The Wood

by Guy N Smith

  'You wait here, keeper. I expect you know this place well, better than most of us here, but we'll call you if we need you.' We don't like civilian involvement unless it's absolutely unavoidable.

  'No, sir, I never come here.' Bean's tone was one of uncertainty, reluctance.

  'We don't shoot the wood any more. It ain't safe.'

  Too many bogs, eh,' Fillery cut in quickly. He didn't want this yokel to begin retelling the Droy legends. They were concerned with facts not rumours today.

  'You follow me, constable, and we'll take a look inside. We'll have to tread carefully, we don't want the whole lot collapsing on top of us.'

  Somehow the girders still held the doorway open, the door itself long gone, a dark dusty square remaining. Threatening, defiant; almost an 'abandon hope all ye who enter here', Houliston thought. But Fillery was moving forward with a cautious eagerness, peering inside, producing a torch and swinging its beam on the interior. 'Let's go inside,' he said.

  The torchlight revealed walls covered with moss and lichen, condensation which streamed down the stonework and dripped steadily into puddles on the floor. Houliston swallowed; the sound reminded him of a radio play he used to listen to as a youngster, propping his bedroom door open at night so that he could hear the wireless in the living room downstairs. A headless body in an empty house, the steady drip-drip of blood from the landing to hallway. Ugh!

  'Look!' Houliston jumped visibly as Fillery spoke, saw the CID man drop to his knees. 'Now that is very interesting!'

  The other checked the instinctive 'what?' The detective force invariably adopted a superior attitude over the uniformed branch, a kind of Holmes and Watson relationship; surely you see what I see.

  Jock Houliston leaned forward, peered intently at the floor. He saw slate chips and fragments, a mound of thick moss — and clearly imprinted on the latter was a naked human footprint. He felt his flesh go cold, start to creep, glanced back towards the doorway. Outside he could hear Roy Bean talking to some of the soldiers. Outside — it seemed a million miles away right now.

  'It's fresh, too,' Fillery breathed, 'see how the impression has squelched right down into the spongy moss which hasn't sprung back into place yet. A matter of hours ago, I'd say. Look, there's another. and another. Going right on into the hallway!' PC Houliston didn't want to follow his companion. Somebody was in here, there was no doubt about that. Fine, they were hunting a fugitive and that aspect did not worry him; if only it had been anywhere else except Droy House! The old stories came flooding back. Tales recounted by his father of how a few generations ago the Droys were the cruel landowners of these lands, how they assisted the Customs' officers in the apprehension of smugglers coming ashore on this deserted stretch of coast beyond the wood. Prisoners were taken, brought back here, some terrible tortures inflicted upon them. The villagers heard the screams in the dead of night and neither the smugglers nor their contraband were heard of again. Stories, fables. Fiction. You could tell yourself that any other place except here.

  'Let's see where they go to.' Fillery's voice echoed in the confined space as he moved forward, his torchbeam scanning every patch of shadow. Houiiston followed; he didn't have any other choice. Oh God, why couldn't all this have waited another year?

  'That must be the cellar.' Suddenly the white beam was focused on what looked like an open trap door in the corner of the hallway. Even Jock Houliston did not need the sharp-eyed detective to show him the piles of rubble that had been cleared from it; more moss, more footmarks. going right on down into the bowels of Droy House. 'Whoever it is, they're down there, all right!'

  Whispering now, the detective alert, his hand in the pocket of his raincoat. He was armed, he would shoot if he had to.

  Descending a step at a time, shining the torch on ahead of him, leaving no niche in the ancient stonework unexplored. There was no debris down here, the cellar having been protected from structural collapse, just bare wet walls and an overpowering stench of damp staleness. And so very cold. You sensed the evil.

  Houiiston moved closer to the detective, didn't want to be left alone in this awful blackness. He prepared himself for the gruesome sight of the murdered girl; she just had to be down here. Maybe Dark, too. And Foster. The place was bigger than you would have thought, like ancient catacombs stretching on and on, the dripping roof supported by stone pillars. All manner of frightening thoughts same to plague the Droy policeman; suppose the roof collapsed with the vibrations of their movements, trapped them alive down here. Catalepsy. Childhood bogies emerging from the cupboard. You do believe in spooks. Can't you hear them whispering in the darkness, touching you with their cold clammy fingers?

  'Christ on a bike!' Detective-Sergeant Fillery pulled up so suddenly that Houiiston cannoned into him, clutched at him to save himself from falling. They both stared, words were superfluous. In the torchlight they saw that they had reached the end wall of the cellar, built in a kind of bow, maybe eight feet high, some fifteen feet across.

  And there fastened to the stonework was a series of rusted manacles, five or six pairs of them with matching leg irons a couple of feet from the floor beneath them. You saw in your mind the pain-wracked bodies of centuries ago, broken limbs threatening to jerk out of their sockets; heard their cries of torment. Oh Jesus, you wanted to slap your hands over your ears to try and shut out the pitiful wails, the screams of women and children. You smelled death, the stench would never leave this place, the evil here would never die.

  'Well. there's nobody here.' Houliston uttered the words, a hint that they should be leaving. Something inside you told you to run, get the hell out. But the sharp-eyed Fillery had spotted something else. He was on his knees again, poking on the floor with a forefinger and holding it up to his nose, gingerly giving it a lick with his tongue. Then he straightened up, turned back to his uniformed colleague.

  'Blood,' he spoke in a whisper, 'fresh blood!'

  'Oh Lord.' Houliston recoiled a pace.

  'And more footprints.' The detective's features were pale in the reflected glow from the torch. 'All of 'em coming in here, stopping at this infernal wall. but none going back out!'

  'That's. impossible!'

  'Yes, if you look at it realistically, but it could be a trick though Christ alone knows what anybody would get out of setting up a thing like this. Undoubtedly this is an old torture chamber going back to the early eighteenth century. Not that that is going to figure in any way in our problem.' Somehow the detective's voice did not ring true. He, too, was scared beneath the bluff facade he had created.

  'Well, there's definitely nobody in the house,' Fillery told the waiting group as they emerged into the foggy clearing. The ground floor and the cellar are empty and the upper storey has completely fallen through. Let's continue with the search outside.'

  PC Houliston checked his watch. 11.30. God, they must have been in that place almost an hour. In spite of this foul stinking mist it was a relief to be outside.

  The line fanned out again, waited for the whistle to blow to send them forward again. If anything the fog was thicker, creating weird unearthly shapes out of the twisted marsh trees, boughs that became arms making threatening gestures at these intruders; the boles demonic faces screwed up in hate and fury. This is still the land of the old Droys, begone from it whilst you are still unharmed!

  Roy Bean whistled tunelessly through his buck teeth, a habit of his when he experienced a sense of inferiority. He almost always whistled on shooting days when he was surrounded by the visiting gentry with their Range Rovers and Purdey or Boss guns. Deep down he hated them, hated his own role which was to serve. Sometimes when this obsession really got the better of him he would take his.22 rifle, fitted with a silencer, up to the feeding points in the woods and pick off a few handsome cock pheasants as they pecked the grain he had thrown down for them. Rader, the butcher in town, would always give him a few quid for birds on the side. It could cost the gamekeeper his job if he was found out, but he told himself that the
risk was outweighed by the satisfaction of nicking half-a-dozen brace of the Agent's birds. It got him one up on the bastards and made him smarter than them. Old Houliston had had a fright, the keeper could tell from just looking at him, the way his ruddiness had paled, his hands shaking slightly as he fidgeted with his stick. Those two had seen something in there they didn't like. But no way was Roy Bean going to go back to the old house to find out. No, sir!

  He wished he could have carried his gun today. Damn it, he had every right to because Droy Wood was officially part of his game preserves. But that officious Superintendent had made him leave it behind in the van. 'Any guns, gamekeeper, will be carried by police marksmen only.' Yes, sir. Fuck you. The going was harder now, the reed-beds denser, the ground softer. Roy Bean used his long ash stick to prod the area in front of him, trying to find the firmer patches. This fog was getting thicker, too; you couldn't see the man on your right or left any longer, and the line could not close up anymore or they would not be able to cover the terrain systematically. At least that Superintendent had not objected to him bringing Muffin, the springer spaniel, along. Roy didn't feel right going anywhere without a dog on the estate. A day in rough cover like this would do her good, cool her ardour. She never walked, always ran; never stopped searching for a scent. If any of the missing people were in here Muffin would find them, long before those snarling police dogs did. Nevertheless, with the fog coming down like this he would have felt a lot easier with a gun under his arm. Christ, he only hoped that they had drawn it ail before dark.

  The liver and white springer had gone on ahead, probably on a rabbit scent. Roy whistled urgently. Hell, he didn't want her getting lost in here. No response, but he could hear her thrashing and splashing about in the rushes up ahead. He whistled again.

  Suddenly the spaniel bitch stopped, a second or two of silence and then she gave a cry, a yelp. Whimpering, yelping again.

  'Muffin!' Roy Bean stepped forward, felt himself sink into a patch of quagmire, the mud viciously sucking at him as though it sought to pull him down below the surface. 'Fucking hell!'

  Fear, anger, and even as he floundered, caught hold of a silver birch seedling, he saw the spaniel coming back. Her ears were flat on her head, her tail curled between her legs, running, whining and whimpering. Fleeing!

  'You stupid fucking bitch!' If his feet had not been so firmly embedded in the mud, Roy Bean would have kicked out at her. She ran up to him, came up close behind him. 'Stupid bugger, you'll knock me back in there. You'll. '

  His anger tailed off as he glimpsed a movement in the fog ahead of him, a shape materialising out of the swirling grey vapour. A man. At first he thought it was one of the search party, a soldier or policeman, perhaps, who had heard his struggles in the bog and come to investigate. But no, [he silhouette was wrong, the strange ill-fitting coat, the triangular-shaped hat with long matted hair falling from beneath it like a cartoonist's impression of a living scarecrow. And for a second, maybe two, Roy Bean was afforded a glimpse of the face and he almost screamed. Coarse features, partially bearded as though mange had taken its toll, sunken sockets that were eyeless yet saw; the mouth open in a snarl of anger displaying a double row of broken blackened teeth.

  And then it was gone, as suddenly as it had come, fading back into the fog as though it had never been. A trick of the half-light, the fog? Roy Bean would have settled for that explanation, told himself over and over again that it was an illusion, had it not been for the spaniel cringing and whimpering up against him.

  He knew only too well that whatever that thing was it existed. Dusk was beginning to merge with the thickening fog as the searchers finally emerged from the village end of Droy Wood, weary, mud-splattered soldiers and policemen, physically and mentally exhausted, the tracker dogs staying close to their masters. Nobody spoke, merely glanced dejectedly at one another, clustering together, waiting for the Superintendent to come across and dismiss them.

  Three missing people: a conservation officer, an attractive naked girl and a crazed sex-killer were not in Droy Wood.

  But everybody sensed that something was.

  Four

  Curled up against the bole of that dead tree Carol Embleton slept fitfully. And dreamed. An erotic, frightening dream.

  She was in a room, a dark gloomy place with no windows, sprawled on the cold stone floor. Naked. A man stood over her, legs astride, and glancing up she saw that he was naked, too. And aroused.

  Despair, then hope as she made out his features. Andy! Oh thank God! Until she saw his expression, the flushed angry cheeks, the blazing eyes, the lips curled in a contemptuous sneer.

  'You bitch!' He kicked her with his bare foot, brought a gasp of pain from her lips, had her cringing, throwing up an arm to protect her head in anticipation of another blow. 'You dirty little poxy whore!'

  Why, Andy, please tell me why?

  'You're going to bloody well answer my question and I want the truth!'

  Furious, squatting on his haunches, a fist bunched threateningly.

  'I'll tell you,' she sobbed. 'I'll tell you anything you want to know. I will!'

  'You'd better.' His face was thrust closer to hers and she smelled his breath. He had been eating peppermints again. 'You've been masturbating, haven't you?

  Answer me!''

  'Yes.' Shame welled up inside, the tears came in a flood. 'I have. And I'm sorry.'

  'Cow!' His fist caught her across the mouth, jerked her head back. 'And you weren't a virgin when I fucked you the first time. Were you?'

  'No.' Shuddering, almost on the verge of hysteria. 'I wasn't a virgin. You know that, I told you.'

  'Then tell me again.'

  'It was a lad out of the village.' She pressed herself back against the cold wet wall, rough stonework gouging her shoulder blades. 'Just the once. I swear it was only the once.'

  'And then you were soliciting on the roadside at night, getting picked up by motorists, getting screwed on the back seat. Weren't you? For Christ's sake, weren't you?'

  'No!'

  'Fucking liar!' Andy Dark's fist smashed aside Carol's frail defences, took her on the side of the jaw. She felt her teeth rattle, tasted blood. Oh Andy, I love you, you don't have to… 'What about that guy in the Mini after the disco. You rode him like you hadn't had any cock for a month. Didn't you?'

  'No… yes… Oh God, I had to, I swear I had to. He'd have killed me otherwise. He raped me.'

  Suddenly the room was much darker so that she could not see Andy any more, only feel him. Strong hands gripping her, hurting her, splaying her back on the floor, banging her head on the stones as he came on top of her. Thrusting her, slapping, cursing, and breathing peppermint all over her. 'And when I've finished fucking you I'm going to kill you. You won't get away this time!'

  Her brain spun, she felt herself going into a faint, starting to slide over the brink of that bottomless black abyss. Every bone in her body ached but she didn't mind the physical hurt. If only Andy. Andy. Andy… An… dy… She awoke crying, shivering with cold, staring into the blackness of a rain-soaked autumn night, still calling for Andy Dark until realisation filtered through her bemused brain. He wasn't here, he wasn't going to come. But he wouldn't do anything like that to her. Furthermore, he never ate peppermints. Everything came back to her. She was naked and alone in Droy Wood and there was a sex-killer somewhere around. Furthermore, she was lost and she would have to stay here until daylight. The tears out of her dream were still wet on her face and now she let them come with full spate. Gradually she became aware of a noise. At first she thought it was thunder, a resonant rumbling that vibrated the air, the distant sky lit up by vivid flashes that merged into a bright fiery glow. Almost dazzling if you looked at it long enough; frightening because you didn't know what it was. It was heavy gunfire, she came to that conclusion. And those shuddering explosions were bombs going off with incessant devastating force. The whole city was ablaze; she could even smell the acrid smoke in the air. Heavy aircraft droned, wave aft
er wave of them. Oh God, another war had broken out. This night, the whole world had gone crazy. Unless it was only another nightmare like the last one.

  That droning noise was louder, much louder. Carol Embleton cowered, instinctively hugged the lichen covered tree trunk against which she rested. One of the planes was coming this way, flying as low as those small pilot less aircraft sometimes did during training sessions across the coastline. Louder, deafening.

  She saw it the moment it burst into flames, a blinding flash, blazing debris, a sharp nosedive; clapped her hands over her ears in anticipation of the devasting explosion. The sky was a deep scarlet hue, surely a reflection of hellfire itself.

  She trembled, cowered. This was madness and she was mad, too. Staring skywards with frightened eyes, smelling the burning and in her mind hearing the screams of the tormented. Scudding fiery clouds deluging rain as though they were determined to douse the inferno. Something attracted her attention; at first she thought it was a weird shadow cast by the distant flickering flames. The moon showed itself briefly and in that instant she recognised the drifting silhouette, the billowing silk, the taut ropes which supported the man. A parachutist!

  Amazement, relief that he had escaped from that plane crash, searching the smoky sky for others but seeing none, experiencing again her own fear of flying. Air disasters filled her with a sense of horror; in a road accident you stood a chance but up there you had none, plummeted earthwards to certain death.

  The parachutist became invisible against the low cloud, possibly he had already landed, maybe he was caught up in the treetops, entangled in his trappings, hanging suspended from the branches, helpless. Or else he was lying hurt, a broken limb, unconscious, drowning in one of these shallow pools of water.

  One thought after another tumbled into her bemused brain. And amidst them a spark of hope glowed. An ally, somebody who would help her in return for being helped. An ally! Together they would find a way out of this dreadful place, he would protect her from the rapist. She must try and find the lone survivor from that plane at once, brave the bogs and the darkness. And the fog!