by Thomas Brown
Trepidation crept into the writing, or sleeplessness, characterised in the fragility of the lettering, the frantic pace at which it rushed across the pages. The trees, she wrote, seemed taller, the dusk dimmer, the fly-faced woman closer. There was night after night of this; each marked by a sole step across the deadwood through the dappled gloom. On reading these things, Freya grew quite sad. The feeling was physical; sickening in her stomach, mixed with pangs of regret. Who was she, to have suggested that walk through the Forest? So naïve to assume that it could heal, that it could help. She, who covered herself in clothes, who could not even bear to look at herself in the bathroom mirror, for fear of what she might see in the steamy glass?
Then came the inevitable entry, which she had been both dreading and eager to read. “Tonight we met halfway across the clearing, under the branches of the alders. I reached out and stroked the woman’s arm. There are few words to describe how lovely and horrid it felt, to feel her flesh against my fingers, so warm and familiar. Her human parts were smooth, and pale as milk in the fading light. I did not touch her face, not because I feared it by this point, but because there was no need. I have realised why I have been dreaming of her, and she is not a thing to fear. Instead I brought my hand to my own face, running it across my cheeks, my skin, the curvature of my head, and found it to be that of the fly. We are one and the same, this figure and I. She is me. I am the fly-faced woman, and I have remembered why I stand in that Gadarene clearing, night on night, alone and bearing the face of the Lord of the Flies, the Gluttonous One, the Prince of Hell...
“On touching my face and confirming these things, I found myself alone in the Forest. Either I had become the figure, or she had never been. One and the same, I fled from that place, overcome with a burgeoning sense of fear. The trees reached out for me as I broke through the brush. Leaves caught in my hair – I had hair, now, and my own face again – and breath blew in white clouds from my mouth. The sun had died and everything seemed frozen. And though I fled aimlessly, there were sounds ahead, growing closer and closer, not approaching me, but I towards them, and I realised – no, I remembered – I was chasing him through the trees, I was chasing him, I was chasing him, and then I felt it inside...”
The writing grew nearly illegible. Ink had seeped into the page and become faint, where wetness had made it run. Freya’s throat felt dry, her lips cracked, her eyes narrow as she strove to read on. There was more scripture, and much talk of flies and demons, and then, on the last page, a confession:
“Only the Forest matters now. Heaven must wait its turn, if He will forgive me my actions. Have I done wrong by Frederick? Have I sinned, by chasing him through the trees that night and sating myself on him, by gorging myself on his flesh, his blood? My God, I can barely write the words, yet even as I do so my stomach grows impatient, my mouth wet with saliva. It is an abhorrent and monstrous thing I have done, in the throes of a hunger that was not my own, and entirely my own. I feared I was a Beast, and that Hell awaited me. Then I realised this was not the case, or that we are all beasts underneath. There is no devilry in what I have done. Do foxes not pick at their prey? Do dogs and cats not eat flesh where they find it? He must forgive me, for I have acted only according to my nature, as it is all things nature to grow hungry and hunt.
“God made me in His image, and I am ravenous, as I once was, so many years ago. I must embrace this hunger, before it happens again in such a violent and uncontained fashion. I go to the Forest, where I shall run and be free and perhaps find Him in the trees and the earth, if not in myself.”
* * *
At every turn Freya saw the terrible things of which she had read. Shadows formed silhouettes locked in ravenous embrace. The wind added sound to their feeding forms, Frederick Mangel’s screams carrying through the years as his famished fiancée tore into him. And all the while Freya’s boots knocked against the cobbles, matching the hurried pace of her heart, which raced, terrified and exhilarated, in her chest.
She saw the village differently now. Lynnwood had transformed in her eyes, reduced by ink and night into formless shapes; a meaningless collection of bricks and stone in the vast sprawl of ancient, untamed forest. Their ancestors heard the bellows of the Forest’s breaths, the thrumming of the trees, the groaning of the earth beneath their feet, and in their horror they built houses and streets and a small church, anything to distance themselves from the roaring hunger of the trees, which so echoed the stirrings inside each of them. Each Midwinter families were found, broken apart across their sitting rooms. Husbands plastered bloodily to their armchairs. Wives in pieces down the landing. And both devoured; great strips torn from their backs, limbs and breasts removed, as though they were livestock and nothing more, like the pigs kept by McCready. Some years only the bones were left, sobering and sick in the cold light of morning, the occupants of Lynnwood, reduced to their grinning, fleshless cores.
Joan’s diary was but one in a study filled with confessions. Lynnwood had been built on a legacy on hunger, as far back as those earliest settlers. Though the forest soil was poor, there was little people would not do, or eat, when it meant the difference between life and death. Even in the winter months, when darkness dragged and bodies froze, there was meat to be found, if they would only eat it. There, perhaps, she had found the roots of Lynnwood’s legacy; the earliest records of that nameless hunger, between the starving hollows of the trees.
And though the village had become a pleasant enough place in which to live, these hardships forgotten, their hunger had survived, carried in the blood and beneath the skin.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Hear the music of the brook
Running through the trees,
Over pebbles, under stones,
Wherever it may please.
Smell the turning of the leaves,
Rich autumn in the bark,
The season sings a merry song
Its voice that of the lark.
See the water run its course,
The Forest, now awoken,
River shining in the light
And at its banks, the Bauchan.
He makes a very pleasant sight,
His long face pale and glowing
Of his hunger deep beneath
Why, none of it is showing!
His sopping lips spread wide apart
From them a pleasant song
He beckons so delightfully
Why, he could do no wrong!
But should you step onto the bank
Where earth and water meet,
He’ll pounce on you, all tooth and bone,
Another treat to eat!
CHAPTER TWELVE
Standing in the window in her front room, as she had each day for a week now since that revealing night, Freya stared out over the street. Upstairs, her children slept. She clutched a tumbler of brandy – an old, thick-cut glass, inherited from her father – from which she took a sharp sip.
Lynnwood was quiet, but not peaceful as it had once been. It would never be peaceful again, tainted by the acts, committed in the dark places beneath the trees. She stood there for what seemed like forever. One by one, the other cottages down the street became dark, as Lynnwood closed its curtains, turned off its lights and became still. It was a ghost village, awaiting the arrival of the hungry dead; the bean sí, as one diary had called them. And in a matter of weeks they would come, as they did every Midwinter; not spirits, not demons but the ravenous people of Lynnwood.
Part of her – a very strong part – wanted the hunger to come. She invited its attentions. Let it take her, she thought, and that would be the end of it, of this two-faced existence. There would be no more pretending, no more forgetting, no more wandering the Forest, wondering why she felt so sick, surrounded by such beauty.
But there were other instincts, as primal and fierce as anything that night inspired. While her children slept upstairs, she could not abandon them. Nor could she bring herself to leave Lynnwood; her existence tied t
o that of the Forest. The very thought of packing up and driving through the trees brought a soft shiver to the back of her neck, as though on entering the Forest she might lose herself once and for all beneath its boughs, and her children with her.
When the last cottage fell dark she dragged her curtains together. She made her way back through the house, switching off each light as she passed. Night spilled into the hallway, the bathroom, the sitting room. Then she climbed the stairs to the landing. Long, oak boards lined the floor, which groaned beneath her tread. The sounds filled the silent house with their presence.
As each night now, she visited first Lizzie’s room, then George’s. It was her youngest she most feared for. Light spilled from the hallway across his clothes-strewn carpet as she moved to his bedside. She ran a gentle hand through his hair, compelled to touch him, to certify he was still there.
He turned, murmuring softly in his sleep. He really was just a boy; so small, so thin beneath his covers. She thought he would always be her boy, no matter how he grew up or what he became. And, of course, she would do her best to raise him properly, in the meantime. She refused to believe the inescapability of their hunger. She refused to believe that one day he would be driven to feasting beneath the trees. She refused it, as she refused to believe she herself harboured that evilness.
Their atrocities were monstrous, and yet each year they went forgotten. She thought that it was the human way, to deal with life and the horrors it brought. They had not wanted to remember – could not remember – for their own sakes. To remember would be too great a thing to cope with. It made her wonder what else she had forgotten over the course of her lifetime; memories that could not bear to exist.
The room was still and silent as the rest of the house. She licked her lips and continued to stroke her son’s hair. It brought her comfort to see Robert’s features in his face. It was his eyes, his mouth. These were the corner-marks of a face; defining features of character, of the person within. At least Robert had escaped this madness. At least somewhere he walked free beneath the night sky, and the stars that he had loved so much. She had thought it strange, once, that a man of faith might admire the stars and the shapes they made in the sky. He explained his God was not in Heaven but in the world around them; the trees, the soil, the constellations in the night. When he saw the stars, he said, he was reminded of nature’s reach and its burning beauty. None captured that spirit better than his favourite: Orion, the Hunter.
Warmth flooded her limbs, which seemed heavy with brandy and remembrance. Lying down, she wrapped her son in her arms, closed her eyes and in that heady state of mind slipped from wakefulness into sleep.
* * *
She dreamt horrible things; new dreams that may or may not have been real. Shadows stretched for her son’s window from all around; long, black limbs reaching for the glass. There was pale movement in the moonlight as scrawny figures clutched at the thatched straw of the roof, faces white and pained. Then sounds; clicking, like tongues against the hollows of mouths, or the cracking of many-jointed legs, and the foetid stench of unwashed teeth as the shadows swarmed closer, a hungry hive, descending on Haven House –
* * *
She woke suddenly in the darkness of the bedroom. Releasing George, she struggled into a sitting position. She felt cold, damp. Sweat plastered her chest and beneath her arms.
She thought to inspect the time. George’s clock sat on the bedside table, but she couldn’t see its face in the darkness. Beside it was a radio alarm, with a digital clock, but that appeared to have died. It must have run flat, sometime in the night. Rising carefully she slipped from the bed.
Shadows fled from the movement, the curtain caught a breeze, and for a moment she struggled to differentiate between dream and reality. The window was open, even though she was certain she had locked it. She moved quickly across the room, reached for the window latch and closed it. Wind buffeted the frosted glass, rising like a scream into the night, then was still.
Standing there, she stared out over the village. It was a very different place by night. The road stretched on into the darkness until she couldn’t distinguish between the two. That seemed right, somehow. Gardens glittered with frost and everything else was black, as though coated in liquorice. She was reminded strangely of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, which her father used to read her when she was young. All that was missing was the swarm of small, child-like figures, rushing through the darkness –
Another gust of wind, another scream, and her reflection twisted, unsettled. She put the thought quickly from her mind and was about to turn from the window, from the cold, empty blackness of the world outside, when she saw it. Long, apish arms clutching the window frame. And pressed up against the other side of the glass, as far away as she had been seconds earlier, a face. White, gaunt, like that of an old man, but horribly childish, staring at her through the first-floor window.
* * *
She woke, as before, in George’s bed. Outside was the deep blue of dawn, growing gradually paler with the rising sun. Birdsong filled the air. She turned to her son, who was once more in her arms, and kissed his forehead. For the briefest moment, she felt at peace. She clung to the moment, savouring it and the soft waves of relief that lapped inside of her.
Then the feeling passed, replaced by another, more insistent urge. Unwilling to ignore it, to risk anything that might make her appetite grow, she rose from the bed and descended through the cottage into the kitchen.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
When she noticed the brooch on George’s windowsill the next morning, she snatched it from sight and placed it in the pocket of her cardigan. She had been made privy to the darkness in Lynnwood, her eyes had been opened to the truths behind Midwinter, and the brooch seemed all the more horrible for it; a thing of delicate beauty in the shape of indelicate hunger, as though commemorating that night and the gaping mouths that filled it. Theirs was an insatiable society. Fine wines, foie gras, blue cheeses and long pork; they consumed these things without conscience. She supposed it was the natural way. Eaton had shown no remorse when chewing on the magpie, and she had lost count of the number of sparrows deposited by Merlot on Catherine’s doorstep.
“Sit down,” she told George, when she confronted him that afternoon. He hadn’t returned straight home from school and it was almost five o’clock before he finally let himself into the house. She waited for him in the kitchen, her anxious hands knotted in her lap. She heard the door open then quietly close, feeling the air grow cold around her as winter rushed into the house. Moments later, his pale face appeared in the doorway.
“I’m home,” he said. It was then she had instructed him to sit. He did as he was told. The placid hum of the refrigerator filled the room.
“George, what’s this?”
He stared across the dinner table as she produced the brooch from her pocket. It shone dully in the lamplight, dark and grey against the rich grain of the wood beneath.
“It’s a brooch,” he said. “I think it’s made from iron. It looks like a mouth, with teeth.”
“And who does it belong to?”
Still staring, he shrugged his slight shoulders. “It doesn’t belong to anybody.”
“That’s not true, George. I know where it’s from and who it belongs to because I’ve seen it before. Why did you take it from the churchyard?”
“I didn’t take it,” he said. His eyes rose to meet hers, before falling back to the brooch. They swam dark against his pale face. “That would be stealing and stealing’s wrong.”
“Yes, stealing is wrong, but so is lying, darling.”
“I didn’t take it,” he repeated. “It was a gift.”
“A gift?”
“From my friend,” he said. “The man in the tunnel.”
Her mind jumped back several weeks, to the first time her son had mentioned the man. She remembered patchwork trees, damp soil, the ripe aroma of autumn, as the Forest softened and grew thin, like a piece of brown, s
hiny fruit.
“The one you saw in the Forest that day?” she said. After a moment he nodded. “I thought you fell out with him, darling?”
“I did. He scared me. But now we’re friends again. I didn’t know he’d stolen it.”
She swallowed, her throat tight, lips pursed. “George, this man...”
“My friend,” he interjected.
She forced a smile. “Do you really think you should be friends with him, if he steals?”
He seemed to think about this. The flicker of something, she couldn’t tell what, crossed his face. “I’m sure he didn’t mean to steal. He’s nice to me. I feel better when he’s around.”
“George, I know things are difficult at the moment. The world doesn’t feel like a very friendly place. But it will get better, I promise. In the meantime I need you to be honest with me, and with yourself. I think it’s wonderful you have this friend, but you mustn’t use him to lie for you, as a way of blaming others –”
“I’m not –”
“I need you to be honest with me –”
“I am –”
Pain flashed behind his eyes. His expression tightened, grew sad, such that she thought he might cry. She spoke quickly. “Can I meet him? Maybe if I asked him nicely, he’d put the brooch back where it belongs and none of this will matter.”
“He doesn’t speak,” he said.
“He doesn’t speak?”
“No, he just stares. And grins. Besides, you’ve already met,” he said.
“I have? But when?”
“He visited last night, while you were sleeping.”
Another face flashed before her eyes; long and white and filled with simian cunning. Imagined from the features of her son, it was all the more horrible; the predatory, formed from the placid. She drew a short breath. “He visits you at night?”