Strong hands whisked him up from the step. His name was spoken loudly, and there was laughter, and amused irritation from the man, his father, and he was on his back. Rough hands stripped him, and he was lifted by the feet as the stickiness was wiped from him.
Turning his head slightly he could see the white paper sheet in the corner of the room, and the great red loops, and the darting figures of the shadows he had drawn. There was such
comfort
in the feeling of the way those loops and lines led
inwards
. He knew it was the entrance to a tunnel. Sometimes he felt the tunnel reach out around him, swallowing him. At the end of the tunnel the sea shifted and surged. Massive shadows moved there and the sun was hot on red cliffs.
He smiled and chuckled and reached a hand towards the paper. But before he could make the shadows dance again he was once more in strong hands, held aloft, newly clad in fresh nappy, held before his father’s face. The bearded man kissed him, shook him, and bawled words of excitement before passing him to the gentler of his parents …
They reached Hawkinge Woods just after eleven in the morning, parking close to a bridleway that led in and through the beech woods. It was hot
and still, an idyllic late July morning; surprisingly, there was little sign of other visitors to the parkland and forest.
Half an hour later they were below the trees, kicking through fern and bracken, bathed in the intense, green sunlight that played through the thin woodland canopy.
‘This is magnificent!’ Susan’s father murmured. He carried the picnic hamper and trudged through last year’s beech mast, his gaze dazzled by the shifting light.
The beeches were silent and formed strange animal shapes. Great bulked trunks, produced after ancient pollarding, gave the impression of four or five trees grown together, each pushing out faces or the smooth flanks of bodies drawn into the bark. Light coppicing made walking difficult in places, but the saplings were flexible.
Richard led the way down a slope through stands of holly and maythorn, to a muddy stream. Several trees had fallen across the wide, dirty water-course. They led to the far bank and the just-visible earthworks of the hidden fort.
‘Iron Age?’ Doug asked as they surveyed the rise of land.
He was right. The beech woods had been cleared more than two thousand years ago, and a ring enclosure, defensive in purpose, built by the local clans. The fort had no known history, and there were no signs of any dramatic event having occurred here. It had been abandoned in late Roman times and the woods had re-established themselves.
Richard had discovered the place in his childhood, and had a romantic attachment to it. It was his old camp, and as a teenager he had often cycled here with his girlfriends, imagining the ring fort to be his secret and private place. On more
than one occasion he had been disturbed during his ‘history’ lesson.
They had to walk the tightrope, balancing on the fallen trunks to cross the water. Richard went first, Michael held carefully in his arms. The child was quite still and seemed very aware of the light through the branches. Doug, game for anything, made a performance out of the crossing, leaning forward then back, his ruddy face creased with a grin, then shock, causing Susan’s mother, Gwen, to have five forms of fit. But he crossed all right, and Gwen herself, a plump woman clad in tight slacks and pristine white blouse, ran across the tree with an unexpected and applaudable daintiness.
Susan managed to slip, went up to her calf in water and mud. She was barefoot, though, and found the accident more amusing than irritating. She used handfuls of fresh fern to scrape the mud from her feet and from the hem of her summer skirt.
Inside the ring they found the signs of previous visitors, charred patches of ground, pits, and stones piled to make fire-shelters. A rope swing hung from one of the thicker branches of a beech; Doug tested it for strength, yanking the frayed rope hard, then took a courageous leap on to the horizontal wooden bar which formed the swing itself. A man of fifty, he yelled like a kid and swayed back and forward until his strength gave out and he fell, and stumbled down to the soft ground. His normally red face was now flushed and almost purple, and Gwen had short, sharp words to say to him. He ignored her, breathlessly proclaiming his continued youth.
Richard spread out the picnic mat while Susan unpacked the hamper. Michael waddled towards the inner rise of the earthwork, fell flat, eased himself up and continued his journey. Above him the massive beeches reached protective
limbs across him. The earthwork ring was topped by thirty or forty of these vast trees, an odd palisade but one which gave the inner area a feeling of being isolated from the rest of the wood.
The conversation was light, in keeping with the lightness and the stillness of the day. Michael was complimented on being an advanced child for his eighteen months. The drawings he made were more in keeping with a three-year-old’s, and Gwen was particularly struck by the infant’s precocious talent in drawing rudimentary faces. (Richard doubted that they
were
faces, rather than just other swirls, but Gwen was insistent.) His alertness was commented on too. But this made Richard and Susan feel less comfortable, and they exchanged a glance.
Michael was sometimes
too
alert. They had half-heartedly joked about
The Omen
, about children who see the world with the eyes of mature evil. Sometimes Michael’s silent staring and sudden quizzical expressions alarmed Susan so much that she felt unable to hold the boy. But he seemed happy enough, on the whole, and sat in his corners (a favoured corner in every room) and covered sheets of drawing paper with circular lines and little black shapes that often had faces. He ate comfortably, cried little, slept well, and in the year or more that the family had lived away from Eastwell House, there had been no further incidents with earthfalling.
They had come up with a simple answer to the problem of the house. They had swapped with Jenny and Geoff. The arrangement was not intended as anything permanent, it was just to get away from the haunting for a while, to allow Michael to grow, to hope that whatever non-natural element had been attacking him would go away. In Jenny’s house the Whitlocks had less space, and less garden,
but they lived comfortably enough, sharing a study room. Richard’s photographic work took him away for days at a time to remote and weather-battered locations; Susan used the crèche in the polytechnic at Maidstone; and the Hansons, in their suddenly larger domain, had filled it wonderfully with their two children, their two dogs, and their collections of books and model ships.
In all the time that the families had ‘swapped’, there had been no phenomena that could be called ‘occult’ or ‘supernatural’. Jenny had been quite disappointed at first, since she had hoped to track down the source of the psychic attack. But all things had been quite silent.
Even when the Whitlocks had visited their old home, which they had done with increasing frequency, nothing untoward had occurred.
At the end of the summer the families were thinking of changing back. They had not become complacent about the gritty events at the time of Michael’s home-coming, but Susan acknowledged that she felt a ‘sense of peace’. Perhaps the mother
had
gone away; removed her spirit from the house; closed down her anger. Perhaps she had at last given Michael up to the Whitlocks.
There was another, more practical reason for thinking about returning to the bigger house, though.
With appetites satisfied, Richard opened the terracotta wine cooler and produced a bottle of champagne. It was a cheap one, but the family never used champagne seriously, only for fun.
Gwen and Doug watched quietly, half aware of the news that would be announced. Susan glanced at Michael, who was standing below a root-mass from one of the trees that had begun to grow out of the earthen bank. He was staring down at the ground, quite motionless, quite safe, as if listening to something.
‘If my own parents weren’t
on holiday, they’d be here too. But this is just …’ Richard raised his glass, tapped it against Susan’s, and waited for Susan to say:
‘Here’s to you two: about to be grandparents for the
second
time!’
Doug’s reaction was typical of the man. ‘Well, I’ll be buggered!’ He drained his champagne glass, stood awkwardly, leaned to kiss Susan on the head, then ran to the rope swing, making childlike cries of delight. He leapt on it and swung four times in a shallow arc.
Susan laughed, then noticed her mother’s frown.
‘I thought …’ Gwen started to say, and her frown deepened.
‘You thought we couldn’t have a natural child? So did we. Apparently this is very common. You adopt a child and something, some maternal change occurs, and the next thing you know …’
‘You’ve got your
own
child …’ Richard said lightly, and instantly turned away, furious with himself. ‘Damn!’
Susan was on her feet, blazing. ‘Don’t
say
that! You stupid man! You
stupid
man!’
‘I’m sorry, Sue …’ He stood awkwardly and took her by the shoulders. His eyes had filled with tears. ‘I didn’t mean it that way. I didn’t mean that. You surely know I didn’t …’
‘
Michael’s
your own child! Like it or not, Rick, you’re
already
a real parent!’
‘I didn’t
mean
it …’
‘You always mean it!’ Susan bit off the words, folded her arms and looked down. She was shaking with anger.
Doug drifted gently on the rope swing, then let himself down and came over to the picnic party, where tension hung silent and deadly in the air.
Michael was watching them. There was a light breeze, now, and his ginger locks were being blown about. The leaves around his feet
were disturbed, as if being kicked by little feet.
‘Take the words away from me,’ Richard said quietly, but his eyes suddenly shone with need. Susan watched him, her fury dissipating but her concern growing.
‘It’s OK, Rick. It’s done. Forgotten.’
‘Take the words away …’
Now she looked suddenly frightened. ‘It’s not necessary. It’s over. Just … Just …’ she punched him on the chest, her mouth grim. ‘Just bloody well be careful what you say. And if you ever
do
think like that, then for God’s sake talk to me about it …’
But Richard was too angry, too mortified to be pacified. His face was ashen. Doug watched him in alarm, while Gwen kept an eye on Michael.
Richard said loudly, ‘Use the doll. Take the words away. Michael might have heard me …’
‘Don’t take family superstition too far,’ Gwen murmured as she realized what the man was asking. Irritably, Richard tried to reach into the pocket of Susan’s skirt. ‘Use the doll,’ he said, his voice rising.
‘Why do you think I’ve got a doll?’
‘I know you have. You’ll have brought one with you to make the link. Please, take the words away from me. Use the doll.’
Again he reached into her pocket, grasped the small clay figurine, and struggled with Susan, forcing her grip from his wrist as he wrenched the object from her clothing.
‘Give it back!’
‘Use it!’
‘No! I can’t! I’m pregnant! I
can’t
use it. Stop this, Rick. Stop it now!’
Richard swept his arm round, holding the crude figure towards Gwen. ‘You do it, then. You do it.’
Gwen very calmly slapped the man’s face, not hard, just very purposefully. Without
a flicker of emotion on her face she said, grimly, ‘I didn’t
make
the doll. Susan can’t
use
it. And you don’t
need
it. Why don’t you listen to what she says? You’re behaving like a damned fool.’
There were tears in his eyes, and Susan reached out and touched his shoulder. He shook his head, then raised the doll to his lips and whispered, ‘Take those words from me. Take them from me. I love Michael. I love Michael. I love Michael …’
And then with a roar of anguish, he flung the object far into the distance. It vanished into the fern and leaf mould at the base of the earth wall.
In the sudden silence, all they could hear was a strange wind in the branches of the trees above and around them, and the sound of someone scrabbling through the bracken.
They turned towards Michael and all four of them started to run. The boy was halfway up the slope, crawling and dragging himself up and away from the enclosure as if being hauled by a rope. He ascended the earth bank in seconds, stood tottering at the top, his arms stretched to the sides as he faced into the distance, a moment only, a moment in which he was silhouetted against the green brightness of sun through leaves …
Then he was gone.
Richard reached the top of the earth wall first. Michael had rolled down the far slope and now was up and running again, through the crowded saplings, through the yellow and green light. He was clutching the back of his head with both hands, but making no sound.
‘He’s been stung. A bee sting!’
Richard slipped down the steeper bank, and raced the few yards to Michael’s staggering shape. He reached towards the child, reached to sweep him up into secure arms.
The wood around him erupted, an explosion of wind
that uprooted saplings, flung dirt, leaves and clumps of fern at him. The great trees swayed and bent, their branches waving frantically against the flickering brilliance of the sky.
Michael had fallen once more, but again was running. Richard staggered after him through the shadows and light, pistol-whipped by the lashing saplings, calling for the screaming infant who seemed to move with impossible speed through the dense leaf mould and waving ferns. Leaves, earth and chunks of wood swirled around the two of them like a tornado. The wind boomed and groaned, and the taller beeches cracked and screamed as their wood was torn and they bent against the hurricane.
Somewhere, Susan’s voice was a cry of despair, but Richard was half-blind with the leaf matter that smacked at his face and clogged his mouth and eyes.
The boy was running
faster
than him!