Каарон Уоррен - The Best Horror of the Year Volume Ten

“It is.”

“What’s the best wood to pick up do you think?” I asked.

“Ash if you can find some. Most of it’s further in towards the middle of the wood, though. Did you have it in mind to go right inside there?”

“Yes. We were never allowed as kids, so it’s time we did.”

“Right inside,” Eddie repeated, and I could hear an echo of the night-whisperings of our childhood in his voice.

“You might find a house in there,” the old man muttered. “But if you come across it, you should move on in haste.”

“What house would that be Mr. Ratchetson?” I asked trying not to show my interest, for here was the point of my questioning.

“The last one along this stretch,” he answered, raising his thin arm into the air for emphasis.

“I thought yours was the last,” Eddie said.

“Lots of folk did,” he answered.

“Dad spoke about that house to me once,” I said. “He reckoned it got swallowed up by the encroaching wood, and when I asked if Eddie and I could go and see it, he said if we did, we’d be swallowed up by the wood too, and never find our way out again.”

“You didn’t tell me that when we were kids,” Eddie said, frowning at me.

“I didn’t think there was any point.”

“Dad liked to know exactly where we were, you see, Mr. Ratchetson,” Eddie explained, and I could hear a tiny scraping of anxiety in his voice.

“You’re the Marshall boys, you say?” the old man asked. “Ann Marshall was your mother?” We nodded. “She had glorious hair, but I’m glad she cut it off; it put my mind to rest. Mightily to rest.”

“I remember Mum’s hair when it was long,” Eddie said. “It used to swing about when she had it loosened on Sundays. I really loved it; I was heartbroken when she had it all shorn off.”

Mr. Ratchetson shifted from one slippered foot to the other. “Wisest thing to do, son; it was attracting a great deal of attention.”

I glanced at Eddie and was startled to find myself moved by the emotion on his face. I too had been sad when Mum cut off her hair. I’d asked her what she did with it and was puzzled when she whispered that Dad had taken it into the field behind our house and burnt it. She wouldn’t say anymore, and Eddie and I could tell by our parents’ faces that we were not to ask about it, and not to stare at Mum’s raggedy shorn head, or at the hundreds of little cuts on her arms and neck.

“So, the house, Mr. Ratchetson?”

“Try to sell it to decent people,” he answered, “if there are any such left in the world.”

“The other one; the one inside the wood.”

“To collect the ash, you mean?”

“Yes, exactly… where we can get ash.”

“I know where a big old oak has fallen down,” he said, turning his head first and then by small shaky movements, his body, in the direction we’d come from. “Walk along the railway to the old shoe factory. Whole tree down just there.” He stared at us for a short intense moment, and then, without saying more, turned, and made his way to his open front door.

“Wow,” Eddie said, “did you see the way the pulse on his skull was twanging?”

“I want to find that house,” I murmured, somehow fearful of the words as I spoke them. “I’ve been curious about it all my life.”

Eddie shrugged. “Let’s not waste more time then; half the morning’s gone already.”

Moss had formed vivid green pillows along the route into the deeper wood, some of them huge and glistening with moisture, and although we didn’t see fungus poking out anywhere, I could smell it above the odour of wet rotting leaves. As we walked on, the tree trunks began to take on an unfamiliar slimy look and I was disinclined to reach out and run my palm over them, as had always been my way with trees.

“It’s a little ecosystem all of its own in here,” I said, “moist and dripping.”

“What’s that stuff growing in the rock crevices with black stems?”

“Maidenhair fern, Eddie. Or Venus’s hair.” We could see that it had grown lushly and undisturbed for a long time, and it made me shiver despite its beauty.

“Quaint,” Eddie whispered, and walked towards it. “It’d make a great shot, or have you given up nature photos?”

“Let’s not stop,” I said. Time’s getting on, and we’ve got stuff to get in town later. As I spoke, just at the corner of my eye something attracted my attention. “How weird is that?” I whispered, pointing it out. “Who do you think did it—kids?”

“Must be, I suppose.”

“It’s on both sides of that path, look.” We stood close together, and stared; the vegetation and wood grasses on a small side track off the main path had been neatly plaited and their ends bound together with some kind of delicate twine. “Shall we see what’s further on?” I asked.

“Let’s just stick on this path and find the ash,” Eddie said.

I’ve never forgotten those words of his, and each time I think of them, my heart seems to plummet downwards and fall away into a great void of pity, and longing, and grief, for I said, “No, come on, let’s just take a quick look down there. Where’s the harm?”

We turned off the main track and walked down the tiny dark and plaited pathway before us. We came to a bend pretty soon and as we rounded it, both of us cried out. We’d found the house, and it was huge with many shabby, grey glinting windows.

“Abandoned ages ago by the looks of it,” Eddie murmured.

I could understand why he thought so; trees and spindly saplings had grown right up against the peeling walls of the house and across what once would’ve been a handsome pathway to the front door. But some of the windows on the upper floor were curtained and they weren’t in ribbons or covered in filth, but clean-looking and made of the same shiny fabric that the haberdasher in town kept on a roll at the front of his shop.

We stood in silence for a long time and gazed. I was just thinking how distracting the wind was, when I saw movement. “Eddie,” I said, gripping his arm tightly, “that place is not abandoned. I’ve just seen someone in the top room on the left.”

A while later, the same figure moved across a different window.

“Whoa!” Eddie said loudly, “it was a woman. How can she be living out here? Look, no cars in the front, no road down here anyway.”

There comes a strange pricking sensation, almost like a weight has settled on your shoulders. It’s not a sensation I’ve experienced a great deal, but as Eddie fell silent, I was compelled to turn around, and in the dappled shade of a large tree behind us on the track some thirty yards away, two women were watching us. The smaller one had her arms crossed and was balancing on one foot. The other had her hands on her hips and was stooped forward slightly, the better to see us, I felt. Eddie had turned too, and joined me in my scrutiny. The wind had whipped up the leaves of the tree the women stood beneath and caused changing patterns of moving light on the path, so that we had to blink and look away several times. No words had passed between the four us, and perhaps it was that small oddness more than anything else which alerted me to the peculiar nature of our situation.

It was Eddie who brought an end to the staring. He moved forward a pace or two, and put his hand up in greeting. “Hi there,” he began. “I’m Eddie and this is my brother, Ross.”

The women looked at each other and moved slowly out from the shadows. What I’d taken to be cloaks of an old-fashioned kind draped around their shoulders, were no such thing. Their hair hung about them concealing much of what they wore, and it stopped a few inches only from the ground itself. I felt quickly nauseous and assumed, knowing Eddie’s sensitivities that he would too. But he walked straight over to them and although they would not take his outstretched hand, they were, within minutes, smiling up at him. I hadn’t moved and it was as if I was irrelevant, and that unsettled me further.