Darkest Part of the Woods

by Ramsey Campbell

  Once the three were seated facing one another in the front room she seemed content to draw breaths deep enough to pass for sighs. Even if they weren't designed to provoke a question, Heather hadn't stopped wanting an answer. "You were going to tell us why you needed cheering up," she said.

  "Was

  I?"

  This could have been an appeal to Sylvia, who admitted "I thought so too."

  "You don't want to let an old lady's problems bother you."

  "You're not old, and of course we do. We'll only worry more if you don't tell us. You don't want Sylvia doing that in her state."

  Heather saw her sister resist glancing at her to be sure what state she had in mind. Both of them eyed Margo until she tried on a wry grin that didn't fit her words. "Everything's come to bits at the exhibition."

  "What's anyone been saying now?" Heather demanded.

  "No, I mean literally. The exhibition's finished, and when Lucinda and her people started moving my pieces they fell apart. The pieces not the people."

  As the attempt at humour made Heather's eyes feel big with moisture, Sylvia said "Was anything inside them?"

  "Insects, you mean, like the ones I'm famous for now if I'm famous for anything.

  None that anyone could see, Luanda said."

  "So what's she going to do?" Heather said with more anger than she could contain.

  "I've told her to junk it all. By the sound of it that's all it's worth."

  "Aren't you at least going to take a look first?"

  "I know it wouldn't mean anything to me, Heather."

  Heather was too dismayed not to say "But it's years of your work.

  "Years of learning what I should be doing instead, and now I am.'

  "That's one hundred percent positive of you, mom."

  Heather was less persuaded that it wasn't unacknowledged desperation. "How much responsibility is Lucinda taking?"

  "Her insurance company will be looking at the damage, but you can guess their argument will be the problem was in the wood and not the gallery. According to Lucinda it all looked as if it had rotted from within."

  Sylvia clasped her hands over her stomach. She might have been taken to be praying if she hadn't said "They'll have heard about the insects."

  "That'll be part of their argument for sure."

  As the last to be positive, Heather had a try. "Nothing's gone wrong with your pictures, has it?"

  "No, they'll be coming back to me. I'll still have them if nobody buys them, and remember I'm a video artist now. I'll have to show you the results soon, though nothing I make in the woods is anywhere near as important as our forthcoming event."

  Sylvia crouched over the cage of her fingers. "Hear that, Natty?" she whispered.

  "Grandma's anxious to see you."

  A sound not unlike a scratching of fingernails seemed to respond. At first Heather couldn't locate it, perhaps because she wasn't expecting to hear it so soon. As the key was withdrawn from the lock and the front door shut with a muted thud she called "Is that you, Sam?"

  Since he was the only candidate, she couldn't blame him for answering with barely a syllable. "You weren't long at Andy's," she said.

  "Long

  enough."

  He was heading for his room when Margo called "Aren't you going to say hi to me?"

  "Hi." He sounded willing to leave it at that, but relented and produced a dutiful smile as well as himself. "Hi," he said without much variation.

  "What did Andy want?" Heather took the opportunity to ask.

  A shrug and a terse laugh or at least an expulsion of breath let her guess the answer before he said "Just to tell me he's closing the shop. Closed it, actually. I don't know why he couldn't have told you instead of making me drive over."

  "Never mind, Sam. More time for us to walk in the woods," Sylvia said.

  "I expect Sam will be out looking for jobs," said Heather, not too heavily, she hoped. "I know Terry would want that too."

  Perhaps her mentioning his father betrayed how concerned she was. Margo broke the awkward silence by saying "Can't Sam do both?"

  "If he can't I expect you could walk with Sylvie."

  The silence this provoked was longer still, apparently because Margo was choosing her words, though Heather didn't think much of her choice. "Don't try to make him less than he can be, Heather. We all ought to be doing everything we can to stay close."

  She either took Heather's muteness for assent or ignored her inability to trust herself to speak. "Have you been back in there yet?" she asked Sylvia.

  "We were today."

  "How did you find it?"

  "I feel like I could go in any time."

  "That has to be nothing but good, doesn't it, Heather? We want her to be whole before she has to concentrate on being a mother."

  From the size of her sister's midriff, Heather could have thought that would be sooner than it had any right to be. "I don't think I'll need to go back many more times," Sylvia said,

  "thanks to Sam."

  "Thank you, Sam," Margo said, and aggravated his uneasiness by taking his hand.

  "So stop worrying about them, Heather. If I can you can."

  Heather felt her lips open and was unable to predict what she would say. She had the impression this might be her last chance not to be alone with everything she'd learned from Merilee. She saw her sister splay her fingers on her midriff as though its occupant was threatened, and that swayed her. "I'll do my best," she said, and glimpsed the fleeting smile Sylvia gave her. It must be meant as gratitude, but she felt as if they were children again, hiding from their mother in the woods.

  23

  The Cells

  HAVE you remembered?" Sylvia said. Sam had to separate her murmur from the other sounds in the forest. The notion of having to turn up a memory connected with the woods brought him unexpectedly close to panic. "How about you?" he said in an attempt to fend it off.

  "I remembered when we were on the common."

  "That's all right then," he said without the least idea whether it was.

  "But you know why we're here too."

  He raised the spade that kept letting him down as a walking-stick "Not much we can use this for except digging."

  "You know what, though."

  He'd known as soon as he'd left the common, but could have done without referring aloud to the prospect while the wind that was invisibly at large in the woods made everything restless, the multitude of trees and shadows describing passes over one another that looked magical-that he could have imagined were designed to lure him an his aunt deeper into the forest.

  "Steps,"

  he

  nevertheless

  said.

  "They're our secret for now, but I'm looking forward to sharing whatever we find with the others, aren't you?"

  "It's only a secret because we forgot it. How can you take that for granted?"

  "I don't see what else we can do with it. There are stranger things in the world."

  If she was about to tell him more of her tales, the possibility failed to appeal to him. "I believe you," he said quickly.

  That silenced her, and she contented herself with holding onto his arm. The lack of conversation only aggravated his awareness of the sounds around them. Behind the cawing of branches as the trees tossed their spiky faceless heads, the huge irregular breaths of the forest resembled a blurred voice close to forming words. Sam dug the edge of the spade into the ground he was limping over, in case the act could drive away an impression of walking on a substance more alive than it appeared to be. When the clearing appeared beyond the trees, he didn't know if he was relieved that it would bring him into the open and the sensation perhaps to an end.

  There was no question how the sight affected Sylvia. She strode forward, pulling at his arm, as the woods muttered around them and snatched at the sky. Yards short of the clearing she let go of him and hurried ahead, only to halt at the ring of bricks. "Someone's been here,"

&nbs
p; she complained, and then her resentment faltered. "Or something has."

  The glare of the unseasonably hot mid-morning sun caught at Sam's eyes as he ventured to join her. He had to blink and use his free hand as an eyeshade in order to see that the patch of the mound he remembered her tramping smooth had been not disturbed but altered. It had acquired a covering of leaves, an almost perfect square of them that appeared to contain an elaborate pattern. Before he could distinguish it, the leaves raised themselves in unison as though scenting the newcomers and swarmed off the mound, scuttling away to add themselves to the gestures of the woods. "They were just leaves," Sylvia said.

  Sam peered across the clearing but could no longer identify the withered brownish fragments. He was in danger of growing entranced by the dance of trees and shadows, which looked cryptically ritualistic, when his aunt said "Ready to dig?"

  He wasn't, but he didn't think he ever would be. "Here I go," he mumbled, and stepped over the bricks to clear earth off the surface under the mound. Sooner than he liked he finished exposing a stone slab, pallid where it wasn't blackened, about three feet square and lacking a large portion of one corner. He thrust the spade into the gap to the length of half the blade, and it fetched up against an obstruction that sent a shiver through his arms and then through him.

  "We'll never get through there," Sylvia protested. "You need to lift it up."

  Sam dropped the spade and dug his fingers under the broken edge. Earth gritted beneath his nails as he hauled at the slab. An ache spread from his shoulders to his skull, and he felt as if the clamour of the trees was invading his consciousness. Either it or tension almost deafened him before he straightened up. "Won't move," he gasped.

  "Let me help."

  "You don't want to strain yourself." He was aware of sounding even more like Marge or his mother as he said "Think of the baby."

  "Natty would want me to help," Sylvia said, and crouched as though urged by the presence she'd named. "Try again, Sam."

  When she poked her fingers under the slab he had to come to her aid. He rammed the spade past the broken edge and leaned all his weight on the shaft. In a moment he felt Sylvia adding her efforts to his, and then the blade started to bend. "No use," he panted, so relieved that he even managed to feign frustration.

  "Once more."

  Her voice was so low that he could have imagined she was addressing somebody other than him, especially since she was gazing downward. So long as lifting the obstruction was beyond them it would do no harm to indulge her. He tramped the spade deeper and levered a the slab until the blurred sounds of the forest seemed to close around him as though the trees were leaning towards the mound and chorusing encouragement. He saw his aunt's arm begin to shiver with exertion, and opened his mouth to suggest they had tried hard enough. At that moment the slab reared up.

  Perhaps the final effort had dislodged the earth that had been tamped around its edge, but it felt to Sam as though the slab was being raised from beneath. He would have let go of the spade if that mightn't have left his aunt supporting the slab. He fell to his knees as the spade pivoted almost horizontal and the slab balanced on its far edge for a moment before thudding against the height of the mound. The opening it had revealed was full of earth. Sam found the sight so ominous that it seemed he might reassure himself by saying "You couldn't have been here, could you? You couldn't have got through."

  "I must have been close, though, and you know what I think?"

  "What?" Sam would rather not have said.

  "Suppose he didn't want to bury me? Suppose he just wanted me to go down there?"

  How that could please her was beyond Sam, unless she was more like her father than anyone cared to admit. "Don't stop now," she pleaded. "Make a way for us."

  He wanted to refuse but couldn't think of a reason; his mind was overwhelmed by a shapeless mass of sound, the voice of the forest. He began to dig in something of a frenzy, flinging earth onto the canted slab until Sylvia intervened. "We may want to put that back," she said.

  His bad leg was eager to demonstrate new ways to ache from treading on the spade. His shoulders seemed bent on giving the leg more ideas while clamminess that felt mixed with grit was well on the way to covering the whole of him. He disinterred one step and then another, and saw how they wound downwards. The second was partly blocked by the rest of the slab. He only wished it had made further progress impossible, but most of the earth in the hole had lodged against it, leaving the route all too clear. He was gazing unhappily the blackness into which the steps led when Sylvia ran down the steps to hug him.

  "Well

  done,

  Sam."

  When she smiled in his face he felt trapped-by her, by the narrow reddish passage that surrounded their calves, by the trees that creaked like a jaw in the process of rediscovering its use. The pressure of her swollen midriff against him brought him close to panic, as did her moist breath in his ear. He was suddenly terrified of being overtaken by an erection. "Will you go first?" she murmured.

  At least that gave him an excuse to free himself and climb onto the mound. "I don't think either of us should."

  "No need to be scared, Sam."

  "I'm not," he said as a shiver-only an aftershock of his toil, he wanted to believe-travelled through him. "I just think we should have some more people with us."

  "Think how long this may have been hidden. Don't you want us to be the first living people to see?"

  "It mightn't be safe."

  "Only one way to find out, and someone has to." A blink ended her disappointed look, and she produced a flashlight from a pocket of her loose denim overalls.

  "You could hold this while I go through, she said.

  He saw there was no overcoming her determination. He tried to hold the flashlight steady while she planted her hands on the discoloured reddish walls and eased herself past the leaning chunk of the slab. She looked as though her midriff was dragging her through the gap.

  "Thanks," she said briskly as her swollen shadow wobbled downward, and held out a hand.

  Sam passed her the flashlight and watched her descend, her free hand supporting her on the left wall. She didn't have to do this, he told himself. He'd tried his best to dissuade her, but she was more than old enough to know her own mind.

  Below her the light wavered as if betraying a nervousness she refused to admit, and then it shrank around the curve of the narrow passage, tugging her after it.

  Within seconds there was no trace of her except a faint illumination that vanished into the depths. He couldn't even hear her footsteps for the

  triumphant roaring of the forest. He was about to call to her when she spoke.

  "Here's the first thing."

  Perhaps it was only the subterranean passage that made her voice seem too low to be addressing him. "What?" he blurted, and heard the mound swallow the question.

  "You'll have to see for yourself."

  He felt his lips part well before they managed to pronounce "I'll need some light."

  The darkness at the limit of his vision remained unrelieved long enough for him to wonder if she'd misunderstood him. Then a faint glow crept around the bend onto the dimmest of the steps. He was taking the light away from his aunt, he thought; he was leaving her and her baby in the dark. Disgust with himself sent him down the steps, pressing a hand against the rough damp wall as he edged past the fallen chunk of the slab. The surrounding trees seemed to crane to watch before they cleared the sky for the sun. Its light and their crowing dwindled as he hurried down to Sylvia, and he hadn't reached the glow of the flashlight when it began to withdraw from him. He took a breath to ask her to illuminate the steps, only to inhale a smell of something like decay but sweeter. By the time he expelled the worst of it he'd turned the curve, and her light was waiting for him.

  Or rather, most of it was beyond a doorway off the steps. Just enough of it remained in the passage to show him that the wall above the doorway had at some time been blackened by a fire. I
t showed him his aunt's face too, intent on the room beyond the doorway. Nevertheless as he reached the step above her she swung the beam towards him, so that he barely glimpsed a shape huddled against the far wall of the room. He had a sudden uneasy suspicion that she was checking that he was who she expected. "I'm glad you decided to be brave," she said.

  "Let's see, then," he urged, because having to imagine what was there might be even worse.

  Sylvia shone the beam through the doorway at once. Sam had the impression that the darkness was refusing to give way until he saw that

  the walls and low ceiling and even the bare stone floor were charred. The room was sufficiently extensive that the light grew fainter by the time it touched the far wall. About midway along the stone curve the solitary contents of the room had shrunk into the angle of the wall and floor, perhaps in a vain attempt to escape the fire. Its arms and legs were bunched together as if it had been struggling to return to not having been born. It was merely a skeleton smaller than a man's, but any reassurance that might have offered was negated by its shape. Sam tried to tell himself that the bones had been distorted as well as darkened by the fire, but there were too many of them, by no means all familiar.