Forest Ghost (18 page)

‘Sparks,’ said Jack, taking hold of Sparky’s sleeve. ‘I want you to stay right here, OK. Don’t go any further.’

‘He’s not dead, though, is he?’

‘No, he isn’t. But I still want you to stay here.’

‘Dad, I’m not a kid. I’m
twelve
.’

‘I know, Sparks. But just let me check out what’s happened here, OK?’

‘I will stay with him,’ said Lidia. ‘If Diablik does not want to go near, then neither do I.’

Sparky reluctantly stayed where he was, while Jack caught up with Borys and Krystyna. Diablik was pulling so hard in the opposite direction that Borys had to let his leash all the way out, and even then he kept on scrabbling to get as far away from Robert as he possibly could.

When he came closer, Jack saw that although he was standing upright, Robert had no feet, only the peg-like ends of bloody white leg bones. The hems of his jeans had been rolled up, and were soaked dark crimson. His hands were bloody, too.

‘Robert,’ said Krystyna gently, touching his unshaven cheek. ‘Robert, it’s Krysta! Can you hear me? Who did this to you, Robert?’

Robert’s eyes rolled around and tried to focus on her. A long string of bloody dribble slid from his mouth on to his jacket.

‘Listen to me, Robert! It’s Krysta! What happened? Who did this to you?’

‘
Ja
,’ he croaked. ‘
Sam to sobie zrobiłem
.’

‘You did it to
yourself
?’ said Krystyna. ‘How? Why did you do it?’

‘More to the point,’ said Jack, ‘how come he’s still standing up?’

Borys circled around behind Robert. He took one look, crossed himself, and then beckoned to Jack to join him. Jack came around and shone the flashlight on Robert’s back. Between Robert’s legs he saw the trunk of a young pine tree, with flaking orange bark. It had broken at an acute angle slantwise, to form a sharp point, and that point was penetrating the crotch of Robert’s jeans.

Jack said, ‘Jesus. What are we going to do?’

Borys shook his head and said, ‘I don’t know. I just don’t know. How far do you think it goes up inside him? It must go up far enough to keep him standing up, so I don’t know if you and I would have the strength to lift him off it. Even if we did, he may bleed to death.’

Krystyna looked at them over Robert’s shoulder and said, ‘What is it?’

‘He’s impaled on a tree trunk,’ said Jack. ‘We’re not sure what we ought to do next.’

‘Impaled? What do you mean?’

‘It’s stuck right up between his legs. That’s what’s keeping him upright.’

‘Oh, God,’ said Krystyna. Then she leaned forward to Robert again and said ‘Robert?’ very gently. ‘Can you hear me, Robert? We’re going to get some help for you.’

Robert grunted, and nodded.

Krystyna said, ‘I don’t think we dare to move him. Borys – why don’t you go for help? You know your way out of the forest better than any of us. We can stay here with Robert. If you leave Diablik with us, and your gun, we should be all right. But if he did this to himself, there shouldn’t be any danger.’

Robert grunted again, and said something that sounded like, ‘
Pan
.’

‘
Pan
?
Pan
Who?’ asked Krystyna. Pan was Polish for ‘mister.’ But Robert’s head abruptly slumped forward and he didn’t answer.

Borys gave Diablik’s leash to Krystyna. Both Sparky and Lidia kept their distance, although they had heard Jack say that Robert was impaled and they were both staring at him in helpless horror.

Just as Jack was about to take Borys’s shotgun, he heard a rustling sound, off to their left. He shone the flashlight into the trees, and saw a white shape flicker for a split-second, and then vanish.

Borys turned around and frowned in that direction, too, lifting his shotgun and easing off the safety catch. ‘I heard something,’ he said.

‘That white thing again, whatever it is.’

They waited, and listened, and then the rustling was repeated, but much nearer this time, and off to their right.

‘Dad,’ said Sparky. ‘Dad, I’m
scared
, Dad!’

Now the rustling grew louder, and a wind began to whistle through the forest, with an eerie down-the-chimney sound. Sand and dried pine needles started to snake around their feet, and pine cones rattled softly across the forest floor. Jack thought he heard something crackling, close behind him, but when he quickly looked around, there was nothing there. In spite of that, his heart beat painfully hard in his ribcage, and he could almost hear the blood pumping in his ears. He suddenly realized that he was frightened – not just apprehensive, or anxious, but critically frightened for his life.

Krystyna and Lidia must be feeling the same sense of panic, because Krystyna dropped her flashlight and clutched her hands to her head as if she were being deafened, and Lidia ran a few steps in one direction and then ran back again, panting. Even Borys was hopping around and around in confusion, as if he were performing a Native American rain dance, his eyes staring wildly.

Jack glimpsed the white figure running behind the trees again, and this time he felt as if he had been drenched by a bucket of ice-cold water. He snatched Sparky’s hand and shouted to the rest of them, ‘
Run! We have to get out of here! Run!
’

Krystyna stared at him as if she couldn’t understand what he was trying to tell her. ‘Here – take my hand!’ he said. He tried to push his flashlight into the side pocket of his jacket, but he fumbled and it fell to the ground and immediately went out. He was panicking too much to worry about picking it up. He seized Krystyna’s hand and the three of them began to run together back the way they had come, tripping and stumbling as they weaved their way through the forest.

Krystyna kept trying to turn her head. ‘Lidia! Borys!’ she panted. ‘Are they behind us?’ But Jack was filled with such dread that all he could think about Borys or Lidia was that if they were caught first, it would give him and Sparky and Krystyna more chance of escaping.

They kept running, even though they were gasping for breath and Jack felt as if his knees were going to give way. In the darkness they kept colliding with tree trunks, so that they were scratched and bruised, and it was all they could do to keep hold of each other’s hands.

It was only a few minutes before they saw the pale gray sand dunes behind the trees. They realized that they had nearly reached the edge of the forest, but their feeling of panic only grew more intense. With every step she took, Krystyna was letting out little screams of fear, and Sparky was moaning in that weird ululating way he sometimes did when he was having a nightmare.

Jack thought:
It’s after us, whatever it is. It’s after us, and it’s going to overtake us when we cross the sand dunes, and it’s going to rip us apart and we’re going to die. Our skeletons are going to be scattered and our insides unraveled like firehoses and our eyes will be staring at the sky and seeing nothing.

He kept running, awkwardly tugging Krystyna along with one hand and Sparky with the other, but he couldn’t help thinking:
This is hopeless; we’re never going to get away. The best thing we can do is kill ourselves. Then, at least, that terrible white thing won’t catch us.

He could feel the weight of his clasp-knife inside his jacket pocket, knocking against his hip. He could cut Sparky’s throat, and then Krystyna’s, and then his own. At least they would be spared the agony of being dismembered while they were still alive.

‘Krystyna!’ he panted. ‘Krystyna, wait up!’

‘No, Jack!’ she gasped. ‘It will kill us! We will all die!’

Jack stopped running, and tried to stop Krystyna and Sparky, too. He managed to pull Krystyna to a halt, but Sparky twisted his hand out of his and went on running into the darkness.

‘Sparks! Come back!
Sparks
, come back here!’

But all he heard was Sparky’s footsteps, and his low, siren-like moaning. After a few seconds, even those were gone, and there was nothing but the whistling of the wind from out of the forest, and the trees swishing, and the snapping of twigs.

‘
Sparks
!
Sparky
!
Alexis
!’ Jack shouted. ‘
Come back here, Sparks
,
right now!
’

‘We must keep on running, Jack,’ Krystyna pleaded with him, tugging at his hand. ‘If we keep on running, we will catch up with Sparky.
Please!
’

‘Krystyna, it’s no use. You know it’s no use. We’re never going to get away.’ He paused, and then he shouted one more time, ‘Sparks! Come back here!’

The wind was rising and the pine trees all around them were beginning to creak like coffins.

‘So, what can we do?’ said Krystyna. Although she was still breathless, she sounded less hysterical and more resigned.

‘I was thinking that we could end it ourselves, right here and now. At least it wouldn’t hurt. But now Sparks has run off …’

Still holding his hand, but much more tightly now, Krystyna looked up at him, her blonde hair blowing across her face. ‘It’s the finish, Jack, isn’t it? It’s so strange. When I first saw you, at the airport, I had the feeling that you and I would die together.’

The wind was blustering so loudly that Jack could hardly hear her, but from the look in her eyes and the movement of her lips he thought he could understand what she was saying. Their panic was now so overwhelming that they had both become unexpectedly composed. Jack thought of the stories he had read about the Home Army fighters in Warsaw, during the war, who had calmly shot themselves rather than allow the Nazis to take them prisoner. Better death than torture. Better to end it all quickly than suffer the pain of being torn apart alive.

Just as that thought entered his head, they heard a loud shot, not far away, somewhere in the forest. Then, almost immediately afterward, another shot. This was followed by a long pause, and then a third shot.

‘That must have been Borys!’ said Krystyna. ‘Maybe he has managed to shoot it, whatever it is.’

‘Borys!’ she called out. ‘Borys, was that you?’ But the wind was too strong for anybody to have heard her. ‘Borys! Lidia! We’re over here!’

Jack said, ‘Let’s just get out of here.’ The shots had somehow broken the spell of his panic, and he was beginning to think more rationally now. ‘We need to find where Sparks has gone first.’

‘But Borys and Lidia—’

‘Come on; Borys knows his way around this forest. Like his wife’s backside, that’s what he said. They’ll be OK.’

They continued to jog side by side through the trees, glancing behind them from time to time, but the wind was dying down, and Jack no longer had that cold tingling feeling in his back that they were being pursued. As they cleared the tree line and came out on to the sand dunes, he was already breathing much more calmly. Up above them the clouds were gradually rolling away, and a bone-white gibbous moon was shining, which gave the forest the appearance of a brightly lit stage set.

‘What was it, Jack?’ asked Krystyna, brushing back her hair. ‘What was it that frightened us so much? It was only a wind, after all. A
wind
, nothing else! I didn’t
see
anything, did you?’

‘Maybe,’ Jack told her. ‘I’m not too sure.’ What could he tell her – that for a split-second he had glimpsed a white shape running behind the trees, but he had absolutely no idea what it was?

‘All I know is I never want to feel as panicky as that again – like,
ever
. Now, I’d better try to find Sparky, before he wanders too far off.’

He walked back toward the tree line, cupped his hands around his mouth and shouted out, ‘Sparky! Sparks! Can you hear me?’

He called again and again, walking along the tree line as he did so. But all he heard in response was long-eared owls hooting, as if they were ghosts, mocking him. After a while he said, ‘I’ll have to go back into the forest and look for him.’

‘What about Robert? We can’t just leave him there.’

‘I know, and I don’t intend to. But the poor guy’s dying if he isn’t dead already, and I can’t help him. We have to contact the emergency services somehow.’

‘I’ll go,’ said Krystyna. ‘You keep on looking for your son. Maybe you can also find out where Borys and Lidia have gone to. They must have run the wrong way and gotten themselves lost.’

Jack said, ‘You know that
I’d
go for help, don’t you, if it wasn’t for Sparky?’

‘Of course,’ said Krystyna. She looked past him, into the forest, and said, ‘Do you think that it’s gone now – whatever it was that was chasing us? I don’t want anything to happen to
you
.’

‘I have no idea. It could be that Sparky was right about it, and there’s nothing there at all. Maybe it was just us, getting the heebie-jeebies for no reason. But for just a minute back there, I swear to you, I could have killed all of us, myself included, rather than have it catch up with us.’

Krystyna touched his sleeve, as if she were reassuring herself that they were both still alive. ‘For just a minute, Jack, believe me, I would have let you.’ She looked away for a moment, and then she looked back at him. ‘I would have begged you.’

A
fter Krystyna had left him to call for help, Jack cautiously re-entered the forest. The moon was still shining brightly, but within minutes it would glide down behind the jagged treetops and disappear, and it was already too gloomy for him to penetrate more than two hundred meters without losing his bearings. The last thing he wanted to do was get lost himself.

Before he started calling out for Sparky, he stood perfectly still and listened, just to make sure that he couldn’t hear any rustling or any footsteps or any unnatural breeze blowing. Now, however, even the owls were silent, and the only sound was the creaking of the trees and the furtive burrowing of pine voles.

‘Sparky!’ he shouted out. ‘Sparky! Where are you, Sparks? It’s Dad here!’

He gave a piercing two-fingered whistle and then shouted out again. ‘Sparks! It’s Dad here! Where are you, son?’

He whistled twice more, and then listened. Nothing, except for some pine cones dropping.

Next he called out for Borys and Lidia, and whistled for Diablik, too. Again, nothing. He might just as well have been alone.