by Jack Lewis
Inhale, exhale.
Count to ten.
Inhale, exhale.
Loe performed the ritual that had become way too familiar to her, ever since she had gone to the doctors five years ago with a mild case of heart palpitations. A flurry of consultations and tests later, she was diagnosed with a condition that had a big, fancy, scary-sounding name. She really, really hated hearing the word. So, she decided to call her condition Clive, since it was impossible to be scared of anything named Clive.
Clive’s sole purpose in life was to screw with Loe’s mind. If she got too stressed or overexcited, Clive would start squeezing her heart like a cobra crushing a mouse, threatening to make her pass out or worse. Fainting was the start of it. If she didn’t keep an OCD-like check on her stress levels, things could get a hell of a lot worse. Keep feeding Clive, and he’d turn into a monster.
That made it a crappy deal. She needed to stay calm, but she had to be incredibly uptight about her way of life to do so. She had to be obsessive about her calmness. It was like an axe-wielding maniac jumping out of the shadows and screaming at you to not be scared.
For now, she banished thoughts of missed funerals, estranged siblings, and lost little girls and woodcutters from her mind. She breathed until her pulse slowed into an acceptable rhythm.
Then, she started doing something else that never failed her when a problem threatened to overwhelm her; get practical about it.
Getting out of the car, adorned in her black dress and white trainers that she liked to drive in, she considered one question: What did a chut-chut-chut sound and a dead engine mean?
There were no warning lights on the dash. The lights still worked. She turned on the radio and heard a dozen voices hissing at her, but that was just the interference from being so far out in the country. Nothing wrong with the battery, at least.
She checked the battery cables, oil, fuses. Nothing. She turned the key in the ignition again, and her car gave a few weak coughs but didn’t start. She took a look at the air filter, spark plug, fuel pump. Nothing wrong that she could tell.
Everything she checked slowly narrowed down her choices until she had only two left. She wasn’t going to be able to get her car going, so she could either walk through the forest to Harrow Hall, or hike back to the village that she’d driven by on the way here.
With no GPS or mobile phone signal, she couldn’t call any car rescue people out, and she didn’t have a clue how far into the woods she was. She hadn’t thought that she’d need to know; after all, all she had to do was follow the road and she’d reach Harrow Hall. She hadn’t factored her car dying into the mix.
Not that she needed her phone to orientate herself. Loe had done lots of survival courses over the years. Ones where a group of them would go into the wilderness with an instructor, who would show them how to do all kinds of things. Make fires, navigate using the stars, find running water.
Then she graduated to tougher classes. Ones with instructors who were always on hand but wouldn’t step in to help unless there was real danger. Then she stopped taking classes completely, and she’d go into the countryside alone and last for a week, a fortnight, sometimes longer, on barely any provisions, finding everything she needed in nature.
It was a game to her. A game, and an addiction. There was something thrilling about being out there alone, knowing that if something went wrong, if she broke her ankle or something, nobody was around to help. Like Russian Roulette using mother nature as a bullet. Except, there was less chance involved than in roulette, because her survival depended mostly on her own skills.
She decided that it would be better to walk back to the village since there’d be a mechanic there. Harrow Hall was a few miles closer by her best guess, but she was damned if the first impression she’d give her siblings would be of her sweaty and covered in dirt from having walked all the way there, and then asking for a ride out to her car.
She had just taken a step in the direction of the village when something changed in the forest.
The birds stopped singing. The wind died. It was as though someone had put the world on pause. Or worse, smothered it.
Then came the sound of twigs crunching, leaves scrounging. Something fluttered away from a tree.
A cold dread settled over her.
As nonchalantly as she could, Loe walked to the back over her car and took her tire iron from the trunk.
“Are you in trouble?” said a voice.
An old woman was standing ten paces away from her. Skin wrinkled to a prune-like state, her pallor almost greyer than elephant hide. Her eyelids drooped and made her eyes look slit-like, and her back was bent under an invisible weight. She wore a gown that reminded Loe of gas lamps and penny farthings, and the numerous multi-colored splotches that adorned it could have made for a great guess the stain game. if such a game existed.
It was disconcerting enough to see someone all the way out here, someone who didn’t have a car, and all the more sinister that it was an old woman. How had the old bat gotten here? How had an ancient, bent-backed lady hobbled her way out here where the birds had stopped singing and the wind seemed to have fled?
Loe’s pulse throbbed a little and she felt Clive begin to stir, so she focused on a breath or two, and then decided to utilize whatever help this old woman could give.
“My piece of crap car decided this was the perfect time and place to throw a fit.” Sorry, car. I didn’t mean that. “Typical, eh? That’s what you get for not doing due diligence before you steal them. I should have picked something better.”
The old woman arched an eyebrow.
“A stupid joke,” said Loe. “Borne out of nerves and a poorly developed sense of humor. Do you live around here? Could I be cheeky and ask to use your phone?”
The old woman smacked her dry lips. “A person can ask what they like, Chloe.”
“You know my name?”
More dry lip-smacking. “Loe is short for Chloe. It doesn’t take a genius to work that out, dear.”
“Right. Of course. Is there a garage in the village? A tow truck or something?”
“Truck?”
“In Eldike village. Is there someone who can come out and help me?”
“You don’t want to go to Eldike, dear. It isn’t the sort of place for you.”
“For me? Implying what? Forget it. I don’t really want to spend my day in a village where throwing stones at the moon counts as a hobby, but I don’t have much choice. So I can use your phone, or…”
“Phone, dear?”
“Your telephone. So I can call someone for help.”
The old woman, staring deep into Loe’s eyes, licked her lips. “Of course. My house isn’t far, dear. I’m just on my daily walk. Sit still for too long and I seize up like a rusty hinge.”
“Great. Just let me check I haven’t left anything on show, like my crack pipe collection or something. No point tempting the woodland thieves.”
The old woman began to hobble away from the road and into the forest, her head dipped so low and her spine so bent that it looked like she didn’t have a head at all. She lifted her hand above her and beckoned with a crooked finger as if luring Loe on.
Loe went to put the tire iron in the trunk, but as she reached out to drop it, she found she couldn’t open her fist. She couldn’t say why, but it felt like her brain was screaming at her to keep it. So instead, she kept hold of it and she checked the front and back seats of the car for anything that she didn’t want to leave behind.
And then a thought struck her, sending a trail of ice slithering down her spine.
She turned around.
“I didn’t tell you my name was Loe,” she said.
But the old woman was gone. The birds were still gone. The wind was still gone. It was just Loe, miles and miles of woodland, and a funeral in Harrow Hall going on without her.
Feeling Clive’s sinister presence beginning to wake again, Loe gripped the tire iron and fixed her sights on the road ahead, in
the direction of Harrow Hall. The hall was closer, and she no longer gave a damn about first impressions. She just wanted to get out of this maze of shrubbery and pines.
She grabbed her rucksack from the car, slung it over her shoulder, and set off. She had taken eight steps in Harrow Hall’s direction when a voice called out, stopping her dead, making her expel all the air in her chest.
“It isn’t safe for you here.”
She turned in a full circle and then did it again, the other way.
The forest was empty. Nothing and nobody that could have spoken. And now the words were growing dim in her memory until she thought she imagined it, and then her brain rationalized things further until the only explanation was that the wind had made strange sounds that her brain interpreted as words.
It isn’t safe for you here.
Yeah, well, Loe was the one with the tire iron. This place wasn’t safe for any old bints who tried to scare her, either.
Chapter Two
“At last! Harrow Hall in all its decrepit glory.”
She arrived there covered in sweat, with pine needles in her hair, mud on her trainers, and a song she couldn’t remember the name of repeating in her head.
It felt like it had taken an age to arrive but there it was, nestled in the forest whose silence bordered on oppressive. Harrow Hall, the place where her siblings had grown up. They probably did family stuff here, like making wicker baskets together or whatever country folks did to bond as a family unit on boring nights. Then again, maybe they had the internet. Loe remembered hearing that even research bases in Antarctica got 3G or 4G. One of the G’s, anyway.
Loe, meanwhile, had grown up way across the country in a flat so small that with one step out of the kitchen you could dip your toe in the bath. It was hard not to feel hard done by. Angry, even. But anger and jealousy were emotions that lured Clive from his grubby little den in her mind, and she was sick of the guy.
So, she focussed on the bad things she could imagine about Harrow Hall. She forced herself to forget imaginary whimsical childhoods and happy families, and focus on what Harrow Hall was now: a god damned dump.
Harrow Hall was a growth on the skin of the forest. An old growth, sure, but the kind that was still ugly and maybe even still dangerous if you picked at it too much. Judging by its condition, the growth had lost most of its anger and potency and it was beginning to fade, paling at the edges so that maybe one day it would be lost to time.
The manor boasted an old, moss-stained wooden facade, the planks weather-beaten and their pattern was broken only by windows so dark that anything could have been staring back from them. The building was bloated at both sides from extension work that didn’t quite match its original design, a Frankenstein’s monster of a house but without the poor monster’s accompanying kindness of soul.
Then again, put a bit of work into Harrow Hall, give the wood a nice varnish and paint job, and maybe it’d be a nice getaway home. Certainly, if you wanted a break from people. This was an introvert’s dream. Deep in the country, you could scream ‘fire! fire!’ until your vocal cords chafed to dust and you wouldn’t get so much as a cup of water thrown in your direction.
So maybe it had been a quaint place one day, but nobody had cared for Harrow Hall this side of the eighties. A big manor like that, with its arched doorway and oval windows and spires on the roof, and nobody had given it any affection. Sad. Without getting a little attention and kindness the place had turned nasty, decrepit, and it wore its corruption on its façade for everyone to see. Coming from an apartment where her bedroom was probably smaller than a Harrow Hall broom cupboard, it annoyed her to see a place like this left to go to hell.
Did people still have cupboards just for brooms?
Forget it. No important, she told herself.
There were three vehicles in front of Harrow Hall. Not enough for a funeral, unless it was a small one for someone who hadn’t left many people behind to mourn them. Loe knew from hours spent on genealogical websites and search engines that Fallacy Harrow – what a name! - her dad’s wife and her siblings’ mother, had popped her clogs years ago.
Did that mean the cars out front belonged to her brothers and her sister? That her dad didn’t have other relatives or friends who cared enough to see him off into the great beyond?
If that was the case, then it was three vehicles for three siblings that she’d never met. And if they weren’t already reeling from the loss of dear old Pa, they were about to get the shock of their lives when Loe stepped through the door.
You could tell a lot about a person by their car. Take Loe’s, for instance. The poor thing was alone in the forest right now, and she tried not to get weirdly upset about that and instead thought about what her car would tell people about her. A casual glance would tell them she didn’t take care of her stuff, she drank too much, and she ate too much fast food, and that she had an unusually large collection of guided meditation CDs. She’d played these so many times on the way here that the idea of meditation, self-help, and babbling streams made her want to tear her ears off and throw them out of the window.
What about her siblings’ choices of vehicles? What could they tell her? She eyed them each in turn.
A black family car so clean that it gleamed. Two child seats in the back, along with a bottle of mineral water with a dark blue liquid in it, and a pair of plimsolls.
Next to it was a motorbike. Not a Harley or anything, but one that still instantly multiplied a person’s imagined coolness by four, while increasing their actual coolness by maybe half a point at best.
Finally, there was a big beast of a vehicle, the kind of car you’d get if Ford started making family-friendly tanks. Way too big for a normal person. Who needed that kind of space? What were they planning to haul around in that thing, a piano?
With nothing more to gleam, and knowing she was just stalling for time, she headed toward Harrow Hall’s front door, which was wide and revealed a gloomy, ill-lit corridor behind it.
So, she thought, what am I gonna say? How did a person introduce themselves to siblings who didn’t know they existed, on the day of their dad’s funeral, no less?
Hey guys, you better buy another stocking for the fireplace this Christmas!
Morning! Here I am, another poor sap who dad didn’t give any attention to!
The hardest part would be getting them to believe her. If a stranger turned up unannounced and said the same thing to her, she’d tell them to get lost. Maybe she’d ask them if they were rich, first. And if the answer was no, then they were no siblings of hers.
It was a tough one. No perfect introduction came to mind, and it was no use waiting outside all day. She was just going to have to trust her intuition and sparkling personality. Which meant she was in big, big trouble.
Loe took a deep breath. Time to get this over with.
Wow. She suddenly felt nervous, which was stupid. They were just people. Yeah, you could attach the label brother or sister to people, but that’s all it was. Just a word. It wasn’t like she’d grown up with them. They’d had each other, but Loe grew up an only child in a place where you really didn’t want to be the only child. Not that anything like…that… was going on, but still. Some of the things Mum used to say, the things Mum used to dream about…
Forget it. She turned over various greetings in her head, but phrasing things nicely was never her strong point. After narrowing her choice of words down to a passable greeting, she tapped on the front door.
There was no answer. The door was ajar, which maybe meant anyone was welcome. Perhaps there was a wake, one with a lack of guests, and she was okay to attend it even in her dress, trainers, mud, and pine needles outfit. Hefting her rucksack on her shoulder, she walked into the hall.
She crossed a gloomy hallway, noting décor that wouldn’t have been out of fashion when Queen Elizabeth was still in nappies. There were framed paintings on both walls. They showed a forest, maybe Harrow Wood. Lots of trees, leaves, the usual forest
stuff. Something made her feel uneasy when she gave them a closer glance.
There was something hidden in each one. A black shape, walking on two legs but with a definite animality to it. All eight paintings were titled ‘Him.’
Forgetting the lovely paintings, she reached the door at the end of the hallway. There, she heard a voice, muffled but still clear enough to make out.
“He was insane! Mentally ill. That’s the bottom of it,” said a man. “Mad as a box of bats.”
“Jay!” said another man, possibly older and with less of a northern accent.
“What? He was! Read the letter again, Altair, and try and convince me he wasn’t.”
“The letter. Bloody hell, Jay. You used to write stories about your imaginary platypus friend. What if I conducted a psychiatric examination on you based on the adventures of Platypus Pete? Don’t judge a person’s sanity by what they write.”
“Do you guys really think you should be talking about this? Alt, you know as well as anyone that people can have problems,” said a woman.
They seemed to ignore her, because the younger man said, “Answer me this, then. Is it a coincidence that we bury him, come back to our lovely childhood home, and we find the scrawlings of a madman waiting for us? And you’re going to tell me he was writing a novel or something?”
“We don’t have all the facts, is what I’m saying. Judgments built on a foundation of assumptions collapse under the weakest winds.”
The woman laughed. “Weakest winds…Altair, I’ve missed you and the stick you keep up your arse. I’m just surprised it still fits...you’ve had it since we were kids. Or do you replace it from time to time?”
“Ah, good. You’ve become more hilarious with age,” said the man they called Altair.
“Dad dies, and he leaves us a letter saying sorry, over and over again. Don’t tell me he wasn’t crazy.”
“Whatever. Let’s finish looking around,” said the other man, Jay. “Then we can shut off the water, throw out any food that might rot, and come back and box the old guy’s stuff tomorrow.”
