The Silent Forest

by Guy Sheppard

  ‘Let’s face it,’ said John, leading the way along the cloister, ‘James looks to be a thoroughly nasty piece of work. He deserves his comeuppance. But to say he had Sarah bumped off is a big step to take.’

  ‘Bigger than saying Freya did it?’

  ‘In Susie’s opinion! We only have her word for it that Sarah wanted to ditch Freya and go back to her.’

  ‘What else do we have?’

  Jo opened her wallet and drew from it a piece of paper.

  ‘We have this ‘killer diller’.’

  ‘What can I say? It looks like how I feel after a night on the tiles.’

  Together they stopped in the echoing cloister walk and studied the bristly head, small eyes and square snout of a wild animal.

  It had to be some sort of pig.

  They could agree on that at least.

  You had to see it to believe it.

  They shared a bad feeling about it.

  But what was it exactly?

  The hell if they knew.

  ‘Where did you get it?’ asked John.

  ‘Sam drew it for me when we first met in the cathedral.’

  ‘And you show it to me now?’

  ‘I can’t pretend ever to have seen anything quite like it.’

  ‘Because it’s obviously not a real creature.’

  ‘I think he’d know.’

  ‘Yeah, right.’

  ‘Which means he really has met something?’

  John studied the ferocious eyes and sharp tusks and could only marvel at the little boy’s remarkable ability to set such a lifelike vision down on paper. It looked so angry. That wasn’t all. The beast was uncannily like one of those wild boars carved on the ledges-cum-seats against which weary monks once leaned while singing for hours in the choir stalls – it was equally scary.

  ‘What’s this drawing got to do with Sarah Smith?’

  ‘We have a possible pig connection, remember. Someone left a boar’s head on her car and wrote ‘Say Nothing’ in its blood on the windscreen.’

  ‘Oh come on, what have we got here, really?’

  ‘Suppose Sam lights candles to keep this what-d’you-call-it, this monstrous hog, at bay? He’s trying to banish something that comes to him in the Forest? In his dreams? It’s his own worst enemy?’

  ‘A fiendish one, certainly.’

  They might have been out of the snow but the cloister contained a sudden chill. With the shiver came a sense of something else. It might have been fear.

  Jo folded the picture back into her wallet.

  ‘What if it’s not?’

  John shuddered.

  ‘Just put me out of my misery.’

  ‘Forget what you know. If I were a psychiatrist…’

  ‘Which, just to be clear, you’re not.’

  ‘…I’d say that Sam is showing us his state of mind. He’s praying for superhuman strength.’

  ‘You believe in that Freudian bullshit?’

  Jo scooped Bella from the cold stone floor and began to warm each paw with her fingers. She dug ice from between her pads and claws. Dusted her ears.

  ‘I may be wrong, but when Freya throws in her lot with Sarah it changes everything. Releases her stronger ‘shadow self’. It sets free something that can’t be put back in its cage. Something untameable. For the first time she has a friend who can help her escape her violent husband. Now that friend is gone but she still wants out. It goes beyond whatever feelings she might, or might not have had, for Sarah – from hereon it’s all about survival that requires someone to come up with a new plan. Quickly. All this Sam sees every day. He’s traumatised by it. What’s the betting he’s old enough to want to hold his father to account for his mother’s never ending misery?’

  Bella held up a leg – she’d failed to de-ice one paw.

  ‘So what are we going to do?’ asked John.

  ‘We’re going to show Freya this picture and see if she cracks.’

  ‘That before she bites your head off?’

  ‘This is what I think: Sam isn’t just drawing some monster he honestly believes lives in the Forest, he’s drawing his own father.’

  ‘Boorish Boreman. Boar Man.’

  ‘Exactly.’

  ‘So it’s a father-son thing.’

  ‘It shouldn’t be, but it is.’

  John raised his bushy eyebrows.

  ‘Or we could just leave well alone and see a film at the Picturedrome.’

  Jo wrinkled her lip.

  ‘I’m not wrong. He’s revealing his rage in a drawing.’

  ‘In your opinion.’

  ‘This is not a picture but a prediction.’

  ‘Whatever does it mean in reality, though?’

  ‘It means we have to get to Sam before his prayers get answered.’

  FORTY-EIGHT

  Since when could snow be such hard going? Frosty air pricked Sam’s cheeks like needles. His boots sank into frozen beech leaves and dragged him down. He blinked and struggled to focus. That’s all he could do right now. If the wintry morning was a fiery red glow through the black, skeletal trees, then the ground he trod was a frozen, salt-white sea.

  Most of all he was in awe of the surrounding silence.

  But in a good way.

  Silence was reassuring.

  Oddly enough.

  It was the click of a rifle’s flat bolt handle and ten-shot magazine that really set his nerves on edge. Low voices were no less menacing. When the poachers pulled on their balaclavas they looked somewhat sinister. Breath from mean mouths blew ghostly clouds over his head.

  Should he even have come?

  He knew them all: Phil Cotter, Kevin Devaney and Gordon Bates. His fellow hunters cracked jokes among themselves as they prepared to enter a rarely explored corner of the Forest.

  Their nervous banter came in hushed bursts.

  ‘That the Mannlicher-Schonauer repeating rifle you got there?’

  ‘Sure is.’

  ‘I thought you were going to go for another Lee-Enfield?’

  ‘With its full-length barrel this can take .375 rimless cartridges which pack quite a punch. It also has the extremely good Baillie-Grohmann peep-sight.’

  ‘Makes sense, I suppose.’

  Everyone had to work as a team. Sam felt it, too. The change. The thrill. The subtle alteration in his perception of himself. No longer was he the odd one out at home or in school; he felt charged, primed, prepared like one of those loaded guns – like a bullet ready to go. He was a thing of darkness. A stalker. A killer. No mere boy at all. No oddball.

  That stiffening in his spine was pride. It was what his father wanted him to feel and he didn’t want to let him down.

  He felt big inside, like a giant, even though he was unarmed.

  James’s pale breath came hot in his ear.

  ‘Stay close, Sam. Stay silent.’

  ‘I promise.’

  ‘We won’t kill anything if you scare it away.’

  ‘I won’t make a noise, I really won’t.’

  ‘Watch, listen and learn. No humming. No buzzing like a bee.’

  ‘I’ll do what you do. I’ll follow you.’

  ‘Good boy. Who knows, today might be the day you get to have a go with my gun.’

  Sam nodded vigorously, as if this was the best news ever. Then he joined the other shadows to merge with the Forest. He did wonder why his father should be so insistently happy for him, given what had just transpired.

  Back home he had broken his favourite stoneware mug. He always drank from that mug and no other.

  There had been a big row about it.

  As a result, almost nothing liquid has passed his lips for nearly two days.

  No wonder his head reeled now.

  *

  They walked a long time. It felt like miles, as Sam measured the distance in strides: 1037. 1038. 1039…. The world made better sense in numbers. If it hadn’t been such
a maze he would have counted the trees. At least his beloved book of trains was safely back in his pocket. That fire watcher from Gloucester Cathedral had been a woman of her word, after all.

  His feet shovelled snow and fallen leaves on the Forest floor. Frozen puddles cracked. Snowdrifts crumbled. Each snap of a twig exploded in his ears like fire.

  But none of these could account for the noises he didn’t quite hear.

  There was that rapid succession of short, sharp rattles which occurred whenever the trees shook themselves.

  And there were those tuneful stalactites of ice that dangled from the underside of weeping branches or fell to the ground in sudden, brittle waterfalls.

  He found each mini-avalanche thrilling. They clinked and jingled. Far from being frozen solid, the Forest was in constant, fretful motion. That’s because something disturbed dead bracken close by. He looked everywhere but to no avail. Whatever it was stayed invisible. Some living creature kept pace with them in time to the ice-music. Could it be what he thought it was? His grandfather would know. He’d ask him, the next time he visited him at Tunnel Cottage.

  His heart raced like a runaway rain, his lungs pumped as hard as bellows.

  Suddenly he felt a heavy hand twist his shoulder as James ordered everyone to halt. Another hot whisper scorched his chilled ear.

  ‘Look and learn, son. Tell me what you see?’

  Sam recognised the voice’s hard urgency. James was expecting him to rise to the challenge. To prove he wasn’t stupid. Not weird. And he desperately wanted to measure up to the dare. The snowy Forest deprived him of perfect sight, confused him. Rationally, he knew this lack of vision was a trick of the light. Irrationally, he thought it an affliction. Because he could not see very well past the massive trees he felt robbed of his own judgement. His heart throbbed. His lips hummed. He didn’t like to be put on the spot like this.

  ‘I see a gap in the oaks and beeches.’

  ‘Nothing else?’

  ‘One silhouette is much clearer than the other.’

  James screwed the heel of his boot deeper into the soft ground.

  ‘What does that tell us, do you think?’

  ‘I don’t know. Could be a head and ears.’

  ‘What did I say before we set out? What did I tell you to look for?’

  Taking the question for the test it was, Sam racked his brains for an answer. There had been so many things that his father had said to him earlier that it was hard to know which was the priority. Instead he felt his head spin. That’s because he remembered them all.

  But what he feared most was to make a mistake, or worse, give himself away.

  ‘I’m not sure. The sun is making the snow glint like glass.’

  James caught him by the shoulder and shoved him roughly at the nearest tree.

  ‘See that pale, white mark on the bark, Sam? That’s where an animal has rubbed its neck quite recently.’

  ‘Understood.’

  ‘Nearby will be its wallowing place. Stags scrape them out with their hooves or antlers.’

  ‘I see.’

  And Sam did see. He imagined the great animal rising up from wet, steaming mud and rubbing itself against the tree trunk after its bath. They were trespassing on someone’s most intimate habits.

  ‘The thing is, son, an animal doesn’t just scratch itself when it rubs against bark like this, it leaves its scent to mark its territory.’

  ‘Which means?’

  ‘We’re on its trail.’

  He breathed a big sigh of relief. He might not have said exactly the right thing, but neither had he earned his father’s joyless smile. He lived in fear of that smile. It was used to hide irritation, impatience, even contempt.

  Next minute, Gordon Bates returned from scouting ahead.

  ‘Well?’ asked James, impatiently.

  The burly hunter cradled his rifle on his arm and pointed.

  ‘Fresh tracks. Going north.’

  No sooner had he spoken than a roar filled the air. The deep, belching groan echoed through the trees. The sound alone was ready to swallow them whole.

  ‘What is it?’ said Sam and clung to a corner of James’s camouflaged jacket.

  ‘It’s a fallow buck calling.’

  While falling snow had to be a bad time to hunt deer because they moved about less, all that went out of the window during the rut. They were on the move everywhere at any time of day or night. Sam could remember quite a lot about deer if he wasn’t being put to the test, if he wasn’t feeling ‘flummoxed.’ Sure enough, two magnificent stags were squaring up to each other like medieval knights in a Forest clearing.

  It was enough to make the hairs stand up on the back of his neck. One majestic animal thrashed its antlers about in the ice-covered undergrowth, the other was still covered in snow from its recent wallow. Such was their preoccupation with fighting that they failed to smell the hunters. The two adversaries strutted parallel with one another to suss out their rival – he was privileged to be watching one of the Forest’s most ancient rituals.

  Next instant James gestured to him to stay low while he raised his rifle and prepared to fire off a bullet at 2,025 feet per second.

  But Sam hardly noticed, so mesmerised was he by the clash of beasts as they went head to head in almost sacred battle. Both stags had lost their summer spots and their thicker, greyer hair had the look of winter. If only he could be that clever and change his appearance to suit time, place and mood, then he could hide like an animal, too – no more would he creep under his bed or shut himself in his wardrobe for hours on end to recover his equilibrium, when things proved too much and he couldn’t cope. As it was, his ears cracked apart at the stags’ head butts; his nostrils snorted at each snort. The winning stag would have the pick of the does.

  He opened his mouth and would have roared his own roars if he hadn’t been sworn to keep quiet.

  Above all else, he could smell it. That sweaty, earthy smell. Of testosterone, or something like it. It was savage, angry, wild. An icy chill ran down his spine. Here was everything he’d ever wanted to feel but had never found a way to express, according to the unspoken laws of the dean.

  At the same time perspiration broke out on his brow. Something terrible was going to happen and he would have a share in it.

  One part of him wanted to jump up and wave his arms about.

  ‘Stay still, damn you,’ hissed James. ‘If you want to kill something you first have to learn how to stalk it. You want to learn, don’t you?’

  Oh yes, thought Sam, part of him did want to learn.

  It wanted to learn very much.

  How to stalk.

  How to kill.

  FORTY-NINE

  ‘No one can know why I’m meeting you,’ said Freya, clutching her shoulder bag and gasmask in THE MONKS’ RETREAT. With her went Ruby on a lead. ‘Promise me.’

  ‘My lips are sealed,’ said Jo and offered to buy lunchtime drinks all round, but Freya, looking very smart in her black sweater and slacks, seemed less than keen to pull up a chair, or give her a smile. Not to her, she didn’t. She appeared to be extremely on edge about something and kept casting worried glances at her wristwatch. Should she protest? She hadn’t expected her to pick up her phone, let alone agree to see her again so soon after their disagreement yesterday.

  If she hadn’t known better, she would have said that Freya positively wanted to be seen in public right now, as if they were her alibi for something.

  John stopped by the bar on his way past. ‘Bag a seat for me, will you.’

  Bella glared at Ruby with contempt. While a dog was often admired for being just like its owner in looks and habits, this yappy thing in its little red coat was a panicky ball of noisy trouble. Hypersensitive. That was the word. The harder it shivered the more it shook its fringed ears. She wrinkled her own ears and twitched her nose. In her eyes the Chihuahua was no better than a rat.

  Sometimes one dog coul
d not bring itself to speak to another.

  She petitioned to play in the hotel yard, but was forbidden to trot up the crowded undercroft’s steps and sink her teeth into fresh snow.

  ‘I’m afraid you’ll think it’s all about nothing,’ Jo stated matter-of-factly, the moment she found them all chairs in a corner.

  Freya gave an impatient wriggle.

  ‘Get to the point. I don’t have much time.’

  ‘Sam drew this strange drawing for me in the cathedral.’

  Freya immediately took off her dark glasses to expose the remains of an ugly black bruise round one eye. Removing her scarf was no less revealing. Although she had spent considerable time backcombing her hair and kept it in place with bobby pins, combs and grips, she still could not entirely conceal the place where a tuft had been ripped from her scalp not so long ago. She looked perplexed and pale. But if her sudden rigid posture and stubborn gaze were manifestly uncooperative, her swollen face was at once a mixture of curiosity and annoyance. Even embarrassment. Some of those bruises had to be new.

  ‘That’s the boar Trwyth. Sam draws it every day. Once he gets an idea into his head nothing will stop him – he becomes obsessed with it.’

  John suddenly set three bottles on the table.

  ‘Sorry, no glasses.’

  Jo traded frowns with him. Hadn’t he heard, Freya just refused the offer of a drink? He mouthed something back, as if to say: you think she didn’t want to? But even he had his doubts now.

  Freya’s hand went to her bruised mouth and she blushed.

  ‘I may have a bit of a loose tooth.’

  ‘Please go on,’ said Jo. ‘This so-called boar Trwyth, what’s that all about?’

  Freya set aside the beer after a couple of sips. She winced. Honestly, she reacted like someone put on the spot. This was all very difficult and complicated.