The Silent Forest

by Guy Sheppard

  ‘Honestly?’

  Nora relaxed her grip on his arm, with a laugh.

  ‘We got our Identity Cards back, didn’t we? James Boreman has no hold over us any longer.’

  ‘Look, the fire has taken,’ said Thibaut and left his seat to blow on hot coals in the grate.

  Their kiss had lasted barely two seconds.

  ‘There’s more coal in the scullery,’ said Nora. ‘I’ll fetch some.’

  Thibaut’s limbs were quivering but for a different reason. He no longer thought only about the newspaper article. Instead one emotion collided with another.

  Don’t you get what just happened?

  What was his problem?

  Honestly, he didn’t know.

  Was he happy?

  Yes, he was.

  That kiss should have lasted forever. It was a feeling he had never identified before; it was a sensation of reverential respect mixed with fear and amazement. He wondered if it might be love. If so, it had to be worth fighting for.

  Next minute a scream pierced the whole house.

  ‘Thibaut! For God’s sake, help!’

  There was only one possibility: Boreman’s men. He spun round and knocked over the chair – he fell against the Welsh dresser and rattled its crockery. Nora had to be in serious trouble. He was so busy rushing to help her that he forgot to answer. But the scullery was empty and its door stood open. He flung himself at the snow and darkness outside; he was immediately floundering about like a stranded fish among piles of chopped wood in the backyard. Flakes of ice hit his face and the winter air scorched his lungs.

  It was hard to see much more than a crumpled shape in the shadows. Nora was on her knees! She had her back to him, half buried in a drift of white.

  What he thought had to be right.

  ‘Where’d they go? Where are Boreman’s men? What have the bastards done to you?’

  ‘Not me, him.’

  Thibaut kicked away dunes of powdery snow to discover that Nora was cradling an old man’s head in her lap.

  ‘Who is it?’

  ‘I reckon it must be the owner of the cottage. Who else can it be? Oh God, I think he might be dead already. See the trail of blood behind him.’

  ‘What’s someone of his age doing out here in this weather?’

  Half the stricken man’s clothes were missing. He had torn open his shirt. His frozen look, wild and horrified, had the stare of someone who had been fighting a fire in his body, when in reality he was freezing to death from hypothermia. His head, as well as being covered in rime, rust and coal, was streaked with gore from a serious wound over one eye. Only the severe cold had helped to slow the massive bleeding. One leg lay twisted at an odd angle – he still clung to a branch which he had used as a crutch to come this far in a series of agonising slips and slithers.

  Nora scraped ice from his eyebrows.

  ‘Can we move him?’

  ‘His leg looks bad.’

  ‘You’re right. We ought not to lift him?’

  ‘Fetch a blanket. Quick! We’ll make a stretcher-cum-hammock and drag him along.’

  *

  ‘Is he breathing?’ asked Thibaut, tending to the fire in the parlour in a hurry.

  Nora leaned closer to the corpse-like figure on the hearth rug and pressed her ear to his chest to listen.

  ‘Yes, but his hands are icy cold, no matter how hard I rub them.’

  ‘Keep trying.’

  ‘He has pine needles stuck in his socks. He must have hobbled and crawled quite a way through the Forest.’

  ‘We should go for help.’

  ‘No time.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I can’t hear his heart.’

  ‘Move away. Let me in.’

  ‘But we don’t know what we’re doing.’

  ‘Do we have a choice?’

  With that, Thibaut knelt astride the prone man and pressed the palms of his hands flat on his chest. He didn’t say so but he’d seen army medics do it a dozen times in bombed out streets, he’d witnessed the frantic attempts to keep oxygen flowing to a soldier’s brain because his heart was beating too faintly after being wounded.

  He had to do at least one hundred compressions a minute.

  Or so he’d been told.

  If the patient’s heart really had stopped then he knew there was not much he could do. Most people he’d seen on the battlefield simply failed to respond.

  He pressed thirty times and kissed the veteran’s chapped, cold lips to breathe down his throat.

  Nothing.

  ‘There’s a list of phone numbers on the wall in the hallway,’ said Nora. ‘I’m ringing his doctor right now.’

  ‘Forget it. Remember the state of the roads. We should leave him be.’

  ‘Why would we?’

  ‘You know that as well as I do.’

  ‘We left Raoul. I won’t do it again.’

  Thibaut tried a few more compressions, without much hope. He saw Nora lift the phone and did not attempt to stop her. Yet to make the call was to invite awkward questions.

  Suddenly the victim uttered a groan.

  ‘Stop,’ said Nora. ‘He’s coming round.’

  But Thibaut didn’t stop. He’d seen would-be rescuers fooled like this before. Some apparent signs of life were only a person’s final gasps for breath before they expired. To stop now could be a big mistake.

  Press. Press. Press.

  Breathe.

  Press. Press. Press.

  Next minute the old man opened his eyes. He started batting Thibaut’s hands away as he uttered a bad-tempered moan.

  Thibaut sat back and his face widened into one enormous grin.

  ‘Mon Dieu. You’re alive.’

  FIFTY-FIVE

  The ever deepening snow makes it extremely hard to keep going.

  Icicles fly off low hanging branches into his face.

  Like silver daggers.

  All bloody.

  He wanted to lure the boar into his snare to prove that he, James Boreman, will not be made a fool of. Anything else was not part of the plan.

  Whenever he looks back over his shoulder he collides with another tree – his pursuer is pounding the Forest floor not far behind him? He rests for a moment, but immediately hears it snuffle his way like one with a cold. Such behaviour is unfair; it’s crafty; it knows things he doesn’t.

  He glimpses its spear-like, white bristles that prickle the mist.

  Christ, what does it have on him?

  It has his guilty conscience.

  ‘What the hell are you? Leave me alone.’

  For he’s no longer convinced that whatever pursues him belongs in this world.

  Where does it come from?

  Why won’t it answer?

  He jumps patchworks of paths where the bitter night unwinds its black veil. Dead twigs crackle beneath his feet where he might have hoped that the snow would muffle all sound. If anything will betray him now it will be the Forest’s all-encompassing silence. It magnifies every move he makes.

  He’s in forbidden territory.

  There are other things, too.

  A wounded stag with a broken antler stands and stares.

  But he can’t stay here. That beast will be right behind him. His eyes drown as his face streams tears. His lungs feel fit to burst. That last snowdrift nearly dragged him down – now his knees ache. More sharp branches claw at his face and scratch his hands to ribbons. He no longer looks round at every other step. What good will it do? He’s in a nowhere land between one place and another.

  Because he’s no longer the hunter but the hunted.

  Isn’t that the truth. Those are more grunts, squeals and rumbles? That’s something, very briefly, in a glint of moonlight? That’s the snort of a very angry creature?

  It can track him effortlessly.

  By sound.

  Or smell.

  That wild boar
is not chasing but driving him. Each wrong step is corrected with the flash of an eye or stamp of a foot which doesn’t in the least reassure him – this beast of uncertain appearances commands all the trails. And if he refuses?

  He stumbles, runs and trots to a place within sight of felled trees and a fence. Suddenly frost flickers silver on the glass windows of a spanking new concrete and timber mansion in a freshly carved glade. Thank God! The boar has brought him back to within sight of Beech Tree Grange.

  In the sliver of light at the end of the path lies his salvation, since he can now see the gap in the fence to his very own gardens.

  The warmth of home is in his heart, the hope of refuge in his cries.

  All things considered.

  A sea of ground mist washes at his waist; it misleads and confuses. For a moment his mind is a maze and a blur. How can he be so close and yet so far from safety?

  The beast is nearer, for sure. What’s that? Sprouting from its hideous jaws, its tusks froth and rasp with a purpose entirely malignant. It’s as if his pursuer, having secured its place in his brain, is hell-bent on working its spell from within. That must be it. What? Just say it: he doesn’t pretend to know what’s real and what isn’t any longer.

  With a yell, he runs at great speed towards the house. He’ll go as fast as he can – he’ll shut himself up and lock every door.

  His head is down and he’s dodging the last few trees within sight of the breached fence and ruined lawn. How strange are those calls across the Forest as he crashes through the frozen bracken. Those cries drive him on. Sound urgent. He and Sam were here not so long ago? That should tell him something.

  A sudden giddiness grips him when the trees spin madly. The ground runs away from him until he can’t catch up. Mist stops floating before it lets go. A black void erupts in his guts.

  Then, with a cruel snatch, his legs vanish from under him.

  Absolute agony shears him to the bone.

  Next minute he’s in mid-air as someone’s eyes flash fire at him. Two lower teeth grind their points on two upper ones. Not so much frothing as sharpening.

  That’s all he can tell.

  Because Sam just took to his heels.

  That scream he screams after his own son is enough to shatter the silence.

  Wake the dead.

  FIFTY-SIX

  Every few minutes Jo uttered a fresh curse, even as another flash from Freya’s torch shone a way through the Forest. It winked between black branches.

  ‘What does it look like to you, John?’

  Little cascades of snow kept slipping down the back of his neck, too.

  ‘She’s following the same footprints we are.’

  ‘And not much else.’

  ‘We’ll freeze to death out here at the end of the day.’

  ‘You can say that again.’

  ‘I know what you’re thinking.’

  ‘I think only Bella knows where the hell we’re going.’

  Bella breasted white waves with her broad brisket – she was soon busily bulldozing snowflakes with her broad nose.

  ‘Come back here, Bella. Wait for me.’

  Jo tried to curb her reckless enthusiasm, but Bella did not obey any of her calls or whistles. The moment she sniffed a bend in the trail, she charged ahead with every hope of tracking her quarry.

  Any more shouts only got lost in the vast tract of frozen trees, as though some unsympathetic, permeable presence existed to taunt their arrival.

  It was the heart-stopping backdrop of quietude.

  Still Freya forged on. Her boots tore through snow with each purposeful stride. Flakes of ice settled on her hair until she no longer resembled anyone of this world but a mysterious white lady.

  Her torch glinted again, then she was gone through the next gap in the oaks and beeches.

  Moments later there came the clash of hooves and a furious bull-like snort.

  There was much squealing and grunting in the dead bracken and ferns up ahead.

  ‘What the hell was that?’ asked John in a hushed voice.

  Jo hesitated, too. They were not alone, but smelt some raw animal smell. Her nostrils were all rank bristles, spit and pheromone.

  ‘I can’t rightly tell.’

  Freya was but a wisp of white fire as she crossed the next glade. Next minute she was using her torch to penetrate infinite darkness again and it made good sense to go after her while they still could. She was on a track that stretched on and on. So why didn’t she speak? She had to know by now how closely they followed her.

  Bella proceeded more recklessly than ever. She was definitely thinking enormous male pig. One such boar in Germany had been known to drag a Shepherd dog thirty feet when provoked. Even a sow could slash someone’s belly wide open with her jaws.

  She’d know she was in trouble if it stamped its foot. She’d heard the tales. When an animal could smash through fences and lift a twelve-foot long, galvanized farm gate off its hinges, you knew not to mess with it.

  She could only say that she thought she’d seen something pass by a minute ago with more snorts and snuffles.

  And something else.

  Immediately from the trees there stepped a small figure. It was he who uttered that feverish buzzing from the back of his throat. Like bees swarming. Like bombers droning. Once he might have cried or called out for help, but not any more. Before, he hadn’t known what to do. This was different.

  ‘Sam?’ said Jo in astonishment and rushed forwards.

  On the little boy’s head was an old school cap frayed at its peak and round its edges.

  But Freya was oblivious to all that; she only wanted to calm her son and hug him closer.

  For some reason she was drawing him away from something.

  And Sam let himself be drawn – he no longer had any reason not to.

  Freya uttered a cry and dropped her torch, even as Jo ran forward and plucked it from the snow.

  Because there was something else they needed to know?

  Framed in the flashlight’s glow, a mouth’s frozen scream lit up in the gloom. The eyes were wide open, blank, repulsive. The nose leaked blood and pieces of yellow vomit stained the chin. Jo’s own stomach heaved. Her heart raced. There came a strange weakness in her legs, until she feared for a moment that she might topple backwards in sheer horror. She struggled to admit that what she was seeing could really be called a man. Behind her, John stifled a scream. Then, with a gasp, she stepped up to a tree. Carefully, tenderly, she pressed two fingers urgently to the person’s neck in search of a pulse.

  ‘It’s James Boreman. He’s dead.’

  Sam looked on matter-of-factly.

  ‘Did you see it happen?’ asked Jo.

  But Sam said nothing.

  That look in the boy’s eyes was troubling.

  Did she know what she was asking him?

  They had to go now.

  They shouldn’t be here.

  ‘Do you know how your dad came to be in the Forest at this time of night?’ said Jo. ‘Just tell me why.’

  Sam squeezed Freya’s hand very hard.

  ‘I helped him set the spear-trap to catch the phantom boar.’

  John hurried over to Freya as she tried to shield her son’s eyes. Sam’s maddened buzzing had become a hum. But she would accept no well-meaning words of sympathy from him, or anyone else. All this she made clear on her son’s behalf, since in no way would she have him blamed for a chance occurrence. Yet it seemed that it was also defiance in the face of some great wrong which, though not explained, haunted her every nerve. To the peculiarities of her son, the constant flicker of her pupils demonstrated an extra uncertainty.

  She knew what he had done.

  ‘Anything you want to say?’ asked Jo.

  Freya came out of her trance. Looked startled.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘You don’t look too surprised.’

  ‘You’ve no id
ea.’

  ‘Tell me.’

  ‘I’d rather not.’

  ‘But your husband has triggered his own trap. How is that even possible?’

  ‘I can’t explain it any more than you can.’

  Jo examined the scene more closely. The wooden spear had skewered James’s stomach, swept him off his feet and nailed him to the oak tree’s ancient trunk. Snowflakes misted red the instant they settled at his feet. His contorted cheeks were ashen – he was gutted, disembowelled. By the smell of it, he was dangling in his own faeces.

  ‘Please forgive my colleague,’ said John. ‘She shouldn’t ask so many questions. Now’s not a good time, not with Sam here. We should talk again later.’

  Freya inhaled sharply. She straightened her shoulders and the deadly pallor momentarily faded from her face. Her mouth looked doubly determined.

  ‘I’d rather we leave all that to the police.’

  John eagerly concurred.

  ‘I’ll run back to the house and ring them right now.’

  Bella’s eyes, meanwhile, did not leave the trees. Something sniffed and listened to them from the Forest.

  It wasn’t just the intense quietude.

  She hesitated to call it savage. Free. In a word, that’s what it was. And its presence could only be a good thing.

  *

  It was late evening before two Gloucestershire Police cars and a doctor arrived at Beech Tree Grange.

  DI Lockett was in a foul mood.

  ‘Bloody snow. The main roads are virtually no-go.’

  ‘Make it brief, Inspector. Mrs Boreman and her son have had a terrible shock.’

  ‘And you are?’

  ‘Miss Jo Wheeler.’

  ‘It says ‘Mrs’ on your ID Card.’

  ‘My husband died in the Bristol Blitz.’

  ‘I know you. You’re the daughter of Lt-Col. James Huntly Dutton, 6th Baron Sherborne.’

  ‘Actually, everyone knows me as chief fire watcher at Gloucester Cathedral.’

  ‘Your father is a great man. You must be very proud of him.’

  ‘It’s too late for that.’

  ‘Even the nicest young lady can tire of tea parties and summer balls, is that it? You want to prove privilege is no excuse not to do your bit for the war effort? You can only do that by appearing to be as ordinary as everyone else?’