Beast of Robbers Wood

by Ralph E. Vaughan

  The old man looked down. “Things aren’t the same anymore.”

  “The way people look at you?”

  Hardwick nodded. “I’ve known them all their lives, watched them grow up. I haven’t changed, but they certainly have. The way they acted…” He groaned. “I think they might have killed me had not Mr Ravyn come along when he did.”

  Misery, confusion and a sense of loss were writ large in the old man’s features. Looking at him, Stark almost felt sympathy for the fellow, a feeling he fought off, for the most part.

  “If you don’t have any information for me, I have…”

  Hardwick grabbed Stark’s coat sleeve when he turned. A harsh look from the detective, however, and he dropped it as if it burned his hand.

  “Tell me,” he said. “Did Lisa Martin come back?”

  “Yes, she did,” Stark said after giving Hardwick a penetrating glare. “DCI Ravyn and me, we found her coming out of the woods up around a portion of Old Pike.”

  “Tucker’s place?”

  Stark’s eyes narrowed. “That’s right.”

  “That’s right near the Temple…not far, relatively.”

  “What?”

  “She was the Intended,” Hardwick said. “She was taken by the High Priest to be the Bride of the Beast at the Temple.”

  “High Priest?”

  “The servant of the Beast,” Hardwick explained. “It is he who serves and propitiates the Beast, keeps it sated till it returns to its long slumber. He conducts rites of appeasement at the Temple of the Beast when the stars are right.”

  “What are you on about?” Stark demanded. “What happened to you saying…” He tried to recall Hardwick’s exact words, but failed. “You said there was no such thing as the Temple, and you didn’t say anything about a High Priest or a Bride.”

  “Secrets are meant to be kept, Sergeant,” Hardwick whispered. “I know many things I dare not speak, not when…” He glanced at the brooding forest huddled on the other side of the lane. “Not when I live in the shadow of the Beast, within hearing of the High Priest whose face is never seen.”

  Stark’s lips pulled into a grim line. “My guv’nor may give you some rope, but, to me, you’re nothing but a nutter, a dangerous one at that. I’ve wasted too much time with you already. Stay out of my way or I’ll nick you for wasting police time.”

  Hardwick again grabbed Stark’s sleeve, this time not letting go till the sergeant slapped his wrist. He cradled his smarting hand.

  “You have been warned, Mr Hardwick.”

  “You must tell Mr Ravyn,” the old man said. “The Bride of the Beast escaped and another has been chosen. The Beast will be given her when the stars are aligned. He must know! You must tell him!”

  “Nutter!”

  Fuming, as angry at losing his temper as he was at the old man for provoking him, Stark stalked to the forest’s edge. Looking back, he saw Hardwick still at his gate, small and lonely. Stark turned back to his work, expelling Hardwick from his thoughts.

  He thought about keeping Ravyn ignorant of Hardwick’s latest drivel, then decided he did not dare.

  Chapter 12

  Elder Woods

  “I’ve been up and down the high street, in and out of every shop, and had two other constables knock up residents on every side street and lane along the way,” PC Lessing said. “They’ve all got copies I made from the snap I got from her aunt, but nothing has come from any of it. Isn’t right, sir. I don’t understand how all the villagers could have missed seeing the girl.”

  “You’ve done her whole path?” Ravyn asked.

  “Me personally, sir, or men I can trust—no locals for that,” said the constable from Deeping Well. “All the way from the school to Shadow Lane. And we searched the Coldspring home too.”

  “They gave permission, did they?”

  “Not a bit of hesitation, sir,” Lessing said. “The Coldspring girl is put out over an exam Elizabeth was supposed to tutor her for, but the parents seem genuinely concerned.”

  “What about the council houses?”

  “Two men going through, also with a photo of the girl, but there’s not that much to the place, sir,” Lessing said. “I’ve seen worse foisted on villages. Only ten or so families in the mix, and most of them like it well enough here to keep their nippers in check. Nothing to help our enquiries.”

  “You don’t think the answer will be found there, PC Lessing?” Ravyn asked. “Amongst strangers?”

  “No, sir, I don’t.” The young constable reddened. “Begging your pardon, sir. It’s not my place to…”

  “No, go ahead, Constable,” Ravyn said. “If you have a thought about the case, I’d like to hear it.”

  “Admittedly, I don’t know people here near as much as I do in Deeping Well, but they’re not really that different,” Lessing said. “For all they think know each other, they really don’t. Know each other. I mean. They keep secrets, don’t they?”

  “Deep secrets, held for generations,” Ravyn said.

  “Yes, sir, that’s exactly what I mean,” Lessing said. “You know a family for five, maybe six generations, think you know all there is to know, then—bang!—out of the blue you get surprised.

  “There was a bloke in Deeping Well, name of Lovax,” Lessing continued. “Everyone knew him, knew his dad and all the Lovaxes before him since Cromwell cut his teeth. He was the last of the line. When he popped his clogs, his cottage got sold to a London man, vacation home that. Doing renovations, what do the builders find?”

  Ravyn nodded, for he well knew what the builders found.

  “A bevy of beauties walled up in the cellar, a half-dozen of them,” Lessing said. “Seems the Mr Lovaxes were unlucky in love, all their missuses running off. Only they never run off, did they? Including the last missus. It’s like that here. Whoever took the two girls, it’s someone the villagers see every day and think they know. Only they don’t know him. The secret squirrels could learn a thing or two about how to keep secrets from these folk.”

  Ravyn said: “You might be right, Constable.”

  Lessing, who thought he might have gone too far with the chief inspector, breathed a silent sigh of relief. Other times, his views had not been appreciated by those who were quick to let him know just who his betters were.

  “I had better check on the men, see if anything has turned up,” the constable said. “If it all comes to a dead end, I’ll move everyone over to where Sergeant Stark is.”

  “No, not everyone,” Ravyn said.

  Lessing’s eyebrows shot up. “No, sir?”

  “Whatever happens, I want you and one other constable to stay near the village centre.” Ravyn said.

  “Do you think she’s here somewhere?” Lessing asked. “I talked to Sergeant Stark and he said it was going to be the woods.”

  “Ultimately, it might be,” Ravyn said. “But, as you say, there are always secrets in plain sight.”

  “Yes, sir,” Lessing said. “I guess so.”

  Lessing was rough around the edges, but those edges, Ravyn noted, were sharp. Midriven and Lessing would be a good match.

  “See you later, sir.”

  Ravyn chose a point where he could view the length of the high street, Midriven’s main thoroughfare. One end of it, which joined the river road to Stafford, was anchored by the village school and some of the newer developments; the other, heading off to Deeping Well, led through the oldest and poorest section of the village.

  As he looked over the shops and car parks, the pub and other buildings, Ravyn layered past memories of the street. The few folks out and about in the waning day mingled with phantoms of the recent past, at times with their own misty doppelgangers.

  The area along the new housing up the road was a fallow spot, he noted. Villagers hurried past, and the people living there kept to themselves, strangers in a strange village. Even the usual lounging louts were absent, likely off in Stafford or one of the larger villages where there was more to do than nothing.
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  People spoke and greeted, nodded in passing, but their gazes were not penetrating. They did not look closely at their neighbours. After generations of familiarity, why would they? They accepted façades as bone-deep reality, just as they hoped others would not see past the surface to their own hidden secrets.

  A misty buzz of humanity hovered about Stoneman’s shop. In any village, everyone eventually came to the post office for pension payments and gossip, and to the general store for all other needs. Visitors passed through Ravyn’s memory of the earlier mob.

  He frowned. Entering Stoneman’s, he had found Zoriah within, ranting and chanting, but his initial memory placed him outside the shop. He watched as Zoriah came from around back, hurrying to join the others. His face was etched with an expression of mad glee. Ravyn sent the memories back to the pigeon-holes of his mind; the agitated mob and the demented old man vanished like mist, leaving only a lone pensioner making his way out of the shop.

  Ravyn pushed through the door. He was assaulted by a cloud of scents redolent of Abofyl, the tiny river village at the confluence of the Orm and Dresal, his birthplace and home till the accident. Even smaller than Midriven, it was a true one-horse dorp, as his dad was wont to say. A visit to the post office, mother holding his hand, was also a visit to the general store, news agent, chemist and tobacconist. He breathed in the smells of newsprint and candy, fresh bread and rum-laced tobacco. For a moment, Ravyn indulged himself in the memories of a happier, simpler time.

  “Good afternoon, Chief Inspector,” Wendell Stoneman said. “Has there been any word yet about the Jenks girl?”

  “Not so far, but it’s early hours yet.” Ravyn held the door open for an elderly woman, who obviously desired to linger, but who had no reason to stay. He smiled graciously as she passed, a smile that evaporated with the closing door. “The only thing we can say with reasonable certainty is that Mr Hardwick had no part in it.”

  Stoneman reddened. “Yes, that was unfortunate. In a village, a rumour spreads like wildfire. One moment, old Hardwick was in with his account book, the next he was pinned by those ruffians.”

  “Seems odd,” Ravyn noted, “the mood changing like that.”

  Stoneman shook his head. “Things happen.”

  “No, I mean that a well-known pastime should rise to the fore.”

  “An obsession, you mean.”

  “Whatever you call it, everyone knew of it.”

  “It was no real secret, if that’s what you mean, Mr Ravyn,” the shopkeeper said. “We knew he kept watch on Robbers Wood and we knew he took snaps of birds walking Flintlock Land and around the village, but what was anyone to make of it? Lots of geezers have hobbies to keep them busy—Colonel March stages battles between toy armies, Harold Winthrop builds model airplanes, and it’s a rare day in summer when we don’t see Mr Stapleton pursuing a butterfly through a field with a net.”

  “Yet no one assaults them.”

  “You should not think poorly of us over what happened with old Hardwick,” Stoneman said. “The circumstances…the…” He shook his head and threw up his arms. “I really don’t know what set everyone off. I was trying to calm everyone down.”

  “Yes,” Ravyn said. “I could see that.”

  Stoneman licked his lips. “Well, nothing really came of it. He was a bit shaken, naturally, but not hurt. Give it some time to blow over. Things will go back to normal.”

  Ravyn’s mobile chimed. “Ravyn.” He listened for a moment, then said: “Bride of the Beast? Sounds like a bad Hammer Film. It’s not mentioned in any of his books.” He listened a bit longer. “You are probably correct, but I had better talk to him anyway. He’s where? All right. I’ll stop by there after I finish at Stoneman’s.”

  “Is there something I can do for you, Chief Inspector?”

  “Actually, I stopped by to see your father.”

  “Dad?” Stoneman frowned. “He doesn’t know nothing.”

  “I’m told he is a wealth of knowledge about the village.”

  “He can tell stories, I’ll say that much for him,” Stoneman said. “He does tend to ramble now and then. And rant. He’s not quite right in the head at times. Well, you saw him in the Ned Bly.”

  Ravyn nodded.

  “He has his good days and bad,” Stoneman continued. “Lately, it seems the bad days outnumber the good. That day at the pub was one of his worst. You shouldn’t make too much of what he says.”

  “May I talk to him now?” Ravyn asked.

  “I don’t know.” Stoneman rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “All this excitement about the missing girls, it really has him upset. He’s getting very hard to handle. I’ve been thinking maybe it would be for the best, putting him in a home. He doesn’t want to, but…” He sighed. “I’m really getting to the end of my tether with him. People are reluctant to enter the shop lest they be accosted by him.”

  “Is he here?”

  “I don’t want him upset.”

  “I’ll try not to upset him.”

  “If it’s local stories you want, go to the pub,” Stoneman said. “There’s always a hovering of old geezers talking up the old days as they quaff it down. Buy them a pint, they’ll tell you all they know, more than you’ll want to hear.”

  “I think your father will be better able to help me.”

  Stoneman sighed in resignation. “Very well. I’ll get him, but I will not tolerate you upsetting him.”

  “Would it be all right if I went back to see him?” Ravyn asked. “He might be less volatile if I speak to him privately, and, of course, you would not have to take time from your duties.”

  “That might be better, I suppose,” Stoneman said. “I don’t like to have him about unless necessary. He tends to harass customers with his foolishness.” He paused in thought. “You should not expect complete lucidity from the old man. He is often confused.”

  “I only have a few simple questions,” Ravyn said.

  “And you’ll not tire him, I hope?”

  “I’ll be as brief as possible.”

  “How long?” Stoneman asked.

  “No more than ten, fifteen minutes.”

  “Very well,” Stoneman said. “Through those curtains, down the corridor, then right, third door on the left. Be sure to knock. Loudly. The old man doesn’t hear as well as he used to.”

  Ravyn nodded and pushed aside the faded green curtains. The corridor beyond was lit by a single fly-specked bulb halfway down. Open storerooms lined both sides, all stacked with boxes and barrels containing the necessities of village and farm life. He turned right.

  A flickering fluorescent fixture created more shadows that light. He tried the doors as he approached Zoriah’s room. They were all locked. At the third door he knocked, then again, louder, when there was no response. He heard a short croak of a sound that might have been anything. He eased the door open.

  “Mr Stoneman?” he said. “It’s DCI Ravyn, Stafford CID.”

  A single taper at the centre of a small square table was the only illumination in the room. Faint breezes from the open door made the flame dance. A gaunt figure sat in a chair facing the door, his eyes bright in a nest of shadows. Two bony fists rested on the table, just inside the wavering circle of light. Skeletal arms vanished within rough grey sleeves.

  “Mr Stoneman?”

  The figure’s head raised slightly.

  “May I come in?”

  “Aye.”

  Ravyn sat in the only other chair, across from the old man, his back to the door. The room had two windows, both covered over to prevent all but the barest hint of light from intruding. The shadowed walls were laced with darker lines, but it was impossible to trace their form and purpose in the gloom.

  “You’ve lived in Midriven a long time, haven’t you, Zoriah?”

  “Aye.”

  “And all your fathers before you.”

  The old man chuckled. It was a flat, toneless sound.

  “Did I say something funny?”

  “Stra
ppers always say funny things.”

  “A strapper because I was born in Abofyl, not Midriven?”

  Again, Zoriah uttered a deathly, mirthless chuckle.

  “I see,” Ravyn said. “They’re all outsiders, aren’t they?”

  “Clever strapper, you,” Zoriah said. “We were here before there was a here, before strangers came.”

  “Before those who built Midriven?”

  “Maybe you’re not so clever after all.”

  “Before the Norse raiders and the Saxons?” Ravyn suggested. “Romans? Celts?”

  “We spat on Rome,” Zoriah said. “We watched the tree priests call upon their mewling gods.”

  “The Beaker People who crossed the Channel when there was no Channel,” Ravyn said. “Did your folk come with them?”

  “Only yesterday did they raise the standing stones and henges,” Zoriah said. “They stretched youths across the bloody altars. Called for the sun to rise, to dispel the darkness. They prayed for protection from night terrors. We watched them from the elder woods. We didn’t come from nowhere but here. That’s why even those born in Midriven are naught but newcomers. Strappers all.”

  “Most people don’t know where they come from.”

  “That’s right,” Zoriah agreed. “No memory.”

  “But you remember, don’t you, Zoriah?”

  “Long memory.”

  “And Wendell, too?”

  “Prat!”

  “Why do you say that about your son?”

  “The boy tries to be one of them, thinks they’re as rooted as we are because they’re born here,” Zoriah said. “He don’t see them as they are. They’re all newcomers with but shallow roots. They never lived in the shadow of Shudmell’s Realm, did they?”

  Ravyn frowned. He had lived almost the entirety of his life in Hammershire County. Exposed to the idiosyncratic lexicons of the many villages and regional dialects, he rarely came across unknown words or phrases, much less a proper noun. They almost always left a linguistic footprint on some map.

  “Shudmell’s Realm?”

  “The elder woods,” Zoriah said. “What they now call Robbers Wood, and Freya’s Forest afore that. Fools! The Old Gods can’t be banished by changing a name. Ain’t those girls proof of that?”