Two trails lead from it into the woods. One is wide, and ribbed as though outlined by a giant ladder half-buried in the earth. The other winds through a thicket, and he takes it at once, trusting the trees and the undergrowth to betray any attempt to pursue him.
The thicket is more extensive than he anticipates. The trees blot out the sky with branches so closely entangled that it’s impossible to tell which foliage belongs to which. The leaves of the shrubs which mass between the trees, narrowing the path, look starved of sunlight; some are pale as the fungi which swell among the roots. Roots encroach on the gloomy path, so that he has to keep glancing down as he sidles through the thicket, peering ahead for the end.
At first he’s able to ignore the way the darkness seems to creep closer around him whenever he examines the path, and then he tells himself that it’s bound to grow darker as he progresses. But the darkness feels like a sign of pursuit—it feels like a sack which someone is poising over his head. Glaring over his shoulder, he sees that the thicket has closed in behind him, obscuring the view beyond it so thoroughly that the park and the city might never have been there at all.
Though he can neither see nor hear anyone pursuing him, his sense of being followed infests the woods. Foliage gathers overhead like eternal night, fungi goggle at him from beneath the mob of shrubs. He can’t keep glancing back, because many of the shrubs between which the path meanders are full of thorns on which he’s liable to tear himself. When he fixes his attention on the way ahead, however, he has the impression that he’s allowing a pursuer to gain on him—that the dented head is about to crane over his shoulder, protruding its eyes and its discoloured tongue. “Stay out of my mind,” he whispers, grabbing at branches and letting them whip savagely past him.
He feels as if he has ventured into a maze of thorns whose points are catching at his mind. He’s tempted to retrace his tracks, but when he turns he sees that the branches which he let fly have blocked the path, rendering it indistinguishable in the gloom. At least the way ahead is passable, since initials and whole words are carved on the trees beside the path.
He’s less inclined to welcome these signs of life once he succeeds in identifying the words. A tree to his left is inscribed vertically with one word: sockets. A flap of bark has been left hanging from the next tree as though to expose the words dream or scream. Most disconcerting is the message displayed by a trunk on the opposite side of the path—nearly a tree—because when he surveys the woods beyond it, several of the trees seem unconvincing, more like wood carved and assembled to masquerade as trees. He sidles between the thorns as rapidly as he dares in the gathering darkness.
The path bends sharply, and as he approaches the bend he observes that the trees directly ahead of him are carved with words from their roots to their crowns—tree after tree, leading his gaze into the depths of the woods. It seems to him that the thorny gloom must contain words enough to fill at least one book. Should he force his way through the bushes to read them? Perhaps the thorns won’t injure him, for he’s beginning to identify with them, beginning to think that the thorns themselves must have scratched the words on the trees; he can’t imagine anyone struggling through the mass of them to do so. He feels as if the thorns aren’t reaching for his mind after all, they’re reaching out of it. He tries to grasp that impression, but it’s too like an embodiment of the dark for comfort. He drags his gaze away from the engraved trees and edges along the path.
The woods are loath to release him. Thorns snag his rucksack and his shoulders; he feels as if the contents of the rucksack are trying to delay him. How long has he been stumbling through the woods? Will he ever be out of the dark? He’s suppressing a fear that the path may have turned back on itself, because wherever he looks in order to pick his way he’s confronted with paragraphs gouged out of timber. He’s afraid to rest his gaze on them even for a moment, knowing that he’ll be compelled to stand and read them while the darkness continues to gather.
Now the thorns ahead are rising above him as though to drive him back. The rucksack tugs at his shoulders, the thorns overhead seem to writhe. He winces from side to side of the path, convinced that he can feel thorns reaching for his eyes. His left eye twinges as if the point of a thorn has touched the surface of the eyeball, and he claps one hand over his eyes and gropes forwards with the other. The skin beneath his fingernails is tingling with apprehension. No thorns have pierced his fingertips, however, when the rucksack slumps against his spine and he flounders into the open.
It’s almost as dark outside the forest as it was beneath the trees. Glancing back, he sees that he has emerged through a gap in a hedge which, in the darkness, looks impenetrable. The path, or his deviation from it, has led him into the back garden of a large two-storey house.
Light from a kitchen window and between the curtains of the adjacent ground-floor room lies on the worn grass, trapping him in the intervening darkness. He’s preparing to dodge through the narrower ray and sneak around the building to the road when he recognises the house. The curtains may not be familiar, but the gap-toothed look of the arch above the curtained window is, and the tilt of the bricked-up chimney and the droop of the handle of the back door. This was once his house.
The gap in the hedge was his doing. No wonder he was able to place the woods; they were his refuge whenever he found that he couldn’t think in the house. He remembers taking care to leave the thorny branches intact, to make it harder for anyone to follow him. He remembers returning from the woods one day to find his children carving their initials on the kitchen doorpost, glancing fearfully towards him as the hedge creaked. His wife ran through the kitchen to rebuke them before he could lose his temper, but listening to her reasoning with them was more than he could bear. “Give me the knife,” he said to her, and saw the blade flash in all their eyes. “Maybe one day people will know this was where we lived.”
The initials are there on the jamb, all four sets of them. The pile of final letters appears to depict a steady hum, a lullaby which he can almost hear and which makes him feel dreamy and safe, home at last. The situation isn’t so simple—he can’t assume that he will be received with open arms—but surely once he sees his family he’ll recall what happened in the interim. He creeps along the track of darkness, grinning in anticipation of the sight of their faces when they become aware of him. He’s halfway across the lawn when a man appears beyond the gap between the curtains of the downstairs room.
Mottershead throws himself flat. The lawn feels like a mattress hardened by age, prickly and full of lumps. Is the man a burglar or some even more dangerous intruder? Mottershead gropes around himself in search of a weapon and finds a rake, its tines upturned a few inches in front of him. If he’d taken one more step before prostrating himself they would have had his eyes. He draws the rake towards him between the strips of light and begins to raise it through the shadow so as to grasp the handle.
The rake is perpendicular in front of him when he wonders if the man, who has passed the gap between the curtains, may be in the house by invitation. He can’t assume that, he has to establish that his family is unharmed and not in danger. He has been pressing both hands on the tines of the rake in order to lift the handle; now he lets go with one in order to reach for it. His other hand can’t support the weight, and the rake totters. As he tries to grab it with both hands, it falls into the light with a thump and a clang.
He digs his hands and face into the soil and lies absolutely still. The curtains rattle, the light spreads over him, and then the sash of the window bumps up. “Are you all right, old chap?” the man calls. “Stay there and we’ll get you.”
Mottershead seizes the rake and hauls himself to his feet. The man, who has a long face and a mane of reddish hair, looks concerned until he sees Mottershead clearly; then he frowns. “I lived here,” Mottershead gabbles. “I’m just going.”
“No hurry, old fellow. Perhaps you still do. Come round the front and we’ll see if we can find your room. Shall we pu
t the rake down? It’s a bit late for gardening, don’t you think? When it’s light we can see about finding you your very own plot to look after.”
Mottershead lets the rake drop. His embarrassment and discomfiture are giving way to panic, but he has to be certain that he’s right to leave. “My wife and children aren’t still here, are they?” he says as calmly as he can manage. “The Mottersheads.”
“I’m sure they’ll be here at visiting time. Let’s go round the front now and I’ll let you in.”
Mottershead makes himself stroll to the corner of the house. As soon as it conceals him he breaks into a run, intending to be past the gates by the time the nurse opens the front door. But he slows to glance through the window in the side of the house.
Beyond the window is the dining-room. All the furniture has been replaced. About a dozen old folk wearing plastic bibs which cover their chests are seated at a trestle table draped with cellophane. Brawny nurses of both sexes stand behind them, spooning greenish slop into their toothless mouths or removing slices of bread which two of the diners have placed on their own heads. One nurse seems about to knock with her knuckles on a balding woman’s skull but desists, simpering, when she catches sight of Mottershead. He puts on speed again, too tardily. As he rounds the house, the male nurse opens the front door.
He raises his long face towards Mottershead like a hound on the scent. “Sorry to have bothered you,” Mottershead calls to him, backing towards the gates. “I should be somewhere else by now. I’ll be on my way.”
The man’s face seems to elongate as his mouth opens. “We’ve someone who’s a bit confused here. I don’t think we want him wandering off.”
He’s addressing two of his colleagues who have just stepped into the drive. Their eyes gleam with the light of the streetlamp outside the gates; the rest of their faces are covered with surgical masks. They move to either side of the drive and advance on Mottershead like mirror images, each stretching out a hand to take him by the arms.
He waits until they’re almost upon him, his neck twitching as he watches them over his shoulder. At the last moment he dodges around them, leaping and nearly falling over what’s left of his wife’s rockery, and dashes across the car park which most of the front garden has become. He swings himself around an upright of a sign naming the Wild Rest Home and manages to drag the right-hand gate open as the concrete catches at its bolt. Struggling through the gap, he clashes the gate shut and looks back.
The nurses have already caught up with him. Though he didn’t hear them following, all three are close enough to touch. The eyes of the masked nurses are far too large; their masks are so flat it seems impossible for them to be concealing any features. Their companion’s face points like a hound’s towards Mottershead, and he poises himself, eager for the chase, as they each seize one of the gates. “Stay,” Mottershead cries, and flees into the dark beyond the streetlamp.
Has he strayed back into the woods? Surely the suburban street ought to lead to a main road, but he’s having to dodge around trees which sprout thickly from the pavement and even, it seems, from the roadway. There must be houses; he sees the flickering of televisions, though their screens appear to be among the trees themselves rather than in rooms. If he has turned the wrong way at the gates, it’s too late to rectify his error. The single lamp has already been blotted out by trees dripping with mist, but he knows his pursuers are behind him. He runs towards the sound of an engine revving somewhere ahead.
It’s a bus, and he doesn’t care where it’s going so long as it helps him escape. When he glances round he sees that the nurses are gaining on him, the long-faced man’s nose quivering above the bared teeth, the others flanking him, their lack of faces glimmering. The sound of the engine is moving gradually to Mottershead’s left, and he sprints in that direction, trying to avoid the patches of unsteady light where he glimpses figures watching televisions, unless the shapes are monumental statues which have collapsed in front of marble slabs. Then the long-faced nurse draws level with him, leaping over the source of one patch of flickering, which seems to freeze him for a moment so that Mottershead can see him clearly: face like a hound’s skull, pallid flapping belly, limbs white and thin as bones. He drops to all fours and bounds ahead, ranging back and forth while he waits to see which way Mottershead will dodge.
Mottershead runs straight at him, praying that will make him falter. Instead the man leaps to meet him, his eyes bulging as whitely as his teeth. Mottershead lurches aside and puts on a final desperate burst of speed, which takes him away from the sound of the bus. There are no lights where he’s running, only trees which loom in front of him whichever way he stumbles. “I won’t go back,” he tells himself, unable to say it aloud for the clamping of his jaw, feeling as though even his voice has deserted him. He swerves around another tree and another, and suddenly he’s in a narrow passage where weeds and branches overhang the high walls. He dashes along it, tripping over bricks which have fallen from the walls, and at last it lets him into the open.
He’s on a street which winds between dark dumpy houses. All the houses are derelict, as are the cars parked beneath smashed lamps along both sides of the road. Nevertheless the street isn’t entirely lifeless; he hears the creaks of rusty springs, and several bunches of heads rise to watch him through the glassless windscreens, their tiny eyes glittering like raindrops. He peers along the brick passage, which for the moment is empty, and tries frantically to judge which way to run. The groaning of the engine becomes audible once more, and the bus grinds into view between the houses to his right.
The vehicle is dark except for its guttering headlamps. He stares at the passage again and sees three figures racing towards him, stretching out their arms until it seems they could finger the ground without stooping. He forces his way between two cars. They crumble when he brushes against them, and he feels them shake as he disturbs their occupants. He staggers into the road, waving his hands wildly at the bus.
Is it really bound for somewhere called Frosty Biceps? He hasn’t time to reread the destination, he’s too busy trying to catch the attention of the driver, who is bent so low over the steering-wheel that his forehead appears to overhang his eyes. The driver sees him and lifts his expressionless face, whose features are squashed into a concavity between the jutting forehead and prominent chin. The vehicle slows, and Mottershead digs in his pocket for the envelope of money. The bus halts a few feet away from him and the door wavers open.
He hasn’t reached the platform when the vehicle starts to coast forwards. Glancing behind him, he sees hands drumming their fingers on the walls at the end of the passage, three hands on each wall, as if his pursuers are only waiting for the bus to forsake him before they run him down. “Help me,” he pleads.
The driver doesn’t brake or look away from the road, but his forehead and chin relax sufficiently to let him open his mouth. “Get if you’re getting,” he mutters.
Mottershead clutches at the metal pole beyond the door and hauls himself onto the platform. At once the bus sways around the next curve, barely missing two derelict cars and almost throwing Mottershead off. He hangs onto the pole until the door drags shut like a curtain rusty with disuse, then he takes one hand from the pole to reach for the envelope. “Ferry?” he says hopefully.
“You’ll end up where you have to go.”
The driver seems to begrudge him even that response. Mottershead wraps his legs around the pole, feeling like a monkey, and tries to hold the envelope steady while he inserts a finger beneath the flap. “How much is it?”
The driver jerks his head, vaguely indicating the depths of the bus. “You’ll have to deal with him.”
Presumably he’s referring to a conductor, but the vehicle is too dark for Mottershead to locate him. No doubt he’ll come to Mottershead, who clambers upstairs as the bus sways onwards. As soon as he’s on the top deck he clings to the banister above the stairs and peers through the grimy windows.
The passage down which he w
as chased is already out of sight, and the road is deserted. Otherwise the view behind him and ahead of him is less reassuring. The spaces between the houses are piled high with refuse: crumpled cars, bent supermarket trolleys, handless grandfather clocks hollow as coffins, huge verdigrised bells, television sets with doll-sized figures stuffed inside them, their faces and hands flattened against the cracked screens. He can’t tell whether the hulks beyond the houses closest to the road are buildings or abandoned buses. He staggers to the front seat and falls into it, sitting forwards to let the contents of the rucksack settle themselves, and then he sinks back.
There’s movement above him. A round mirror is set in the ceiling over the cabin, allowing the driver to survey the top deck through a spyhole. Having spied Mottershead, the driver returns his attention to the windings of the road, and Mottershead looks back. As far as he can distinguish in the thick gloom, he’s alone on the upper deck. He gazes ahead, willing the landing-stage not to be far.
He rather wishes he hadn’t noticed the mirror. Its bulbousness stretches the driver’s forehead and chin so that his dwarfed eyes and nose and mouth appear to be set in a crescent of flesh surmounted by a tuft of whitish hair. The feeble headlights flicker over the derelict suburb, and Mottershead has the impression that the houses themselves are stuffed to their roofs with refuse; certainly the figures in the gaping windows are being thrust towards the sills by the tangled masses within. As the bus swings around a curve, scraping several cars, he thinks he sees a figure lose its hold on the second-floor sill where it’s perched and fall headfirst onto the concrete. He can’t be seeing all this, he tells himself; it’s just that he hasn’t had a chance to recover from the day, from the effect which the man with the unreal pate had on his mind. Another figure plummets from a window, the impact flinging its head and all its limbs in different directions, and he realises that the figures are dummies. He shouldn’t even be watching, he hasn’t sorted out his fare. He tears open the envelope and brings it to his eyes.
The Mammoth Book of Nightmare Stories Page 40
