Authors: Lisa Hinsley
Coombe's Wood (30 page)
George moved away to the left – deeper into the woods. He grabbed a handful of leaves from the ground and wiped his hands then moved out of sight. Izzy sagged against the tree.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” A voice said in her ear. She almost collapsed in fright, collected her senses and turned, ready to fast-walk. A hand gripped her arm. “Izzy, it’s me, Feathers.”
“Why are you here? How did you find me?” she asked. Her eyes searched the dark. She took a deep breath, her heart pounding within her chest.
“I followed you,” he whispered.
“How? I was driving!”
“Fast-walk. I can easily go faster than a car.” He held her for a moment, and placed a tender kiss on her forehead. “I followed because you sounded so strange. Something was going on, and I had to know what.”
“Now you know.”
“So you lure George out here. But what if the creature gets you as well? I mean, just what do you think you were up to?” He sounded angry now. “I only just found you. I can’t have you go and die on me. And what about Connor?”
She turned away. “I don’t know.”
“Come on, we’ll leave him out here. If he finds his way out, well, so be it.” Feathers hugged her.
“I just wanted to be sure. I can’t live not knowing what the bastard’s going to do next.” She started to cry, and buried her face in Feathers’ neck. “He could do anything – he means to kill me. I know this! And what if the police don’t catch him? What if he beats me to death? It’s the same outcome if I die in the woods. At least this way, I have a chance.” She pulled back, and tried to see the features of Feathers’ face in the dark.
“I know. I understand, I really do. But we still need to leave. The woods are not safe.” Feathers kissed her, his fingers cradling her face. She nodded.
A twig snapped on the other side of the tree.
“Found you!” Like a peek-a-boo toy, George popped out from behind the trunk, and grabbed Izzy’s arm. “Looks like you found a lover boy, and a hippy one, no less.”
“Let go, George. And leave me alone!” she screamed, squirming away from him. “I don’t want you in my life, I just want to be left alone!”
Feathers, didn’t try negotiation, and she ducked just as his fist flew into George’s face. With a gasp George let go. Feathers and Izzy ran off.
“What the fuck!” George shouted from the forest. “Come back, I was only kidding. I just wanted to talk to you. No pain, not this time.”
Feathers and Izzy stopped on the other side of a small clearing hid behind a large tree trunk.
“He’s bloody delusional, isn’t he,” Feathers said.
Izzy nodded, her eyes fixed on George, who turned in slow circles, trying to figure out where they were.
As Feathers and Izzy stared into the night, she felt a snort of warm air on her neck, followed by a low sonorous growl.
“Oh shit,” she breathed. “Run, Feathers, we need to run!” Without waiting to see what Feathers did, Izzy used her fast-walk and dashed through the woods. She arrived back on the lane, and hid behind her car, and dug in her pockets for the key.
She could see red eyes scanning the woods. George had stopped hollering, and seemed to be standing perfectly still. Feathers wasn’t in sight. She couldn’t imagine the beast had got him. But where was he? With a croak not much louder than a whisper, she called, “Feathers?”
The beast’s head swivelled in her direction. Its red eyes shone like liquid fire. For a moment, she just stared, the shifting and changing shades of the creature’s eyes hypnotising her. She blinked, trying to break the trance. The creature had almost reached the car, was almost next to her. With a sharp breath, she moved, breaking straight into fast-walk as the animal bounded to a stop.
She ran away from the cars, through the woods, and back to where she’d been hiding with Feathers. There was still no sign of him. George was still transfixed in the centre of the clearing. She took another chance and shouted, “Feathers!”
“Shut up, you stupid bitch!” George hissed through gritted teeth. Bodu loped back, bounding between the trees with graceful ease, his eyes lighting the woods more brightly than the night sky. She tried to use the red glow to find a trace of Feathers.
She watched the beast approach George, as he played statue in the clearing. The beast crept up behind him, and sniffed the top of his head.
She couldn’t help but watch.
The giant dog nosed George, pushing him to the side. George dropped to the ground, and lay as he fell. Bodu nudged him again, this time flicking George into the air. The man flew a short distance, and landed with a crunch.
She jumped as a hand pressed into hers. Feathers didn’t speak, but turned her head away from the scene with his hand and indicated they should leave. She nodded, and tried to turn back, to see George and his fate. But Feathers pulled her in the opposite direction, back to the lane, and to the edge of Coombe’s Wood.
The force field seemed furious with them, and threw them both out onto the tarmac. They landed separately, rolling to a stop meters from the edge of the beast’s prison. Something fell away from Feathers, and bounced along the road to where Izzy had landed. She reached over and picked it up, a rectangular glass vial with a tiny cork in the top, and four faces, all like gargoyles on each side. The moon peaked out as the clouds broke up, and she turned the bottle in the light. Empty. Feathers glanced over, and put a finger to his lips, and with the other he took the vial back.
She sat on the tarmac and listened, Feathers stood behind her. He tried to pull her up from the ground, but she shook him off.
She was listening for George’s shrieks. When none sounded, Izzy took Feathers’ hand, and stood. Her leg had twisted in her fall out of the woods. She hardly noticed, and used Feathers as a crutch to make her way home.
25
8
th
Dec
“…and in other news, a decomposed body has been found at the edge of a field. Police in West Berkshire have cordoned off the field and part of the adjoining woods following the discovery of human remains.
“A member of the public made the discovery near Coombe Lane, in Cedham, on Thursday afternoon. Police said the body was in an advanced stage of decomposition, but has been identified as that of George Malley from Chester. He has been missing for over a year.
“First indications are that the death is not suspicious. Sergeant Mike Davies said the body had clearly been there for some time.
“He said: ‘Scenes-of-crime officers were at the scene for most of the day making sure no evidence was lost before taking the body down to the mortuary. It does seem like the body has been there for a while, and possibly dragged there by a large animal, this has made the enquiry more difficult.’
“The body has been taken to the mortuary at the Royal Berkshire Hospital, in Reading, and the coroner has been informed.
“Now on to the weather…”
“I can’t believe he turned up.” Izzy sipped at her wine. Milo stretched and changed position on her lap. She stroked him without thinking, and he responded with a deep purr. “I keep thinking about a dream I had after George threw poor Sidi onto the balcony. A strange sort of black beast caught George in the woods and killed him. First it played with him for a while, as if George was a mouse. Then feasted on his flesh. I woke up somewhere between relieved and guilty, because I’d been wishing him dead.”
“Had you?”
Izzy glanced down at the cat, his green eyes staring back at hers.
“Yes.”
“It’s a bit of a relief, isn’t it, though, especially after all that he put you through last year,” Feathers mused, running his fingers through his beard. “He must have died right after… well, that stuff he did.”
She had been surprised when the officer appeared on the doorstep. As she told them, she thought they’d found George, and taken him into custody for stalking her. Imagine her surprise when they said they had a body, and asked her to identify him. That had been hard. A severe-looking woman in a long white doctor’s coat directed Izzy into a viewing room, where a body lay on a hospital trolley. The shape beneath the sheets was distorted, no longer entirely human-looking. Only his head remained uncovered.
Izzy stared for a long time. Identification took seconds, but she lingered, visually tracing the misshapen lines of his body. Strangely, his eyes, although sunken, remained, along with the once shiny top of his head.
They said he died of a heart attack. They said they thought he must have been preparing another attack on Izzy when it happened. After they found his body, the police searched the woods and found his car in the lane. It’s funny his body hadn’t been found earlier, but then, no one uses the lane much, not with all those silly rumours of a beast.
END
By Lisa C Hinsley
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Thank you!
Lisa
Also available on Kindle:
My Demon – US (coming soon)
My Demon – UK (coming soon)
Lisa C Hinsley was born in Portsmouth in 1971, and grew up in England, Scotland, and America. She now lives on the Wirral, in northwest England, with her husband, three children, and four cats. She hopes not to be thought of as the American Cat Lady, but some things are just inevitable.
Recently, her novel What Alice Sees placed as runner-up in the 2010 UKA Opening Pages Competition. Her novel Coombe’s Wood finished in the semi-finals of the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award 2009 and was awarded runner up in the all-genre Book of the Year Awards 2008 on Arts Council website YouWriteOn. Now listed on Amazon Kindle, Coombe’s Wood has sold over 2000 copies and counting. Lisa’s novel The Crocodile was short-listed in the Undiscovered Authors 2006 competition. Several of Lisa’s short stories and poems have appeared in print publications.
You can find out more about her here:
www.lisahinsley.weebly.com
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First published in 2009 by Lisa C Hinsley
Copyright © Lisa C Hinsley All rights reserved.
The author asserts the moral right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work.
All Rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written consent of the author, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead is entirely coincidental.