You have grown up in a world of wealth, power and privilege. If you chose not to obey your father’s wishes, tomorrow you will awake homeless, penniless, locked out of all property that belongs to your father including the house you live in. Your position and title will be gone; your name blackened and so on. No one will give you shelter or the time of day.” He nodded in the direction of the innkeeper.
“Tonight he will let you drink your fill. Tomorrow he will call in his debt and it is a big debt sir. You have others, many others we both know this? All debts will be called in, you shall have no place to hide and you know what that means.”
Blenerhorn’s face reddened. This simply couldn’t be true.
“But my father… he wouldn’t allow...” Squelby cut him short once again.
“But he is not your father. Your father lies castrated at the bottom of the sea. You are no more than a dead man’s bastard and Mr. Wormhold has ‘facilitated’ you for all these years so he might exact his ultimate revenge.”
Squelby gave him a moment to let it sink in. Blenerhorn could not possibly survive if his debts were called in. He was as good as a dead man already if this were true.
“Mr. Wormhold has chosen to be kind. He knows it is not your fault, you are the son of an imbecile and a whore but he will have his final revenge on your mother.”
“On a dead woman?” Blenerhorn was stunned by the revelations and more by his predicament.
“Precisely sir, on a dead woman. Dead or alive it makes no difference. You think there is no place beyond this life where we cannot continue to be cursed or blessed?”
Blenerhorn glanced at Squelby as his voice had changed. He saw something darker there. There was something frightening about this skinny little man all of a sudden.
“Do as your father asks. Indulge yourself for this night, it shouldn’t be hard you have had years of practice. If tomorrow you are still with us in this world, you will know the true meaning of losing everything. You sir, were not built to handle such a life. It was your father who brought you up to be this way on purpose. He has left you helpless now and with only one route to take.”
He nodded with his head at the letter on the table.
“Read it again, perhaps it will guide you.”
Squelby stood up and without another word, left the tavern. Blenerhorn had to decide what to do, what to believe. He was unsure and frightened so he decided to visit his father’s house.
When he arrived at the gate it was locked and two strange men stood just inside. He demanded to be allowed in to speak to his father but they told him on his father’s orders he was not welcome. He returned to his own house and found that while he had been drinking with that weasel Squelby, his house had been locked and boarded and there was no way in. Panic began to take hold. Blenerhorn ran to his offices but he was met by three of the men from one of their ships at the door. They refused him entry. Large as he was, these were hardened seamen, even larger than he and Blenerhorn was forced to retreat.
As he made his way back to the quay, trying hard to think of what he might do next, a stranger approached flanked by two burley men in capes. He spoke but only to say “Excuse me” and “This is for you.” The letter he was handed was a demand for payment in full for just one of his many debts. It was signed by Cuthbert Banks a serious man indeed.
This was the beginning. Blenerhorn knew it. Already within the first hour of leaving that wretched little man’s company, his prophecy was coming true. He almost ran to the tavern and when he burst through the door, the people there seemed to stare at him. It was busier already as the evening regulars had begun to arrive. He ordered a tankard of ale and was pleased when he was not refused. At least this part of the promise was also being kept. He emptied the first then a second and soon was enjoying his fill, wallowing in his self-pity.
When he took Candice Legbottom up the stairs, he was quite drunk. She didn’t have to work very hard that night and as soon as he had finished with her, Blenerhorn fell into a deep sleep. He would have stayed there all night sleeping off his drunken worries but he was brought to a very rude awakening as a bucket of cold water was thrown over him.
He spluttered to a sitting position and much to his surprise discovered he was lying on the deck of a ship. Rubbing his eyes to clear his drunken vision, Blenerhorn caught the sight of a stranger exiting the ship, disappearing over the side.
He stood up, dripping still and looked about. The full moon lit the town as he watched from the deck. Someone must have placed him in a boat and rowed him out here. Blenerhorn was a heavy sleeper at the best of times, full of ale one could roll him down a hill and he would stay asleep. He looked to the water and saw a small boat with what looked like three men inside, rowing to shore. Everything began to come back to him now. He was still drunk, his head a haze of muddled memory. He recalled Squelby in the tavern, being refused entry to his father’s house, his own lodging all locked up. He paced the deck alone, rubbed his weary eyes and as he lifted his face skyward to brush away his wet hair, Blenerhorn saw it. In that moment all was clear again and Blenerhorn Wormhold was instantly sober.
The rope that dangled from the yard arm was just out of reach, but the men who left him there had prepared everything. There was a small set of wooden steps beneath the rope. All that was needed was for Blenerhorn to accept his fate, take a few small steps and allow his father this victory.
Blenerhorn was not a strong man. He was not a brave man. There was no way he co
uld survive his debts, a life of poverty if he did not do as he was asked. He was not a man of talent or guile, merely a man who had been suckled and spoiled all through his life, setting him up for the impossible, a life of survival alone. Blenerhorn Wormhold took a step forward and steeled himself. He knew what he must do.
On shore Wormhold senior stared out to sea. The ship was too far away for him to see the silhouette of Blenerhorn mount the wooden step, but he knew that he would. He sucked on his pipe and coughed a small shallow cough. He wrapped his scarf about his face to protect himself from the chill of the sea breeze, then turned and walked away.
CHAPTER FIFTY ONE – HAUNTED BY THE PAST
Daisy followed Wormhold. She had nothing to gain by staying put. He was in control, there was no denying that and he had promised to bring her back to Rose and Holly. If he was lying there was little she could do.
Wormhold simply stood there waiting for her to get close. The thumping sound in her head was painful and she tried to conceal her discomfort. What she didn’t know was that Wormhold heard it too, only he had become accustomed to it.
It was not until as she got close to him that she saw the opening beside him. The mechanism he had worked within the rotting log had opened a hidden entrance in the forest floor. She looked down in amazement.
“Impressive isn’t it?”
He said nothing else before he began to descend beneath the forest, slowly walking down a stone staircase, largely carpeted with moss. There was no rail. Daisy stood at the top and watched him disappear into the dim light below. What choice did she have? Trapped at the heart of Darkly Wood, Daisy knew this was her only option. She had been here before but this was new.
Carefully she descended and was greeted by Wormhold at the bottom standing at the entrance to a long wide tunnel. The walls were like the forest itself but strangely it didn’t feel claustrophobic. There was grandness about the space. It was lit by torches every thirty paces or so on one side.
“Not many people have travelled these tunnels. They are Darkly’s little secret. But I shall tell you more later on for now it’s not important. Come, let us begin our journey.”
They walked at a brisk pace, the air was damp and it was very cold. Beneath her feet, the same slimy surface that filled the heart of the wood made Daisy cautious with each step. It felt almost alive. As far as she could make out beneath her feet was damp rotting forest leaf litter, teaming with all sorts of crawling insects. But like the forest above, it was a mystery where the leaves came from. Darkly’s heart was comprised of a tangle of dead blackened trees. They were a mass of tangled leafless branches. It was as if they were a throwback, some remnant or memory of what this place once used to be.
They walked for a long time. It was hard to tell if they were going deeper underground or not as there was a constant rise and fall in the tunnel. Wormhold didn’t look back and they walked in silence. Daisy May tried desperately hard to think of how she would get out of this.
It was all very strange. A part of her was glad that none of what happened when she was a young girl was a fantasy belonging to her alone. Unfortunately, that there was something terrible in Darkly Wood that others had witnessed was no consolation really, for now her daughter and granddaughter were in danger. That they had come into contact with such danger she increasingly believed, was down to Daisy and her original foray into these woods. Daisy May Coppertop had been brave and found a way out of this place once. She didn’t know if she could do it again. Wormhold was a far more dangerous foe than Woody had been. She never forgot how vile that creature was, but in her head, she connected him to Benjamin. That was something Wormhold was yet to clarify but even at his most vicious, that beast was never more than wild instinct and savagery. Wormhold controlled the beast and now it seemed there were two creatures, perhaps more. He had something they didn’t have and it was his guile and sharp mind that concerned her most.
As she thought through her possible options, Wormhold came to a quite sudden stop in front of her and then he turned to face Daisy. She looked at him waiting to see what was next. He nodded his head to the right and when she looked, she saw a door. Daisy looked at him again but he just stood there and again nodded his head in the direction of the door as if to say, go ahead.
The door looked heavy. It was made of oak and iron and she grabbed the handle and pulled. It moved quite freely. She pushed and it opened without resistance. Before her, was a staircase made of stone, not unlike the one they had earlier descended, except this one was free of debris and moss. Again she looked at Wormhold and with a point of his chin beneath the scarf; he indicated that she should go through the doorway and up the stairs.
Daisy May took her first step and slowly began to make her way up the stairs. There was light streaming through a half-open door at the top. She looked back and Wormhold was right behind her. Each step set a new sense of fear in motion. There were sounds, familiar sounds at the top and Daisy realised that she was clenching her fists and teeth. She relaxed them a little.
Finally she reached the top but Daisy didn’t go through the partially open door. She listened to the familiar sounds. Beyond there was a kitchen she thought. But there couldn’t be? They had walked far but not that far, they must still be beneath Darkly Wood. Wormhold stepped past her. He was close, pressing against her to pass and she noticed that the vile and putrid odour was gone. She could no longer smell him. He unravelled the scarf from around his neck, all the time looking directly into her eyes and there beneath the scarf, was a handsome chiselled chin, a noble face and a smile filled with bright white teeth.
As they stood there facing each other at the top of the stairs, Wormhold pushed open the door fully without taking his eyes from Daisy and then he simply said,
“It’s time to meet the rest.”
CHAPTER FIFTY TWO - PURELY BY CHANCE
Magne was a fine specimen of a man. Born and reared in the wilds of Norway, he had spent his childhood fishing and hunting and as he grew into adolescence, Magne became a superb athlete. He took to everything quite naturally. An expert cross country skier, he had both stamina and strength.
When it came to women, Magne was a little shy. They frightened him. His mother died when he was just a little boy and he spent his formative years in the company of his brothers and father in the relative isolation of the Norwegian countryside. He had plenty of contact with girls in school but he was always quite a shy boy and he was a late bloomer, so by the time he came to their attention, it was too late for Magne.
It wasn’t that Magne was ugly, quite the opposite in fact. Magne stood six foot two inches tall in his bare feet. He had broad straight shoulders, a fine strong back, he was slender but not skinny and he had a most beautiful kind face. He wore his blonde hair long and it fell in waves about his shoulders. On his face the beard of a Viking, but tidy, not too wild. As he began his travels, Magne discovered that girls, especially foreign girls, really seemed to like him but he often fell at the very first hurdle. During an early encounter with a Dutch girl, she asked him for his name. When he told her she repeated it back to him, flicking her hair from her face, touching her mouth. She could have been his in minutes, but his shyness and blunt response let him down.
“No,” he quite bluntly corrected her, “it is not Magne. It is Mogena.”
It wasn’t so much his correction of her pronunciation as it was the tone of his voice. He sounded like he thought she was stupid. It was almost like an admonishment and she didn’t like it.
“Swedish?” She asked him naively.
“NO! I am not Swedish. Do I look Swedish? Why does everyone ask me if I’m Swedish?”
Again his tone turned the poor girl off.
“I’m sorry, you sounded Swedish.” She raised her eyes to heaven, wondering why she had bothered to start talking to this guy at the bar in the first place.
“I don’t sound Swedish! I am from Norway. If anything our language is closer to Danish than Swedish. You are Dutch, have you nev
er met a Dane before?”
He wasn’t annoyed in the least but that was just how his bluntness sounded. In truth, he knew that Danish was sort of like Norwegian spoken with a Swedish accent and people got them mixed up, but he was fiercely patriotic and he hated being mistaken for his neighbouring countrymen. She took the hint that he hadn’t intended to give and left him on his own. That is how poor Magne spent most of his travels.
Any half girl-savvy man, who had even a little bit of a way with the ladies, would have scored big time looking like Magne, but it all seemed to pass him by. But he was not a ladies man, a player, he was simply trying to experience the world and so he followed his nose. He made his way into all the small corners of every land he travelled to, in order to experience different cultures and meet real people. Men loved him, for he was unnecessarily loud and somewhat gregarious without meaning to be. He was fun and he enjoyed a beer or two. He was comfortable with men, but women?
It was this part of his nature that led him to Cranby. It was a town well off the beaten track and when he went to have a drink at the local hostelry, old Gavin Carp regaled him with tales of Darkly Wood in return for Magne’s generosity at the bar.
Magne overnighted in Mrs. Diddley’s lodgings on the advice of old Gavin and it was a good decision. The bed was comfortable and the breakfast enormous. After he was fed, Magne decided that he should find out about this Darkly Wood for himself. He was a woodsman by nature and at heart there was no place he felt more at home than in the forest. He quickly traversed the great meadow and stopped at the edge of Darkly Wood to look back down on the beautiful countryside below. Cranby was so picturesque from where he stood. The sun was in the sky, there was barely a sound and a gently cooling breeze made it perfect for a hike like this. On such a day, Magne was pleased he had chosen to go on his travelling adventure. Soon it would be over he knew this and when it was, he would return to his beloved home and work for his father, but until then, Magne was free.