Darkest Part of the Woods (42 page)

Even though it left her with the impression that he was limping forward away from her while continuing to face her, she dared to feel reassured. Through the trees beyond him she was just able to distinguish the lights of Goodmanswood.

So he'd found the way out, and nothing else need matter. She wasn't certain if the beam had grown dimmer or only more diffuse because she'd raised it higher to greet the lights, but surely enough

power was left in the flashlight to see her and Sam to the edge of the woods.

The apprehension underlying that thought had to be sufficient reason for her to feel paced by a companion behind all the trees at once. She could ignore it if she concentrated on catching up with Sam-ignore the vast presence that loomed behind the trees from which she'd begun to think the frantic shapes were hatching or otherwise emerging, though some of the treetrunks seemed content to display swollen wrinkled growths that peered and mouthed at her. She wasn't compelled to look at any of this, not when she could see lit windows, however distant, through the trees and better still, Sam limping while the flashlight beam staggered around him as if they were competing at unsteadiness. She was yet more relieved to hear his voice until she realised her mistake. "Mum," she imagined she heard. "Mum, is that you?"

Even if that had made any sense, she seemed to be hearing him somewhere at her back.

It had to be as much of a hallucination as the rest of the misperceptions her mind was struggling to exclude. That was Sam ahead of her, imitating the unbalanced flashlight beam, and only Sam need be real. She was chasing him as fast as the trees and the slithery ground would allow-she'd abandoned trying to hold the flashlight any steadier than was required to keep him visible, however dimly-when she seemed to hear his voice again, more separate than ever from the sight of him. "Is the light you?" it said.

It wasn't just its tone that succeeded in making her hesitate, though it sounded more desperately hopeful than she thought she could have borne to imagine; it was the notion of his being lost in the dark dreadful woods because she'd taken the light away from him. His voice had to be a product of her state, which must be worse than she was able to admit, but nevertheless she stumbled to a halt. As the flashlight beam steadied, so did the figure that was leading her towards the town. Only the swaying of the light had caused its gait to appear lopsided. As she realised that, she saw the figure remember to limp.

She was jabbing the light towards it in a vain attempt to discern it and its reversed face more clearly when Sam's voice grew despairing. "Is it you?

Can't

you

speak?"

Tightness renewed itself on her neck and shoulders as though to fix her where she was, but she swung herself and the light in the direction of the blackness that had seemed to produce his voice. "Sam?"

"I'm here. Can't you see me?"

She couldn't deny him the light any longer, and yet she felt compelled to glance over her shoulder. Though it blocked more of her vision than she found reasonable, she was virtually certain that nobody was on the move between her and the town; indeed, the woods had become oppressively, intently still. "Not yet," she called as directly towards his voice as she could, and began to trail the flashlight beam across the waiting trees. "Am I pointing at you yet? Tell me when I am."

Nothing moved except the net of dim shadows that she or the dark might have been casting for him. Whatever had been ranging up and down the trees had disappeared as though absorbed by the tree-trunks. Only swellings and the faces trapped in them remained on the scaly wood, faces that refused to own up to being hallucinations, however passionately she felt they should. She dragged the light across them, unable to move it faster in case she missed Sam, and then it shuddered to a halt on a growth as high as but larger than a man's head on a trunk that bore at best a token resemblance to a cypress. Though the excrescence was patched with glistening lichen and starting to collapse, it had her father's face.

The bulging eyes were no more than pale knots in the wood. The mouth that looked paralysed in the act of uttering a cry was only one of several holes in the face, and just as full of restless insects. It was all too recognisable, however, and so was its absolute helplessness. That seemed to gather on her, adding to the pressure on her neck and shoulders. Perhaps nothing could have jerked her out of her appalled trance except Sam's plea. "Why have you stopped?

I'm over here."

She forced herself to swing the beam towards his voice, and the night closed like black water over the ruins of her father's face. "Stay there.

I'll find you," she had to swallow in order to call, and made herself walk away from the lights of Goodmanswood. She'd taken just one step when she felt the woods change.

At first she wasn't sure how. She sensed only that the transformation was or was about to be immense and terrible. The air had thickened with the imminence of some event far larger than a storm, so that she was barely able to draw breath.

The trees seemed poised to execute some movement-to cut her off from Sam.

Whatever surrounded her in the dark didn't want her to reach him. She yearned to continue doubting its existence, but she couldn't if that entailed leaving him at its mercy. She managed a breath that aggravated her shivering, and pressed the heels of her hands together in case that might reduce the shaking of the flashlight beam, and pushed one foot in front of the other. "I'm still coming," she declared in not much of a voice.

Shadows twitched ahead of her as if they were determined to find him before she did.

As she told herself that was merely an effect of the light, they moved more than they should.

They reared up in unison behind the trees that cast them, and each shadow merged with its source. At once it was apparent how much darkness was involved in the composition of the trees, which began to soak up the flashlight beam with a thirst so voracious Heather felt it in her shrinking fingertips. In a second the beam was twice as dim and reached scarcely half as far.

"That won't stop me," she whispered, unless she simply thought it. If there were no longer any shadows, however insane that seemed, and the woods maintained their intimidating stillness, then any movement would surely have to be Sam. It took her a moment to gain enough control of her mind to realise she needn't rely on her sight. "Talk to me, Sam. Don't stop," she pleaded, and lurched forward a step.

The trees fastened on the light as if they didn't need to move in order to pounce. As her foot found the earth, whose decaying surface felt ready to slither apart beneath her, every visible tree vanished into blackness, or it welled out of them. Nothing was visible except the filament of the flashlight bulb, a shrivelled reddish ember-not even any stars or the difference between the sky and the branches she sensed looming overhead, if they were only branches.

"Where are you?" Sam called, his voice giving way. "Where's the light?"

"Here. I'm here."

She was afraid of alerting the dark by telling him. She had so little idea where she was that she felt in danger of losing her balance, of sprawling into whatever the darkness hid. She risked planting her feet wider apart but found herself retreating a step, to be where she could be certain she'd already stood.

The next moment the bulb flared up.

Though the beam had by no means regained all its strength, she was able to make out the nearest trees. "Can you see that?" she did her best to shout.

"I'm not sure."

She heard him struggling to sound his age. She mustn't worsen his panic, she mustn't panic herself, but it felt as though she might have to when she yielded to the only idea she could find in her aching brittle skull. As she stepped back a pace the action felt like an unspoken prayer. It was answered; the flashlight brightened, hinting at dozens of trees. "I can now," Sam told her as if his voice had drawn power from the beam.

She scarcely heard him. If the darkness hadn't come close to extinguishing the flashlight in order to keep her and Sam apart, what had its purpose been? She paced backwards and saw the beam stretch dimly further in what was unquestionably a response-and then she became aware that she was backing towards Goodmanswood. In that moment she didn't just understand: she sensed the thirst of whatever was intent on urging her in that direction, a thirst more profound and awful than the voraciousness that had consumed her light. Perhaps everything she'd glimpsed in the woods had been designed to lead or drive her out of them. Something wanted her to carry it or its influence beyond them, into the world.

"Where are you going?" Sam protested, but his words were dwarfed into insignificance.

She was unable to halt her insight, which was letting her perceive far too much. She was beginning to glimpse the essence of the woods-the presence they had grown both to summon and conceal.

At first it seemed that her surroundings had been reversed-that the woods were rooted less in the earth than in the darkness the familiar sky would have masked. This left her utterly disoriented, in the grip of a vertigo that let more of the truth come for her. Her mouth opened as her mind did, but she no longer knew if she was desperate to cry out or to breathe. The entity whose thirst she'd sensed was using the forest to reach for her and the world. The forest was a member with as many claws or digits or tendrils as there were trees. It was the end of a gigantic limb that stretched into a blackness she was terrified to contemplate. However insubstantial the limb might be in terms of the reality she had taken for granted, it was gaining some kind of substance.

The body to which the limb belonged was drawing itself along it like a spider down a thread of web. The prospect of looking up appalled her, and yet her head was tilting helplessly skywards as if her neck was being manipulated like a puppet's. Any moment she might see more than blackness overhead. She might see what its inhabitant had for a face.

"What's wrong?" Sam called, which struck her as almost, though dreadfully, comical.

She heard his footfalls pounding towards her, muffled by leaves, if only leaves. She was suddenly afraid that he would be prevented from reaching her-afraid of how he might be prevented-but apparently all concentration was on her. She felt frozen by the notion that she and Sam were less than insects trapped beneath a great cat's paw. Her gaze edged upward, dragged towards the blackness that was no longer merely night. She was peripherally aware that Sam was close to her; he'd halted a few feet away and was muttering "Oh Jesus." Had her perception somehow rendered her unrecognisable? When he came at her and thrust his hands around her neck, she thought he meant to strangle her.

Even this seemed negligible under the blackness that was lowering itself to settle on her or to crush her in its grasp. Then she realised that he was trying to remove some object from her neck.

At once the sense of hugeness grew unfocused, and there was only the weight on her shoulders. She felt thin limbs clinging to her neck an instant before Sam broke their grip and flung away the creature that had been riding her ever since she'd crossed the threshold of Selcouth's lowest room. As it struck the ground it began to squirm feebly on its back and grope at the air with its rudimentary limbs as though searching for Heather. It was pallid and half-formed, very obviously premature, except for its oversized head. That was all Heather glimpsed-she hadn't even time to turn the beam on it-before Sam grabbed the flashlight. "Sam,"

she gasped.

She'd realised what he meant to do, but it was too late to stop him, even if she should.

As he swung the flashlight, the beam lit up the creature's face. It was by no means unlike Sam's, but dauntingly ancient, and transformed into a mask of flesh by the eyes, which were filled to their brims by a blackness deeper than any night. Was it grinning or baring its toothless gums in some other kind of anticipation? In a moment Heather might have known, but two blows with the flashlight made sure of crushing its fragile skull.

A cry was rising to her lips when an indrawn breath cut it off. Every visible tree was straining towards the sky, an agonised convulsion that she heard seizing the entire forest, while the creature lost its substance. In an instant it was skinless, in another shapeless, and then there was only a trace like a glistening mist or a haze that seeped into the shrouded earth. A faint sweetish scent lingered in the air for a heartbeat before she sensed the withdrawal of a presence, how far and in what direction she was unable to judge. When she dared to glance up, having heard the trees creak back into their everyday form, she saw stars pretending there was nothing besides them in or beyond the sky. "Gone," Sam muttered, and stood fingering his forehead as if something had vanished from within it. Heather found she couldn't stop writhing her shoulders as she turned to urge him to light the way out of the woods.

Epilogue:

The Watcher

"SAM."

"Did it have to be me?"

"No, but I hoped it was. How are you this week?"

"Pretty good. How about you?"

"Never better. I'm the last person you should worry about. Only pretty good?"

"No, fine."

"Now, Sam, the last person you should try that on is your mother. What's wrong?"

"Just the job."

"You aren't enjoying it as much."

"Yes I am, and there's none I'd rather be doing. None I can think of that would be more worthwhile either, but it can get frustrating."

"For

example?"

"We've a family where I'm sure the father is abusing all his daughters, but the hard part is getting anyone to say so."

"I can imagine how you must feel about that."

"I don't want you to think I wish I didn't have to handle it. It's my kind of case."

"I've gathered that. Why, do you think?"

"Because it's the worst kind, the kind that most needs somebody to intervene."

"That's it, of course. That must be it. Sam..."

"I'm still here."

"I keep meaning to ask you, that's if you feel like talking about it, how much you remember."