Deadwood

An old man travels through a forest of eternal night alone, and encounters something extraordinary.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep,   

But I have promises to keep,   

And miles to go before I sleep,   

And miles to go before I sleep.

Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening, Robert Frost

He lay in the hollow, limbs wrapped around his torso. The noises were here again. He could hear them skittering and howling and echoing through the trees. The moonlight filtered down onto him through the canopy, scattered and threadbare. The ground was chilly and damp, and the night was bitterly cold. His hands covered his ears.

The moisture was beginning to soak through the side of his coat that was pressed to the ground. His arms and legs were cramped from remaining motionless for so long. His eyes were beginning to ache from being so tightly pressed shut. A wild, loping scream sounded above him somewhere and he shuddered, hearing it distantly reverberate and ripple amongst the pines like a dream. His hands were shaking. After a while, thin and spindled shadows began to flit and flicker across his body and drift across the mossy, moonlit ground above. 

Several hours later, the noises ended. About an hour or so after that, he slowly removed his hands from his ears and prised his gummy eyes open. He unfurled his body, relaxing his limbs. He climbed out of the hollow slowly, hesitantly, without any sudden movements. He turned left. He turned right. Nothing was moving through the pines but the thin, wispy mist he had grown to expect. Above the tops of the trees, the moon was imbued with an ethereal glow, cloud-pale and heavenly. He could feel the cold air falling down his throat into his lungs. 

He was bathed in moonlight himself. His filthy overcoat hung almost right down to his pre-historic boots, the original colour and even shape of which were unknowable because of the thick, turgid layer of molten grime which had shrink-wrapped them. His hands were buried in grubby fingerless gloves, the deep-rooted, stained dirt of his fingers speaking eloquently about the rest of his body. His trousers were littered with long, ragged tears, and there were corresponding tears in his skin beneath. He wore a woolen black hat. His face looked as if it had been shaped by natural weathering; gaunt, hard, impenetrable. His features were dusky and shaded with muck, but his eyes glinted a brilliant electric blue, deep set in the crevices. He had a thin, patchy beard, which was threaded with twigs. He was seventy-six years old. 

He foraged in the night-time. Bird's eggs. Mushrooms. Moss. He stumbled across a deep, dark pond and drank from the waters, knees enveloped in suckling mud. He peered out across the surface, filling his canteen. Hunchbacked oaks and elderly yews prostrated themselves away from the waters, their clammy roots translucent, pressed between clumps of cloying filth in the glistening light. The trees on the outskirts of the pond were slowly slipping in, he noticed. The liquid was eroding the soil beneath them, climbing ever upwards. Perhaps soon they would simply slip beneath the still surface and be gone forever. He pulled himself up and carried on. 

The woods were a gnarled tangle of bark and brier, twisted and rocked by the flows of time, dusted with cloud and faint trickles of ghostly whiteness, or khaki carpets of pine needles, with phantom limbs and spectre branches scrabbling out. Eddies and dips in the ground accumulated mist, like rock-pools. Above, the stars were lustrous and wild. He pushed on through the darkness, stumbling over thick, heavy roots and skimming away the layer of leaves that covered the earth, for all the trees had disrobed. 

It was impossible to tell how much time was passing. There was no change in the sky. Eventually he tired and slumped down against the trunk of a weather-beaten old oak. He drank deep from his canteen. The water might have been muddy, but it was too dark to tell. Customarily, he sat still for several minutes. There was no sound. Somewhere an owl hooted. The wind whispered amongst the leaves and branches. He relaxed and drank again. For a time he sat there, watching the moon glitter above and feeling the woods breathe. There was a subtle rhythm to this place. The branches parted together, and the leaves flowed across the forest floor together, forming mounds and kingdoms, then breaking apart and scattering this way and that, tumbling over and over. 

Behind him, there was a screech. 

His blood was icy in an instant. His head whipped to and fro, scouring the area for a hiding place. It was just undulating dirt... thick brier... dense trees... suddenly, he spotted a shallow crevice. It was coffin-sized, and he plunged in. He curled himself up just in time for the screaming to begin. 

He didn't dare open his eyes, but he could sense the shadows moving across them- the darkness he perceived with his eyes shut darkened and lightened. The caws and howls and deep-throated bellows rang through him. He could just about perceive a faint and distant rustling of leaves. He blended into the dirt, he now realised. He was one with it. 

After several hours, the noises ended, and he crawled out of his hole. Branches were broken here and there, and the leaves had been cast against the trunks of the pines, as if by a strong wind. He set off once more. He could tell broadly which way the noises had gone, and he cut off sideways, or at least so he thought. There were no landmarks. The woods all looked the same. He walked for several hours, the moon shimmering down vividly.

Eventually he came to a lake. The other banks were far away, stretching out further and further until they could not be seen in the night and in the mist. The water close to the shore was beaded with waterlogged leaves, but he filled his canteen and drank anyway. There were some mushrooms growing against the trunk of one of the large elms overlooking the water, and he tested and then ate them. He sat a little way back from the lake, where the mud was still dry, and looked out across the water. It was hazy and effervescent with the moon's light, and the trees on the banks sparkled and glimmered. The banks around the other edges of the lake slowly descended to the water rather than dropping off, but his bank extended for a way where there were no trees, only cracked, dry mud. Nothing grew there, while the other banks of the lake were forest-green with grass. 

In the centre of the lake there was an island. It was verdant and leafy, almost overflowing with growth into the water. On the island the trees were tall, dense pines. You could see them rising far above the rest of the forest, almost laying a finger on the moon. Their shadows spilled out a long way across the surface, the water contained within instantly invisible. Against the low shimmer of the forest, the island seemed alive with heavenly light, the moonlight glancing off the branches of the pines and down onto the packed dirt of the earth, dancing among the leaves and radiating out across the surface of the water. 

He watched it for some time, and occasionally walked across to the lake to drink or fill up his canteen. The silhouette of a bird took flight from one of the highest trees on the island, and soared away over the forest. Then from behind, a bird swooped over, plunging towards the island. He took a drink, and by the time he lowered the canteen he could see three more in flight, soaring, rolling, tumbling unimpeded from behind, towards the island. 

He knew what was coming before he heard the noises, scrambling to his feet. His bones were weary. They were not built for this any more. He spun- the ground around him was featureless dead mud beneath the stars. He set off for the treeline, moving at a pace that would probably constitute a slow jog for anyone else, but was flat-out for him. Something flitted, flickering across the corner of his eye, but he ignored it. He reached the treeline, then through into the darkness. A brier tore at his leg, adding to his miscellany of cuts. Nowhere stood out as a hiding place- just biting thorns, or heavy, impassible trunks. He laboriously clambered down onto his hands and knees, then his stomach, and wormed his way into the hollow between two low-set oaks. It was better than nothing. He pressed his hands to his ears. 

The hours passed slowly. This time he was aware of motion nearby, a febrile humming of activity, of movement, of something. Shadows passed him over, the moonlight streaming through the branches leaving him painfully exposed. He didn't dare to open his eyes, or to remove his hands from his ears. With the bulky, thick-veined roots of the oaks pressing into his chest, his breathing was laboured, but he couldn't adjust his position. The night was deep, and cold. A clamouring, jittery, unhinged whooping was echoing and flowing through the woods. He could hear a gurgling, hollow-chested bawl; a low hissing murmur; a keening, feverish shriek, and his nerves were rattling and jangling like keys on the taut strings of a piano. The leaves were murmuring back and forth as they were swept through the woods in the starlight, and the wind muttered and cajoled darkly to itself, and the old oaks creaked and groaned and sang their miseries, but no animals could be heard, anywhere.

Suddenly, something flared brightly against the outer lids of his closed eyes. He stayed still, air pulsing in and out of his lungs faster. A few seconds passed, and then the insides of his eyelids glowed intensely once more. Slowly- oh so slowly- he opened his eyes. Through the sharp silhouettes of the trees, he could see out across the flat crumbling mud and over the surface of the lake. 

The island was thrumming with light. Colours flared and swirled, blooming out through the trees; colours he hadn't seen in so long: blues and greens, purples and oranges. The whole landmass was alive, colours scampering to the upper branches of the pines and swan-diving into the darkness; colours twisting and morphing around the tree trunks, forming patterns and dissolving and forming patterns again; colours giddily skittering away across the surface of the lake in wild undulating torrents; colours tunneling down into the cracked and cobwebbed earth from which the trees grew, illuminating with the waters around the lake with a vivid ambiance. 

Over a low nub of earth, his face was illuminated and dancing. He sunk back into cover. After a few minutes, he raised his face again and peered out into the maelstrom. The noises had stopped. The island was making some sort of sound- a viscous, thumping rush. He rested his head back against the dirt and listened. He could make out what almost sounded like voices played backwards, but the hiss and whirl of the sound make any precision impossible. He could have been imagining it all.  

Without warning, it was all gone. The music of the island hummed itself out of existence, and the colours dimmed and twisted and vanished. He was left with the trees and the stars. The moonlight fell down upon the towering pines of the island, the quiet regained its throne and the lake was once more calm and still. 

Gradually, he emerged from his hiding place. Tentatively walking out across the packed dirt, he reached the water's edge. From here, the island was crowned with a milky halo once more in the ambience of the night. He started down at the water. He crouched. He slowly touched one finger to the surface, then snatched it away. He returned his finger, then sank his hand all the way in. Then he drank once more from the lake, sat down and filled up his canteen. He lowered his aching legs into the water.

For a long time he just sat there, thinking not much at all. The stars were shining as bright as ever, and they were cloned in the surface of the water. A gentle wind rustled the distant branches. The mud began to soak out of his trousers. He stripped his boots of their filth. Finally, he got back to his feet and stood, considering. Then he set off across the mud around the lake towards the grassy banks, where the island would be closer. He found a leafy hollow in the ground and clambered into it, squirreling himself round onto his front so he could see the lake. He waited. 

Some time later, he began to hear cries out deep in the forest, but whether they were of pain, terror or joy he could not tell. Glugging roars and shallow yelps. Shadows passed over his hollow, and shapes began to move across the mud separating the trees from the lake. He didn't look at them. His gaze was focused on the island. All at once, it was suddenly alight with brightness and fire and noise, spinning with sickly colour and heaving out convulsing tendrils of light into the darkness, which whipped back and forth drunkenly. Suddenly, the shapes were shaking, flying, tumbling over one another to return to the comfort of the black and the trees. Within seconds, all had melted back into the dark.

He watched the blazing chaos of the island with a clear line of sight this time, free of tree trunks and branches and stubs of dirt. It was hypnotic- a riot of the senses, a whirling, joyous mass of energy and vibrance. The colours blurred and rippled and melded into one, then went flying apart again as different hues batted each other to and fro across the ground, hurtling around the trees and scaling their peaks, scrambling up amongst the stars above before plummeting like stones back down to the earth, sending lights blazing out of the island's wrinkled skin. 

The trees around him were a second-hand mess of colours, some shuddering with the noise. The lights washed the sky above the island from rich royal purple to deepest tropical blue to a thin, delicate gold in a second, which then all spun amongst each other and spewed sound and light down amongst the trees once more. He watched, transfixed. For the duration of the spectacle, he was free. Then somewhere in heaven a switch was flipped and it all fizzled into nothing. He blinked, startled. When he looked away, it was still emblazoned on his irises. 

He clambered out of his hideaway, invigorated. He ran-ran!- down onto the mud and collapsed at the water's edge. He cried thick, choking sobs, hunched over on his knees, and his tears mingled with the waters below. His shoulders shook in the starlight. The cool night-time breeze sent a few tears curling away across his cheek on alternative paths. He cried and cried until he could cry no more, and then he sat heavily down and smiled and stretched his legs out into the water. 

He gazed up into the heavens for the last time, maybe, and saw the stars as he had never seen them before- really saw them, glinting and glimmering and blazing in the night. And he felt the good old night breezes cool his cheeks and slow his heart, and he felt the thick claggy earth beneath him crawl under his fingernails as he dragged his hands through it, and he felt the elegant weightless stillness of the water surrounding his legs, and he saw the looming gothic pines shining in the moonlight, and he knew that it was all good. 

He was ready when the noises began. There was a baying and a yodeling somewhere out in the trees, and the noises grew and grew until he could see dark shapes moving among the pines and casting no shadow in the moonlight and filtering out onto the thick cracked mud of the lake-bed towards him. His feet were dug in. As the shapes seeped across the surface towards him, floating off the mud a little, he couldn't help but smile because he knew that this was it, one way or another. They gave off no light and had no features. They were ragged, hanging, faceless things, shapeless and gaunt, and they drifted and murmured and screamed their way towards him.

He took off his hat and let it fall from his hand to the ground. He wouldn't be needing it any more. He pulled off his fingerless gloves and dropped them too. The shades were close now, hovering and lurking and carrying along with them a gusty, blustery train of leaves that had been hauled forth from the woods by their collective breeze. One by one, he tugged off his boots, then the clammy socks which stuck to the soles. His feet were black with muck. It had been so long since he had seen them. The shades were drifting down from the trees to all sides of the lake now, as if he was in some vast twilit amphitheater. In the moonlight and the haze of the stars, they could be seen massing and swarming on the distant banks. More and more were emerging from the trees ahead of him, joining the horde scudding across in his direction, which was now a thick, lumbering mass. The closest were near enough to begin to loom hunchedly over him, strange, spindly and shrouded in dark.  

All at once, the island behind him was aflame. The colours were instantly spiralling and carouselling across the frames of the enroaching swarm, and indeed causing the trees far behind them to bloom and flare with new life. Immediately, the things were melting and howling and swishing backwards, zig-zagging and colliding, stumbling and turning and rushing. 

He turned and hefted his body into the water, pushing off and swimming with the energy of a much younger man. He didn't look back. The cold of the lake jolted into him, but he swam stroke after stroke after stroke, and whenever he plunged his face into the water he could see the wispy lights of the island flaring through deep below and hear the vague muffled noises, and each time he came up for air he could see the island in all its glory, glowing and fizzing with life, and the noises pulsing and rushing up into the sky. 

And as he swam, he could feel the waters washing the filth from his clothes, freeing him from all the accumulated dirt and grease that had built up in God knows how long, and the island was now close and he could see the recumbent branches hanging down into the water, and his foot hit something and all of a sudden he was walking uphill, pulling himself forward with the branches out of the water, and onto the cool sweet grass. And he dragged himself to his feet and the lights swirled to and fro around him, back and forth, and the cracks in the ground fizzled with colour and took him away and the noises howled out wildly and told him everything he wanted to hear and he fell down on his back and smiled.

THE END

Author's Note

Constructive criticism would be much appreciated, thanks. Anyone who reviews will get a review in exchange.

Reviews

[Elodie Thompson]

The descriptions were so vivid and the mindset that you were able to create was very persuasive, convincing the reader that the man was desperately trying to get away from all the noises and terrors that lurked within.
Good job with the descriptions and it was a pleasant read.

[hyenatree]

Thanks, much appreciated