What They Find in the Woods: Dark Minds Novella 2 Read online

  So then I followed at once, along a path that winded so far that I wondered whether I’ve ever get out of the woods again. The man ahead of me, who I now realised was dressed in some kind of floor-length gown, just kept on creaking, but that was just the wind of course, fighting all the trees around me.

  I can’t really describe what happened next– everything occurred in a mad whirl. All I know is that we eventually reached an empty space, a circular part of the woodland which had no trees but had a fire burning at its centre, and then I noticed all these chair-like things around the fire, but when the man clapped his hard hands, every one of these things came to life, and they weren’t chairs at all but little figures, looking even more as if they were made of wood than their dad, who was just a man of course and who then settled down in front of the fire to make something out of herbs he’d cut and also boiling water from a pot, but then we started dancingand I couldn’t watch him anymore, because we were whirling and laughing and creaking and the world seemed like such a fine place and I was happy, happy, happy, even though I was having such fun with things which were little more than bits of wood come to life and mimicking (is that the right word? I’ll have to look it up, but not just yet) human bodies, just trunks and twigs and seeping sap.

  When it finally came to an end, I just sat down, my head spinning so much that the world seemed to be doing so. It felt the way it sometimes did if I took my tablets at the wrong times and had to go and lie down until all the craziness in my head passed by (this only happened occasionally). And so I slumped on the floor, and when I felt hands all over me, trying to lift me back up, I let every part of my body go limp, so that I became a kind of rag doll in this other person’s arms.

  I opened my eyes again and that was when I saw him, leaning over me, his face more gnarled than I remembered it before he’d led me here, to play with all those things he called his children. But I wasn’t frightened. I think I even felt sorry for him. His eyes were still green, like chemical pools, and when he lifted a wooden cup for me to drink from, I felt like a lady, the way I think daughters must feel when their dads love them and give them treats.

  I drank the liquid inside, which tasted herbal and sweet and sour, a lot stronger than those funny teabags nurse Susan sometimes drinks. I thought I’d have to tell her about this happy time for me, maybe even get hold of some of the stuff to take back as a present. But I didn’t get chance this time, because then the world started changing again and I just went with it, because it was so glorious.

  Everything was suddenly perfect. The sky at night, full of shadowy cloud before, was now a field of electric stars. The woods around us glowed with all this weird light, and those many figures, like chair legs bent and now latched together, surrounded us to watch.

  And that was when I saw him: the young man who looked just like a boy band member, sitting beside me and smiling. I didn’t know where the older man had gone, but I didn’t care. This was like being in the company of a prince, and I was now his beautiful princess.

  “What’s your name?” I asked, as he enfolded me in his hands, the thickness of his gown creaking against my body.

  “Donald Deere,” he replied, smiling when he did so, his teeth as white as freshly cut wood.

  I smiled back, with more eagerness than I’ve ever shown anyone else, ever. Then, as the moon kept shining down, joining all the stars to applaud us with their silvery light, he laid me on my back and loved me. And that was when I loved him back, because this was the nicest thing that had ever happened to meand, unlike my dad and some other men I’ve known down the years (doctorswho’ve treated me, I mean), I trusted my beautiful young prince to make me safe.

  I got home hours later, and mum was asleep in the lounge next to a bottle of booze. But after I helped her upstairs to her room, I went to my own bed and then remembered all this stuff, because I knew I’d soon write about it on this blog. And now I have.

  I guess I just want the whole wide world to know how brilliant it was, and how much I now love Donald Deere.

  4

  “Did you get a chance to read that blog entry I sent you a link to, Dr. Cole?”

  “Please, call me Matthew. Well, most use Matt, actually. Feel free to do so yourself.”

  “Okay, Matt,” said Chloe, placing a smiling emphasis on the second word as she took a seat opposite me, only seconds after I’d responded to her knock at my door by calling her inside the office.

  She’d arrived on time for this second supervision meeting, and I could only assume that now, having overcome her initial uncertainties by settling on a solid topic to research, she was keen to get on with the work. But first she and I must talk about several important fieldwork issues, and I suspected this would be far from a short session.

  Unlike her skirt, I thought with uncharacteristic lecherousness as I looked away while she settled in the nearby chair. Given the chill season outside, she was dressed rather scantily today, but then I recalled how little I’d felt the cold when I was younger – much younger – and ascribed her choice of clothing to a naïve feeling of being indestructible. Indeed, she seemed livelier today, no longer sullen and withdrawn. So soon after an almost wordless breakfast with Rose (my wife had been up unusually early that morning, keen to return to romantic fantasies under the guise of her fictional heroine Mary Chesterton), this felt quite stark to me, and I tried seeking distraction, a task to get me away from my seat for a few minutes, enabling time to orient myself.

  Realising that a retreat to my desk to tackle any aspects of my work would be unconvincing, I spotted an ideal method of achieving such brief respite.

  “Regardless of my poor hygiene standards,” I said, grabbing a cup from the table mercifully between us, “please let me make you a drink today. How about one of these things?”

  I dangled one of the herbal teabags my wife had bought me; it looked like a pitiable puppet on one remaining string.

  Chloe met my gaze, and now even her eyes were smiling. “Why not?” she replied, and then, as if some kind of nebulous act of telepathy had just occurred between us, I moved away, out of the room, and across to the kitchen area, which had a sink and a wall-mounted boiler steaming with stored-up passion.

  I returned only minutes later, following a brief chat with a colleague about some dry-as-timber academic theory on which she’d lecture after lunch. It had certainly been a dull exchange but had served its purpose in defusing a little of the irrational tension I’d sensed between me and Chloe, which might even have been only in my mind, just stubborn residue from my failure to perform sexually a few nights ago with Rose, let alone a second unsuccessful attempt the following evening.

  Once my wife had fallen asleep on that first occasion, I’d removed my phone again and then accessed the blog post to which my student had sent a link. It had been an enlightening read, loaded with suggestive and evocative power, a fascinating glimpse into the psyche of a young woman clearly experiencing psychological challenges, almost certainly some kind of learning difficulty. I was no expert in the field, but the nature of her alleged experience was enough for me to suspect something unusual at work in her life. Indeed, it was this that Chloe and I needed to discuss during our latest session.

  After handing her the drink (in one of my cleaner cups, with a soggy label hanging over the rim announcing the now scented contents), I apologised for the short delay and then retook my chair. In my peripheral vision, I noticed that I’d accidentally left my mobile phone on my desk to one side – I was usually careful not to let the device out of my sight – but then realised that I was fretting about that to give me something to focus on as I glanced back at Chloe. She was still smiling, but the expression no longer touched her eyes, as if she was chastising me in wordless code for leaving at exactly the moment she’d needed most contact… But then I told myself to quit with all this silliness, and began to explain the issue I’d hope to address today.

  “In answer to your earlier question, yes, I did read the blog post and
found it very interesting, if not also rather…well, disturbing, wouldn’t you say?”

  Chloe, reanimated by our renewed engagement – just the two of us, with the office door shut tight – nodded at once, already equipped with a response. “But that’s how I’m likely to earn a high mark, isn’t it – by tackling something with plenty of substance?”

  I didn’t much care for her giddy tone, but nonetheless responded in my usual grounded way. “Yes, that’s true. But as researchers, we also have to be careful. We have a responsibility to ensure the safety of everyone involved in our work, and I don’t just mean their physical well-being – I’m referring also to mental issues. And having reviewed the contents of the evidence you presented, I’m afraid I cannot allow you to approach its author as a potential subject for interview. She’s not yet fifteen years old, and as such would be considered a vulnerable subject. Even if we tried, we’d be unlikely to gain ethical approval from the university to recruit her.”

  The young woman thought for a moment, re-crossing her legs as she sipped from her cup, leaving a smear of red lipstick on its rim and looking unlikely to remove it anytime soon. “But I can include the blog post as documentary data, can’t I?” she asked eventually, blue eyes narrowing with a knowingness I was gradually getting used to. “I mean, having published it in the public domain, hasn’t the girl – Shaz – relinquished any rights to prevent us from using it for such purposes?”

  If I perceived a coldblooded attitude here, I tried not betraying it, even though I now realised that Chloe – craftier perhaps than I’d imagined her – had already checked on legal issues relating to online information. It was true that universally accessible material was free for everyone to draw upon, unlike most social networking data which, often fire-walled by owners by password-protection mechanisms, required formal permission to use. But none of this meant we could do whatever we wanted with it; there were still moral rules to adhere to.

  I explained all that, and Chloe nodded again, this time with what I interpreted as mild impatience. But the upshot was that the blog post would be included in her dissertation as an ethnographic document, to be supplemented by further investigation, including interviewees who lacked its author’s obvious personal difficulties.

  “I’m quite interested,” my supervisee said once we’d moved on to other matters in her project, “in the way Shaz at first thought that Donald Deere was her…well, her father.”

  I’d detected Chloe’s brief hesitation, which usually suggested that an emotive issue had just been alluded to, and then wondered about something she’d said during her first visit to me earlier that week – or rather, a conspicuous omission in relation to the few aspects of her home situation she’d mentioned. She’d suggested that she and her mum had moved to the small village of Pasturn about four years ago, following her parents’ messy divorce, but had said nothing at all about her dad, a man who might, I imagined, be little older than I was.

  I drew a quick breath and replied, “Well, that may indeed be interesting, but we have to be careful not to lose sight of our goals. What you’re perhaps suggesting is some form of psychoanalytic analysis – one concerning a girl’s relationship with her father – and although that could result in a perfectly good dissertation, I’m afraid I’m unqualified to support a piece of work like that.”

  At that moment, Chloe, having visibly warmed to my words “our goals”, seemed to back down from her previous focus with surprising haste. “Oh yeah,” she said, shaking her head and then hiding the rest of her face behind the cup of steaming herbal beverage, “I was just mentioning that in passing, really. I mean, I agree with you. We should use the blog only as a basis for the project.”

  “Well, you should, Chloe.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  I smiled, clasping together slightly tremulous hands. “I acquired my degree twenty years ago. That’s as far back as you are old,” I explained, eyeing her carefully, hoping I was being sensitive enough to get across my point without offering so much information that I might be accused of impropriety if I’d misread the situation.

  Chloe’s gaze dropped, making her look like little more than the child she was, and one who’d been caught out in some illicit act she’d had no idea others were aware of. I simply gazed at her, sensing myself sighing inside. Right then, I didn’t know how to proceed.

  The simple truth was that all our exchanges during this latest session had persuaded me that young Chloe had developed – what had been known in my own youth, though I had no idea whether the word still had currency today – a bit of a crush on me. It was apparent in her body language as we conversed, in the way she attended to my every word and seemed dispirited whenever I failed to support any of her spontaneous exclamations. Lord knows why she felt drawn to such an ageing, un-ambitious, impotent person like me, but I supposed it wasn’t the first time this had occurred.

  Young women, as the almost certainly deluded Shaz had demonstrated, had a weakness for older men they considered to be in possession of power. Now, being a university scholar was hardly a position of world-leading authority, but nonetheless contained its own brand of appealing qualities. To a youth about to enter life, with all its potential for menace, people ostensibly in-the-know must appear attractive, particularly to those whose pathways were possibly more challenging than for the great majority. Indeed, it was no secret that young women faced greater barriers in the jobs market than their male counterparts, possibly because this was how the world had been shaped, prioritising the achievement of men.

  This was of course a social-psychological account, my personal speciality, with aspects of evolutionary theory built in. I was aware that there were other explanations for such cross-generational attraction – including a Freudian approach which Chloe had I had briefly touched upon earlier – but the central issue was that such relationships were often mutually delusional: experience-hungry younger woman seeks stability, combining passion with safety; older man clings to what he interprets as his fading status, recapturing youthful feelings of power. I’d never previously engaged in any such nascent trysts, gently pushing away the student until the message was slowly and harmlessly received.

  And yet what was different here, with Chloe Linton? Why did I feel an almost overwhelming temptation not to bother with my usual artful withdrawals, all those almost imperceptible distancing strategies I guess most teachers learn during years of tutoring young, zestful and inherently insecure people?

  I didn’t wish to dwell upon this issue – images of my wife now rose unbidden to my mind, especially the passionless sex act of making babies – and so then, after further strained talk about her project, I decided it was time for Chloe to leave, using the excuse of having to deliver a lecture as my reason for cutting the session shorter than I’d hoped it might be.

  Perhaps she detected the uncertainty in my bearing, because when she spoke again after draining her cup of that herbal beverage, she sounded confident once more. “Okay, but let me quickly recap on our discussion. We agreed that my next step will involve conducting a documentary analysis of relevant information I can find on the Net, as well as any material available from the university’s library.”

  I nodded, thinking this would be a good start. “That should certainly keep you busy for a few weeks,” I said, and although my body seemed to protest, I immediately added, “Then maybe we can fix up another meeting.”

  Chloe looked hard my way, her large blue eyes appearing to consume me. “Is it all right if I email you concerning anything I’m uncertain about?” she asked, her voice back to sounding unsettled, as up and down as her general mood seemed to be. “I mean, just to make sure I remain on the right track from the start.”

  “Of course. That’s absolutely fine,” I replied, because this was the support I provided for all my students, the act I was paid a good wage to fulfil, one which had allowed my wife to pursue such a creative life while making unrealistic plans for the future. Moments later, standing fro
m my chair just as Chloe had, I quickly added, “In fact, I…well, yes, I look forward to it.”

  “Oh, me, too,” she replied, ostensibly passing me back the now empty cup, but then, with her free arm, taking my rising hand spontaneously and giving it a slow shake. Then she finished, “Goodbye, Matt.”

  5

  I didn’t hear again from Chloe until over a week later, and only then by email and not to arrange another meeting. She’d certainly been busy gathering information suitable for her project concerning the role of local legends in small communities, their psychological relevance to a variety of residents. I was impressed by her industry.

  I received the first communication one evening, while Rose and I again watched TV in our lounge. As soon as the email dropped into my inbox, my phone made a small pinging sound I’d forgotten to switch off after another long day at the office. My wife hitched her head from my lap and asked who was contacting me at this time. By now, I’d already unfurled the message and found it difficult – not to mention unnecessary – to lie, and so I told her that it was just a student panicking over her (yes, I did say her) dissertation, and that to put her mind at rest, I should take a quick look at her work. Which was the truth, after all…well, close enough to it, anyway.