The Hollowing (21 page)

“Of course he means the Jack,” she said, scanning the scrawled words again. “It’s got ahead of us. Damn!”

She was agitated and irritable and Richard kept both his curiosity and apprehension concerning the giant ursine to himself. They were in a place of massive trees, with wide spaces below the heavy canopy, a hard encampment to defend. Lytton had made a windbreak of dead wood in the overhang formed by a low bough. The river flowed on the other side of a raised bank.

During the early evening, the creature moved cumbersomely from its den, among the rocks on the high ground behind the encampment, and padded down to the river. Breathless, Richard watched it from cover, hoping that Helen, who was at the water’s edge, washing, would hear it coming. The beast was familiar, its body bearlike if huge, its long muzzle thrown up into fleshy ridges. Overlapping canines pressed outside its mouth. Its shoulders were covered with a thick shawl of spiked, black hair, on a body that was otherwise grey and brown.

Close to where Richard crouched in total silence, waiting his moment to warn Helen, it rose onto its hindlegs and browsed at the foliage twenty feet above the ground, its stomach rumbling loudly, its breath a series of muffled snorts. When it dropped to all fours again, it hesitated half-way down, front paws with spreading claws held expectantly, the whole beast hunched as if listening.

When it moved on to the river, Richard followed it, spear held firmly. He wished sincerely, at that moment, for Lytton’s pistol. There was no sign of Helen by the flowing water. The cave bear approached the tree-fringed river and drank.

There was a furtive movement opposite and it reared up to its full height, arms extended. The wood was suddenly full of chattering and three sleek, lizard shapes dropped from the overhanging branches onto the huge beast. The bear screamed in an oddly human way and turned, slashing at the reptiles. One of the wide-eyed lizards had its teeth in the bear’s neck. One hung onto the black shawl with tiny hands, slashing with a blade-like hind claw at the ursine’s eye. The third was kicking at its bulging and exposed paunch, trying to rip through the hide with its glinting knife. The whole attack held a fascination for Richard, probably because of the thought that these were
living dinosaurs,
engaged in the hunt: he eased down the bank, crouching in cover to watch the kill. Absorbed by the bloody mayhem by the river, he failed to notice the narrow, grinning face that was staring at him, until the reptile chattered suddenly and dropped toward him, killing jaws open.

He cried out as the sleek body swung down, ducking away from the claws that flashed before his eyes, narrowly missing him; the creature’s whip-like tail struck him across the face. A second later, a bloody iron point erupted from the wide jaws of the creature and the dinosaur wriggled, gurgled, and finally went limp. Behind it stood Helen, lowering her spear before working the point out of the skull.

“You should pay more attention!” she said angrily to Richard. “This vicious little bastard had been watching you for over a minute.”

Richard watched as the hind claws flexed in the death throes, six inches of razor-sharp curved horn. “Thanks. That’s one down; only three to go—”

By the river, the ursine had broken the back of one of the rapacious reptiles. It used the limp body to thrash at the others.

Then, unexpectedly, a fifth reptile appeared, running like a sleek bird along the river bank, nervous, jerky, its long tail horizontal until it stopped, at which point the tail undulated stiffly. It glanced at the humans and uttered a croaking taunt, then ran to join its kin. Oddly, the two dinosaurs had detached themselves from the bloody fur of the giant mammal, leaving it to lumber away, still roaring with pain. They were spitting and tail-flexing at the newcomer. Richard sensed their panic, as they circled on the spot, watching an animal that was identical to them, but which they clearly did not recognise. The bear appeared suddenly close to Richard, but it ran heavily through the trees toward its den, shaking its massive head to alleviate pain, spraying blood to right and left.

By the river, the fifth reptile rapidly grew and changed its shape, and as the two killers turned to flee it hunted them down, so fast that its actions were a blur. It bit through each neck, severing the head, then stood on its hindlegs, the corpses in its hands as it tore and nibbled at the muscle and tissue of the bloody necks.

It was ten feet tall. There was a human quality to its face and limbs, though the tail, held almost vertically, quivered and flexed at the tip. It was a lurid red on its belly, bright yellow and green on face and back, the colours of the Jack that had been born in the hornbeam glade.

As it ate, it croaked a challenge to the woods, certainly intended for the human observers.

Richard withdrew discreetly, following Helen who had fled the location long seconds before. A last glance at the river afforded him the glimpse of a man, shaggy-haired and clothed in coloured rags, standing by the water watching the wood, the dead dinosaurs held easily in his hands.

“Why didn’t he take us? The Jack—why is he taunting us?”

Helen had rolled up her sleeping things and filled her pack, then squatted down behind it, an arrow nocked to her bow, her iron-bladed spear to hand. “I don’t know. Part of its nature would be my uneducated guess. We can’t move until dawn; in the meantime let’s defend ourselves as best we can.”

*   *   *

In the event, the night passed swiftly, with only the grumbling roar of the wounded bear, high in the rocks, disturbing the snatched sleep of whichever one of them was not on watch. With first light they followed Lytton, cautious and apprehensive, but nothing was waiting for them, although Richard could not shake off the feeling of their tracks being dogged quietly. It was an understandable anxiety, he imagined.

*   *   *

Helen’s apprehension did not lighten. On the third evening they heard the sound of fife and drum coming from a clearing in the wood, and she skirted widely, anticipating danger. Richard crept close to the small fire and saw the three tunicked soldiers, seated in the fire’s glow, one of them practising the thin flute, a second drumming happily on his side drum, the third smoking a long, clay pipe. They were British soldiers of the eighteenth century, redcoats, and in Alex’s mind would probably have been associated, from the Grimm brothers’ tales, with giant dogs whose eyes were as wide as saucers. Indeed, the baying of a hound sounded later, but by that time they were ensconced inside the walls of an old tavern, huddled in the canvas tent as the night’s dew formed. Empty oak barrels, stacked against one wall, were a tease to Richard’s appetite for a pint or two of strong beer.

For warmth they slept in the same roll of blanket. They had come to this arrangement without really addressing it. Although intimate, in its way, it was also too practical for either embarrassment or exploitation. In the morning, Helen’s arms were round Richard, her breath soft in his ear, the flop of silver hair tickling his nose. When he stirred, stiff and damp with dew, she murmured softly and tugged him back. “This is too comfortable,” she said. “Let’s have a few more minutes.”

This welcome lie-in was rudely interrupted moments later when the bushes outside the ruined tavern were crushed violently and a tall shape peered over the wall, startling them. Against the brightening sky it was hard to see detail save that the figure was a man, a tall, lean man of huge height, carrying two staffs. He peered at the tent quizzically for a few seconds, then spoke in a deep voice, guttural words whose intonation suggested a question. He repeated the query, frowning at Richard’s silence. Again he spoke, a single word, “Helpen!”

Richard called up to this fairy-tale figure, “We don’t need help. Thank you for offering.”

He laughed huskily, then reached over the wall and with a hand the size of an armchair picked up one of the tuns, shaking it then discarding it with a sigh. A moment later he withdrew.

From the doorway Richard watched his unsteady passage through the trees, his short cloak ragged, his breeches tied with leather in the Saxon way, his face grey with a bristling beard.

“What the hell is
he?
” Helen whispered.

“A Long Man,” Richard said, and there was little else to add. That the visitor was a Long Man was obvious: he was the living reflection of the chalk figures that could be found on the English downlands, and whose origins and identities and functions remained a mystery.

Just before he was out of sight, the Long Man turned and called again, pushing aside the foliage with one of the staffs, bending the high branch easily. When Richard shook his head he shrugged, then turned and reached out his arms, a tall pole in each hand, an absolute image now of the Long Man of Wilmington, in Sussex. He stepped forward and faded, both poles following him into obscurity.

Behind Richard, Helen gasped and laughed at the same time. “He carries his own hollowing!” she said. “We should have made friends with him … he could have saved us hours!”

*   *   *

A distant rumble, a freshening breeze, told of the storm approaching. They had set off from the ruins, anxious to make the rendezvous with Lytton, but had gone no more than half a mile when the thunder came closer, and the sky darkened to such an extent that they lost the track below the canopy in the gloom and the constant, wind-whipped motion of the undergrowth. When the first rain began to trickle through the foliage, Helen led the way swiftly back to the tavern. They re-erected the tent and crouched in misery as the heavens opened and the downpour began.

For a while there was nothing but the drum of the rain, but the hound that had bayed in the distance grew closer, its cry a mournful sound at first, then more of an angry challenge to some hunted beast. Helen had folded into a tight ball, her arms around her head, as if blocking the sound, but after a while she looked up, drawn and misty eyed, a grim set to her features. Richard grew concerned and asked her why she was frightened, and she replied quite simply, “Trickster.”

She wouldn’t talk further, not for the moment. Richard established only that, although she was hunting Trickster, she could not be sure whether or not he had risen from the earth in the wood at her own instigation. The Jack that dogged their steps, the shapechanging relic of pre-Celtic myth that shadowed them like a lie, was probably Alex’s creation, imbued with the darker side of the frightened boy, who was protecting himself so intensely against the products of his own imagination.

She could not be sure. She had expected to encounter Trickster in its Amerindian form, yet this Jack was quintessentially European. This, however, might be the trick that Trickster was playing on her, hiding himself from her in confusing guise while he waited for the moment to destroy her, as he had destroyed …

At this point she slumped again, then looked up sharply at Richard, reaching for her bow and quiver. She said, “It’s an odd story, and I can only explain it in the simplest of terms.”

“Good. Then I’ll understand it.”

“Five hundred years ago, Trickster destroyed my family; it didn’t end at that time. The destruction has continued down the family line to the present day. And I’m going to stop it. Or die trying. And that’s my story.”

She brushed aside Richard’s question, his concern, his offer to come with her. Heavily dressed in weatherproof jacket and leggings, her head protected beneath a hood, she tested the bow, selected six arrows, and went out into the rain, walking fast towards the awful baying of the giant dog.

If it
was
Coyote, she would have a fight on her hands.

When two hours had passed, and the sound of the dog had been swallowed either by distance or death, Richard followed Helen through the wood, calling for her. Emerging onto open land, where tall, wild grass was being crushed by the heavy rain, he saw her distantly, coming back towards the stone shelter. Stray light, penetrating the thunderclouds, caught on her rain-drenched waterproof. Her head was down, she was walking normally. As she came close Richard could see that she was unwounded.

Back in the shelter she ate food and tried to dry her saturated hair.

“Coyote?” Richard asked.

She shook her head. “I let it go. It was what Lytton calls a wild-hound, an early form of dog. You see them regularly. They’re solitary animals, more inclined to help than hinder. All for food, of course.” She smiled distractedly. “The story of the dogs’ downfall.”

After a while she relaxed. In her absence Richard had built a ditch around the squalid shelter; the floor was dry, and it felt warm with the small fire that smouldered at its centre. Richard asked her what had happened five hundred years ago, and why she felt she could end the curse today, in 1967.

“Because I carry the curse in my head,” she said. “As do all my family. Trickster is in here.” She tapped her skull. “And he shares his spirit between all the minds of my family. There’s only one of him, and if I can just entice him out … if I can just make him come out of the shadows…”

She was in a dreamy state, her eyes closed, her body swaying. For a moment she sang, but so softly that Richard strained to hear the words, then realised they were in an older tongue than his. When the song had finished she began to speak, eyes open but watching the long-gone, her voice rhythmical. The story was entrancing,
chanted
by the speaker as the rain lashed down.

Richard established afterwards that it was more than a family story, passed down from generation to generation: it was literally a family
dream,
and the dream of a family that had been regularly attacked, abused, and destroyed by Coyote. When he came to record the story he could not recapture the sense of time and land that she had elicited in his mind, the rhythm of a lost land, reflected in the rhythm of her words.

The first dream is still with me, though I haven’t dreamt it for years, now.

When we are children, the past is closer. It passes through the lands in our heads more easily.

Young Grandfather, who was named Three Crows Flying, was a fine hunter, and later a flier with eagles, which we would call shaman. He was born in the time before horses, when the great plains were covered with grass, and the best hunters were the fastest runners, or the most skilled at setting hidden nets and blind-alleys of wood for a single buffalo.