Darkest Part of the Woods (22 page)

"What makes you say that?"

"Can you still not feel it?"

He hoped she didn't mean what he was trying not to feel-that the yielding of the forest floor reminded him of flesh. He needn't imagine that they were walking over a face the size of the woods, a flattened face that was holding its breath while they approached its mouth. A shiver overtook him as though his body was anxious to dislodge the clinging shadows, and Sylvia renewed her grip on his arm. "Whatever you're feeling is right,"

she murmured.

"I doubt it."

"Don't be scared. I'm not, so why should you be?"

"I didn't say I was."

"I never am when I'm in here. Sometimes I forget that when I'm away from it, that's all."

"You must have been..."

"Go on, Sam."

The words were as hard to find as to speak. "The last time you were here."

"Not

even

then."

"Because you were drugged, you mean."

"I wish he hadn't done that. The drugs just got in the way."

Sam would have preferred not to have to ask "Of what?"

"That's the point," his aunt said, impatient with him or with herself. "I can't remember.

That must have been the drugs."

"But if you can't remember..."

"I know it was something extraordinary. I've held onto that much," Sylvia declared, and lowered her voice. "I feel as if it may be where my whole life has been leading, Sam."

She was speaking as if she might be overheard. She mustn't be as untroubled as she'd said, and he couldn't help staring about in the hope of not seeing a reason. The nearest trees were elevating nests towards the sky as though to trap something from it. Many of the lower branches were tipped with buds whose shapes seemed oddly wrong. Before he could start to imagine what they had in store, if indeed he wanted to, his aunt said "We're here."

That was loud enough to be addressing not only him. She tramped forward as if tugged by her bulky midriff. Beyond the trees ahead of her Sam saw the centre of the woods and in its midst the low wide ring of bricks. They and the mound within them were clear of the shadows of the trees, so that the forest seemed to be focusing the sunlight on them. To Sam the mound looked far too reminiscent of a grave, especially since it had nearly been Sylvia's. He was unnerved to see her march to it and announce "This is where I was."

Sam took his time over limping to stand by her, but thought of nothing to say except

"You make it sound like it was something to be pleased about."

"Don't you think not being disturbed is a reason?"

"If you aren't that's good." His voice seemed dwarfed by the stillness that felt more than ever like a breath held by a vast lung. "I mean, you aren't," he said.

"I see you aren't."

"There are worse places to come to yourself."

"You're talking about now."

He might have thought the stillness had entered her until she said "Then."

Maturity required him to ask "Do you want to tell me about it?"

"I do while I remember. Maybe two of us will have more chance to keep it in our heads.

I'm certain I forget things that have happened in the woods once I leave."

Sam felt as though he was risking more than he could grasp by admitting "Me too."

"I was right to make you come with me then, wasn't I?"

He didn't know whether she meant that on his behalf or her own. "So what have you remembered?" he said with some haste.

"It felt like waking up."

"Remembering did." | She giggled, a tiny high sound that part of the woods seemed to echo. "Coming back to myself. I kept thinking I was camping out and he'd tucked me up for the night. I didn't feel too bad even when I', realised what he'd really done."

"You were drugged."

She paused in pacing around the ring of bricks to look frustrated.

"Once I got my hands and face out I didn't mind lying there. I could see all the trees watching me. It was like being little again."

Sam glanced at the trees, whose impassiveness was nowhere close to reassuring.

"You couldn't have been under long," he tried to reassure himself. "You wouldn't have been able to breathe."

"Unless there was something I could."

He understood she had to come to terms with what she'd undergone, but she seemed almost nostalgic for it. "If you say you didn't mind lying there," he objected, "what made you get up?"

His aunt leaned over the bricks, and the middle of her loose dress swelled. "I didn't want mom worrying where I was."

She sounded so distracted she might have been saying the first thing that entered her head-perhaps less than or not even the truth. Her midriff seemed to haul her closer to the mound before she lurched across the bricks. Sam limped fast to her, thinking she'd tripped, but she had only bent towards the earth.

"Look," she whispered.

Her whisper brought the stillness closer. The light the clearing isolated was so intense that the mound appeared to shine with a blackness deeper than any night sky. Protruding from it was a tattered brownish object Sam took at first to be an elongated autumn leaf. He had to stoop as low as his aunt was crouching to distinguish that the marks on it weren't just wrinkles rilled with soil. They

were letters in a handwriting that looked centuries old. I Nathaniel, they said.

Sam was staring in bewilderment at this and dismissing the possibility that it was a Biblical reference when Sylvia slipped her fingertips under the fragment to pick it up, only to let out a small cry. The scrap had crumbled into pieces so minute no writing was distinguishable on them, and Sam was immediately unsure it hadn't after all been a leaf. His aunt began to straighten up, rubbing brownish flakes off her hand. Then she lowered herself to one knee and dug her fingers into the soil. "There's something else."

Sam wasn't eager to see; the spectacle of her clawing at the mound was unsettling enough. When she desisted he wondered if she'd realised how she must look, until she said

"Sam, fetch a stick."

Though her tone didn't quite suggest she was talking to a pet, he resented the words.

Nevertheless he couldn't refuse her, not in her condition. He must already have noticed a fallen branch at the edge of the clearing, because he limped to it at once. "The champion with his staff," said Sylvia, taking it from him to poke and scrape at the earth. "I was right," she cried.

For a moment he thought she'd uncovered only an area of the foundations-a random stretch of blackened stone. Then she thrust the branch several inches into the earth, and with an effort further still. "Here," she said, half withdrawing the branch to angle it towards him. "See what you feel."

He felt close to fearful. Rather than infect her with that, he stepped onto the mound and grabbed the branch. The exposed slab was broken, he saw; there was a jagged gap about a foot wide and packed with earth, which Sylvia had been probing. He shoved the branch into it, only to encounter at a depth of several inches an obstruction so solid it jarred his arms. He worked the stick free of it and poked deeper, and found another obstacle an equal distance beneath.

Leaning on the branch let him find a third. "You know what's there, don't you?" Sylvia said eagerly.

"Steps."

"How far do you think they go down?"

"I wouldn't know."

"We'll find out, won't we?"

Whatever expression that brought to his face made her giggle loud enough to be echoed somewhere nearby. "Not now. We'll need a flashlight and a spade," she said. "Better cover it now so nobody goes down before us. We don't want them taking away anything that's there."

She watched him extract the branch and use it to spread earth over the broken slab.

Once he'd finished she improved on his work before

treading on the earth to obscure any traces of their presence. The sight and sounds of her trampling on the mound dismayed him so much that he was retreating towards the trees, not that they seemed likely to offer any comfort, when she said "Stay a moment."

"What is it now?" he heard himself blurt, but no echo.

"Just making sure we don't forget." Having propped the branch against the nearest tree, she found a ballpoint in her pocket and wrote on the back of her hand a message she displayed to him: SPADE LIGHT WOODS. "Now even if we forget what it means we'll know what to do," she said, apparently under the impression this would please him. It didn't, and as he turned his back on the mound to escort her through the forest he felt sure he had already forgotten something else about the place. For no reason he could bring to mind, not that he was anxious to, he felt grateful to be unable to remember.

22

Secrets

HEATHER didn't know how long she had been sitting at Sam's window to watch for his and Sylvia's return when she glimpsed movement in the woods. As she leaned across the desk, bruising her elbows on the spaces she'd cleared amid the clutter, she saw the rest of Sylvia surface from behind a tree, followed by Sam.

Trees confused her view, so that the pair appeared to be retreating rather than advancing, drawn back by the woods and a haze that set tree-trunks writhing around them. She had to peer so hard her eyes ached to be certain they were emerging from the woods, though not from the outstretched shadows. Their own shadow hitched itself on four elongated legs across the common, its two heads nodding together, a spectacle Heather found so disagreeably fascinating that she failed to move away from the window until they were halfway to Woodland Close.

She didn't want to be seen waiting for them-preparing to talk to her sister.

When she arrived in the kitchen she was expecting to hear a knock at the gate.

She seemed to wait altogether too long for the rasp of a key in the front-door lock. They must be footsore, she told herself; Sam called "It's us."

"Us three," said Sylvia.

How long had she looked as though her midriff was on its way to consuming her?

Perhaps her voluminous dress emphasised her pregnancy, or Merilee's visit had intensified Heather's sense of her sister, not a reason she cared for. "Coffee for anyone?" she said in an attempt to pretend everything was normal. "Oh, Sam, Andy rang and wants to see you. He wouldn't say why."

"I'll drive over to his, then."

"What did we need to remember?" Sylvia reached to detain him and gazed at smudged writing on the back of her hand. "There it is," she said. "Better write it down somewhere else."

Before Heather could ask what it was, Sylvia made with ungainly haste for her room. "I ought to be home for dinner," said Sam.

"Be careful driving," Heather said automatically. As soon as she heard the Volkswagen chug into the road she called to Sylvia "Were you having that coffee?"

"I was just going to lie down for a while."

"Do you mind if I come and talk?"

"Why would I ever mind?"

Heather thought there might be a reason now. If Sylvia didn't want coffee, she didn't either: her nerves were active enough. She had yet to decide what to say once she'd climbed the stairs. Sylvia was lying on the plump green quilt overlooked by leafy wallpaper, and for an instant Heather imagined her sister prostrate on a grassy bank in a wood. There was no question that her midriff was more prominent, but it would be in that position, Heather told herself. She sat at their father's old desk and turned her back on the trees, which were extending their spidery shadows towards the house as they clutched the sun. "Was it all you hoped," she said,

"your walk?"

Sylvia closed her eyes as her lips considered smiling. "I believe so."

"You feel better for it, then."

"More

complete."

"Sam looked after you, did he?"

Sylvia's hands moved apart on her stomach, and Heather saw writing on the left hand was illegible, leaving the skin to look grubby or bruised. "I wouldn't want to do anything in there without him,' Sylvia said.

"Good for Sam," Heather said with more enthusiasm than she felt. "So what was so important that you wrote it on yourself?"

Sylvia squeezed her eyes tight, and Heather didn't know if she was trying to hide from the question or remember. "Just a message," said Sylvia.

"Is it a secret?"

"Maybe till I've followed it up."

"Don't let me stop you coming to terms." When Sylvia's face accepted this without a trace of an expression, Heather took a preparatory breath. "I've got to apologise," she said.

"You shouldn't," said Sylvia, and let her sleepy gaze find her. "You've gone nowhere near upsetting me."

"I don't mean about now."

"Now or for a long while. As a matter of fact I can't remember when you last did. You needn't try so hard not to if it's a strain. Just tell me if having to be my big sister gets to be too much."

"I don't see how it could," Heather said, telling herself included now. "The thing I have to apologise for, I forgot to give you a message."

"When was that?"

"The day we lost dad."

"Then I'm not surprised you forgot, and stop apologising, was the message?"

"Someone you knew in America was trying to get in touch. Someone you shared a room with."

"Any more to it?"

"Merilee."

"Right," Sylvia said, her lids beginning to veil her eyes. "I remember her."

"I should think you would. She was here today looking for you."

Sylvia's eyes stopped just short of closing. "Is she coming back?"

"I imagine she's well on her way to the airport by now."

"She's been wanting to travel for a long time. She thinks everywhere in the States is either too fast or it's too slow. She's looking for somewhere with enough history that it feels stable to her."

"I don't care about her, Sylvie. I care about you."

"I hope she finds somewhere," Sylvia said with a hint of defiance, and continued to show little of her eyes. "Did you talk much?"

"Enough."

"So what did she say about me?"

"How you met and where you were." Sylvia's reduced gaze strayed past Heather, who wanted to launch herself from the chair and grab her sister's hands. Instead she protested "I thought we weren't going to have secrets from each other."