Mythago Wood by Robert Holdstock
He rose from his crouch and walked out of the door. ‘For God’s sake, Chris, where are you going?’
‘Inwards,’ was all he said, before I heard him clump heavily down the stairs. I remained motionless for a moment or two, trying to clear my thoughts, then rose, put on my dressing-gown and followed him down to the kitchen. He had already left the house. I went back up to the landing window and saw him skirting the edge of the yard and walking swiftly down towards the south track. He was wearing a wide-brimmed hat, and carrying a long, black staff; on his back he had a small rucksack, slung uncomfortably over one shoulder.
‘Where’s inwards, Chris?’ I said to his vanishing figure, and watched long after he had disappeared from view.
‘What’s going on, Chris?’ I asked of his empty bedroom as I wandered restlessly through the house; Guiwenneth, I decided in my wisdom, her loss, her leaving … how little one could interpret from the words ‘she’s gone’. And in all our chat of the evening before he had never alluded to his wife again. I had come home to England expecting to find a cheerful young couple, and instead had found a haunted, wasting brother living in the derelict shadow of our family home.
By the afternoon I had resigned myself to a period of solitary living, for wherever Christian had gone (and I had a fairly good idea) he had said clearly that he would be gone for some time. There was a lot to do about the house and the yard, and there seemed no better way to spend my time than in beginning to rebuild the personality of Oak Lodge. I made a list of essential repairs, and the following day walked into the nearest town to order what materials I could, mostly wood and paint, which I found in reasonable supply.
I renewed my acquaintance with the Ryhope family, and with many of the local families with whom I had once been friendly. I terminated the services of the part-time cook; I could look after myself quite well enough.
And at last I visited the cemetery; a single, brief visit, coldly accomplished.
The month of August turned to September, and I noticed a definite crispness in the air by evening, and early in the morning. It was a season I loved, the turn from summer to autumn, although it bore with it associations of return to school after the long holiday, a memory I didn’t cherish.
I soon grew used to being on my own in the house, and although I took long walks around the deep woodlands, watching the road and the railway track for Christian’s return, I had ceased to feel anxious about him by the end of my first week home, and had settled comfortably into a daily routine of building in the yard, painting the exterior woodwork of the house ready for the onslaught of winter, and digging over the large, untended garden.
It was during the evening of my eleventh day at home that this domestic routine was disturbed by a circumstance of such peculiarity that afterwards I could not sleep for thinking about it.
I had been in the town of Hobbhurst for most of the afternoon, and after a light evening meal was sitting reading the newspaper; towards nine o’clock, as I began to feel ready for an evening stroll, I thought I heard a dog, not so much barking as howling. My first thought was that Christian was coming back, my second that there were no dogs in this immediate area at all.
I went out into the yard; it was after dusk, but still quite bright, although the oakwoods were melded together into a grey-green blur. I called for Christian, but there was no response. I was about to return to my paper when a man stepped out of the distant woodland, and began to trot towards me. He was holding on a short, leather leash the most enormous hound I have ever seen.
At the gate to our private grounds he stopped, and the dog began to growl; it placed its forepaws on the fence, and in so doing rose almost to the height of its master. I felt nervous at once, keeping my attention balanced between the gaping, panting mouth of that dark beast, and the strange man who held it in check.
It was difficult to make him out clearly, for his face was painted with dark patterns and his moustaches drooped to well below his chin; his hair was plastered thickly about his scalp; he wore a dark woollen shirt, with a leather jerkin over the top, and tight, check-patterned breeches that reached to just below his knees. When he stepped cautiously through the gate I could see his rough and ready sandals. Across his shoulder he carried a crude-looking bow, and a bundle of arrows, held together with a simple thong and tied to his belt. Like Christian, he bore a staff.
Inside the gate he hesitated, watching me. The hound was restless beside him, licking its mouth and growling softly. I had never seen a dog such as this, shaggy and dark-furred, with the narrow pointed face of an Alsatian, but the body, it seemed to me, of a bear – except that its legs were long and thin, an animal made for chasing, for hunting.
The man spoke to me, and although I felt familiar with the words, they meant nothing. I didn’t know what to do, so I shook my head and said that I didn’t understand. The man hesitated just a moment before repeating what he had said, this time with a distinct edge of anger in his voice. And he started to walk towards me, tugging at the hound to prevent it straining at the leash. The light was draining from the sky, and he seemed to grow in stature in the greyness as he approached. The beast watched me, hungrily.
‘What do you want?’ I called, and tried to sound firm when I would rather have run inside the house. The man was ten paces away from me. He stopped, spoke again, and this time made eating motions with the hand that held his staff. Now I understood.
I nodded vigorously. ‘Wait here,’ I said, and went back to the house to fetch the cold joint of pork that was to last me four more days. It was not large, but it seemed an hospitable thing to do. I took the meat, half a granary loaf, and a jug of bottled beer out into the yard. The stranger was crouched now, the hound lying down beside him, rather reluctantly, it seemed to me. As I tried to approach them, the dog growled, then barked in a way that set my heart racing and nearly made me drop my gifts. The man shouted at the beast, and said something to me. I placed the food where I stood and backed away. The gruesome pair approached and again squatted down to eat.
As he picked up the joint I saw the scars on his arm, running down and across the bunched muscles. I also smelled him, a raw, rancid odour, sweat and urine mixed with the fetid aroma of rotting meat. I felt sick, but held my ground watching as the stranger tore at the pork with his teeth, swallowing hard and fast. The hound watched me.
After a few minutes the man stopped eating, looked at me, and with his gaze fixed on mine, almost challenging me to react, passed the rest of the meat to the dog, which growled loudly and snapped at the joint. The hound chewed, cracked and gulped the entire piece of pork in less than four minutes, while the stranger cautiously – and without much apparent pleasure – drank beer, and chewed on a large mouthful of bread.
Finally this bizarre feast was over. The man rose to his feet and jerked the hound away from where it was licking the ground noisily. He said a word I intuitively recognized as ‘thank you’. He was about to turn when the hound scented something; it uttered first a high-pitched keen, and then a raucous bark, and snatched itself away from its master’s restraining grip, racing across the yard to a spot between the ramshackle chicken houses. Here it sniffed and scratched until the man reached it, grabbed the leather leash, and shouted angrily and lengthily at his charge. The hound moved with him, padding silently and monstrously into the gloom beyond the yard. They ran at full speed around the edge of the woodland, towards the farmlands around the village of Grimley, and that was the last I saw of them.
In the morning the place where the man and beast had rested still smelled rank. I skirted the area quickly as I walked to the woods and found the place where my strange visitors had emerged from the trees; it was trampled and broken, and I followed the line of their passage for some yards into the shade before stopping and turning back.
Where on earth had they come from? Had the war had such an effect on men in England that some had returned to the wild, using bow and arrow and hunting dog for survival?
Not until midd
How I knew I cannot say: intuition, or perhaps something that my subconscious had detected in Christian’s words and mannerisms the week or so before, during our brief encounter. In any event, late in the afternoon that same day I took a spade to the chicken huts, and within a few minutes of digging had proved my instinct right.
It took me half an hour of sitting on the back doorstep of the house, staring across the yard at the grave, to find the courage to uncover the woman’s body totally. I was dizzy, slightly sick, but most of all I was shaking; an uncontrollable, unwelcome shaking of arms and legs, so pronounced that I could hardly pull on a pair of gloves. But eventually I knelt by the hole and brushed the rest of the dirt from the corpse.
Christian had buried her three feet deep, face down; her hair was long and red; her body was still clad in a strange green garment, a patterned tunic that was laced at the sides and, though it was crushed up almost to her waist now, would have reached to her calves. A staff was buried with her. I turned the head, holding my breath against the almost intolerable smell of putrefaction, and with a little effort could gaze upon the withering face. I saw then how she had died, for the head and stump of the arrow were still embedded in her eye. Had Christian tried to withdraw the weapon and succeeded only in breaking it? There was enough of the shaft left for me to notice that it had the same carved markings as the arrow in my father’s study.
Poor Guiwenneth, I thought, and let the corpse drop back to its resting place. I filled in the dirt again. When I reached the house I was cold with sweat, and in no doubt that I was about to be violently sick.
Three
Two days later, when I came down in the morning, I found the kitchen littered with Christian’s clothes and effects, the floor covered with mud and leaf litter. I crept upstairs to his room and stared at his semi-naked body: he was belly down on the bed, face turned towards me, sleeping soundly and noisily, and I imagined that he was sleeping enough for a week. The state of his body, though, gave me cause for concern. He was scratched and scarred from neck to ankle, filthy, and malodorous to an extreme. His hair was matted. And yet, about him there was something hardened and strong, a tangible physical change from the hollow-faced, rather skeletal young man who had greeted me nearly two weeks before.
He slept for most of the day, emerging at six in the evening wearing a loose-fitting grey shirt and flannels, torn off just above the knee. He had half-heartedly washed his face, but still reeked of sweat and vegetation, as if he had spent the days away buried in compost.
I fed him, and he drank the entire contents of a pot of tea as I sat watching him; he kept darting glances at me, suspicious little looks as if he were nervous of some sudden move or surprise attack upon him. The muscles of his arms and wrists were pronounced. This was almost a different man.
‘Where have you been, Chris?’ I asked after a while, and was not at all surprised when he answered, ‘In the woods. Deep in the woods.’ He stuffed more meat into his mouth and chewed noisily. As he swallowed he found a moment to say, ‘I’m quite fit. Bruised and scratched by the damned brambles, but quite fit.’
In the woods. Deep in the woods. What in heaven’s name could he have been doing there? As I watched him wolf down his food I saw again the stranger, crouching like an animal in my yard, chewing on meat as if he were some wild beast. Christian reminded me of that man. There was the same air of the primitive about him.
‘You need a bath rather badly,’ I said, and he grinned and made a sound of affirmation. I went on, ‘What have you been doing? In the woods. Have you been camping?’
He swallowed noisily, and drank half a cup of tea before shaking his head. ‘I have a camp there, but I’ve been searching, walking as deep as I could get. But I still can’t get beyond … ’ He broke off and glanced at me, a questioning look in his eyes. ‘Did you read the old man’s notebook?’
I said that I hadn’t. In truth, I had been so surprised by his abrupt departure, and so committed to getting the house back into some sort of shape, that I had forgotten all about father’s notes on his work. And even as I said this I wondered if the truth of the matter was that I had put father, his work and his notes, as far from my mind as possible, as if they were spectres whose haunting would reduce my resolve to go forward.
Christian wiped his hand across his mouth and stared at his empty plate. He suddenly sniffed at himself and laughed.
‘By God, I do stink. You’d better boil me up some water, Steve. I’ll wash right now.’
But I didn’t move. Instead I stared across the wooden table at him; he caught my gaze and frowned. ‘What is it? What’s on your mind?’
‘I found her, Chris. I found her body. Guiwenneth. I found where you buried her.’
I don’t know what reaction I expected from Christian. Anger, perhaps, or panic, or a sudden babbling burst of explanation. I half hoped he would react with puzzlement, that the corpse in the yard would turn out not to be the remains of his wife, and that he had no involvement with its burial. But Christian knew about the body. He stared at me blankly, and a heavy, sweaty silence made me grow uncomfortable.
Suddenly I realized that Christian was crying, his gaze not wavering from my own, but moistened now by the tears that coursed through the remaining grime on his face. And yet he made no sound, and his face never changed its expression from that of bland, almost blind contemplation.
‘Who shot her, Chris?’ I asked quietly. ‘Did you?’
‘Not me,’ he said, and with the words his tears stopped, and his gaze dropped to the table. ‘She was shot by a mythago. There was nothing I could do about it.’
Mythago? The meaning was alien to me, although I recognized the word from the scrap of my father’s notebook that I carried. I queried it and Chris rose from the table, but rested his hands upon it as he watched me. ‘A mythago,’ he repeated. ‘It’s still in the woods … they all are. That’s where I’ve been, seeking among them. I tried to save her, Steve. She was alive when I found her, and she might have stayed alive, but I brought her out of the woods … in a way, I did kill her. I took her away from the vortex, and she died quite quickly. I panicked, then. I didn’t know what to do. I buried her because it seemed the easiest way out …’
‘Did you tell the police? Did you report her death?’
Christian smiled, but it was not with any morbid humour. It was a knowing smile, a response to some secret that he had not so far shared; and yet the gesture was merely a defence, for it faded rapidly. ‘Not necessary, Steve … the police would not have been interested.’
I rose angrily from the table. It seemed to me that Christian was behaving, and had behaved, with appalling irresponsibility. ‘Her family, Chris … her parents! They have a right to know.’
And Christian laughed.
I felt the blood rise in my face. ‘I don’t see anything to laugh at.’
He sobered instantly, looked at me almost abashed. ‘You’re right. I’m sorry. You don’t understand, and it’s time you did. Steve, she had no parents because she had no life, no real life. She’s lived a thousand times, and she’s never lived at all. But I still fell in love with her … and I shall find her again in the woods; she’s in there somewhere …’
Had he gone mad? His words were the unreasoned babblings of one insane, and yet something about his eyes, something about his demeanour, told me that it was not so much insanity as obsession. But obsession with what?
‘You must read the old man’s notes, Steve. Don’t put it off any longer. They will tell you about the wood, about what’s going on in there. I mean it. I’m neither mad nor callous. I’m just trapped, and before I go away again, I’d like you to know why, and how, and where I’m going. Perhaps you’ll be able to help me. Who knows? Read t
Four
There is one entry in my father’s notebook that seems to mark a turning point in his research, and his life. It is longer than the other notes of that particular time, and follows an absence of seven months from the pages. While his entries are often detailed, he could not be described as having been a dedicated diarist, and the style varies from clipped notes to fluent description. (I discovered, too, that he himself had torn many pages from the thick book, thus concealing my minor crime quite effectively. Christian had never noticed the missing page.) On the whole, he seems to have used the notebook, and the quiet hours of recording, as a way of conversing with himself – a means of clarification of his own thoughts.
The entry in question is dated September 1935, and was written shortly after our encounter with the Twigling. After reading the entry for the first time I thought back to that year and realized I had been just eight years old.
Wynne-Jones arrived after dawn. Walked together along the south track, checking the flux-drains for signs of mythago activity. Back to the house quite shortly after – no-one about, which suited my mood. A crisp, dry autumn day. Like last year, images of the Urscumug are strongest as the season changes. Perhaps he senses autumn, the dying of the green. He comes forward, and the oak woods whisper to him. He must be close to genesis. Wynne-Jones thinks a further time of isolation needed, and it must be done. Jennifer already concerned and distraught by my absences. I feel helpless – can’t speak to her. Must do what is needed.
Yesterday the boys glimpsed the Twigling. I had thought him resorbed – clearly the resonance is stronger than we had believed. He seems to frequent the woodland edge, which is to be expected. I have seen him along the track several times, but not for a year or so. The persistence is worrying. Both boys clearly disturbed by the sighting; Christian less emotional. I suspect it meant little to him, a poacher perhaps, or local man taking a short cut to Grimley. Wynne-Jones suggests we go back into woods and call the Twigling deep, perhaps to the hogback glade where he might remain in the strong oak vortex and eventually fade. But I know that penetrating into deep woodland will involve more than a week’s absence, and poor Jennifer is already deeply depressed by my behaviour. Cannot explain it to her, though I dearly want to. Do not want the children involved in this, and it worries me that they have now twice seen a mythago. I have invented magic forest creatures – stories for them. Hope they will associate what they see with products of their own imaginations. But must be careful.