The Woodwitch

by Stephen Gregory

  ‘Go on, you fucking cave-peasants!’ Andrew began to shout. ‘Yes, go on, fuck off up into the mountains!’

  He lunged at them, roaring, and something in his blondness, the whiteness of his features which suddenly swelled purple with fury, something in the shagginess of his wet blond mane made the brother and sister turn from him and stumble away, splashing through the marshes, half-running, half-­staggering over the clumps of spiny grass. He watched them fade into the gloom, two small dark figures dissolving as their hounds had done in the lowering clouds of the crater. He listened to their fading footsteps. He heard his own breath rasp in his throat, the heaving of his chest . . . And then there was no sound, only the running of water down the slabs, a layer of sound which was so inescapable that it registered as a kind of silence . . .

  When they had gone, when the hounds had vanished and the terrier as well, he was alone in the crater. He turned to the corpse of the dog. A kind of romantic scenario flashed across his mind, of himself kneeling to stroke and kiss the head of his beloved pet and weep a few more bitter tears. It should have been the appropriate thing to do. But he could not. The twisted thing which lay trampled in the mud, with its teeth and eyes rearranged, with its bowels steaming and pink, with a coil of liquid excrement oozing hot and yellow from the rent where its tail had once been, was nothing like Phoebe. How could he kiss it? How could he continue to love it? ‘Is it you, Phoebe? Christ . . .’ He tore off the lead which had been hanging from his wrist and slung it from him, into the darkness. Very quickly, with his teeth clenched against the wave of nausea rising in his throat, he stooped to the thing and seized it where he guessed the scruff of its neck should be, straightening up with the body dangling from his hand like the remains of an old umbrella. It came out of the mud with a sigh of suction. He held it away from his chest, his head averted, and he swallowed very hard to keep down the taste of vomit. The corpse was black and slick, water poured from it and left it skeletal, its limbs jutting in the awkward angles to which they had been broken. Coils of shit spattered into the grass, splashes of brilliant viscous colour in the sombre shadows. Gagging at the stink of the rising steam, Andrew tramped in the direction of the forest, his arm outstretched to keep the thing away from him. With difficulty, he negotiated the barbed wire and then he was moving fast through the plantation, down the track. There were only his own clumsy footprints in what was left of the fall of hail, coming towards him, the evidence in the silver carpet of ice of how he had slipped and stumbled in pursuit of the chase. It was very dark. But the trail was easy to follow, white like a strip of bandage and winding steeply down through the black trees. He came to the body of the vixen and paused for a moment. She was dead, but she was still very pretty, blemished only by the wound of the single shot which had killed her and by the desecration of her brush. Momentarily he wanted to stoop and pick her up with his other, empty hand. No, he thought . . . she’d have to stay in the forest and be dismantled by the ravens. He moved on, following the pale light of the path, aware that the night had shut down the mountain and the valley and the forest once more. Even in the woodland of the birch there was very little light, for although the hailstorm had passed and left a veil of ice on the fallen leaves, still the sky was muffled by a layer of thick black cloud. He picked his way among the oak and the rowan, making out the angular shape of the cottage below him. The wellington boots slapped, his breath made plumes of smoke in front of his face, the black dead thing dangled and dripped a complicated festoon of slime from its belly. And the man stepped to the front door of the cottage.

  He put down the thing he was carrying. Unlocking the door, he was in and out in a matter of seconds, bringing the torch from the living-room. He shone it on the corpse and caught the leer of its broken mask in the circle of light. Taking a deep breath, he picked it up again and followed the torchlight to the woodshed.

  Somehow the stench was a comfort. And so was the droning of the flies. When he stepped inside, he felt secure in the close, warmer darkness which the beam from the torch made golden. He relaxed. The hum of industry! The feeling that things were working! The atmosphere of bustle and business and commitment! The badger turned slowly on its hook and stared at Andrew. It smiled. It sighed and released a clutch of dry pupae from its nostrils. The swan shivered its vast wings, caressing the bristles of the badger with its silvery breast. A cluster of flies tumbled noisily from under its tail, like drunks being manhandled from a pub. The bird and the beast hung on their hooks. Andrew ran the torchlight up and down the badger and the swan, comfortable in the little woodshed . . . there were the logs he had so lovingly cut, stacked neatly by the walls, sweet-smelling, drying to be ready for the flames.

  He felt easy in the outhouse, in the shrine he had prepared to the god he worshipped. It was the shrine which he dedicated to the stinkhorn.

  He put down the torch on the logs so that its beam shone up towards the rafters. The feel of the place had calmed him after the exertion of the chase and his rapid descent through the woodland, there was something soothing in the presence of the two dead things and their work-force of flies. And here was another dead thing. Using both hands now, having lost his disgust for it, he swung the dog in front of his face and looked for the right spot on its mutilated body. Its head hung down, like the badger’s. He lifted it easily higher, to the next vacant hook. The tip of the hook pressed for a second into the matted fur of the dead thing’s belly, found a place where already the skin had been broken by shot and by the teeth of the hounds, and it slid smoothly and deeply in. Andrew held his breath. Very gingerly, not sure how secure it would be on its ruptured belly, he let go and stood back. The dog rearranged itself now that it was inverted: it hung on its hook, the tangle of viscera falling over its chest, the diminishing flow of slime seeping down.

  ‘Splendid . . .’ he whispered, picking up the torch. ‘Yes, you’ll do . . .’

  He retreated to the door of the woodshed so that he could have the overall view of the scene: the interior of a dilapidated stone outhouse, its clutter of tins, paint and paraffin, the walls stacked with an assortment of logs, birch and rowan and oak and even some twisted limbs of ivy; and, illuminated by the single golden beam of light, his three dead things in different stages of decomposition. The dog was just a beginner, with a lot of catching up to do. Badger and swan and dog, on their three hooks, with the torch-running tenderly up and down their dangling bodies . . . All of this so that the presence of the stinkhorn might be perpetuated.

  The torchlight led him back to the cottage. Turning on the lights, he glanced briefly at the basket and its rumpled blankets in the corner of the room, but, before any twinge of sentiment could be triggered by the sight of it lying empty, he was distracted by the drumming of the flies in the cupboard. The two jars were stuffed with buzzing black insects. More and more of the pupae had developed rapidly in the heat and the tumult, so that the jars vibrated with a riot of clambering bodies, the beating of hundreds of pairs of wings. Repelled, Andrew turned from the scene, his heart pumping again wildly as it had done in the forest. A vision of the stinkhorn swam into his mind and burned there, eclipsing everything else into a dim blur.

  He spun round. A cold panic gripped him as he surveyed the mantelpiece.

  The penultimate stinkhorn had risen to a full erection. But now, already, it was wilting. Its head slipped down the inside of the jar. In the warm dampness of the cottage, while he and Phoebe had been clambering upwards through the forest, while he and the dead thing had been slithering down again, while he had been making his third offering to the shrine, his god was up. It must have stretched itself aloft within the prison of its jar, fine and white and brazen, with no mesmerised onlooker to worship it. Quite alone, unspectated, the stinkhorn had risen to its one and only occasion. Not a soul on earth had seen it. Andrew groaned. Both hands flew to his head, smeared with blood and mud and excrement, where they gripped into his hair with a passion of frustration. He bolted back to the cupboard and grabbed one
of the jars in which the flies were writhing. ‘Here, take these!’ he was panting, ‘please, please! These are for you!’ and he attempted to make his sacrificial offering to the exhausted phallus. He slammed down the jar of flies, frantically unscrewed the lid of the stinkhorn’s jar, put it back on the mantelpiece and took up the flies again. In his hurry, in his clumsiness, as he tore off the cellophane skin, he dropped the jar on to the hearth . . . It smashed into hundreds of pieces. ‘Christ, oh Christ!’ he screamed, as scores of flies broke on to the carpet and grappled hysterically to get themselves airborne. He trod away in horror, but the flies rose in a single, droning black cloud and beat around his head. He shouted, he flagged his arms and windmilled them, but this only sucked the swarm more densely to his face. They banged their heavy bodies into his mouth, against his glasses, they drummed at him as vigorously as they had drummed to be released from their prison, while, on the rug, popping under his feet as he danced to disentangle himself from the flies, the spillage of pupae lay on their bed of sawdust. Unable to think clearly, Andrew thought only of the stinkhorn, the image of its recent erection burning in his head. He reached forward to the mantelpiece and seized the jar whose lid he had unscrewed, and, lurching across the room, his mind ringing with curses and all kinds of bizarre blasphemies against the god he had worshipped, he tore the door open . . . He flung the jar as far as he could into the darkness of the hillside. The cloud of flies followed him out of the cottage. Just as he heard the shattering of the jar against a rock, as though they had heard it too and were desperate to search out the relics of the thing for which they had been reared in confinement, the flies blew away from his head and vanished as one mass into the night. Andrew was panting like a walrus, still trembling from the panic which overwhelmed him. He ran his hands through and through his hair to shake out any laggardly insects, he stared away from the light of the cottage . . . There, he found the blackest expanse of the opposite hillside and focused hard on it. For the time being, the spectre of the stinkhorn was gone.

  When he was almost calm again, he went inside. With a brush and dustpan he swept up the mess of sawdust, he made sure all the shards of glass were picked up too and went around to the back of the cottage to deposit them in a heap of ashes. In those few moments in darkness, he made up his mind about what he was going to do next, so that there was no drama or passion in it. He wanted everything to be quite clear, quite uncomplicated, so that nothing would distract him. After all, the jars which contained the obsolete stinkhorns, still on the mantelpiece, were no use. Why had he kept them there? They were finished! They were gobbets of dead mucus! He collected them, the two jars in which the phalli had risen and fallen, never to rise again, and, one after the other, he hurled them with all his might where he had hurled the first. He listened with satisfaction to the splintering of glass. He smiled to hear the sheep stampede.

  This done, he stepped into the cottage and closed the door. ‘No more clutter now,’ he said. ‘There’s just you and me, and nothing else.’ He addressed this to the single jar remaining on the mantelpiece. Of the four which had been there, one was left. In it, the last stinkhorn egg in Britain lay warm and ripe in its bed of moist earth. ‘Just you and me and a few flies.’ He sat down in the armchair. ‘I’m going to watch you. I’m not going to let you get away.’ He wondered whether to wash himself, for he was very dirty. No, he’d remain smeared with mud and blood. He wondered about lighting the fire, to comfort his vigil. No, no fire tonight. No distractions. He wanted nothing, no dancing golden flames, no aromatic sizzling to spoil his concentration. Turning the lights down, he reached for a blanket. That was all he needed. There was no need for a fire.

  He noticed then the portrait of Phoebe. The little green slug had not only crossed the expanse of glass, but it had been back and forth half a dozen times. In doing so, the slug had finished the job of defacing the picture which the damp had so thoroughly begun. The trails of slime glistened on the glass. There was nothing much left of the dog’s face, for its eyes and its teeth had been rearranged into a blur of black and grey. So, he thought . . . the stinkhorn had escaped the tomb of glass in which he’d tried to imprison it. The silver slime of the slug was the stinkhorn’s signature, on Phoebe’s death-warrant.

  Andrew rose from the armchair and went into the kitchen. Picking up the salt cellar, he returned to the mantelpiece. ‘There,’ he said, ‘this is for Phoebe,’ and he poured the salt on to the slug. Instantly it writhed from the glass. It landed on the hearth, where he administered more salt. The slug contorted and shrank into a ball of green pulp, like snot. ‘Go on, you bastard . . . Scream . . . Can I hear you screaming?’ When the slug lay still, Andrew put down the salt cellar. He removed the disfigured painting of Phoebe from the wall and placed it, face downward, in the dog’s basket. Having done this, having resisted a surge of sorrow which threatened to overcome him when he smelled the familiar scent of the dead creature’s blanket, he took down the rest of Jennifer’s pictures and leaned them against the wall in a corner of the room. Good. Good.

  No distractions. No bleary impressions of Sussex. No memories of Jennifer. No Phoebe. No picture of Phoebe. No relics of the obsolete fungi. No fire.

  He settled down to the vigil. Outside, as ever, the mountain and the forest and the woodland were smothered by the night. The cottage huddled under the black blanket. And inside, waiting and watching, there was Andrew Pinkney, never flinching his eyes from the one unblinking eye of the last egg. Long into the night, he awaited the hatching and the arrogant erection of his one remaining stinkhorn.

  VII

  The hours of the night limped by, cold and painful.

  Huddled in his armchair, Andrew watched the jar and its imprisoned egg as determinedly as a falconer would watch his falcon. That was how a man might tame a wilful, haughty bird of prey, bend its will to his, by keeping it awake until it finally accepted defeat and slept on his fist. For Andrew, the task was to remain alert enough to catch the first stirrings of the egg, when­ever that might be, in the bleakest and most silent depths of the night or at dawn the next day, or later still, or later still, or . . . Hours or possibly days could pass, and he must be vigilant or be beaten by the stinkhorn.

  His head became heavy and it nodded. And then he would lurch himself awake, rub his eyes and stare once more at the mantelpiece. Nothing had changed. Only, wherever he looked, at the ceiling or the bare walls and their blossoms of mould, he saw the ghost of the woodwitch, hovering like a pale, unearthly candle before his vision. It was branded on him. It was everywhere, following him. He could not shake it off with any amount of rubbing or blinking. When he closed his eyes, the stinkhorn burned more brightly still against a background of darkness, a white, ethereal column which had come to haunt him. The need for sleep became greater as the night wore on and he felt colder. When he dozed, his head falling on to his chest, then the spectre of the stinkhorn was eclipsed by a persistent dream which flickered in and out of focus like an ancient newsreel . . . He was in the forest. He was being pursued through the black, clinging trees. As he ran and stumbled and fled, his face was lashed by the branches, everything was dark, there was no path, he blundered blindly among the ranks of the trees and felt their bristles sting him and cut him. Behind him, the sound of his pursuers grew louder, their inexorable splintering footfalls through the undergrowth, louder and louder, closer and closer, until he was sure he could feel the weight and the heat of their breath on the back of his neck . . . He was shouting, he was struggling to breathe, he was suffocating in the smothering grip of the forest, while the footsteps over his shoulder increased in volume and became a rhythmic crashing, faster, noisier, nearer . . . Then, unable to fight his way any further through the trees, he would turn to face the hunters. This was when the nightmare shifted from one blur to another, for at one moment it was the sheep which thrust their blackened, manic masks at him and breathed a blast of fetid breath, and then it was the hounds, lolling their fleshy, blood-flecked tongues, and then they b
ecame a pack of braying women, imbeciles the lot of them, big women with hard smiles on their mouths, a pack which was led by Jennifer and by the kennel-maid and by Mrs Stone . . . Just as he was pinioned by the stares which glinted from Jennifer’s glasses, or as the kennel-maid’s tongue loomed pink and wet, when he felt the heron-woman’s gimlet beak come close, he would leap to wakefulness, find himself swathed deeply in his blanket, its damp folds wrapped about his face. He sat up, trembling, sweating. In horror of the dream, and panic-stricken that he might have slept through the stinkhorn’s performance, he jumped to his feet to inspect the jar . . .

  Nothing had changed.

  He paced the room, with the blanket around his shoulders. He recited aloud some clauses of the 1968 Theft Act (for he knew no poetry or dramatic speeches), he sang a few verses of the hymns with which he had been indoctrinated at school, but always the lure of sleep led him back to the armchair. The imprint of the stinkhorn glowed in front of him. The night stretched ahead and seemed to have no end; like the forest which was the killing-ground of his dreams, it gathered around him and would not let him go. More fitful sleep, and again the nightmare of the pursuit among the trees . . . More dreadful inspections of the egg in the jar . . . More hours alone in the silence with only his tuneless voice for company . . . And the unshakable presence of the stinkhorn.