“Come on,” Lytton said suddenly, taking the book into his hands. He brushed irritably at his left shoulder. “Is there something there?”
“There is.”
“Damn! Anyway, let’s sit, talk, and look at the world George Huxley has made.”
And as he strode to the edge, he lit a cigarette, choking as he drew the first smoke.
* * *
“Are you beginning to understand us, Richard?” Lytton asked in his slow, Scots drawl. “Has Lacan been a good instructor to you?”
Sitting close to the edge of the overhang, Richard felt overwhelmed again by the spread of forest before him. As he stared into the great distance, regular shapes began to expose themselves among the billowing waves of the trees. He could see the crenellations of a medieval castle, the broken point of a spire, the solid columns of totem trunks, nearly as tall as the great elm standards. In the farthest distance, the wood seemed to burn, and beyond that flickering illusion of fire, the suggestion of mountains.
In answer to Lytton’s question he could only say, “I understand his words, but not how they add up. I just can’t grasp the whole of this—all in one tiny patch of woodland…”
Richard had accepted the vastness of Ryhope Wood as if in a dream, but every hour or so the incomprehensibility of it struck him with surging, stifling power. It was a dizzying feeling, sickening. He was a real presence in an unreal world, listening to talk of spirit-guides and space-time warps, of elementals and a dead boy, now alive, and who had not aged at all over seven years. He lived a lucid dream, a dream of need, because that boy was his son, and he missed him and longed for him, but he was caught in this dream, fully aware, between sleeping and waking.
He realised suddenly that Lytton was watching him with a curious intensity. The Scot raised his eyebrows, asking, “A dark twilight of the soul, is it Richard? What are you thinking? Tell me about it.”
“Is my son alive? Is Alex alive? Is it possible? I saw his dead body.”
Lytton nodded and ground his cigarette into the sparse turf, then stared out across the wilderness. “Alex is most certainly alive, and if I could show you where he’s hiding, I’d do so, and gladly. I can show you a bit of him, that castle, the fortress. We’re pretty sure it’s from Alex’s mind, and not Huxley’s. Did he have an interest in knights and jousting?”
Richard thought of the models, the castles built of tiny bricks, the stacks of books on Arthur, and the paintings of Green Knights and Red Knights, even a knight dressed in gold, and one called the Ghost Knight that Alex had made into a Christmas presentation when he was eight, a silly little play, but wonderful fun for proud parents to watch. “Yes,” Richard said with a smile.
“I’m not surprised. The castle is like the White Castle on the Welsh Marches, near Ludlow. Do you know it? The site of a fortress for thousands of years, mentioned in the Mabinogion, the old Welsh tales of Celtic adventure. In the manner of Hamlet’s father’s ghost, Alex haunts that castle. McCarthy has glimpsed him in the passages. Lacan too, I think. It’s a place from which he watches us at times, and it was there that we first contacted him, first heard him talk, so to speak.”
“Sciamachy…”
“Indeed. The contact of shadows. It’s a two-week walk to the castle, although it doesn’t look it, and you’ll go there with Helen. But as to where he is … all I can tell you, Richard, is that he is out there somewhere, hiding from us and defending against us, and against the creatures that would gladly render him to corrupted flesh and bone. He is in great danger. But you already know that, because Helen would not have kept it from you.”
“No. No, she didn’t…”
“You can’t see him, but we have an idea how to approach him. What you saw, all those years ago, the remains of the boy, they were probably, yes, probably a form of Alex. But they weren’t Alex. He’s here, around us, and he’s destroying what Huxley has created.”
The words took Richard by surprise. Lytton indicated the wilderness. “Do you not get it yet? Everything you see is Huxley. The wood was here from the first seed after the ice, yes, of course. And people came and went and seeded the wood with the products of their myths. Yes. Yes. But not until Huxley was it shaped. Whatever the man did, he touched its very heart. Huxley is dead, but lives on around us. We are living in the man, in the mind of Huxley himself. And somewhere out there, somewhere at the heart, is the key and the clue to what he did, thirty years ago. But Alex …
“When Alex came he began to disrupt everything. He is like a tumour at the heart of the world, eroding, destroying the subtlety and the beauty of Huxley’s creation. His mind, roaming free, is like a fire, burning and charring. It’s an evil thing. That’s why I want him out of here, Richard. And bloody fast! That’s why we need you. He’ll come to you … I’m sure of it. And when he does…”
Lytton was suddenly angry; his words had taken on a tone of menace and Richard was disturbed. Very pointedly he said, “And when he does … what? What will you do? What are you implying?”
For a second the fire continued to burn in Lytton’s narrowed eyes. Then he frowned and shrugged. “I apologise. Huxley’s hurting and it grieves me. You may grieve too.” He glanced up, spoke softly. “You see, there’s something I have to tell you, something else about Alex. It may be bad news for you…”
“Go on.”
“There is something wrong with the boy. His mind…” Lytton tapped his temple, squinting at the other man as he growled the words. “Something lacking, or something … twisted. We can’t be sure, Richard. What the boy is creating, what is generating in the wood around the cathedral, is warped. It’s not right. He has defended himself against these creatures, but it can only be a matter of time before those defences fail. This is a dangerous enough place as it is, without seeding it with the twisted and cruel products of a child’s grimmest imagination.”
Imagination. The key word. Richard thought about his son, that sad, blank face that had stared at Alice and him during the long, final year of the boy’s life. He relived the pain, the attempts to draw something, some imaginative response from a child who seemed to have shed all emotion, all feeling, all fun, as a snake sheds its skin.
Lytton reached out and gripped Richard’s arm, a reassuring squeeze. “I’m sorry if that hurts. It’s best you know.”
“I knew,” Richard said. “Something happened to Alex, a year or so before he died … vanished. He was staring through a mask, trying to see into Ryhope Wood. I thought it was a game. A madman’s game. But he was struck by something. I only caught a glimpse of it…”
Lytton was excited, his eyes intense again as he listened. “I need to know everything,” he said. “Every detail. A mask, you say? I need to know about it. Everything, Richard. The more we understand about the boy, the quicker we can winkle him out of hiding and send him home. Come on. Come on.”
He was standing, brushing at his jeans, impatient to be on the trail again.
Richard stared at the castle walls, now just shadows among shadows. He thought of Alex coming home. He tried to feel what it would be like to have him home again, as if he had never been away, the same age, the same bright-smiled child, the same enthusiast, the same little boy, longing for someone to help him with his models.
It was too much for him, too powerful, and Lytton came back and crouched down, staring impatiently out across the forest, but waiting until the sadness had passed.
Echoes
In the warm longhouse, Richard relaxed with the smell of fresh turf and the sweet woodsmoke that came from the central fire. Lytton unfurled a map of Ryhope.
“This is the perimeter, the easy part of Ryhope Wood to draw, though you still won’t find it marked on any Ordnance Survey map.”
Ryhope was more-or-less circular, though a deep path cut into it from the south-east, leading to a mill-pond. Two streams flowed into the wood, only one flowed out. Inside the perimeter were bands and enclosures, with names like Oak-Ash Zone; Elm Track; Primary Genesis Zone; Quick-S
eason Gorge, and Wolf Caves.
Lytton tapped the map. “There are four ways into Ryhope that we know. One is across the pond, a difficult entrance through a thick stand of oak. It’s the place where Huxley’s boys saw various apparitions back in the thirties. Huxley’s own entranceway was here.” He tapped a stream marked “sticklebrook.” “He found he could penetrate quite deeply by following the stream for a while. Ultimately, of course, the wood turned him around, disorientated him, but he managed to map the zones near Oak Lodge, and found the horse shrine, which is a very powerful site. The other two entrances into Ryhope are ‘hollowings,’ which run into different planes and different times, if we’re not careful. One here is where we think the girl got lost, your son’s friend, Tallis. From what you tell me, she probably went in through Hunter’s Brook. The fourth way in is through an abandoned Roman tin mine, just here.” He indicated the solid edge of the wood, on the side facing the village of Grimley. “The workings were abandoned in about 200 AD, probably because of what was happening to the miners … The shafts are deep, but were sealed in antiquity.”
Now Lytton unrolled a second chart, smiling as he saw the expression of complete bemusement on Richard’s face.
“The underlayers,” he said. “Otherworlds we think are accessed through hollowings.”
The map showed five Ryhope “perimeters,” one above the other in a staggered display, connected by thin tubes that curved down between them, some connecting adjacent planes, others running deeper and usually ending in a question mark. Old Stone Hollow Station was clearly marked on the top plane and, like some ancient and mystical site radiating ley-lines, seemed to be the source of several hollowings.
“We’re in the top plane—topwood. It’s the Ryhope that Huxley knew. Here we are, at the cave. Two hollowings leading from here are short, and have been successfully explored. One drops to a dark lake-filled land, in three-wood, probably from Slavonian legend. And this one … where does this one go?” He twisted the map slightly. “Oh yes. To a valley filled with stone tombs in two-wood, late Neolithic Europe. But the hollowing that leads from the cave must go very deep indeed, the same with Wide Water Hollowing. So far we’ve detected five levels of underworlds. There’s more than a lifetime’s exploration here, Richard, and all we can hope to do is establish safe routes down and back, so that later explorers can at least have more than a hollowstick to guide them.”
Richard stared at the confusion of tracks, tunnels, and shafts for a while, then gently rolled the chart up again to expose the simple plane of Ryhope Wood. He had seen, previously, the small spire marked in the outline, and pointed to it. “You think Alex is in topwood?”
Lytton cocked his head and raised his eyebrows. “That’s not easy to say. He seems to be. But the cathedral itself might exist in more than one level. The question is: In which wood is Alex hiding? If he’s deep, then we’ll need to find a hollowing. If he’s in topwood, then we should be able to get to him directly. The problem is, we can’t. There’s something blocking us, Richard, a barrier, about five days in from the Station. If it is Alex putting that barrier up, then perhaps—just perhaps—he will let you through. Are you willing to try?”
Richard was surprised at the question. “Of course. I’ll try anything, now that I’m here. Never mind that I hardly understand a word, that my vision is full of dancing, my dreams are like some prehistoric commedia dell’arte, chaotic, colourful, confusing—frightening. If Alex is alive, then I want him back. Just tell me what to do.”
“You’ll get used to the dreams,” Lytton said kindly. “And the chaos at the edge of vision fades in time as well. That’s just part of the process of generation.” He smiled broadly. “Mr. Bradley, you’re creating life, although you don’t know it. Out there, the wood is listening to you, feeding off you, enriching both itself and its underworlds from you. It’s drawing out your dreams, your memories, your fears.” He slapped the back of his hand against Richard’s chest. “It’s giving them flesh, but ennobled and empowered by the form of the Hero!” He laughed quickly. “I like your metaphor of the commedia. It’s more apt than you might think. Wait until you are an audience at your own show! It can be quite enthralling!”
* * *
As night closed over the Station, and a second generator powered-up to bring light to the compound, an odd and musical wind began to blow from the cave, carrying with it the distant sound of voices. At once, Lacan started recording. Helen went through the scrub to the overhang, to observe and to listen. Richard, finished for the moment with Alexander Lytton, sat with Elizabeth Haylock, the sketchy map of the wood spread out between them on a trestle table, and shivered as the voices rose and fell in eerie pitch.
“They sound in pain,” he said.
“It could be no more than distortion…”
“Can you recognise them?”
She shook her head. One voice, deeper, began to chatter. The words ebbed and flowed, but were meaningless. Then there was an anguished cry, high-pitched, falling away in volume, lowering in tone.
Soon the wailing from the cave passed away, and Helen returned. She came to the table where Richard sat and glanced grimly at Haylock.
“One of them sounded like Ben Darby.”
“Oh God.”
“You said you always wanted to know … I might have been wrong.”
“I do want to know. Thanks.”
“Need to talk?”
“Not necessary. Thanks anyway.”
Helen went into the longhouse. Elizabeth Haylock stared at the overhang for a while, then rose and walked stiffly to the river. She lay face-down on the bank, trailing a hand in the cold water. After a few minutes she stood again, walked along the river bank, searching for something, in fact a long stick, and crossed the bridge with this simple weapon, striking angrily at the vegetation as she was consumed by darkness and the forest.
* * *
Richard followed Helen to the lodge. She was eating a sandwich and writing notes in a thick pad. A mug of tea was cooling beside her. “Elizabeth’s just crossed the bridge. She seems very upset.”
Glancing up, Helen nodded, swallowed her food and motioned Richard to sit. “She’ll be OK. Ben was her lover. He’s long dead and she knows it. We found his body a year ago. But his ghost pursues her in more ways than one. He and his partner must have passed through a timeslow, so he’s still alive in the wood, just for a while. Sometimes the echoes come through.”
“Did the same thing happen to Dan?”
Helen watched Richard, her eyes narrowing slightly. “Lacan told you about Dan, did he?”
Richard nodded.
She took a huge bite from the sandwich, staring into the middle distance, then scrawled a few more words on the pad. “He knew the risks,” she muttered eventually. “We take risks just by living here. But Dan’ll be alive, still. I’ll get him back. Lacan is wrong. McCarthy is wrong. They say there’s no shadow of him in the forest, but I don’t think that can be right. Dan knew the risks—he’ll have been on his guard. Don’t talk about him any more. Please?”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to distress you.”
Helen laughed. “How English. There’s no need to be sorry. I’ll tell you about Dan later. I just don’t want to think about him now, OK?”
“OK.”
“Now. Have you made your hollowsticks? You’ll need to make four or five. You’ll find wood behind the longhouse. You need hair, blood and…” she smiled awkwardly, “semen? If you’ve got any to spare. It’s a good spirit link.”
“Witchcraft,” Richard murmured and she raised her eyebrows, nodding enthusiastically.
“It also works!”
Richard hesitated to point out that three hollowsticks by the cave entrance did not seem to have been effective, indeed, that Dan’s token up in the Sanctuary ruins was growing fungal with age, but Helen saw his reservation and intuited his doubts. “They work more than they don’t. And sometimes it takes time to call the traveller back. We use the hollowstick
s to mark our passage through the hollowings, to know who has gone. In this world, Richard, time is strange, so patience takes on a new meaning.”
Richard fetched twigs and twine from the small pile behind the research lodge and shaped five little effigies, ready for the incorporation of his “body relics” later.
“Do you need any help?” she asked, mischievously.
“I can manage, thanks.”
“I’m sure you can.”
When Helen had finished her notes she cracked a beer—Richard took a second—and relaxed more, recounting her trip out to Hergest Ridge. She soon grew tired and went to the river’s edge, splashing her face with water and singing softly to the night-dark across the flow. Richard was entranced with her voice and went over to crouch behind her. The song had an eerie tune, and the words were in the language of the Lakota. When she had finished singing she told Richard to look away and quickly used the river.
As they walked back to the tents, Richard said, “Was that a folksong?”
“A charm,” she said, and smiled. “A trick. It’s the only way to catch a trickster. And catch him I will! Mark my words.”
And with that she ducked into the tent where she kept her pack, to sleep.
Genesis
The hares had hung for two nights and a day. At reveille Lacan, dressed only in torn-down denim shorts and his magic tooth-necklace, began to prepare the feast for the evening, skinning the creatures, talking to them, loudly celebrating their elegance, and issuing instructions to everyone, as they woke and emerged from the tents to wash, as to what they should each do for him.
“This meal is Lièvre à la Royale and only a Frenchman with an intense Celtic ancestry can do it justice. Ah, Helen—good morning—when you’ve finished your womanly ablutions, your job is to make a rich sauce of the congealed blood—brandy will thin it out—”
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