Hexwood

  Ah-haha! Ann thought. Little do you know I have my trusty mirror!

  She saw the man’s face quite clearly, narrow and important, with lines of worry and impatience. It was no one she knew. She saw him take up the ornament hanging on his chest from the gold chain and advance on the gate with it as if he were going to use the ornament as a key. And the gate opened, silently and smoothly, just as it had done for the van, when the ornament was nowhere near it. The Lord Mayor was really surprised. Ann saw him start back, and then look at his ornament wonderingly. Then he picked up his suitcase and hurried importantly inside. The gate swung shut behind him. And, just like the van, that was the last Ann saw of him.

  This time it could have been because the virus suddenly got worse. For the next day or so, Ann was so ill that she was in no state to watch anything, in the mirror or out of it. She sweated and tossed and slept – nasty short sleeps with feverish dreams – and woke feeling limp and horrible and hot.

  Be glad, the Prisoner told her. He had been a sort of doctor before he was put in prison. The disease is coming to a head.

  You could have fooled me! Ann told him. I think they kidnapped the Lord Mayor too. That place is a Bermuda triangle. And I’m not better. I’m WORSE.

  Mum seemed to share the Prisoner’s opinion, to Ann’s annoyance. “Fever’s broken at last,” Mum said. “Won’t be long now before you’re well. Thank goodness!”

  “Only another hundred years!” Ann groaned.

  And the night that followed did indeed seem about a century long. Ann kept having dreams where she ran away across a vast grassy park, scarcely able to move her legs for terror of the Something that stalked behind. Or worse dreams where she was shut in a labyrinth made of mother-of-pearl – in those dreams she thought she was trapped in her own eardrum – and the pearl walls gave rainbow reflections of the same Something softly sliding after her. The worst of this dream was that Ann was terrified of the Something catching her, but equally terrified in case the Something missed her in the curving maze. There was blood on the pearly floor of her eardrum. Ann woke with a jump, wet all over, to find it was getting light at last.

  Dawn was yellow outside and reflecting yellow in her mirror. But what seemed to have woken her was not the dreams but the sound of a solitary car. Not so unusual, Ann thought fretfully. Some of the deliveries to the shops happened awfully early. Yet it was quite clear to her that this car was not a delivery. It was important. She pulled a soggy pillow weakly under her head so that she could watch it in the mirror.

  The car came whispering down Wood Street with its headlights blazing, as if the driver had not realised it was dawn now, and crept to a cautious sort of stop in the bay opposite the launderette. For a moment it stayed that way, headlights on and engine running. Ann had a feeling that the dark heads she could see leaning together inside it were considering what to do. Were they police? It was a big grey expensive car, more a businessman’s car than a police car. Unless they were very high-up police, of course.

  The engine stopped and the headlights snapped off. Doors opened. Very high-up, Ann thought, as three men climbed out One was wealthy businessman all over, rather wide from good living, with not a crisp hair out of place. He was wearing one of those wealthy macs that never look creased, over a smart suit. The second man was shorter and plumper, and decidedly shabby, in a green tweed suit that did not fit him. The trousers were too long and the sleeves too narrow, and he had a long knitted scarf trailing from his neck. An informer, Ann thought He had a scared, peevish look, as if he had not wanted the other two to bring him along. The other man was tall and thin, and he was quite as oddly dressed as the informer, in a three-quarter-length little camelhair coat that must have been at least forty years old. Yet he wore it like a king.

  When he strolled over to the middle of the road to get a full view of Hexwood Farm, he moved in a curious lolling, powerful way that took Ann’s eyes with him. He had hair the same camelhair colour as his coat. She watched him stand there, long legs apart, hands in pockets, staring at the gate, and she scarcely noticed the other two men come up to him. She kept trying to see the tall man’s face. But she never did see it clearly because they went quickly over to the gate then, with the businessman striding ahead.

  Here, it was just like the Lord Mayor. The businessman stopped short, dismayed, as if he had confidently expected the gate to open mechanically for him. When it simply stayed shut, his face turned down to the small informer-man, and this one bustled forward. He did something – tapped out a code? – but Ann could not see what. The gate still did not open. This made the small man angry. He raised a fist as if he was going to hit the gate. At this, the tall man in the camel coat seemed to feel they had waited long enough. He strolled forward, put the informer-man gently but firmly out of the way, and simply went on strolling towards the gate. At the point where it looked as if he would crash into the peeling black boards, the gate swung open, sharply and quickly for him. Ann had a feeling that the stones of the wall would have done that too if the man had wanted it so.

  The three went inside and the gate shut after them.

  Ann could not rid herself of the feeling that she had just seen the most important thing yet. She expected them to come out quite soon, probably with Harrison under arrest. But she fell asleep still waiting.

  Much later that morning there was a violent hailstorm. It woke Ann, and she woke completely well again. For a moment, she lay and stared at thick streams of ice running down the window, melting in new, bright sunlight. She felt so well that it stunned her. Then her eyes shifted to the mirror. Through the reflected melting ice, the road shone bright enough to make her eyes water. But there in the parking bay, mounded with white hailstones, stood the businessman’s grey car.

  They’re still in there! she thought. It is a Bermuda triangle!

  She was getting out of bed as she thought this. Her body knew it was well and it just had to move whether she told it to or not. It had needs. “God!” Ann exclaimed. “I’m hungry!”

  She tore downstairs and ate two bowls of cornflakes. Then, while a new hailstorm clattered on the windows, she fried herself bacon, mushrooms, tomatoes and eggs – as much as the pan would hold.

  As she was carrying it to the table, Mum hurried through from the shop, alerted by the smell. “You’re feeling better?”

  “Oh, I am!” said Ann. “So better that I’m going out as soon as I’ve eaten this.”

  Mum looked from the mounded frying pan to the window. “The weather’s not—” But the hail had gone by then. Bright sunlight was slicing through the smoke from Ann’s fry-up and the sky was deep, clear blue. Bang goes Mum’s excuse, Ann thought, grinning as she wolfed down her mushrooms. Nothing had ever tasted so good! “Well, you’re not to overdo it,” Mum said. “Remember you’ve been poorly for a long time. You’re to wrap up warm and be back for lunch.”

  “I shall obey, o great fusspot,” Ann said, with her mouth full.

  “Lunch, or I shall call the police,” said Mum. “And don’t wear jeans – they’re not nearly warm enough. The weather at this time of year—”

  “Fuss-great-potest,” Ann said lovingly, beginning on the bacon. Pity there had been no room in the pan for fried bread. “I’m not a baby. Two layers of thermal underwear satisfy you?”

  “Since when have you had–? Oh, I can see you’re better!” Mum said happily. “A vest anyway, to please me.”

  “Vests,” Ann said, quoting a badge that Martin often wore, “are what teenagers wear when their mothers feel cold. You’re cold. You keep that shop freezing.”

  “You know we have to keep the veg fresh,” Mum retorted, and she went back into the shop laughing.

  The sun felt really hot. When she finished eating, Ann went upstairs and dressed as she saw fit: the tight woolly skirt, so that Mum would see she was not wearing jeans, a summery top, and her nice anorak over that, zipped right up so that she looked wrapped up. Then she scudded down and through the shop, calling, “Bye, eve
ryone!” before either of her parents could get loose from customers and interrogate her.

  “Don’t go too far!” Dad’s powerful voice followed her.

  “I won’t!” Ann called back. Truthfully. She had it all worked out. There was no point trying to work the device that opened that gate. If she tried to climb it, someone would notice and stop her. Besides, if everyone who went into the farm never came out, it would be stupid to go in there and vanish too. Mum and Dad really would throw fits. But there was nothing to stop Ann climbing a tree in Banners Wood and taking a look over the wall from there.

  Get a close look at that van, if it’s still there, the King agreed. I’m rather anxious to know who owns it.

  Ann frowned and gave a sort of nod. There was something about this weighing-scale logo. It made her four people talk to her when she had not actually started to imagine them. She didn’t like that. It made her wonder again whether she was mad. She went slowly down Wood Street and even more slowly past the expensive car parked in the bay. There were drifts of half-thawed hailstones under it still. As she passed behind it, Ann trailed a finger along the car’s smooth side. It was cold and wet and shiny and hard – and very – very real. This was not just a fever-dream she had imagined in the mirror. She had seen three men arrive here this morning.

  She turned down the passage between the houses that led to the wood. It was beautiful down there, hot and steamy. Mum and her vests! Melting hailstones flashed rainbow colours from every blade of grass along the path. And the wood had gone quite green while she had been in bed – in the curious way woods do in early spring, with the bushes and lower branches a bright emerald thickness, while the upper boughs of the bigger trees were still almost bare, and only a bit swollen in their outlines. It smelt warm, and keen with juices, and the sunlight made the green transparent.

  Ann had walked for some minutes in the direction of the farm wall when she realised there was something wrong with the wood. Not wrong exactly. It still stretched around her in peaceful arcades of greenness. Birds sang. Moss grew shaggy on the path under her trainers. There were primroses on the bank beside her.

  “Here, wait a minute!” she said.

  The paths in Banners Wood were always muddy, with Coke rings trodden into them. And if a primrose had dared show its face there, it would have been picked or trampled on the spot. And she should have reached the farm wall long ago. Even more important, she should have been able to see the houses on the other side of the trees by now.

  Ann strained her eyes to where those houses should have been. Nothing. Nothing but trees or green springing hawthorn and, in the distance, a bare tree carrying load upon load of tiny pink flowers. Ann took the path towards that tree, with her heart banging. Such a tree had never been seen in Banners Wood before. But she told herself she was mistaking it for the pussy willow on the other side of the stream.

  She knew she was not, even before she came up beside the big leaden-looking container half-buried in the bank beyond the primroses. She could see far enough from beside this container to know that the wood simply went on, and on, and on, beyond the pink tree. She stopped and looked at the container. People often did throw rubbish in the wood. Martin had had wonderful fun with an old pram someone had dumped here. This thing looked as if someone had thrown away a whole freezer – one of the big kind like a chest with a lid. It had been there a long time. Not only was it half-buried in the bank. Its outside had rotted and peeled to a dull grey. Wires came out of it in places, rusty and broken. It looked – well – not really like a freezer, quite.

  Mum’s voice rang warnings in Ann’s ears. “It’s dirty – you don’t know where it’s been – something could be rotting inside it – it could be nuclear!”

  It did look like a nuclear-waste container.

  What do you think? Ann asked her four imaginary friends.

  To her great surprise, none of them answered. She had to imagine their voices replying. The Boy would say, Open it! Take a look! You’d never forgive yourself if you didn’t. She imagined the others agreeing, but more cautiously, and the King adding, But be careful!

  Maybe it was the solution to the Hexwood Farm mystery – the thing that had fetched all those men to call on young Harrison, the thing he thought so well of himself for guarding. Ann scrambled up the bank, put the heels of her hands firmly into the crack under the lid of the container, and heaved. The lid sprang up easily, and then went on rising of its own accord until it was standing upright at the back of the box.

  Ann had not expected it to be that easy. It sent her staggering back down the bank to the path. There, she looked at the open container and could not move for sheer terror.

  A corpse was rising up out of it.

  The head appeared first, a face that looked like a skull except for long straggles of yellow-white hair and beard. Next, a hand clutched the edge of the box, a hand white-yellow with enormous bone knobs of knuckles and – disgustingly – inch-long yellow fingernails. Ann gave a little whimper at this, but still she could not move. Then there was heaving. A gaunt bone shoulder appeared. Breath whistled from the lips of the skull. And the corpse dragged itself upright, unfolding a long, long body grown all over with coarse tangles of whitish hair. Absolutely indecent! Ann thought, as the long spindly legs rose above her, shaking, and shaking loose the fragments of rotted cloth wound round the creature’s loins. It was very weak, this corpse. For an instant, Ann saw it as almost pathetic. And it was not quite a skeleton. Skin covered it, even the face, which was still far too like a skull for comfort.

  The face turned. The eyes, large, sunk and pale under a grey-yellow hedge of eyebrow, looked straight at Ann. The skull lips moved. The thing said something – croaked something – words in a strange language.

  It had seen her. It was too much. It spoke. Ann ran. She scrambled into a turn and ran, and her hurtling trainers slipped beneath her. She was down on the moss of the path, hardly aware of the sharp stone that met her knee, up again in the same breath, and running as fast as her legs could take her, away down the path. A corpse that walked, looked, spoke. A vampire in a lead chest – a radioactive vampire! She knew it was coming after her. Fool to keep to the path! She veered up the bank and ran on, crunching and galloping on squashy lichen, leaping among brambles, tearing through strident green thickets, with dead branches cracking and exploding under her feet. Her breath screamed. Her chest ached. She was ill. Fool. She was making so much noise. It could follow her just by listening.

  “What shall I do – what shall I do?” she whimpered as she ran.

  Her legs were giving way. After all that time in bed she was almost as weak as the vampire-thing. Her left knee hurt like crazy. She glanced down as she crashed through some flat brown briars to see bright red blood streaming down her shin and into her sock. There was blood in the brambles she stood in. It could track her by smell too.

  “What shall I do?”

  The sensible thing was to climb a tree.

  “Oh, I couldn’t!” Ann gasped.

  The creature croaked again, somewhere quite near.

  Ann found strength she did not know she had. It sent her to the nearest climbable tree and swarming up it like a mad girl. Bark bit the insides of her legs. Her fingers scraped and clawed, breaking most of the fingernails she had been so proud of. She heard her nice anorak tear. But still she climbed, until she was able to thrust her head through a bush of smaller branches and scramble astride a strong bough, safe and high, with her back against the trunk and her hair raked into hanks across her face.

  If it comes up, I can kick it down! she thought, and leant back with her eyes shut.

  It was croaking somewhere below, even nearer, to her right.

  Ann’s eyes sprang open. She stared down in weak horror at the path and the chest embedded in the bank beyond it. The lid had shut again. But the creature was still outside it, standing in the path almost below her, staring down at the scarlet splatter of blood Ann’s knee had made when she fell on the stone
. She had run in a circle like a panicked animal.

  Don’t look up! Don’t look up! she prayed, and kept very still.

  It did not look up. It was busy examining its taloned hands, then putting those hands up to feel the frayed bush of its hair and beard. Ann got the feeling it was very, very puzzled. She watched it take hold of the shreds of cloth wrapped round its skinny hips and pull off a piece to look at. It shook its head. Then, in a mad, precise way, it laid the strip of rag across its left shoulder and croaked out some more words. This time, the sound was less of a croak and more like a voice.

  Then – despite all the rest, Ann still had trouble believing her eyes – the creature grew itself clothes. The lower rags went expanding downwards in two khaki waterfalls of thick cloth, to make narrow leggings and then brown supple-looking boots. At the same time the strip of rag on the corpse’s shoulder was chasing downwards too, tumbling and spreading into a calf-length robe-thing, wide and pleated, the colour of camelhair. Ann’s lips parted almost in an exclamation as she saw the colour. She watched, then, almost as if she expected it, the long hair and beard turn the same camelhair colour and shrink away. The beard shrank right away into the man’s chin, leaving his face more skull-shaped than ever, but the hair halted just below his ears. He completed himself by strapping a broad belt round his waist – it had a knife and a pouch attached to it – and slinging a sort of rolled blanket across his left shoulder, where he carefully fastened it with straps. After that, he gave a mutter of satisfaction and went to the edge of the path, where he drew the knife and cut himself a stout stick from the tree nearest the leaden chest.

  Even before he moved, Ann was nearly sure who he was. The long strolling strides with which he walked across the path made her quite certain. He was the tallest of the three men who had come in that car, the one who had made the gate open, the one in the odd camelhair coat. He was still wearing that coat, after a fashion, she thought, except he had made it into a robe.