What They Find in the Woods: Dark Minds Novella 2

by Gary Fry

  By now, I was really scared, and I quickly darted forwards to shut the curtain I’d yanked back a moment ago. Then, perhaps caused by my sudden movement, the hideous thing with that bricklike face began to look a bit like some of the boys on my pop posters, but only in a weird way, their features all skewed, as if someone had poured hot water down the walls and all the paper had got wet and crinkly.

  I finally managed to pull the curtain across and then, holding my belly with both hands, I ran back and climbed into bed. Lots of time seemed to go by so slowly, but after about a minute that felt like an hour, I heard those noises again, all the horrible clunks, and then realised they were footsteps. When these stopped, more of that mad rattling occurred, like lots of objects as hard as bones scratching at a road. Now I knew that the thing or maybe even things were moving away, and before long it or they had gone – forever, I hoped at the time.

  But I don’t think like that now, while writing this blog in normal daylight. Because later I worked out what the figure looking into my room was.

  It wasmy baby’s dad and I love himand can’t wait for him to come back.I think I’ll be less scared next time.

  When I finished reading this deeply disturbing account, I immediately shut down my Internet-enabled phone and quickly retreated upstairs, having first made sure all the doors and windows were shut and locked on the ground floor. In truth, I felt vulnerable right then, that weird sensation in my skull – like a head-cold, but not one boasting any usual symptoms – spilling my thoughts all over, threatening to make even harmless, delusional material seem realer than it should be taken to be. Indeed, as I slipped eagerly into bed with Rose, refusing to glance into that curtain-less, unlit window across our room, I shifted my thoughts to another woman, one who presently felt much safer to dwell upon, a mental process I could hardly resist because it seemed almost automatic.

  And that was how, only minutes later, thoughts about Chloe Linton, swirling around in my mind like some exotic dancer, sent me hurriedly off into a dream-packed sleep.

  9

  All that – my wife falling asleep early in the evening, and me reading the blog before rushing to bed later like some fretful child – had occurred on a Friday night, but over the weekend I didn’t feel much better. By this time, the weird virus or infection which had got inside my head seemed more bullish, pushing around my thoughts like fragile children in a playground, rendering each fearful of exposure, holding secrets firmly within.

  I took tablets and drank wine, but nothing helped, and after another disturbed sleep on Saturday night (I was mercifully unable to recall my dreams, even though I woke the following morning with an ache deep in my groin), I decided to go outside and get some fresh air, hoping the graspingly chill fingertips of advancing winter might pinch the malady from my bones.

  To my credit in light of where I ended up going, I need to say that I invited Rose along, too. But my wife refused, saying she must submit the first draft of her new novel the following week and hadn’t the time to spare. I was both pleased and disappointed by this response, but for very different reasons, and when I finally went outside to climb into my car, I felt the pain in my skull ease to some degree.

  I started driving, exactly where I wasn’t certain, but definitely in the direction of Leeds. I was so familiar with this route that I might have casually claimed that habit had taken over my body, but I knew this was a lie. The simple fact was that deep down, at a level of the mind beyond even the activation of muscle memory, I realised exactly what I was up to. But that didn’t make the experience of obeying such nebulous mental instructions feel like anything less than yielding to a compulsion, as if certain magical forces had conjured up a powerful form of magnetism, dragging me to a specific place.

  I’d never been to Pasturn, but had occasionally seen it signposted during my travels close to my place of employment. Once I’d come off the A-roads – wonderfully deserted during this non-working day – I advanced along a series of country lanes, enjoying the rapid transformation West Yorkshire could always manage between urban bustle and rural tranquillity. This new area reminded me of my home near Hebden Bridge, but I quickly suppressed any negative thoughts about what my wife might think if she knew where I’d headed today and instead concentrated on all the territory up ahead.

  It wasn’t as if I was doing anything wrong, anyway; this was merely a reconnaissance mission, seeking out the area of fieldwork being negotiated by one of my ablest supervisees. If it came to it, I could just claim that, regardless of it being a Sunday, I was simply taking my job seriously, making sure a promising student was as safe as the university rules claimed she must be. Only Rose could question that, but not because I was stalking anyone; indeed, however much my irrepressible thoughts kept turning her way, it wasn’t as if I planned to visit Chloe Linton’s home, let alone that of the newly expectant “Shaz” living directly opposite, was it?

  When I reached Pasturn, I slowed my car and carefully observed my surroundings. Most of the housing appeared quaintly dated and had a private, even secretive bearing that appealed to me. I soon headed for the village centre, where a crossroads of shops was accompanied by what looked like an infants’ school, a church and a small modern medical surgery. Any child born here in the future would certainly be in good hands, I reflected, but then quickly dismissed the notion as I took a turning to my left, towards a bank of trees I’d spotted at a distance. Surely this belonged to the woods I’d heard so much about recently.

  By now, it was early afternoon, and the feverishness inside my head had relented slightly. I imagined the mere act of driving had helped, something which had always felt to me like fleeing my troubles, but this certainly didn’t mean I believed it was my wife I’d hoped to escape. Far from it, in fact: now I was here, in this uncommonly quiet place – few people walked along the pavements, just an occasional male drinker with red-raw eyes staggering out of a pub – I felt a need for company, though my brain was still too clogged to decide who this should be. Rose seemed the likeliest candidate, but how much of that might be just nuptial familiarity, all the safe ground involved in a long-term marriage? I’m not suggesting that matters between us had gone stale lately – I’d never described myself as a passionate man, anyway – but I guess there comes a time in every relationship when the mind wonders what if.

  Thoughts like these were most unwelcome as I pulled my car into a kerbless roadside, where a stretch of trees had now concealed the green horizons, sinking deeper than my eyes could perceive. The local woodland was a surprisingly large body and had come upon me suddenly: one moment, I’d been driving past a network of small residential estates, and the next, there it had been, like some shadow writ large, filling my perceptual field the way an incipient brain tumour – or certainly some invasive affliction of the skull – might blemish vision.

  I didn’t get out of the car, simply sat there, with my engine idling, watching the depths of those woods, as if expecting…well, what exactly? What had I ever thought this impromptu visit might achieve? Was I seeking confirmation of my belief that, whatever function it played in this small community, the story about Donald Deere was just hearsay, rumour, nonsense? And why the hell should that be so important to me right now?

  Sitting there, still seeing nothing other than darkness lurking amid so many clustered trunks and stripped-bare bony branches, I turned my mind to my role as a professional, an academic tasked with supporting an eager young undergraduate. What intrigued me most about the case from a scientific perspective was the third research question arising from my student’s early survey. It was obvious why long-term residents of the village, along with so many women, should be familiar with the legend – the first group growing up hearing about it, the second mindful of its personal threat – but not why both older and younger people – the 65+ and 16-24 years old categories Chloe had identified – had demonstrated noticeably more knowledge of it.

  I was hoping that the next batch of research findings my supervisee
sent would enlighten me on this issue; I had a few speculative ideas, but none I would willingly give voice to, not until I had more evidence to work with. And in the absence of that emerging from all the woodland nearby (what on earth had I expected? Donald Deere stepping quietly out of that insect-ridden darkness, along with his coterie of misbegotten offspring?), I simply slipped my car back into gear, programmed my satnav to take me home, and then gently let out the clutch.

  I’d again got as far as the village centre when another sudden impulse struck me. I pulled over, unwary of doing so as the place looked so deserted this dim December day, and then removed my phone. Using a staff password, I had access to all students’ personal details stored in secure folders, and it was a relatively simple task to extract Chloe’s residential address. I don’t know why I felt the need to carry out this furtive act; a vague notion in my unsettled brain suggested that, as I’d driven all the way out here and was unlikely to visit again, I might as well take a quick look at the street in which my supervisee lived. This could even help me to visualise the scene of these supposed encounters, just as travelling to the Pasturn woods had surely done.

  Look, I’m nobody’s fool; I realised what nonsense all this self-justifying reasoning was. I guess I’m merely trying to be honest about what I was thinking at the time, about the decidedly strange place my psyche occupied, as if…well, yeah, as if none of these thoughts even belonged to me anymore – the familiar me, that is: the practical, guarded, quietly emotional person who’d grown up an only child, got married to the first woman I’d ever known intimately, and had since committed myself to a modest career in the social sciences, trying to make sense of exactly the kind of experiences I was going through now.

  Once I’d reprogrammed my satnav, I quickly turned the car around and headed for my ablest student’s home.

  Of course I never planned to go further than the end of her street. Okay, I know I hadn’t intended to go anywhere other than those woods, but this was different. There’d been nobody lurking amid all those trees, regardless of any creepy tales and spooky photos I’d heard and seen lately; I’d ventured there without consequence, knowing my prowling would go undetected. But there were certainly implications in straying too close to the young woman’s house, potentially a devastating change in our relationship, which I’d always sensed was on the verge of becoming something it shouldn’t be anyway. If she spotted me loitering, so close to where she lived, I’d never be able to explain myself, even by drawing on lies which I might – by coming here at all – have already begun to tell my poor wife.

  Despite all this sensible reasoning – despite every accessible part of my previously well-balanced mind saying no, no, no – I continued acquiescing to the seductive woman’s voice programmed into my satnav, as if driving in some kind of trance. Again, I experienced a profound sense of compulsion, of ungovernable magnetism, pulling me in that direction, churning my rational thoughts. By this time, there were troubling images rooted deep in my brain, of figures coupling, one older and the other painfully young. I felt simultaneously aroused and horrified, as if an act of blissful abandon might lead to years of personal damage, the loss of a marriage, a stable home-life, possibly even a career…

  But all of this could only occur if I got caught, couldn’t it? At any rate, that was what I kept telling myself as I eventually reached my destination, the narrow street described by Shaz in her blog, one flanked by twin rows of terraced houses, all with small, well-kept gardens.

  It was now that I felt impelled to tell myself a new lie. As I stopped the car in the roadside, leaving the engine running in case I needed to make a swift getaway, I sensed my body cool off, as if the virus that had made it so hot and impulsive appreciated this move to a more conducive environment. That was a crazy thought, of course – the stuff of implausible novels, like the ones Rose penned – but I was simply unable to suppress this conclusion. Now, parked so close to Chloe Linton’s property, it was as if the feverish symptoms I’d experienced recently had finally relented, my immune system doing its expected duties, leaving my head clearer and my reasoning sound.

  And this was the lie I told myself: I’d come here not to stake out my supervisee’s home, but to see whether the details presented in that blog entry I’d read the other night were supported by physical facts.

  It didn’t take me long to figure out what the problem was. From where I was parked, to the left of the street, I could see all the property on the right. As the nearest house beyond the kerb beside me was number 7, my student’s place – number 19 – must be six doors along, a clean, squat building which, at only a single glance, made my heart ache a little, as if someone so attractive and intelligent deserved far more… But I quickly put a stop to that sort of yearning and focused on the task at hand.

  If, as I’d been led to believe, “Shaz” lived in any of the properties directly opposite Chloe’s, it must be one of a few relatively rundown houses, each with only two visible windows: one downstairs – presumably giving onto a lounge – and another above: a bedroom situated about twenty feet off the ground.

  Short of hefting some great ladder through the streets at gone midnight, there was no way any person could ever get their head as high as this pane, glancing into the room beyond it with furtive scrutiny.

  It was nonsense, then – the legend, that blog, my student’s borderline belief in it all. And during our next meeting, I’d have to do everything I could to make sure she stuck to the project we’d agreed upon: exploring only its psychological impacts, the often weird dynamics involved in human experience, but ones no less amenable to a rational analysis.

  With this firm resolution in mind, I – without seeing so much as a single person during the few minutes I’d been parked there – backed away into the street from which I’d entered, and then, my body protesting only modestly on this occasion, began driving off.

  I tried not to think again until I’d reached my secluded home, and certainly entertained no further mental imagery, especially any pictures – sketches or photographs – I’d recently observed, telling me things I simply didn’t wish to dwell upon so soon.

  10

  She emailed me the following day, both asking for a meeting before Christmas and telling me she’d attached a new file, the transcript of her first interview carried out with a long-term Pasturn resident.

  It felt as if my dreams the previous night had summoned this communication, but, still feeling peculiar and to such an unpleasant degree that I’d seriously considered taking time away from the office and maybe even visiting a doctor, I resisted any such fanciful notion. I merely agreed to another supervision session later that week (I was working from home again that day, which had initially puzzled Rose, but she was too busy completing her new manuscript to interrogate me) and then settled down to read the document.

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

  Fieldwork interview #1

  [I = interviewer; P = participant]

  I: Thanks for agreeing to be interviewed for my university project.

  P: You’re very welcome, dear. I just hope I can be of some use.

  I: I’m sure you can. Now, as you’ve already signed the consent form, we can begin. So I just wondered if you could me a little about yourself.

  P: Yes. I’m Judy. I’m eighty-three years old and I’ve lived in Pasturn all my life.

  I: Wow. That’s pretty amazing. I bet you’ve seen some good times here.

  P: It’s a lovely village, dear. Quiet, but that’s the way I like it – my family, too. My daughter and then her daughter and now her daughters live here, too, so it must have something about it!

  I: All girls, too! That’s amazing. But you know, that’s kind of why I asked you to take part in my research. As I said before this interview began, it concerns a local legend – one about a man who once lived here called –

  P: Donald Deere. [laughs] Oh yes, I know all about
old Donald!

  I: Could you tell me more?

  P: Well, yes. We all heard about him as girls. This would be during the Second World War and just afterwards. Later, when things settled down a bit, I’m not sure he was talked about that often, and I’ve always had a theory about that, you know.

  I: Do you want to tell me about it now?

  P: Yes, I’d be happy to. It’s been a while since anyone other than my great granddaughters was interested in anything I have to say! It’s basically this, my love. Like everywhere else in the country, we lost a lot of young men during that terrible war, and as Pasturn, perhaps more than other places, was a bit of a walk away from the rest of Leeds, this presented a problem for us young women.

  I: How do you mean?”

  P: [laughs] Well, how do you think I mean, love? There were no young men around to court us!

  I: Ah, right!

  P: And I suppose that’s why the old Donald Deere story got – what’s the word? – got reactivated. Because some girls, many of my friends included, became so desperate that they started going off with any young man who showed his face in the area.