by Jack Lewis
Going into the woods was the last thing in the world I wanted to do, but I couldn’t abandon Jeremiah. If he went exploring there alone then he was in danger, and he was too stubborn to admit something like that.
I switched away from rational thoughts and let my feet carry me until the woods stood tall in front of me. Thick tree trunks stretched out of the earth and spread their branches across the sky, creating a knobbly umbrella that blocked the glint of the moon. It was a well of darkness, a labyrinth of black that threatened to close on anyone stupid enough to walk through it. Was I this stupid?
My heart beat so fast that a searing pain spread across my chest. I shivered and rubbed my arms over my body, but any chance of heat was long gone. It felt like I stood in a snowstorm that I couldn’t see, and the only thing I heard was the scream of the wind. I couldn’t do this, I realised. No matter how much I wanted to help Jeremiah, I couldn’t go into those woods. I knew that even if I tried, my body wouldn’t comply.
I saw a bolt of light penetrating the black. It was just off the centre of the woods, a vertical arc of yellow that started at the ground and spread up toward the ceiling of the trees. It didn’t move nor flicker, it was like an upside down street lamp in the middle of the forest. A chill shuddered through my chest. It was Jeremiah’s torch, and it was on the forest floor.
I couldn’t turn away now, not when he was in trouble. I tried to swing my leg forward but it was filled with two tons of lead. My heart hammered the blood through my veins so fast that I thought they would burst. My mind screamed at me to turn back, told me how stupid I was being. It told me that nobody had ever cared about me, so why should I care about anyone else? I gritted my teeth. I was done being that person. Jeremiah was a stubborn old fool and he was rude as hell, but I wouldn’t abandon him.
I forced my legs into action. The closer I got to the woods, the more they felt like jelly. My stomach turned to water and swirled around inside me, and my arms felt light and full of air, like balloons twisted into shapes.
I reached the threshold of the forest. It would only take one more step to be inside, but it felt like a climb over Everest. There was something final about it, as though I was making a decision that would affect me forever. I took a deep breath and stepped over the line. As I walked into the forest the shadows slipped over me. They were heavy, and with every step I took toward the beam of light the weight grew. I had the urge to hunch over, as though I really did have layers and layers on my back.
Each twig that I stepped on sent a snap out into the air. Sometimes it was answered back with another snap, and I stopped dead. I felt icy fingers stroke me and spread cold through my tingling skin. I listened and hoped not to hear another noise. It was just an echo, I knew. Or a woodland creature scampering across the floor.
I walked on. As the beam of torch light grew closer the trees tucked in together until soon I had to weave in and out of them. Some of them were so close that it was a tight squeeze to get through, as though they had formed barriers. I was near the middle now. A treacle of pure darkness swished around me, but I didn’t need my eyes to know I was in the centre. It was something I could feel, like walking through a maze and getting the sense you had nearly beaten it.
A fallen branch snapped beneath my feet. Behind me, something crunched on the forest floor. This time I didn’t stop. I took a breath and squeezed between two elm trunks, took a few paces forward and reached the torch light. I had expected Jeremiah to be nearby. Maybe even to see him on the floor, like he had fallen over or something. Instead, it was nothing. Just the same black wilderness that covered the rest of the forest.
I felt alone. I picked up the torch from the floor and lit up the barks of the elms trees that surrounded me. I realised that they formed a perfect circle now, and that the square metre of forest in the centre was the only part that was clear. As I span the beam of my torch across the trees, the yellow arc flicked and then faded away, plunging a deep darkness down on me.
I smacked the torch against my chest and flicked the power button. It coughed a weak ray of light and then faded again. Damnit. I shouldn’t have been in such a panic to find Jeremiah.
I realised just how far into the woods I had come. I was in the heart of it now, and to get out would mean a long walk back in the darkness through tangles of bushes and roots that hooked up from the forest floor. A breeze blew on the back of my neck.
Where the hell was Jeremiah? I wished beyond anything else that he was here with me. I had tried to keep the feelings of terror inside me, to be confident and keep control of myself. As the black of night pressed in and I felt shadows grow into shapes around me, I surrendered to the dread. I let it seep through my chest, into my heart and then spread through my veins.
Something whined in the trees across from me, and I dropped the torch to the floor in shock. It sounded like something twisted the branches and made them creak. I knew that it wasn’t just the wind blowing through them. I held my breath so that not even my own intake of air could interfere with the stillness of the woods. I listened as hard as I could.
This time the whine came from behind me. Then to the side of me. Soon the circle of trees around me turned with terrible groans, and I realised what the sound was. My heart flooded with a terror so sudden I thought I was going to faint.
The whining sound I heard from the trees was that of rope rubbing against them as something twisted underneath. The ropes were tied onto the branches around me, and limp bodies swung off them.
I shut my eyes. I wished there was a way to close my ears, but my body was so frozen in place that I didn’t even dare raise my arms to cover them. I felt a retch work its way from my stomach and to my throat, and I clamped my mouth shut. All I could think was how much I wished someone was here with me. Someone, anyone, just as long as I wasn’t alone with the terrible creaks of the trees as things swung from them.
I opened my eyes and peered into the fog of darkness, but I couldn’t see anything passed a metre away. As silently as I could I bent to the floor and reached for the torch. I clicked the power button, but nothing came.
The arms of the trees groaned in the night. I couldn’t see them, but I felt heavy masses form around me. They were a denser kind of shadow, shades of black that were impossibly darker than the rest of the forest. They hung in the noose of invisible ropes and stopped just short of the ground, swinging gently in the night air.
Something wheezed. Behind me, a raspy groan drifted toward me and tickled my ears. A murmur began, as though choked throats tried to speak. Someone laughed. My eyes widened so much I felt like my eyeballs were going to pop out. The laugh came from somewhere deeper in the forest. It was a girlish laugh, full of fun and mischief. Another laugh answered it, this one of a young boy.
A branch creaked. The others creaked back at it. My stomach sunk, and I felt like falling to the ground and shutting my eyes. Something spoke without making a sound, as if the words turned inside my mind and then faded away.
We will claim the girl.
My back stung as a sheet of ice settled on it. I felt a scream try to escape but my throat was too dry to let it out.
Kill the boy.
Claim the girl.
The childish laughter got closer, tiny feet snapping on twigs. The trees whined and the shadows twisted beneath them. Suddenly I knew. I wanted to warn the children away, but my mouth was clamped as though something had sawn it shut. I needed to warn the children about what waited for them, but as their chuckles and shouts grew nearer I knew that it was impossible.
25
I sprinted through the trees. My feet crashed over rotted branches and the snaps rang off around me. Adrenaline flooded through me, gave me fuel, took the sting out of my shoulder when I ran into a tree. I sucked gushing breaths into my lungs, and even though I felt them start to burn I knew that I couldn’t slow down. Soon the trees grew sparse until finally, without even realising it was so close, I spilled out of the forest and onto the grassy fields. I had never
been so happy to feel the glow of the moon seep down onto me.
As my lungs began to relax and my heartbeat slowed, I got up and walked away from the woods. I was glad to put as much distance between us as I could. The Jenkins’s cottage loomed before me, a centuries-old relic that defied the attempts of time to pull it down.
There was a shape in the window of Emily’s room. I looked away, as though my brain averted my eyes out of instinct. When I looked back, all I saw was a dark curtain that had been drawn to cover the window. I walked closer and soon I was at the front of the house. I was going to pass it and walk into the village, but the glow of a light in the living room intrigued me. It must have been gone midnight, and the light had not been on earlier when I had gone toward the woods.
I looked over my shoulder. I tried to be subtle at first, but soon I just stared. The Jenkins family were in their living room. They sat together on their couch, but there was a foot of separation between them as though they couldn’t bear to sit close to one another. Opposite them I saw the back of a head. It was a mane of familiar ginger hair with hulking shoulders beneath it.
Why was Jeremiah there? I knew deep down that he wouldn’t just give up on things, and perhaps I even expected him to go to the woods at some point. I never expected him to go back to the Jenkins house. What was even more surprising was the fact that they let him in.
Inside the living room Peter jerked his head up and caught me in his cold glare. He lifted his arm and pointed. Jeremiah span round, saw me, and his eyes seemed to widen. He stood up from the couch and walked way.
As the cottage door opened I felt like shrinking away. It felt like I shouldn’t have been watching them, that I had intruded on something private.
“Thanks for your time,” I heard Jeremiah say.
A few seconds later the living room light was extinguished, and the Jenkins’s family home once again looked empty. Jeremiah strode across the fields. I expected him to look mad, but his features were soft.
“You look like crap,” he said.
I smiled at the words. Out of the forest and away from swinging branches, Jeremiah could insult me all he wanted.
“How did you get them to talk to you?” I said.
Jeremiah took off his leather coat and wrapped it around my shoulders. I started to protest but as the warmth slid over me the words died in my throat.
“Jesus,” he said. “You shouldn’t be out in this. I’m freezing my bollocks off and I have layers of blubber to keep me warm. Why aren’t you in bed?”
“I needed to find you.”
He put his arm on my shoulder and turned me toward the village.
“You get back to the pub,” he said.
“What are you going to do?”
“There’s one last person I need to see. You get back, get some sleep, and I’ll see you in the morning.”
The village lay before us but this time, despite the gloom, I didn’t mind walking into it. Only, instead of going back to the pub, I wished that we could walk back to the car. I didn’t care how treacherous the country roads were in the dark. I didn’t care that I couldn’t do anything about the secrets of the village. I would feel better if I could get to the bright lights of the city.
“Wait,” I said, as Jeremiah turned away from me.
He stooped. “What is it?”
“How did you get them to talk to you? Last time we were there, it was like they hated you.”
“Well – “ he began.
I cut in. “Let me guess. ‘A bottle of whisky goes a long way in this village.’”
Jeremiah grinned, then shook his head. “Nope. This time, I just apologised.”
I crossed my arms and felt the leather of Jeremiah’s coat crinkle around me. “Wow. I bet you didn’t expect personal growth when we came out here.”
“I’m not about to try yoga.”
A breeze tickled my legs. I stamped my feet onto the floor. “So did they tell you anything?”
“Quite a lot, actually. Really interesting stuff, not that it matters much. Did you know that one of Peter Jenkins’s ancestors was part of the witch hunts?”
I heard the creak of rope on wood in my head. I pulled the coat tighter toward me. “Oh?”
“His great, great, great and-then-some grandfather tied the ropes around the trees. It was his job to pick branches that wouldn’t snap. Ones that would stand firm and make sure the women’s necks broke properly.”
I thought back to the groans of the trees as things swung off them. Snapping sounds that followed me through the forest. Suddenly Jeremiah’s coat wasn’t enough to ward off the cold winds that lapped around me.
“I went looking for you, you know.”
Jeremiah arched his eyebrow.
“What do you mean?”
“I went into the woods. I saw the torch you dropped.”
He shook his head sadly. “That was stupid of me, going in there. But I was so pissed off. I just needed to find something.”
“And did you?”
“No.”
“What about you?” he said.
I didn’t want to think about what I had heard. I didn’t want to relive the experience through the telling of it.
“Not a thing.”
Jeremiah took a few steps back toward me. He spoke in a low volume, as though we were members of a conspiracy guarding our words against listening ears. The wind brushed against Jeremiah’s jumper but if he felt the chill, he didn’t show it. I was grateful to him for looking out for me. He wasn’t as bad as I thought, I decided. In some ways he had earned his reputation, but in others the reputation masked the truth within.
“I asked them about the diary,” he said. “I wish to hell I’d made copies of it straight away instead of letting you take it for the night.”
I opened my mouth to protest, but Jeremiah lifted his hand in the air.
“Don't worry, I’m not blaming you,” he said. “I just wished I could have shown it to them. Instead I had to tell them about it. I described the different sets of handwriting.”
“And what did they say?”
Across the fields, in the woods, an owl screeched. The wind lapped above and below us, moving black clouds across the sky, flicking blades of grass back and forth and trying to tear them from the ground. A solitary light winked on in a house in the village. Jeremiah leaned closer.
“Did you know she died in the bath?”
“Emily?”
He gave a grim nod. “Drowned herself.”
I shuddered. “Part of me wishes I never came here.”
Jeremiah skipped over my remark.
“Peter acted like he didn’t know about the diary. But there was this look in his eyes, Ella. I’ve seen it before. The look of a man who doesn’t want to admit the truth. The diary is the key to it all. The answer is in it somewhere. I just wished I knew where.”
26
Jeremiah left me when we got to the village. I didn’t know where he was going, and my head throbbed so much that I didn’t want to ask. My body felt weary, the energy drained out of me and sucked away into the night sky. My nose felt like it was swollen with snot. As soon as we left the village and went home, I was going to crawl into bed and hibernate through the winter.
At the pub I unlocked my bedroom door and was greeted by a warm glow. At the end of the room flames spiralled inside a black fireplace. Funny, I hadn’t even realised it was there. It was strange the things you missed when they weren’t used. If I had, I would have made sure Marsha had kept it constantly lit. Chop down the entire forest for fuel if you have to, I would have said, just keep that fire going.
The heat spread from the fireplace and warmed up half the room, but it couldn’t seem to fill the rest. The stone walls looked like the sides of a cavern, and the air near my bed was draughty. I walked over to the desk and flicked the switch for the lamp, but the bulb stayed dead. There were three candles on the desk and next to them was a box of matches. Marsha hadn’t reset the fuse box, but she’d ob
viously been in my room and tried to make it comfortable. I picked up a match, struck it against the rough side of the box and smelt sulphur in the air. The candle wick soaked up the spark and a flame teased up the end and cast a dim glow in the room.
I reached into the pocket of my coat and took out the diary. It felt like a slab of stone. I threw it on the desk with a thud, settled into the chair and positioned myself so I could see the door. I wasn’t taking my eye off it tonight.