Darkmans (55 page)

He’d been especially moved (he remembered) by the plight of the Wood Anemones, which – like the plainer, smarter sister in a Brontë novel – had been gradually shoved (by their more popular sibling) into the wood’s inhospitable outer margins, where they clung on, tenaciously, seeming to positively thrive in the poor soil and dappled shade there. They were such fragile plants, so plain and sweet and tender…He smiled, fondly. But that was spring – his smile rapidly dissipated – and this was winter.

Once he’d left Elen –

Elen
 –

No
…

Stop.

– he’d driven – his breath still irregular – along the A268, took a left at Two Hoven’s Farm and pulled on to Bixley Lane. It was ludicrously dark here and so unimaginably wet that he felt like he was ploughing though a vicious jar of black Quink.

He changed down a gear as he headed past the old saw mill and a couple of small cottages, then put his lights on bright as he drew beyond. The woods crowded ever closer, glowering down at him, encroaching.

He didn’t want to stop, but he took an old Landrover in a small layby –

Abandoned?

Dumped

– as a signpost (a pointer) and parked up close to it, in the hope of shading his bike (in its lee) from the worst of the weather.

He was quite wet already (tiny rivulets of water trickling down his back). His scarf was damp. He wore a woolly hat (which he’d hurriedly yanked from his rucksack after removing his helmet) and his thick, leather biking gloves. He had a compass – hung on a black cord around his neck – which he quickly inspected. He tried to pull out the map, but it was tipping down and the wind howled, so he thought better of it.

He was wearing solid boots (biking boots) but this didn’t equip him for the voluminous puddles and the sticky expanses of mud on the initial track. It was a wide track. A good track, really, all things considered. He had a torch. Without a torch any kind of progress would’ve been totally unfeasible.

He trudged into the darkness, calling out, woodenly, at ten-second intervals.

‘Dory?’

He felt strange –
surreal
– as if this wasn’t actually a real search, just a pretend search, a search in a film, perhaps, which had already been carefully scripted to fail.

‘Dory?’
he called. ‘Isidore?’

Two minutes in and he was drenched. He felt hopeless.

‘Dory?’

After five minutes, he entered the pine forest. The weather wasn’t nearly so extreme here and the ground was softer underfoot. The soles of his boots were cushioned by rotting ferns, old moss and pine needles which stuck to the mud he’d already accumulated until soon his feet were like two, huge, weighted blocks.

He stopped for a moment, out of breath, closed his eyes and tried to inhale the forest. He sniffed (as if desperate to reactivate his storm-battered senses, his curiously fragile sense of self), but the only thing to enter his nostrils was water. Water from the perpetual drip on the tip of his nose. He coughed.

He moved doggedly onward. Soon the wide track fractured into a dozen much smaller paths. He inspected the compass, shivering, then took a bold step forward and almost fell. A tendril of Bramble had hooked on to the sleeve of his coat. He pulled it off, cursing, but as he pulled he noticed something – a piece of cloth. He reached out for it, unhooked it and drew it closer to his face. He grimaced –

Boxer shorts
…

He wrung them out and shoved them (grimacing, fastidiously) into his pocket.

‘Dory?’

He felt overwrought. He felt too
old
to be heroic. Too
old
to be brave and dependable. Too
old.

He tried to look around him, to focus, but his glasses were streaming. ‘Dory? Are you there?’

Then, quite out of the blue – with almost no warning – his hackles rose. It was entirely unconscious – unwitting –
automatic.

‘Dory?’
he pivoted on his heel. ‘Is that you?’ He lifted his torch from ground-level, into the rain-soaked black, then gasped, stepping back, almost tripping.

Behind him – 7 feet away, at best – stood a stag. A giant stag. ‘Holy Mary,’ he said.

The stag gazed at him, blankly. It seemed dazed. It was an old one. Its horns were broken. Its pelt was thick in certain places (the shoulders, the rump), but intensely threadbare in others.

‘Holy Mary,’ he repeated, panicked, feeling the beat of his heart, almost
entering
his own heartbeat (through a funnel, a dark funnel, through his…his
head
? Where? His
ear
?) and then suddenly – an entirely
different
sensation (and yet the
same
, somehow) – he felt the beat of the stag’s heart, he felt himself crushed up against it, against this bold and extraordinary
counter
-beat – he felt the stag’s ears pricking up, turning towards him, he felt himself sucked in – the two beats merging and becoming one, pumping in tandem – charging on,
careering
on, in a riotous, shuddering gallop, twice as strong, twice as powerful – the same beat, the same breath, the same…

He took a second, blind step back, then a third, his boot hitting a tree trunk. He tried to push himself up against the tree, to become the tree (as he’d become the stag) but his rucksack blocked his body.

The stag glanced over its shoulder, away from him, distractedly. He felt the individual bones rippling in its neck.

He could still feel its heart, but softer now. The flare of its nostril…

‘Heart,’ he thought, then, ‘hart.
Hart
…’

He scowled –

No.

‘
Dory!
’ he yelled, swinging the torch around.

‘
Dory?!
’

He returned the blaze of the torch to the deer, but the deer was disappearing into the darkness, sinking into the darkness, being engulfed by the squall…Its beat gradually grew softer.

‘
Dory!
’ he yelled again, and as he yelled something hit him, square on the head.

He froze for a second, blinking, terrified, then he laughed – a cone, a
pine
cone! He took a small step forward, still laughing, searching for the cone with his torch, and as he searched – still chuckling, oddly engrossed,
childishly
engrossed in the search – a large, heavy branch came crashing down on to his back.

‘I had three visions,’ he told her, a little later on that evening (as she swallowed her pre-lights-out medication).

‘Yeah,’ she murmured, boredly. ‘You already
said
…’

‘In the first,’ he continued (refusing to be put off), ‘a man is standing next to a house. Everything seems fine. And then the house simply collapses.
Totally
collapses. But it’s like in that old Buster Keaton gag – that black and white short – where the house falls around him but the man remains standing, apparently unhurt, in the middle of all this mess and chaos…’

‘Hmmn.
Fascinatin
’,’ she said, picking up her phone and sending a quick text.

Nite MumXX

‘In the second vision I saw a sheep leading its lambs to slaughter. Or if it wasn’t a sheep it was a duck, or…or some
generic
creature…Animals aren’t really my
bag
…But the
kind
of animal
it was doesn’t really matter – it was a
symbolic
image, a
metaphor
…’

‘’Course it was.’

‘And in the third I saw a boy awaken from a long, deep sleep. He sits up. He looks around. He speaks. He says two words, very clearly…’

‘Oh yeah? An’ what’s he
say
, Rev?’ she asked, idly.

‘I’m not sure. I don’t remember.’

‘Great.’

Kelly checked her texts. There was one from Gerry, one from her aunt, one from her dad, one from Jason, one from Gaffar and one from her mum.

Eh?!

She scowled, mystified.

‘And now I’m dieting for Jesus,’ he said, with apparent satisfaction.

‘Well bully for you, mate.’

She rapidly scrolled down the messages and pressed ENTER.

He was huge, or at least he appeared to be. A veritable titan. He was in his late thirties, early forties, heavily built with a pallid complexion (but flashes of high colour on his nose, chin and cheeks), wore a large, thick moustache (with tinges of red in it), a deer-stalker hat and an impressive collection of all-weather gear, topped off by a smart, camouflage jacket decorated with – Beede squinted – what looked like a bizarre photographic
montage
of twigs and leaves.

He was shining a torch directly into Beede’s face as he lay – prone and winded – on the forest floor. Beede didn’t realise (at this point) that it was actually
his
torch.

‘Well that wasn’t very clever of you,’ the giant observed mockingly, ‘was it now?’

He was drunk, Beede surmised. His breath reeked of alcohol –

Rum?

Brandy?

Beede slowly pulled himself up into a sitting position and blinked, owlishly, into the light. He flexed his shoulder, then his neck, then his leg. He felt a little stiff and creaky, but there was –

Thank God

– nothing sprained or broken, so far as he could tell.

He frowned, then put a tentative hand to his face –

Damn
…

He’d somehow managed to dislodge his glasses in the fall. He pulled off his gloves, stuffed them into his pocket, then felt around, clumsily, on the ground surrounding him. As he reached out, blindly, a
cold, wet snout suddenly made contact with his bare skin. A warm tongue licked his knuckles. He snatched his hand away, alarmed.

‘
Enough
, Gringo,’ the man snapped. Beede squinted into the darkness. Just to his left he made out the rough outline of a small and extremely overweight, pure-white Jack Russell.

The man drew a step closer and peered rudely into Beede’s face. ‘You’re getting a bit long in the tooth for this kind of lark, aren’t you?’ he asked.

‘Pardon?’

Beede adjusted his hat which was currently hanging – somewhat rakishly – over one brow.

‘A bit long in the tooth, a bit
old
…’

‘I seem to have lost my glasses in the fall…’

Beede continued to pat at the floor around him.

The stranger shone the torch helpfully on to the ground, then took a step back.

‘Careful not to stand on them,’ Beede cautioned him.

‘Nothing happens in these woods,’ the man informed him, slurring his words a little, ‘without me or Gringo here knowing about it.’

‘Is that so?’

Beede glanced up, distractedly.

‘She’s been hard on your trail for the past twenty minutes,’ he stared down at the dog, fondly, ‘all in a bait, she was, so I left her to it. She tracked you down a real treat, she did.’

‘Can you see anything?’ Beede asked (neglecting to mention that he hadn’t actually been in the woods that long). ‘I really can’t function without them…’

‘No,’ he said, barely even bothering to look.

‘Are you
sure
? They must be around here somewhere.’

‘I heard a voice calling out earlier,’ the man said. ‘Was it you?’

‘Probably…’ Beede was crawling around on his hands and knees now. ‘I’m searching for someone. A friend of mine…’

‘A
friend
?’ he sneered.

‘Yes.’ Beede glanced up. ‘Perhaps you’ll’ve seen him? Tall, blond, German…He might’ve appeared…’ he paused ‘…distressed.’

‘A
male
friend?’

‘He’s German,’ Beede continued, ‘but he speaks excellent English…’

Beede stopped his search for a moment as something odd suddenly dawned on him –

The branch
 –

The fallen branch
…

‘Where’s the branch gone?’ he asked, rocking back on to his heels.

‘What?’

‘The branch. The branch that fell on me.’

The man stared at him for a second, blankly, and then, ‘Oh. Yes. The branch. I moved that off,’ he said, ‘I threw it over there somewhere…’ He gesticulated, vaguely, towards the distant undergrowth.

Beede frowned. He felt a brief moment’s disquiet.

‘Isn’t that
my
torch?’ he asked.

‘No.’

Pause

‘Yes.’

‘Could I have it back, then?’

Beede held out his hand. The man passed it over, sullenly. ‘That’s a good torch,’ he said, ‘very powerful.’

‘It’s an old torch,’ Beede said, ‘I’ve had it for twenty-odd years.’ ‘An oldie but a goldie,’ the man quipped, leering down at him.

‘So you live locally?’ Beede asked.

‘Me?’

He pointed to himself, stupidly.

‘Yes.’

‘Roundabout.’

‘In Beckley?’

‘Roundabout Beckley.’

‘It’s a filthy night to be hanging around in the woods,’ Beede mused.

‘We patrol these woods,’ the man said (placing his hands on to his hips, as if rehearsing some kind of formal speech), ‘summer, autumn, winter, spring – come rain or hail or shine.’

Beede nodded, his eye casually alighting on what he took to be –

No.

Surely not
…

– some kind of ornately decorated, American-Indian-style –

Holster?

No.

Scabbard?

–
sheath
hanging around the man’s waist. A sheath for a sword. Or a large hunting knife, perhaps.

‘So you spend a lot of time here?’

He stated the obvious.

‘I do.’

‘Are you a warden of some kind? A gamekeeper?’

‘You could call me a warden,’ the man nodded. ‘You could call me,’ he paused, self-importantly, ‘the
Guardian
of the Woods.’

‘The King of the Woods, eh?’ Beede murmured.

‘What?’

‘In ancient English myth there was this perplexing figure called The King of the Woods. He guarded a large Oak in the centre of the forest. He never slept…’

‘I wouldn’t know anything about
that
,’ the man demurred, taking an unsteady step back.

Beede aimed the torch down at the forest floor again and bent over to recommence his search. He felt a sharp spasm of pain in his left shoulder as he moved it –

Ouch

‘Did you see the deer?’ he asked, suddenly remembering the deer, almost with a jolt.

‘I’ve seen deer,’ the man said, ‘I’ve seen
plenty
of deer. But not tonight.’ ‘There was a huge deer,’ Beede said, ‘a stag. An old stag. Standing about 7 or so feet away. A magnificent creature.’

‘I lost my bird,’ the man said (defensively, almost competitively). ‘I wasn’t just hanging around.’

‘Pardon?’

Beede glanced up again.

‘My kite. My red kite. I keep birds of prey.’

‘And you lost it?’

‘Yes.’

‘A red
kite
?’

‘Yes. I flew him this afternoon – in the clearing just to the south of here – and while he was flying this other bird started to bother him, to
harass
him – which they will do, sometimes. It was a dark bird, a small bird, probably just a starling. But fierce.
Crazy.
Really caught him on the hop – put him on his mettle – until suddenly he got it into his
stupid
head…’

He tutted, ‘He was an
ounce
over. Just an ounce. But that was all it took.’

‘An ounce?’

‘Yes. He was too heavy to fly…’

‘If you fly them when they aren’t hungry,’ Beede said (plainly very familiar with this concept), ‘then there’s no incentive for them to return. They’re remarkably pragmatic creatures, aren’t they?’

‘It’s all about weight with birds of prey,’ the man continued (as if Beede hadn’t actually spoken). ‘If they aren’t hungry then they won’t come back. He was an ounce over his flying weight, but I flew him anyway. I suppose I got too cocky, too
bold
…’

As he spoke he drew a large flask from his jacket pocket, unscrewed the lid and took a long swig of its contents. He shook his head, bitterly. ‘I thought there was a
bond
between us – a strong bond – but I was wrong. He deceived me. I was a
fool
– a soft-touch. I shouldn’t’ve trusted him.’

He proffered Beede the flask. It smelled of rum and coffee.

‘Thanks,’ Beede said warily, ‘but I’m fine.’

‘Suit yourself.’

The man scowled at him and then took a second, even longer swig.

‘Will he survive out here?’ Beede wondered. ‘In this bitter weather?’

‘No.’

Silence

‘He’ll die.’

The man shoved the flask away again as Beede continued his search. ‘I don’t know how I’ll get home without my glasses,’ Beede murmured, growing increasingly pessimistic about his chances of finding them. ‘I couldn’t possibly
drive
…’

‘Where to?’ the man asked.

‘Pardon?’

‘Where’s home?’

‘I live in Ashford.’

‘Oh.’

The man grimaced, as if coming from Ashford was somehow unconscionable.

‘I’m
Beede
, by the way,’ Beede straightened up and held out his hand, ‘Daniel Beede.’

The man stepped forward (he
was
huge: 6'4", 6'6"…) and grabbed hold of Beede’s outstretched fingers. Then he squeezed them (Beede winced), and
squeezed
them. He held on to them for four – perhaps even five – seconds longer than Beede might’ve thought appropriate. He had huge hands. Spotlessly clean. Dry. Surprisingly warm.

‘You have very cold fingers,’ the man slurred, ‘
very
cold.’

Beede managed to disengage himself from the man’s tight grip and then continued his search. Gringo joined in. She sniffed around in the pine-needles with an audible enthusiasm. Then she began to dig. Soil and needles flew everywhere.

‘Careful, girl,’ Beede cautioned her, flinching, not sure if her contribution was entirely helpful. But the dog ignored him. The man stood by and watched, making no effort to restrain the dog or to help in the search himself.

After several minutes, Beede stood up again. ‘I just can’t seem to find them,’ he said, worriedly.

‘What will you do?’ the man wondered.

‘I don’t know,’ Beede shrugged (perhaps a fraction irritably).

‘Well at least the rain’s stopped,’ the man volunteered.

Beede peered up into the sky. The rain had stopped and the wind had calmed, but the cold was even fiercer than it had been previously. His hands were almost frozen. He shuddered, then shoved his hand into his coat pocket and withdrew –

Eh?

– a piece of unfamiliar fabric. Damp. He blinked as he unfolded it –

Oh, yes
…

The pair of boxer shorts. He shone the torch at them for a moment, then he scrunched them up and shoved them away again, pushed his hand into his other pocket and withdrew his gloves. He pulled them
back on, then slowly ran the torch over the forest floor one final time.

‘It’s like they’ve just vanished,’ he said, mystified.

‘Are those your shorts?’ the man asked. His voice had a new, slightly menacing tone to it.

‘Pardon?’

‘In your pocket. The shorts. Are they
yours
?’

‘Uh…’

Beede put a tentative hand to the pocket.

‘No,’ he said, ‘I found them in the Brambles. A few minutes ago. I thought they might actually belong…’

He paused, judiciously. The man stared at him, in silence.

‘I should probably start to try and work my way back,’ Beede said, turning and aiming the torch in the approximate direction of the larger track.

‘These woods are packed full of mischief,’ the man murmured, ‘like you wouldn’t hardly believe.’

Beede opted not to comment. He grabbed hold of his compass.

‘Due north east,’ he said cheerily, inspecting it closely in the torchlight. He pointed the torch ahead of him again. Everything was just a blur.

‘The things I’ve seen,’ the man said, his voice suddenly an unsettling mixture of rage and longing, ‘behind the trees and in the bushes. Things I can’t get out of my mind…’ he slammed his hand, hard, into the side of his own head. ‘Just can’t seem to get
rid
…’

‘Right,’ Beede said abruptly. ‘Well good luck with the kite. I do hope you find it.’

He took a rapid step forward.

‘Hey…’

The man called out. Beede half-turned.

‘Your glasses!’ He pointed towards his feet. ‘Down there.
Look!
’

Beede directed the torch to the the place he’d indicated. As he angled it he could’ve sworn he saw something glinting in the man’s hand. A blade, perhaps. A long blade. His heart began racing. ‘I can’t run,’ he thought. ‘If I run then I’m done for.’

‘I am the Guardian of the Woods,’ the man’s voice boomed, portentously.

‘I don’t see the glasses,’ Beede said (at normal volume).

‘I am the Guardian of the Woods,’ he boomed again.

‘I spent ten years in the Merchant Navy,’ Beede announced. He
spoke with confidence. He threw back his shoulders. He tried to look like a proposition.

‘You know what they say about sailors,’ the man sneered.

‘I
don’t
, actually,’ Beede said, sharply.

‘Anyway,’ the man continued, ‘you’re looking in the wrong place. I meant over there…’

He pointed to his left, and as he pointed he staggered slightly.

‘I already searched over there,’ Beede said, firmly.

‘Perhaps you should look again,’ the man said, thickly.

‘No,’ Beede stood his ground, ‘the glasses are gone. I don’t want to waste any more time on this.’

He turned.

‘
Here
they are!’ the man exclaimed.

Beede glanced over his shoulder. The man was holding out his huge hand. Inside his hand were what looked like a pair of glasses. Beede paused. He turned the torch on to the man’s hand. Yes. They were definitely
his
glasses. They stared at one another. The man’s other hand (his right hand) was hidden behind his back.

?

Beede suddenly heard a curious grunting sound and redirected the torch downwards. There he saw the dog – Gringo – rocking back on to her haunches and panting.

‘Is your dog all right?’ Beede asked.

‘I am the Eyes of the Wood,’ the man intoned, sonorously, drawing his hand from behind his back. The hand held a knife; a long, sharp hunting knife.