The Bone Forest (6 page)

Huxley looked at his own hands, smelled the fingers. There was no blood in evidence, not under the nails, no sign of charcoal. He examined his clothes. There was mud on the trouser legs, but nothing that suggested he had torn and wrenched at a half-cooked carcass. He ran his tongue around his teeth. He checked his pillow in the bedroom.

If
he
had written this entry, if he himself had come into the study, in a moment of unconscious separation, eating the raw bone, he would surely have left some trace.

The words were odd, had an odd feel. It was as if the writer genuinely believed that he
was
Huxley, and that Huxley's own entries in the journal were being made during times of unconscious calm. Reality, for the bloody-fingered journalist, was a time of "lucidity."

But Huxley, keeping a rational and clear mind now, was certain that two different men were entering notes in the private journal.

It astonished him, though, that the other writer knew about the key.

He picked up his pen and wrote:

Today I went in search of Wynne-Jones. I didn't sleep, and I am convinced that I remained alert and aware for the full twenty hours that I was away. I am concerned for Wynne-Jones. I fear he is lost, and it grieves me deeply to anticipate the fact that he might never return. In my absence, someone else is making entries in this journal. The entry above was not written by me. But I believe that whoever has entered this place believes themself to be George Huxley. You are not. But whoever you are, you should tell me more about yourself. And if you wish to know more about me, then simply ask. It would be preferable for you to show yourself, perhaps at the edgewood. I am quite used to strange encounters. We have much that we need to talk about.

 

He had just finished writing when the car pulled into the drive. Doors slammed and he heard the sound of Jennifer's voice, and Steven's. Jennifer sounded angry. She came into the house and a few seconds later he heard Steven go into the garden and run down to the gate. He stood from his desk and watched the boy, and was disturbed by the way his son glanced suddenly toward him, frowned, seemed to stifle back a tear or two, then went to hide among the sheds.

"Why do you neglect the boy so much? It wouldn't hurt you to talk to him once in a while."

Huxley was startled by Jennifer's calm, controlled, yet angry tones speaking to him from the entrance to his study. She was pale, her lips pinched, her eyes hollow with fatigue and irritation. She was dressed in a dark suit and had her hair tied back into a tight bun, exposing all of her narrow face.

She entered the room the moment he turned and crossed to the desk, opening the book that was there, touching the pens, shaking her head. When she saw the bone she grimaced and kicked at it.

"Another little trophy, George? Something to frame?"

"Why are you angry?"

"I'm not angry," she said wearily. "I'm upset. So's Steven."

"I don't understand why."

Her laugh was brief and sourly pointed. "Of course you don't. Well, think back, George. You must have said something to him this morning. I've never known the boy in such a state. I took him to Shadoxhurst, to the toy shop and the tea shop. But what he really wants—" She bit her lip in exasperation, letting the statement lie uncompleted.

Huxley sighed, scratching his face as he watched and listened to something that simply wasn't possible.

"What time was this?"

"What time was what?"

"That… that I said something to Steven, to upset the boy…"

"Mid-morning."

"Did you come and see me? Afterward?"

"No."

"Why not? Why didn't you come and see me?"

"You'd left the study. You'd gone back to the woods, no doubt. A-hunting and adventuring… down in dingly dell…" Again she looked at the grim and bloody souvenir. "I was going to suggest tea, but I see you've eaten…"

Before he could speak further she had turned abruptly, taking off her suit jacket, and walked upstairs to freshen up.

"I wasn't here this morning," Huxley said quietly, turning back to the garden, and stepping out into the dying sunlight. "I wasn't here. So who
was
?"

Steven was sitting, slumped forward on the wall that bounded the rockery. He was reading a book, but hastily closed it when he heard his father approaching.

"Come to my study, Steve. There's something I want to show you."

The boy followed in silence, tucking the book into his school blazer. Huxley thought it might have been a penny-dreadful western, but decided not to pursue the matter.

"I went deep into Ryhope Wood this morning," he said, sitting down behind the desk and picking up his small pack. Steven stood on the other side, back to the window, hands by his sides. His face was a sad combination of uncertainty and distress, and Huxley felt like saying, "Cheer up, lad," but he refrained from doing so.

Instead he tipped out the small collection of oddities he had found at the Horse Shrine, and beyond: an iron torque, a small wooden idol, its face blank, its arms and legs just the stumps of twigs that had once grown from the central branch; a fragment of torn, green linen, found on a hawthorn bush.

Picking up the doll, Huxley said, "I've often seen these talisman dolls, but never touched them. They usually hang in the trees. This one was on the ground and I felt it fair game."

"Who hangs them in the trees?" Steven asked softly, his eyes, now, registering interest rather than sadness.

Huxley came close to telling the boy a little about the mythogenetic processes occurring within the wood, and the life forms that existed there. Instead he fell back on the old standby. "Traveling folk. Tinkers. Romanies. Some of these bits and bobs might be years old, generations. All sorts of people have lived in and around the edge of our wood."

The boy stepped forward and tentatively picked up the wooden figure, holding it, turning it over, then grimly placing it down again.

Huxley said, "Did I upset you this morning?"

Oddly, the boy shook his head.

"But you came to the study. You saw me… ?"

"I heard you shouting by the wood. I was frightened."

"Why were you frightened?"

"I thought… I thought someone was attacking you…"

"
Was
someone attacking me?"

The boy's gaze dropped. He fidgeted, biting his lip, then looked up again, and there was fear in his eyes.

"It's all right, Steven. Just tell me what you saw…"

"You were all gray and green. You were very angry…"

"What do you mean, I was all gray and green?" "Funny colors, like light on water. I couldn't see you properly. You were so fast. You were shouting. There was an awful smell of blood, like when Fonce kills the chickens."

Alphonsus Jeffries, the farm manager for the Manor. Steven had been taken around the farm several times, and had witnessed the natural life of the domestic animals, and their unnatural death with knife and cleaver. "Where were you when you saw this, did you say?" "By the woods…" Steven whispered. His lips trembled and tears filled his eyes. Huxley remained seated, leaning forward, holding his son's gaze hard and firm. "Grow up, boy. You've seen something very strange. I'm asking you about it. You want to be a scientist, don't you?"

Steven hesitated, then nodded.

"Then tell me everything. You were by the woods…"

"I thought you called me."

"From the woods…"

"You called me."

"And then?"

"I went over the field and you were all gray and green. You ran past me. I was frightened. I could hardly see you. Just a little bit. You were all gray and green. I was frightened…"

"How fast did I pass you?"

"Daddy… ? I'm frightened…"

"Be quiet, Steven. Stand still. Stop crying. How fast did I pass you?"

"Very fast. I couldn't see you."

"Faster than our car?"

"I think so. You ran up to here. I followed you and heard you shouting."

"What was I shouting?"

"Rude things." The boy squirmed beneath his father's gaze. "Rude things. About Mummy."

Stunned and sickened, Huxley bit back the question he longed to ask, stood up from his desk and walked past the wan-faced lad, into the garden.

Rude things about Mummy…

"How do you know the man you saw was me?" he murmured.

Steven ran past him, distressed and suddenly angry. The boy turned sharply, eyes blazing, but said nothing.

Huxley said, "Steven. The man you saw… whoever it was… it only
looked
like me. Do you understand that? It wasn't me at all. It only
looked
like me."

The answer was a growl, a shaking, feverish, feral growl, in which the words were dimly discernible from the furious face, the dark face of the boy as he backed slowly away, sinking into himself, lowering his body, eyes on his father. Angry.

"It…
was
… you… It…
was
… you…"

And then Steven had fled, running to the gate. He left the garden and crossed the field almost frantically, plunging into the nearby woods.

Huxley hesitated for a moment, half thinking that it would be better for the boy to calm down first before pursuing the matter further. But he was too intrigued by Steven's glimpse of the ghost.

He picked up one of Wynne-Jones's frontal-lobe bridges and trotted after his son.

As I had imagined he would, the boy became intrigued when I told him about the frontal-lobe bridges (I called them "electrical crowns"). He was hovering in the edgewoods, shaking, by the time I reached him. I have never seen Steven so distressed, not even after he and Christian glimpsed the Twigling, and were given a great fright. I said that WJ and myself had been experimenting on seeing ghosts more clearly. Would he like to try one on? Oh the delight! I felt smaller than the smallest creature in so tricking Steven, but by now there was an overwhelming compulsion in me to know who or what this "gray-green figure" had been.

As we returned to the house Steven glanced backward and frowned. Was it the figure? I could see wind stirring the trees and scrubby bush that borders the denser zones of the wood, but no sign of human life. Can you see anything, I asked the boy, but after a moment he shook his head. We returned to the study and after a few minutes I tentatively placed a crown on Steven's head. He was trembling with excitement, poor little lad. I should have remembered WJ's instructions of two years ago, when first he had started to tinker with this electrical device. Always use with a calm mind. We had had our greatest successes under such conditions, perking up the peripheral vision, sharpening the focus of the pre-mythago forms that could be glimpsed when within the swell and grasp of the sylvan net. It was wrong of me to go ahead with Steven without first checking the notebooks. I have no excuse, just shame. The effect on the boy was devastating. I have learned a severe and sobering lesson.

Steven remembers nothing of the incident with the frontal bridge. It is as if the electrical surge that sent him into such hysteria has blanked the last five days from him. His most recent memory is of school, on Tuesday. He remembers eating his lunch, and walking to a class, and then nothing. He is happy again, and the fever has died down. He didn't wake last night, and has no memory of the gray-green man. I walked with him by the edge of the wood, then ventured in through the gate, down by the thin stream with its slippery banks. Inside the wood I sensed the pre-mythagos at once and asked Steven what he could see.

His answer: Funny things.

He smiled as he said this. I questioned him further, but that is all he would say. "Funny things." He looked quite blank when I asked him to look for the gray-green man.

I have destroyed something in him. I have warped him in some way. I am frightened by this since i do not understand even remotely what I have done. Wynne-Jones might know better, but he remains lost. And I cannot bring myself to explain in full just what I did to Steven. This act of cowardice will destroy me. But until I understand what has happened, who is writing in my journal, I must keep as free as possible of domestic difficulty. I am denying something in myself for the sake of a sanity that will collapse as soon as I am free of mystery. This is limbo!

Jennifer treats me harshly. I am spending as much time as I can with the two boys. But I must find Wynne-Jones. I must find out what has happened to bring this haunting upon myself.

So tired he could hardly walk, Huxley walked across the night field, glad of a moonglow behind clouds that showed him the stark outline of Oak Lodge. Using this as a marker he stepped slowly toward his home, the sickness in his stomach still a jarring pain and a nauseous surge. Whatever he had eaten, he should have been more careful.

This excursion had been short, again, but he had hoped to have returned before nightfall. As it was, he imagined dawn was just an hour or so away.

The sound of Jennifer's cry stopped him in his tracks. He listened carefully, close to the gate, and again he heard her voice, a slightly strangled, then increasingly intense evocation of pain. She was gasping, he realized. The sound of her voice stopped quite suddenly, and then there was a laugh. The sound was eerily loud in the night, in the still night, this solitude of sound and sensation that was so close to dawn.

"Oh my God. Jennifer… Jennifer!"

He began to walk more swiftly. An image of his wife being attacked in the night was insisting its superiority over the obvious.

The doors of his study were shattered abruptly. Glass crashed and the doors flung wide. Something moved with incredible speed across the lawns, through the trees, causing leaves and apples to fall. Whatever it was stopped suddenly close to the hedges, then crashed through them, passing Huxley like a storm wind.

And stopped. And moved in the moonlight.

Gray-green man… ?

There was nothing there. There was moon-shadow only. And yet Huxley could sense the outline of a man, a naked man, a man still hot from exertion, the smell of the man, the heat of the man, the pulse of heart and head, the shaking of the limbs of the man…