They move quietly through the forest, Violet several steps ahead, picking out a path that feels markedly different from the one they took when they visited with school. It feels as if Violet is leading them into the pages of some dark fairy-tale. The further they go from the lake, the denser and darker the wood becomes. The mountains to the east shuts out the sunlight so the ground never seems to dry out properly. Each step feels wetter than the last. The forest seems older here, too. Thicker. The trees have fatter trunks and their branches fork off at odd angles, like limbs that have been broken and improperly set. The air feels somehow heavier. When Catherine licks her lips she tastes raw meat. She raises an arm and pushes on through the twist of trees. In places, the ground is uneven. Old stones push through the earth like skulls. There was a building here, once.
Two beeches have grown at odd angles, their trunks leaning inward and branches weaving around one another to form an archway. Violet is leaning against one of the trunks, smiling, proudly.
“Never made a sound,” she says, softly, and Catherine gives a tight, nervous grin in reply. She’s starting to wish she’d taken the punches.
“Can we go back a different way? My feet are soaked. I don’t like being spies …,”
“Ssshh,” whispers Violet, and takes her friend’s cold hand. It’s an affectionate gesture, and reminds Catherine just how sweet her friend can be when she isn’t trying too hard to be mean. She is about to speak when a sound from up ahead makes her freeze where she stands. She feels like an intruder. Her head fills with a thousand different terrifying scenarios. She’s heard that some farmers and landowners shoot people found on their land. Without thinking, she squats down in the earth, dragging Violet down with her. Violet stifles a giggle. “What are you doing?” she hisses.
Catherine pulls a face, exasperated. “Sssssh,” she says, frantic. “That’s Dad!”
Violet raises her head from the forest floor. There are leaves stuck in her hair. Up ahead, in the clearing where Sixpence has parked his old campervan, she can hear raised voices. She squints: a hopeless attempt to make her hearing more acute. Catherine pulls her back down.
“Let’s go back to the water,” she whispers. “I don’t like hearing when I shouldn’t …,”
“I thought we were spies,” smiles Violet, raising her head again.
“Violet, please …,”
Violet cocks her head, listening hard. There are four voices, all male. Slowly, like a face forming in fire, the sounds become people, and the noise becomes words. She hears Mr Tunstall. Mr Rideal. Rev Marlish. Another man, too. His voice is softer, harder to hear, but it contains a solidity that makes it seem like an iron bar surrounded by the willowy branches of the other speakers.
“…he did everything he could, you know that! He’s a healer, not a magician…”
“Nothing was ever done that went against your wishes. He tried. The boy fooled him. Fooled all of us.”
“What you’re asking is impossible. It goes against our every principle. I appreciate that you’re upset but how can we possibly countenance that? This is a place for learning. For healing….,”
“Let him tell me himself. Let him look me in the eye and explain why he took a sick boy and made him sicker. Taught him things that twisted him inside out. His mother’s scared of him. His own fucking mother …,”
“He comes and goes. Sometimes we don’t even know where he’s gone. That’s why we stopped accepting the private sessions. The Reiki. The healing. He only did those things as favours to old friends. We’ve pushed him too hard. He has problems…,”
“Yeah, he fucking does. Me. He has a problem that he’s going to put right. You’re all going to put it right. You’ll do what I tell you to do or by God I will rain down vengeance on all of you. If you were to see the mess he made of her. My own boy. He came here to be put right and you sent me back a fucking monster …,”
Violet’s smile fades as the language grows coarser; as the tone grows more aggressive – as the sounds of violence cascade through the wood.
She looks to Catherine, who has her face buried in her forearm. She wants to snuggle into her. Her friend has no understanding of moments such as these, when words are no longer enough and only the thud of skin on skin, bone on bone, is enough to release the rage within. She doesn’t know why the men are arguing. Doesn’t know what service they are refusing to provide. They are protecting Mr Sixpence, that much is clear. But from what? What could the kind, gentle man have done to bring down an enemy upon himself who spoke as if with the gift of prophesy?
From behind, she senses movement, as if a shadow has folded her in its embrace. She snaps her head towards the tangle of woodland back towards the lake. Mr Sixpence sits on his haunches, his body streaked green and brown; great swirling handprints all over his gristly, knotted body. There is dirt in his hair; thick mud holding it back from his camouflaged face like lacquer. He has a finger to his lips; the nail painted a green that makes her think of old bottles.
He looks more like a tree than a man, thinks Violet. And his face, with his broken nose and tangled beard sinking into hollow cheeks – he looks to Violet like a carving on a church door; a satyr; some ancient representation of the Green Man. He blends in with the forest so perfectly that Violet could have lain upon his bare leg and been unaware she was not resting on a tree root until she registered the warmth of his skin.
He is looking at her. Looking at her with perfect green eyes. She hears a voice, clearer than any of those that wash down from the place where the men wait for Mr Sixpence.
Go. This is not a place for you. They will not find me until I wish it.
Violet hears it in the centre of her skull. It is a soft, gentle voice. A voice that she is powerless to ignore. She closes her hand around Catherine’s and together they slither back through the archway of and squirm back through the forest. Neither speaks. Neither says anything until the angry voices fade away, and they can see the top of Whin Rigg rising above the tops of the trees.
When Rev Marlish picks them up, neither girl mentions the mud on his trousers, or the blood on his hands.
8
Snowdrop gives her uncle a damp nudge with her forehead - a dog trying to wake a corpse.
“Well?” she asks, raindrops spraying from her lips. “Have I got a nose for this stuff or what?”
Rowan shrinks into his coat, deep creases of concentration lining his forehead. He scowls out at the rain, blowing in from all sides, bouncing off the forest floor like coins thrown at a trampoline. Above, they sky is the colour of stagnant water. The wind hurtles in from the coast like an angry tide: tearing along the ground, reaching up to grasp bedraggled trees that creak and grown in anguish. Rowan and Snowdrop have found a kind of shelter in the boggy entranceway of this half-roofed sheep-pen. They’re only a mile or so from home and probably can’t get much wetter but the rain has throbbed them into submission. They shiver in the doorway, faces pale, hair slick, the fronts of their jackets three shades darker than they should be. They have their heads together.
Rowan, still mildly stoned, is considering his options. There’s a story here, though he’s no idea what it is or what to do with it. The so-called ‘women’s-interest’ magazines still pay decent money for first-person exclusives and he’s considering testing the waters. He’s ghost-written a few himself in the past: lurid stories with headlines like ‘My Boyfriend ate My Leg’ or ‘Grandad’s Cross-Dressing Shame” There’s usually a decent yarn somewhere within the text. Sometimes they’ll take something with a bit of the supernatural to it. Messages from dead grandparents warning of impending transportation disasters is usually a good one. If he does get a chance to speak to Violet Sheehan, he’s pretty sure he can persuade her to talk about how her repressed memories of childhood trauma led her to seek out a Shamanic ceremony. A couple of pictures, some show-don’t-tell anecdotes about what happened during their captivity and it could be the best part of 500-quid. He makes a note to check which of the gossip magazines has folded in the past six months and which of the commissioning editors at the remaining tiles has any legitimate reason to think him a prick. He’s left with a paltry collection, but he seems to recall there was a nice woman at W0-Man! magazine who had said she could always make use of proper old school journalists. He should probably buy Snowdrop an ice cream when they pay up. She’s done well. Stopped herself from butting in too often and even nudged the subject back on line when he wandered off. He wishes he were providing her with a less particular set of skills.