Twisted Winter (3 page)

Now Julian Hogg wanted that woodland too. He had enlisted two partners from Europe, and developed exquisitely detailed plans to cut down all the trees and build an American-style shopping mall. With three major towns a few miles away, Hunter's Wood was the perfect site. They would call it Castle View, for the distant outline of Windsor Castle on the flat Berkshire horizon. Mrs Wallace seemed
unaccountably hostile to the scheme, but Julian was confident that the money would bring her round.

Shrieks of laughter erupted from the room behind them, where a Hallowe'en game was in noisy progress. Julian's son George, totally hidden inside his expensive Darth Vader suit, came tugging at his father's arm.

“Dad, Dad – it's your turn – feel inside the box! Come on, tell us what you feel!”

Julian joined the cheery circle, noting with satisfaction the difference between his family's impressive Hallowe'en outfits and the home-made masks of the principled Macaulays. George directed his father's hand to the hole in the black-draped box on the coffee table, and Julian dutifully reached inside.

“It's awful!” hissed Freddie Thomson, giggling. “It's really disgusting!”

Julian groped, and felt.
Olives
, he thought.
Some things never change. Olives in olive oil
. He made a revolted face, and a suitable sound to match.

“Eeeuw!” he said. “Eyeballs! Cats' eyeballs!”

The children happily shrieked in triumph, and then it was Charlie Ransom's turn, his daughter having forgotten that he was the one who had opened the
tin of cocktail sausages that he would soon identify, shuddering with horror, as babies' fingers.

But just as he began, there was a disturbance at the front door: a sudden eruption of unexpected music, drowning out the soft background pop oozing from the stereo. It was live music, a high, lively sequence of notes played on a pipe and a stringed instrument that most of them had never heard before, and in from the front hall came two tall dancing figures dressed in chequered orange tights with black face-masks across their eyes: two Harlequins, playing a tabor and a lute.

Charlie Ransom's wife was calling him from the door, and in her voice he heard a faint note of panic.

“Charles! Mrs Wallace is here!”

But already everything had stopped, everyone had turned, entranced, to see the happy Harlequins – and the tall lady at the door, allowing James Macaulay to take her cloak. Part of her height was her eighteenth-century wig, a high pile of curls above a brilliant, elaborate long dress, and in her hand was the stem of an astonishing brocade face-mask studded with glittering stones. She held the mask over her face and reached out a graceful hand to Ruth Ransom and her bristling chin.

“Happy Hallowe'en, Mistress Witch!” said Mrs Wallace. “My nephews brought you some music!”

The Harlequins had effortlessly taken control of the room; the children loved them, copying every move as they danced round the room, playing. All the games were forgotten, even the babies' fingers.

Then for a moment the music stopped. The Harlequins paused, looking back at the front door. Mrs Wallace had her hand on the shoulder of one more figure, swathed in a black hooded cloak.

“And one more Hallowe'en friend!” Mrs Wallace said warmly.

“Allow me,” said James Macaulay politely, reaching round for the black cloak – and as the hood fell back, the whole house seemed suddenly gripped by a deathly chill. The Hallowe'en mask inside the hood was an appalling face of vicious evil, deeply lined, the mouth curled in a snarl, the eyes glaring. Its malevolence was more powerful than any monster mask they had ever seen, perhaps because its lines were so human.

They all stared. It was an ancient, twisted, baleful face, and on its forehead were two stumps, bleeding. For a moment, everyone in the room was afraid.

Julian Hogg stood motionless, feeling as though an icy hand had gripped him by the back of the neck.

The smallest Fothergill child began to cry.

At once the Harlequins began their music again, a cheerful, jaunty tune. The man in the mask, a dark figure in black jeans and turtleneck, bent his terrible head towards Mrs Wallace in a little bow, and they began to dance. The tension in the room dropped at once, and the children began their capering again.

Julian Hogg shook his head, bemused, and went to find himself another drink.

The room filled with music and laughter; it was a happy Hallowe'en. After a while the lights dimmed, and the hosts, the witch-hag and the pirate, brought in a bowl of fruit punch flickering with little flames. There were glass cups to be dipped into the punch, and straws for those people forced to drink through a hole in a rigid mask. The straws were very popular; they glowed in the dark.

The children clustered round the punch-bowl, reaching for straws. Mrs Wallace and her partner paused beside them, and she dipped a cup into the fruit punch and drank. Then she carefully fitted a straw through the cruel snarling mouth of her friend
in the twisted mask, and held up a cup so that he could drink too.

The children watched, warily.

Freddie Thomson was not a rotting mummy this year, but a unitard skeleton. He was lost in admiration, gazing up at the man's head. “That's the best monster mask I ever saw. Where'd you get it?”

“Not a monster,” said the man, removing the straw from the hole in his mask's awful unmoving mouth. His voice was husky, with an accent that sounded vaguely West Country. “It's Herne. You know Herne.”

“The ghost in Windsor Great Park,” said Verity Ransom, who knew everything. She was a ghost in floating white silk, with a feathery white mask across her eyes. “Herne the Hunter. He haunts a big oak tree. But he had antlers.”

“I had antlers,” said the man in the mask. He gave his head a little jerk, and a drop of blood from one of his forehead stumps flicked on to Verity Ransom's ghostly white silk.

“How do you
do
that?” said Freddie Thomson in awe.

Mrs Wallace said, “The Great Park story is more recent, Verity. This is a much older legend, from our
own old wood, Hunter's Wood. Haven't you heard it? A woodsman cut off Herne's antlers, long, long ago, so Herne's ghost protects the trees from anyone else who tries to cut them down. Whenever those ancient trees are in danger, his stumps bleed, and they tell him to come after the attacker.”

“And he comes,” said the masked man softly. “Oh yes, he comes.”

He bent his knees a little, so that his terrible head was at the same level as the children's heads, and he turned, slowly, facing them one after another.

Mrs Wallace said, “I wouldn't want him coming after me, would you?”

The children were backing away. “No!” said a small Fothergill devil fervently.

Blonde Mrs Fothergill, an outsize Alice, reached for the little boy's hand. She said reproachfully to Mrs Wallace, “You know, I really feel – ”

The man in the mask turned his face to her, with its wide yellow eyes and glistening wounded forehead.

“Herne the Hunter,” he said in his soft husky voice. “When there is danger, he comes hunting, and none can stop him.”

The small Fothergill made a whimpering noise.

Verity Ransom said in her high clear voice, “Don't be frightened, Petey. It's just Hallowe'en. That nasty old witch over there is really my mum, you know that. And this is just a Herne mask – look, you can see the string.”

She pointed to the neck of the man in the mask.

Freddie Thomson peered critically at the neat bow of tape just visible in the man's dark hair.

“Yeah, there it is,” he said. “And I can see a fold where the mask doesn't quite fit.”

The man in the mask chuckled, in a totally different voice. “Darn! I've got to be more convincing!” And he gave a high screech and dived at the children around him. They scattered, howling happily, and the chase became a game. The Harlequins joined in, still playing, and the party was back in full swing.

Mrs Wallace found Julian Hogg's chunky green-clad form at her side.

“Good evening,” he said. “So nice to see you. It's Julian, inside this froggy outfit. I'm hoping you and I will come to a mutually profitable agreement later this week. Your lawyers have heard all the details from my people, of course.”

Mrs Wallace held her brocaded mask up to her face, and her eyes glinted at him through it.

“You know my feelings about Hunter's Wood,” she said. “They go back a very long way. Those great trees are ancient, beyond counting. The wood is a powerful place, not to be touched. Time keeps it.”

“But times change,” Julian said genially. “And people change. We have to think of the future, Mrs Wallace.”

“Yes, I've done that,” Mrs Wallace said. “I spoke to my lawyers. I intend to give Hunter's Wood to the National Trust, to be preserved for the people and the ages.”

Below the bulging green eyes of his frog mask, Julian Hogg's thin-lipped mouth tightened. Then he smiled.

“Come now,” he said, “we can't have National Trust tourists parking up and down the borders of The Close.”

“I'm sure that won't happen,” said Mrs Wallace. “The Trust is very discreet and careful. And they will take very good care that nobody cuts down the trees of Hunter's Wood.” She lowered the stem of her mask for a moment, looking at him over its glittering edge.
“Not even you, Julian Hogg.”

Julian said, “You're forgetting that I own the Manor House.”

“In which I have the legal right to live for the rest of my days,” Mrs Wallace said peaceably.

“Indeed,” said Julian. “But the agreement doesn't specify how much of it you occupy. If I can't buy Hunter's Wood, I shall be forced to convert the manor into an apartment building. And you'll find yourself living the rest of your days – legally – not in a splendid spacious house but in a one-bedroom flat.”

He gave her another smile, and this time it was unpleasant and triumphant.

The Harlequins' music jingled on, and the children hopped to and fro.

“You are not a gentleman,” Mrs Wallace said.

“Perhaps not,” said Julian. “But I'm an excellent businessman.”

Mrs Wallace gazed into the slits in the bulbous green froggy eyes of his mask, for a long moment.

She said, “You are. And luckily, so is a friend of mine.”

She raised her brilliant fantastical mask to cover her face again, and turned, and in the same instant the
room fell silent, because once more the Harlequins stopped playing.

“Aaaaaaw,” said the children, who had been enjoying their cavorting. But the two Harlequins each gave them a little bow and followed Mrs Wallace, who was sweeping towards the front door.

Mr Macaulay, stationed near the coat-rack, helped to drape her heavy silk cloak round her shoulders, and she smiled at him. Then she left, as the Harlequins opened the front door, and they all went away past the marble columns, down the marble steps.

Out of the crowd of dancers came the man in the appalling mask, following them. “Thank you!” he called to the witch-face of Ruth Ransom, as he seized his hooded cloak from the rack. “Lovely party! Happy Hallowe'en!”

Julian Hogg had tried unsuccessfully to follow Mrs Wallace; he was standing beside the front door, in his green velvet jacket and his half-frog face. He put out a hand towards the man in the mask as he went by.

“I don't believe we were ever introduced,” Julian Hogg said.

“Just a friend of Mrs Wallace's,” the man in the
mask said. “A very old friend. A business friend, you might say.”

He loped down the white marble steps into the darkness, and paused. Then he turned his head back toward Julian and the house, so that the light caught the appalling, immobile, vicious mask with the two bleeding stubs on its forehead. Julian found himself suddenly giddy, and he felt his fingers curl in against their palms, rubbing softly, as if they could still feel the greasy olives that might, or might not, really have been eyeballs. Somewhere in the night, or perhaps in his mind, he heard a thin high call like the note of a hunter's horn.

Still facing him, the man in the mask reached to the dangling straps behind his neck and pulled his mask away.

Nobody but Julian Hogg was there to see that the mask had been simply a copy of the dreadful face that was underneath. And the monstrosity of the real face was far more appalling because it was alive: now the glaring yellow eyes blinked, the twisted mouth moved its dark lips. For an instant Julian stared in horror at the terrifying malevolent sneer, and the stubs of horns dripping blood.

Mrs Wallace's old friend smiled at Julian. The smile was the worst thing of all.

“See you soon, Mr Hogg,” he said.

Then he turned, and was gone.

Liz Williams

I didn't like our new home, but my mum said that it would grow on me. I wasn't sure about that. I thought that it was too flat, the hills a distant blur of blue. The village lay low and soggy. The grass in between the apple trees was puddled with wet and not only after it rained. It was late November now and everything was brown and grey. The trees looked as though someone had taken a black pen and drawn them against the sky. They were alder and willow and ash, Mum told me, and in the spring a man would go around with a machine and give the willows a haircut,
until they looked like the ugly heads of old bald men. This was because willow grows too fast, she said.

“How do you know?” I asked her.

“Because I lived near here when I was a little girl, like you, Hannah. A bit younger, maybe – I was only ten when we moved away. I lived with my grandmother, your great-grandmother. She had a cottage in a village called Oddmore, which is on the other side of Taunton.”

“Does she still live there?” I was curious. I hadn't known my nan, let alone a great-grandmother.