Darkest Part of the Woods (37 page)

"Just before the old lady, Lennox's wife was in the crash."

So she wasn't talking about Sam and his aunt. It was only to him that everything seemed to be about them, he reminded himself. "No you didn't," he said, trying to hide his relief. "I wasn't there till after it happened."

"It looked like you. The face did, anyway." Delia scrutinised him, tugging at her cheeks with her fingertips to let out more eye. "Maybe it wasn't," she granted at last. "You couldn't have been behind that many trees at once."

Sam's relief was dissipating, and he reached with the key for the door of the Civic.

"Anyway-"

"How's the thin girl? Not so thin any more, eh?"

He mustn't take that as an accusation. Swallowing, he said "She's gone away."

"Can't be far."

Sam thrust the key into the lock. "Why not?"

"She's like us."

He felt as if there were increasingly fewer words he dared speak, and regretted demanding "Who?"

"You and me and the rest of us. All the ones who can't leave."

For a moment he wanted to accuse her of having eavesdropped outside Dr Lowe's office, but that would only delay the question he was afraid to ask. "Why can't we?"

At once her face looked about to crumple-whether with dismay or hysterical laughter he couldn't judge. "Don't you know yet?" she said in a voice driven high.

She was mentally ill, he found it necessary to point out to himself- never mind politeness, she was mad. Nevertheless he couldn't help almost pleading "Tell me."

She leaned towards him, and he fancied something vast and dark as a denial of the sunlight leaned with her. "The woods," she whispered, her gaze flickering from side to side.

"Your grandfather's in there, and my mother."

Sam wondered why he'd thought she could be any help to him. He was twisting the key when she said "And lots that are older. Everyone who's been that close is part of them."

That needn't include him or be true, Sam attempted to convince himself. He snatched the car door open, and Delia lurched across the front of the vehicle at him. He felt as if something beyond darkness was descending towards him-as if it was about to part the pale blue sky. "We'll be like them. We'll all be the same," Delia said.

She was running her fingertips spider-like over her cheeks. Sam had an appalled notion that she was checking her face hadn't been somehow transformed. He was about to take refuge in the car when she looked abruptly sympathetic, which was yet more disturbing. "Don't worry," she said.

He had the impression of stepping over an edge into worse than blackness by asking

"Why not?"

"We're the lucky ones."

"You think," Sam said, unable to laugh at the idea even inside himself.

"We are, because we're what people call mad or whatever they say we are these days.

They don't know that means we'll be readier than they are. We're already on our way, so it won't be such a shock. Just imagine being Dr Lowe and the rest of them when it happens."

Sam's question was more an admission of despair at having to ask or at learning the answer. "What?"

"You should have asked Lennox. You still could. He knew the most of any of us." Delia smiled and stepped back, fingering her lips in case they'd changed.

Sam had succeeded in starting the car when she waved her left hand and arm, stiff and contorted as a branch. He assumed she was bidding him adieu, though he would have made it a farewell, until he heard her belated answer to his question. "What called Lennox here in the first place," she said.

32

Sealed by the Past

HEATHER almost managed to refrain from saying any of the things she'd vowed she wouldn't say to Sam, but it surely

couldn't hurt to accompany him as far as the front door and wish him good luck. The words earned her only a grimace, however. "What?" he said as if he didn't see how they applied to him.

"Try feeling lucky. No harm in that," Heather said, determined not to exert pressure on him and hearing herself continue to do so. "Sorry. Don't let me tell you how to feel. You feel whatever helps."

"Like what?"

She was beginning to wish they'd talked this through after all, though before it was time for him to leave. "Forget me," she said. "Forget your father. Just go because it's you that wants to.

It still is, isn't it? You still want to try for the job."

"I've got to go where I'm going."

"You keep telling yourself that. And listen, I shouldn't think your father's friend would have rescheduled the interview if she wasn't biased in your favour, but there's no need to stake too much on it. If you don't get the job there'll be others, and the main thing is you'll have gone for it. You'll know you can."

"Dr Lowe said something like that."

"Well, there you are. What do they say about great minds?"

"Don't know."

She could have felt disparaged, but she was too concerned with his mental state while he was driving to London. "Are you worried about anything else, Sam?"

When his lips parted she tried to be prepared for whatever revelation he'd decided to entrust to her, but they closed again before releasing his apparently favourite word of the day. "What?"

"If it's your grandmother, the hospital would have called if there were any developments. I told you they said she has a pretty good chance of getting about on sticks when she comes home."

"She didn't seem that bad when they took her to the hospital."

"Her bones are old, Sam." Heather thought he sounded not unlike a child whose trust in the rightness of life had been betrayed. She reached to hug him, murmuring "Try not to have her on your mind too much. I'm sure they're doing everything they can for her at Mercy Hill."

She was disconcerted to find him unresponsive as a tree-trunk. It felt as if he'd formed himself into a barrier against some or all of her encouragement. "Isn't it just Margo?" she guessed.

He didn't answer until she let go of him and stepped back. Again she had the sense of an impending revelation, but couldn't be sure that wasn't to do with the gathering heat, which felt like the threat of a January storm. "Maybe," he muttered.

"Is it Sylvie?"

"Maybe."

His voice was well on the way to withdrawing into itself. He dropped his gaze as his bad leg gave a jerk that suggested it was eager to bear him away, but Heather didn't think she should abandon the subject now that she'd raised it in his mind. "She must be too busy to let us know where she is, that's all," she said, almost as much for her own benefit as his. "She's always been a bit like that. I know we'd expect her to keep us informed now there isn't only her to wonder about, but that's my sister, I suppose. I'm certain we'd have heard if anything was wrong."

His head appeared to be weighed down by her insistence or his thoughts. "Anyway," she said, and paused until he looked up. "Here I am using up oxygen when you should be on your way and make sure of having plenty of time."

She wouldn't have minded seeing agreement with that, but his thoughts were too deep in the dark of his eyes for her to read. "So long as I haven't made you feel worse," she risked saying.

He shook his head so rapidly he might have been attempting to dislodge a notion and nearly succeeded in hauling up the corners of his mouth. "Go on then," she said and restrained herself from delivering another hug. "You show the world."

It was simply a form of words, but as he limped to the Volkswagen she was left with the impression that she could have chosen better. She opened the gate for him and watched as the car, having elaborately cleared its throat, chugged away. He saw her waving in the mirror and raised one stiff hand without glancing back. She held back from stepping into the road to watch him as long as she could, and closed the gate. She heard him brake at the corner of Woodland Close as she returned to the house.

The interval until she next saw or heard from him was bound to feel stretched close to snapping, but she didn't mean to spend her day off work in worrying about him and her mother and sister. The house had stored up plenty of tasks-if she attacked them vigorously enough they might even leave her no spare energy for thoughts. She was making to release the vacuum cleaner from its cell beneath the stairs when she was halted by a smell so faint she was tempted to dismiss it as imagination. It was the secretively decayed odour of Selcouth's journal.

Heather didn't want the object in her house. It would be better kept at the university, available to anyone who needed to consult it-she couldn't imagine who or why. It could wait until tomorrow to be

removed, even though now that she was aware of it she felt as if she'd been left alone in the house with it. She was about to open the cupboard under the stairs when she strode up them instead. Once she discovered what Sylvia had been reading aloud she would put the book out of her mind.

She pushed open the bedroom door and hesitated on the threshold. The room retained so little of Sylvia's presence that she might have fancied something had stolen every trace of their shared past, along with her sister. It seemed inhabited only by the journal in its binding black as a lump of night refusing to give way to the sun, and she caught herself wondering what Selcouth might have meant the blackness to recall. The book contained more than enough nonsense without her encouraging it, she thought fiercely. She sat at the desk and threw the volume open with a clunk like the fall of a dead branch.

Nat. Selcouth, his Journall.

She'd forgotten how much she instinctively disliked the thick angular handwriting that reminded her of twigs or of stains left on the page by rotten twigs. She wouldn't get far if she started off thinking like that, but the act of reading felt not unlike snagging her mind with the treetops that loomed at the upper edge of her vision.

I who am named for my Qualities shall here sette down the Historie of my Discoveries, that he who is to follow may carrie the Worke onwards.

Let him understand that his Blood sets him as far above the Herd as my Powers have elevated me above the Flesh.

"Well, you did think a lot of yourself." She'd hoped to be objective-it was a piece of history, after all-but couldn't when she was aware that Sylvia had read from it to her own child, even if unborn.

Heather wasn't sure if that made it better or worse. So long as it didn't mean that Sylvia was losing control of her mind, surely it needn't matter. If Heather thought it did she would have to alert the police on behalf of Sylvia and her child, and her instincts suggested that her sister would never forgive her. She leafed onwards, trying to read no more than would show her the sentence she'd heard in the night, willing the phone to ring-to have Sylvia's voice.

Spirit calls to Spirit across the Gulphs of Space and Time, and thus my Spirit in its unfleshed Journeyings was called to Goodman's Wood, which is a Site of great Powers forgotten by the Herd and a fit Setting for the Completion of my Experiments. Here have I caused to be builded an Habitation modelled on a Figure visible to me where once an antient Ring of Stone was raised to summon and containe the Daemon of this Place. The ignorant Invaders cast it down and planted Trees sacred to their feeble Gods but meerly constructed the Deamon a Lair wherein to brood and grow in Secret. Now my Tower shapes itself from the antient Circle and presents its one Halfe to the World while an equal Portion lies for ever in the Dark, as befitts the House of one whose Task it is to mate the Twain.

It occurred to Heather that much of this confirmed traditions Sylvia had wanted to believe were true of Goodmanswood-believe in the sense of adding them to her research. Just because Lennox had ended up convinced of the truth of local legends, it didn't mean Sylvia had followed him along that route. And yet she'd said she had felt summoned to the place as Selcouth apparently imagined he had. "It's not the same thing," Heather declared aloud and read on to drive the likeness out of her mind.

Some faintest Trace of Illumination must remain to the guttering Minds of the Villagers that they keepe without the Wood and mumble Prayers should they become sensible of its Proximity. Only the most aged Grandam of the Village remembers Tales told to affrighte her as a child. Then would a very Cavalcade of Glimpses and Encounters be recount'd which I alone knew to betoken but one single Presence.

So one Grey-Beard might speak of chancing upon Goodman in the Shape of a tall Man whose Shaddowe caused Insects to warm within it where it fell, while another would whisper of a Mist with shifting Face, whose Passing thro' the Woods braught down Birdes like Fruit out of the Trees to rot in an Instant and loam the Forest. Againe a Grandfather would describe how, as he crossed the Common while a Boy, a great Arm reach’d forth from the Depths of the Forest to grope for him with many Fingers, and his withered Wife would prattle of her Girl-Hood, when beneath the Moone she saw the Trees perform an antient Dance from joining which her Prayers and Eyes closed tight could scarce protect her. Much else besides I learn’d upon a Mid-Night Visit to the quaking Grandam, whose Babblings confirm’d my Belief that the Volatileness of the Forest Daemon fitts it to be shap'd to my Purpose, even as have I shap’d my House. Then, that she should not gossip of my Interest, I let the Grandam spy within my Eyes the meer Reflection of that outer Dark where my Spirit yearns to range at Will, at which the Blood flew from her Heart and sally’d forth from every Egress.

"Of course it did," Heather scoffed with distaste. Whatever beliefs might have been common in his lifetime, she was certain that the writer had been dangerously insane. Could anyone saner than Selcouth find the book suitable for reading to even or perhaps especially an unborn child?

Some of it had to be, otherwise Heather would be on the phone to the police.

So shall these forgotten Terrours, sunk too deepe in these dull Minds for sounding, keepe my Researches hid from prying Eyes. Even I, Nathaniel Selcouth, suffered that Feare which shrivells the Spirit as I kept the vigill

necessary to entice Goodman to me. Throughout the Whole of the first Night of my Vigill, as I watched without my House sans Lanthorn or Taper, I was circl’d about by Footfalls, now light as the Scurrying of many Insects, now pondrous as the Paces of a Colossus. Then from Dawn to renew’d Night the entire Forest held still as a great Cat waiting on its Prey. That second Night many Fingers or Bones touch’d and pluck'd at me, and the Trees were loud with many whispers, despite there was no Wind. Againe a Stillness reign’d thro' the second Day, which I knew to be no more than a Pretence of Light amidst the veritable State of endless Dark. Thus arm’d with secret Knowledge, I had only to entrust my Vision to that Dark so as to observe Goodman when he appear'd in the Midst of the third Night. At first he shap’d himself into a Giant pale as any Toadstool, whose face was but a Vapour, and then it was as if the very Ground opened a vast Mouth and Eyes and spake in a great Voice that set every Beast of the Village to imitating Babel in the Xtian Taradiddle. At the last Goodman saught to cow his Master by rearing higher than my House on many Legs like Trees and lowering his monstrous face to me betwixt them, as it were a Moone should settle its decay’d Mask on the Earth. But I stood my Ground and spake the words of Binding. So the awful Pact was seal’d, and I know that I have yield’d a Portian of my Spirit to this place in having striven with its Daemon. Yet my Spirit is greater than needs mourn the Loss.