Forest of the Damned

by Lee Mountford

  These dwellings were, as before, nestled between the trees, the trunks of which were again black, matching the wood of the houses as well.

  The buildings circled an open space that was almost devoid of trees, and it seemed to serve as a village centre with a stone well at the middle. Behind this open area, but directly in Ken’s line of sight, was the building that stood out most: a small stone church. Simple in its design and form, the church was made from random grey blocks and had a pitched tile roof. The front of the building, which was one of the gable ends, contained a large and strong-looking wooden entrance door. Above the door sat a high, thin window that had been boarded up, and at the head of the wall an iron crucifix rose up from the pointed apex. On this cross a body—old and decayed—was mounted, arms out to its side and head lolled down to its chest.

  Given that all of the windows he could see had been boarded up, and the fact that the slate roof sagged and was covered with moss, Ken got the impression that the church had long since been abandoned. The rest of the village, too. At least, that’s what he hoped.

  Regardless, this was without a doubt the same village Ken had found yesterday, but somehow it had shifted location, because it was clear to him that they had not run far enough back into the forest to get to the same place he had previously seen it. Not even close. Hell, they should have been about a day’s walk away from that spot. And the layout of the village, while roughly the same, had adjusted enough to suit its surroundings.

  The trees here were much less dense, allowing the buildings to sit closer together, and the centre of the village was almost entirely unobstructed, whereas previously the dwellings just seemed to be tucked between the trees wherever possible. At the time, Ken had assumed that the forest had grown around those buildings over the years, but then the village had vanished, and now this one was here for them to see.

  ‘I don’t believe it,’ James uttered. He looked back up the incline behind them, wide-eyed, and Ken gazed up, too. He knew what James was thinking. Those things could still be coming. However, the crest of the bank was clear.

  A realisation then struck, one that should have come to him straight away. While the mass of bodies had indeed blocked their exit from the forest, he understood they served a different purpose after appearing both behind and, when needed, in front of them, serving to push the three of them in a specific direction.

  Right to this spot.

  ‘We need to keep going,’ James said. ‘Those things—’

  ‘They aren’t following us anymore,’ Ken stated.

  James turned to look at him, his brow furrowed in confusion. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘They weren’t chasing us, James. They were guiding us. Shepherding us to this place.’ He held out his hands, gesturing to the village before them.

  Ken saw the realisation draw over James’ face. ‘Fuck,’ he said. ‘Then surely we need to get away from here. Nothing good can be waiting for us.’

  ‘And how do we do that?’ Ken asked. ‘If we flee, don’t you think those things will just push us right back here? We wouldn’t get anywhere. Unless you think we have a chance by running right through them?’

  After a moment’s consideration, James shook his head. His body slumped, defeated. ‘Then what do we do?’ he asked.

  Roberta started to walk away from them slowly, towards the buildings ahead. ‘We look around,’ she said, her voice almost happy. She then stopped and turned to them with an odd smile. ‘Let’s see who’s home.’

  ‘Roberta, wait!’ Ken snapped, but she merely giggled and took off jogging, well out of his reach.

  ‘She’s going to get us killed,’ Ken said to James.

  James gave a nod. ‘I agree,’ he said. ‘And part of me thinks she wants to.’

  Ken didn’t want to believe that.

  Regardless of how unhinged Roberta seemed to be acting, and despite the stress she was clearly under, Ken didn’t think she was the type of person to purposely cause any of them any harm. And Ken wasn’t the type of person to simply stand by and let harm come to any of his group, either.

  ‘Come on,’ Ken said, pulling James along with him. ‘We need to get her under control.’

  James let out a spiteful snort, but he followed along. ‘Good luck with that.’

  Roberta skipped ahead along a muddy pathway leading to the village’s centre, and peered into the well, which was made up of a circular, crumbling wall of stone that matched that of the church.

  ‘Ohhhhh,’ she said, obviously seeing something within, and giggled again.

  Ken and James followed slowly, keeping their eyes on the surrounding buildings. Ken could detect no movement from within any of them, but still felt exposed as they walked into the middle of the village. They then reached the smiling Roberta, and Ken asked, ‘What is it?’

  ‘Look,’ she said, pointing down inside.

  Ken and James shared a glance before circling to the other side of the well, putting the circumference of it between them and Roberta. It was an instinctive move on Ken’s part, as he had a horrible feeling Roberta would attempt to push him inside should he lean over and peer in.

  So much for thinking she would never do them harm.

  Clearly, he was just as wary of her and her mental state as James was. Once away from her reach, they both looked inside, and Ken gasped, his heart in his mouth at the awful sight below him.

  Bodies.

  Heaped on top of one another, and all completely naked. The skin on these corpses was the mottled white and purple of the long since deceased. However, these bodies had not decomposed over time, like the thing Ken had seen yesterday, or like the entities that had barred their escape earlier. Arms and legs intertwined with torsos and heads as the cadavers were mashed tightly together, packing the inside of the well. Men and women filled this mass grave, but that was not all.

  Some bodies were smaller.

  A foul stench immediately rose from the gaping hole of death beneath them and assaulted their senses. Ken gagged and backpedaled as James turned and vomited, a string of yellowy bile hanging from his mouth.

  Ken was close to doing the same, but held the fabric of his sleeve over his nose and took steady, calming breaths through his mouth.

  Real or not, that was the most horrific thing Ken had ever seen. Especially considering the age of some of the victims down there, which brought back memories of his own—

  ‘Over there,’ James said, interrupting Ken’s line of thought. Though still doubled over, with his face red and eyes watering, James was pointing. Ken followed the gesture to the old church behind them and saw what James was pointing at.

  The large door was slowly gliding open, swinging inwards into the darkness with a gentle creak.

  No one emerged from the church, giving no indication as to who had opened the door, but Ken knew they were being beckoned inside.

  ‘I think we should go in,’ Roberta said, clearly excited.

  ‘Not a fucking chance,’ James replied, coughing again, and spitting globs of something black to the ground.

  James had put plenty of distance between himself and that pile of bodies within that well, but the smell that wafted out was overpowering, and he was struggling to get his gagging under control. Ken continued to move farther away from it as well, unable to stand that horrific stench. Roberta, however, seemed completely unfazed.

  ‘Oh, James, where’s your sense of adventure?’ Roberta asked, teasingly. ‘You two still have your cameras, don’t you? So why not go and get some more evidence? That’s why we came here, after all. You should be recording this. All of it. We’ve found the legendary village, said to have vanished. Isn’t it amazing? And now we are being called. There are answers waiting for us inside that church, James, I just know it. Don’t you want to see what this place wants to show us?’

  Again, James shook his head. ‘No, we don’t need to know. We need to leave.’

  Ken agreed completely, of course he did, but he still didn’t think they wo
uld get very far. Whatever it was in the forest that was stalking them… it wanted them here. It wouldn’t let them go.

  Then Ken heard something that made his heart freeze. It was the cry of someone young, coming from within the church, echoing out from it. The thing that chilled him most, however, was that he recognised the feminine voice as it shouted out a single, pained word.

  ‘Daddy.’

  25

  James heard the haunting cry from the church as well. It was the sound of a young girl in distress.

  It caused the hairs on his arms to rise, certainly, but when he looked over to Ken, James saw that the sound was having a far more profound effect on the older man.

  Ken looked ashen and close to tears.

  Of all the fucked-up things they had seen and heard so far—top of that list being the sickening mass grave behind them—that call, while unsettling, was not something James reacted strongly to.

  So why was Ken so evidently distressed by it? The answer came in a single word from Ken.

  ‘Amy…’

  James had no idea who Amy was to Ken, but jumped into action when Ken started running towards the stone church. He grabbed hold of Ken’s arm and managed to spin him around.

  ‘What the hell are you doing?’ he asked. ‘You can’t go in there.’

  ‘I have to,’ Ken said as tears started to fall down his cheeks, streaking the dirt that coated them. ‘Amy is in there.’

  Ken tried to turn away again, but James stopped him. ‘Who the hell is Amy? What’s going on?’

  Ken didn’t take his eyes off the building, and they both heard the call again.

  ‘Daddy.’

  Ken started to sob. ‘That’s… that’s my daughter.’

  The revelation caught James off guard, as he hadn’t been aware that Ken even had a daughter. James was so startled that Ken was able to shrug off his grip and again sprint towards the church, this time unhindered. But James knew there was no way Ken’s daughter was really inside that place. It was a trick, played by whatever malevolent force had been toying with them all along. Why couldn’t Ken see that?

  Roberta giggled like a child herself, enjoying what was unfolding. He turned to her and scowled, but she just twirled a lock of thin, greasy hair around her finger and laughed again. ‘He’s going to die in there, you know,’ she said.

  James tensed his fists, so dearly wanting to swing at her. But instead, given that she could well be right, he sprinted after Ken. Considering the age difference between the two, James would have hoped he could have easily made up the distance, but the strength it took for him to run, even over this small distance, quickly sapped his energy. He immediately felt weak and drained again, and dizzy too.

  Considering all they had been through recently, both mentally and physically, there was a good chance James was coming down with an illness—which he could scarcely afford right now. Perhaps that would explain it? He coughed and spat as he ran, the streak of liquid dripping from his mouth disconcertingly dark. And no matter how hard he tried, James could not seem to gain any ground on Ken, who disappeared inside of the church and into the darkness beyond.

  James thought about stopping—considered it strongly—not wanting to know what was waiting inside that place. But he wasn’t too far behind and felt he had a good chance of pulling Ken out of there. Also, whereas before he’d aided Ken because the man was a necessity to his own survival, now he just felt the need to help a friend. If Ken had truly heard the voice of his daughter, James could not imagine how confusing that must have been.

  But he needed to get Ken to see things clearly and realise his daughter was not here; she would likely be wherever she had been before, hopefully safe and sound somewhere.

  So he gritted his teeth and carried on, following Ken inside. As he crossed the threshold, James felt a noticeable, oppressive feeling fall over him, as if the darkness itself actually had weight to it. The air was also thick with a musty, potent smell.

  James’ eyes soon adjusted to the sudden absence of natural daylight, cut off thanks to the boarded windows, and saw that the church was lit by flickering candles, giving off an eerie glow.

  James looked down the rest of the building’s interior, but wished he hadn’t.

  The layout was what he would have imagined from a small, simple church such as this, with rows of wooden pews on either side of a central aisle. At the front, towards the other end, was a raised section that contained a pulpit and altar.

  James wasn’t a particularly religious person, but what he saw down there he immediately understood to be an insult against God.

  Bodies in various stages of decay had been strewn about—some whole, many not. The surroundings also had a dark-red palette to them, thanks to the gallons of spilt blood that wetted the floor and splattered the walls. Organs and intestines were strung up like decorations, looping over rafters and twirling around rudimentary effigies of Christ, wrapping around his neck and draping over his shoulders like a shroud.

  And, while some of the corpses looked to have been merely dumped or discarded randomly, many had been positioned quite deliberately, their bodies propped and shaped, tied to sticks of wood with twine in order to hold their pose. Some had even been stitched together in sickening violent and sexual acts.

  Two of them had their mouths sewn together—hands restrained behind their backs—as they were being sodomised by other macabre marionettes. The hands of the assailants grasped around the bound victims’ necks. Another lay prone on the ground with its stomach open. A group kneeled close, heads lowered into the opening, like pigs feeding at a trough. There were even unfortunate corpses stuck and intertwined with beasts of the field.

  Beyond all of this, situated on the raised area to the front, sat another body, this one markedly different than the others. With the wooden pulpit off to the left-hand side, and a simple altar behind it, the figure sat central to the width of the room, heels pulled into its crotch in a cross-legged position. It sat in a circular symbol that had been drawn onto the wooden floorboards, marked out in white chalk, though from this distance James couldn’t see what the symbol was exactly. What he could see, however, was that this corpse had once been female—an elderly female, with sagging breasts and loose, wrinkled skin covered in cuts and markings. Again, this body had been supported by wooden sticks to hold its position—the left hand was set on top of something in its lap, and the right was held up to its side, bent at the elbow. James had no idea what the woman would have looked like in life, however, given that the head—or the original head—had been removed and replaced by that of a horned, black goat, and stitched at the neck.

  Then he saw that the thing resting in the disgusting figure's lap was a head, and considered that it could be the original. But he soon saw that was not the case, because the face that stared back in open-mouthed horror was male, and one he recognised.

  The question of whether Tony was alive or dead had finally been answered.

  26

  Ken felt all the energy and hope drain from him.

  He stepped slowly into the macabre surroundings of the church, his boots splashing in puddles of blood as he moved between the bodies, which were posed like marionettes in the middle of horrific acts. The fact that most of these corpses didn’t appear to be fresh, nor have any running wounds, made the presence of the blood on the floor and walls all the more confusing.

  But then again, nothing about this scene made sense. Least of all the head of his friend settled into the lap of that monstrous effigy at the head of the church.

  The sight was so shocking, seeing Tony’s face etched in an eternal horror, that Ken felt numb—like his soul was shutting down. It was just too much to comprehend.

  Still, he continued to walk towards it. Because he had to know more. After all, Ken had been called here by a voice that had been so very dear to him—one he knew well. However, he had not found Amy inside as he’d hoped, but rather, this hellish display.

  He should have known bett
er. Of course Amy wasn’t here—what the hell had he really expected to find?

  Then again, perhaps what he saw all around him was not real at all, and that head in the lap of the posed goat-thing was not really not Tony's. James had been right before: this village should not exist, even before it had somehow changed locations. So maybe what Ken was being shown now was fake, or perhaps just a symptom of a shared madness they were all suffering from.

  Somehow, though, he did not think that was the case.

  Ken reached the goat-headed corpse and looked at the crude stitching at the neck. The stench the figure gave off actually overpowered the smell of decay elsewhere inside the building, reminding him of the stench that had seeped from the well outside. Ken knelt down, holding his breath, and looked closer at the head of his friend as it nestled in its resting place near the bare groin of the corpse.

  Tony’s jaw hung open slightly, and his wide eyes stared ahead, the pupils dulled with some kind of milky coating. The man’s neck ended in a jagged stump, and vibrant red flesh was exposed, looking raw and fresh. A small pool of blood, now dried, had seeped from the wounds and trickled out beneath the goat-headed body, covering some of the symbol on the floor. Ken looked at that symbol closer now—the one the body was sitting centrally within—taking in the details. It was primarily formed by two large, concentric circles, and in between the circles were numerous, indecipherable markings. Lastly, the inner circle housed three more smaller rings, laid out in the shape of an inverted triangle, each split down the middle with a horizontal line.

  In all his years of study of the macabre and the occult, Ken had never come across that symbol.

  Ken then looked back to Tony’s dead eyes and an overwhelming tidal wave of grief and guilt washed over him. Tears welled up and spilt from his eyes as he began to sob.