Four British Mysteries Page 5

  But she misses him. The emotion endures because, like the hunger, it is instinct. She realises that now. Her son as she knew him is gone. She is nothing to him, or he to her, except memories, and soon even they will be devoured.

  Except for the ones recorded by the fading light, in dark blue ink across the half-filled pages beneath her.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  The morning Freya accompanied Ms. Andrews to the Forest was the last time she, or anyone else in Lynnwood, ever saw the old woman.

  Ms. Andrews’s dreams had been growing worse, she confessed after service the following Sunday. There was no escaping the fly-faced woman or the nightly visitations that brought her closer. She felt constantly drained and had taken to drinking herself into a stupor each evening. This, she discovered, was the only way to ensure a restful night, if alcohol-induced sleep could ever be called such. True to her words, the woman’s breath burned with brandy. Her eyes were shallow pits in her face and her frame had shrunk, so that she resembled a wrinkly child or the husk of one of George’s insects, left too long in the damp. The woman seemed to have aged years in a matter of weeks.

  The sky was bleak; a vast expanse of distance, grey and empty except for the thin wind, which howled through the church corridors. They were standing just outside the entrance, on crumbling stone steps, and could hear the wind clearly as it sang through the building.

  “Another insightful service,” Freya said, “thank you again, Joan. What would we be without you?”

  “You mean where, surely?” said the vicar, laughing.

  “Yes, of course! Still, thank you.”

  “You’re welcome. It’s always a pleasure to see familiar faces gathered in one place. How are you keeping?”

  “I visited the brook,” said Freya, “after we last spoke.”

  “That’s good, my dear. How do you feel?”

  “I didn’t mean to walk by that way. I just sort of ended up there. Looking back, my father wouldn’t have wanted me to avoid it for so long. It really is beautiful this time of the year.”

  “I’m pleased to hear you’re feeling better,” said Ms. Andrews.

  “It’ll be the same for you, with the clearing in the Forest. Think of it as therapy.”

  As Ms. Andrews heard this, a curious expression swept her face. She gasped silently, like a fish left to die on the banks of the brook. She recovered quickly. “I’m not so sure I should follow in your footsteps. My dreams are not of your pleasant sort.”

  “Then, if anything, a visit to the trees will remind you.”

  “Remind me?”

  “Well, that the Forest is not as you dream it.” Freya smiled encouragingly as the two moved away through the graveyard. “We’ll go together. Tomorrow, once the children have left for school. Eaton will need walking anyway.”

  After a moment of hesitation, Ms. Andrews returned a thin smile. “Yes, of course. Who am I, refusing the prospect of company on a Monday morning? I have a number of errands to run anyway. It will be good to catch up properly, and see that beautiful dog of yours.”

  “He’s a wild spirit,” she said, her laughter carrying over the graves.

  “Aren’t we all?” said Ms. Andrews. “Aren’t we all?”

  * * *

  They met earlier than planned that Monday morning, Freya having also found errands to run. These were not dissimilar to Ms. Andrews’s own and, after browsing the high street for almost an hour, they headed to McCready’s farmhouse. The morning was misty with frost, the village cobbles treacherous. Cold light filtered through the clouds, which rolled like crashing waves through the sky. The air stung her cheeks and numbed her nose; winter, teasing her flesh with its teeth.

  They made polite conversation as they moved towards the Old Barn. Freya spoke much of Lizzie and George; their art projects and school progress respectively. A great deal of fuss was made over Eaton, who was more than happy to oblige their attentive hands by presenting his belly and the backs of his ears. Ms. Andrews seemed well enough, although she still looked disturbed at the prospect of entering the Forest. Freya understood, given the lucidity of her own dreams. If Ms. Andrews’s horrible visitations were anything similar, her apprehension was not unfounded.

  Freya thought only of the healing to be found there, or if not healing then a freedom from the pressures of the village, of life, a primitive release. The delicate sound of the water as it ran its course, the rich aroma of bark, the feel of the Forest as it snapped beneath her wellies; Ms. Andrews would experience these things for herself, she would unbridle whatever beasts strained within and, relieved of these burdens, sleep would once again become restful.

  The wind picked up as they approached McCready’s farmhouse. Although she could see no smoke behind the barn or in the fields, she fancied she could smell the charred pig again, or the ghost of that smell, clinging stubbornly to her nostrils and the wet slip of her tongue; a smoky-lipped lover, pressing the taste into her mouth...

  Moving past the barn, which seethed with the clamour of livestock; the metal sounds of riled fencing, bestial snorts and the clatter of unsettled trotters, they reached the farmhouse. Its proud, long-faced owner met them at the door. He was dressed in clean work overalls and his thin hair stood wilder than she remembered.

  “Ms. Andrews, I hadn’t realised you were coming so early. And Freya, what a pleasant surprise!”

  “The early bird catches the worm, or so I hear,” said Ms. Andrews with a tight-lipped smile.

  He returned the expression, his long face softening somewhat. “I hadn’t reckoned on lovely creatures such as yourselves hankering after worms, now...”

  “Perhaps some bacon, then?” The words tumbled quickly from Freya’s lips.

  He stared into her eyes before replying. His own eyes were small, shrewd, set deep into the hollows of his face. Confronted with the unexpected challenge, she stared boldly back, relishing the unexpected thrill that raced within. It felt curious but not unpleasant; a bristling at the back of her neck, which coursed like blood through her veins, setting light to her nerves with animal fervour. The wind buffeted her face, scented with smoke and cold against the hotness of her skin. After what felt like forever, he spoke again. “Couldn’t wait until market on Thursday, my dear? Not that I blame you, mind...”

  “We’re running low,” she said, “the children have quite an appetite lately. I don’t know where they put it all.”

  “I’m sure you don’t,” he said, still staring quite intently. Then, as though snapping from a dream: “Yes, I think I can stretch to some bacon. Here, come in. Let me take your coat. How about some sausages, too?”

  “Why not?” she said, smiling, delirious with unspoken defiance. “Lead the way.”

  * * *

  Despite moving to Lynnwood only nine years ago, John McCready had settled very quickly into the community. He was no stranger to village life, having lived in nearby Ashurst for many years before. The McCreadys had owned land there for centuries and were famously proud of their title as Commoners, which authorised them the care of their own land. The Forest was a law unto itself. They understood that better than most in Lynnwood.

  The farm had meant everything to John’s family. He had spoken at length with Freya about his childhood there, when first moving to Lynnwood. Mostly she had wondered what drove him from Ashurst, where so many of his roots were based.

  “My sister,” he said plainly that day, and she had known from the look in his eyes that she would not like what followed. “Mary was an unsettled woman. Even when we were children she would hear things. Noises at her window, or from the sties.”

  “Noises?”

  “The pigs, screaming at night. Sometimes it was the cows. The farm was no place for a young girl.”

  “We’re more resilient than you think,” Freya said, smiling. He did not smile back.

  “Have you ever heard a cow scream, my dear? Or a pig?”

  “I haven’t, no.”

  “Then let us hope you never have
to.” He took a long draught of his drink before continuing, his lips white with foam. “When my sister didn’t get better, they took her to the doctor. Dosed her up on pills. Little tablets, all kinds of colours, to make her social, like. It seemed to work, I suppose, though she was never the same since.”

  “I’m so sorry, John.”

  “Happen the part of her that heard those sounds was the good part, the real Mary. The pills put a stop to that, anyway. For a while at least. She grew up right enough, though she was never fit to leave the farm again. Then one day, they stopped working.”

  “Just like that?”

  “Just like that,” he said. “I’d only recently moved back to the farm myself. Our father was not long gone and my mother couldn’t cope with all the heavy work herself. So I came back, with my brothers, to help look after the place. That was when Mary started playing up again. Hearing things that weren’t there. Seeing figures in the morning fog.”

  “Wasn’t there anything you could do?”

  “It all happened so quickly. Besides, what could anyone do, when she was struggling to surface? I swear it, the old Mary was trying to break free. It never did sit right with me, when they gave her those pills. Anyway, they said she’d built up some resistance, when they examined her afterwards, but I knew. I knew she was fighting.

  “We found her in the stables one morning. Curled up in the corner, naked, stiff as the table here.” He struck the wood with the palm of his hand. “They said the cold got her. They said they were sorry. I didn’t know what to believe, but I couldn’t stay there anymore. All I could see was that shape in the corner of the stables, so old but so young-looking, and so vulnerable like. And I remembered Lynnwood.”

  He had visited the village several times, it emerged, during his formative years, and something of Lynnwood had remained with him ever since. She had heard similar stories before and was not surprised. The village had a way of sticking, in the mind and in the soul. So he had sold his shares of the farm and bought the rights to new land, here in the village, and had not looked back since.

  * * *

  The clearing stood near Mawley Bog, not far from the Hanging Tree. Smaller and more intimate than she had imagined from Ms. Andrews’s telling, there was nonetheless room for the pair of them to wander. The old woman walked slowly, as though in her dream, twigs breaking beneath her tread. Sunlight shone down through the branches, which stretched overhead. Even the bark glinted silver with hoar frost, bright against the rotten branches on the ground.

  “You see, Joan? No flies, just trees. They’re just trees.”

  Freya’s voice shattered the silence; a human voice, so out of place in this copse, this wild place, encased in a layer of cold. Only then did she realise how uneasy she felt. It might have been the stillness of the scene, or the hallowed quiet of the Forest in the absence of bird calls or the trickling brook, their dirges frozen on the air, as water to sheets of ice. And it was quiet. Every hollow snap beneath Ms. Andrews’s feet echoed between the trees, until they might have been coming from anywhere in the Forest. The icy air pricked Freya’s lungs with each savage breath, emerging again as a pale cloud when she exhaled.

  “Lord in Heaven...” muttered Ms. Andrews, her back to Freya. “Oh Lord in Heaven...”

  “Joan, what is it?”

  “I’d forgotten... God forgive me. Lord! Forgive me for what I’ve done.”

  Alone together in the clearing, with only the trees and the cold for company, the enormity of those words crept agonisingly down Freya’s spine. And with every word spoken, it seemed as though the trees crawled closer, the branches longer, the cold harsher. Her pulse thundered hot in her temples and it might have been her imagination but she thought she saw something between the trees; a thin figure moving swiftly around the outskirts of the clearing. Her throat tightened, her eyes distracted. The wind took Ms. Andrews’s scarf, tossing it to the trees.

  “Joan, what had you forgotten? What do you see?”

  Another flash of movement, as something continued to circle the glade. She would have followed it except Ms. Andrews turned to her then. Never had she seemed so physically frail, as if drained by the chill air or the forest roots until only the ghost of Ms. Andrews remained. And yet there was a feverish light in her face, shining in her eyes, visible in those vaguely parted lips. Her scrawny frame trembled – from the cold, Ms. Andrews would later confess, as they walked back through the trees.

  “Joan, I’m so sorry. I didn’t realise. I didn’t know you had... memories here.”

  “No flies,” said the woman dumbly. “You were right... No flies.”

  “We should go. I can’t apologise enough. Let’s get you inside and warm. Have you seen Eaton? I think he ran into the trees.”

  Hearing the crunch of dead leaves behind her, she turned, to grab the dog, leash him and leave this wild, menacing place. Except the shape that burst from the undergrowth behind her was not Eaton, or any dog. Long, human arms reached for her. Bones clicked as the figure scrabbled closer, face twisted, mouth gaping, eyes fixed feverishly on her own –

  This instinct was different. She fell back from the apparition, tumbling into the blanket of leaves. She could not challenge the sheer savagery of that vision, or the fact that behind the ecstasy in its eyes, the hunger that split its lips, it had seemed so familiar.

  They hurried from the place; two small silhouettes beneath the vastness of the skies, the trees and the long, hungry howl of a dog.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Though no one confessed it, the residents of Lynnwood sought their missing vicar for their own savage curiosity as much as Ms. Andrews’s welfare. When the news broke that she had vanished, they rushed from their homes and the village crawled with insatiable activity; figures moving swiftly, bent low with desperation, through the streets.

  Once it was determined she was nowhere in the village borders, one question quivered, unspoken, on everyone’s lips, hidden beneath the proper questions they voiced: what had become of Ms. Andrews since surrendering to the wild glamour of the Forest?

  Joan Andrews’s funeral was a formality. Lost to the trees there was no body to bury. The village gathered in the graveyard behind Allerwood Church where they prayed for their vicar, even as they stood upon the mouldering remains of those hundreds who had died before. Freya had never realised the hypocrisy of it, the sheer madness of such celebrations. Life was spirit, yes, but spirit made flesh; the kiss of the wind against one’s face, the rushing of hot blood beneath one’s skin, the swelling, irrepressible urges that flooded one’s body with every hurried thump of the heart. In death, there were none of these things. Nothing but ethereality, reduced to insubstantial memory, so easy to scatter, no better than a dream, or the orange leaves of a tree in autumn. And then the body, stripped of the self; a cooling collection of limp limbs and ragged flesh, growing soft and syrupy with decay.

  She attended the funeral with Catherine, two spectres in a congregation of famished ghosts. Mrs. Morecroft took the sermon. She spoke of Ms. Andrews’s childhood in the village, then Frederick, and her role as vicar of Lynnwood. Others took the floor with their own memories, their own private interactions. Each anecdote pricked Freya until she thought she must be pink and flushed with shame. This was her fault. She had led Ms. Andrews to the trees. She had urged the old woman through the Forest, where she wouldn’t have stepped alone. She had forced her into that place, which was so far from the village, and it had swallowed her whole with a verdant, vacuous roar...

  She clung to the tears, hot and wet against her skin. Something had happened that morning in the Forest that she had not expected. The hunger had grown too great, too wild, bursting from every vein beneath her skin until she thought she might lose herself. Surrendering to her appetites whenever she felt them, she had not dwelt on how dangerous they were, or why they were repressed in the first place. She had thought them delightful, then wildly indulgent, but never deadly.

  They must be reined in, she vowed. The
feasting, her visits to the brook, these things must be stopped before they consumed her. Already, it seemed, they had nipped at her flesh, stealing bite after bite, and then in the clearing with Ms. Andrews, a monstrous mouthful, pale-faced and ghastly in the undergrowth.

  She endured the rest of the ceremony in silence. Though there were no remains and, therefore, no grave, a traditional headstone was nonetheless erected. Once this had been appreciated and the ceremony concluded, Lynnwood’s residents broke away, one by one drifting back into the village. As the last to leave, her face red, fingers pink from the cold, she was the only witness to Mr. Shepherd, the village artisan, and the gift he dropped quickly onto the headstone before himself departing.

  Close inspection revealed it to be a brooch. Though ornate in design, it was hammered from little more than iron. She touched it tentatively. No bigger than the palm of her hand it proved smooth to the skin and icy cold, as if devouring the warmth from all around it. But more than the cold or the intricacy of the brooch, the depiction she saw in it struck her, causing a sharp inhalation of breath; the brooch resembled an open mouth, distended and ravenous, gaping up at her from the metalwork.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Freya thought often of the moment in which McCready’s gaze had met with hers that day outside his farmhouse; the second when, challenged by his eyes, carnal instinct had bubbled to the surface. Civility decreed she fled; it taught to run from conflict, or to console it where possible, to neuter it as a dog relieved of its potency. But she had stared into McCready’s eyes, bright with understanding, and recognised the hunger. She held his gaze unflinching, even as her lips formed the lies she had known they would. And though she concealed the truth, there was no hiding the lustre in her own eyes, as she had seen in his.