The Wood

Five

Still that trail of broken, trodden-down reeds wove on ahead of Andy Dark. In places it backtracked where the mud was too deep and only his keen eyesight picked up the trail again. Every time he came upon a patch of dense undergrowth he paused to part the foliage, steeled himself to search it, afraid of what he might see. But there was nothing. Surely they had not come this far? In places he found the heavier tracks where the man had followed in blind crazed pursuit but in the pitch darkness of night Foster had been unable to see the tracks which would have led him to the girl.

Through a long narrow stretch of thick reeds and out again on to wet but firm ground; veering to the right, back again to the left, and then he came upon that patch of ground beneath the aged and rotting tree where Carol had spent the night, saw how the springy grass had been flattened, had barely started to straighten up again. A matter of only an hour or two ago perhaps. His pulses were racing, there was a roaring in his ears. She had still been alive then, the killer had not found her. Perhaps with the coming of daylight she had made her way back towards the road. She might be home already, his own mission a fool's errand.

And then he saw the tracks again leading off in the opposite direction; eastwards, seawards. Oh Christ Almighty, she had lost all sense of direction, had blundered off towards the marshes. She.

He stopped, a movement catching his eye amidst the darkness of the trees. A wisp like smoke, as though somebody unseen had lit a cigarette. Not dispersing, thickening; more of it, billowing.

The fog was coming in from the sea again!

He leaned his body up against a tree, wrestled with his decision. It needed an army to search Droy Wood effectively. Carol was lost already, maybe panicking. She would wander around in circles for ever, deep bogs cutting off what seemed to be the obvious exits. And with the mist coming down anything could happen. The rapist was in here, too. Oh Jesus!

Andy Dark cupped his hands, yelled 'Carol. Ca-rol!'

Nothing, not even an echo. Just the mist thickening with unbelievable rapidity. He sighed, remembered all those stories about the wood. Every place had its legends, stories spread and added to by superstitious locals. The villagers were scared of Droy Wood but there were logical reasons for keeping away. Deep bogs that could suck you down if you panicked and floundered in them, these damnable mists, caused by the adjacent gaseous marshes, doubled the perils. The dangers were only too real,

'Ca-rol!'

He was wasting his breath. Just a cloying silence everywhere, the old trees dripping with condensation. He ought to go for help but that would take time, maybe an hour before he got back to the village, God knows how long to muster a search party, and it could be late afternoon by the time they got back here. Then darkness, another night in this awful place for Carol. No, it wasn't on, he must carry on searching, pray that he found her. He looked at his watch. 9.25. No, that couldn't possibly be right, he had been in here much longer than that. Holding it to his ear, shaking it, tapping it. Sod it, his watch had stopped and with this damned mist drifting in like this it was difficult to even guess what time of day it was. Andy set off, wished that he had a compass with him, the one he always used when he went bird-watching on the marshes. But he didn't and he would have to make the — best of it. The tracks were becoming erratic now as though Carol had had several changes of mind, met up with a wide channel and tried to find a shallow crossing, eventually finding somewhere to cross. It took him several minutes to find where she had crossed over; a sluggish black stream that came up to the tops of his Wellington boots, slopped over once and wet his socks. The mud was sticky, pulling back on every step he took until finally he reached the opposite bank. He clambered out, looking for a continuation of the trail he was following. It wasn't there, not a single imprint of Carol Embleton's feet in the squelchy black silt. There had to be! He looked about him, his task being made doubly difficult by the encroaching mist. He walked ten yards to his right, found nothing and retraced his steps. Tried the left; nothing again. Perplexed, worried. There had to be tracks unless she had followed the course of this stream. Upstream or down? He sighed, then tensed as a faint noise caught his ears, some kind of movement, a long-dead branch snapping, a squelching footstep.

Andy Dark tried to see through the fog but it was thicker than ever now, visibility reduced to a maximum of ten yards or so. He heard the noise again, almost like long wheezing breaths, somebody who moved with difficulty. Certainly not Carol; in that case it had to be… the rapist! Anger, hatred welled up inside Andy. Only yards away from him was the man who had subjected Carol Embleton to terrors beyond male comprehension. She might even be. dead! The conservancy officer experienced a wave of dizziness at the thought. He might be too late, the multilated body already sucked down by a vile bog. Gone for ever.

The bastard! Andy moved forward, fists clenched. He would make the fucker pay for what he'd done, mete out a punishment beyond the laws of civilisation. The other would scream for mercy, but there would be none. No softly administered legislature, no protection from the fury of an outraged public. Here in Droy Wood it would be man against man, the death penalty the sentence imposed upon a sex-killer; Andy Dark judge, jury and executioner. His face was twisted into a mask of malevolence, moving cautiously in the direction from where the sounds had come, through stunted spreading oaks whose boughs no longer sprouted foliage, a dead silent world of murk and rancid marsh odours.

Andy tensed, caught sight of a fleeting shape in the mist, grunted with bewilderment. He had expected to see a naked man whose clothes remained in the parked road-side Mini after he had satisfied his lust. Instead he saw a long coat, a three-cornered shaped hat, the fashion of a bygone age. A silhouette that merged with the grey swirling vapour and was lost again. He hurried forward, paused once more to listen. Squelching footsteps going away from him, hurrying, seeming to traverse patches of bog that Andy had to circumnavigate. And leaving no tracks in his wake.

Andy Dark sweated profusely but somehow he could not catch the other up. Just fleeting glimpses as the man in front forged ahead into the fog, never once glancing back, no suspicion of pursuit. The sweat on Andy's body chilled; there was something uncannily inexplicable about this, the way the other crossed deep bogs and left not a single broken reed to mark his passage]

And suddenly Andy was aware of other movements around him, the tramping of feet, the splashing of water. Voices, muffled shouts but he did not understand the tongue, more like animal grunts. Frightening, recalling again the old legends, of happenings in here when the mists came in off the marshes and people disappeared never to be seen again. Rubbish! Somehow he could not convince himself of that right now, was prepared to believe things which he would have scoffed at in the safety of his own office back at the bungalow. He stopped, pressed himself flat against the nearest tree. Two men, only yards apart, emerged from the trees close by, passed within feet of him. Oh Jesus wept, you only had to see those faces, even partially obscured by the mist, to know that something was dreadfully wrong. Gaunt and wizened, the features of long-dead corpses, decomposition just beginning to set in, dressed in long greatcoats, those triangular hats pulled well down as though they wished to spare any hidden watcher the horror of looking upon their putrid countenances. Passing him and going on, heading in the same direction as the first one. And there were more of them, Andy could hear them to the right and left of him. Fear of a different kind now, not just for Carol Embleton's safety, but the terror of being alone in this dreadful wood with things that had no place in the realms of the living world!

He smelled the marshes and the sea shortly before the weird trees petered out, the fog not so dark now. They were out in the open, heading directly towards the sea. Andy paused, doubted the wisdom of following, yet Carol might be out there. He prayed to God that she wasn't but he could not chance it. Moving cautiously, stooping low even though the fog hid him, following the progress of the others by ear. Some urgent calling had brought them out on to Droy marshes, some terrible purpose to be fulfilled which he was about to witness.

Suddenly he almost blundered into them, checked just in time, ducked back into the fog. There were half a dozen of them crouched behind boulders on the narrow rocky shore, their backs to him, their attention focused seawards, otherwise they would almost certainly have seen him. Lurking, waiting. For what?

Andy Dark dropped on to his haunches. The fog seemed to thicken as though to screen something from him which he had no right to witness, blanking out even those creatures purporting to be men in a land of mist. They were no longer communicating with each other in those guttural grunts, kneeling silently amid the stinking heaps of seaweed. Watching.

Then his ears picked up a sound, the soft rhythmic splashing of water, one which he instantly recognised as that of oars being pulled, heading inshore. Beyond Andy Dark's vision a rowing boat was steadily coming inshore from the open sea.