The Darkest Part of the Woods by Ramsey Campbell

Author:Ramsey Campbell
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub, pdf
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

23. The Cells

HAVE you remembered?" Sylvia said. Sam had to separate her murmur from the other sounds in the forest. The notion of having to turn up a memory connected with the woods brought him unexpectedly close to panic. "How about you?" he said in an attempt to fend it off.

"I remembered when we were on the common."

"That's all right then," he said without the least idea whether it was.

"But you know why we're here too."

He raised the spade that kept letting him down as a walking-stick "Not much we can use this for except digging."

"You know what, though."

He'd known as soon as he'd left the common, but could have done without referring aloud to the prospect while the wind that was invisibly at large in the woods made everything restless, the multitude of trees and shadows describing passes over one another that looked magical-that he could have imagined were designed to lure him an his aunt deeper into the forest.

"Steps," he nevertheless said.

"They're our secret for now, but I'm looking forward to sharing whatever we find with the others, aren't you?"

"It's only a secret because we forgot it. How can you take that for granted?"

"I don't see what else we can do with it. There are stranger things in the world."

If she was about to tell him more of her tales, the possibility failed to appeal to him. "I believe you," he said quickly.

That silenced her, and she contented herself with holding onto his arm. The lack of conversation only aggravated his awareness of the sounds around them. Behind the cawing of branches as the trees tossed their spiky faceless heads, the huge irregular breaths of the forest resembled a blurred voice close to forming words. Sam dug the edge of the spade into the ground he was limping over, in case the act could drive away an impression of walking on a substance more alive than it appeared to be. When the clearing appeared beyond the trees, he didn't know if he was relieved that it would bring him into the open and the sensation perhaps to an end.

There was no question how the sight affected Sylvia. She strode forward, pulling at his arm, as the woods muttered around them and snatched at the sky. Yards short of the clearing she let go of him and hurried ahead, only to halt at the ring of bricks. "Someone's been here," she complained, and then her resentment faltered. "Or something has."

The glare of the unseasonably hot mid-morning sun caught at Sam's eyes as he ventured to join her. He had to blink and use his free hand as an eyeshade in order to see that the patch of the mound he remembered her tramping smooth had been not disturbed but altered. It had acquired a covering of leaves, an almost perfect square of them that appeared to contain an elaborate pattern. Before he could distinguish it, the leaves raised themselves in unison as though scenting the newcomers and swarmed off the mound, scuttling away to add themselves to the gestures of the woods.

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