Forest Ghost: A Novel of Horror and Suicide in America and Poland

by Graham Masterton

  ‘They’re dead? How can you know that?’

  ‘Didn’t you hear those shots? They’re both dead, and Diablik, too. Borys shot them, and then himself.’

  ‘You didn’t see him do it, though?’

  ‘No.’ Sparky seemed strangely disinterested, and not at all frightened any longer.

  Jack said, ‘Come on, Sparks … Borys could have just let off a few shots to scare off whatever was chasing after us.’

  ‘No, he didn’t. I saw it in the stars. They were very specific. They said that one thing could lead to another.’

  ‘What does that mean?’

  ‘If we found Robert, the duch would find us.’

  ‘The ghost?’

  ‘Yes … and if that happened, the stars said that two of us would die. That’s why I wanted us to keep on running. I didn’t want us to die – not you and me, or you and Krystyna.’

  ‘Jesus, Sparks, why didn’t you tell me this before we went looking for Robert? I mean, you practically encouraged us to go look for him, didn’t you? We were just going to take his feet with us and go for help. We weren’t going to go into the forest at all.’

  ‘I needed to see if it was true.’

  ‘The ghost?’

  ‘Yes. I have to know why Malcolm killed himself.’

  ‘But if you’re right about Borys and Lidia, Sparks – that means that two people have died and you’re responsible. Indirectly responsible, anyhow. That’s just terrible.’

  ‘I’m not responsible, Dad. It was there, in the stars. Two people were going to die, although the stars didn’t say which ones they were. It was always going to happen, no matter what I did.’

  ‘Oh, really?’ Sparky was making Jack feel both anxious and angry. He always found it difficult to control his temper when Sparky started talking in this measured, emotionless way. He always sounded so rational, but as far as Jack was concerned there was nothing rational about astrology whatsoever. ‘So what did the stars have to say about this so-called duch?’

  Sparky’s eyes darted from side to side, almost as if he were reading his words from an autocue. ‘It’s like I said before, Dad. It’s nothing, but it’s everywhere. We should go now.’

  ‘I don’t get it, Sparks. Well, I do and I don’t. I thought I saw this white thing back there, running around behind the trees. It was just like we saw in the woods at Owasippe. Is that the ghost?’

  ‘We should go now.’

  ‘Sparks – I just asked you a question. That white thing I saw – is that the ghost?’

  ‘I told you. There’s nothing. We should go now.’

  Jack didn’t want to push Sparky much harder. He was obviously disturbed and distracted and when he became really upset it would sometimes take him weeks to get over it. All the same, he said, ‘Sparks – listen to me, we’re going no place. We’re going to stay here until Krystyna gets back with the forest rangers and the paramedics. There’s no way we can leave Robert stuck on that tree stump like that – and, if you’re right about Borys and Lidia, we can’t leave them, either. Supposing one of them is only wounded?’

  ‘But we don’t know where they are,’ said Sparky. Jack wished that he would stop speaking in that deadly monotone. ‘How can we help them if we don’t know where they are?’

  ‘That’s not the point. You don’t just go off and leave somebody when they might need you.’

  Sparky didn’t say anything to that, but turned away and walked over to a sloping granite rock that protruded from the sand. He sat down with his back to Jack, his arms folded, making it quite clear that he was only staying here on sufferance. Jack was tempted to tell him to stop sulking, but he knew from experience that would only make things more difficult. Back at home, he might have given him a hard time for acting so moody, but he couldn’t really do that here, in the Kampinos Forest, with the moon already touching the trees.

  They waited for nearly two hours before they saw headlights and blue emergency lights flashing through the trees and heard the labored whinnying of all-terrain vehicles.

  During all of that time, Jack had continued to shout out ‘Borys!’ and ‘Lidia!’ over and over, and whistle for Diablik, but Sparky had continued to sit on his rock with his arms folded, saying nothing, although he did get up once to go behind a tree and relieve himself.

  Jostling slowly across the sand dunes came two police Pathfinders, a Jeep from the Kampinos National Park and a Mercedes G-Class from the ambulance service, with Krystyna’s Toyota trailing at least two hundred meters behind them. They circled around and parked, their blue lights still rippling. Six police officers and two paramedics climbed out, as well as Krystyna. She came hurrying over to Jack, followed by two officers in uniform and one in a black leather jacket and jeans, with his hands in his pockets.

  ‘You found Sparky!’ she said, and she went across to Sparky and laid her hand on his shoulder. ‘Sparky?’ She smiled. ‘Are you OK?’

  Sparky said nothing and irritably shrugged her away. Krystyna frowned at Jack but Jack simply shook his head to indicate that she should leave him alone for now.

  ‘Any sign of Borys, or Lidia?’ she asked.

  Jack shook his head again. ‘Nothing. And I’ve been calling them ever since you left.’

  The police officer in the black leather jacket came up to Jack and held out his hand. He was several kilos overweight, with a stomach that bulged over his belt, and with his short gray hair and bulbous nose he reminded Jack very strongly of Meat Loaf, the rock singer. Jack could smell alcohol on his breath.

  ‘Komisarz Piotr Pocztarek, sir, from the Masovian Command. Panna Zawadka here has been explaining to me what you were doing in the forest.’

  ‘Professor Zawadka,’ Krystyna corrected him.

  ‘My apologies,’ he said, with barely disguised sarcasm. ‘Professor Zawadka. She says that you were searching for her missing colleague. I am still not clear, though, why you all ran out of the forest – what alarmed you so much?’

  ‘I told you,’ said Krystyna. ‘We don’t really know. We could hear something coming after us, but we couldn’t see it, so it could have been anything. A man, or a wild animal. We had just seen my colleague impaled on a tree, with his feet cut off. You can’t blame us for being afraid.’

  The uniformed police officers and three forest rangers had now all switched on heavy-duty flashlights, and the rangers were explaining to the officers the best way to search the forest, in parallel zig-zags between the trees. ‘That way, there is much less chance of you missing anything.’

  ‘What about your friend from the university, and the forester who was with you?’ asked Komisarz Pocztarek.

  Jack looked over at Sparky, who still had his back turned. ‘We don’t know. We heard shots, but we think they might have simply gotten themselves lost.’

  ‘OK, dobra,’ said Komisarz Pocztarek. ‘I think the best thing that you can do is take us to Professor Zawadka’s colleague, as quick as you can. I’ve called up a helicopter from Capital Command which should be here in twenty minutes or so.’ He turned around and beckoned to the two paramedics. One of them was carrying a lightweight aluminum stretcher and an oxygen cylinder, while the other was carrying a metal box of emergency equipment.

  ‘You don’t mind if Professor Zawadka takes my son back to Warsaw, do you?’ asked Jack. ‘We only flew in from the States this morning and he’s pretty much exhausted.’

  ‘I don’t see why not,’ said Komisarz Pocztarek. ‘I will want to talk to Professor Zawadka some more, and maybe to your son, too, but it can probably wait until tomorrow morning.’

  As soon as he heard that, Sparky stood up, ready to go.

  Jack said, ‘I’ll see you later, Sparks. Make sure you order yourself some supper on room service, a cheeseburger or a sandwich or something. I shouldn’t be too late, with any luck.’

  Sparky didn’t answer but walked off toward Krystyna’s car. Krystyna said, ‘Forgive him, Jack. He must be very tired, and traumatized, too. This has been a terrible s
hock for all of us.’

  Once Krystyna had driven Sparky away, Jack followed the police officers and the paramedics into the forest. The trees deadened their voices and their flashlights made the trees look flat and two-dimensional, as if they were cut out of cardboard.

  ‘You understand Polish?’ Komisarz Pocztarek asked Jack.

  ‘Pretty much, yes.’

  ‘The good professor wasn’t just being hysterical, was she? You, too, felt that something was coming after you?’

  ‘I felt it, for sure. Absolutely. I couldn’t get out of the forest fast enough.’

  ‘But? You don’t sound convinced that it was real, or if you all just lost your nerve.’

  ‘Wait until you see this poor guy stuck on a tree stump, and then tell me what you think.’

  But it was Borys and Lidia and Diablik that they came across first. One of the policjanci up ahead of them shouted back, ‘Here, panowie! There’s two of them, dead! And a dog!’

  Jack and Komisarz Pocztarek hurried to catch up with them. The police officers and the forest rangers were standing around, brightly illuminating a triangular space between three pine trees. There was so much blood on the ground and up the tree trunks that it looked as if somebody had been drunkenly splashing around a five-liter can of bright red paint.

  Lidia was lying face-down with her arms neatly by her sides and her legs together. Jack could have thought that she was planking if the whole of the back of her head hadn’t been blown off. Her remaining hair stuck out wildly like the petals of a large scarlet dahlia, with a beige mush of pellet-peppered brains for its center.

  Next to her lay Diablik, on his side, with his red tongue hanging out. He had been shot in the stomach, which had almost taken his back legs off. Jack imagined that he had probably been jumping up when Borys had shot him.

  Then there was Borys himself, lying on his back with his double-barreled shotgun held in both hands, its muzzle pressed underneath what had once been his chin. He had blasted his face off completely, except for two eyeballs still attached to their optic nerves, one each side of his head, and both staring in opposite directions.

  Komisarz Pocztarek crossed himself. ‘This was Borys Grabowski, yes?’

  ‘Borys, yes,’ said Jack. ‘I didn’t know his surname.’ His stomach was beginning to twist into tight, painful knots, and his mouth was flooding with bile. At the same time, however, he found that he was unable to take his eyes off the grisly carnage that was lying on the forest floor in front of him. He had never realized how deep the sinus cavities were, behind the human face. They looked like a dark array of unexplored caves.

  ‘Did he give you any sense that he was capable of committing an act like this?’ asked Komisarz Pocztarek. ‘Was he bad-tempered? Belligerent?’

  Jack shook his head. ‘No, not at all. He was friendly, and helpful. He had a great sense of humor, too.’

  ‘This is not so humorous, though, is it?’ said Komisarz Pocztarek. He sniffed and wiped his nose with the back of his hand. ‘Sorry. I’m allergic to pine trees.’

  Jack took several deep breaths and pressed his hand against his stomach to try and stop it from churning over so loudly. Then he said, ‘I’d better show you where Robert is. I doubt if he’s still alive. In fact I think he may have died while we were still there. You see that canvas bag? His feet are in there.’

  Komisarz Pocztarek went over to Borys’s canvas sack. He took a ballpen out of his pocket and used it to lift up the flap, and peer inside.

  ‘Holy shit. Professor Zawadka told us about his feet. I didn’t know whether to believe her.’

  He came back, took hold of Jack’s elbow and steered him away, until the bodies were out of sight behind the trees. ‘Are you OK?’ he asked him. ‘You’re not going to puke?’

  ‘I’m thinking about it. At least my lunch is.’

  ‘I know how you feel. I was having dinner with my family at the Restaurant Dziupla in Truskaw when they called me. I was halfway through my hunter’s stew. I can definitely feel it sitting there, like your lunch, trying to make up its mind if it wants to stay where it is.’

  He sniffed again, and then he turned back and called out to one of the officers to get in touch with the Masovian Command forensic team again, to see when they expected to arrive here.

  ‘Make sure they’re bringing a sniffer dog! But for now you can start a spiral search all the way around here, at least five hundred meters. You’re looking for anything – footprints, weapons, discarded clothing, bloodstains. Anything.

  ‘Now,’ he said to Jack. ‘Let’s go.’

  Flanked on either side by three of the six police officers, two forest rangers and both paramedics, they made their way through the forest as fast as they could. The beams from their flashlights criss-crossed through the trees and their equipment belts jangled. After a few minutes they came to the clearing where Robert was still standing. His head was hanging down, his chin on his chest, but this time a large black carrion crow was sitting between his shoulder blades, pecking at the back of his neck. As soon as it saw them coming, the crow croaked and noisily flapped its wings and flew away.

  They approached Robert cautiously, shining their flashlights on the ground all around him to make sure that they didn’t tread on anything that might be evidence.

  While the police officers and the forest rangers searched the clearing, the two paramedics put down their stretcher and their metal box and gently lifted Robert’s head up. His face looked ghastly, like a Halloween mask made out of pale gray rubber. His mouth was hanging open and his eyes were milky.

  ‘Deceased,’ said Komisarz Pocztarek. ‘Don’t think there’s very much doubt about that. That’s one hell of a way to die. Your feet cut off and then sodomized by a fucking tree. Mother of God. I’ve seen some sick things in my time, believe me, but this just about beats them all.’

  He borrowed a flashlight from one of the uniformed officers and walked slowly around Robert’s upright body, examining it closely, especially where the splintered tree trunk had been forced up between his legs.

  ‘He was still alive when we first found him,’ said Jack. ‘The only thing he said was “I did it myself”.’

  ‘Yes, Professor Zawadka told me that. But I find that hard to believe, don’t you? If he did do it himself he must have been very drunk, or delirious. I’ve had a couple of cases where people have deliberately cut their own legs and arms off – their penises, too – but that’s a recognized psychotic condition, body integrity identity disorder, and after they’ve done it they usually call for help.’

  He shone the flashlight into Robert’s face. ‘Let’s just say this: they don’t usually go to find a tree stump to sit on.’

  He was still staring at Robert when one of the uniformed officers came up to him and said, ‘I think you ought to see this, sir.’

  They followed him to the edge of the clearing, and he hunkered down and pointed to the ground. Almost hidden under a fibrous thatch of twigs and dry pine needles lay the brown leather handle of a large camping knife, smothered in bloody fingerprints. Only the handle, though – the blade had broken off completely.

  ‘Well, that could be the weapon that was used to cut off his feet,’ said Komisarz Pocztarek. ‘The fingerprints will tell us if he really did it himself. I think it’s far more likely that somebody did it for him – that same somebody who chased you away.’

  ‘Robert did say one more thing,’ Jack told him. ‘He said “Pan”. I’m sure that’s what it was, anyhow. He said it quite clearly.’

  ‘“Sir”? “Mister”? Why would he have said that? That was all? He didn’t give you a name?’

  ‘Sorry,’ said Jack. ‘He didn’t say anything else after that. Borys and me, we thought about trying to lift him off that tree stump, but we decided that we probably weren’t strong enough, and even if we did it would do him more harm than good. One of my restaurant customers was mugged once, and stabbed in the chest when he wouldn’t hand over his wallet. He made the mistake o
f taking the knife out, and he bled to death in five minutes flat.’

  Komisarz Pocztarek looked around the clearing. High above their heads, the carrion crow let out another scraping cry, impatient to continue its interrupted meal.

  ‘You can go and join your son now, sir,’ he told Jack. ‘It looked to me like he needed his father. I will have one of these officers drive you back to the city and I will contact you tomorrow, if that’s OK.’

  Jack said, ‘Thank you, I appreciate it. I’m just about beat.’

  Komisarz Pocztarek beckoned to one of the uniformed officers, and spoke to him quickly and quietly. The officer said to Jack, in English, ‘Come with me, please, sir,’ and began to lead him back through the forest.

  Jack had only walked about fifty meters, though, before his stomach violently contracted. He leaned against a tree and vomited bile and half-digested bacon and sausages, and then retched, and retched again.

  The policjant patiently waited for him, whistling Hej Sokoly between his teeth.

  InterContinental Hotel, Ulica Emilii Plater 49, Warsaw

  When Jack quietly opened the door to his hotel suite, he saw that the desk lamp in the living room was lit and that the TV was still on, although the sound was muted. He crossed the living room toward the bedroom, but as he did so he saw that there was a blue blanket spread out on the couch, and that a mop of blonde hair was sticking out from under it.

  He gently drew down the top of the blanket and saw that Krystyna was lying there, fast asleep.

  ‘Krystyna?’ he whispered. ‘Krystyna?’

  She opened her eyes and blinked at the back of the couch, obviously uncertain where she was. Then she turned her head around and stared at him.

  ‘Jack,’ she said, in a thick, sleepy voice.

  ‘What are you doing here? Why didn’t you go home?’

  She pushed the blanket aside and sat up, tugging her fingers through her hair. ‘Oh, God. I’m so glad you woke me up. I was having such a scaring dream.’

  Jack went to the bedroom door, slid it back, and looked inside. Sparky was sprawled across the bed like a human starfish, his mouth open, breathing deeply.