The Darkening

he do once he had? Did you bring a camera? A compass? A weapon? No, no and no. What an idiot. And then a thought bloomed brightly, trampling his foolish feeling and chilling him: Nobody knows you’re here.

He noticed the stream bed underfoot was narrowing. He sensed that he was heading slightly uphill, but the hunched trunks, the fallen trees leaning against each other like drunken titans, and the clutching undergrowth made it impossible to judge. Roots arched over the rolling ground like stealthy fingers. He knew from the street map that if he could travel straight, he would eventually meet the river. He couldn’t be sure whether the dry watercourse was running straight, twisting left or right or meandering wildly — it hunted under dark schist and round knobbed elbows of roots. So was the river half a kilometre distant, or would he cross the next ridge and slide down into brown, frigid water?

He was lost.

Worse, he was thirsty and, now his empty stomach had recovered from the crawl through the tunnel, hungry as hell. As he climbed, the rocks grew sparser and the undergrowth wilder. Leaning trees had been covered in thick curtains of vines so they took the form of elephantine beasts, hulking antediluvian monsters with shimmering hides of shadowy jade. Soon, Nicholas was scrambling, climbing hand and foot over saplings and fallen, rotting trunks hoary with moss. He seemed to reach a low crest, and stopped.

Below, visible through a narrow gap between the tight-packed trees, was a path.

He carefully edged his way down to it, pushing aside thorny shrubs and crawling between close trunks. After much panting and straining, he slid out onto a narrow stony track that wended between the trees. To his left, the path seemed to go slightly uphill; to his right, it seemed to fall slightly. Which way? Any sense of direction was long gone, and without glimpse of the sun, he couldn’t pick north from south. He was trying to decide when a flicker of red caught his eye.

Tucked nearly out of sight behind a tree root off the path was a small patch of strawberries. The plants’ serrated leaves were peppered with tiny fruit each as small as Nicholas’s thumbnail. Seeming to sense that food was near, his stomach growled. He pinched one of the berries off — it was firm but yielding and ripe. Well, thank God for small mercies, he thought, and popped the fruit in his mouth. It was deliciously sweet. He knelt and plucked and ate, only stopping when he recalled standing on St James’s Street eating a large punnet of strawberries while Cate had a job interview; the runs they gave him an hour later were a loud and painful reminder of the paucity of public toilets in central London.

Cheered by the pleasant fullness in his belly, Nicholas regarded the path again. The trees lining the downward slope seemed less tightly packed and sinister, so he headed that way.

A small thought nagged him: Why is there a path here at all?

Never mind, he told himself, I’ll find out soon enough.

And why haven’t you seen any dead children? Clearly, he was in the wrong part of the woods. Let’s see where this path goes, and if it goes nowhere, I can eliminate it from my next search. This seemed completely reasonable. He’d follow this path to its terminus and then follow it back. Yes, but why is there a path?

Nicholas grew annoyed with his own arguing voice. Animals? Maybe a feral goat or something — who cares? This was the easiest going he’d had all morning. He could walk without being scratched, there was a mild breeze, glimpses of sunlit sky winked between the leaves overhead. The woods either side were actually quite pretty. Elkhorn ferns grew from the trunks of some, their green fronds hanging pleasantly like peacetime pennants. The air was crisp and smelled clean and lively. He was, he discovered, in a good mood. Regardless of this hunt for. . whatever, he must make a point of returning to this delightful little track.

The path curved as it circumvented first one wide, friendly trunk of a fig tree, and then another, and then straightened again.

As Nicholas stepped around the last trunk, he stopped and stared.

The path kept straight ahead, widening slightly. The woods each side retreated to allow a clearing. Its gently sloping ground was a carpet of low ferns and guinea flowers; at the bottom of the grade was a fast-running creek that burbled over glistening rocks before its clear waters broke into a wide pool a stone’s throw across. An almost perfect circle of blue sky rode overhead.

But what made Nicholas blink in wonder was the boat.

Moored at one edge of the pond was a wooden sloop. It was, he thought, the loveliest ship he’d ever seen. She wore white lapped timbers, a fresh blue canopy and waxed hardwood rails. Her style was old, from the century before last, but her proportions were neat and spry, and she sat very prettily parallel to the shoreline. Sunlight winking off the glass portholes of her wheelhouse made her seem to smile and sparkle.

Nicholas beamed back, delighted.

Why is there a boat here?

‘Shh,’ he hushed himself again. He stepped off the path over the soft, fragrant blanket of green down to the water’s edge, and ran his hands along the boat’s timber flanks. Her white paint was almost blinding after the gloom of the forest. What a beautiful surprise!

Footsteps. Nicholas turned.

Coming down the path was the old woman in the pink cardigan, walking her tiny white terrier — the pair he had seen outside the woods on Carmichael Road so many hours ago. The old woman was speaking quietly to her dog, whose tail wagged contentedly at the praise. She held herself tall, reminding Nicholas of the proud elderly women of Paris, always dressed beautifully, walking with grace. Suddenly, the woman noticed him and stopped in her tracks; she was so startled that she dropped the dog’s lead.

‘Garnock,’ she called to the terrier.

Garnock took a few brave steps towards Nicholas.

This isn’t right. .

‘Shh,’ he reprimanded himself again — he didn’t want this good mood to pass, and here was someone to share it with.

‘Hello!’ he called.

The woman looked anxiously behind her to see if there was anyone coming up the path who she might summon help from.

‘It’s all right,’ called Nicholas.

It’s not all right.

‘I don’t usually see others here,’ said the woman. Her voice was clear and strong. Nicholas could see that she would have been a pretty thing in her youth. Garnock took a few more steps towards him, and his tail wagged cautiously.

Now you have to go, said the voice in Nicholas’s head. It’s not too late if you go now.

He patted the hull of the boat. ‘I just found it myself. She’s a beaut, isn’t she?’

The old lady smiled and nodded agreement, some small relief in her eyes. Still, she watched Nicholas cautiously. ‘She is indeed.’

Garnock was just a couple of feet away now. His eyes were brown and shining, his tail started wagging faster.

Go! For God’s sake, go NOW!

‘What’s her name?’ he asked.

The old lady nodded at the bow. Nicholas followed her eyes. The boat’s name was printed in black on the white timbers: Cate’s Surprise.

Nicholas blinked, and looked back at the woman, a question on his lips.

Garnock jumped, and his teeth sank deeply into Nicholas’s hand.

It was as if a black shroud fell over the world. The trees rushed in, gnarled branches and green-black leaves closing over the sky. The pond drained into itself, drying in an instant to become a choked bowl of wild and vital thorn bushes. The largest and oldest of the trees all leaned in the same direction, as if away from a mighty gale, and the lush elkhorns that nodded from the tree trunks became hanging shards of rotting cloth or harshly bent rusted iron. The boat heaved over on its side, sucking into itself like a collapsing lung, its white paint stripping away to reveal a skeletal wreck of grey, warped boards. The painted name flaked away to different letters: