The Hollowing (7 page)

Then he grew black. Alex was dead. Whatever this woman was talking about, whoever they had found, it was not his son.

“Who’s we? ‘We’ve’ found him?”

“We’re explorers. I’ll come to that later.”

“What does he look like? Alex? How does he look?”

Helen looked confused, now, shaking her head, angry at herself. “I’m not making a very good job of this. Lytton should have been the one to talk to you. Richard, it’s not as easy as perhaps I’m making it sound. I’m sorry. It’s hard to know how to approach it—”

“Approach what?”

“We’ve made
contact
with your son. But we haven’t exactly
found
him. Not yet, at least.”

“He’s telephoned you?”

“No. Nothing like that. We
have
found him. We’re going to need your help to bring him home…”

Tears stung Richard Bradley’s eyes and he stood, facing the garden through the misting window, hands in pockets.

Six years since Alex’s body had been found. Six long years, six empty ones. He could still remember the stink of the wood as he’d trudged with the police through the saturated bracken. The skies had been overcast, a dull, depressing rain falling. Beneath the trees it was stiflingly humid. Their footsteps, crushing through the undergrowth, had been the only sound in the world. A solemn group of men had stood around the cordoned area where the litter had been swept away and the distorted torso exposed, its empty skull upwards, the face no more recognisable than a crushed pile of autumn leaves.

“I’d given up hope,” he said from the window. “I can’t believe you. My son went away. He’s never coming back. It’s too painful to give me this hope again. You shouldn’t have come.”

There was no sound from the woman save for the gentle clink of her cup returned to her saucer.

He went on, “The bones were very corrupted. Very rotten. They were an inch or two too short. Or were they? Who could tell what changes had occurred with a skeleton so decayed? The forensic tests were done hastily. They all knew it was Alex. It was easy to bury him and give up anguish. If I’ve had doubts about his being dead, they’ve ceased to gnaw at me. So I suppose I’ve accepted it.”

“You’ve accepted that he’s not coming back, not that he’s dead. I spoke to the barman at the Red Lion. I know about your doubts. Forgive me, that’s why I was so blunt. I thought you’d be glad of the news.”

“What news? You’ve brought me no news. You can’t give me evidence of Alex. You confuse me.”

He had turned from the window, angrily watching the calm woman at the table. She leaned forward.

“You said the bones were rotten—what exactly was said about them at the inquest?”

“They were woody.”

“They weren’t bone,” Helen said dogmatically, her eyes alive with certainty. “It wasn’t Alex. We have a word for what it was. A
mythago.
A false thing. And the boy we’ve located is Alex. Believe me.” Her face darkened. “The only problem is … we don’t know where he is
exactly.
”

Suddenly suspicious, Richard came back to the table and leaned down on it. “The
boy?
How old is the boy who’s been speaking to you?”

“About thirteen,” Helen said.

Richard laughed sourly, walking away from her. “What is this? What sort of sick game is this?” But he couldn’t look at her as he chided. “If Alex is alive he’s nineteen, twenty years old, now. He’s a man.”

Why was he crying? With disappointment? Anger? He didn’t want to be angry with Helen Silverlock. He didn’t want her to go. Perhaps hope had surfaced for a moment, but her words had dashed those hopes again.

She said, “He’s still a boy, Richard.”

Perhaps he was retarded … perhaps he sounded like the boy he’d been, even though he would be bearded, deep-voiced … NO!

Helen went on, “We’ve learned a lot from him, including where he lived, this house, and we feel him strongly. He’s a boy, and he’s not complete. His mind is not complete. But he has strength, and he is drawing his world back to himself. It may take a long time, and it’s dangerous. He’s in great danger. Dr. Lytton doesn’t know if we
will
be able to help him, but we can’t do anything until we get our hands on him. That’s why we need you. We want to help you, and Alex too. But you have to be involved, which means one weird trip.”

After a moment Richard sat down, tried to pick up his cup but the china rattled so badly in the saucer that he abandoned the simple act. “You’ve hit me where it hurts,” he said with a thin smile. “And I think you have something else to tell me. I can sense it. There’s something very wrong. Where is it you
think
Alex is?”

“He’s built himself a defended site in a ruined cathedral. The cathedral is in the heart of Ryhope Wood—”

“Ryhope? I doubt that. It’s on the Estate. An unpleasant and dangerous stretch of wood. But it’s far too small to have had a cathedral built within it.”

Helen Silverlock laughed delightedly, shaking her head as she watched the man. “You’ll be surprised by what can be found there. But I’m not the person to show you. There’s more than a ruined church, Richard. And Alex is there too. We can get him back, with your help. But he’s a long way in. Maybe three months…” she said awkwardly, watching him.

“Three months?”

“Maybe three months to get to him. It’s hard to tell. There
may
be a short cut.”

“Three months? In Ryhope?” Richard was laughing at the absurdity of what he was hearing.

Helen ignored him, finishing, “And we don’t know what’s between the edge and the guarded zone he’s constructed. There’s an anomaly, an abnormality, something we can pass through, but can’t
access.
”

“Lost,” Richard said kindly. “Totally lost.”

“Who?”

“Me.”

Helen stood and fetched her coat from by the back door, shrugging it on and zipping it half-way up. “It’s late. I have to get back, and you need rest.” She seemed undecided and disappointed.

Richard toyed with the cup, half-watching the woman, very much wanting her to stay, despite the pain he was feeling.

She couldn’t be right. He shook his head. Alex would be twenty! They had the wrong boy. She couldn’t be right.

“I’ve got to go,” she said. “If you change your mind, leave another marker. And have good walking boots, weatherproofing, a good book, any medication you need, some food, a good brandy, two changes of clothing, and a rucksack, a good-sized one. Have them ready.”

“I have a job in London. I have to be back in two weeks.”

“You won’t need that much time.”

“You said three months. Three months to find him. I don’t understand.”

“I know. I know you don’t. I’m sorry, but it’s as hard for me at the moment. Will you come to the Station? It’s not far. Six or seven hours’ walk. Come tomorrow?”

He shook his head. “I don’t know. You have a boy at the end of some sort of communication network and the boy is thirteen. And my boy is twenty. And unless his voice has failed to break, they can’t be one and the same. Is it possible he’s older than you realise?”

“Maybe,” she said with a shrug. “I doubt it. We think he’s in a timeslow.”

“Something else I don’t understand.”

“Sorry.”

She turned to go, opening the door to the gathering dusk.

“Helen?”

Glancing back, she hesitated and smiled. Richard stood and went over to her. “Thank you,” he said. “I’m sure your intentions are quite genuine.”

“I’ll come back,” she said defiantly, smiling. “Don’t you worry about that!”

As she walked down the path he called out, “Next time he calls you, ask him what stick I danced with round the fire. It was our secret.”

“That’s a good idea,” she said dully, mocking him.

He called again, “I’m being honest with you. I’m not sure I believe you’ve found what you tell me you’ve found. But I’ll know him when I hear his voice. I’ll know him. If you can arrange it.”

Helen had zipped up her coat and was running along the bridleway towards Hunter’s Brook. Richard recognised the gait, and his confusion was compounded.

Helen Silverlock
had
been here before, despite what she’d said.

Oak Lodge

At dawn, a grim grey mist hung over the land, a subdued and flowing sea in which the dark features were the taller trees of the fields and woods.

Richard stood in his bedroom, fully dressed, hands in his pockets, and stared at the wreathed land, thinking moodily of the woman, her message, her enthusiasm, her strangeness. Crows circled close to the house, flapping and vanishing through the wraithed branches. One detached itself and swooped towards the garden, gliding low over the gate and rising towards the bedroom window with the merest flap of its wings. Richard could hear the scrabbling of nestlings in the disused chimney and waited for the great bird to continue its curve, up to the roof, but the creature came straight on and smashed startlingly against the window. The whole pane shook. The crack of beak on glass seemed deafening. When Richard opened the window and stared down, he could see no sign of the bird, but its dreamlike and dramatic action had disturbed him and he went downstairs.

At nine o’clock he rang Alice in London. She had just arrived at work and was tetchy and tired. She became almost hysterical when he told her, as simply as he could, what Helen Silverlock had implied to him, but when she heard that the boy was thirteen years old she laughed scornfully, then began to get angry. She wanted to know why he had
really
called her.

“For just that reason,” he said. “I thought I should keep you informed.”

“You have something on your mind. What is it, Richard? Why don’t you be honest about it?”

“I rang to tell you what I’ve told you,” he said wearily. “Goodbye, Alice.”

He put the phone down, wondered if she would call back, and when the phone stayed silent went back upstairs and sorted out his weatherproof clothing.

By midday the grey gloom had been replaced by a bright and overcast sky, a fresh wind bringing the land alive. Richard trudged in heavy boots along the bridleway towards Hunter’s Brook. He had not brought a rucksack. He intended only to look a little more closely at the wood where Helen had said she and her team were stationed.

The stream was in wild flood, and along its edge he could see the spoor of deer, probably from the Manor park. A high wall bounded the Estate on most sides, but a right of way passed over several fields, and here the boundary was marked by fences and a stile. Ryhope Wood was a dense and solid wall of trees to his right as he crossed the field towards the old road. He followed this to the wood itself, and was mildly surprised to find that it ended abruptly, overgrown by dense bushes and scrub elder. A “Keep Out” notice had been recently fixed on barbed wire.

He walked on round the wood, conscious that he was now on private grounds. The Manor House was hidden by trees, half a mile away; the only sign of life was a gallop, five riders exercising the horses from the Manor’s stables. They crossed open land, then turned and came back, thudding past Richard without taking any notice and passing away toward the ridge where an earthworks had been built, long in the past.

Was this where Alex had come to play with his friends, Tallis and the rest? Tallis had always been so quiet, a mysterious girl existing in a rich fantasy world of story and invention. Alex had always wanted to play rougher games, when outside, exploring woodland being one of them. But he had never talked in detail about Ryhope, only referred to it darkly as a place where “Tallis talks to statues.”

What had he meant?

Years after the boy’s death, Richard began to miss him again, and to miss the lost opportunity of knowing his son, of sharing his mind-games. Alex had always liked comics, and they had read together in peace, or watched TV, but had so rarely spoken or explored ideas. Alice had always been too busy doing things, arranging for trips, for picnics, for journeys to London, for schoolbooks and clothes. She had known Alex’s strengths and weaknesses and had been nurturing him towards areas of intellect and interest where he might do well at school, such as playwriting and biology. Even so, she could not have known the inner boy, the adventurer.

He felt sorry for himself, sat for a while head bowed and thought back over the years. He allowed himself tears, and the wind, freshening and gusting, made the enclosed scene all the more mournful.

Alex had been in his grave too long. The pain had passed away too many years ago. The tears, the melancholy, were short-lived, and Helen Silverlock was standing before him again, mysterious and inviting.

An intense curiosity now began to push away the sorrow. The edge of the wood was thorny and grassy, too solid, too dark. It was as if it had never been broken by the passage of people or animals. Sunlight caught the sign across the road, and Richard’s interest piqued.

He eased himself through the barbed wire and entered the gloom of the undergrowth, brushing at branches and ivy as he felt his way carefully along the hard surface underfoot that told of the crumbling road. When the wall of a house suddenly loomed before him he was startled. He touched the brick and pushed through the stifling tangle of creeper and briar, following the wall until he reached the back of the house. Sunlight dappled above him now, and by its flickering light he could see the blackened, rotting shape of a tall wooden idol. It was leaning heavily against the house. If there had ever been carved features they were long since obliterated by rain and time, but he thought he could faintly discern a gaping mouth and the outline of a wide, blind eye.

Crouching, he crawled below the statue, still feeling along the brick wall, and after a moment stepped into a cleared space, now grassy and filled with flowers and nettles, extending from what had once been french windows. He saw, too, that people had been here recently.

He stepped into the house. The vegetation in the room had been scythed down and the smell of fresh sap was still strong. Through the covering of nettles and ivy he could see the fragmentary remains of furniture. A tree, a substantial oak, grew in the middle of the room, and Richard was puzzled: this was old; had the owners built their house
around
the oak?