by Matt Haig
Intrigued, Samuel started to peel back the checkered cloth. Before he had seen what was inside, he jumped, startled by a sudden gust of wind slapping against the attic’s small window.
He didn’t know why he was so scared. Maybe it was because of what he had seen last night. Or maybe it was just because of the strange feeling he had gotten when looking at the photograph of his uncle.
Anyway, Samuel knew he didn’t have long before Aunt Eda would catch him nosing about up here, so he closed his eyes and whipped the tablecloth off the chest as fast as a magician wanting to keep a tea set in place.
He opened his eyes and became instantly disappointed. The chest was full of books, and not even interesting-looking books. These were old books, in boring hard covers with dull colors and no pictures on them. And they were written in Norwegian.
Samuel hadn’t read a book since his parents died. He had tried. Mrs. Finch, the neighbor who had looked after Samuel and Martha before they flew out to Norway, had suggested that Samuel should read to take his mind off things. But he hadn’t been able to concentrate enough to finish reading a single sentence. His mind was still so full of the car accident that his eyes had slid off words like feet on an icy pavement.
Picking through the books in the tea chest, Samuel looked at the titles on the spine.
Niflheim og Muspellshein
Ultima Thule
Ask og Embla
Æsir
Per Gynt
And then he saw another book, underneath all the others. It was right at the bottom and Samuel had to stretch his arm as far as it would go in order to reach it.
It was heavy—heavier than its average size suggested—as if the words weighed more than in the other books. The cover was the dullest of greens, like grass in a March fog, but it somehow looked better than the rest.
Samuel looked at the spine, and felt a chill as the wind kept blowing against the side of the house.
The book had a title he could understand. It was called The Creatures of Shadow Forest, by Professor Horatio Tanglewood.
The Fascinating Darkness
While her brother was nosing around in the attic, Martha stared out of the bedroom window and watched her aunt collect the washing from the line. The wind was strong, and kept blowing the vests and long johns and jumpers into Aunt Eda’s face as she unpegged them.
What was Martha thinking about as she stared out from that upstairs window? Whether you were ten thousand miles away or right in the same room, you wouldn’t have been able to understand what was going on behind those dark brown eyes as they observed her aunt battling the wind.
The truth is, she wasn’t paying much attention to anything her eyes were witnessing. Since her parents’ death, everything she saw in the outside world struck her as being pointless. What was the purpose of doing anything? Where did it get you? Everybody dies in the end, whether that end comes sooner or later it didn’t really matter. She knew that some people—like Aunt Eda—could try to spend time talking and smiling to cover up the sadness inside them, but words and smiles belonged to another world now. A world to which Martha knew she would never be able to return.
So when she watched a bedsheet that her aunt had placed in the basket fill like a cotton balloon and fly up into the air, she didn’t open the window and tell Aunt Eda that the washing was escaping in the wind.
It was only when her aunt turned around from unpegging her last pair of long johns that she caught sight of the rebellious bedsheet.
Aunt Eda shoved the long johns into the basket and started running after the white sheet as it swooped up in the air, and back down, cartwheeling over the grass toward the forest.
Martha saw other items were now leaving the basket as well, due to the increasing strength of the wind. And pretty soon all of the washing was traveling through the air toward the trees, flying over Aunt Eda’s head or whizzing past her on the grass.
Undershirts, long johns, woolly socks, underpants—all tumbling and soaring like birds with injured wings…
Aunt Eda managed to catch hold of some socks and a shirt, then she saw the bedsheet come to rest only a few steps away from the forest. She ran toward it, pinning the rescued items of washing to her chest with her left arm. Then, once she had gotten to the bedsheet she stretched out her other arm—her javelin arm—but just as she was about to clutch hold of the white cotton, it escaped her, as it responded again to the call of the wind.
Aunt Eda ran a few more steps forward, awkwardly holding the bundle of dry washing, but then stopped suddenly as the sheet disappeared into the darkness of the forest.
Martha watched as her aunt stood facing the trees.
Aunt Eda was either unable or unwilling to step forward and retrieve any item of washing that made it beyond the giant trunks in front of her. And it was right then, at the moment Martha was reminded of the dreaded fear that the forest seemed to inspire in her aunt, that the ten-year-old girl at the window started to become interested in what she was watching. As her aunt began to walk back, toward the empty basket and the washing line, Martha’s eyes stayed rooted on the darkness between the trees.
It seemed beautiful.
Beautiful, and strangely inviting. She became fascinated by it, as she stood there, at the window. It seemed so different from the pointless smiles and pointless words she had been surrounded by since her parents died.
Something about the black spaces between the trees seemed to speak directly to her, drawing her in—the darkness as irresistible in a world of false smiles as a cool pool of water on a hot summer’s day.
As Martha stared out of the window, Samuel was a floor above her, opening The Creatures of Shadow Forest. He turned to the first page and began to read:
There is a place you must never enter. It is a place where evil has many faces, and where creatures of myth and legend live and breathe. And kill. It is a place beyond dreams or nightmares—a place that has so far been too feared to be called anything at all. Now, in this book, I will explain the unexplained, and give fear a name that suits it well. That name shall be Shadow Forest, and it will plant terror in your hearts.
Samuel gulped, and sweat moistened his palms. Then he flicked to the next page and began to read about the creatures of his nightmares.
The Huldre-folk
The huldre-folk are human-sized creatures who spend most of their lives underground. They have very bony bodies and long tails and claws instead of fingernails. They have scrunchedup noses and their eyes are set wide apart, and never blink or cry. They only come above ground in the dark—to hunt for caloosh, to catch creatures trying to escape and to escort doomed prisoners to the clearing in the forest where the Changemaker lives. The Changemaker is the fearsome overlord of Shadow Forest and he is loved and worshipped by the huldre-folk.
Years of living underground have had a very negative effect on the huldres, leading to a profound jealousy and hatred of creatures who live freely in the forest.
Their natural cruelty was one of the reasons the Changemaker chose them to be his prison guards, stopping all humans from entering and leaving the forest.
Most creatures in the forest speak Hekron, a universal language that everyone—even humans—can understand. The huldre-folk are the exception. They hate being understood almost as much as they hate the sunshine and so they invented their own language called Okokkkbjdkzokk, a language which sounds almost as cruel and sinister as the huldres actually are.
Weakness: Their flesh evaporates if exposed to daylight.
Samuel turned over the page, and he read as fast as he could about another kind of creature—trolls:
Trolls
Trolls are the most terrible creatures in the whole of Shadow Forest. These are the creatures a human should be most scared of meeting, as they are horrible right down to their bones. Not only do they steal people’s goats, but they also kill any humans they can get their hands on. They come out when it is dark and can smell human blood from a great distance away, and are dr
awn to it like bees to pollen.
They are generally very strong, and use their strength to drag people back to their homes, where they cook them alive in a giant pot. All trolls have three-toed feet and they are universally ugly, but the type of ugliness varies greatly. There are two-headed trolls. No-headed trolls. One-eyed trolls. Four-armed trolls. Despite their differences of appearance, trolls are all equally dangerous and should be avoided at all costs.
Weakness: Trolls have no weakness at all. They are pure evil.
Samuel shivered with terror after he had finished reading, and flicked through the pages, catching glimpses of other creatures’ names—Slemps, Truth Pixies, Tomtegubbs and many others. He decided to keep hold of the book, tucking it in his trousers and hiding it under his sweater. He then put the checkered cloth back over the tea chest. He stepped across the creaking floorboards, toward the ladder that leaned against the opening in the floor.
I’d better go. He realized his aunt would have probably finished taking the dry washing off the line.
As he placed his foot on the ladder he noticed an object like a spear leaning against the corner of the room.
Aunt Eda’s old javelin.
But there was no time to inspect.
He heard Aunt Eda downstairs, so he quickly climbed down the ladder and tiptoed back to the bedroom where he had left Martha.
“Martha, there’s a jav—”
Samuel’s sentence was left unfinished, hanging in the air as he scanned the room for his sister. But it was no good.
Martha was nowhere to be seen.
Martha Goes Missing
“Martha?…Martha?”
Where was she?
Samuel ran downstairs and looked in the living room but the only presence was that of Ibsen, his four legs jerking as he lay in his basket, lost in cheese-fueled dreams.
Martha wasn’t in the hallway or the kitchen either. Maybe she was in the washroom, helping Aunt Eda sort out the dry clothes. This possibility led him through the length of the kitchen to the yellow door with the wobbly handle. He opened it and walked inside the small room, which had once been used as a tiny cheese factory. Aunt Eda was grumbling to herself in Norwegian while trying to match socks together on top of the washing machine. After she finished with the washing, she was going to phone Oskar and ask if it would be all right to stay with him until she had found somewhere else for them all to live. These thoughts preoccupied her so much that she was completely unaware that Samuel had stepped onto the stone floor beside her.
“Where’s Martha?”
His question made Aunt Eda jump. She turned from her half-rescued pile of washing.
“Good heffens, Samuel. You shocked the life out of me.” Then she remembered his question, and frowned. “Martha’s upstairs. In the bedroom. With you. By the way, I haff made a decision. Today we are going to moof—”
“No,” Samuel said. “She’s not there. Martha. She’s not in the bedroom.”
Aunt Eda turned toward Samuel, and as she looked him in the eye a sudden terror seemed to grip her.
“When did you last see her?” she asked him.
“Ten minutes ago,” Samuel said. “I went to—” He managed to stop himself from telling her “the attic.”
Aunt Eda looked around the small, windowless washroom. After all those years, it still smelled of cheese. “I haff been in here fife minutes,” she said, as much to herself as Samuel. Then, with a sudden urgency: “Look out of the window.”
Samuel went back out of the yellow door and looked out of the kitchen window, with The Creatures of Shadow Forest still under his sweater. He saw nothing except empty fields with the fjord and the mountains in the distance.
“No!” barked Aunt Eda, behind him. “The window at the back of the living room!”
They ran toward the living room, but Aunt Eda paused by the doorway.
“Her shoes,” she said. “Her shoes are missing.”
Samuel looked out of the window that was positioned above Ibsen’s basket. (Ibsen, owing to the sudden commotion, was now yawning himself awake.)
Samuel strained his eyes but saw nothing except the empty washing line and the grass field sloping up toward the—
He saw something. A figure in the distance. A figure heading straight to the forest.
“No!” Samuel screamed, when he recognized the dark blue of his sister’s dress, blowing forward in the wind.
Samuel ran out of the room, down the wooden hallway, shot past his aunt and opened the door. Once outside, he started sprinting up the slope toward Martha and the forest. As he ran he pulled the book from under his jumper and held it tight with his right hand. He thought about dropping it, but if Martha reached the forest, he would need to keep it with him.
“Martha! Martha! Stop!”
As he got closer, he was hardly conscious of the wind that blasted him or the soft muddy grass that pressed into his socks.
“Martha!” Aunt Eda called. Then: “Samuel! Samuel!”
Even his aunt’s voice was only half in his mind. It was as if the Samuel she was calling was someone else, running alongside him.
“Marth-aaaaa!” he called.
The only thing he focused on now was his sister, so he wasn’t aware of all the muddy hoofprints left by the huldres’ stallions the night before.
“DON’T GO IN THE FOREST!” Samuel screamed, pushing the air out of his lungs. He could see her long hair blowing forward like the branches of the tall trees in front of her.
“MARTHA! STOP! CREATURES! HULDRES! TROLLS! IN THE FOREST!”
Martha was only walking, but she was so far ahead that Samuel knew he couldn’t reach her.
“MARTHA! NO! COME BACK!”
Martha didn’t turn or show any outward sign of having heard her brother. She just kept on walking—neither quickening her step nor slowing down—until she had reached the trees.
And even then she kept on going, farther and farther, until she disappeared into the darkness of the forest.
Running Up the Hill
She had gone.
Samuel kept running toward the space between the trees, where his sister had been visible only a moment before, and tried to see farther into the darkness.
“MARTHA! COME BACK! MARTHA!”
He was running fast. Faster than when he had run to the forest before, in pursuit of the cat. And Aunt Eda was finding it difficult to catch up with him.
True, he’d had a head start. He had shot, shoeless, out of the front door while Aunt Eda was still looking out of the window. But Samuel was running at such speed, and with such single-mindedness, that his aunt’s old legs couldn’t narrow the distance.
“Don’t follow her!” she cried, breathless, as she ran. “Don’t go into the forest!”
Of course, her words were useless. The fear of the forest was never going to be as great in Samuel’s mind as that of losing his sister.
Even though she had explained to Samuel the story of what happened to Uncle Henrik, Aunt Eda knew that he would imagine he could enter the forest and bring his sister back. After all, Martha had only walked between the trees a few seconds ago. She wouldn’t have gotten very far, so Samuel would have every reason to believe he could find her.
But Aunt Eda knew better. She knew that in this instance the usual rules of space and time couldn’t be trusted. She knew that whoever or whatever entered the forest never returned. It didn’t matter whether it was a white cotton bedsheet or a flesh-and-blood husband—the forest never let go of whatever came its way.
And so when she saw Martha disappear between the trees, Aunt Eda knew she was already lost. The only hope she had now, as she ran up the grassy slope, was in reaching Samuel before he too disappeared forever.
Damn these old legs, she thought as she struggled against the angle of the ground to gain speed.
“SAMUEL! STAY THERE! SAMUEL!”
But the boy still wasn’t listening. He was sprinting ahead with unlimited energy, desperate to catch a glimpse
of his sister’s long hair or navy dress.
He was nearly there.
“SAMUEL! SAMUEL! STOP!” The words stole Aunt Eda’s breath, and seemed to make the ground even steeper.
But then, just when she thought it was too late, she heard something. A noise. Behind. In an instant she recognized it as the jangle of Ibsen’s collar.
And sure enough, the dog was there, galloping fast across the grass toward Samuel. It was an incredible sight. The dog who had always been too scared even to point his nose in the direction of the forest was now charging headlong toward it at ferocious speed. It was as if something had been woken up inside him. Ibsen, who of late had shown little interest in anything other than begging for cheese and snoozing in his basket, was tearing across the grass as fast as a cheetah chasing a gazelle.
Not that Samuel was aware of his canine pursuer. For Samuel, everything that was now behind him might as well have stopped existing. He was nearly there now. He could see other trunks of pine trees, farther into the dark.
But just as he was ready to dive headlong into the shadows, he felt something tug his arm.
At first he thought it was Aunt Eda’s hand.
“Get off me!” But then he saw the hand had teeth—teeth that weren’t letting go of his sleeve.
Ibsen, having jumped into the air to catch hold of Samuel, was now digging his four paws into the ground to stop the boy from running into the forest.
Although the dog was lighter than the twelve-year-old he held on to, he had gravity and the force of two extra legs on his side.
“Get off me, you stupid dog!”
But Ibsen held firm. Samuel raised his arm, causing the dog to stand on only his hind legs. Despite such rough treatment, the steadfast elkhound didn’t once let go, or seek a better grip by sinking his teeth into the arm itself.
“Get off! Get off! Get off!” Samuel cried, staring into the dark abyss of the forest.