In the Night Wood

“And the second bit of wisdom, doctor?”

“I should steer clear of the wood if I were you.”

“Why is that?”

“People get lost, Mr. Hayden.”

“I’ll be careful.”

“Do. And ring me if you need anything.”

With that, Colbeck put his back to Charles. He strode with long steps across the yard to the stile. On the other side, he wheeled around a battered four-by-four — it might have been red once, but had long since faded to a dull, no-color brown — and disappeared into the trees. Charles stood there, knowing that he should do as Colbeck had said and go in to check on Erin. But the doctor’s closing words lingered in his mind: I should steer clear of the wood if I were you.

Charles turned his gaze back to the forest. He had an obscure sense that something was watching him from the line of trees, but when he scanned the wall, there was nothing there.

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Nothing else happened that day.

Except that Charles and Erin slept in separate bedrooms, as they had every night since Lissa died.

Except that, somewhere in the deepest trough of morning, Charles opened his eyes.

He stood by the bed, dreaming of a black combe where a shallow stream hurried over a bed of broken stones and a green moss grew. The window had been flung open and a breeze caressed his bare skin, beckoning him toward the deep purple sky where a horned moon hung like a child’s toy, and the night wood, girdling the great house, whispered green thoughts in its green and leafy shade.

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YARROW (#ulink_ed4900ce-529f-56ac-bfab-b724d9c10894)

When Laura told him of the little creatures in the trees with their daemonic physiognomies, the Helpful Badger said, “All manner of Folk live in the Wood. And they are all abroad under the Moon, for this night they must shrive.”

“They frighten me.”

“They are more often capricious than they are cruel,” the Badger said. He yawned and scratched a flea, adding, “There is only one whom you must fear. When you encounter Him, you must summon all your strength and courage and bring all your wit to bear.”

“Must I encounter Him?”

“The Story requires it of you,” the Badger said.

“But who is He?”

“I dare not say his name. But He long ago seduced the Wood Folk into betrayal and grievously wounded their rightful Lord, whom He banished into the Outer Dark. And now the Wood Folk must bow before him and shrive their sin in secret.”

“How will I know Him when He comes?”

“He wears a crown of horns.”

— CAEDMON HOLLOW, IN THE NIGHT WOOD

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It was haunted, of course, Hollow House.

But they were all haunted — Erin and Charles, Cillian Harris, Mrs. Ramsden, too. And though Mrs. Ramsden’s sins and failures and regrets, like those of Ann Merrow or Dr. Colbeck, have but glancing significance in this story, they were each of them protagonists in other tales, with their own dramas, their flights of joy, and their plunges into sorrow. Once upon a time: no life too humble, no event too insignificant.

Every story is a ghost story.

It was the photograph that haunted Erin and Charles, or, more precisely, the loss that it signified. A kindergarten photograph of a blonde girl, three-quarter profile, her hands crossed neatly upon the table in front of her, but otherwise unposed — her giggling smile (no doubt the photographer had ventured some joke), the soft curve of her jaw, her milky complexion — all this trapped behind a spider web of shattered glass.

For Erin, the photo was like a shallow well in a dry season. She dared not drink of it too often — yet she could not help herself. She drew it in her sketchbook time and again, laying out the lines of Lissa’s visage, lending it dimension and form with each careful stroke of her pencil. And then she would turn the picture to the wall and keep working, as if by this obsessive reproduction she could score the image into the tissue of her brain and heart. She would not forget her daughter’s face.

Already she could feel it slipping away.

For Charles the photo was like a jail, prisoning away the grief that could any moment escape to overwhelm him. As long as Lissa was locked behind the glass he could manage his days by rote — not unaffected, but functional at least. Erin feared forgetting. Charles longed for it. The burden of his sin (for so he thought of it) was too much to bear. Yet memory could not be contained. The shattered glass made the metaphor manifest. Looking at the photo now, he felt an inconsolable longing to go back, to start over and do everything right.

And Cillian Harris? Who could say? But he’d stiffened, like a man taking a small electric shock, when his gaze fell upon the photo that first day in the breakfast room. Briefly, to be sure — a breath, no more — but Charles had observed it nonetheless, and wondered.

The glass would have to be replaced, of course.

“I can’t look at her like this,” Erin said, too much reminded of the horrors of the day that Lissa had died. And now that Lissa had escaped, Charles had to lock her away once more.

He took the car and drove into Yarrow, to the hardware store he’d seen on the way to Hollow House. But Lissa had arrived before him. He saw her in a small child — was it her? — holding her mother’s hand as she leaned forward to smell the early spring flowers that bloomed in pots outside Petal Pushers. And worse yet, he saw her on the front page of the newspaper racked before the newsagent: the Ripon Gazette, the photograph unnerving, the headline worse: A FAMILY’S AGONY. He stepped inside, pressing his coins with tremulous fingers into the hand of a gruff man who barely acknowledged him, his eyes fixed on the television behind the counter.

Outside, in the bloodless English sunlight, Charles turned his attention to the paper:

The search continued for a missing six-year-old Tuesday near Yarrow. Mary Babbing was last seen riding her bicycle in front of her family home toward dusk last Sunday. Investigators —

Too much. Charles moved to discard the paper. He could not do so. Lissa stared up at him from the front page in lurid color. He folded it instead, tucked it under his arm, composed himself, blinking back tears.

Okay, then.

Mould’s hardware was next door.

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Charles took a deep breath, pushed his way inside. The narrow space beyond felt claustrophobic, though the store wasn’t crowded. A single customer, lean, with a hank of dark hair hanging over his forehead, studied the packets of seeds on a wire rack. Charles nodded as he slipped past to the counter at the back of the store.

A tall, fleshy man stood there, wiping his hands on his apron.

“Ah, the stranger among us,” he said in a thickly accented voice. But Charles was the one with the accent here, wasn’t he — the stranger, as Mould (was he Mould?) had pointed out, in a strange land. Mould or not, the man was old, seventyish and hale, bald but for the unruly wisps of gray that clung to the sides of his head, thin of lip, bulbous of nose, tufted of eyebrow and ear. Eyes of pale, penetrating blue peered at Charles over half-rim glasses. Charles wasn’t sure he liked the eyes. They seemed to see more than they had any right to see. The old man extended his hand. It was callused, the thick, ridged nails clogged with crescents of grease. He was Mould after all, Trevor Mould. He said the name as they shook hands, and Charles winced, not at the name but at the fact that he seemed to have inserted his hand into a vise.

“Charles Hayden,” he said.

“No doubt. We’re glad to have you here.”

“True enough,” the seed-packet man said, joining them at the counter. He introduced himself as Edward Hargreaves, adding, “Hollow House hasn’t had anyone to warm its bones for near two years now. Longer if you think of how Mr. Hollow grew toward the end.”

“Wouldn’t leave the house,” Mould said. “I hadn’t seen him for years by the time he finally passed.” He reached out a hand. “Let’s have a look at that, shall we?”