Coombe's Wood (16 page)

A dark shape leapt out of the shadows. Saucer sized eyes glowed blood red in the dark, too high. The eyes bobbed in the air as a colossal creature sprinted at her. They burned, two bowls of fire, hungry, and fixed on her.

Each thump of its feet shook the ground. Each thump matched the beat of her heart. The creature snorted in her scent and speeded up, galloping past the trees. Low hanging branches ripped off against its hide, and were flung off out of the canopy.

Someone shouted, “
Meu deus
!
Meu deus
!” over and over. Then they screamed, a high piercing shriek. Izzy closed her mouth, the person quieted. With that, her feet awoke.

She stumbled back, into the treacle air. Damp fingers wrapped around her and pulled her away from the beast. The force field was helping her, and threw her out of the woods, expelling her. She landed on her bottom and skidded back a few feet.

Although she intended to turn and run, fast, back to the safety of her flat, she stayed, unmoving. Her eyes fixed on the creature. It tore up the lane, speeding up even more, and then launched off the ground, so high, Izzy tilted her head back to follow its shape against sky.

“
Merde
!
It’s going to get me!” she cried and scuttled back, hands scuffing on the tarmac. A couple of meters remained, until a monster took her forever. She’d forced this situation with her need to know more. The insanity of leaving her warm flat, risking a confrontation with George, had her cowering, waiting for the belly of the beast to land on her.

As if in a trance, Izzy followed the ascent of the creature. It flew up, through the air, its jump taking it past the tops of the trees. Birds, shocked into waking, flew from the trees, squawking and chastising. The black shape grew, ever larger, the eyes burning, molten, furious. She thought she saw a flash of white, sharp teeth, an open mouth waiting to tear into her flesh.

Then it landed against something, high above the woods. For a moment, the beast seemed stuck, suspended not quite above her. Then it slid down, in slow motion, grasping for purchase. Izzy searched the shape for definition, for identification, but its black fur blended with the scenery and the sky.

Claws screeched down the surface of the invisible prison. The beast fell to the ground and roared, its breath hot and hungry. The stench sped time back up, awoke her from whatever spell had been cast on her. The creature rammed up against the force field, crying out in frustration. Its pained sound filled the night, deafening Izzy. Red eyes glowed brighter. It slashed at the air, shrieked, tried to battle its way through. The air bent as the creature pushed, giant furry paws flailing as they attempted to reach her.

Will the force field hold? Izzy thought.

Without waiting for an answer, she jumped to her feet and ran.

The night was thick and warm, and Izzy rolled around her bed, damping everything in a heavy sweat. Her dreams intermittent, she fell in and out of sleep, hearing that roar each time her eyes closed.

A black bear pushed against the force field. The air flexed, held. He shoved, threw back his head and roared. Paws, the size of dinner plates, ripped at the air. Her scent lingered, he snorted it, and slashed harder. He crashed against his prison, snarling. The air tore, bleeding elfin magic. The bear fell through onto the tarmac, landing in a heap on the exact spot Izzy had hours before. He took a lungful of her odour. Back on all fours, he galloped towards the block of flats.

Izzy woke up on the cusp of a scream. The kind that might make Connor wet his bed in fear. She lay in the dark, the thud of her heart filling her ears. Her skin pulsed along with it, tightening each time, until she felt like a giant drum. The dream seemed so real, the creature escaping, coming for her. She had taunted it, gone into its prison, entered and escaped. Had her adventure been real? Hadn’t she been searching for those horrible lads from down the road? She held her hands up and caught them in a sliver of streetlight. The palms were tender to the touch, red and scraped.

The sweat on her body cooled as she played the evening over in her head. The escape had to be a dream. She tried to believe it, she needed to calm down and sleep. The clock read 6:13. A black bear ran in the dark, in front of her red curtains. She blinked and the animal was gone.

Just a dream, she thought, and allowed her eyelids to drift shut.

Bang.

Sleepy dreams insinuated into reality. Obscure thoughts twisted into dreamscape and floated her over the woods.

Shuffle.

Her eyes sprung open and then immediately closed. She squeezed them, tight enough to produce a sparkling crop of silver flecks inside her eyelids.

Scrape.

Something was moving outside the front door, making a multitude of quiet noises on the landing. Maybe Feathers couldn’t sleep and wanted to talk. Although perhaps an indicator of a controlling mind, it was better than the thought of a giant black bear sniffing around the stairwell.

Reluctantly she swung her feet onto the boards and tiptoed into the hallway and towards the door. The noises quietened, as if the beast on the other side knew she’d woken.

On her tiptoes, she peered through the peephole. She strained to make anything out. She saw nothing, heard nothing. After a few minutes, she returned to bed. It was her dream. Enough substance had leaked though to leave eerie noises. Stop worrying,
she thought. Satisfied, Izzy crawled back under the covers, cold in her damp pyjamas. Sleep took her quickly, depositing her back in the woods.

Day broke, and the sun came streaming though the canopy, turning the light jade. The danger departed, she strolled along the lane, her hand running through the cow parsley growing abundantly by the bushes.

Out on the landing, there was a rustle, a scraping sound, the wiping of som
ething sharp. Then it was gone
…

7
^th
Oct

Izzy slept in, vaguely listening to Connor bump around in the kitchen. The door closed hard, and she listened to him shuffle down the hall to the bathroom. A trickle splashed into the toilet, and Izzy immediately felt the need to go. She rolled over and stretched, waiting for him to finish. He flushed the toilet with a roar of water and stomped to the living room.

Curled up under the covers, her dreams flitted about, half-remembered, vague. Had she gone out? She put a pillow over her head and tried to piece together the day before.

“Feathers left
…
” she said into the pillow. “Did I go out?” She drummed her fingers on the cotton cover. “And a monster
…
in Cedham?”

She flexed her hand, and saw the palm tender, rough lines of scabs forming where the skin had been scrapped off. She pushed the pillow aside, and stared. “It’s from scraping the wallpaper,” she whispered, and laughed. “Somebody’s been eating too much cheese.”

She forgot about the toilet, and dozed, the sour taste of nightmares disappearing as the sun blazed behind the curtains. The room heated up, deepening her sleep. Yesterday afternoon she’d checked her diary, and the weekend was clear for the first time in a month. Mr and Mrs Davis, who went away most weekends, were dedicating some time to their overgrown garden. Mr Cook, an elderly bachelor who still thought he could have any lady he pleased, had sprained his left ankle and was confined to his cottage. Izzy had passed Cathy on the street in the Pangbourne, and she’d told Izzy that Mr Cook had hurt himself chasing an unco-operative Mrs Johnston from Woodstoke Road. He’d tripped over a step in her garden. Cathy leaned in close to whisper, “He liked the attention he received from her as they waited for the doctor. Watch he doesn’t fake an injury next time you’re there.”

Noises lifted Izzy from sleep. Car doors opened and closed, an engine roared into life and someone drove away. Children shouted. A ball smacked the road. Connor, on the move again, clomped back to the kitchen.

“Mum, we’ve run out of milk,” Connor shouted.

“If we owned a cow, we’d still run out of milk,” she muttered under her breath, rolled over, and climbed slowly out of bed. Would Feathers be awake by now, thinking of her?

The sun bled in through a slight parting between the curtains and the beam created a golden path across her bed, and she followed it with her finger, a warm miniature yellow brick road. She got up and plucked her dressing gown off the back of her door, pulling it on as she made her way to the kitchen. Not much food was left after Connor’s breakfast feast, and she settled for fruit tea and a slice of toast. She wandered back out to the hall, stuffed jammy toast in her mouth, and opened the front door to pick up the newspaper.

What lay on her threshold made Izzy drop the toast. It bounced to the floor, partially covering the thing that lay there. She stood, half leaning, arm extended, frozen with her fingers inches from the floor. Connor rushed out of the living room, and to her side.

Apparently, she’d been screaming.

“What the bloody hell is that?” he shouted.

She didn’t reply, her eyes unblinkingly glued to the mat that yesterday read
Welcome
in bold green letters.

Covering most of the mat was a carcass, most likely a rabbit – she couldn’t tell for sure, as the skin had been torn off. The animal was still wet, blood congealing, staining the brown bristles a dark rust colour.

Perhaps a cat had dragged it upstairs, tried to eat the creature, and abandoned its meal. Eyes too big for its stomach or some nonsense. How else would a skinned rabbit find its way inside a security locked block of flats, drag itself up a flight of stairs – only to die on her
Welcome
mat.

She felt her legs wobbled and began to give. Feathers threw his door open, took two steps onto the landing, surveying the scene, and sprinted to support her.

Darkness was coming, viscous, like the night before. The landing grew fuzzy, the edges of her door losing focus. Her sight was reducing, a macabre tunnel vision spotlighting the thing she couldn’t seem to turn away from. All she could see was the rabbit.

Izzy heard another scream now – as if through cotton wool. Poppy, with little Romeo on her hip, ran upstairs. Her mongrel puppy followed, his little mouth working. Now open. Then closed. Barking, but she couldn’t hear. Poppy froze, terrified, her son, quiet and wide-eyed. Cathy charged down, her dressing gown half open, her hair wild. Behind her, Gilbert peered, detached, soaking in the view. They stared at Izzy, then the rabbit. Curiosity and worry changed to horror and disgust. Their mouths moved, shouting. Cathy gesticulating. She turned to Izzy – asking something? All were silent.

At the side of the door, her newspaper lay. Piled on the paper lay a heap of flesh, like a freshly made fur-lined glove.

Her eyes swam around the hallway – to Feathers who held her, to Connor’s scared face. He stared at the rabbit and nowhere else. Neighbours gathered closer. Lou shuffled down the stairs, and stood next to Cathy, tartan slippers on his feet, his newspaper in hand.

Scuffed blood surrounded the
Welcome
mat, hiding patterns she’d not noticed before. A finger pointed, tracing the shapes – her finger. On the tiles, a word hidden in partial footprints and crimson streaks read:

You’re
.

Izzy frowned. Her eyes moved back to the rabbit, seeing the way a knife had split open its belly until the guts fell out in a heap. Seeing how the intestines completed the sentence in cursive script.

Dead
.

She tried to say the words. Certain only she had seen them, she felt the firm hands of Feathers support her as she sagged further.

You’re dead
.

The message is:
You’re dead
.

She twisted back to Feathers, his blue eyes sadly connected with hers.

Mute, she mouthed, “
You’re dead
.
Can’t you see it? It says
You’re dead
!”

She threw up, on the mat and the rabbit, splattering the newspaper and the inside out skin. The dropped toast soaked up liquids. A rain of silver flecks turned the world black and white. She struggled to stay conscious, and blinked furiously against approaching dark. The sparkles grew into a million lights, blinding her. The face of the rabbit, pink and wet, one glazed eye staring back at her – was the last thing she saw before she fainted.

“Izzy.”

“Mum.”

Whispered voices worked their way into her mind.

“Should we call an ambulance?” Connor must be biting his nails, she thought – something he’d stopped the day they’d left George. She heard Connor tear at his nails and grind them to dust in his mouth.

“Give her another minute,” Feathers said. Then, “Go into my flat, you know where my oils cabinet is? Get the bottle with bug eyes on it.”