The Beast of Hushing Wood

by Gabrielle Wang

  I am going to see Grandpa Truegood tomorrow, I decide. Grandpa Truegood is the wisest person I know. Or at least, he was. For almost a year now, he has been doing and saying strange things. He talks about things that don’t exist. He forgets who he is and what he is doing. The doctor said he was just getting old and he needed to go into a home. For his own safety. But Grandpa isn’t old.

  Sometimes, when I visit him at Gold Leaf Lodge, his mind is clear. I want to tell him what I saw in the woods tonight. I want to tell him about my premonition. Hopefully, tomorrow will be one of his good days.

  The next morning, as soon as Petal leaves, I bump my bike down the porch steps.

  ‘Grandpa Truegood,’ I say to Mystic, and off he trots towards town in the direction of Gold Leaf Lodge.

  I follow him down Main Street, smiling as I pass Dell Hollow Library where Grandpa was the librarian. Stella Parker’s mom took over when Grandpa got sick.

  I stop pedalling. The library’s still closed, even though it’s Saturday and nearly nine o’clock. Mrs Parker always opens the doors at eight sharp, just like Grandpa did. I frown and keep pedalling. Maybe she’s sick?

  Further down the street, Petal’s dad is sweeping the footpath outside Brown’s Hardware. In the first days of the gold rush it was the only store in town. Petal’s great-great-great-grandfather sold everything from wedding dresses to coffins, baby clothes to peppermints.

  ‘Did you and Petal have a nice sleepover?’ he calls out.

  ‘Yes, thank you, Mr Brown,’ I say.

  I see my teacher, Miss Cubby, and wave. She waves and smiles back as she goes inside Brown’s. Miss Cubby has curly light brown hair and a dimple in her right cheek. We all love her. I remember her first day in the classroom two years ago. I was in Fourth Grade. At first the other kids didn’t like her because she was an outsider. But by the end of the week, everyone was rushing to get to school early. Suddenly, learning was fun. We spend a lot of the time with our shoes off, lying on the floor, our eyes closed, listening to stories about flying carpets, white-sand deserts, dragons and magic temples. We play a lot of games with cards that she has painted to teach us maths and geography and history. Miss Cubby shows us things you don’t find in books – exciting, scary, mysterious things.

  As I reach the end of Main Street, I hear shouting. A crowd has gathered.

  When I get closer I see that it’s Harry Arnold’s dad, who owns the butcher shop, yelling at Mr Canon, the blacksmith. I get off my bike to see what’s going on. They’ve been best friends since they were kids. You always see them laughing and joking with each other. And nobody yells in public. Dell Hollow is a small town where everyone knows everyone, so you have to be extra polite.

  ‘It’s been sitting in front of my shop for forty years and now it’s gone!’ cries Mr Canon.

  ‘I didn’t touch it,’ Mr Arnold says. ‘What would I want with an anvil?’

  ‘You’ve always had your eye on it,’ says the blacksmith.

  ‘What rubbish,’ yells Mr Arnold. Angry words fly back and forth like wasps, and Mystic growls. Then they start pushing each other as if they’re going to have a fight.

  Mr Maloney, the undertaker, finally steps in and pulls them apart. He’s thin but his arms are strong from building coffins and lifting bodies into them. ‘All right, you two. I’m sure the anvil will turn up. Stop shouting now, there are children about.’

  Mr Maloney waves everyone away and the butcher and blacksmith blink and look around in surprise at the departing crowd. I throw my leg over the bar of my bike and ride off, feeling strangely unsettled. Nothing seems to be right lately.

  I cut through the woods, past the abandoned goldmine with its crumbling walls, until I reach the road that leads to Gold Leaf Lodge. Because of last night’s rain, mud puddles pockmark the road, and by the time I arrive I am filthy.

  ‘Hello, Ziggy,’ says Kaye, the lady at the front desk. ‘And how is my favourite dog today?’

  Mystic wags his tail and goes to greet her.

  ‘Your grandfather is having his breakfast,’ she says, giving Mystic a rub under his chin. ‘He’ll be glad to see you. He’s been kind of anxious lately.’

  The smell of burnt toast and stale coffee mixed with canned air freshener grows stronger as I walk down the hallway to the dining room.

  Grandpa Truegood is sitting at a table by the window. Behind him the morning light shines through the glass, making his grey hair look like wispy smoke. He’s sitting with Harry Arnold’s grandmother.

  Sometimes I see Harry at the nursing home. He shows his grandma card tricks or reads magazines to her or does his crazy ventriloquist trick. That’s one good thing I can say about Harry Arnold. He might be a bully, but he is good to his grandma.

  I sit down beside Grandpa Truegood and take his hand. He’s wearing the blue and yellow scarf I knitted for his seventieth birthday. I like knitting scarves with stripes. I have six, all with different colour combinations. I like the happy click-clack-chatter my bamboo knitting needles make. Knitting is predictable and controllable when everything else in my life is not. I know that after a plain row there’ll be a pearl row. Then a plain row again. Pearl, plain, pearl, plain – if only life could be that simple. I’ve knitted everyone in the nursing home a scarf. Grandpa Truegood’s scarf has food stains on it, but he doesn’t want me to take it home to wash. He turns and smiles.

  ‘It’s Ziggy, Grandpa. Your granddaughter.’ I say this every time I visit.

  Mystic rests his head on Grandpa’s knee.

  ‘Good dog,’ Grandpa Truegood says. ‘Brave dog.’

  Grandpa Truegood’s watery blue eyes look into mine and it’s as though a small part of him opens when he smiles. I look to see if he’s worried. Kaye said he seemed anxious.

  ‘Rima?’ he says.

  I’m surprised. Rima is my middle name. He’s never called me that before.

  ‘Yes, Grandpa,’ I say. I sit forward.

  ‘Mother,’ he says.

  I realise he’s thinking of his own mother, whom I was named after. Grandpa Truegood told me she came from a place far away across the sea and Rima is a foreign name. It means ‘white antelope’.

  I keep the sentences short so I don’t confuse him. ‘Hushing Wood,’ I say.

  Grandpa Truegood closes his hand around mine.

  ‘The woods,’ he says.

  Could this be one of his good moments?

  ‘There’s something in them. I’m scared, Grandpa.’

  ‘Picnics in the woods. Love in the woods. Swimming, swimming and laughing . . . We had such fun.’

  My spirits drop. He’s not making any sense. Hushing Wood has always been a cursed place to everyone but me.

  His grip tightens and he turns to me. ‘Drown . . .’ he says.

  I draw in my breath. ‘What?’ I say, leaning even closer. I have never told Grandpa Truegood about my nightmares.

  He looks confused for a moment.

  ‘Drowning in gravy,’ he says as if he’s caught hold of the thought again. ‘Lamb, potatoes, peas all drowning in gravy.’ And he laughs.

  I sit back with a sigh. How stupid of me to hope that it would be one of his good days. They’re getting fewer and fewer. I kiss Grandpa Truegood on the cheek.

  ‘I love you, Grandpa. I’ll come again soon,’ I say, then I stand up to leave.

  ‘Be careful, Rima. It is here.’

  His eyes are large now and he turns to look out the window at the woods.

  I stare at him. ‘What is here?’

  He chuckles. ‘Lamb and potatoes drowning in gravy.’

  I leave Gold Leaf Lodge with a creeping coldness in my heart. There were moments back there when I thought Grandpa Truegood seemed normal. He called me Rima but he could have been thinking of his own mother. He said drowning. He told me to be careful. But what of? The thing I thought I saw in the woods?

  Sometimes I feel like Grandpa Truegood is under a spell – how can someone be well one minute and just a few weeks later make n
o sense? Because that’s what it was like. Grandpa Truegood didn’t slowly lose his memory like Harry Arnold’s grandma. It was really sudden.

  I decide I’m not going home. I’ll go to my special thinking place, the Hollow Tree. I leave my bike at the back of Mr Canon’s blacksmith shop. It seems peaceful enough now. Even a little too quiet. Mr Canon is standing at the back door, smoking a cigarette and shaking his head.

  ‘Is everything all right, Mr Canon?’ I ask.

  ‘Not really, Ziggy,’ he says. ‘I must be going crazy. I thought someone stole my anvil, but now it’s there in its proper place in front of the shop.’

  ‘Who put it back?’ I say.

  ‘That’s the mystery. I’ve been here the whole time and I didn’t see anyone.’

  Hmm . . . that’s one more thing to add to my list of strange happenings.

  I say goodbye to Mr Canon, walk along the rear of the shops, then enter the woods. I feel uneasy. But Mystic would sense any danger and he’s happily running ahead, barking and leaping around. I push the niggling feeling away and sing, which always makes me feel better.

  As I walk towards the Hollow Tree, I start to feel a familiar rising panic. I want to run. My nightmare flashes in piercingly sharp pictures through my mind – the silver beast pushing me under water, its claws tearing my skin.

  But when the trees open up and I come out onto the bank of Fiddlers Stream, I take a deep breath and smile. This couldn’t be the place. Nobody could drown in a quiet old stream that’s only knee-deep even when the snows melt.

  What a stupid thought.

  The Hollow Tree is a gigantic oak that was hollowed out by fire a long time ago, forming a huge cave. I keep a small stash of things there – a jar of chocolate biscuits, coloured pens and pencils, a flashlight, books and a diary. And they’re all safe because nobody comes to the woods but me.

  I sit down with Mystic beside me. The feeling of panic has gone now and I lie back. A squirrel with soft brown eyes sits at the entrance, looking in. Then it scampers up the tree.

  I am safe and at peace in the Hollow Tree. I close my eyes and imagine I’m a wild girl with her pet wolf, living on berries and mushrooms. It’s a daydream I often have. This time I’m rescuing a fox from a hunter’s trap and setting it free.

  The knocking of a woodpecker high above echoes through the trunk and my daydream vanishes. I pick up my flashlight and move it in circles on the ceiling. The play of light on the wood begins to form shapes.

  Then I see something. I sit up. Carved about six feet off the ground is a heart, and through the centre of the heart is an arrow with the initials BT and SW.

  ‘BT loves SW,’ I murmur. Why do those initials seem familiar?

  I lie back and stare up again, and then it comes to me. ‘Grandpa Truegood!’

  At the sound of my excited voice, Mystic thumps his tail on the earth floor.

  ‘Grandpa’s name is Benjamin Truegood and my grandma’s was Simmone Winter. They must have come here when they were teenagers,’ I say to Mystic, and smile at the thought of them sitting in this very spot.

  Then I remember what Grandpa Truegood said earlier. ‘The woods. Picnics in the woods. Love in the woods. Swimming, swimming and laughing . . .’

  Did he mean that the townspeople came here too, not just him and Grandma?

  I imagine the townspeople with their shoes off, wading in Fiddlers Stream, picnicking on the banks. Could Hushing Wood have been a normal place to visit once upon a time? Why doesn’t anyone talk about it? I can’t even look back through old photos of the town. There aren’t any. Miss Cubby already asked – she wanted us to do a project on the history of the town – and apparently they were all kept in the local museum, which was burnt down in a fire a long time ago. People don’t like talking about the woods, so it’s tricky finding out any more.

  There just seem to be too many questions and no answers.

  ‘Are you coming in, Momma?’ I ask as the car pulls up outside the school. I already know what she’ll say, but I ask anyway.

  ‘I’ve got more sorting to do, hon,’ she says. ‘See you at eight.’ And she leans across and kisses me on the cheek.

  Before Papa left, Momma used to help out in the school library and serve in the school canteen. Now she stays at home. I know what her old friends all think – There, you see, we told you so. You should never have married an outsider.

  I step out of the car into the windy night. I’m late and it looks as though everyone’s already inside. Dell Hollow Elementary is in an old house that used to belong to one of the founding families of the town. I open the front door and cross the lobby to what used to be the ballroom. Now it’s used once a week for school assembly as well as for things like the Sixth Grade dance. Slips of wind follow me in, making the streamers in the lobby spin like skipping ropes.

  ‘Hello, Ziggy,’ says Miss Cubby, who is serving drinks. She’s wearing a red dress with a small white collar and a thin black leather belt that matches her shiny black shoes.

  ‘Are you going to dance tonight, Miss Cubby?’ I ask, grinning at her.

  ‘Who do you think I should dance with?’

  ‘Big Bobby,’ I say. ‘He’s a really good dancer.’

  ‘All right then, I will. Enjoy yourself, Ziggy.’ She turns to ladle out a drink for Principal Poole.

  I see Petal in the far corner and wave. She looks so pretty in the orange dress with red and yellow tulips her momma made for her. Is she wearing lipstick? She is! I smile, touch my lips and raise my eyebrows.

  When she comes up to me she says, ‘It was too red so I added a bit of Mom’s powder to make it pink. Can you tell?’

  ‘No, it’s perfect,’ I say.

  Stella Parker is up on the stage. She volunteered to be DJ because she loves being the centre of attention. Tonight she’s wearing her hair piled on top of her head. Stella reminds me of a peacock. Her green eyes flash around the room as she stands behind a big rectangular black box, twisting knobs and flicking switches. Red and green lights flash on the panel in front of her.

  Petal turns away in disgust. Besides Harry Arnold, Stella Parker is the only other person Petal can’t stand.

  ‘Decided to wear your best ball gown, did ya?’ says Harry Arnold as he passes me.

  I ignore him.

  Grandpa Truegood used to say, ‘When a mean person says mean things to you, they are usually describing themselves. The world they see around them is like a mirror. They hate it and scream at it and it really has nothing to do with you.’

  I wave at Big Bobby Little. He waves back and Petal and I go over to him.

  Big Bobby has a cowlick right in the middle of his forehead and bits of blond hair stand straight up as if they’re spring-loaded. Everyone calls him Big Bobby because he is the biggest kid in junior school. He can’t talk, but his hearing is excellent. And he has a very special gift. He can make just about anything out of paper. People, trees, animals, cars, buildings, machines.

  In the school library there’s a long table with a miniature replica of Dell Hollow that he made. It is beautiful and so realistic. Every shop and every house is there, as well as some of the townspeople, including me and Petal. Even Mystic trots beside me.

  The only thing I don’t like about the paper town is the way he’s depicted the woods. They are dark and menacing and tower over Dell Hollow like they’re ready to devour it. I see the woods cradling our town, protecting it.

  Big Bobby points to the dance floor, using his hands to communicate.

  ‘I told Miss Cubby you’d ask her to dance later,’ I say.

  He nods an okay and grins.

  Stella pumps the air with her fist. ‘Come on, everyone. Teachers, parents, students. Let’s go!’

  Petal, Big Bobby and I hold hands in a circle and spin. We lean back against each other’s weight. Soon the music, the hall, everyone else, disappears. There is only the circle, the three of us, as if we are electrons spinning around an invisible nucleus.

  When the musi
c stops, I feel suddenly hot.

  ‘I’m going outside to cool off,’ I say.

  The ballroom’s double doors lead out to grass and trees. The moon hides behind stringy dark clouds.

  I suck in the cool air and soon my skin no longer prickles from the heat. I’m just about to go back in when a mini whirlwind of dry leaves spirals up my legs then sweeps across the grass. For a moment I’m mesmerised as I follow the swirling leaves with my eyes.

  That’s when I see him.

  A boy is standing between two spruce trees. He is about my age, I think; tall and thin with curly dark hair, wearing some kind of long loose-fitting shirt over trousers. The dappled light makes him look like his clothes are made from leopard skin.

  I know every kid in Dell Hollow, but I don’t recognise this boy. I’d normally call out, but the way he’s staring at me is creepy.

  Without taking my eyes off him, I walk backwards towards the door. But as I do, he takes a step forwards.

  I feel like I’m his prey. I turn and quickly open the door, bumping into Petal.

  ‘There’s a strange boy outside,’ I blurt.

  ‘And plenty inside too,’ Petal grins. She grabs my hand and hauls me onto the dance floor before I have a chance to tell her about him.

  Big Bobby Little starts dancing with Miss Cubby and everyone stands back to watch, except me. I am eyeing the door, expecting to see that creepy boy come in at any moment. But he doesn’t.

  A sudden bright flash of lightning plunges the room into darkness. There are screams and a lot of laughing. Principal Poole calls for candles while he and some of the dads go outside to look at the fuse box. In the darkness and the flickering candlelight, everyone shouts and laughs above the sound of the pelting rain on the shingled roof.