What They Find in the Woods: Dark Minds Novella 2

by Gary Fry

  At any rate, once Rose had settled back again, clearly content with my explanation (it was hardly an unprecedented situation; undergraduates commonly grew flustered during their final years, and my wife knew I had a responsibility to them which I took seriously), I was able to address the material Chloe had sent through. I attached little significance to the fact that she’d chosen to contact me during unsociable hours. She’d have other coursework to develop during the daytime, as well as lectures to attend and all the other stuff involved in achieving the worthwhile degree she was destined to get.

  I soon learned that she’d shown some enterprise by venturing out into the streets of Pasturn and conducting a short survey with many passersby. We’d covered this research stage while dealing with her ethics forms for submission to the university, but I hadn’t expected her to act so quickly. Her results, neatly processed and presented in suitable tables, were very interesting, and after only a brief perusal of this data, I realised that she’d already identified a few promising trends among the village’s residents.

  In search of “the passion man”: a social psychological investigation of a rural legend by Chloe Linton

  Exploratory survey results

  Table 1. Study sample: by gender and age

  (number = 158)

  Age

  Gender

  Male

  Female

  Total

  16-24

  15

  21

  36

  25-44

  20

  22

  42

  45-65

  25

  20

  45

  65+

  17

  18

  35

  Total

  77

  81

  158

  Table 2. Awareness of the “Donald Deere” legend: by gender, age and village occupancy status

  Category

  Sub-category

  Heard of legend? (%’s)

  Gender

  Male

  24

  Female

  75

  Age band

  16-24

  72

  25-44

  38

  45-64

  32

  65+

  89

  Lifelong resident of Pasturn?

  Yes

  84

  No

  36

  Table 3. Selected comments made by survey respondents (all recorded with permission of speakers)

  Respondent characteristics

  Comment

  Female, 16-24, lifelong village resident

  “It was me gran that first told me about [Donald Deere]. I don’t even think my mum had heard about him and wasn’t happy when I explained what gran had said.”

  Female, 16-24, lifelong village resident

  “He’s supposed to look like the trees where he lives, isn’t he? I also heard he had green eyes which swirled like hypnotism. He’s meant to put a spell on you, but I don’t know how. I think I’d find him scary [laughs].”

  Male, 25-44,

  lifelong village resident

  “Yeah, I’ve heard of Donald Deere. He was supposed to have lived around these parts – in the woods nearby, I think – about five-hundred years ago, when folk knew no better than to believe in silly stories. Anyway, he apparently brewed up potions to get what he wanted from young women in the village. I think we all know what I mean by that [sniggers]. Thank God the world’s moved on!”

  Male, 45-64, lived in village for twenty years

  “No, I’m afraid I’ve never come across that legend before. It all sounds a bit daft to me, not to mention implausible. I mean, who’d want to keep hold of children without a mum around to help out and…well, to do other things for a man, if you follow? It doesn’t make sense.”

  Female, 65+, lifelong village resident

  “We all knew about him as girls, way back before you were born, love. None of us would dare go near those woods, especially at night. And this was when there was a war on!”

  Female, 65+, lifelong village resident

  “Donald Deere is like all men: he needs loving and doesn’t want to do all the dull things for himself. He’s a monster, but only because he never died and never will. I won’t let any of my granddaughters go anyway near those deep, dark woods.”

  This was such a strong start to the data-collection stage of her project that, still feeling uncomfortable – even guilty – about the tensions which had clearly arisen between us during our last meeting, I emailed her back at once.

  Dear Chloe,

  Good work! If I’m reading your evidence correctly, I’d say there were three key areas to explore in more detail:

  1) The fact that considerably more females are aware of the legend than males (which makes intuitive sense).

  2) The fact that lifelong village residents are more aware of Donald Deere than relative newcomers (which also makes intuitive sense).

  3) Most intriguingly, the fact that older people appear to be more aware of the myth than younger adults except those aged between 16 and 24 years old.

  I think all these questions could make for a fascinating project and I’d urge you to move on immediately to the next stage of your research, maybe carrying out one-to-one interviews with selected residents. The comments you’ve included already hint at some social-psychological explanations for the issues I’ve highlighted above, but it’s unwise to speculate without further evidence.

  At any rate, keep up the great work and I look forward to your next communication!

  Best wishes –

  Matt

  I’d already sent the email – mainly because my wife had begun stirring beneath my arms – before I’d had chance to reread and judge its tone, considering the impact it might have on its recipient. Had I been too effusive here? Should I actually have signed off so informally (using Matt instead of Matthew or even Dr. Cole)? Oughtn’t I to have waited till morning, during normal working hours, before answering the message?

  Whatever the long-term consequences were, it appeared that, now later than eleven p.m., Chloe had stayed up tonight, because only seconds after I’d responded to her work, she sent back another email, one whose brevity was belied by its unsettling suggestiveness.

  Thanks, Matt.

  I can’t wait for what happens next.

  C xxx

  She might be – and probably was – referring to the following stages of her research; she was a bright student and obviously committed to her work. But even so, as I retired to bed that evening with my wife (who, on this occasion, had fallen asleep on my lap, and, to my mild relief, had needed little encouragement to continue with this arrangement upstairs), the psychologist in me couldn’t help assigning further significance to those three Xs, let alone the way she’d now truncated her Christian name to the intimate “C”. Indeed, didn’t only lovers do that? Or at the very least close friends?

  I wish I could say I slept well that night, but I’m afraid that would be a lie.

  6

  With no lectures to deliver during the next few days, I decided to work from home, which genuinely surprised Rose, because this wasn’t something I often did, despite having been such an integral part of the School for so many years that my Head of Department was happy to grant me carte blanche on this issue.

  As my wife continued writing about much more passionate lives than ours – maximising satisfaction with a modest income – I went about the uninspiring and yet reliable process of survival, marking half-decent student essays to pay for food I later prepared for our evening meals, which Rose and I enjoyed before settling back to more cheering TV, a serious-minded film maybe, or a cutting documentary about how demanding life could be for others.

  One night towards the weekend, after retiring to bed, we tried making love for the first time in several weeks, and I even rose to the occasion, even though ejaculation eluded me. Rose smiled and thanked me for helping h
er achieve orgasm, but by now I suspected she was simply glad I was able to perform at all. I didn’t want to believe that she’d begun suspecting me of anything improper concerning our relatively happy marriage, but I’m afraid this thought had occurred to me on several occasions lately.

  The next time I heard from my supervisee Chloe Linton was about a fortnight after her previous message. I’d seen her a few times on campus and on each occasion she’d been hanging out with people her own age, including a number of good-looking lads. Maybe whatever wobbly stage she’d gone through during the early months of her final study year had now lifted and she felt she could get back to being just another normal (if uncommonly bright) undergraduate. Or perhaps all this had just been in my mind, anyway, some kind of incipient middle-age crisis projected onto a student in that impish manner the human mind often resorted to. Whatever the truth was, I felt more confident about replying to the young woman’s latest message in merely a professional way.

  It had helped that Chloe had emailed during a working day. I was in my office at the time, having started work on a funding bid for research I planned to carry out the following academic year, when I hoped a short Sabbatical break could be arranged, offering me some much-needed protected time. My head was whirling from all the financial details I’d had to work out, and so new information about the mysterious Donald Deere, that possibly supernatural resident of a nearby village called Pasturn, greatly appealed to me. My supervisee began as she had in her previous communication, greeting me impartially and explaining that she’d attached several documents relating to the case she was exploring. I downloaded these at once.

  The first was a print-screen copy of a page clearly extracted from a website dedicated to the documentation of the myths, legends and folklore which attended every region in the country. This text ran as follows:

  In the small West Yorkshire village of Pasturn, just miles north of Leeds, a man named Donald Deere once resided in local woodland, along with a number of entities reputed to be his children. Donald was allegedly a black magician in the 1500s, whose spells and potions were supposed to possess amorous qualities. Indeed, even unrequited love could be overcome by offering one of Donald’s herbal drinks to the person you lusted after!

  Donald had a reputation for being something rather less than human. People who’d met him had invariably done so in the Pasturn woods, and it was said that he closely resembled the trees which surrounded him. But all this could change according to his surroundings, including the company he kept. In short, a consensus suggests that he – whatever he was – functioned as a mirror of sorts, reflecting both his environment as well as the desires of those with whom he frequented, especially after they’d consumed one of his specially brewed cocktails!

  Alas, his life is believed to have ended in scandal, when local residents discovered that he’d been misusing magic for private purposes, seducing women and then stealing their children to live with him in his woodland lair. When authorities finally tracked him down, it’s said that he’d taken possession of at least thirteen purloined offspring, all of whom pandered to his nefarious needs. Although Donald closely resembled a person, none of these youngsters had done so, and then, understandably horrified, his hunters had taken action. Donald and his ill-gotten brood were apparently destroyed in a fire started among all the trees in which he’d resided.

  One final point: across a range of historical material, Donald is referred to in no other way. In fact, the surname “Deere” is thought to be a latter-day variation, possibly added soon after the Second World War (when the alteration becomes apparent in local documents). Interviews with people living in the village at that time suggest that this was how the man always responded to requests about his identity. To wit:

  “What’s your name?”

  “Donald, dear.”

  What’s perhaps more troubling, however, is how such relatively recent Pasturn residents had come about this knowledge. Surely nobody during that period had encountered his spirit lurking in a lonely road running alongside that wood…had they?

  This article had obviously been written in a playful, sceptical way, its author remaining anonymous. Nevertheless, in light of what I already knew about the story – particularly the strangely compelling blog post made by fifteen year-old “Shaz”, who almost certainly had special needs – it made me tremble in all the cool, clear daylight streaming through my office window.

  I soon turned and glanced through the glass, seeing only a vague outline of myself reflected in the pane, my features seemingly composed of all the things in the room: desktop computer, paper files, a stack of unmarked essays. For one moment, it looked as if I was made out of these things, as if I’d gained form from my immediate surroundings the way Donald Deere (or rather “dear”) had been reputed to do. Then I glanced quickly away, and readdressed my monitor screen, seeking to access the other document I’d opened from Chloe’s attachments.

  It immediately became apparent that this was a JPEG file, a scanned reproduction of a pencil sketch possibly executed lots of years ago, maybe as many as centuries. It showed a figure climbing a kind of ladder, which was pressed up against what resembled a tree-house surrounded by plentiful woodland. The ladder had an asymmetrical structure, with a number of chunky logs serving as its uprights and thinner branch-like structures as the rungs. But it was the climber I was keener to observe.

  It was clearly a man. He was dressed in a kind of dark gown which reached as far as his knotted ankles. Other than a pair of chiselled feet, only his similarly carved hands and sanded face were visible, all looking as if they were made of a gnarled, grainy substance which matched his immediate environment to a disarming tee. Indeed, if not for the lumpy protrusion of both a nose and a mouth, as well as bright eyes depicted with starry radiance by several elaborate flourishes of a pencil, he might have been hard to spot there, lumbering upwards, eager to enter a wooden home from which smoke emerged, as if he had something decidedly insidious on the boil.

  7

  It had taken me a few days to respond to Chloe after her last submission of project materials. I’d apologised, blaming administrative responsibilities, which was only half-true. However, as the university policy was for all staff to respond to dissertation enquiries within a week, I was hardly violating any formal obligation.

  Nevertheless, when she showed up about a week later (as arranged during a perfunctory exchange of emails), she appeared quite sullen again, much the way she had during our first encounter, when I’d ascribed her attitude to mere shyness. But did I still believe this was the case?

  Of course I had no idea about what might be going on in her private life (my hunch concerning an issue with her father was little more than that, with no further evidence to make it clearer), and in any case, that was none of my business and irrelevant to our professional relationship. And so then, trying hard to ignore her reticence that early November afternoon, I settled down to more instrumental concerns.

  As Chloe – dressed with more reserve today, maybe because it was so cold outside – reached into a handbag she’d brought, I asked, “Do you want to tell me about the progress you’ve made since we were last in touch?”

  When she sat up again, she held the same notebook she’d used during her first meeting, and had just removed a loose printed sheet from its opening section. But before showing me that, she said in a hard-to-read voice, “No drink on offer this time, Dr. Cole? I’m quite thirsty, as it happens. I just got off the bus and had to run across campus to make this appointment.”

  Being late hadn’t troubled her on at least one occasion in the past, but as she’d terminated her comment with a narrow smile, I decided to match her playful demeanour.

  “Ah yes, of course,” I replied, only now realising that she’d just reverted to a formal mode of address – “Dr. Cole” – rather than my preferred “Matt”. But then I quit burdening myself with such foolish mind-games and made a grab for a cup on the table between us. “Same as last t
ime okay?”

  I’d already snatched up another of the herbal teabags when Chloe leaned forwards and, with her free hand, took it from me. “Let me make it this time,” she said, and then handed me the piece of paper she’d produced from that pad. “You take a good look at that while I’m gone.”

  Glancing down at the sheet didn’t prevent me from noticing that Chloe collected two cups from the table between us, before quickly leaving the room, headed for that small kitchen area across the corridor, which students were also permitted to use. One teabag shared between two vessels? I thought, but not for long, because that was when I looked more closely at the sheet my supervisee had passed to me.