The Forest of Souls

by Carla Banks

  She was standing in the hallway, tense, her hand on her phone. And now she was aware of the empty house around her, the sound of the bushes stirring in the wind, the scraping of branches against the windows, like fingers working insistently at the frames. The living room ahead of her was a pool of darkness, Grandpapa’s study, the door partly open, was in shadow. The corridor down to the kitchen was a black tunnel. ‘Grandpapa?’ The house was icy cold.

  She could hear the sound of breathing, heavy and quick. There was someone in the passage, in the shadows. She had a vision of Helen lying dead in the abandoned house, surrounded by old papers and the relics of the past. Her hand groped along the wall for the light switch, and the dim illumination from the bulb filled the corridor, lighting up the figure that was standing there.

  Her heart lurched, then steadied as the figure resolved itself into Grandpapa. His hair was tangled, his shirt unevenly buttoned, and his stick was grasped in his half-raised hand. ‘The light!’ he said. Then he seemed to see her. He lowered the stick and looked around him. His face expressed bewilderment, and a dawning fear. She was shocked to see the shiny tracks of tears on his cheeks. He never cried. She had never seen him cry.

  ‘Grandpapa. It’s okay. It’s me. What’s wrong? What happened?’ She slipped her coat off and wrapped it round his shoulders. She could feel him trembling.

  ‘The light,’ he whispered. ‘The light. You must go!’

  ‘It’s okay,’ she said. ‘It’s okay, I’m here now.’ She was trying to lead him into the front room, somewhere warmer, but his hands were pushing her away.

  ‘No. No. It isn’t safe. Listen to me–someone is watching. You must go. You must go!’

  ‘It’s okay now,’ she said. What was this? ‘Whoever it was, they’ve gone. It’s okay, come on.’ Talking quietly, she managed to guide him across the hallway into the living room. She got him into his chair, lit the gas fire and tucked a rug round his legs. ‘You’re frozen,’ she said. She felt the radiator. It was cold.

  He was huddled in his chair, blinking in confusion. She needed to get him calmed down, and she needed to get him warm. ‘I’m going to get you a hot drink,’ she said. ‘And I’m going to see what’s happened to the heating. Will you be okay? I’m not going far.’ She looked at him closely, trying to make sure that he knew her, that he knew where he was. He nodded, his eyes moving round the room, checking the shadows.

  She waited a second, then went through to the kitchen. The smell hit her as soon as she opened the door.

  The sink was full of pans, crockery, cutlery that had been used and then dumped, the food still on the plates or in the pans, crusts of bread floating on the water. It looked as if no one had cleaned up for days. There were open tins on the work surfaces, some empty, some half-full. Spilled food had dripped on to the floor and into the open drawers. The frying pan on the hob contained a burnt mess that looked like eggs and half-cooked potato. He’d been trying to make draniki. He’d said he was making her a treat.

  She looked round her in silence. She’d been here on Friday–and she remembered how he wouldn’t let her into the kitchen, and how easily she’d accepted her exclusion. And she remembered what he’d said to her on the phone, twice now: Doreen doesn’t come. She could feel anger starting inside her. He hadn’t been confused, he’d been telling her the truth–Doreen hadn’t been here for days by the look of things.

  But she needed to deal with the here and now. She ignored the chaos and dug around in the cupboards until she found a clean pan. She looked in the fridge. There was a plate with some half-eaten food pushed on to the shelf. An egg had smashed and trickled, then dried, over the inside. But at least there was some milk She tipped it into the pan–he needed something warm–and looked at the boiler while the milk was heating up. The pilot light was out. She managed to get it lit, and the boiler ignited with a roar.

  She took the hot milk through to the living room. The gas fire had warmed the room a bit, and when she put her hand on the radiator, it felt tepid. He took the mug from her and drank slowly. Some colour came back to his grey-tinged skin, and the haunted, bewildered look began to change as he took in his surroundings. ‘Faith?’ he said uncertainly.

  ‘Yes.’ She crouched down in front of him and took his hands. ‘What happened? What upset you?’

  ‘What…? I…’ He was looking round the room as if he had just woken up. His gaze settled on the window. ‘It was out there,’ he said. ‘I think I see…’ He shook his head.

  ‘What was out there? Was there someone in the garden?’ There could well have been someone. It was no secret that an old man lived here on his own. His fear of burglars was hardly irrational.

  Slowly, he was returning to normal, becoming the grandfather she knew. ‘No one,’ he said. His eyes went back to the window, and he shook his head. ‘Crazy old man, just…crazy old man.’ He patted her hand. ‘Nothing, little one.’

  ‘There’s no way that was nothing. Grandpapa, you’re ill. I’m going to call the doctor tomorrow.’

  He looked at her over his spectacles: his way of indicating that, as far as he was concerned, the matter was closed. ‘Is just…dreams. I have the bad dreams.’

  Bad dreams. Wartime memories and burglars. But at least he was more himself. She wasn’t going to argue with him now about the doctor, that could wait until the morning. The important thing was to get him warm and settled. ‘I’ll make us something to eat,’ she said.

  He began to push himself out of his chair. ‘No,’ he said. ‘I do it. The treat—I promise you the treat.’

  ‘I’ll see to it,’ Faith said. ‘You stay here where it’s warm.’ She didn’t want him going through to the chaos of the kitchen.

  She worked quickly, not wanting to leave him for too long. She found some bread that wasn’t too stale for toast, and some eggs. To cheer him up, she decided to use the silver cutlery. He liked to make small occasions of their time together. She opened the drawer where it was kept, but there was nothing there, not even the felt-lined cutlery tray. Odd. She had a quick look in the other drawers, and the cupboards, but she couldn’t find it. She shelved the problem. That was something else to deal with later. The important thing was to get him warmed up and eating.

  She put the eggs on to boil and, while they were cooking, she drained the sink and threw out the rotting food that had been floating in the water. She stacked the dishes, emptied a kettle of boiling water over them, and bagged up the rubbish. She’d need to get on to the agency tomorrow, find out what had happened to Doreen.

  Grandpapa struggled out of his chair as she brought the tray in, and insisted on helping her set it down on the table. He’d found a bottle of wine–one that was already open–and he’d poured them each a glass. He held his up in a toast. ‘Many happy days,’ he said, the toast he always used to make. She took a mouthful of wine. It was sour, but he didn’t seem to notice. She felt an ache of sadness.

  He grew quiet as he ate. He picked at the food on his plate as she talked to him about her work, about the things she’d been doing. He seemed to listen, but she wasn’t sure if he understood. Then he told her about his plans for the garden. ‘Maybe this year, we get the cherries,’ he said. ‘The camellia–so many flowers. Red flowers.’

  ‘Like the hair-ribbon you bought me,’ she said. She still had it, tucked away in the back of the box where she kept her few bits of jewellery.

  After he’d finished, she took the tray back to the kitchen and made him some cocoa. When she took it through, he was sitting in his chair by the window. There was a book open on his lap, but he wasn’t reading, he was staring out into the night. The room was dark, and the standard lamp made a pool of light around his chair. She could hear the sound of the wind as it stirred the trees. She remembered his earlier fear and started to pull the curtains closed, but he stopped her. ‘I must watch,’ he said.

  She put the drink on a table beside him. ‘Watch what? It’s dark out there.’

  The wind was rising, and the
trees swayed and sighed. He shifted in his chair. His gaze stayed on the window. ‘The forest…’ he said.

  Faith looked at him. His eyes were far away. His face was sad. ‘So many die. So young…’

  ‘Grandpapa…’

  He looked at her, but it was almost as if he didn’t see her, or didn’t believe she was really there. ‘I think I have left it behind, and all the time…It is better if I die, too.’

  ‘Of course it isn’t!’ she said. ‘You mustn’t say that!’ She pulled the curtains across, shutting off the black space that was the window.

  He seemed puzzled, like someone waking up from a dream. ‘Faith…you are a good girl,’ he said. He stood up slowly. ‘I go to bed.’

  She watched him up the stairs and waited until his bedroom door shut. She found a piece of card and taped it firmly over the broken pane in the door, then went back to the kitchen and started tackling the job of clearing up. It took her almost an hour to get everything straight, then she made herself some coffee and took it through to the front room. The book he’d been reading was on the table. She picked it up. It was open at the story of Baba Yaga. There was a picture of a dense wood, with a path through the trees, and a young girl peering anxiously though the darkness. Once upon a time, deep in the dark forest where the bears roamed and the wolves hunted, there lived an evil witch…Once upon a time…

  She turned the page. Baba Yaga’s house waited in the darkness, poised on chicken legs, behind the fence hung with the heads of the people she had killed. Baba Yaga’s house could stalk its victims, and the witch herself flew through the air in a mortar, rowing with a pestle. Stories for children! Except, according to Antoni Yevanov, these weren’t really children’s stories. They were some kind of fossil from the days before laws and lore could be written down. In a way, these stories were supposed to tell a truth.

  She sat for half an hour, trying to distract herself with the book, trying not to think about the evening, about what it presaged for the future, but the anxieties pressed in as she stared at the page, reading the same lines over and over again: Once upon a time…an evil witch…an evil witch…an evil witch…

  He couldn’t stay here on his own. The house was too big and too old. He needed more care than someone like Doreen coming in a few days every week. He needed someone there to watch out for him. He needed company to keep the dreams at bay.

  She sat and listened to the sounds of the house, as he must sit and listen, on his own, night after night–to the wind that was stirring the trees in the garden, to the murmurs and whispers of the draughty corridors, and she found herself listening, straining her ears, for the sound of feet, chicken feet, placing themselves with stealthy malignity as they advanced.

  Enough. She was being morbid. She needed something to distract her. Then she remembered her last visit here, when she’d found the pile of old newspaper cuttings in his desk drawer. There was an article there that Jake Denbigh had written. His expression had changed when she’d mentioned it, and she wanted to read it again, to see what it was that had wiped the easy smile off his face and left him looking, just for a moment, bleak and haunted.

  She walked towards the door of Grandpapa’s study, moving quietly, as though she was doing something secret, something illicit. That is enough, little one, and the study door clicked shut in front of her. Once upon a time…She pushed it open. The cold darkness greeted her. She pressed the switch, and a dim light illuminated the room. The roll-top desk was shut, but the lock hadn’t caught. She opened it, breathing in the smell of leather and ink, and released the spring that held the secret drawer closed.

  It was empty.

  The certificates, the cuttings, and the will–they were gone.

  That night, Faith dreamed about the roses. They had grown up from the dead ground, the stems curling out in spiky tendrils that wove a barrier against each path she tried to follow, faster and faster. There was something following her, something she had to escape, but now the shoots were coiling round her arms, pinning her legs, round her neck, and she could feel them tightening and felt the panic of her breath about to be cut off. Then she was awake, gasping, covered in sweat that had nothing to do with heat.

  She was at Grandpapa’s. She had been dreaming, and something had woken her. She sat up and touched her neck where she could still feel the stem pulling tighter. A stem from one of the dead roses, cut down and lying on the grass. Was that what Helen had felt, that last moment of blind, choking panic?

  It was freezing. She tried to get warm again, pulling the blankets around her, but the cold air crept in through the gaps, sank through the coverings, made her draw her legs up and curl into a ball in the middle of the mattress.

  She needed to pee. She swore and sat up, reaching for her dressing gown. If she had to get up, she might as well make herself a hot drink before she came back to bed, and take a couple of aspirin. Her fatigue from the day before had left her with a dull headache. She looked at the clock. It was just three. She was going to be good for nothing in the morning.

  Faith picked up the tumbler she’d filled with water before she came to bed–it was empty and she wanted to refill it–slipped her feet into a pair of mules and went quietly to the door. She didn’t want to disturb Grandpapa, who slept lightly these days. ‘When you are old,’ he had told her once, ‘you do not have the time to waste in sleep.’

  She didn’t turn the light on, but guided herself along the landing using the balustrade. She looked down the stairs into the empty hall. Moonlight shone though the glass, making a space of hard edges and shadows.

  And underneath the door to Grandpapa’s study was a line of light.

  She’d turned all the lights off before she went to bed–he was always insistent on that. Had she forgotten the study light? No, they hadn’t been in there. He must be sitting downstairs reading. He did that sometimes when he couldn’t sleep. That must be what had woken her. She shivered again and wrapped her dressing gown closer round her.

  She went to the bathroom, then went downstairs. If he was sitting up in this cold, she was going to make him a hot drink as well, and switch the heating on. She went to the study, and stood there listening. She was six again, standing outside the heavy wooden door.

  The grandfather clock chimed the hour, making her jump. She pressed her hand against her throat, her heart hammering. When she pushed the door, it swung quietly open. The faint smell of books and dust enclosed her. The room was dimly lit by the table lamp that stood on the bureau. He was sitting at the open desk, his back towards her. The desk was strewn with papers. He seemed unaware of her presence.

  ‘Grandpapa?’ she said. She pressed the light switch and the overhead light came on. ‘Grandpapa? What are you doing?’ She came further into the room.

  He was still, so still.

  ‘Grandpapa?’ And she was beside him now, her fingers touching his hand, which was as cold as ice, her eyes looking into his, which were blank and empty. His jaw hung slack.

  ‘Grandpapa–’ The tumbler dropped from her hand and smashed on the corner of the desk, showering him with shards of broken glass. Oh, God!

  She tried to brush the pieces off him with her bare hands and the sharp edges cut into her fingers, and now her hands were bleeding, staining the fabric of his dressing gown. And he was cold and there didn’t seem to be any way to make him warm.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I’m so sorry. Grandpapa? I’m sorry. I’m sorry.’

  The Soldier

  This is the story of a parting.

  For the first time in her life, Eva had ridden on the train. It had stood by the platform, the smoke pouring from its funnel, catching in their throats and eyes. Steam leaked from around the wheels, the engine hissing as it tried to contain its power. There was a smell, like the faint smell of the line when the trains had passed, but this was alien and strong, and it said the train was here, and alive. Eva could feel its heart beating.

  Marek lifted Eva, and then Mama, into the carriage. It was
bare except for the wooden benches and the stove in the middle. He threw their bags aboard, and climbed in after them.

  The track lay ahead of them, vanishing into a distance that was flat as far as the eye could see, marsh and waste and forests. The whistle sounded, and slowly, the train began to move. It was taking Eva away from the forest forever.

  The city was noisy and crowded and dirty. Everywhere she looked, there were people, the streets were packed with cars, buses, horses and carts, all hustling and barging to find their way through. And there were soldiers. Everywhere, there were men in uniform. The war had come. Not long after they left, under the blue sky of summer, the Soviet army had swept through the forest and engulfed the village they had left.

  Papa had stayed behind. He had been made a local commissioner, and he had to organize the village after the Soviets came. But now there was more unease, talk of trouble on the borders, and he’d come to Minsk to see them, before he left to go to war. Marek and Papa were leaving to join the troops on the border. Eva and Mama were to stay behind, crammed into the rooms that Zoya shared with her family. Papa held Mama close for a long time. ‘I’m coming back, Katya.’ His pet name for her.

  Marek walked with Eva through the town the day before they left. They stopped outside the iron gates of the distillery, one of the first landmarks of the city that Eva had begun to recognize. The gates were wrought iron with a high, ornate arch where a stylized bear danced. Marek spoke to her seriously, he didn’t tease her or tug the ribbon she wore in her hair, the red ribbon he’d given her a long time ago. ‘I don’t know what will happen, little one,’ he said. ‘I’ll write to you, and I’ll send you messages—people will be coming to Minsk all the time–you’ll know what we’re doing, and we’ll know about you.’