by Adam Cloake
“Maybe she just reminds you of someone,” Sean replied casually.
“Yes. Maybe she does.” In his voice was nostalgia, mixed with malice. “I’ve met a lot of women in my life.”
They walked towards Miranda, the ground uneven beneath their feet. Broken pieces of old bark crunched and crackled as they walked. Apart this, the only sound was the song of the birds – some sweet and mellow, others throaty and raucous.
Miranda turned and started into the forest. Above her, a slight breeze rustled the gnarled upper branches of the trees.
The men followed, Sean walking behind Hill.
Suddenly, Hill turned and stared at him. It was a fierce look. It seemed to challenge Sean, asking him why he would presume he had permission to join them. The man’s disdain was frightening.
The look lasted for a few seconds. Then, Hill turned, and continued after Miranda, as if he had chosen to simply ignore Sean’s presence. Sean shivered, collected himself, and followed him in.
A few seconds later, all three of them had entered the forest. They were walking in file, each separate from the others.
The early morning sunbeams slanted through the trees ahead of them. The light blinked as they passed under the branches, as if sending them coded signals – of welcome, or of warning!
From behind him, Sean could see the intensity on Hill’s face as he turned his head from side to side while passing certain spots. They both knew what these places were. Sean had seen the photographs, but Hill had been here himself, many times. His victims had been found buried in various sites around here. Hill was either unaware of how his excitement made him look, or he didn’t care.
After ten minutes, Miranda abruptly stopped, and turned to face them. She was standing beside an old, weathered tree stump. Sean could see that the stump had been covered with symbols. The freshness of their reds and greens glinted in the new sunlight. It looked like an altar.
The men, too, stopped, and waited.
Hill was closer to her, about forty away. Sean was a few paces behind him, where Miranda had asked him to be.
“That spell you used all those years ago…” she began, her voice just loud enough to cover the short distance. “It wasn't strong enough, Derek. That's why you were caught. Just one little bite on the hand, and it was all over for you. Well, I've been doing a little work of my own. There are things I've learned that even my mother didn’t know. I've got a whole new spell for you, Derek. And it's perfect!”
“Your mother?” Hill asked, his voice reflecting the search taking place within him. Then, with recognition, he said, “Yes! Your mother! Of course! You’re Hettie’s little girl.” He chuckled. “You’re still so pale, my dear.”
Miranda’s smile broadened, as if she had been expecting a comment like that. Sean knew that she was ready to begin.
She spread her arms to either side, her elbows slightly bent, her palms open. Her chest expanded as she filled her lungs with air. Then she shaped her mouth into an “O”, her lower lip pushed slightly outward.
She exhaled slowly. The sound of her breath was strangely amplified. It seemed to fill the entire space around the three of them, like the echo of a distant pan pipe.
Finally, she tilted her head back, sending her breath upwards, in the direction of the treetops.
In an instant, Miranda’s magic began to happen.
From where he stood, Sean saw the rain of colours before Hill did. From the branches directly above Hill’s head, there floated down a gentle cascade of petals – a mixture of red, blue, and purple. Sean couldn’t see where they were coming from. It was as if they had been hiding, invisible, among the leaves, waiting for their turn to drift towards the earth. And now they were doing their duty, making their slow, lyrical descent. They rested gently in Hill’s blonde hair, bounced off his shoulders. He raised his hand before him, and the petals landed softly in his palm, some brushing past the tips of his fingers. He seemed transfixed by the wonder of it, as Miranda continued to speak.
“Love-Lies-Bleeding,” she said. “Or amaranth. You’ve seen this flower before, haven’t you, Derek? My mother often used it. Do you remember?”
“Yes,” he whispered, his voice seeming to come from a distance. “Amaranth. I remember it. And I remember her.” He looked closely at a set of tiny wreaths – intertwined blue petals – which now lay on his palm. “And this is Monkshood! And ground fern seed!” He massaged the brown grains of fern between his fingers.
“And black hellebore!” she added, as a new torrent of darker petals joined the shower.
The number of falling petals was increasing, and so was the pace of their descent. What was beautiful a few moments earlier had now become ominous, almost frightening.
“Together they will conceal you, protect you, better than any spell you’ve ever tried. I’m giving you a truly powerful gift, Derek!” Her voice was becoming louder.
“It’s too powerful!” Hill said, the panic clear in his voice. “It’s too much magic! You’re trying to destroy me!”
“No!” she replied. “I’m trying to send you back to prison!” The petals abruptly ceased to fall.
Suddenly, Hill ran at her. His feet sent the petals on the ground flying off to left and right.
Sean, taken by surprise, rushed after him.
Hill gripped Miranda by the throat. She stood, allowing him to dig his fingers into her.
Two seconds later, Sean was on him. He grabbed Hill by the shoulder, trying to spin him around. Hill swung one arm back, using it to bat Sean’s hand away. He released Miranda, and punched Sean on the side of the head. Sean staggered backwards. With his right knee, Hill stabbed a painful blow at Sean's thigh, then pushed him backwards. Losing his footing on the treacherous ground, Sean struggled to stay upright. He could barely think what to do next, so his instinct took over. He had enough time to see Hill throw another punch at his face, so he quickly dodged aside. Hill’s fist swung past him, his body twisting around after the punch, causing him to lose his balance. This gave Sean some vital seconds to prepare. Before Hill could steady himself, Sean had time to push him away, keeping hold of his jacket. He then delivered a punch of his own, which landed squarely on Hill’s mouth. The punch was hard enough to split Hill’s lip, as his teeth tore some of the skin from Sean’s knuckles.
But Hill was younger and stronger. Before Sean could prepare a follow-up, Hill had righted himself. He lunged, shoulder first, throwing his entire weight at Sean’s body. Sean couldn’t prevent himself being pitched backwards. He fell, his back landing on the edge of Miranda’s altar. Winded, he could do nothing to stop the continuing attack. Hill pounced on him where he lay, and punched down at him three more times. One of the blows was hard enough to burst open Sean’s eyebrow, causing blood to spray into his eye. Through a wavy, red haze, he could see Hill preparing to follow up with a potentially lethal series of blows.
Sean closed his eyes.
He waited for the next onslaught of pounding pain.
But it didn’t come.
A few seconds later, he opened his eyes.
Hill was gone.
Sean was looking up at a blue sky. There were no clouds.
He blinked a few times to clear his blood-diluted vision. Now he could just make out the figure before him – Miranda. She had a look of sadness and regret in her eyes. “I'm sorry you had to go through that, Sean,” she said.
“If I had been Robert Mitchum, I would have hammered him to a pulp,” he smiled, as a film memory came to him from out of the past. He was surprised that he still had the strength for such levity.
“You did just fine, dear,” she answered, helping him to his feet. She then used a handkerchief to stem the trickle of blood from his eyebrow. He could feel that there were plenty of other cuts and bruises on his face. Sean concentrated on keeping himself steady, though, despite the waves sloshing around in his head.
“Did it work?” he asked her, glancing around to survey the area.
“Yes, I think
it did,” she replied, letting out a relaxing sigh.
“And is he really…?”
“Yes,” she replied. “He is.” She had already explained to Sean where Hill would be when this was all over.
“Maybe we shouldn’t have…” He didn’t finish, the uncertainty of the morning still niggling at him.
“I know,” she answered, a heavy hint of doubt in her own voice. “I’m still convincing myself that this is all right.” She looked straight at him. “But I will convince myself, Sean. And so will you.”
He hesitated, staring off at one of the treetops. When he looked back at her, she was gazing at him. There was an appeal in her look, mixed in with her guilt. He nodded, then smiled, and said, “We’ll be fine, love. We had our reasons for doing this.”
She smiled back, and took his right hand in hers. It was the hand he had used to deliver his one good punch. On his knuckles were tiny rolls of broken skin, pared back to reveal spots of drying blood. But there were also small traces of clear, glistening wetness.
“This is precious stuff,” Miranda said.
He knew that she was referring to the saliva around his wounds. It had burst from Hill’s mouth, and onto Sean’s fist, during the scuffle. Some of this foul stuff would have seeped into the wound itself. Despite his rancour at the thought of Hill’s saliva being part of him, he understood how important the substance was to their plans.
Miranda placed a dock leaf around his knuckles, then wrapped the whole hand in gauze. As he watched her do this, Sean said, “Everything you do is fascinating. Is there any chance you might teach me some of these tricks of yours?”
“They’re not tricks, Sean; they’re spells,” she answered. “Or charms. And yes, of course I’ll teach you. In fact, the first one you’re going to learn is a very important one.” She smiled up at him, “It stops other people from reading your thoughts.”
He smiled back. “You mean, people like you?”
“I mean, especially people like me.” She finished wrapping his hand. Hill’s saliva was now safely intact within the dock leaf.
“Okay, let’s go!” she said, as she turned to leave the forest. “First, we need to get Hill’s things from your car.”
“Right,” he said.
“Then I’ll bring you to the dead man I left on the mountain.”
At first, he thought it was just another shaft of sunlight through the trees, playing a trick with his eyes. Whatever had caused that strange bright flash, it made him feel instantly disoriented, as if he had stepped out of time, if only for a second or two.
As soon as he regained his equilibrium, he could see that everything around him was wrong. Totally wrong!
The Probation Officer was no longer on the ground in front of him.
He should have been lying bleeding against this tree stump, but there was no trace of him there.
He turned around to find that the witch had vanished as well.
He stood up and looked around him. There were other changes here. What were they?
The light! And the cold! And the birds!
A few seconds earlier, it had been a bright early morning in autumn. The sun had felt crisp on the back of his neck as he delivered all those satisfying blows to the face of the Government Man. But now, it felt as though much of the sun’s power had been muted. He didn’t feel cold exactly, but there was a greyness in the air which was different from anything he had felt before.
He listened. The forest, whose sounds had been so familiar to him for years, was completely silent. The birds had stopped singing. Even the wind had disappeared, leaving the trees still and lifeless.
His anxiety growing, he walked back through the Woods. It was just as he remembered, but it felt completely new to him. Even the places he had visited many times before – the places where he had brought the women – felt like alien territory. Being this close to the burial grounds he had created had once given him such pleasure. Now, he felt that some strange force had stolen this feeling away from him.
The petals – the hellebore, the amaranth, the monkshood – were still lying in a mound where he had last seen them.
But there was no sign of the man or the woman anywhere.
And then, he did see someone. Further along the way, not far from the place where he had entered the Woods, he saw a woman with blonde hair. She was standing with her back to him, slightly obscured by trees. He walked towards her.
As he drew closer, he saw how perfect her body was. The anxiety and fear brought on by the morning's uncanny events was gradually dissipating.
Slowly – very slowly – the woman turned around to face him, and he saw how young and beautiful she was, despite a strange greyness in her skin tone. She stood gazing at him. There was a calm sadness in her face, offset by the resolution in the set of her jaw.
There was something red around her neck, the most colourful thing about her.
Suddenly, a visceral memory struck him. The thing on her neck was silk.
And he had seen it before.
He had seen this woman before.
He was filled with a wave of excitement and dread. The excitement came from the memory of how he had raped this woman, over the space of an hour, here in these very woods.
The dread, however, was more powerful, for he knew that he had also ended her life. Her corpse was buried just a few feet from where he stood. And yet, she was here – alive – in front of him.
He turned his face away from the grey woman. Now he realised. Those petals! That whispered chant! The young witch had tricked him!
He was about to break into a run but, before he could, he saw another horribly familiar figure, standing just to his left. It was the woman's five-year-old son; also killed; also buried. The small child was staring at him with that same sadness as his mother – as his mother's corpse – but with more steel in his eyes. He had only one ear. The left one had been battered into the crater the man had made in his skull. Seeing the boy reminded him of the wet, muffled sound the rock had made against the fragile bone.
Trying not to scream, he ran back the way he had come, towards the entrance of the Woods. He was sweating, mostly from fear, by the time he reached it. He promised himself that, if he found the witch and the Probation Officer anywhere near here, he would kill them both.
He looked around for the place where the treeline ended, where the road would be almost visible beyond the ridge.
But he couldn't find it.
As he ran around, frantically searching, he realised that his surroundings had somehow shifted. He had seen these trees before – just moments earlier – but not here, not in this part of the forest.
Suddenly, he froze him in his tracks. Off to his right, standing rigidly, he saw the same blonde woman. She remained as silent as before, glaring at him with her dark eyes. She appeared to be standing in the same place where he had first seen her, even though she should be back there, behind him. Somehow, he had run around in a circle, but he had no idea how this was possible. The familiar place where he had entered this forest wasn’t here. But it should be here!
It should be!
Again, he ran. Again, he was forced to stop.
Standing just yards from him were four new figures, just as familiar, and just as dead as the first two. Beautiful women in their 20s and 30s, and one twelve-year-old girl. They each stared at him with the same grey, chilly silence as the surrounding forest.
He remembered some of them better than others, but he had met them all before. He had attacked each of them here in these Woods, and he had buried each of them, some while they were still alive.
He couldn’t stop himself. He cried out, “You want to kill me, don't you?” A cold, self-assured man, he was not used to the sound of his own screaming voice. “Well, come on, then! I'm here! Come oooonnn!”
As he uttered these last words, he lunged at the woman closest to him. She quickly stepped to the side, as if she had anticipated his attack. His hand briefly touched her shoulder, the m
omentum propelling him past her. The sensation in his hand shocked him. The woman’s body was cold and hard, like winter stone. Nonetheless, he righted himself and grabbed the throat of another of the grey women. This one stood still, allowing him to clasp his hands around her, just as Miranda had done. The memory of the witch, and the trap she had set for him, brought a surge of hateful strength into his fingers.
But it was no use. The coldness of the woman’s skin was repulsive to him. The throat he was squeezing was rigid and unyielding.
Not since he was a child had he felt this powerless.
He never found his way out of the Woods. In the beginning, he spent a lot of time looking for it, but he gave up many years ago. None of his dead companions have ever spoken to him, but they remain with him always. When he wakes in the morning, they are there, watching him, and they follow him throughout each day. He still thinks in terms of “day”, “morning” and “night”, but these words have long since lost their meaning for him. The sky is always the same grey colour, and the sun never moves from behind its chilly cloud. There are no seasons – not any more.
He never hears a sound in the Woods, aside from those he makes himself. There are no birds to rustle the leaves, and no forest animals to dart out in front of him and break the monotony of the pathways. He cannot remember the sensation of a breeze on his face. The only foods are berries and roots, and he drinks water from a small algae-covered lake. Soon the memory of real food fades.
He senses that there are people – living people – walking these pathways, sometimes quite close to him. But he cannot see them, or hear them. They exist in a different world – the world that he once shared with them. He wonders if they can sense him in the same way, as some ethereal presence standing beside them. And is it a warm feeling they get from him, or a cold one?
He made his first suicide attempt less than a month after his arrival, but the little boy stopped him. He had gone looking for the sharpest stick he could find, then tried to skewer it into his throat, around where his jugular is. Just as he began to draw blood, the boy – Michael had been his name, once – appeared beside him. With a firm little hand, the boy took the stick from him. His eyes – one of them partly sunk into the hollow of his skull – were as dark as ever. But there was a glint of compassion there as well.
