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 uphill; to his right, it seemed to fall slightly. Any sense of direction was long gone, and without a 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 ripe, and deliciously sweet. He knelt and plucked and ate, only stopping when he recalled standing on St. James’s Street eating a large container 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.
His belly no longer grumbling, Nicholas regarded the path again. The trees lining the downward slope seemed less tightly packed and sinister, so he headed that way.
Yes, but why is there a path?
Nicholas grew annoyed with his own arguing voice. 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 on 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. Was he going mad? He reassured himself by remembering the old adage that only the truly insane never question their sanity. But then, he was in the haunted woods of his youth, following the ghosts of murdered children. So, maybe he was crazy. But whether he was or not, he couldn’t deny that this was a lovely 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 on 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.
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 toward 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.
“Garnock. Unusual name. Welsh, is it?” he asked.
The woman looked anxiously behind her to see if there was anyone coming up the path who she might summon help from.
“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 toward 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 in 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 gray, warped boards. The painted name flaked away to different letters: Wynard.
Nicholas tried to turn his head, but it whirled vertiginously and his eyes struggled to focus.
The dog’s white coat dissolved away as if by invisible acid, revealing a dark brown shagginess beneath. Its legs cracked and grew, and from its flanks sprouted another four long, cadaverous shanks. Its snout and face split and peeled away, revealing another one, two, four, six unblinking eyes, and its white teeth cohered to become two curved fangs as big as bear claws, wet and sharp as needles.
Nicholas looked at his hand-two ugly, red-circle punctures were bleeding slowly. The world of the dark woods spun. With huge effort, he lifted his gaze to the old woman.
Of all the things, she alone had remained unchanged.
“How did you enjoy my strawberries?” she asked pleasantly.
Nicholas’s eyes rolled back in his head and the world went black.
S inging.
A woman’s voice from across dark air, a siren song; faint, tugged at jealously by the wind.
Awareness swam up out of nothingness, like a slow bubble rising through the night sea. Nicholas realized he was moving. His feet and hands felt a million miles distant, ice cold and unreachable. He could not command his legs, arms, lips, eyelids. But he could sense the subtle rise and fall of his chest, although there was a heaviness there. He could hear the rustle of leaves, a surf-like whisper. He was supine and yet he was moving. Under his back, his buttocks, the underside of his thighs and calves, under his forearms and head, were thousands of tiny shifting knuckles. He willed himself to breathe deeper, but his lungs kept at their shallow work, tight and pained as if laboring under a weight.
The singing grew clearer: “… his face so soft and wondrous fair…”
He couldn’t open his eyes. He tried another deep breath, but his lungs ignored him and kept their own
