Chapter 10

Light, or its absence, can be keenly felt. It’s not only the eyes that lose their sight and objects losing their substance. Darkness brings with it a desolation desired by some and abhorred by many.

We are creatures of light, the latter proclaims. We require it to exist. Without it, how do we know we are?

The former group has no need for light. They don’t shy away from its glare but, also, they do not crave it. Darkness is a friend. It walks with them through equally shadowy times, and offers succour. A safe space, one that, often, is purely internal.

Edmund wasn’t afraid of the dark. He never had been, even as a child. When other youngsters feared monsters under their beds, he had no issue with closing his eyes and dropping quickly to sleep. But that night, darkness wasn’t a space around him. It was something inside him. It moved. It stretched. It learned the shape of him. And the taste.

As the sun departed, night settled over Black Thickett with a weight Edmund hadn’t known a night could possess. It wasn’t darkness in the usual sense. Not the gentle quieting of the world or the soft reminder that rest was due. It was heavier, denser, the village itself exhaling something that pushed against the windows, urging its way in.

Or, the forest inhaling, sucking the will from the villagers. Drawing them in like air into blackened, toxic lungs.

Edmund lay in bed, fully clothed. His duvet was pushed aside, and one leg was draped over it, lest it decide its purpose was to wrap and not be merely a crumpled mess. Every attempt to rest had ended in the same prickling tension behind his ribs. His chest felt too tight, and no amount of deep breathing could ease it. The room was stifling, as if its walls had drawn, or been forced, closer.

He closed his eyes anyway.

Just for a moment. Just to see if…

Sleep didn’t slip into his body, causing him to sink into its embrace, so much as lunge at him.

One breath he was staring at the ceiling.

The next he closed his eyes.

The next…

The trees were all around him.

They were not merely at the edge of his vision, hinted at or half-seen through haze or fog. They surrounded him completely, towering sentinels, their trunks impossibly tall and too close together.

He wasn’t walking. He was standing still.

But the forest moved.

Branches stirred overhead, their creaks like strained whispers. Leaves rustled though there was no wind. Roots curled beneath his feet, thick and knotted, undulating like living muscle.

He tried to step back, but his legs didn’t respond. They felt more like roots themselves, fixing him in place.

A laugh drifted between the trees. It came not from a single direction, but from everywhere, though with a single voice. It couldn’t be called a full laugh, one of hilarity of wickedness. It was just the breath at the start of one. A child’s breath. Familiar, somehow.

Jack.

Edmund’s eyes darted toward the second sound, which was directional.

“No,” he whispered. “No, that’s not…”

Something else was layered beneath it, sunken beneath the surface. A deeper one. Wet. Heavy. Like something crawling inside hollow, decaying wood. If you were to see it, to peer inside the wood, there would be glowing eyes within a glutinous bulk.

He tried to run.

His body remained rooted – literally, now. His feet were encased in soil.

The earth clamped tighter, slipping up over his ankles to grip his calves. His struggles only brought it higher. Something moved in the darkness amid the trees. A figure. Small at first. Then taller.

Then wrong.

They came back wrong.

It stood halfway between shapes – a boy, a man, a shadow – blurring into something different each time he tried to focus on it. It watched him without eyes he could see. The darkness around it throbbed.

A chill entered him like a ghostly possession, one that might fill him with demonic rage, but only made him shudder.

“Stay back,” he managed.

The figure didn’t move closer. It didn’t need to. The forest closed in on its behalf.

Branches arched downward, reaching. Roots slithered over his shoes, serpents on prey. A weight pressed on his chest, gentle but firm, like a hand keeping him still. Don’t move. We’ve got you.

The figure opened its mouth and a rasp crawled out of it, raw and fractured.

Ed…

The sound cracked. Broke. Reformed.

Edmund.

He choked on sudden fear.

“No… No, you’re not…”

A high, thin giggle drifted overhead, keeping elusively out of reach.

Then something touched his shoulder. Small and gentle. A child’s hand.

Edmund screamed.

—

He shot upright in bed, gasping so violently it hurt his throat. Sweat soaked through his shirt and the room spun around him. Shadows stretched long across the floor, and for a moment, he couldn’t tell if they belonged to the dresser or if the trees had followed him back to his room.

Someone was pounding on his door.

“Edmund! Edmund!”

He couldn’t speak. His breath shuddered in harsh bursts.

The door rattled.

“It’s Malcolm, the landlord! Open up!”

He forced himself off the bed, his legs trembling, and stumbled to the door. His fingers could barely grip the latch, slipping twice. When he finally managed to open it, the landlord’s face appeared, creased with worry.

“You screamed,” the man said. “Whole bloody downstairs heard you.”

Edmund tried to answer, but all that came out was a broken whisper.

“I… I saw…”

The landlord stepped inside without waiting for an invitation. His gaze swept the room, then returned to Edmund.

“Sit. Now.”

Edmund sat on the edge of the bed, shaking uncontrollably. His hands wouldn’t unclench and his jaw was tight enough for his teeth to ache.

“It was a dream,” he muttered. “Just a dream. It wasn’t real.”

Malcolm studied him before speaking.

“It doesn’t feel like a dream, does it?”

Edmund swallowed hard, wincing at the burn from his throat. His eyes stung.

“It felt… too real. Like I was there. Like… like it knew me.”

“It does know you,” the landlord said softly.

“Stop saying things like that! It’s a bloody forest. Trees don’t do that!”

The landlord lowered himself into the chair near the wall, ignoring his guest’s outburst.

“You think you’re the first person in this village to dream of the forest?” he asked quietly. “You think Tom didn’t have nights like this before he vanished? You think Helen still doesn’t?”

“I’m not them. I’m not like them.”

“No?” the landlord asked. “You talk in your sleep. Did you know that?”

Edmund stared

“Huh? I… Since when?”

“Last night,” the man said. “I heard you through the floorboards. You were whimpering.”

A wave of nausea rolled through Edmund and he shook his head.

What was this place doing to me?

“What was I… saying?”

Malcolm hesitated.

“I wondered what it was. There’s always strange noises. I came up. It was something about stepping inside.”

Edmund pressed both hands to his face, his fingers against his eyes as he tried to push the images away. He was trembling.

“I can’t stay here.”

“You think leaving will stop this?” the landlord asked, with a humourless smile. “Once it’s noticed you? Once it’s got hold of you?”

“Stop. Please. Just… don’t.”

Malcolm’s face softened. He shrugged.

“Look. You’re not gone yet. You’re still fighting. That’s more than some managed. Most, in fact.”

Edmund dropped his hands. His eyes burned with exhausted fear, and his thoughts were scattered like… like fallen leaves in a forest.

“What do I do?”

“For now?” The landlord stood. “Try to sleep again. Small dreams. Safe ones.”

Edmund laughed, a sharp sound that hurt his own ears.

“Safe ones? How the hell do I manage that, or even sleep?”

The landlord’s mouth tightened, but he remained sympathetic.

“Try. Somehow. That’s all any of us can do.”

He moved toward the door but paused with his hand on the frame.

“And Edmund?”

Edmund lifted his head.

“If you dream again, if something calls your name, don’t answer it.”

“I won’t,” he whispered.

“Good.”

The landlord gave a grim nod, then left, closing the door gently, implying there was still hope. Edmund sat in the quiet, unable to lie down again, unable even to close his eyes.

Because beneath the quiet, beneath the darkness, he could still feel it.

The forest.

Waiting.

Pressing against the edges of his mind as he’d pressed against his closed eyes.

And, somewhere deep inside the tree-dark dream he’d left behind, a voice shaped like a child’s giggle whispered his name again.