The Woodwitch

by Stephen Gregory

  ‘Right, Phoebe . . . Come on, you little bastard!’ And he went for her, brandishing the lead which he had had in his pocket.

  Again, it was fortunate for Andrew that no one saw the ensuing scene. He baited the dog with his dangling hand, which by now was dripping blood from its fingertips, he squatted down and offered her the hand once more. Phoebe was past the stage of responding normally to his commands. She was breathing so heavily, her yelps were so fractured that he could hear the rasp of her breath in her throat and the rattle of her lungs. He crouched, swinging the bloody hand before her face. ‘Come on, Phoebe, come and get it . . .’ She also crouched, punctuating her snarls with long, rattling breaths, until she could bear the tension no more and she did what the man wanted her to do. Bellying towards him, quick and low as a snake, she darted her teeth at his wet fingers. He felt the pain of her bite. He saw, uncannily clearly as though it were the frozen frame of a film, the look of an untamed, untameable beast in her eyes, and his other hand flew round to seize her by the scruff of her neck. Straightening up like an uncoiled spring, he tore the one hand from the dog’s mouth and twisted the grip of the other in her long coat. ‘Right, you bitch!’ he yelled. ‘Time you had a lesson . . . !’ The dog squirmed in mid-air as he held her away from him, she emitted a long scream, as a child does in the throes of a nightmare. Andrew flung open the back of the car once more. He shook the dog before the folded white corpse. She writhed more violently still, averting her face from the swan and increasing the pitch and passion of her cries. She scrabbled with her feet, she wrinkled her muzzle into a snout more like a pike’s or a polecat’s, but she was helpless in the man’s grip. ‘That’s where you’re going, my girl! Take a good look at it!’ So saying, he bundled her forward so that she landed with a squeal of disgust on the body of the swan, and he slammed down the car door. ‘Bitch! Fucking bitch!’ he bawled at her through the window.

  Unlocking the driver’s door, he got in. Without another glance at the bleeding wounds on his hand, he started the car, turned it around in the lane and began to drive away from the coast.

  The view of the drizzle-drenched mountains was no longer a shrinking square in his rear-view mirror. The open expanses of the coast were forgotten now, behind him. Ahead, filling the entire windscreen, looking grey and black until they lost themselves in the hanging cloud, the mountains blanked out the puny attempt Andrew had made to clear his head. He drove on. The car was a capsule of frenzied sound and hideous smell. Phoebe, imprisoned in the back with the dead swan, never once relented of her crying. She grieved like a widow, quite unable to stop her howls, she could not escape from the closeness of the dead thing. Andrew wound down his window, but still he was engulfed by the stinks and vapours which issued from every orifice of the corpse. Nevertheless, he was calmer, more contented now than he had been when he awoke that morning to survey the chaos of the cottage and when he remembered the events of the previous evening. Once more he had a purpose to his stay in Wales! It was not simply a holiday to be aimlessly filled by walking the dog or by reading novels before he resumed a life in suburban Sussex . . . No, he had something to expiate, and he had found a way to help himself do it! Why fight against the mountains and their cloak of rain? Why run from the mists which enveloped the hillsides? Why shrink from that blanket of the black forest? They were all there to be used in the furtherance of his experiment, whose quintessence was an atmosphere of clammy damp! On the mantelpiece of the cottage, waiting for his return, were the eggs of the stinkhorn; behind him, alive with maggots and the tunnelling of flies, was the other half of the equation he was trying to work out. Put the two together, leave them time to couple in their own mysterious way . . . and there would be something to show for his visit to Wales. This country was a bog. He would be glad to quit it. But while he was in it, he could use it!

  He drove faster, eager to get back. His short-sightedness no longer seemed to be a handicap as he accelerated wildly through the narrow lanes. His feet were clumsy on the pedals, since he had not changed out of his wellington boots, he trod heavily and brutally on the accelerator. Only a vision of the stinkhorn hovered before him. Its white erection gleamed in his mind’s eye and made the details of road and traffic just an irksome irrelevance. In the same way as he had seen the stinkhorn fuse with the swan’s neck, now the image flickered with any column or pole he passed . . . It guided him home, like a candle seen dimly through mist. He no longer heard Phoebe’s sobbing cries, the stench of the corpse no longer nauseated him, he was hardly aware of turning from the road and negotiating the flooded bridge across the river, he did not feel the jolting of the car as he drove up the track, he scarcely noticed how the mountains closed around him. All of this was a blur in the background. The real issue, the real point in focus, the matter in the foreground of his vision was the stinkhorn, that devotional candle he was yet to light. In this way he drove up to the cottage, finding it as ever smothered with a white wet fog.

  Phoebe fled from the car the moment he opened up the back. He had never seen her move faster, even when she had been in mad pursuit of the sheep. She streaked to the front door and quaked there, wanting only to regain the sanity and the well-known scents of her basket. Andrew left her to quake. ‘Fuck off, Phoebe!’ he snarled at her. ‘Fuck off, Phoebe!’ he said again and laughed, savouring the symmetry and the rhythm of it. Her welfare was now less important than his business with the swan. Holding his breath, he leaned into the car and took the bird again by the throat, this time using the hand which Phoebe had bitten. As he lifted the swan and laid it down on the grass, a few droplets of his blood fell on the bird’s breast, splashes of red on the pure white feathers. He returned to the car, swept from it the pupae which had scattered from inside the corpse’s hollow frame and then he closed the door. The sound of the swan’s dragging over the grass was softer than its progress across the sand . . . now it whispered as the man drew it up the slope towards the woodshed, the feathers hissed on the wet hillside. And as they came closer to the little outhouse, two powerful pungencies collided head to head and made that place a reeking morgue. Andrew unlocked and opened the door. Maggots dripped from the badger’s nostrils, they writhed from its anus. Flies blundered from its eyes and spun dizzily from its mouth, gorged to a stupor on the sweetness of the putrid flesh. There were scores of pupae in the sawdust on the ground. The stink buzzed from the woodshed as the rotten, pulsing thing swung silently on its hook. Still the badger grinned, satisfied with its work. Gagging on the smell, Andrew approached with the swan, towing it with him to the doorway. It was easier to lift than the badger had been, much lighter and more manageable. He ducked into the building, his face brushing for a second on the badger’s flank, and he raised the swan’s head to the next hook. The hook pierced the bird’s throat in the cleft beneath its beak. Gently, afraid that the flesh might tear with the weight of the corpse, he let the swan hang . . . It creaked and stretched as it took the strain. The neck pulled as taut as a cello string, the body bulged as all kinds of fluids and sacs and tubes adjusted to the new position, there was a groan from inside the belly as something broke or a clutch of maggots seethed from one bruise to another. The enravelled feet dangled like a pair of fruit bats from a tropical tree. And slowly, with a cracking of stiffened joints, those massive wings subsided . . . they collapsed and relaxed at the swan’s sides, a fitting shroud for a noble corpse.

  ‘You are beautiful . . .’ the man whispered. ‘You beautiful beautiful creature . . .’

  He forgot the stink of the badger and the swan. He was lost in admiration. The two bodies hung side by side, sometimes touching as they swung on their hooks. Head down, the badger leered at Andrew. Its jacket of barbed wire cut into the punctured sac of its belly. No more blood dripped from its snout on to the logs of the mountain ash, although there were red rosettes on the white wood. The swan stretched up its head and let down its wings. The only blood on its feathers was from the man’s hand, a gash of blood as though its throat had been cut.
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  Smiling, pleased with what he had done, Andrew Pinkney stepped out and walked to the cottage. He let the dog in. He took off his boots and went directly to the bathroom, where he spent a long time washing his hands.

  VI

  When he awoke the following morning, Andrew Pinkney felt nervous.

  His stomach was tense in the same way it had always been tense on the first day of a new school term, on the first day of a new job, before an evening out with Jennifer. It was because the business with the stinkhorn was being forced to a head. He had walked with the dog through the forest again, through the woodland too, right up to the crater and back, to see if there were any more stinkhorn left and to see if he could dig up any more of their eggs. There were none. They were finished. The only eggs which remained ready to rupture this year were the two in the jars on his mantelpiece, perhaps the only two in the county, the only two in Wales, the only two in the British Isles. That was what made him nervous. He lay in bed and thought of the responsibility he had taken on. What did he know about the stinkhorn? Nothing, except what he had read in Caernarfon library, a few facts gleaned from a few books, with the occasional dry crust of information he had picked up from Jennifer. And yet he was now entrusted with the sole-surviving eggs and the self-imposed task of trying to promote their hatching, their growth into full-blown fungi and then their regeneration. A flashing reminder of the upright white column of the last stinkhorn jolted him out of bed. A vision of it seemed to shimmer in front of him. He remembered the swan which now teamed with the badger to help him fulfil the task, the swan and the badger which now teemed with maggots. It was time for the harvest!

  He washed and dressed quickly, hardly bothering to look at his face in the mirror. Phoebe was slow to stir from her basket. Perhaps the stink of the swan was still on him, for she recoiled when he urged her to move. ‘Get out, Phoebe, go on out!’ and he tipped her abruptly from her nest of blankets, on to the floor. Limping to the open door, she went out. Underneath the privet bush, she hunched and squatted and squeezed two long dry turds on to the wet grass. Andrew was relieved to see this instead of the slime with which she had been smitten, and he was glad to see that the day was drier and clearer than it had been for a week. The air was quite still. The mists hung over the mountains, white and folded, as though a team of decorators had covered them with dust sheets while they painted the sky with an undercoat of uniform grey. At least it was not raining. Andrew set about preparing for his task.

  Rummaging through the kitchen cupboards, he found two saucepans and took them to the outhouse. His nervousness protected him from the stench of the two corpses. Because he was active, because he was busy and he knew exactly what he had to do, he breathed evenly the fetid fumes from the badger and the swan without feeling nauseated.

  ‘You first, badger,’ he said to the mask which smiled grotesquely upside-down. ‘You’ve been very patient, waiting here in the woodshed, quietly getting on with your work. Nothing spectacular, just a businesslike decommissioning. So it’s your turn first.’ He held a saucepan under the creature’s dangling snout. ‘Right, badger, what’ve you got for me? What’ve you got to show for all your work?’

  With his other hand he reached up and started to shake the meat-hook to swing the badger round and round, from side to side, to bounce it gently without straining the corset of rotten barbed wire which held it in mid-air. The first few maggots plopped from its nostrils into the saucepan. They landed with a curiously attractive musical sound, not unlike the thoughtful improvisation of a minimalist composer. More and more fell in a shower when he punched the animal’s flank, then he put the saucepan on the logs so that he could use both hands to squeeze and massage the hanging sack. As he did so, as he listened closely to the gurglings of fluid he could coax by pummelling and to the flutings of internal farts he could produce if he pressed hard enough in the right places, he was thrilled to see the maggots tumble from the twin exhausts of the badger’s nostrils together with dozens of developed pupae. In a couple of minutes the saucepan was an inch deep with the writhing larvae. Concerned that, by shifting the badger in its wire, he might tear the softening hide and cause the corpse to rip away from the hook, he stopped the massage.

  ‘Good boy, badger. You’ve been busy, haven’t you? That’s plenty from you for the time being.’ He turned to the swan. ‘Now, you’re new here, aren’t you? I don’t want to rush you when I know everything’s a bit unfamiliar on your first morning, but you can’t just hang around doing nothing. Let’s see what you can do, shall we?’

  He bent down and picked up the saucepan. Holding it out, he took one of the heavy wings, lifting it up and away from the bird’s side. There was a soft ripping sound, like the tearing of silk. Under the wing, where the skin was purple and raw and had attracted the beaks of the crows, there was a hole the size of Andrew’s hand from which he could almost hear the movement of maggots; it came to him as silently and subtly as the sigh of a breeze, on the very edge of his hearing. The flesh heaved with the maggots’ working. ‘Oh yes, oh yes, you’re doing well, for only your first day here. I think you’ve got the idea all right. Let’s see now . . .’ All he did was to row the joint of the wing slowly up and down so that the skin did not break too much, and the maggots rained from the swan’s side. Those that missed the saucepan dropped dully on the stack of logs. He lifted the other wing. The harvest was a bountiful one, and he, the harvester, reaped it with excitement. He held the saucepan under the swan’s tail, swung the bird tenderly on the hook lest its throat should rip, while the fruits of the harvest fell ripe and plump from its anus. The crows had been there too, tearing with their beaks. All kinds of bubblings and whistles broke from the bird’s belly as Andrew shook it, things were caving in, things were collapsing inside there, with a sigh and a squelch. The saucepan was three inches deep, there was more fruit than he could ever use. Still he was thrilled by the juxtaposition of the two corpses . . . They were so different, so incompatible! They had had nothing whatsoever in common while they were alive, but now they were working together side by side, white feathers caressing grey bristle, and yielding such a bumper crop! More importantly, using the second saucepan, Andrew knelt on the floor of the woodshed and gathered from the sawdust as many of the more mature pupae as he could find, pupae in a more advanced stage of development. They were dry and hard and brown, like long grains of rice, and they would soon be flies. With the two saucepans, he returned to the cottage.

  Phoebe observed from her basket. There was something very housewifely about the way that Andrew went about the next part of the operation. He arranged two empty jam jars on the draining board of the kitchen sink, before running out to the woodshed once more and coming back with his hands cupped around as much sawdust as he could hold. He sprinkled a bed of this, about half an inch deep, into each jar. Then, ignoring the maggots in one saucepan, he used a spoon from the cutlery drawer to pick out the pupae from the other pan and sprinkle them into the two jars. They dripped on to the draining board, on to the kitchen floor, blind stupid things taut with pus, dropping into the sink. They popped under Andrew’s feet and left a juicy blob where they had burst, like a smear of snot wiped from a child’s nose. But he continued happily, until both jars were more than half full; tearing a square of adhesive cellophane from a roll, he stretched it tightly over each jar like the skin of a drum and pierced each skin just once with a knife to allow a little air inside. He put the two jars of pupae beside the hot water tank, in the warmth of the cupboard in the living-room. In this way, he played the conscientious housewife, tidying the kitchen afterwards, washing the spoon he had used, also covering the immature maggots in the other saucepan and putting them by the water tank . . . Except that Andrew Pinkney was not bottling a winter’s supply of green tomato pickle, he was not making jam. He was bottling pupae which would soon change into big, buzzing flies, growing bigger and noisier and stronger. And then, when the stinkhorn was ready, he would release the flies to feed on the fungi’s drippin
g heads . . .

  The next thing was to prepare the containers to which he hoped to introduce the flies after they were gorged on the slimy spore mass. The flies would both carry spores on their bodies after contact with the stinkhorn and also pass the spores, unharmed, from their digestive systems when they defecated. So Andrew must make ready a number of suitable receptacles for this crucial stage. It was easy, as far as his amateurish notion of the procedure was concerned. He still had the plastic bag he had used when first carrying the stinkhorn eggs from the forest to the cottage, and it still contained plenty of the soil and leaf mould he had dug from around the eggs. He found two more jars, which he cleaned thoroughly with soap and boiling water, having some half-baked idea that real scientists would insist on the conditions being sterile; in the bottom of each, he put a wad of moistened tissue paper and he added on top of this a few inches of the soil from the forest. That was it. Each jar had a screw-on lid which he pierced with a knife. How long did it take for the mature pupae to change into flies? They had already been lying in the earth and sawdust of the woodshed floor for over a week, so they were in the last stages of development. What could he do if the next stinkhorn were to thrust up its head before the flies were ready? Go stumbling about the woodshed, banging his head on the rafters, blundering into the two decaying corpses, and try to harvest a clutch of flies which were mature and ready for the mission? No, he’d wait. Perhaps tomorrow, or the next day at the latest, everything would be in place: item one, on the mantelpiece an erect and oozing stinkhorn, one of the last in Britain; item two, a jam jar bursting with eager meat-flies, lusting to be unleashed on the putrefaction of the stinkhorn; item three, a warm and damp receptacle of forest earth to which the intoxicated flies could be transferred and where a new generation of stinkhorn would be . . . what was the word? Spawned? Jennifer would have known. And fourthly, if all went to plan and, more by accident than design, Andrew’s game resulted in the growth of another egg or two, he might then wrap up his sojourn in Wales and speed down to Sussex with a surprise for Jennifer! What a relief that would be! To get out of the drizzle and the mists and the baying of the hounds, to return to the sanity and freshness of Sussex! But not yet . . . He’d try not even to think about it, now that things had gone so far.