The Killing Woods Read online

  ‘Be careful,’ Mum had said, pressing the phone in my hand and checking that Dad had taken his pills. ‘Call me if there’s a problem.’

  But he’d been OK. He’d even looked up and noticed the summer migrants – the swallows and swifts skittering about.

  Now I spin in a circle until the trees around me blur. I should hate these woods, just like everyone else seems to. I should never want to be back inside them again. But I can’t help it. I want to be here just like someone else might want to see their family. Is that wrong? Does it make me sick? It makes me like Dad, I know that. I brush my fingers over the sign I’ve passed so many times:

  Welcome to Darkwood Forest Nature Reserve.

  Please keep to the paths and respect this ancient woodland.

  Keep away from cliff edges.

  I’ve never been nervous of going into Darkwood before, but now it feels as if this wood is more than its trees and animals – it’s deeper and darker. Just thinking of going inside it makes a part of me want to turn and run back to the high street, but there’s another part of me that keeps me here. The same part that makes me look out at Darkwood from my bedroom window every night before I sleep, that makes me wonder what is inside, or who.

  I rest a hand on the gate and it’s cool, solid, a little damp. Exactly how this gate has always felt. So I do it – I go into Darkwood to find Damon.

  8

  Damon

  We’re going the long way, Mack and me, entering the woods from near the river. I didn’t want to go through the car park, not past her trinkets again.

  ‘Still wonder if we should have told them,’ I say, my voice sounding louder than I mean it to. ‘About the Game, you know . . .’

  Mack sucks in air. ‘What’s the difference? Ashlee was on her track home when he found her, we’d finished playing.’

  When his eyes flick to mine, I nod. Because this is what I told the guys the next day after all: I walked Ashlee back to her shortcut track. It’s what I did every time.

  I watch Mack as he looks round at the trees. There are thoughts in my head – questions – things I don’t want to be thinking about right now. Things I never want to be thinking about. So I ask if he’s been back here since.

  He shrugs. ‘Not much. What’s the point?’

  He’s right: without the Game, why come here? Without Ashlee . . .

  The woods look different in the daylight. I’m seeing things I never saw at night: orange leaves, birds. I’m remembering how I used to play some hiding game with Dad and my brothers in some other wood near another of Dad’s barracks – that feels like years and lifetimes ago. It was, I suppose.

  Mack notices me being weird. ‘You all right?’

  ‘Course.’

  Being back must be strange for him. Maybe images are slamming into his brain too. Maybe he wants to run to get them out.

  ‘Might have a go for some elvers,’ Mack says. ‘Come with?’ He squints like he’s searching for the river behind the trees, like he’s trying to find the spot where the elvers are. ‘Should be plenty flowing down that place soon, just need to bring a bucket and scoop ’em up . . . be worth thousands if no one catches us.’

  He flashes a grin, tries to. He’s trying not to talk about when we were last here together two months ago, that much is obvious. I haven’t told him that this is part of the reason I want to be back again now – to see if I can remember more, work something out.

  I keep quiet, remembering Mack’s garage the morning after, remembering him grabbing my shirt and pushing me against the wall and demanding to know what’d happened the night before. His face had been so close to mine I’d seen jagged red lines in his eyeballs.

  ‘After the Game finished,’ I’d said, ‘I walked Ashlee to her shortcut track.’

  The words had been out of my mouth before my brain kicked in, so they must’ve been right – they had to be.

  But Mack had kept staring. ‘I’ve just been past her house and there were coppers everywhere!’

  I’d blinked, gaped.

  ‘Ed reckons she can’t have come home. And Charlie tried to get into the woods and it’s all closed off.’

  Charlie and Ed had been standing behind Mack, staring at me too. They’d also wanted answers. But I’d been unsure, so drunk the night before I’d still been spinning. I’d been hung-over as hell. And I couldn’t remember. And I’d thought it would come back.

  ‘I walked her,’ I’d said again. ‘I won her collar!’

  If I said it enough times, maybe the memory would kick in.

  Mack had nodded. ‘She’s probably just passed out somewhere and hasn’t gone home yet. It’s probably nothing.’

  I’d gone into the toilet attached to Mack’s garage and thrown up. Vomit came out so fast I’d thought I’d choke on the stuff. I could smell whisky and Ashlee’s fairy dust all through it, plus something sour and evil. That was when the guilt first hit.

  I’d run to Ashlee’s house, the others behind me. I’d seen the police car out front and I’d banged on her door, demanded answers. From inside, I’d heard crying: not Ashlee’s. The police wouldn’t let me in, though, said they’d come for me next. So we’d gone back to Mack’s garage, waited there, trashed some of Mack’s things by chucking fishing sinkers into the air and hitting them with the butt of an old air rifle as if we was just playing cricket. I’d whacked those sinkers hard, trying to jolt my brain each time, trying to snap it into thinking of words, images . . . anything. Mack had yelled when I’d smashed a jar of his best fishing bait. But we couldn’t do nothing else – not even go into the woods to look for her, not when the cops were coming, not when it was me who’d seen Ashlee last the night before.

  ‘Maybe we shouldn’t say about the Game,’ I’d said.

  And Mack had agreed. ‘Yeah, we’d get slammed. They’d think we did something.’

  Now, Mack is silent as he walks. He’s learnt that off me and I learnt it off my old man: how to step so soft it’s like you’re not stepping at all, how to keep your body weight evenly spread across your feet. A hunter’s walk, Mack calls it. A soldier’s walk is what my old man said. Mack and me walk like this automatically, taking the deer tracks up towards the Leap. We know where we are without speaking about it.

  ‘What you going to do with his daughter then?’ Mack asks. ‘Are you really giving her detention?’

  ‘I’ll run her ’til she’s sick.’

  Mack’s eyebrows rise. And maybe that does sound harsh, but this appeals: making Emily Shepherd sweat, seeing what she’s made of.

  ‘Do what you need to do, man. Whatever helps. Then forget her. Seriously, forget all of it.’

  ‘Maybe I’ll push her off the Leap, then,’ I say. And it’s a joke, sort of, but Mack don’t smile.

  ‘Careful,’ he warns.

  I shrug off his stare, focus instead on the steep pathway to the summit of the Leap. When Ashlee first saw these pale rocks glowing in the moonlight – that first night she played the Game – she said they was magic. But I know from Geography that limestone rock is made from the skeletons of sea creatures, that this cliff comes from ancient dead things. I look across to its wild, rough side where the wind blows hard.

  ‘You know, Damo, being nasty to this girl won’t bring Ashlee back,’ Mack says.

  And that’s the sum of it, isn’t it?

  ‘If only,’ I say. My voice sounds weird. ‘You think I’m an idiot for giving her detention with me, don’t you?’

  ‘Yeah. Total knob end.’ He half-smiles. ‘Just get her expelled next time, get her away from us . . . from this town.’

  Mack’s a mate. He knows I’m breaking up inside but he doesn’t make a big deal of it. He’s not like all the rest at school.

  ‘Maybe she’s a psycho like her dad is?’ I say. ‘Could happen.’

  I’d seen the anger in Emily Shepherd’s eyes as I’d pulled her off that girl today: she was a wildcat. I’d even thought she might’ve gone for me.

  ‘Maybe.’ Mack shru
gs. ‘Race you?’

  Then Mack and me are off, scrambling to the summit, just like we used to. I’m ahead of Mack instantly, weaving easier through the overgrown paths. Mack barges through bracken, grabs at rocks, kicks dirt across at me to make me slow.

  ‘Hey!’ I shout.

  He doesn’t care. His long arms reach further around the rocks than mine can, and he pulls himself up ahead of me, slithers and disappears over the summit ledge.

  ‘Dirty bastard,’ I call.

  ‘Dirty winner!’ His face pops over. Then his hand reaches towards me, grabs me.

  I lean backwards, testing him. If I used my whole weight I could probably pull him over, send us both tumbling down. If he let go of me it would just be me who’d fall.

  ‘Stop grabbing on to my hand, ya poof,’ he says. ‘Get up here.’

  So I let him pull me up the last bit ’til we’re both lying on the summit, backs to the cold rock. This is like how things were, before I got with Ashlee, before we even started playing the Game with the others. Just me and Mack and these woods: the running together after my old man died, almost a year ago now. I’ve got that empty, angry feeling that I had then too.

  I roll on to my stomach, look over the edge to see the different ways up here. There’s the bike trail, the jagged rocks where people sometimes rock-climb, then there are the tracks the animals use. Animal tracks are how me and the boys get most places in these woods, how we stay hidden. For no good reason I dig about in my pocket for the cigs Ed gave me after my old man’s funeral, light up and inhale.

  ‘Fucking brilliant sports prefect, you!’ Mack says.

  I keep sucking it down, ignoring him. I don’t care much about sport since Ashlee’s gone, or even much about being a prefect. It’s not like I deserve it now anyway – any other prefect that had been found drunk and on drugs would’ve been stripped of the badge straight up. I’m only still a prefect because the school feels sorry for me. I hate that shit. So now I just do what makes me feel OK. Mack knows it.

  I hand the ciggie over. ‘Can’t kill myself alone.’

  Neither of us says nothing else for a while. I just listen to him sucking down that cig.

  ‘Maybe we should start training for army selection again,’ he says eventually. ‘It’d be good, y’know, start pushing ourselves . . . something to keep our minds off . . . get us back to where we used to . . .’

  He trails off and I don’t help him out. Joining the army seems a long way from right now, though I suppose the selection process begins in only a few months’ time: as soon as school’s finished, as soon as we’re both eighteen. I don’t feel that buzz of excitement when I think about it now, though. I take the ciggie back from Mack, drag ’til I feel the smoke curl into my lungs. Dad would’ve hated me doing this, would’ve hated a lot of things about me these days. When I try to hand the cig back to Mack he gets up and starts balancing along the edge of the summit instead, like we did when we first started coming up here.

  ‘Could you jump?’ I call across. ‘What would make you?’

  Pausing at the steepest bit, he looks down for so long that I start to feel my legs twitch.

  ‘You’d have to have done something real bad to drop down there,’ he says.

  He balances on one foot. For a moment I want to run full-pelt-crazy, straight over the edge – join Ashlee and my old man this way. I could take Mack with me. I keep sucking down my cancer stick instead. These are crazy thoughts. I don’t even know where stuff like this comes from sometimes.

  ‘If Jon Shepherd was here, I’d push him over,’ I say.

  ‘Sure!’

  I go and balance-walk with Mack. To one side of us is that steep drop, where, if I fell, I’d be skewered in a hundred different places. Mack turns, arms out, like he’s balancing on a tightrope. He’s loving this, even making himself wobble deliberately. But if I pushed him, even just a little bit, he’d be gone: his trainers would slip on the rock. I reach out quickly, take his shoulders. Like this, we’d both go.

  ‘You sure you’ll be all right?’ he says. For a moment, I think he’s meaning about me standing on this edge. Then I remember why I’m really here: Emily Shepherd. Her detention. ‘You’re not going to, like, flip out or nothing?’

  ‘I’ll be fine! She might not turn up anyway.’

  ‘If not, get her suspended, serve her right. You saw how she was going at that girl today. She’s dangerous!’ Mack’s top lip curls, but he’s hardly one to make fun of how other people fight.

  Emily Shepherd will come, though. She’s curious about me, I saw that in her eyes when I pulled her off that girl. She feels sorry for me too.

  Mack digs into his pocket, holds his phone up. ‘Well, you know where I’ll be.’ He grabs my shoulder real quick, wiggles me back and forth. I go limp, put my weight into his hands. ‘Don’t do anything dumb, Damo. I mean it.’

  I step away from the edge, shrug him off. I’m surprised to feel my thighs are shaking. I’ve balanced on that edge a hundred times!

  ‘Just give her detention and get the hell out,’ Mack adds.

  ‘I’m the prefect.’

  ‘I know.’

  He makes his hand into a fist, holds it out for me to lock in.

  ‘Safe,’ he says, like we’re some sort of gangstas, like we’ve been saying for the three years or more I’ve lived in this place. Such a stupid ritual, but it always makes us laugh. Always used to.

  ‘Catch ya later.’

  He pretends to throw a punch but I avoid him easy. He raises his hand to his forehead in a kind of salute. Then I see him move through the trees. Maybe he’ll wait somewhere nearby, checking his rabbit traps.

  After I can’t see Mack no more, I go back to the edge of the Leap and tightrope round it again, arms outstretched. One slip, I’d be gone. Dead. It wouldn’t be hard. The thought hovers at the back of my brain. And the muscles in my thighs are shaking again, daring me. I’m tingling all through. I’m remembering leaning up against Ashlee after one of the times she’d played the Game.

  ‘You have to notice tingling feelings,’ she’d whispered, her fingers working up across my chest and giving me those feelings all right. ‘Tingling means that something’s going to happen.’

  I’d laughed and kissed her. ‘Something like what?’

  She’d shrugged. ‘I dunno. Like going somewhere. Somewhere like Fairyland.’ She’d rolled her eyes.

  ‘You’re nuts, you are.’

  I’d grabbed her quick, my hands under her top.

  I blink fast to stop the memory, and look over at the rocks below. Shudder. Tingling would be nothing like how it’d feel if I dropped down there, if I smashed on to those rocks. Hitting something like them would be nothing but pain.

  9

  Emily

  I’m trembling standing here and it’s not because it’s cold. It takes every bit of my concentration not to run back to the gate and leave. There are images in my head. Ashlee stumbling drunk on one of these pathways. Someone following. Hands on a neck. Dad’s hands brushing her neck in our kitchen. Rain washing everything away.

  Someone else might think these woods were still and silent right now, but they’re not. Dad taught me that. For one thing there are two swallows wheeling high above me, which is strange because they should have left long ago. They belong to a summertime with Dad in it.

  I do what Dad did to calm his mind, just make myself focus on the forest around me. I listen to a bird shaking its wings out above me. I smell earth, rotting and sweet. There’s the taste of smoke and pine needles. A breeze whisks around the back of my neck promising rain. I hear the trees creak.

  Once when people asked what I wanted to be when I grew up, I would say a tree. It used to make Dad laugh, and I liked that, but it was more than this too. It was knowing that, as a tree, I would only feel wind on my bark, animals on my branches. I could stretch down deep into the earth and this would be all I’d need. I breathe in, this place feels fragile and desperate. Its ancient air wants to be su
cked down into my lungs, doesn’t want to let go. I take a few steps towards the red-gold trees and it feels as if I’m walking into a blaze of fire.

  Then I see a twitch of movement up ahead.

  I squint. Stop.

  There’s a darker shape between the trees.

  A dark shape in these woods could be anything, or anyone. A deer? A bird watcher? Maybe a tramp or a jogger. It could be someone more sinister. I take my phone out, just in case. But when I look up again, the shape has disappeared in the dappled light. Now I’m not sure I’ve seen anything at all. I peer to the space through the trees where I thought the shadow was but, with the branches swaying, shadowy shapes are everywhere now. Maybe I imagined it. It could be my mind playing tricks on me because I’m back here again, because I’m feeling nervous.

  Then I realise who else it could be: Joe. He could have followed me from the bus stop, it would be just like him to worry. I call his phone, still squinting into the undergrowth. I don’t hear it ring but he’s often got it on silent. It goes through to his voicemail; I don’t leave a message. I don’t shout out his name either, don’t want to break the silence of this wood unless I have to. Anyway, there are shadows and shapes everywhere now. That shadow I thought I’d seen could have been nothing at all.

  I walk on. I don’t know this part of Darkwood so well, but I guess the edge of the quarry will be on my left soon, and then the caves, then the boulders that lead up to the Leap. Its summit has the best view of anywhere. From there it’s easy to see how huge these woods are, how they stretch into and separate parts of the town, how they seep into farmland like sea on a shore, how they retreat into darkness.

  Maybe that shadow I’d seen was Damon, getting up to the Leap before me. There aren’t even any birds darting across this path now. Wiggling my fingers apart, I think about how it would feel to have Damon walking beside me, his fingers threaded through mine. And, before I can help it, I’m remembering that time again, late afternoon last November. That day where I’d been sat on the edge of the bike trail, waiting until dusk for when I’d go collect Dad from the bunker. When I’d been watching the first of the starlings begin to flock and form a roost.