Devil Forest

by Jack Lewis

  She clapped her hands together. She looked at Jeremiah, then at me. I tried to see how big her pupils were, but she didn’t hold my glance for longer than a second.

  Jeremiah arched his eyebrow at me. At least he was thinking the same thing.

  Tugging Jeremiah’s sleeve, she said, “You’re here, then. Are you ready? Have you started investigating yet? You must have questions to ask me. Wait–I have something to show you.”

  She opened her handbag but then lost her grip on it, emptying half the contents on the floor. She scooped up a packet of rolling tobacco, an empty miniature bottle of Gordon’s gin, and a little plastic bag with white dust in it. I pretended not to notice the plastic bag as she gathered her things together.

  “Can we ask you some questions, Marion?” said Jeremiah.

  “Of course” she said, crossing her legs one way, then the other.

  “Some of this will be hard,” I said, putting my hand on her knee.

  “I asked you to come here,” Marion said, for a minute, back to her pre-bathroom self. “It’s always hard. It’s not as if I’m delirious with happiness until someone mentions his name.”

  “Okay. Jeremiah?” I said and waited to see what he was going to ask her.

  “Ashley disappeared five years ago, have I got that right?”

  “Five years, three months, six days.”

  “Can you tell me about the night you found out? From Ashley’s point of view, I mean. What do we know about that evening for a fact?”

  “His friends saw him leaving school. He used to cut through Devil Forest.” She paused for a second and took a deep breath. “I always said I’d stop calling it that after what happened. But we used to call it Devil forest when we were kids. Everyone does.”

  “Was anyone with him in the forest?”

  She shook her head.

  “So did anyone see him go into the forest?”

  “This is all in the police report,” she said. “Haven’t you read it?”

  Jeremiah shook his head. “Only the details they gave to the press, and those were scant. They sometimes hold things back so that if someone comes forward or if they catch someone, they can verify that they’re the real guy. Or girl.”

  “Catch someone,” Marion repeated. “Catch someone.” She gripped the edges of her chair now, but she didn’t let it show on her face.

  I was ready to stop this and do it another day, but Jeremiah could be relentless. During one investigation, he’d asked so many questions about a person’s recently deceased father that we got kicked out of their house before we could even investigate the haunting. I didn’t write a blog post about that incident.

  Today was going a little better. It had been years since her tragedy happened, but Marion was still on edge. Who wouldn’t be? Not only had the worst happened, but she had no closure. They never even found a body, so there was no way for her to move forward with her life.

  The lack of closure trapped her in a purgatory of grief, and that was why she’d become desperate enough to turn to Jeremiah. Whatever we could do to help, we’d do it.

  “Did someone see him go into the woods?” I asked.

  She nodded. “A married couple were walking their dog. They saw him at a quarter to four, which matches up with school finishing.”

  “What about leaving the woods?” asked Jeremiah. “He could have walked through them, and then whatever happened, could have happened afterwards.”

  I shot him a look that I hoped would tell him what an ass he was. He could have worded that more tactfully, and he knew it. We’d been working on that–I was giving Jeremiah a tact 101 class. Sometimes though, his curiosity locked into place and then he worked with a different part of his brain. Social norms, politeness, tact, they were all standing by the side of the road watching his inquisitive mind speed by.

  Marion’s alertness was leaving her now, the lethargy coming back. “The thing was, there’s only one path out of the forest. The rest is full of thorn bushes you can’t get though, or marshes. You wouldn’t walk through them; they reach up to your stomach in places.”

  “But he could have taken the path.”

  “There was a landscaping crew working where the path leaves the forest. Cutting down trees. A dozen men and women, and none of them saw Ashley come out of the forest.”

  “So he goes into the forest at a quarter to four, and he never comes out,” said Jeremiah. “Never…comes…out…”

  Every word felt like a hammer smashing on a nail in my head, because I could see what it was doing to Marion. This was Jeremiah’s way; he repeated stuff to himself to let them sink in. But it would tear the woman apart.

  I wanted to speak to Jeremiah to tell him to cool it, but there was nowhere private to go.

  “Maybe we should do this later,” I said.

  Jeremiah eyed me. He looked like he was about to speak when Marion cut in.

  “Do you mind if I open a window? I’m burning up.”

  Her pale skin made her look cold, but she opened all four windows in the bedroom, letting a mini gust into the room. Curtains flapped, the shade of a lamp on the bedsit table turned.

  Marion tossed her hair back and then went into the bathroom, locking the door. I heard something banging.

  “I’ll have to ask where she went to eat last night,” said Jeremiah. “Wherever it is, we’re not going there.”

  “I don’t think that’s why she’s in the bathroom.”

  “I know; I was joking.”

  “She’s so on edge. Maybe we should talk to her another day. A better day.”

  “Trust me, there won’t be a better day. There are wounds that don’t scab over and if they do, it’s a weak scab, the type that keeps catching on your clothes and blood and pus comes out.”

  “Nice imagery, but I think I get it. There’s not gonna be a good time to ask this stuff.”

  The bathroom door flew open so hard it smacked into the wall. I had to stop myself getting up to check if it had damaged the stone, because that would come out of our room deposit.

  Marion looked determined now. She checked all three windows, making sure they were shut. Then she turned the deadbolt on the door, locking us in. I had no idea what she was checking for.

  “What’s going on?” I said.

  Marion put a mobile phone on the table. It was from generations past, thick and like a television remote. There was a play button on the screen.

  “I told Jeremiah that I go out to the well at night and talk to Ashley. One night I tried recording him, but the voice was too far away, and my phone is crappy. So I tied some string around it and lowered it to the bottom.”

  Jeremiah wrung his hands. “And this is it?” he asked.

  I could see the excitement seeping off him. I knew why. Jeremiah had searched for the paranormal for decades and finding it was a passion that had burned in him. It was the fuel that kept him going.

  He’d seen things he couldn’t explain before, but he’d never found undeniable evidence that he could show to others. This mobile phone, though, might be what he needed. We’d never know until we pressed play.

  -16 – The Girl -

  She heard the voice shout her name through the forest. Was it Dad? It couldn’t be. He’d been gone for five years now. She’d gone with Mum to St Agnes beach and grabbed some of his ashes and thrown it, copying how Mum did it.

  But someone had just spoken her name. Someone who sounded a lot like Dad. How many people in Blaketree had a voice like his? No one. She didn't know anyone else who had grown up in Paris

  He spoke her name again.

  She froze. It sounded far away, but close enough to chase. The problem was, she was standing in the forest and she’d already gone too far in. It was quicker to get home by cutting through the forest, but only crossing around the outside of it, never going into the middle.

  It was nearly lunchtime now, and she could use her spare key to unlock her door, stay at home until school ended, and then go out, go back into the
forest, wait thirty minutes and go home as if she was just getting back from school. Mum would never know she was playing truant.

  Now, though, she was thinking of breaking the number one rule.

  Could she go deeper into the forest? She’d never wanted to before, and especially not this time of year when the trees looked thin, like Uncle Russel’s skinny arms. They looked scary without their leaves; it changed them. Like when their neighbors’ dog, Ben, had gotten ill, and they had to shave him and he looked mean and she had to force herself to stroke him, because it wasn’t fair to stop being nice to him because he looked different.

  No, going deeper into the forest was wrong. It looked endless, like if she went away from the path she knew she’d never come back. The air was so cold that she wished she’d listened to Mum for once and put her cardigan on under her coat.

  A horrible feeling came over her. She felt like old eyes were watching her now.

  There was no one around. That was the point in coming this way when she didn’t feel like going to school. She didn’t do it all the time. Just when she woke up thinking like the world was a hundred cannonballs hanging over her head in a net, and someone was going to open it on her. That was when she pretended to go to school. Sometimes she met her friend, Ivy, and they went to the burrows and read books and joked with each other.

  But Ivy was on holiday in Barcelona with her parents, and today was a dark day, and going to school was too much.

  A voice called her name again. Definitely French, like Dad’s accent. Deep like his voice, too.

  She was panting and shaking both at once, trying to force herself to believe that it was impossible to hear Dad, but knowing that he’d shouted her name three times now.

  Without thinking any more about it, she started walking in the direction she’d heard it come from. An uneasy feeling tightened in her stomach and she thought about turning back, but then she heard it again. Closer this time.

  Following it took her deeper into the forest, maybe deeper than she’d ever been before because she started to see things she didn’t recognize, like a giant tree laying on its side, and the place where its belly would be – if trees had bellies – was rotted away.

  The problem was that she didn’t hear the voice again. It was like he’d called to her and then left her again.

  She stopped. Her legs were heavy, like her body didn’t want her to take another step. A feeling of hopelessness swirled inside her.

  Why didn’t she just go to school? It wouldn’t have been that bad. Mrs. Kitner’s classroom seemed warm and cosy in her mind now. Better than this place. This cold forest, with its pathetic trees that had no leaves and were all decayed.

  She wanted to leave, but she didn’t dare anymore. She didn’t dare turn to go back the way she came, because she realised something.

  The forest was completely silent. Not just that Dad had stopped shouting her name, but everything had fallen quiet; the birds, the forest animals, even the wind.

  It was like it had all gone quiet to watch her, to watch…what? What would happen to her?

  She needed her mum, her dad, anyone.

  “Dad?” she said.

  There was no answer. Just complete silence, soon broken by the snapping of twigs behind her.

  -17-

  It was hard to keep myself from pacing around as Marion pressed play, and I knew Jeremiah felt the same. Whatever was on the recording from the well, it must have been special. Otherwise, why would Marion make a show of playing it?

  Then came the nasty edge to my thoughts about it. Poison syringed into the doughnut. If there was evidence of the paranormal on the tape, then it came from one source; Ashley.

  He’d been missing for so long now, and they knew he wasn’t in the well, because they’d checked it. For his voice to come from there would mean it was travelling from somewhere else, somewhere beyond the physical world.

  I didn’t want Marion’s source of grief to be the proof Jeremiah had searched for all his life. There had to be less tragic sources. Why couldn’t we get proof of the paranormal from the ghost of a person who passed away by natural causes after a long and happy life?

  Marion went to press play, when we heard a door open outside our room. Boots clomped in the hallway, two girls laughed, and then a door slammed.

  “Dutch girls,” said Jeremiah. “I saw them getting their room key at the bar.”

  The girls laughed. Their feet scuffed on the hallway flooring. Jeremiah gripped the back of the chair so hard it looked like it’d snap.

  Finally he opened the door, and I saw a redhead, though her color was more natural than mine, and a brunette. They were tall, tanned, and wearing rucksacks.

  “Can you two shut the hell up?” said Jeremiah.

  One girl hissed insults at him in Dutch, and the other called Jeremiah an asshole.

  He slammed the door and sat down, muttering to himself. I nodded to Marion, who hit play.

  “Can you turn it up?” said Jeremiah. “I can’t hear anything.”

  “That’s as far as it will go.”

  “Damn it.”

  I knew what to do. It was a trick I used at home, since I was too cheap to buy headphones or a dock for my phone. I grabbed an empty glass, put the phone in it, and then restarted the audio. Being in the glass amplified the sound, and we heard the audio.

  First there was the wind. Lots of it, some of it so high-pitched it sounded like screaming. It made me feel cold just to hear it. Then a voice spoke.

  “My name is Marion Webb, and it’s October 4th, 2018. I’m in Blaketree woods, sometimes known as Devil Forest. I’m at the old well, and just like every night, I’m going to record what I hear.

  The next few seconds might sound strange.”

  I shot a glance at Jeremiah, whose whole face was warped with concentration, like every cell in his body was attuned to the audio.

  The next few seconds of play were a series of thumps and bangs, and the wind began to die down. It sounded like someone was tapping right near the microphone.

  “That’s the phone hitting the well side when I lowered it down,” said Marion.

  “Shh,” said Jeremiah.

  The gust was completely gone from the recording now. There was just silence. It was unsettling coming so soon after the rush of wind.

  The silence in Jeremiah’s room was just as strange. The Dutch girls had long gone, Jeremiah had gone into an almost statuesque state, he was so transfixed on the recording. Marion looked out of the window. She knew what was on the recording; she must have heard it a hundred times by now.

  “Ashley?” said a voice.

  At first, hearing the dim voice on the recording made my nerves fire. I hadn’t expected it, and it took me a whole to orientate to the sound. It had come from far away, but I realized who it was. It was Marion, she was at the top of the well and calling her son’s name down into its depths, and the tape had picked it up.

  “Ashley?”

  There was no answer. Just silence.

  “Ashley, it’s mum. Can you hear me?”

  Jeremiah was about to say something when Marion held her finger to her lips. Her eyes were intense now.

  A voice spoke.

  “My name is Ashley Webb, I’m ten years old.”

  A sickening feeling of fear stabbed me then. His voice sounded so close, it sounded like it was whispered into the microphone.

  I tried to think about it critically, the way Jeremiah expected of me. It was definitely a boy’s voice. It was young, and it was a boy’s.

  Then again, it wouldn’t be impossible to get someone to speak into a microphone. Could Marion be faking this? I don’t know why she’d do that. Someone else could fake it, sure. When kids went missing and the parents made an appeal for information, tip lines were flooded with hoaxers. It was just a dark side of human nature. But the boy’s own mother? Why would she fake it?

  “Ashely?” Marion shouted, her voice echoing back and forth in the well, getting more warped th
e deeper it went.

  “Ashely, can you hear me?” said Marion.

  I realized then that she’d have been standing at the well mouth, so she wouldn’t have heard her son whispering back to her yet. She wouldn’t hear it until she got home. I felt a chill spread through me when I imagined her playing back the audio and hearing that.

  On the tape, her answer was met with silence.

  “If you’re down there, give me a sign. Say something. Anything.”

  The silence carried another thirty seconds, when Jeremiah bolted upright in his chair.

  “Ella, rewind the last thirty seconds.”

  I did, and we heard the same stretch of silence. “Nothing,” I said. Then I turned to Marion. “You said that you heard Ashely call back to you sometimes. This is what you meant, isn’t it? You heard him on other recordings.”

  She nodded. “I bought a high powered flash light. The beam is strong enough to burn your eyes. I shined it into the well, but there is nothing. Just nothing. No tunnels, no way of getting in other than climbing down, and nowhere to hide when you reach the bottom.”

  Jeremiah picked up Marion’s phone. “Can you send Ella the file?” he said.

  Marion made a pass it here gesture with her hand. When Jeremiah gave her the phone, she pressed a few buttons. “What’s your number?” she said to me. “And you’ll have to connect to the Slaughterman’s free Wi-Fi.”

  A few minutes later, I had the file. It was sitting at the top of a long list of audio files on my mobile, with names like Cotton Cottage [Night 1] and Old Hopshire Asylum Pt 2.

  “You know what to do,” said Jeremiah.

  I nodded.

  “Can one of you explain?” said Marion.

  While I opened the application I needed, I told her. “When we go on investigations, we keep a microphone with us all the time. When we get home, we go through the audio. We have an application that strips all the different sounds into their own channels.”

  Marion nodded. “So you can hear if there are any sounds that shouldn’t be there. I read your blog.”