Haunted Shadows 1: Sickness Behind Young Eyes (13 page)

24

The streets of the village looked
alien when covered in the darkness of the night. The moonlight glistened on the
old cobbles and made them look slick, like scales on a lizard. The wind whipped
and nipped at me but I made no effort to stop it. I scanned every corner as I
passed the shops and houses, but I couldn’t see Jeremiah.

Surely he hadn’t really gone to the
woods? I knew he was desperate to find something, but nobody in their right
mind would go to such a place on their own. A shudder crept through me from
thinking about the dark trunks stretching into the sky, branches twisting
together to block out light. The crunch of leaves as I imagined something
walking behind me.

I moved so fast and was so deep in
thought that I didn’t see the figure in front of me until I walked into it. My
nose hit something hard and I felt it sting.

“Watch where you’re going,” said a
voice.

My eyes took a few seconds to adjust
but gradually I saw ginger hair, a short beard and eyes darting in dozens of
directions.

“Murray,” I said.

“What are you doing out here?” he
said.

“I could ask the same about you.”

“Well I live here. Whereas you…what
are you still doing here? Looking for holes to poke your nose through?”

I shoved my hands into my pockets so
that he couldn’t see them clench into fists.

“That depends. Got anything else to
hide?”

Murray’s nose curled and his eyes
looked harsh. “This goes way beyond you, lady. You couldn’t even begin to
understand. There are hundreds of years of history in the village. Do you
honestly think you have a right to know its secrets?”

He took a step forward, shoulders set
firm and face in a grimace. My heart started to beat faster.

“Like I said, it’s for a university
project.”

He shook his head. “Cut the shit.
You’re looking for them. Believe me about this. Once you find them, you will
wish with all your soul that you hadn’t.”

“Them?”

“I saw your friend head toward the
woods half an hour ago. Go that way if you want to look under rocks.”

With that he pulled his coat collar
over his chin and walked away. He didn’t stop to look back, and soon he turned
a corner and disappeared from view, leaving me stood alone. It felt like I was
the only person awake at this hour. Usually that was something I thought about
with pride as I sat at my dorm room desk and studied into the twilight hours.
Now it was a lonely thought, as if nobody would be awake to hear my screams if
something were to happen.

The air grew colder as I left the
village, and the wind was harsher. It licked at me and swept my hair around
until it was a mess of curls. Part of the back of my head still stung from
where something had tugged my hair in the basement. I put my hand to the back
of my scalp and winced.

Soon the Jenkins cottage loomed. As I
got closer I made a pointed effort not to look at it. I didn’t want to see the
ivy smothering the walls, and I didn’t want to look at a window and see the
harsh glare of Peter or Sharon staring back. Soon the cottage was behind me,
and as I went by it I saw movement in the corner of my eye.

Emily’s room was behind me now, I
knew. It had faced the woods, so right now it looked down on me. I felt a
prickly sensation on my face as though something stood in the darkened room and
stared out of the window, watched me as I walked towards the woods. A shiver
seeped through my skin and massaged goosebumps into my flesh. I knew I mustn’t
turn around. If I saw something now, anything, this would all be lost. I
wouldn’t be able to carry on.

Going into the woods was the last
thing in the world I wanted to do, but I couldn’t abandon Jeremiah. If he went
exploring there alone then he was in danger, and he was too stubborn to admit
something like that.

I switched away from rational
thoughts and let my feet carry me until the woods stood tall in front of me.
Thick tree trunks stretched out of the earth and spread their branches across
the sky, creating a knobbly umbrella that blocked the glint of the moon. It was
a well of darkness, a labyrinth of black that threatened to close on anyone
stupid enough to walk through it.
Was I this stupid?

My heart beat so fast that a searing
pain spread across my chest. I shivered and rubbed my arms over my body, but
any chance of heat was long gone. It felt like I stood in a snowstorm that I
couldn’t see, and the only thing I heard was the scream of the wind. I couldn’t
do this, I realised. No matter how much I wanted to help Jeremiah, I couldn’t
go into those woods.  I knew that even if I tried, my body wouldn’t comply.

I saw a bolt of light penetrating the
black. It was just off the centre of the woods, a vertical arc of yellow that
started at the ground and spread up toward the ceiling of the trees. It didn’t move
nor flicker, it was like an upside down street lamp in the middle of the
forest. A chill shuddered through my chest.
It was Jeremiah’s torch, and it
was on the forest floor.

I couldn’t turn away now, not when he
was in trouble. I tried to swing my leg forward but it was filled with two tons
of lead. My heart hammered the blood through my veins so fast that I thought
they would burst. My mind screamed at me to turn back, told me how stupid I was
being. It told me that nobody had ever cared about me, so why should I care
about anyone else? I gritted my teeth. I was done being that person. Jeremiah
was a stubborn old fool and he was rude as hell, but I wouldn’t abandon him.

I forced my legs into action. The
closer I got to the woods, the more they felt like jelly. My stomach turned to
water and swirled around inside me, and my arms felt light and full of air,
like balloons twisted into shapes.

I reached the threshold of the
forest. It would only take one more step to be inside, but it felt like a climb
over Everest. There was something final about it, as though I was making a
decision that would affect me forever. I took a deep breath and stepped over
the line. As I walked into the forest the shadows slipped over me. They were
heavy, and with every step I took toward the beam of light the weight grew. I
had the urge to hunch over, as though I really did have layers and layers on my
back.

Each twig that I stepped on sent a
snap out into the air. Sometimes it was answered back with another snap, and I
stopped dead. I felt icy fingers stroke me and spread cold through my tingling
skin. I listened and hoped not to hear another noise. It was just an echo, I
knew. Or a woodland creature scampering across the floor.

I walked on. As the beam of torch
light grew closer the trees tucked in together until soon I had to weave in and
out of them. Some of them were so close that it was a tight squeeze to get
through, as though they had formed barriers. I was near the middle now. A
treacle of pure darkness swished around me, but I didn’t need my eyes to know I
was in the centre. It was something I could feel, like walking through a maze
and getting the sense you had nearly beaten it.

A fallen branch snapped beneath my
feet. Behind me, something crunched on the forest floor. This time I didn’t
stop. I took a breath and squeezed between two elm trunks, took a few paces
forward and reached the torch light. I had expected Jeremiah to be nearby.
Maybe even to see him on the floor, like he had fallen over or something. Instead,
it was nothing. Just the same black wilderness that covered the rest of the
forest.

I felt alone. I picked up the torch
from the floor and lit up the barks of the elms trees that surrounded me. I
realised that they formed a perfect circle now, and that the square metre of
forest in the centre was the only part that was clear. As I span the beam of my
torch across the trees, the yellow arc flicked and then faded away, plunging a
deep darkness down on me.

I smacked the torch against my chest
and flicked the power button. It coughed a weak ray of light and then faded
again.
Damnit. I shouldn’t have been in such a panic to find Jeremiah.

I realised just how far into the
woods I had come. I was in the heart of it now, and to get out would mean a
long walk back in the darkness through tangles of bushes and roots that hooked
up from the forest floor. A breeze blew on the back of my neck.

Where the hell was Jeremiah?
I wished beyond anything else that
he was here with me. I had tried to keep the feelings of terror inside me, to
be confident and keep control of myself. As the black of night pressed in and I
felt shadows grow into shapes around me, I surrendered to the dread. I let it
seep through my chest, into my heart and then spread through my veins.

Something whined in the trees across
from me, and I dropped the torch to the floor in shock. It sounded like
something twisted the branches and made them creak. I knew that it wasn’t just
the wind blowing through them. I held my breath so that not even my own intake
of air could interfere with the stillness of the woods. I listened as hard as I
could.

This time the whine came from behind
me. Then to the side of me. Soon the circle of trees around me turned with
terrible groans, and I realised what the sound was. My heart flooded with a
terror so sudden I thought I was going to faint.

The whining sound I heard from the
trees was that of rope rubbing against them as something twisted underneath.
The ropes were tied onto the branches around me, and limp bodies swung off
them.

I shut my eyes. I wished there was a
way to close my ears, but my body was so frozen in place that I didn’t even
dare raise my arms to cover them. I felt a retch work its way from my stomach
and to my throat, and I clamped my mouth shut. All I could think was how much I
wished someone was here with me. Someone, anyone, just as long as I wasn’t
alone with the terrible creaks of the trees as things swung from them.

I opened my eyes and peered into the
fog of darkness, but I couldn’t see anything passed a metre away. As silently
as I could I bent to the floor and reached for the torch. I clicked the power
button, but nothing came.

The arms of the trees groaned in the
night. I couldn’t see them, but I felt heavy masses form around me. They were a
denser kind of shadow, shades of black that were impossibly darker than the
rest of the forest. They hung in the noose of  invisible ropes and stopped just
short of the ground, swinging gently in the night air.

Something wheezed. Behind me, a raspy
groan drifted toward me and tickled my ears. A murmur began, as though choked
throats tried to speak. Someone laughed. My eyes widened so much I felt like my
eyeballs were going to pop out. The laugh came from somewhere deeper in the
forest. It was a girlish laugh, full of fun and mischief. Another laugh
answered it, this one of a young boy.

A branch creaked. The others creaked
back at it. My stomach sunk, and I felt like falling to the ground  and
shutting my eyes. Something spoke without making a sound, as if the words
turned inside my mind and then faded away.

We will claim the girl.

My back stung as a sheet of ice
settled on it. I felt a scream try to escape but my throat was too dry to let
it out.

Kill the boy.

Claim the girl.

The childish laughter got closer,
tiny feet snapping on twigs. The trees whined and the shadows twisted beneath
them. Suddenly I knew. I wanted to warn the children away, but my mouth was
clamped as though something had sawn it shut. I needed to warn the children
about what waited for them, but as their chuckles and shouts grew nearer I knew
that it was impossible.

25

I sprinted through the trees. My feet
crashed over rotted branches and the snaps rang off around me. Adrenaline
flooded through me, gave me fuel, took the sting out of my shoulder when I ran
into a tree. I sucked gushing breaths into my lungs, and even though I felt
them start to burn I knew that I couldn’t slow down. Soon the trees grew sparse
until finally, without even realising it was so close, I spilled out of the
forest and onto the grassy fields. I had never been so happy to feel the glow
of the moon seep down onto me.

As my lungs began to relax and my
heartbeat slowed, I got up and walked away from the woods. I was glad to put as
much distance between us as I could. The Jenkins’s cottage loomed before me, a
centuries-old relic that defied the attempts of time to pull it down.

There was a shape in the window of
Emily’s room. I looked away, as though my brain averted my eyes out of
instinct. When I looked back, all I saw was a dark curtain that had been drawn
to cover the window. I walked closer and soon I was at the front of the house.
I was going to pass it and walk into the village, but the glow of a light in
the living room intrigued me. It must have been gone midnight, and the light
had not been on earlier when I had gone toward the woods.

I looked over my shoulder. I tried to
be subtle at first, but soon I just stared. The Jenkins family were in their
living room. They sat together on their couch, but there was a foot of
separation between them as though they couldn’t bear to sit close to one
another. Opposite them I saw the back of a head. It was a mane of familiar
ginger hair with hulking shoulders beneath it.

Why was Jeremiah there?
I knew deep down that he wouldn’t
just give up on things, and perhaps I even expected him to go to the woods at
some point. I never expected him to go back to the Jenkins house. What was even
more surprising was the fact that they let him in.

Inside the living room Peter jerked
his head up and caught me in his cold glare. He lifted his arm and pointed.
Jeremiah span round, saw me, and his eyes seemed to widen. He stood up from the
couch and walked way.

As the cottage door opened I felt
like shrinking away. It felt like I shouldn’t have been watching them, that I
had intruded on something private.

“Thanks for your time,” I heard
Jeremiah say.

A few seconds later the living room
light was extinguished, and the Jenkins’s family home once again looked empty.
Jeremiah strode across the fields. I expected him to look mad, but his features
were soft.

“You look like crap,” he said.

I smiled at the words. Out of the
forest and away from swinging branches, Jeremiah could insult me all he wanted.

“How did you get them to talk to
you?” I said.

Jeremiah took off his leather coat
and wrapped it around my shoulders. I started to protest but as the warmth slid
over me the words died in my throat.

“Jesus,” he said. “You shouldn’t be
out in this. I’m freezing my bollocks off and I have layers of blubber to keep
me warm. Why aren’t you in bed?”

“I needed to find you.”

He put his arm on my shoulder and
turned me toward the village.

“You get back to the pub,” he said.

“What are you going to do?”

“There’s one last person I need to
see. You get back, get some sleep, and I’ll see you in the morning.”

The village lay before us but this
time, despite the gloom, I didn’t mind walking into it. Only, instead of going
back to the pub, I wished that we could walk back to the car. I didn’t care how
treacherous the country roads were in the dark. I didn’t care that I couldn’t
do anything about the secrets of the village. I would feel better if I could
get to the bright lights of the city.

“Wait,” I said, as Jeremiah turned
away from me.

He stooped. “What is it?”

“How did you get them to talk to you?
Last time we were there, it was like they hated you.”

“Well – “ he began.

I cut in. “Let me guess. ‘A bottle of
whisky goes a long way in this village.’”

Jeremiah grinned, then shook his
head. “Nope. This time, I just apologised.”

I crossed my arms and felt the
leather of Jeremiah’s coat crinkle around me. “Wow. I bet you didn’t expect
personal growth when we came out here.”

“I’m not about to try yoga.”

A breeze tickled my legs. I stamped
my feet onto the floor.  “So did they tell you anything?”

“Quite a lot, actually. Really
interesting stuff, not that it matters much. Did you know that one of Peter
Jenkins’s ancestors was part of the witch hunts?”

I heard the creak of rope on wood in
my head. I pulled the coat tighter toward me. “Oh?”

“His great, great, great
and-then-some grandfather tied the ropes around the trees. It was his job to
pick branches that wouldn’t snap. Ones that would stand firm and make sure the
women’s necks broke properly.”

I thought back to the groans of the
trees as things swung off them. Snapping sounds that followed me through the
forest. Suddenly Jeremiah’s coat wasn’t enough to ward off the cold winds that
lapped around me.

“I went looking for you, you know.”

Jeremiah arched his eyebrow.

“What do you mean?”

“I went into the woods. I saw the
torch you dropped.”

He shook his head sadly. “That was
stupid of me, going in there. But I was so pissed off. I just needed to find
something.”

“And did you?”

“No.”

“What about you?” he said.

I didn’t want to think about what I
had heard. I didn’t want to relive the experience through the telling of it.

“Not a thing.”

Jeremiah took a few steps back toward
me. He spoke in a low volume, as though we were members of a conspiracy
guarding our words against listening ears.  The wind brushed against Jeremiah’s
jumper but if he felt the chill, he didn’t show it. I was grateful to him for
looking out for me. He wasn’t as bad as I thought, I decided. In some ways he
had earned his reputation, but in others the reputation masked the truth
within.

“I asked them about the diary,” he
said. “I wish to hell I’d made copies of it straight away instead of letting
you take it for the night.”

I opened my mouth to protest, but
Jeremiah lifted his hand in the air.

“Don't worry, I’m not blaming you,”
he said. “I just wished I could have shown it to them. Instead I had to tell
them about it. I described the different sets of handwriting.”

“And what did they say?”

Across the fields, in the woods, an
owl screeched. The wind lapped above and below us, moving black clouds across
the sky, flicking blades of grass back and forth and trying to tear them from
the ground. A solitary light winked on in a house in the village. Jeremiah leaned
closer.

“Did you know she died in the bath?”

“Emily?”

He gave a grim nod. “Drowned
herself.”

I shuddered. “Part of me wishes I
never came here.”

Jeremiah skipped over my remark.

“Peter acted like he didn’t know
about the diary. But there was this look in his eyes, Ella. I’ve seen it
before. The look of a man who doesn’t want to admit the truth. The diary is the
key to it all. The answer is in it somewhere. I just wished I knew where.”