by Teri Terry
The toilet is out back: not the sort that flushes, not fun in the dark, and full of spiders. There are also two other outbuildings. Quinn said they used to keep chickens in one of them. It’s dark and musty, old straw scattered about. A dim scurrying suggests this may be where Cat caught his breakfast.
The other building has a bench, garden implements. There is a vegetable garden between the stone sheds, ravaged by the cold and yesterday’s storm. Nothing much is growing there now.
That leaves the locked room inside next to the kitchen. Gran’s reading room, Quinn called it. It—whatever it is—always had to be in there, didn’t it?
I head back inside and examine the door again. There’s no way to get in, not without taking serious action—a hefty ax, or fire.
I walk around the outside of the building, counting windows. The downstairs ones are small and far between, and there isn’t one in that room.
There is only one answer. We need Gran here, don’t we? To unlock the door.
Quinn
Our steps are light and quick today, even on the way back with packs full of supplies and Piper’s clothes. Ness is happy to bounce along with us.
“This place is so different in the sunshine,” Zak says.
Most things are. Zak, for instance. His skin has a warmer glow. The more brilliant the sun, the easier he seems in my company. I can almost pretend he is as he was before I kissed him. Even though I’m different. And there are no sounds of distant howling, no chance sightings of foxes, normal type or otherwise. Just bird calls, bracken rusty with autumn, yellow flowers bright on gorse.
When I was a child, I loved walking on the moors—exploring, climbing, making friends with the earth and the sky. Even after I fell that time and broke my arm, I couldn’t stay away. But something changed when I got a little older. I started to feel the weight of the place, that somehow I was always watched—in a way that made it difficult to breathe.
I’m breathing more freely again. Is it because of Piper and Zak being here? Or maybe I’m the one who has changed. Maybe being here is OK, and nothing bad will come of it. Maybe all those premonitions I had were just nerves about coming back.
We take a break at the top by Wisht Tor, above Gran’s house. On a clear day like today, it’s a good vantage point to see all around. Zak shades his eyes and peers into the distance.
“What’s that over there?” He points at the gray-green smudge of far-off trees. Even from here, they feel cold and impenetrable, seeming to soak the sun from around them to leave a dark stain on the moors—a wicked place, according to Gran. One she warned me to avoid.
“Wistman’s Wood,” I answer tersely.
“I haven’t seen many other trees around here, just the ones in the wall by your house.”
“No. Not many trees on the moors, especially as high as those.” I start walking again.
“How far away are the woods from your gran’s house?”
I shrug without turning back. “An hour’s walk or so. Parts of it are dangerous and boggy, especially after all that rain. Anyhow, I should think we’ve had enough walking for today.”
When we get back, Piper pounces on our packs. She empties them out and exclaims over what we brought, what we left. Then she sighs and flops down on the front step. She gestures and I sit next to her, Zak leaning on the house by her side.
“Quinn, what is there to do here?”
“Not much.”
“Well, how did you used to fill the day?”
“Walking over an hour to work at seven a.m., cleaning for six hours, and walking back again stopped me from getting bored.”
Zak looks appalled.
Piper shakes her head, impatient. “No, I mean what did you do around here, without any TV or internet or anything?”
“Let’s see,” I say, arms crossed. “Cooking, tidying up. Sewing. Gardening. Sleeping. Repeat.”
“No wonder you liked Winchester so much.”
“Yes, I did. But you’re the one who wanted to come here, so what do you want to do?”
“What do tourists do who come here? Like the ones who came to stay at the hotel where you worked.”
“Mostly eat and drink and complain about the weather. Admire the view, walk over the moors, and get lost and need finding by Dartmoor Search and Rescue.”
“I know, let’s go for a walk!”
“We already did,” Zak teases her. “Seems to me you didn’t want to come. But if you really want to head out, there are those woods we saw. How far away did you say they are, Quinn?”
“An hour if you go fast. It’s a boring walk bog-hopping, though, just to see a bunch of trees.” I turn away, trying to hide the tension on my face, to keep it from my words. I fail.
“Quinn doesn’t want to go there, which makes me instantly curious,” Piper says.
“It’s a creepy dark place, full of snakes. Part of the walk is boggy, and after all the rain yesterday, you could find yourself up to your neck in mud. Still want to go?”
“Sounds perfect. Let’s take a picnic!” Piper says. “You don’t have to come; just tell us the way.”
I sigh. “The path branches, and the first part isn’t obvious. I’ll come so you don’t get lost. Ness can’t come; she might get stuck in a bog.”
Piper skips off to pack a lunch, dragging Zak with her. I study the sky: it’s clear today. No sign of dangerous weather. But though things can change fast on the moors, the twist in my belly isn’t about that. It’s something else. Some misgiving about going to the woods, beyond Gran’s warnings or my own wish to stay away from that place—something to do with Piper.
I’m resolved to refuse to go, to fake an illness, to argue.
But when they appear with lunch in Zak’s pack moments later, Piper is so happy, so excited. Zak is with us. The sun shines, and that and Piper’s smile melt my resolve.
I’m sure my misgivings are imagined from Gran’s dark hints and warnings about the woods. Who cares if she said not to go there? If I’d listened to everything she said, I’d never have left this place, never have met my sister, or Zak.
Even when she’s not here, it’s like Gran is still controlling my thoughts and decisions. It’s time to put an end to her tight grip on my life, once and for all.
We set out, Ness tethered to her lead at the house and mournful behind us.
“There—see, the patch of bright green?” I say.
“What about it?” Piper asks.
“Don’t go near. It’s a bog.” I heft one of the sticks I brought, go closer, keeping my feet on solid rock, and push the stick into the green. It goes down, down. Then I try to pull the stick back out. I wiggle it, and there is a vague slurping sound; it sinks deeper. I let go, and it slowly disappears.
“Don’t go there or anywhere that looks like there,” I say. “Got it?”
“What happens if you get stuck in it?” Piper asks.
“The more you struggle, the more you get stuck, and the more you sink. What happens depends how deep the bog is. You might drown if it’s deep enough. More likely it won’t be, but if no one finds you to pull you out, you’ll die slowly of starvation and exposure.”
“Cool,” Piper says, and Zak and I both shake our heads.
“The path we have to take rambles about and isn’t always the same. The bogs seem to shift to catch the unwary. Follow me, and be careful where you put your feet.”
It’s easy to see the bogs in the sun, at least for me, but this is Dartmoor and there is no guarantee the sun will stay with us. I keep my other stick in case I want to test anywhere, and we’re soon through to solid ground. After a while our path links to a main footpath.
“Nice,” Zak says, pointing at the warning sign by the way we just came: DANGER—HIDDEN BOGS.
As we walk, Piper is chattering and laughing, more dancing than walking, going forward and then back again. Zak is laughing with her. I walk silently. They’re on holiday—that’s it, isn’t it? This isn’t a real pla
ce to Piper. It’s a curiosity, something she can look at and remember when she’s back home, warm and looked after.
As if she can feel my scrutiny, she skips over, links an arm in mine. Her skin is warm where mine is chilled.
“Why are you so happy?” I ask, unable to stop myself.
“I’m with you and Zak. The sun is shining. What’s not to like about being right here, right now?” She smiles and laughs, and the sound almost melts the cold knot of apprehension inside me.
Zak has stopped ahead. I know why. We reach him, and Piper’s mouth forms an O.
Wistman’s Wood seems to rise out of the moors like an unexpected apparition—twisted, stunted oak trees, like souls caught in the chase, frozen in terror for all time. “It’s beautiful,” Piper murmurs.
It sort of is; I can see what she means, and why people walk to this place to experience it for themselves.
But wrongness runs deep in Wistman’s Wood.
Piper
I take Quinn’s hand when we approach the trees. There’s something about them, drawing me closer, a magnet to my steel, urging me on.
We’re all silent, as if that is the way to be in this place.
We step under the first trees. They are twisted and misshapen, and under them, tumbled about as though they were thrown there and stayed where they fell, are big rocks covered in green moss. It is hard to pick my way, and I have to let go of Quinn’s hand to keep my balance.
The light is muted, not just from the way the trees block the sun—the canopy overhead admits enough light—but it is the quality of the light. It seems somehow diluted. I stop in front of a strangely shaped tree. A few branches extend forward, like limbs. The trunk is bent toward them, as if frozen in the act of running.
I wander farther in, following no particular direction or pattern, just wherever my eyes and then feet take me. Zak is my shadow, with Quinn a little farther behind.
I pause by one of the twisted, stunted trees, oddly drawn to lay my hands on the bark.
Hunger, horrible desperate hunger.
Running in the darkness.
The smell of prey.
Images rip through my mind, and I gasp and take my hand away. I hesitate, and reach my hand back to the wood.
Red, red blood, hot, delicious. Wanting, needing more.
Always more.
Desperation.
“Piper? Piper?” Zak says. He puts a hand on my arm, and I jump. It breaks my connection with the tree.
“What?”
“Quinn thinks we should go.” She walks up now, and I turn to look at her. Her eyes are fixed on the trees above.
White fingers of mist, cold and searching, are encircling us. At first the mist is thin and lacy, drifting around the trees; then quickly it’s so thick I can barely see past Quinn, a few feet away. Zak’s hand finds mine; his other hand reaches out and finds Quinn’s. He draws the three of us together.
“I can’t believe how fast the weather changes on Dartmoor,” Zak says. His voice is quiet, muffled by mist that is heavy and wet around us.
“Should we stay put for a while?” I say. “It’ll be too hard to see where we’re going.”
I lean against the tree without thinking, and terrible hunger and blood fill my mind again. I take Quinn’s hand, and press it against the trunk. Her face is close to mine. Her eyes widen, and she jerks her hand away.
So this is something else we twins share.
“What is this place?” I ask her.
“There are many legends about the wood, some more true than others.”
“Tell us.”
“This isn’t the place to speak of them. We need to get out of here, now.”
But her voice is faint and drifts away. I’m still there, hand on the trunk—tasting the fear, following the trail of blood, and—
Quinn grabs my arm, pulls me away from the tree. Once my contact with it is broken, I’m back in the here and now, in the wood and the mist.
Carefully, slowly, she leads us through the trees, finding a path I can’t see. As we walk and climb, the mist gradually lessens, bit by bit, until we reach the edge of the wood where we came in—the place where a tree appears frozen in flight.
“Without you, we would have been completely lost,” Zak says to Quinn. He’s right, but for me, in more ways than he means. Without the two of them taking me away from the trees, I’d still be there, somehow lost in that connection with what hungers inside.
Could I ever have pulled away on my own? It was terrifying, and brutal, yes. Yet, somehow . . .
I want to go back.
We climb the twisting slope and walk above the wood. The sun is back on our faces; the wood below us is still shrouded in mist.
“This is a perfect place for our picnic,” I say, and Zak starts to get out our rug.
“Couldn’t we go up a little farther?” Quinn says, her eyes on the wood below.
“I’m starving,” I say, anxious to keep the trees in sight. “Besides, we’re out of the wind here.”
I shake out our rug on the bracken while Zak gets sandwiches from his pack. We sit down and start to eat.
“All right, Quinn, we’re not there anymore! Tell us the legends of the wood,” I say, once we’ve finished eating.
She shrugs. “There are all kinds of stories about Wistman’s Wood being haunted. Souls being trapped.” She hesitates. “And also that many years ago, it was a place of trial. Gran said that women who were believed to be witches were trapped in a box made of stone, with heavy slabs put into place so they couldn’t escape. They’d die slowly, of cold, thirst, starvation. The woods would take their souls.”
“Lovely way to go,” Zak says. “How was that a trial?”
“If one of them was a witch, she’d use magic to move the stones and escape. Then she’d be caught and burned to death.”
“Not much of a choice.”
“No.” Quinn shrugs. “If you believe in that sort of thing.” The way she says it . . . Quinn believes. “Come on. Let’s go.”
“That’s not everything, is it?” I ask.
Quinn starts gathering our lunch things up. “Well, there are legends of the Wild Hunt. That Wisht Hounds are kenneled in the wood. They track the unwary on the moors at night, rip them apart, and make them join the hunt forever.” I shiver. My vision, if you can call it that—from the trees. Desperate, all-consuming hunger. Blood.
And my dreams: of running the moors at night, but never being chased, like in Quinn’s dream. Never that for me.
The Wild Hunt.
That night I lie awake, staring at the ceiling. Quinn is asleep, Ness, too, but Cat’s eyes are wide open and reflect red from the fire. My mind is spinning. Images and sounds and feelings are a mishmash, as if I am staring into a kaleidoscope—or more like I’m in a kaleidoscope myself, and staring out of it.
The trees . . . hunger . . . blood. Fear . . . repulsion . . . blood. Always more blood. It spins round and round in my mind, until I’m falling, down, down, down . . .
It’s cold, but there is a growing fire. It’s dark, but red eyes can see.
We are trapped.
Frozen.
Waiting.
Hungry, so desperately hungry.
Soon we will be free.
Quinn
Zak and I trudge back up the slope above the house the next morning. I’m going fast, so fast that lack of care soon has me slipping on loose stones. Zak reaches out a steadying hand, but I right myself, and his hand falls back.
At the top I keep going, past Wisht Tor.
“Wait a minute,” Zak says, and I pause, turn back. He stands with the tor at his back, the moors sweeping down and then up around us. But he’s not looking at the view.
“What is it—can’t keep up?”
He shakes his head, a half smile on his lips. “Talk to me, Quinn.”
“What about?”
“This place. Your grandmother. What both mean to you. You seem a different person h
ere.”
His eyes are intent and curious, but warm—as if he’s not driven by a hunger to know like Piper, but by the desire to help a friend. And this hooks into the pain inside, the longing to have someone who knows everything about me, someone I can say anything to.
But not like that. Not a friend, and not just someone, but this one—the eyes and lips and warm skin, the caring and intelligence and humor, all put together in the tall, fit, Zak-shaped package that now stands so close I could reach out a hand and touch it. Reach out and pull him close.
But that can never happen.
“You’ll find out about my grandmother soon enough,” I say, and start walking again. We stay silent the rest of the way to the car, but my thoughts race and argue with one another.
Why are we doing this? How does Piper somehow convince me to do just what she wants? Like going to Wistman’s Wood yesterday. Despite my fear, despite that strange feeling beforehand that Piper shouldn’t go there. Despite Gran’s warnings that I convinced myself to ignore.
Piper took my hand and held it to the rough bark of a tree—to feel the anguish, the hunger. I shake my head, not wanting to think what it must mean. And the dream that followed last night? I shiver.
And here I am again, doing exactly what she wants, despite my own judgment.
Something about her dispels fear, makes me believe that things will be all right. There is a magic, an ordinary sort, maybe, but still magic, in her smile. The sort that makes me want what she wants.
Before we came, Piper said all she wanted was to see the house and visit Gran in the hospital. Then last night it all changed. If we go to visit Gran, she said, the shock of seeing the two of us together might be too much for her. We couldn’t risk triggering another stroke.
I’d argued; I’d said that when I called, the hospital had told me how strong she was, that she could go home if someone was able to look after her. And I even said if Piper thought we shouldn’t go to the hospital together, she could go with Zak and pretend to be me, like I did with our dad in Winchester. I kept to myself that there was no chance of getting that past Gran. She’d know.
