Carla Banks - The Forest of Souls

She walked slowly down the aisle, looking at the high shelves and the panelled walls. The shelves were piled with boxes–box files, cardboard boxes sagging at the seams, old shoe boxes, a treasure trove of papers from the past, and one that would probably never be fully explored. As she looked round the shelves closest to her, she realized she had never understood how vast Gennady Litkin’s collection had been.

He had died intestate. The collection–books, paintings, letters, diaries, legal documents, photographs–was being archived and would probably end up scattered among various universities and museums. The house was nearly empty now, and once the last details of the estate were sorted out, it would be sold. Even in its dilapidated state, it must be worth a fortune.

She looked at the boxes with growing anxiety. ‘Has everything been packed up?’ She had the reference from Litkin’s eccentric filing system to help her, but if the papers had been sorted and stacked, it would be useless. It would take years to go through all of this.

The young man looked at her and then shrugged helplessly. ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘I’m just here to keep an eye on the place.’

‘What’s your name?’ She should have asked sooner.

‘Nick,’ he said.

‘Nick.’ She held out her hand. ‘Do you live here?’

He touched her outstretched hand briefly. ‘Just until March. They’ll have it cleared then.’

‘It must be lonely.’ He looked very young to be shut away in the isolation of the old house.

‘It’s not so bad,’ he said. ‘I’ve got the van–I go down to the village. I can go into town if I want, but it’s all right here. It’s a great place for walking.’

‘You like that?’ she said. She used to go walking a lot before she and Daniel got married, before Finn was born.

He nodded, looking suddenly enthusiastic. ‘I did the Pennine Way last summer.’

‘That’s serious walking.’

He shook his head. ‘It’s nothing. What I want to do is go to the US, do the Appalachian Trail.’

‘Okay,’ she said. ‘That’s serious walking.’

He grinned. ‘You said it.’

She’d have liked to go on talking, but she had work to do. ‘I’d better get on.’ Officially, she was here to look at the records from a long dissolved mining company. ‘I’m looking for the ledgers for the Ruabon Coal Company,’ she said.

‘Yeah.’ He’d obviously been briefed. ‘Everyone wants to look at those. It’s about the only thing anyone knows about. They’re over here. I got them down for you.’

She followed him down the aisle to where two sets of shelves formed a kind of nook. She looked at the boxes that filled the shelves. Some of them were labelled, but the ink had faded. She leaned in closer to try and read the words.

Suddenly, a light came on. She turned round. Nick was balancing a desk light on an empty ledge. Its long neck was too high to fit and it stuck out awkwardly, making its position precarious. He shook his head, obviously unhappy with the arrangements. ‘That’s the best I can do. You’ll have to use this. I’m sorry. I’m working on the lights now.’

‘Thanks,’ she said. ‘I wondered how I was going to manage. Listen, before you go, there’s something else I want to have a look at–I’m not sure where to start.’ It hadn’t occurred to her that Litkin’s system might have been disrupted. ‘I’m looking for some stuff from the last war. There’ll probably be a diary, and some letters…I know they’re in this library somewhere. Maybe you’ve seen…’ Her voice trailed off as she looked round the crammed shelves.

He steadied the light with his hand. ‘I don’t know. I’m sorry. It’s all just, you know…’ He gestured around him. ‘Papers and stuff.’

She looked back at the boxes on the shelves, wondering what to do. Then she noticed something she hadn’t seen before. In the light, faint pencil markings on the boxes had become visible. 112.33 OTE . She knelt down to get closer. ‘Look,’ she said. ‘It’s his filing system.’ She ran her fingers along the boxes. ‘It goes up–the ones I want…’ She tried to track the numbers on to the next shelf, got lost and then picked it up again. She could feel the tension inside her releasing–the boxes hadn’t been put out of sequence or repacked. They were the way he’d left them. She moved along the shelves. What had he said? Third shelf from the top, halfway along…Here. A box file marked 120.43 PEKBM . She pulled it out and looked round for somewhere to put it. The young man watched for a moment. ‘I’ll get you a table. Hang on.’ He disappeared.

But the box was empty. She ran her fingers through her hair, tugging at it in frustration. She’d be lucky to get another chance at these papers. It would take forever to get the ownership status sorted out–she’d had to resort to a manufactured interest in the Ruabon Coal Company to arrange this visit. And she didn’t have a lot of time.

She went back to the shelves. The boxes were in shadow. She screwed her eyes up in the dim light, trying to read the rest of the inscriptions as she moved along the row, but it was no good, the lettering was too faded. 12_4_KBM . That could be…She lifted the box file out and moved closer to the light. She balanced it on her knee as she opened it. It contained a sheaf of papers, old and stained.

She shifted her balance to stop the box from falling, and lifted the papers out carefully, aware of their fragility. They looked like jottings for someone’s accounts–balance sheets, profit and loss. This wasn’t what she was looking for. She changed her grip to put them back, and something fell out from between the sheets on to the floor, something that had been slipped into the pile.

It was a book. She felt her heart thump, and she found herself looking over her shoulder around the dark library before she crouched down to pick it up. The cover was stiff card, marbled, and the pages were yellowed and brittle. She turned them carefully. They were covered with a minute script, neatly and economically written, wasting no space. The ink was brown with age. The writing went on and on, and then suddenly ended. The last pages of the book were blank.

She heard the click of the door, and a dragging sound. Nick came into view, pulling a small table. Instinctively, she snapped the book shut. ‘It’s a bit scruffy,’ he said, wiping the top with his sleeve and inspecting it. ‘Here.’ He pulled the table into the alcove and moved the light from its precarious balance on the shelf. He looked pleased with the result. ‘That’s better.’ Then he looked down at her crouched on the floor. ‘Are you okay?’

‘Fine.’ She stood up, dusting off the knees of her jeans. ‘Thanks.’

He hesitated for a minute. ‘Do you know how long…?’

‘Does it matter?’ she said, looking up at him.

‘I’m supposed to lock up at nine.’ He shrugged. ‘Don’t worry about it. I’m not going anywhere. When you’ve done, take the door on your right at the end of the corridor. I’ll be in there.’ His face was under-lit by the lamp.

‘I’ll be finished before nine,’ she reassured him. ‘Thanks.’ She put the papers on to the table.

He looked at her working arrangements with some dissatisfaction, and nodded. ‘I’ll leave you to it, then.’ He turned and walked away up the aisle.

She sat down at the makeshift desk and went through the box file carefully. Tucked in among the accounts there was a large envelope that had probably contained the notebook. She looked inside it, holding her breath. There were sheets of paper, folded round something. She slipped them out carefully. The writing on them was dark and recent, and as she unfolded them, she recognized the hand as Gennady Litkin’s. She felt a stab of disappointment.