Chapter 6

Lies can be soothing, in some cases, more so than truth. They can be destructive too, but they’re spoken to sooth, whether that be the speaker or the receiver.

I do love you.

I’m on the way.

My phone died.

He’s going to be OK.

Edmund had been subject to a long run of truths lately, and wished many were the opposite. He would have taken being soothed over the alternatives he’d been forced to face. He would have taken the untruth to not have to face…

He told himself he was only walking to occupy his limbs and silence his thoughts. It was a lie he recognised the moment it took shape, but he allowed it anyway. Thus, he was soothed.

The morning had warmed slightly. Clouds drifted overhead, too lazy to instill with any speed, pale and frayed at the edges as if the weather couldn’t quite commit to its intentions. The cottages on either side of the main road he’d driven in on stood quiet. Their doors were closed. Their windows curtained. Each was a small universe he would never see into or, coming from a much busier world, understand. A pair of dogs barked behind a fence, fell silent on seeing him, barked again with less conviction. Even they seemed to sense the hush hanging over the village and be wary of his intervention.

He let his feet choose turns as they wished, without instruction. Everywhere would be new, so he didn’t feel the need. A side road here, a cutting there. A meander through the unknown, in an attempt to forget where he was and what troubled him. He came to a gently winding road with little cul-de-sacs sprouting off each side like yet to open buds. Hedgerows grew thick with bramble, and gardens cluttered themselves with gnomes or blooming flowerpots. He found himself cataloguing these details, filling his mind with them, as if they might anchor him to something solid, whilst pushing out anything less welcome.

At first, he didn’t notice the difference in sound.

It happened slowly, almost politely. Don’t mind me. I’ll do my best not to disturb you. You carry on. The distant hum of activity, what little there was, faded. The barking dogs, though they seemed to be doing so because that’s what their kind did, rather than at anything specific, grew quiet. The muffled clatter of someone washing dishes behind a window ceased. Black Thickett had paused. It was waiting for something.

Edmund exhaled forcefully. He wanted to make sure it wasn’t his ears at fault. There was no mistaking the sound of exhaled air, and he saw it mist faintly. He frowned. It wasn’t cold enough for that. He breathed in and forcibly out again, but this time, there was no mist. His breath sounded as it should.

He kept walking, dismissing the phenomenon as Nature messing with him. She probably took pleasure in it, not having much time for play due to her many duties. He kept his eyes cast down at his feet, all the better to ignore anything that shouldn’t… be. The village was just taking a morning nap.

Without him realising, the cottages thinned. The hedges grew taller. The tarmac became gravel and the lane narrowed. A light wind brushed the back of his neck, cool, insistent and determined. When he lifted his gaze, he saw it.

The forest.

It loomed before and over him, an abrupt wall of trunks and shadows, as if the world had simply decided to end there and filled the void with wood. The trees were packed tightly. Oaks and pines and alder wove together in an unyielding barrier that blocked out much of the sky. Their branches stretched overhead, forming a natural archway of sorts.

A threshold.

He slowed.

The last time he’d seen the forest, it had been at a distance, in the dark. The night hid half its truth. In daylight, it was much worse. Not because it was sinister. If anything, it looked perfectly ordinary, though dense. Rather, it was because it didn’t seem moved by the difference. Morning, night, mist, sun. None of it mattered. The forest simply existed either way, deliberately ignorant of all that passed it by.

An unnatural calm crept over him, easing his anxiety. It wasn’t the peaceful kind that followed a massage or meditation, but something that swelled from the centre of his chest outward. It was heavy, but warm and familiar.

He stopped walking.

Birdsong had faded entirely. The world closed in, cupping him in unseen hands.

Edmund swallowed. The calm grew stronger.

He took a step further, wondering why he wasn’t retreating. That would, surely, have been the sensible choice.

The earth underfoot felt softer, almost springy, helping him walk, carrying him along. The air carried a scent he hadn’t noticed before. Moss, damp leaves, and something else he couldn’t identify. He thought it was like petrichor mixed with the memory of laughter.

Another step, despite his reticence.

His breath slowed without asking if it could. His shoulders loosened and lowered, the stress sliding from them. His thoughts, which had been tumbling over each other since he’d arrived in Black Thickett, smoothed into quiet ribbons he could take hold of and lay out for a casual glance over.

The single moment stretched long and languid. It held him suspended.

He didn’t know how long he stood there, unable to move, both wanting to and not.

Not until a faint creak, perhaps a branch bending under a weight, echoed from deeper in the woods. The forest didn’t move, not visibly, but the sound slipped between the trunks and wrapped around his nerves.

The calm wavered.

Edmund blinked twice and stepped back, almost stumbling. The air snapped colder. A chill ran through him, chased by the feeling that he’d been on the verge of something more. Of stepping into a place that wasn’t meant for, but would accept him.

He turned away.

Only then did he hear the birds again, cautiously reclaiming their songs. There was the distant clatter from a cottage as the village resumed its usual workings. A door closed. A child laughed. Normal life slotted neatly back into its place, as if it had been waiting for his decision.

Edmund’s hands shook as he shoved them into his pockets. His heartbeat thudded loudly in his ears. He’d had a panic attack. He was exhausted. He was grieving, for God’s sake. Nothing sat comfortably in his mind. It made him susceptible to all sorts of

He began walking back toward the village, refusing to look over his shoulder.

But even without turning, he felt it.

The forest watched him leave.

It wasn’t angry. Just… patient.

It knew he would return.