The Wood

'You live around here then?' A direct question; perhaps too direct.

'Sort of.'

What's your other name? What's your daddy do for a living? And just where do you live? Thelma checked her curiosity. She would find out soon enough.

'My daddy's down there.' Elsie had run on ahead, was standing looking down into the deep hole.

Thelma halted, a sudden inexplicable terror gripping her, a tremor in her voice when she spoke. 'Whatever do you mean. down there!'

'Down there!' Impatience, a tiny finger stabbing down at the hole. 'If you don't believe me come and look for yourself. I thought you wanted to meet him. I've brought you specially.'

'All. right.' Thelma Brown's legs felt suddenly rubbery. Perhaps it was some kind of joke, this child was funny in the head. Her father wasn't here at all except in her own imagination. It was all a game of pretence, she had run away from home, dodged school and come to indulge in her own make-believe games in Droy Wood. Her mother wasn't dead, just morbid childhood fantasy. They might be, probably were, searching for her at this very moment. CHILD GOES MISSING IN DROY WOOD. SEX KILLER STILL AT LARGE. MASSIVE POLICE HUNT.

'All right, I'll come and meet your daddy.' Better humour her for the moment and then I'll grab hold of her and I won't let her go until the police arrive, if they arrive.

Cautiously Thelma approached the edge of the pit. It was deep, she couldn't see the bottom yet. Sheer sides of thick black mud. Possibly it was a peat excavation after all but how the hell did diggers get up and down without a ladder? There certainly wasn't a ladder in sight now. No, her father couldn't possibly be down there. Pretend for the moment that he is, though. Mentally measuring the depth as she saw more and more of those steep sides. Ten., eleven. twelve feet and we haven't reached the bottom yet. Fifteen. black brackish water in the bottom because this whole place was nothing more than a wooded marsh that eventually the sea would erode and reclaim.

She could see the bottom all right now, holding back a yard or so from the brink, nervous like her mother used to get in the days when they used to go on family holidays and her father used to park the car overlooking a steep headland. 'Don't get too close, Frank, or else we might go over.'

A surface of water some twelve feet in diameter, impossible even to guess its depth. 'Your father's not here, Elsie.' And then she noticed something floating, half-submerged in the water.

She stared, wished that she hadn't, wished she had refused to come anywhere near this dreadful place. An arm casually flung out, a twisted leg protruding

a head, the orifices black cavities as though fierce deepwater pike had fed and bloated themselves. A hairless skull, the flesh greenish with decomposition or gangrene.

A body! Thelma Brown screamed, lurched and almost fell, was going to be sick at any second, would probably have thrown up except that her stomach was empty.

There's somebody down there,' she said turning to the child who was now at her side. 'Somebody who has been dead for a long time.'

'I told you my daddy was down there but you wouldn't believe me.' A mild reprimand. 'I kept on telling you my daddy was in the garden.' Not a hint of grief or revulsion, more than an acceptance of a gruesome fact, almost a gleeful statement. 'Now do you want to see my mummy's grave?'

'No!' Thelma swayed, closed her eyes. 'I do not want to see anybody's grave. That man in there, if it is a man, has been dead for a very long time. We shall have to report it to the police.' And for Christ's sake where are the police?

'It's my daddy.' Stubborn, sullen.

'No, it's not, don't be silly.'

'It is!' Elsie shouted, stamped her feet.

'All right, it's your daddy.' Thelma closed her eyes momentarily. 'How did he come to fall in there?'

'I pushed him in!'

Thelma's heart stalled, charged up into a faster gear. No, it couldn't be. This girl was mentally subnormal. She had found the corpse, invented this story and was determined to live it out. It wasn't healthy. She's likely to fiy into a tantrum so I'd better continue to humour her.

'All right, you pushed him in, but what on earth for?'

'Because he killed my mummy. Her grave's just over there.'

God almighty, this was getting crazier by the second! I've looked at your father but the last thing I want to see is. '

'Look, there!'

Thelma turned her head, saw the fresh mound of soil only ten yards away. She swallowed, tried to will it to disappear, just to be a heap of soil. But it didn't and it was a grave, A crude wooden crucifix at the one end, a macabre wreath weaved out of rushes.

'I'm making another wreath.' Elsie said. That one isn't much good, I did it in too much of a hurry because I wanted to put something on the grave. My daddy didn't like it. He was going to kill me too.'

'How awful!'

'He had another woman. He was going to run away with her but first he had to get rid of mummy. So he brought her for a walk in here to help him get some firewood and then he hit her with the axe, chopped her up into tiny pieces. But at least he buried her.'

Thelma heaved. It wasn't true, it couldn't be. The girl ought to be taken home to her parents (they were still alive somewhere), or else taken into care. Then he said that mummy was in the wood, wanted to talk to me so I went with him. He had the axe, was going to chop me up, too, but I pushed him down there. Look, there's the axe still lying on the ground.'

A morbid compulsion had Thelma looking where the other pointed, tensing as she saw the axe lying in the grass. A stail that had almost rotted off, a brownish-red rusty head. It was rust, it was. Elsie had a vivid imagination, backed it up with any exhibit she could find; the body of an unknown man, she might even have dug that mound herself to support her story, and she'd found an axe which had lain forgotten since the last of the Droys worked this woodland. A fabrication, a good one, but a fantasy nevertheless.

'How long ago did all this happen?' Play along with her. In all probability she knew the way out of here. She just needed coaxing.

'A few days ago, maybe a week.' 'But that man down there's been dead for weeks, maybe months!' Oh Jesus, I've put my foot in it again, contradicted her.

'It was last week!' A shout, the beginning of another tantrum. 'Maybe not even as long as that.'

'Where did your daddy work?' Try and steer her off this macabre subject gently.

'Here, in this wood. He was the Droy Estate woodman.'

But the Droys haven't worked the wood since the turn of the century, maybe even earlier than that! Lies, everything she says is a lie.

'I see. Do you know the way out of the wood, Elsie?' Thelma held her breath, the million dollar question. Or are you just hopelessly lost like me?

'There is no way out when the mist covers the wood!' She might have been reciting from the blackboard in the classroom, words that you learned, remembered and repeated again and again.

There is no way out when the mist covers the wood!

'Who brought you here then, Elsie?'

'My daddy, I told you, so that he could chop me up and bury me like he buried mummy.'

She's not just ninepence for a shilling, she's stark raving mad!

'Well, we'll have to try and find a way out.'

'There isn't one, don't you listen to what I tell you. Are you some kind of idiot?'

'But you came here?'

'With my daddy, are you stupid?' Shrieking now, that tiny face screwed up into a mask of anger.

'So you've been here ever since you. pushed your daddy in there?'

'You've got it,' — a glance heavenwards — 'at last.'

Thelma was trying to think. If only she knew in which direction the road lay she could grab Elsie by the hand, drag her forcibly along with her. But she didn't know. They might walk seawards, be even more hopelessly lost when night fell. Oh God, what were the police doing? They should have been scouring these woods by now, tracker dogs barking. Fillery didn't seem the sort just to give up.