by Helen Slavin
“If you had not been employed on this project then she would not exist,” he smirked.
“You could say the same about Graham’s new baby,” Vanessa parried. Dr Fell snarled out a laugh.
“Graham’s brat was conceived at an office Christmas party.” He licked his lips. “He is not a biological specimen brought back directly from Far North in the incubator of his wife’s womb.”
Vanessa felt the ink beneath her skin, the tap tap of the hammer doing its work. Sweat. Woodsmoke. The skins she lay on as it was done.
“I could go public with what I know about the Arctic laboratory. I could tell the whole story of the disaster.”
“They’d call you mad.” Dr Fell’s eyes glinted.
“A madwoman could make life very awkward for De Quincey Langport.”
Dr Fell’s eyes glinted once more, and he took in a deep satisfied breath.
“Health and safety is a precarious business at a research laboratory. On occasion, we have no idea what we are dealing with. Wouldn’t you say?”
Vanessa continued to stare him down; her neckline burned with the old pain.
“You have eight weeks to find and open the portal to Far North. After that time, De Quincey Langport will lay its claim to the child as our rightful intellectual and biological property.”
Vanessa nodded.
You can try, she thought as she left the room.
She was currently heading up three projects related to the disaster in the Arctic lab that had resulted in Anna’s birth. Only one team was a problem: the one with Christopher Bird at its head. He was, Vanessa knew, in league with Dr Fell to oust her. They wanted the keys to the archive. They wanted Anna’s DNA.
The threat to Anna was a burr beneath Vanessa’s skin. Something must be done. She made her way along the corridor to the archive.
There was no CCTV at this end of the building. This small security measure both protected De Quincey Langport and threatened enemies. The security cameras literally looked the other way. Any terrorist or industrial spy foolish enough to break in could be disposed of within five minutes of the crackling of a security guard’s walkie talkie. It was a dark zone, a black hole of secrets.
There were rumours, for instance, about exactly what behemoth of a monster Dr Merchant had created in 109b. It had hatched, unexpectedly, out of some find or other. Vanessa did not ask questions so that her colleagues might extend her the same courtesy.
It was her duty to destroy the Arctic archive, and she was doing it one yellow contaminated sharps bin at a time. In only the last month, she had filled and disposed of almost a dozen, going through every scrap of paper, broken bottle, every last strand of wood or fibreglass, and nothing had connected to Far North. It was, she understood, something, a place, completely beyond.
The loss of the archive was her back up against the threats of Dr Fell. It was true, Anna was a relic of her journey there, but that did not give Dr Fell a licence to take her. Vanessa feared the consequences any such attempt might trigger. With Anna’s ancestry, who knew what forces might be unleashed?
As she loaded up the latest sharps bin, Vanessa considered that what Dr Fell needed was a walk through Havoc Wood.
She recalled all the paths she had trodden through it, all the dives into Pike Lake she had risked to find the way back. Nothing had offered even a distant glimpse of Far North.
She put the bin on the facilities management trolley at the end of the hallway and, by a circuitous route, headed to her own laboratory.
It was a long day of anomalies and a paperchase of printouts from their latest electro-magnetic experimentation. Nothing affected the small compass that Vanessa carried; the needle was stationary, welded, it appeared, to its pivot point.
“You need a new compass,” Alistair joked as they packed up for the day.
Nothing was ever left unlocked. They were careful with the most sensitive or important information so nothing found its way into Dr Fell’s hands.
“I could take this home.” Alistair patted the stack of paperwork, his calculations, Vanessa’s proofs and theorems. Vanessa shook her head.
“No. I don’t want to make you vulnerable,” she insisted, and Alistair nodded.
Vanessa drove home, the car trundling into Woodcastle long past everyone else’s bedtime. The castle itself loomed out of the summer night casting a cloak of shadow over her. She turned in at Petersham Street and saw the black car at once. It was parked, again, in what was assumed to be the shade of one of the cherry trees. Moonlight chinked off the front wing like a warning beacon.
Vanessa drove past the vehicle, turned out onto Wisheart Road and then by a process of right turns, she was brought out on the corner of Old Castle Road.
Tarmac. Gravel. Dirt. She saw her mother, three-year-old Anna at her hip, already waiting on the porch.
Hettie Way was not panicked, only angry at the threats and intrusion into her daughter’s life.
“Dr Fell will learn the hard way,” Hettie warned. Vanessa was uncertain of Dr Fell’s power and influence.
“There’s only so much Havoc Wood can do,” she ventured, and Hettie laughed.
“I wasn’t talking about the wood.” She winked and helped Anna turn the page of her story book.
Vanessa slept heavily and, as a consequence, was late setting off for the lab.
“Why didn’t you wake me?” she moaned to her mother as she grabbed toast, and Hettie handed her bag and keys.
“You needed the sleep,” Hettie reasoned.
Vanessa drove off. The wood burst with birdsong, the trilling terrors of the dawn chorus, except, as she listened, she felt the calls were altered, were not the wild chorus of territorial claims, instead they held alarm, a warning.
She was part way along Old Castle Road when the first snowflake fell. It lodged behind the windscreen wiper, a flake as big as her hand revealing a maze-like, and arresting, crystallisation. She held her breath, not just because it was August, but because she felt the compass in her pocket begin to spin.
Another flake fell, others drifted behind. The filigree patterns of light speckled the interior of the car as her breath steamed in front of her. The light whited out. She reached for the door.
She stepped onto the creaking ice of the lake. Above her, the aurora glimmered in green shutters across the sky as, across the lake, the wolf waited.
The car was found, and questions were asked by some of the more serious news outlets. De Quincey Langport was not a liked or lauded company, and the media leapt at the chance to pick over the mysterious disaster at their Arctic lab some four years previously. It was only twenty-four hours, however, before the small-town scientist’s disappearance was superseded by shenanigans in Parliament, by fire and flood and inflation rates.
Hettie Way hunkered down in Havoc Wood with her granddaughter. They ranged miles in a day, Hettie hoisting Anna onto her back when she grew tired, held there with the shawl she had used to cart her own daughter with her on Havoc business.
She heard the black cars before she saw them. Gears ground, bodywork was scraped and pranged, and so, Hettie reasoned, the passengers ought to realise that Havoc was making them unwelcome.
Hettie and Anna stood on the porch. Dr Fell and his hired help on the shoreline of Pike Lake below, three men in black suits looking incongruous in the woodland setting.
“Hand over our property.” He gestured to Anna whose hand squeezed tighter around her grandmother’s.
“Get off my property,” Hettie ordered. She was, she thought, very polite in the circumstances.
“I have a very low tolerance for this kind of resistance.” Dr Fell forced his face to look world-weary, but Hettie glimpsed the small beads of sweaty desperation at his temple.
“You’ve still time to get away.” The threat in Hettie Way’s voice was small but deadly as a stiletto.
“Take the child,” Dr Fell instructed to his nearest companion. The man he addressed took in a surprised breath.
“Ta
ke her,” Dr Fell commanded, and the man jumped to it, rushing towards the porch.
Anna stepped forward; her small face looked stark enough to halt the assailant. She let go of Hettie’s hand, tipped her head back, and howled. It was a primal sound, stopping the other suits in their tracks.
“There’s still time to run,” Hettie warned.
“For pity’s sak…” Dr Fell strode towards Anna, shouldering his confederates aside.
This time, the howl did not come from Anna. It came with the wolves, from out of the trees.
“Too late,” said Hettie Way.
It was spring when the snowflakes fell on Hettie Way as she and Anna made their way down from Ridge Hill. It fell, the first, like a lace doily, and at once Hettie packed up their picnic and they began hurrying homewards.
By the time they had hurried back to Cob Cottage, the sky was grey and heavy, the lake freezing over in front of them. The ice creaked and groaned, and Vanessa, heavy with child, walked across its snow-white surface, coming home.
A few weeks later, Hettie was once more the midwife, as Vanessa gave birth on the shore of Pike Lake.
A girl. Kicking and screaming, and named Charlotte.
12
Deer
Logan Boyle had borrowed his brother’s car for their date.
“Are you joking me?” Caitlin snarled when he rolled up in it.
“You getting in?” He leaned across to open the door. Already the evening seemed doomed.
“Did someone shit on this seat?” Caitlin pointed to the brownish stain on the passenger seat, her face as pointed as her finger.
“No,” Logan lied. His mother’s old dog, Ninja, had crapped there on his last visit to the vet. Logan thought of the body in the blanket in the boot on the way home, his mother crying all the way, and the spades of earth he’d dug in the yard.
Christ, this date was not going well. His brother’s car wheezed a bit on the hills, but it would get them to the party at Knightstone.
She’d come to the party with him, and then she’d pretty much ditched him, so Logan recognised that he was basically Caitlin’s Uber driver. While others might see them as “together”, Caitlin did not. He could see himself slipping in the boyfriend rankings. He was suitable for school purposes whereas, here in Knightstone, it was Adam and Oliver who were the focus of her lust.
Logan sat and drank his beer slowly as the music throbbed around him, and he saw where Caitlin and the rich lads were definitely on for a threesome. He felt jealous and uncomfortable, and was reminded of Emz Way, his mind flashing up the white image of her face that night at that other terrible party in September, when she’d been sent out to the summerhouse at Tasha’s place to catch him at it with Caitlin. He winced at the thought.
This was a bad idea. All of it. Everything he’d ever done with Caitlin was a worse idea, but he couldn’t stop himself when she lit him up with desire.
The beer was sour, and he felt a bit sick as he glimpsed Caitlin. Yep. He was going to be sick.
Puking did not make him feel better. He sat on the floor of the bathroom wiping his mouth and thinking of Emz wrangling the geese. He saw her expression of concentration and confusion in Maths. He saw something there and it frightened him, it made his heart creak.
With Caitlin, nothing mattered, it was nothing, like a cheap chocolate bar you scoffed down. He pushed his way through the party into the conservatory.
“I’m going,” he announced. Caitlin cast him a smug glance. Adam or Oliver, he couldn’t remember or care which smug rich git this one was, was filling shot glasses with tequila.
“I’m not.” She was dangerous. Logan saw she was cruel and wild.
“G’night then.” He gave a dismissive wave.
“Logan.” Her voice was commanding. He halted.
“Bye,” he said. He could still taste the vomit in his mouth.
“Logan, what is going on with you?” She stood up, squeezed from her seat between Adam and Oliver.
“I’m going.” He didn’t engage with her.
“How am I getting home if you go?” She was put out. “This is shitty. Stop being shitty.”
“Bye.” The keys rattled in his hand as he moved away.
She was pissed off at him, and he didn’t care, not looking at her as she chased him up the driveway spitting abuse. He didn’t open the door as she tugged at the handle.
“I thought you were staying?” His voice sounded harsh, but he was shaking inside. She banged a hand at the window, and he reached to unlock the door. She got in with a curse and they drove off.
“What was that? How dare you talk to me like…” Her yapping voice disappeared if he just wound down the window, and he could hear the night whipping by. After this, after tonight, he was never going near Caitlin again. Never.
When the car broke down at the edge of Leap Wood, Logan thought it was the only way the evening could have ended. His phone was dead.
“You are such a fucking loser,” she growled and walked off towards town. He watched until she crossed the road and began the long trek to the bus stop.
13
Dreamlike
Racing, Emz’s heart fast as the deer’s own heart, the land a blur but Havoc Wood still.
Wild fright filled her deer heart, but her human heart thrilled at the movement. Looking out through the doe’s brown eye, she saw Havoc as another realm. The green so sappy, the bark scent, the forest floor beneath her hooves, and the leaping, bounding escape of it.
She was not alone. Breath caught in her throat at the thought, and she woke up. Emz had rolled out of the duvet and was cold, but she felt too rattled to lie back down in bed. Instead, she pulled on her sweatshirt and her socks and padded down the hallway to the kitchen.
For once, no one was here, and she was glad of the quiet dark. She didn’t turn on the light as she ran the tap for a glass of water.
Anna was asleep after a long day catering a conference at the Castle Inn. To make certain, Emz wandered up to her door. She could hear her sister’s gentle snoring, a sound like a cat purring. Charlie had had a text from Aron and gone out to meet him. Her door stood open, and it was unlikely she would return tonight.
Things had felt better this morning. They’d all three been in better spirits and then the day had worn down and they’d all returned, tired and anxious once more. Perhaps that anxiety was what fuelled the deer dream. Emz sat in the spoonback armchair by the window and pulled her legs up under her. She contemplated the surface of Pike Lake for several minutes, trying to settle so she could properly consider the dream.
The trouble with dreams was that they vanished quickly. She held to the edges of this one. The deer, like before, racing through Havoc Wood. It was definitely Havoc Wood. She scratched through the ragged remnants of the dream; could she remember where in Havoc it had been? The pendant around her neck was cool against her skin. She reached to touch it. She’d worn it lately as a talisman. As she lifted the piece to take a closer look, it flashed like moonlight. Just once. She turned it. The moonlit effect did not repeat itself and she let the pendant drop. Was she even awake?
There was a message in the dream, she felt certain, but she was distracted by the physicality of the deer. She took a few deep breaths to stop being annoyed at herself. If she let her mind drift it might wander back to the dream. Or a better plan would be to go back to sleep, find the dream that way. That was the most difficult plan. She was wide awake.
She sat in the dark for a long time and listened. In the distance, a car on Castle Hill Road, nearby, the lapping of the edge of the water, in between the trees whispered with the night breeze and then fell silent.
Emily Way asked herself a simple question. Am I afraid? She was surprised at the answer.
The marina was very quiet by the time Charlie arrived. The bars on the opposite side of the harbour were closing up and people were moving further into the city to nightclubs. Charlie had parked down by the river and walked up. Aron texting her to come to the
Marina had been an easy exit strategy, a way to run away from the fresh fear that had settled over her as she returned to Havoc after work.
She called him. Her phone pressed to her ear listening hard to the ringing tone as if it was sonar detecting his presence. The voicemail message clicked in for the third time.
No matter. She was here. The second floor had recently become something of a jungle of tropical plants as the new owner of the flat there put out pot after pot of palm and fern. On sunny days the atrium was a scorching heat sink. This evening, as Charlie took the stairs two at a time, she noted that the plants lent a sharp green dampness to the usually arid air of the entryway. It reminded her of Havoc, as if the wood was reaching out to her. She hurried on upwards to the third floor and then onto the fourth.
It was quiet and dark. The frosted glass panel in the side of the doorway was dark, but Charlie checked her watch. It was not impossible that Aron had gone to bed. After all, he was working tomorrow. Still, having asked her here, he might have waited. He knew she didn’t have a key. Charlie rang the bell.
There was no movement from within. No light switched on. The bell echoed out once again, Charlie able to hear how empty it sounded. She had no key. For several weeks he had promised to have one cut, and he had not got around to it. She checked under the mat and found nothing, not even dust thanks to the maintenance charges that provided a cleaner for the communal areas. There was nowhere else to hide the key. There was no letterbox. That was in the entrance lobby on the ground floor. Ha. Idea.
Aron’s post box was locked, and she did not have a key to that either. A cursory rummage through the flap seemed to suggest it was empty both of post and of spare keys on strings. Charlie tried Aron’s phone once more. And again. Was this a prank for blowing him off the other night on Havoc business?
