Cold Boy's Wood

by Carol Birch

  Always ended on a cliffhanger.

  More! More! Harriet’s face, gap-toothed, anxious and sweet.

  No! Time for bed.

  Never saw either of the girls kill a fly after that.

  I put down the pen, make a roll-up and light it, listen to the darkness outside and dare myself outside. Walk a way to where the trees begin to thin and the sky stares down, lie down and think: Fuck me, this is what it’s all about. Nights lying transfixed under trees, watching the stars, no human soul near, the sound-filled silence of the wood roaring. Out here I can play. I see the Great Bear, Cassiopeia. Wish I could remember all the others. Johnny knew them all. I castigate myself for naivety, but in those days it was so hard to see the flaw in him. Some special soul. That was my Johnny. God but he could charm. Then.

  There faintly goes the Milky Way. I never saw that in town. It seemed to me that it was very important to look at the Milky Way once in a while. I was tired. That fucking man was in my head, I felt sorry for him and I didn’t want to be bothered. I wish he wasn’t here, too close to the wood, as if he owns it. Looks like he could hit you. Weird, living alone, drinking too much. Got to be careful, you never know.

  8

  Stiff and freezing cold, he woke up in the early, still dark morning. Jesus Christ. Hammer in his head. Blood. Fuck.

  Dan felt his head. His fingers came away damp and rusty with drying blood. A jag of lightning shot through his brain when he sat up. He remembered the wrench, stubbing his toe, falling. Stupid old fool. Idiot. His stomach lurched when he looked around. He had no idea of the time but there was the vaguest hint of the sky lightening above the trees. Why was the cushion from the settee next to him on the step? He gawped stupidly at it, touched it. It was bloody. I didn’t bring that out, he thought. Where’d it come from? Or had he? Must have. But I didn’t, I didn’t, I know I didn’t. Fuck, going mad. Creepy. When he stood, his knees were weak. Oh shit, not again, off your stupid head again. Must have gone in and got the cushion, forgot. Course not, makes no sense, if he’d gone in to get the cushion, he’d have stayed in, wouldn’t he? Couldn’t work it out. ‘Go to bed, you fool,’ he said out loud. Where are those fucking cats when you want them?

  *

  Sleeping, Dan thought he was in a hole in the mud, his face squashed up against soft dirt, but when he jerked awake with a shout he realised it was just the duvet. It smelt funny. Stinky. Holes in the ground. Must have been thinking about that body. He turned over and fell into a mess of half-awake dreaming, a Bambi deer looked in the gate from the woods, the ghost of handless Jenny walked under the trees down by the Dogwood Beck that ran down the narrow valley between Hothemby Fell and the Copcollar. Mist rolled down from the heights and handless Jenny turned into his mother sitting on the bathroom floor looking up at him with big black suffering eyes. There was a thunderstorm, heavy rain pounding the bedroom window, he was running through the woods, gasping and panting, crashing wild, throwing sticks for Billy, a grumpy little black and white runt with a docked tail and a tic in his head and a terrible flatulence problem. Something crept over him, and he woke at last, fully, flailing, with a cat getting settled next to him and the thought of his old dog Billy in his head. Tears shocked him. How he ached this morning, body and soul. Pathetic.

  Should get a dog, he thought, reaching for his watch. Getting on for noon.

  Old, he thought, drinking his tea on the back step, stiff all over.

  ‘There you are, you bugger,’ he said. The big orange cat sat on the step below watching him. One notched ear was bent over, didn’t look right. The cat moved suddenly and made a peculiar little sound as if saying, ‘What’s up?’

  ‘Come, Puss,’ he said. ‘Come on. C’m’ere.’

  Puss purred but would not come.

  ‘Sod you then.’ He drained his tea and sat for a while gazing down into the tannin-ringed grimness of the mug. The eternal cowboy, free and cheerful, swirled his lasso on its side, his colours eroding.

  He had to go into town. Things to get. Get in and out quick, he thought.

  Half-way there, the car started whining, a high thin nag of a sound that made him want to punch it in the mouth. Town was packed. He went to Currys, Wickes, Wilco, bought some paracetamol from Boots and swallowed a couple straight down without water, relishing the horrible taste. Coming out of the market hall he saw Madeleine on the other side of the road, pushing a double buggy. She was with a tall girl who looked like her. Her daughter maybe, no, grand-daughter probably, Christ, the time gone, insane. Madeleine was leaning over the bar of the buggy, googling delightedly at the little things in it with their kicking legs in pastel socks. She didn’t see him. He thought about going over and asking her about all that stuff with the police, but didn’t. Nothing seemed to have come of it anyway. Those poor legs in pastel socks waiting to walk and run, fuck, all that long life in front of them, poor things. Baby animals, break your heart. No. Leave her to it, all goo goo ga ga. Instead he popped into the Wagon for a pint before heading off. It was nice and dim and quiet in there, the TV was on but the sound was down, the News with words scrolling across the bottom. Earnest politicians. Fuckem. He sat in his corner, wondering about the whine in the car. Hadn’t drunk in here in a good while. Used to come in a lot once. College. God, that’s an age ago. He was a drinker even then, before he met Madeleine. Runs in families, doesn’t it? His mum always drank but discreetly, in that you never saw her doing it, you just noticed the level in the bottle on the shelf going down, and that was just the bottle you saw, there were others hidden away. And his father’s people, the Brooms, they were all drinkers too. They bred dogs in Durham. The Brooms, sounds like something in a comic. Rough-faced men in old pictures, faded. Grey fields and terrier dogs. Never saw a one of them for real. Like people in books, but somehow inexplicably linked to him. She didn’t get on with them. She didn’t get on with many people. Couldn’t stand poor old Madeleine. The way she went on about her, and she never hurt a fly, poor girl. She looks like a horse. He just sat there. Should have stuck up for her more. The face of a big horse. She’s got that kind of skin that gets threadveins when you get older. (Actually that had come true.) Madeleine couldn’t eat tomatoes or potatoes. What’s she mean, allergies? Everyone’s got allergies these days! God knows what she’d have made of it now with all the gluten and stuff. Good job she’s out of it. I wish you’d never gone to that college, she used to say. Car mechanics. Madeleine doing sociology. She had ginger hair that grew longer and longer as time passed, and she never wore makeup at all, just occasionally some very pale pink lipstick, the kind a lot of girls wore then.

  9

  Perhaps I should get a toad. I’d like that. I picked one up once to put it under the hedge where it wouldn’t get stomped on by the horses, and it was scared and put its hands over its eyes and I thought oh you sweet poor little thing. It’s not that easy to get a toad though. What do you do? Sit in your doorway and wait for one to come. I’m sure I’ve read about that, old lady alone, lonely, back door, yard, toad. Hop hop. But they don’t seem to come to me. I’ve seen one or two but they seemed OK where they were, it seemed a huge imposition to intrude upon it and carry it off to my lair. In the old days I suppose they’d have called me a witch, ha ha. You can see how all that happened, can’t you?

  A voice says, ‘Lorna?’

  The hairs all over my body spring to attention. But it’s only the rain, light rain pattering in the leaves. There it goes, this thing under the skin. It’s moving again. I put my thumb on it and it pushes against me like a baby under the skin. It’s in my elbow. Go away. Stop. But it won’t. I think maybe I have some weird disease. It’s cold. I get into my sleeping bag, pull the blanket over and close my eyes. I think I fell asleep, because I was waking up suddenly from a dream thinking: What if it was all true? You did it. What if it was in you? That feeling – of something a long time hidden, down down down under a million gossamer layers, a memory that lies too deep for the daylight.

  Here’s a pretty rh
yme for times like these: the old woman alone at night in her cottage.

  And still she sat and still she span

  And still she wished for company.

  and

  In there came some girt girt legs.

  With Ai-wee-ee and Ai-wee-ee-ee –

  And sat them on the girt girt knees…

  With Ai-wee-ee and Ai-wee-ee –

  And still she sat and still she span

  And still she wished for company…

  Until the whole ghoul is there, girt girt head and all, and says –

  I’ve come for YOU!

  There’s company here in my head anyway. Those days, those days, that place, the view from the window at night when the street lamp shone on the square. Johnny always had people around him, it was his way. All these people all the time, so many many nights, eating, drinking, the talk going on and on and round and round, hanging like smoke in the air, even when they’d all gone. Cosy with the cats, Lemon and her baby, and the plants and the pictures on the wall. Salome with the beautiful curly-haired head of John the Baptist, dripping blood. Arthur Rackham, trees with faces. And later, very late, all of us talking in the big room, the yellow tasselled drapes of the people downstairs, the TV on with the sound down, getting sleepier and sleepier but it was perfectly acceptable to snuggle down into the big bright floor cushions, close your eyes and drift with the words all tumbling about all over each other like puppies, dialectic dignity democracy new start libertarian positivist boujadiste rule of humanism syndicalism pax truth enterprise republican league justice alliance equal positive law representative georgism blabbadyblabbadyblabbady blah… and every now and then, a tolerant backward glance from Maurice would cause Johnny to quietly implode. No words were needed, no change of demeanour. ‘That’s interesting,’ Johnny would say seriously, ‘that you should think that,’ his voice strained, a peculiar tightness in the set of his jaw.

  *

  Rain’s setting in, but I’m cosy here. You know, I was lying when I said I wasn’t scared? Did I? I did. But it’s not true. I’m alone now, but once upon a time it just about killed me. First time they left me alone in the house at night, God knows where they’d gone, no idea. I remember how time changed and I listened to silence, all scrunched up alone in the corner of the settee, biting my nails, hearing footsteps that might have been, far-away laughter that might not have been. Everything flew apart and I dissolved. Shh. Stay still. It was like fainting when I was very small and a door slammed on my thumb, the dent in my thumb, the dent in reality, and my head turning round and round and dropping into a whirling pit, and the fear and surrender, and the space where thought returns. I had to pull myself back, so I jumped up and switched on the radio. It was dark outside, probably only about eight or nine o’clock but it felt like the middle of the night. I heard a song I’d never heard before, ‘Bruton Town’ sung by Davy Graham, about blood and murder and sadness. Its mood was piercing in my loneliness. I can still sit still, let that feeling back in and let it creep.

  Here you are, I say. Fear. Stare me down. Here I am all alone in the wood, just walk out of the bushes, put your head in my doorway and look me in the eye. That silly young doctor, first of many, all those years ago so happy to explain: you made it all yourself, in your mind, being very imaginative, blah blah blah—

  How terrifying that was!

  Far better if he’d said yes, you saw a ghost, it happens. But he made it real and placed it squarely inside me, and if that’s where it arises, there’s nothing you can ever do to get away from it. He meant the Tulpa but he didn’t have the word for it. The Tulpa is all yours, that deep soul fear from the void that sometimes spreads itself like a smooth sea over the hour of the wolf. But it’s got out, broken away, taken form and is running around out there in the world. Here alone in the woods, how does the Tulpa sound, coming silently through the trees? You made it.

  God, you’re clever! Look what you made! Think about it. I love horror films, I love the bit where she comes out of the telly, where she’s jerking and crawling down the stairs, where the little boy’s sitting under the table. I feel so sorry for the poor ghosts. Something terrible happened to make them like that, and they want to tell you. They want company.

  Come, little Tulpa, through the trees.

  10

  The whine in the engine had gone, but he got a flat a mile from home, and wouldn’t you just know the damn spanner was nowhere to be found. Grumbling, he slammed the door and set off plodding along the lane.

  He could tell at once that someone was there because of the way the cats were behaving. That look they got, all eyes. His high-walled garden gave nothing away.

  He stood outside the gate and his spine went up like a dog’s. If he could have growled, very low, he would’ve. Standing very still, he gauged the air and listened but he couldn’t hear a thing. Cats were mad, everyone knew cats were mad, saw things that weren’t there.

  He lifted the latch silently, crept in.

  There was a horrible woman with long rough white hair and an old black coat in the opposite corner. Putting things in her bag. Eating his raspberries. She looked like a witch, and the scare she gave him was a huge affront.

  She hadn’t seen him. She was stealing food, mint, sage, a sheaf of big dark green cabbage leaves.

  ‘What are you doing?’ he roared.

  She jumped as if she’d been stung and stared at him. Good. Put the fear in her. She looked weird, her eyes were much too big and she had round high-up cheeks and a sunken mouth.

  ‘What are you doing?’ he said again, like a stern teacher who’s just caught a kid smoking. She said nothing.

  Furious, he moved towards her. ‘What the fuck are you doing in here?’

  She tensed, clutching her bag with bony hands and backing towards the gate into the woods, never taking her eyes off him.

  ‘This is private property,’ he said, shaking with anger. ‘Fuck off right now or I’ll call the police. You’re stealing.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said, ‘you can have them all back, I’m sorry, I’ll go now,’ pulling all the stuff out of her bag and dropping some, her eyes looking all over the place.

  She’s not all there, he thought. ‘Fuck off!’ he said, low down in his throat.

  ‘Here.’ She thrust an armload of cabbage leaves in his direction.

  ‘Oh for fuck sake, they’re no use to me now! Take them and fuck off.’

  She walked quickly towards the front gate, down the flagstone path past the ragged mint and the compost heap, and he walked behind her with his most aggressive gait. She lifted the latch to let herself out into the lane. But that’s not how she got in, he knew it. She always came the back way. He knew the sound of that particular latch lifting after dark.

  ‘It was just the outer leaves,’ she said, glancing back. ‘I didn’t think you’d notice. Sorry.’

  ‘Fuck off!’ he said. ‘Now!’

  ‘I’m going!’

  Gone.

  For a moment, shocked, he scowled at the gate, then went after and stood in the lane, but he couldn’t tell which way she’d gone. That was outrageous, that was, just walking in and stealing his produce. What a bloody cheek. ‘I’m going to padlock these gates!’ he shouted, but she was nowhere in the road so she must have gone into the woods. How did she do that? There’s no way in there. Just disappeared. Crept right in through the undergrowth like an animal. Must be living rough. Must be mad lurking about back there in the dark scaring the life out of people.

  It was a terrible invasion. Not like kids, kids he was used to.

  Look at this gate, he thought, anyone can walk in any time, ridiculous, should have put a padlock on it years ago, and went back in, pulling the gate firmly to, dragging a couple of old planks from the side of the compost heap and shoving them up against it, determining to come back with a padlock. His poor garden. He’d let it go. Now suddenly he was stricken with a deep pride in it and wanted to protect it. And that’s another thing, he thought, return
ing to the yard, what do you think you’re doing leaving all those good tools just lying about all over the place? He grabbed what he needed and walked back to the car all unsettled. It didn’t take long to change the tyre, and when he got home, he walked round locking everything up, muttering to himself every now and then: ‘Unbelievable! Fucking unbefuckinlievable! What a fucking cheek!’

  It was horrible. Everything felt spoiled. He didn’t want to go out and sit on his back steps tonight. He looked for a padlock but couldn’t find one, and that night he couldn’t get easy, kept wandering about the house picking things up and putting them down, things he’d kept from his three years at sea, a seahorse, a Chinese bottle with a painting on, a mechanical goose from Alexandria, reminders of longings and disturbance, yet still, comforting as an old jumper. Oh God, don’t let me get the willies, he thought, turning on the TV and not really watching some daft murder thing. His mind wandered. What if there’s more? A whole colony of mad old witches in the wood, the old kind, mad and wild and dangerous. Her face had had a hard cast. Something stealthy and stary about her. Not natural, living alone out there. Allison Gross who lives in yon tower, the ugliest witch in the north country. Where did that come from? His gran’s old book. Probably still somewhere about. He remembered the picture in the big poetry book, an old line drawing. The witch actually didn’t really look as ugly as all that, she was just very fierce and wild with black hair and huge sinewy arms and a huge muscly neck and thick shoulders, and she was hanging all over a terrified young man in tight Elizabethan hose, who sat on something like an ancient chest, and stretched himself as far away from her as he could possibly get.