The Wood

Prologue

Bertie Hass dosed his eyes, braced himself for the limb-wrenching jerk when his parachute billowed out, tried to will it to open. The cold night air rushed by him, tore at his heavy clothing. It won't open, Bertie, A jeering whisper inside his head. You know it won't. Didn't that clairvoyant in Stuttgart tell you it would happen like this?

Falling, faster and faster. And faster. Now he was preparing himself for the crunching impact when he hit the ground far below. He could see it in the faint moonlight reinforced by the flames from his crashed plane and the inferno of a city way beyond the horizon. The night was burning like hell itself, and there was only one place he was going. Down. Mission accomplished, Herr Commandant, the city is destroyed, razed to the ground. Pride, overwhelming satisfaction. You always lost men on raids, it was inevitable. Soldiers, airmen were of necessity a dispensable commodity in war. Secretly, selfishly, you hoped it would not be your turn, always somebody else's.

Falling.

And then the cords jerked him, twisted him, tore at his arms as though they sought to rip them from his body, bore him some grudge for his loyalty to the Fatherland. He almost blacked out, had a blurred glimpse of Ingrid's face again. Darkness and the torments of hell lie below you. Do you not see the flames?

The night sky was a fiery glow now, so bright that he could not shut it out even by closing his eyes. He felt the searing heat, heard the muffled explosions; bombs still going off, incessant ack-ack fire, the drone of heavy bombers, interspersed with the hornet-like whine of Spitfires. But that was all behind him, ten, fifteen, even twenty miles away. His plane had come down, the crew still inside it except for himself. A sense of guilt, cowardice. No, it was every man for himself when you got hit, everybody accepted that. Try and bale out, take your chance. He was floating now, drifting steadily on a downward course, a sense of euphoria overwhelming him. The bombing and gunfire were barely audible; perhaps he had come even further than he had thought. Just a faint orange glow over the horizon. He glanced down again, saw a mass of shadows, some darker than others, a silvery sheen beyond that was undoubtedly the sea. He certainly had lost his bearings.

Darkness and the torments of hell lie below you.

Bertie Hass tried to shrug off his uneasiness, attempted to shut out the voice that undoubtedly belonged to Ingrid the clairvoyant. He had not visited her only to learn his destiny; he had gone for other, more interesting reasons. Like the other Luftwaffe pilots who had introduced him to her. No more than thirty, long blonde hair and a shapely figure which you glimpsed through those near-transparent garments she always wore, her fortune-telling was just a blind. The tiny crystal ball in the front window of her dowdy house signified other things than glimpses into the future. Not that Bertie had any proof of that personally; perhaps you had to be a regular customer with several visits behind you before Ingrid Bramer took you through into the other room. She had warned him not to go on this raid. Perhaps" that was an invitation to stay behind and visit her again. It would have meant going sick, convincingly. There were ways, but Bertie Hass had never done anything like that in his life. You had a duty to the Fuhrer.

He was much lower now, could make out silhouetted details of the land beneath him. A wood, a big one bordering on a coastal marsh. His mouth went dry. He might get caught up, break a leg, worse. If only he could make it to the marsh; a concerted futile effort, treading air with his legs, trying to propel himself along but all the time drifting lower. And lower. There was no doubt in his mind that he would hit the wood.

The trees seemed to move, long thick branches outstretched like weird arms trying to catch him. Lifting up his legs, dodging them, foliage rustling against the soles of his heavy flying boots.

And then he was down. A soft squelching thud on boggy ground, his fall broken by spongy marsh grass, the mud beneath it gurgling and sucking. For a few moments Bertie Hass thought that he had made it to the marsh, had somehow overshot the wood. He lay there in the darkness, then fought to extricate his legs from the boggy ground, saw that he was surrounded by tall trees, macabre caricatures with boles twisted into leering faces, lichen old men's beards. Hissing… it was the muddy water stirring and settling again. A patch of wan moonlight defied the deep shadows, showed him everything he wanted to see and a lot of things he didn't.

Miraculously he had landed in some kind of a clearing, had barely jarred his body on impact with the ground. The big wood, somewhere to hide. Safety. He shuddered, a sudden pang of fear for no accountable reason. That smell. not just the stagnant stench of foul water. Something else. something evil!

Quickly, expertly, he freed himself of his parachute, and began splashing his way out of this tract of bog, leaving a bubbling protesting trail of disturbed mud in his wake. He grabbed at an overhanging branch, hauled himself up on to a patch of solid ground. The shadows seemed to have spread, enveloping him in a black shroud as though claiming him for their own. He was aware that he was trembling, hated himself for it. Was not he a member of the select Luftwaffe, one of the Fuhrer's chosen bomber pilots to whom fear was unknown? This place was the same as any other, just somewhere to hide until he worked out a plan to get himself back to the Fatherland. The mission had been successful and he was alive; it was his duty to return as soon as possible. The war would not last long now, France had fallen and Britain was on her knees. The hour of glory was nigh.

He found himself listening intently. No longer could he hear the familiar sounds of battle and neither was the sky still aglow with the fires of destruction. Bertie Hass might as well have parachuted down into some country where war was unknown, just the unbroken silence of a land at peace. It was decidedly uncanny.

The mud was oozing and bubbling, settling back down beneath the thick grass. A night bird called softly somewhere. He must remain here until daylight, when he would try to get his bearings. After that it would be a question of travelling by night, hiding by day, until he found an aerodrome. Stealth, combined with a little bit of luck, was all he needed, A plane, any plane. And once he got behind the controls they could not stop him. He tried to dispel his feeling of unease but it would not go away. He was all alone in a strange land. An enemy, a beast of the chase. A sound; like a foot sinking into deep mud, remaining there because to have extricated it would have made too much noise. Which all added up to stealth to being watched. Shivers up his spine, goose-pimpling his flesh all the way up into his scalp. Trembling fingers eased the push-stud of his leather holster open, drew out the heavy Luger automatic. Show yourself, pig, and you die. You are facing one of the Fuhrer's Luftwaffe.

Silence. Even the nightbird was not calling any more, just the almost inaudible sound of trapped gases escaping from the bog. But Bertie Hass knew without any doubt that there was somebody out there watching him. Victor Amery had been up on the knoll since dusk. Three nights a week he was assigned to his post throughout the hours of darkness, reclining in a deckchair which he kept up there to make the long boring nights a little more bearable. Fire-watching, it was termed, and somehow you had to try and convince yourself that you were doing your bit for your country. That was what the Home Guard was all about, a psychological boost both for the able who were too old for active service and the population of a virtually unprepared nation.

'Caught with our bleedin' trousers down,' was Victor's favourite phrase most nights in the Dun Cow before he went on duty. 'Everybody could see it comin' but they kept on sayin' "peace in our time" until bloody war broke out. Then "who would've thought it?" So the best they can do is arm all the old fogies with twelve-bores and say "give it the Hun good and proper up his arse if he dares to come".' And he had come, all right, Victor reflected grimly. At fifty life was becoming very tiresome. A clerk by day and a fire-watcher by night. When the bloody hell did they think you were going to sleep? Fire-watching, that was a bleedin' laugh.

Until tonight. Jesus Christ, he'd watched some fires, like a gigantic Guy Fawkes' Night and still going on. The Jerries came in drove after drove, the entire Luftwaffe, surely, concentrated on one target. The railway network first, roads and bridges, then they just let all fuck loose on the city. Victor saw the munitions factory go up, there was no mistaking it. Puny retaliatory fire, the Jerries were having a field day. But they got one, oh Christ, they got one big bugger! Good for our lads!

Vie saw the bomber coming his way, wondered what the hell they were up to. All the others turned back once they had jettisoned their loads. But this one was hit, losing height and then bursting into flames. Victor Amery saw it nosedive, explode in a field of cut hay and catch fire, burning debris everywhere setting the hay alight. Smoke billowed up, hung in the still atmosphere like those fogs that came in from the sea at times. Had you coughing, your eyes smarting.

Fire-watching.

And then he saw the parachutist out of the corner of his eye. At first he thought it was a bird, so big and graceful, but eventually made out the shape of a man, gliding. Heading towards the Droy Wood.

Victor cocked the hammers of his shotgun. A Boche, an enemy. A killer. Look what the bastards had done to the city, an inferno that was even now cremating its dead, hundreds, maybe thousands more trapped by the flames. He swung the gun to his shoulder, his forefinger brushing the trigger. Too far; three, maybe four hundred yards. Not even a WD-loaded SG would reach that distance. Regretfully he lowered his gun, narrowed his smarting eyes. The bastard was going to hit the wood all right, no doubt about that. Victor Amery saw the parachutist clear a tall oak, then dip from sight, swallowed up by the dark shape that was the outline of Droy Wood. Rather you than me, mate. He shuddered, didn't want to think too much about the wood at night. There were too many stories, going back far too long. Half of 'em were probably fiction, village gossip. But there was no smoke without fire. He coughed, wiped his smarting eyes.

Then he was hurrying back towards the village, his shout ready for when he got within earshot,

'There's a Boche in the wood!'

The cordon was thrown around Droy Wood with an hour still to go to daylight, a makeshift village posse. A dozen Home Guard, some youths who were on the verge of being called up, and one or two old stagers who would act as lookouts. Twenty in all, a sparse force when one viewed the wood from the hills above, five hundred or so acres of swampy woodland. Patches of dense reed beds which had infiltrated from the adjacent marsh like stonecrop spreading from a garden rockery into a flowerbed. Trees that had died, rotted, but still stood firm. A very old wood indeed.

But it was when the fogs came in from the marsh that you had to worry, Victor Amery reflected grimly. There was no telling when they would come, winter or summer. A bright May day would cloud over, turn sultry, hazy; then before you knew it that vile opaque vapour was wisping up through the trees, blotting everything out. And Jesus Christ help you if you were in Droy Wood when that happened!

Dawn came, bringing with it clear skies, a glow that could have been from the rising sun, or else a reflection from the city which still burned. You could smell the smoke.

A dog barked. Brutus, the Alsatian that belonged to Owen, the gamekeeper. Owen was somewhere abroad, nobody had heard from him for over two months, didn't bloody well want to, either. Like a lot of others you knew the next time you saw his name it would be on the War Memorial plaque in the church. Secretly, selfishly, you hoped so if you'd lost one of your cats in his snares or traps. That dog was a personification of its absent master; vicious. If anybody was in the wood, and in all probability the German was lying low there, he'd find the bugger. And if he didn't, then Tom Morris's Jack Russell would, a snappy little creature that raced and barked all over the place, sniffed every clump of grass in the hope of a scent; a bloody nuisance on any day except today. Victor Amery could see the others spaced over half a mile in a half-moon formation. Waiting. Captain Cartwright and old Emson would be at the far end of the wood, the guns in a pheasant drive. Everybody else were the beaters. Take your time, tap every tree and bush with your stick. An assorted armoury; twelve-bores, a couple of.410s, air-rifles, pitchforks, pick-axe handles, anything that could be used as a weapon.

A shrill whistle jerked Amery into action, had him moving forward with the rest of them, thumb resting on the hammer of his gun. That Jerry was undoubtedly armed, at bay. Nobody could blame you if you shot him. Self-defence; and think of all those folks who got caught in the raid last night. Women and kids. Anger: he would have walked with his shotgun cocked in readiness if the ground had not been so uneven.

Twenty yards from the wood. The dogs had already gone in, the terrier yapping incessantly. Even with the dogs, Victor decided, it was like looking for the proverbial needle in the haystack. You needed a full pack of hounds, ten times the number of searchers, and even then the German had a good chance of holing up somewhere.

Amery's uneasiness grew once they were inside the wood. So dark, it was incredible how the summer foliage shut out the light, gave everywhere a kind of sinister green hue, the shade that film cameras exaggerated to produce an everglades effect. Everything smelled damp and rotten, the black soil wet, muddy. It had not dried out over the centuries. You got a sense of timelessness in here, even to the extent of being unsure whether it was day or night, kept glancing about you, expecting to see. you didn't know what you expected to see and that was what made it a thousand times worse. Childhood bogey fears came flooding back; if they were reality then this was their spawning ground.

Victor Amery stopped because Fred Ewart had stopped to light his foul-smelling pipe, the flare of the match almost dazzling in the gloom. By its light you saw his wizened features, the crop of blackheads which might have been taken for a dark stubble of beard except that his drooping moustache was iron grey. Pale blue eyes, alert, watching about him. Four-score years had not dulled his brain, only stooped the shoulders beneath the navy blue knee-length mac which he always wore, summer or winter.

The next man down was looking to Ewart too; he'd been around longer than most of them. Ewart glanced one way, met Amery's gaze.

'We'll no' find him.' We're wasting our time but I've come along just for the walk. 'They never find anybody in here. Remember Vallum? 1932. He killed his wife and her lover, ran in here, left a trail of blood where he'd slashed his wrists. A trail a child could follow but there was nothing at the end of it. It just petered out. Nothing. They won't find the German.'

Victor Amery shivered. Damn Ewart and his tales of yesteryear. That was one of the reasons why Victor had almost stopped going to the Dun Cow. Night after night, it got on your nerves, stories you remembered when you put the light out. Always Droy Wood figured in them. Maybe he made them up. Yes, that was it, the silly old bugger took a delight in scaring folks. He was the source of the legends, told 'em over and over again till people believed them and passed them on. The wood was just like any other wood.

All lies. Fred Ewart's goddamned lies. But you never fully convinced yourself of that.

A shout went up further down the line. They'd found the parachute. The terrier was yapping and the Alsatian was barking fiercely. Now the animals had a scent; the hunt was on.

Eager as the searchers were, somehow old Ewart dictated the pace as though he was in charge of the whole operation; a slow gait, his ash stick prodding the ground in front of him, forewarning him of soft squelchy patches. Flies swarmed, buzzing black clouds in search of human prey. Victor Amery came upon the old house suddenly, paused in amazement, experienced a sense of revulsion. Once it had been a fine mansion set on firm ground in the middle of a wide clearing. Stately gables had crumbled, there were holes in the roof where slates had fallen and smashed. The glass had long gone from the windows and they frowned down like eyeless sockets, the broken doorway twisted into a snarl of malevolence. Go away, you have no business here!

Somebody had to check the interior. The party had bunched together, looking at one another, frightened glances, hanging back. Victor Amery almost cocked his gun, his thumb beginning to pull the hammer back. Not me, no, not me!

As though in response to some mute order they all went, five of them, Ewart in the lead, his ash stick tapping eerily, the strong smoke from his pipe wafting back at them, thick twist fumes that reminded them of a city not so very far away that still burned. And the dead whose flesh singed in the fire. A ruin, nothing more. Stone floors where weeds struggled to sprout through the cracks, broken doors leading from one large room to another; all the same, empty and thick with the dust of ages, cobwebs strung between the beams, all the furniture long gone. Silence except for their hollow footsteps and the constant tapping of Ewart's stick. He was getting on all their nerves. Upstairs, a precarious ascent, the timbers of the stairway groaning its protest at their weight and their intrusion. Bedrooms; just one single remaining item of furniture, a rusted iron bedstead. Once somebody had slept in it, maybe copulated upon it. It had seen birth, possibly death. Now its time had come and gone. It would remain here forever. Nothing. An eager descent to the hallway, for once not waiting for the old man to lead the way back out into the clearing where hazy sunlight greeted them. Nobody spoke, there was nothing to say. We didn't find him. Nor we won't. There's probably a cellar. If there is we're not going back in. You can tell there's nobody in there — at least. not alive.

Fanning out into a ragged line once more, every one of them sensing the deepening depression amongst them, the futility of it all. He's not here, let's finish and be away from this godless place.

The dogs were silent, seemed to pick up the mood of their masters. It occurred to Victor that the animals had not followed them into the house, had skulked outside instead. Everybody was hurrying now, even Fred Ewart stumbling in his haste to keep up with them. And what tales I'll have to tell in the safety of the Dun Cow snug. Because I saw what you didn't see. The smell was stronger now, a cloying putrefying stench that they tasted, had them spitting out saliva. Some of them recognised it only too well — the smell of death. In all probability it had wafted on the wind from the bloody carnage of last night's bombing.

Following tracks, forcing their way through clumps of reeds where there was no path, wary of bogs that gurgled hungrily when they inadvertently stepped into one. No longer searching, only wanting to be out of Droy Wood. If the German was in here then he would surely remain there. There's more than one person gone missing in the wood over the years. 1932. Oh Christ, shut up, damn you, save your stories for the Dun Cow.

Finally they emerged into daylight, a boggy reed bed that led up to the pastureland where Captain Cartwright and his companion awaited them, perched on shooting sticks with all the arrogance of landed gentry. Relief on every face, the terrier beginning to yelp and dash about excitedly again; old Ewart cutting up another plug of twist.

Victor Amery glanced up. At first he thought there was a thunderstorm threatening in the hazy sky, the sun a pale red ball that was fast becoming obscured. But no, they were not clouds which were drifting across from the marshes, rather ringers of white mist creeping over the land, spreading out, billowing. Hiding every landmark.

'That damned mist's coming in off the coast,' Cartwright's voice was slightly unsteady, a kind of Well, we've had it for today, chaps. 'Another hour and it'll be like a November fog. I guess the Boche has given us the slip. That damned wood's too big and thick. We'd need a whole army to search it properly.'

'He'll no' trouble anybody again.' Ewart's features were pale, his eyes gimlets that sent a chill through any who looked into them. 'Nobody gets out of Droy Wood when the mist comes across. We were lucky, Captain.'

The atmosphere had suddenly gone much colder. And now they smelled the stench of death even stronger than before.