“There,” I said, pointing to the faint track that ran into the tangled copse.
“You want another sip of party juice first?” Clem said, shifting her pack half off her shoulders.
“I’m good.”
“Lucas?”
“Nah,” he said, and began pushing through the dust-dry long grass towards the trees.
Clem cocked an eyebrow at me, but followed him.
I came last. I don’t know, to this day, whether it was my imagination or not, but when we passed into the shadows of the ivy-strangled dog oak and stunted birch trees, the wasp-like whine from the road vanished. I don’t mean it faded, or became muffled as we travelled further away; it completely disappeared, as if the cars had ceased to exist. Maybe they had. Maybe, if we’d looked round, we would have seen a soup-like fog behind us where the road had been, where the underpass had been. Maybe we would have seen it creep up the green slope beyond and, surmounting the summit, slide down into the folds of the estate, blotting and erasing.
Feeding.
But we didn’t look round. We followed the dead, little path into the secret half-light of the forest instead, and it was magnificent.
Odd snarls of rusted, barbed wire sprouted in patches like fungus, in thickets and along the bases of trees. A cache of miniature bottles, medicinal looking and truly ancient, were piled in a cairn on a moss-varnished stump. Clem stopped to stare, horrified and thrilled, at a bird’s skull nailed above a decomposing bird box high on the trunk of a tree whose leaves whispered in the small breeze. Everywhere was strangeness and wildness and dereliction.
And still we went deeper and deeper into the wood.
“Why is it so quiet in here?” Lucas whispered.
“Isn’t it obvious?” said Clem, softly. “This place is haunted.”
“Yeah, okay Clem,” Lucas scoffed. “Like there was a kid-eating tramp in the underpass, right?”
“Don’t you feel it, though?” Clem said, serious. “This place has gone bad.”
We stopped then, at a curve in the dry-mud track. All around us the strangled and strangling trees nudged and batted at each other. We could see, a short distance beyond the bend, what looked like another clearing.
“I think we ought to go back,” I said.
“Are you joking?” said Clem. “This whole thing was your idea…”
“It’s getting late. Our folks’ll be back from work soon. If my mum finds out I’ve been off the estate she’ll blow a gasket, and I’ll be grounded for a year.”
Clem came closer to me, until her face was just a few inches from my own. She looked into my eyes for a moment, then a smile curved her lips.
“You can’t take it, can you, Jamie? You and Lucas are both the same. You talk like big men, but when it comes down to it…”
“Hey!” Lucas cut in, putting a hand on Clem’s shoulder.
Clem shook him off.
“You go back if you want, but I’m not. I want to see what that is.”
I followed Clem’s finger and saw what she had seen. In the corner of the clearing, obscured and overgrown, was a low, wood and corrugated metal shack.
“Fuck me,” Lucas breathed, close to my ear. “What sort of person would live out here; in there?”
“It’s abandoned,” I whispered. “It has to be.”
“Look,” said Clem. “Next to the door.”
We looked.
Next to the rough rectangle of the door was a crude mailbox, nailed to the wall at about waist height. A newspaper, un-rotted and bright against the corroded tin, poked from its open mouth.
“I bet you a tenner that’s new,” said Clem.
And with that she strode away from us, towards the shack in the clearing.
“Clementine!” I hissed.
The sunlight fell on her like God’s own spotlight as she stepped out of the dappling shadows of the wood. I remember hearing the papery sweep of the long grass against her bare legs as she moved away from us. I remember how a small swarm of flying insects followed her progress, and how straight and strong her back looked, the keys of her spine moving and visible through her light summer top.
I called her name again, but she didn’t even look round. Lucas and I watched as she approached the waiting hovel, and reached out a hand towards the newspaper rolled tight in the mailbox.
“Shit,” I said, through gritted teeth, starting to move towards her. I heard Lucas following behind me. Clem, wrenching the newspaper free, held it up and towards us in triumph.
She opened her mouth to call something back to us, and at that moment the crude door swung open.
I stopped in shock, so suddenly that Lucas slammed into my back and we both crumpled to the ground. Clem’s arm, holding the newspaper, dropped. Seemingly in slow motion her head turned on the hinge of her neck.
Lucas and I couldn’t see the figure who had opened the door – the gloom from within was too deep for that – but Clem could see. Whatever it was she saw drove the blood from her face, and stretched her mouth wide enough to allow passage for the scream that would come.
But it didn’t come, because at that moment a withered arm shot out of the darkness, yanking her inside by the wrist.
I shot up from the ground and, jibbering, ran towards the hovel. I reached the door in the half second before it slammed shut, clutching at Clem’s fingers which were desperately clinging to the frame. I noticed industrial type letters and numbers printed on the corrugated wall next to the door, and some part of my brain, amid the horror, began to calmly wonder as to their meaning.
“Jamie,” I heard Clem’s voice,
