Thirteen
Andy Dark hauled himself up into the lower branches of the towering oak tree, pulled Carol up behind him. Climbing, helping her from one bough up on to the next, and all the time Bertie Hass was still shooting. The shots vibrated the damp night air, then died away to a frantic metallic clicking. A snarling and growling, an animal yelping with pain somewhere. They're wolves, all right,' Andy muttered. 'They can't be anything else.'
'It's impossible.' Carol closed her eyes, tried to convince herself that at any second she would wake up. Please God let it all be a nightmare, a fever brought on by stubbornly walking home in the pouring rain the other night. She hadn't been picked up and raped by a stranger, not imprisoned in those terrible dungeons. The German didn't exist, she wasn't clinging to a branch of a tree, scared she might fall, with ravenous wolves down below. Because wolves were long gone from Britain.
The wolves were baying more persistently now, If you peered into the gloom you could just make out flitting shadowy shapes that might have been Alsatian dogs. Only you knew they weren't.
'Something's gone terribly wrong,' Andy said.
'What do you mean?'
'It's like the whole wood has come to life. Not just a crackpot German who's still fighting World War II. Time hasn't just slipped back forty years, it's reverted centuries, maybe even further, got sort of all mixed up. Like it's been waiting for thousands of years for something to happen and now it's all happening at once. A kind of spoof film only you're bang hi the middle of it and it's' all for real.'
'What are we going to do?'
'For the moment we can't do anything except stop right here.'
Waiting and listening, knowing that it wasn't a fevered dream, praying for it to get light. For the mist to clear; for a party of searchers to appear armed with guns. Clutching at vain hopes, knowing in their hearts that they were all going to come to nothing.
'I can't understand why somebody hasn't come looking for us,' Carol said.
'Surely they've found the Mini and your Land Rover. They must know we're in here so why don't they come?'
They probably have,' he replied. 'But I guess… the wood isn't the same for everybody. Maybe all they see is fog and a dense wood that they have to rely on the dogs to search. I don't know, it defies explanation. I'm only guessing anyway.'
Seconds later they heard the German screaming, hoarse cries of fear, a renewed snarling; it sounded like the wolves were fighting among themselves. It lasted perhaps a minute, no longer, and then the silence roiled back.
'How horrible.' Carol Embleton was trying not to conjure up a picture in her mind of a strange uniformed man being torn apart by savage beasts that should have been extinct for centuries.
'He didn't make it up into the trees,' Andy said quietly, slipping a reassuring arm around Carol. Time had run out for him. I reckon that parachutist coming down out of the sky tonight was his death sign. Poor sod, but he wasn't. real, to explain it simply. I guess he didn't feel anything. I can't explain it any other way.'
They lapsed into silence, reluctant to put their thoughts into words. It would have to get light eventually; at least they hoped it would. There was no guarantee. Droy Wood defied not just the laws of Nature but those of the universe as well.
'What's that?' Carol must have dozed, awoke with a start, aware of a numbness in her legs, cramped so that she might have fallen if Andy had not been supporting her. She heard a distant rushing sound like a series of waterfalls in full spate, recalled a childhood visit to the Elan Valley where she had stared in awe at the mighty foaming dams.
'It's the sea,' Andy Dark replied, 'I know for a fact that this week there are the highest tides of the year. Sometimes, according to the locals, the wood has been flooded right up to the road.' The road, oh what wouldn't we give just to set foot on that hard flat tarmac. 'I've never witnessed the autumn tides myself and you can't always believe what the villagers tell you, but that sea sounds bloody angry to me. I'd've thought there would have been a raging gale in that case, one to blow this damned fog away. Hey, it's starting to get light!'
The fog was turning a lighter shade of grey, they could make out the shapes of the trees around them, boles that became faces again. Expressions. If you stared at them long enough you read something that transcended malevolence. Fear! It was as though Droy Wood itself was afraid, engendering an atmosphere of impending doom, hell awaiting its own collapse. The light was coming fast, the vapour now taking on a faint rosy hue as though the sun was trying to break through, a battle of the elements with a raging sea providing eerie background music. But still there was no wind, just a deadly unnatural calm.
Andy tensed, thought he heard a scream somewhere but he could not be sure. A single yell of pain and terror like Bertie Hass had made when the wolves bunched and rushed him.
'Well, we can't stay here.' The conservation officer finally put into words his thoughts of the past half- hour.
'We're not. going down there? Carol gripped his arm. 'We can't, Andy. The wolves.!'
The wolves have gone.' At least I bloody well hope so. 'I don't think we'll have any more trouble from them but if we hear them we'll just have to shin up the nearest tree. If we stay up here much longer we'll get so cramped we'll fall anyway.'
'I suppose you're right.' She was staring into the mist, making out shapes that could have been wolves but probably were not. In this wood anything might be just anything, or, on the other hand, nothing at all. You never found out until it was too late.
'I've been thinking,' she wasn't going to like this very much, 'if we just go on blindly like this we'll end up even more lost than we already are.'
'So?'
'Our best plan is to head back to Droy House.'
'No!' Carol pulled away from him. 'Anywhere but there. You're mad.'
'Just listen will you?' Andy grabbed her wrist, thought for a moment that she was going to make a run for it. 'There's a flat roof to the house,' unless it's bloody well altered shape again, 'and if we could find a way up there we'd be above the level of the treetops.'
'It might just clear,' — a vain hope — 'but I reckon we could probably attract attention from there. They've got to be searching the wood by now. We can holler, scream, make one helluva din.'
Carol bit her lip, shuddered visibly. What Andy said made sense. The German was gone but those awful dungeons were still there. 'All right, I guess we've got nothing to lose now.'
The moment they reached the ground their legs buckled under them, the numbness beginning to tingle, discomfort escalating into pain. Sheer agony, rubbing at their limbs in an attempt to speed up the circulation. And then shakily they were retracing their steps down that muddy waterlogged track, their feet sinking in at every step.
'There's a lot of water lying,' Andy muttered, ' more than there was last night… as though the sea is steadily creeping into the wood.' He had to shout now to make himself heard above the pounding of waves. 'I think the tide's going to cover the wood!' A disconcerting thought, remembering that time when he had gone out with the coastguard because a man gathering mussels had been trapped on the mudflats, a wide creek filling up between him and the shore, cutting off his retreat. They had just been in time. Now they had another reason for returning to Droy House, an island in the midst of the flooding; being driven there.
'Look!' Carol stopped, pointed. Ahead of them on the path lay a mud covered pistol, one that they both recognised instantly. Bertie Mass's Luger. Beside it was the holster belt and leather ammunition pouch. Nothing else; no body, no remnants of a Luftwaffe uniform torn to shreds by vicious fangs, 'It's the German's al! right.' Andy picked it up, examined it, ejected the spent shells, smelled burned cordite. 'And at least it's real enough. I wonder
. '
He lifted up the belt, unclipped the flap of the pouch, poured the shiny brass cartridges into his hand. Live ones, as good as the day they left the factory. He loaded the weapon, dropped the belt back on to the ground and put the spare cartridges in his pocket. 'Well, at least we're armed.' He tried to sound confident for Carol's benefit.
