Daemon of the Dark Wood Read online

  Thorn nodded meekly and seemed to draw himself in. The sight of such a big, strapping male cringing like a scolded animal amused Sharyn, but she didn’t dare let herself laugh; she was determined to maintain her angry edge. It seemed to be her only real defense against the outer darkness and the dangerous thing it concealed.

  “What’s with this sudden fascination with Pan? And what is this ‘verry interesting’ thing you’re so on about?”

  “Ah, it’s nothing, really. You know me. I just—”

  “Don’t bullshit me, Alfred. Tell me.”

  “All right.” He laced his fingers over his lap and regarded her warily. “I’ve been digging into the local folklore and I think I might’ve struck paydirt. It all started with a conversation I had a couple of months ago with Howard Bently, our illustrious historian. You know Howard. A meticulous researcher, when he’s sober. A crushing bore when he’s in his cups. Well, one night over a bottle of his best scotch, Howard regaled me with his knowledge of local history, and to my great surprise and relief, he was anything but boring. He told me he had come upon some documents from the Civil War era suggestive of a hidden history of Widow’s Ridge. The old boy referred to his documents as ‘historical apocrypha,’ and went on for the better part of an hour about some horrendous incident alluded to in one of these documents. He said he found proof that Widow’s Ridge is not so named because its married women were widowed by the war. Howard is convinced that story was concocted to hide what really happened.”

  “What on earth does all this have to do with a character from Greek mythology?” Sharyn was having a hard time keeping the lid on her escalating impatience.

  “Nothing, as far as Howard Bently is concerned. He deals in historical facts, not myth. But this is where I enter the picture. When Howard showed me the personal journal of Reverend John T. Waller, I made the connection myself. And since then, I’ve been delving into the local folklore and legend, looking for further connections. You see, Sharyn, when a community—or a society—conspires to hide a certain truth, that truth will inevitably find new avenues into the open. Even if it has to come out in the form of legend. Or myth. And I think that’s exactly what happened in Widow’s Ridge. In short, I think some educated, creative soul back in the eighteen-sixties reinvented a Pan-like legend as an alternative to a scandalous historical incident. The legend survived for over a hundred years, but now it seems that the current crop of elders want it to die with them. I’ve found no evidence that they’ve passed it along to their younger generations.”

  “Why would they want to let a legend die? Folklore is a big part of the heritage of these hill people.”

  Thorn shrugged. “I suspect it may be because we live in a time when myth and legend are no longer necessary. The wonders of technology have replaced the need for mythological wonders. Apollo is no longer a god, it’s a rocket to the moon. The ancient world had all manner of gods, heroes and monsters. What do we have? Big Foot, alien abductions and a reanimated Elvis.”

  “I believe there are still things that go bump in the night,” she said. “Even if they’re just representations of the unknown.”

  “That’s true, but these days it’s the monsters we know that terrify us. The wacked-out kids who walk into their school and start blowing away their classmates with automatic weapons. The family man who kills his wife and kids, then takes his rampage public when he walks into a high-rise building and randomly guns down office workers. A suicide bomber with mind ablaze with religious delusion. The monsters we know are us. And they’re all too human. We don’t have to make them up.”

  Sharyn was beginning to relax a little. Her fear had subsided and her protective anger no longer seemed necessary, for the time being. Thorn’s apparent obsession with some local legend had captured her imagination and stirred her natural curiosity. She wanted to know more. “So what was in the preacher’s journal that led you to back to Pan?”

  After a moment’s hesitation, he reached into his shirt pocket and pulled out a small white envelope. “You can read it for yourself,” he said as he gave it to her. “But be warned: some of it is rather grim.”

  She slipped her fingers into the unsealed envelope and extracted several sheets of folded paper. She sat on the edge of the bed and crossed her ankles.

  “Those are photocopies of key pages of the reverend’s journal,” he told her. “Howard wouldn’t let me borrow the actual journal, but he was good enough to let me copy some of it.”

  Sharyn unfolded the three pages and smoothed them on her lap. Reverend Waller’s script was penned in bold cursive, embellished with fussily flamboyant strokes, but it was legible.

  “While you peruse those, I’m going to see if I can prevail upon that pretty young nurse to give me a cup of coffee,” said Thorn. “Would you like one?”

  “No, thank you. Patients aren’t allowed caffeine, and I don’t need anything that might keep me awake tonight. You go ahead.”

  As Thorn eased out of the room, Sharyn switched on the lamp on her bedside table and began to read the excerpts from the journal of the long-dead preacher.

  20 June 1866

  Journey from Talking Rock uneventful. Sheltered last night at the Irving House. Brother Irving and his family being of Good Christian stock, it was a fortifying sojourn. Mistress Irving provided a delightful repast, though her apple cobbler sorely tested my ability to resist the sin of gluttony. The Irvings are recovering quite well from the ravages of The War. Their orchard will doubtless produce a bountiful crop. God has returned their son Jacob to the bosom of the family, and though he lost a leg and an arm to The Cause, young Jacob’s faith remains strong. From the Lord all blessings do flow.

  21 June 1866

  Disaster has struck! A fearsome storm caught me on the trail North of Mt. Oglethorpe and unleashed a bolt of lightning which caused my horse to unsaddle me and to leave the trail in her bolt. The Lord was with me and saw that I sustained only minor bruises and bumps, but my horse broke her leg and I had to put her down with my Merciful pistol. Old Abigail was a fine mount and I am saddened by her demise. I am now faced with the unpleasant prospect of traveling afoot. Though my arrival be late, I shall march into Dogwood with my countenance aglow with God’s Glory.

  22 June 1866

  Holy Father protect me from the evil I have seen! My journey has taken me into a wilderness of depravity, lo! unto the very Mouth of Hell! A day’s hike delivered me into the vicinity of the rustic little hamlet of no appellation which sits high on the ridge over Dogwood and environs. As I departed the trodden path to venture into the thick heart of the woods in order to partake of a cooling stream therein, I came upon a sight only Satan Himself could have rendered. Squatting on bare haunches like a feral beast was a denuded girl-child whose tender age could not have exceeded thirteen years. So enraptured was she in her ghastly act that she at first took no notice of me.

  I hesitate to commit these words to paper, though I know I must. The child was tearing raw flesh from a severed human arm with her teeth and was devouring the bloody meat! Her golden hair was a nest of wild curls, the lower tresses streaked with the blood of the bodiless arm and hand.

  My mind grappled for a rational explanation for the manifest obscenity. My mental grappling ended when the feral girl saw me and I in my turn saw the Bloodlust in her wild eyes. Thereupon she tossed aside the mutilated arm and sprang to her feet. While I was mindful of the danger to my person, my attention fixed on the sight of a gold wedding band on the marital finger of the masculine hand adjoining the severed arm. That gold ring brought home the Reality of the Abomination. The wild child regarded me fiercely, as with great hunger, and I knew she was taking my measure.

  God forgive my murderous intentions, but I drew my pistol and aimed it at the child’s budding breast. I don’t know whether I could have released her soul from its Hellish bonds but I know that question will always remain with me. The girl scampered off into the underbrush, forsaking her ungodly feast.

  Aft
er collecting my wits, I removed the wedding band from the dead hand and put it in my pocket in hopes of finding someone to identify its former owner. I buried the arm in the soft forest floor and marked the piecemeal grave with a flat rock shaped vaguely like Florida. I departed with alacrity, for I sensed the wanton stares of unseen watchers.

  23 June 1866

  Dogwood is abuzz with Rumor and wild speculation. Even the soberest of citizens have been seized by the unexplained abandonment of the neighboring hamlet on the ridge. I confess I am in part responsible for the uproar, but I believe I am blameless in my heart for I acted out of Christian Charity.

  After my encounter with the handmaiden of Satan, I hastened to the nameless ridge village and found the place deserted, save for a handful of small children, hungry and terrified in their abandonment by neglectful parents, and one bedridden old woman who babbled incoherently about a murderous band of wild women, led by her hated daughter-in-law. The woman was plainly feebleminded, but her confused babblings were seized upon by the gossips of Dogwood and the fabulous tale spread like a fire in the wild. The orphaned children were rounded up and taken into the homes of charitable Dogwoodians. Search parties were formed and the surrounding hills were combed for any sign of the missing adult population of the ridge hamlet (which was said to number five and thirty).

  The searchers are still out, but I could not join them. God forgive me! but I am afraid to venture back into those woods for fear that new horrors may await me there.

  24 June 1866

  I am a man of some education. I have devoted much of my life to study of Holy Scripture. I have taken it upon myself to spread the Word of God far and wide. Why is it that now words fail me? How is it then that I feel so inadequate, so ignorant in the face of Manifest Evil? If this be a test of my faith, I tremble with fear that I shall be found wanting. I am unable to sleep, unable to eat. This humble servant of God grows weak, haunted by the vision of that feral child devouring flesh of her own kind. And now there are new visions to torment me. Though I did not see the dreadful sights myself, the descriptions of those who did have left their taint in my soul. The searchers found the dismembered remains of mass slaughter scattered in the woods surrounding the ridge hamlet. In most cases the flesh had been largely stripped from the bones, the limbs hacked away from the bodies as with an axe blade. As all the victims were male, we can now account for the menfolk missing from the hamlet, but what of the females? And what, Dear God, happened to the heads of the males? All decapitated, no heads found.

  Could the feebleminded crone’s tale be true? Did the women of the hamlet go on a murderous rampage and slaughter their own menfolk? Few here in Dogwood believe such. Yet the women remain missing and no one has posited a credible explanation for the Butchery. Would that this be but a dream and I a feverish dreamer!

  Sharyn reread the last line, then folded the pages of photocopy and stuffed them back into the envelope, noticing a slight tremor in her hands.

  “Well?” Thorn’s voice startled her; she had been so absorbed in her reading of the dead man’s journal that she had not seen him come back into the room. “You see why I connected the reverend’s writings to the Dionysian myth of Pan, don’t you?”

  She nodded. “The Maenads.”

  “Exactly. The suggestion is too strong to ignore. A band of madwomen tearing male victims limb from limb and devouring them in drunken tribute to the horned god of the woodlands. Without question, the Maenads.”

  “But if your working theory is that the myth was used to cover up what really happened and to blame it on a woodland god, then what did happen? And what about the missing women? Were they ever found?”

  “Oh yes,” he said after slurping some coffee from a Styrofoam cup. “The women turned up all right. Most of them, anyway. According to Reverend Waller’s subsequent entries, the womenfolk returned under cover of darkness and were found back in their homes the next morning. When asked where they had been, not a one of them seemed to know they had been gone for a number of days. A few of them related strange dreams of particular vividness, dreams of bloodshed and violence, but most of them said they remembered nothing at all, and even denied having been gone in the first place. And none of them seemed disturbed by the absence of their menfolk. Some claimed their husbands never came home from the war, others said their mates had been killed by wild animals.”

  He sat in the chair and crossed his long legs. “As to what really happened and why it happened, I haven’t worked that out yet. That’s why I’ve been trying to get more information from the elders of Widow’s Ridge. But they’re a tightlipped bunch of biddies. It was only by happenstance that Professor Bently found Waller’s journal. He was going through boxes of old documents—letters and the like, donated years ago to the local historical society and then stored in the cellar of the Dogwood library and forgotten—when he happened upon the reverend’s journal.”

  “Maybe the reverend was delusional,” Sharyn hypothesized. “Or maybe he was trying his hand at fiction. Have you considered that?”

  “Of course. But let’s say the old guy was crazy as a shithouse mouse. That still doesn’t account for what happened to the men of Widow’s Ridge. Bently checked the official records of the Confederacy and the Death Registries of Arcadia County, but he found only one man from the ridge village who died in the war. Something happened back there in 1866. Something for which there is no official record. Just the journal of a circuit-riding preacher. An incident some refer to as ‘The Helling.’” Thorn put down his coffee, leaned forward in his chair and took both of her hands into his. “Are you ready for the kicker, Sharyn? The amazing thing I saw in a room down the hall on my way to visit you?”

  She nodded, though she wasn’t sure she wanted to hear what he was about to tell her.

  “An elderly catatonic patient, a female, drew a picture on the wall—in crayon, mind you—of a Pan-like figure and labeled it Helling. Dr. Knott said she came out of her catatonic state just long enough to do the drawing. Is that not fantastic? Check it out for yourself. Room 202.”

  She snatched her hands away and said, “I don’t want to see it.”

  “Sharyn? What is it? Did I—”

  “Alfred, you’re my closest friend,” she said as she moved to the center of her bed, leaned her back against the headboard and hugged her knees to her chest. “You know most of my personal history and you know that without medication, I would be crazy as a shithouse mouse. But believe me when I tell you, I am not having a manic episode now. I am not delusional. I’m scared. I admitted myself here because I heard something that literally scared the piss out of me, and I can’t tell you what made that awful sound. All I know is that it was the most terrifying sound I’ve ever heard, and it caused me to have a panic attack. And now you come here with your stories of Maenads in Widow’s Ridge, of mass murder and cannibalism.”

  “Sharyn, I—”

  “No, I’m not crazy, but I have this irrational fear that maybe there is something out there right now, calling to me, perhaps trying to make me into one of his madwomen. Doesn’t that sound crazy to you? It does to me, but I know I am not crazy.” She rested her forehead on her knees.

  Thorn worried his chin whiskers. His brow furrowed in concern. “What did it sound like? Describe it for me.”

  “Like a hundred wild animals screaming with one voice. Powerful. Compelling. Entrancing … It had a physical effect on me I can’t adequately put into words. It clouded my mind, took away my will. It pulled at me like a magnet, but I was paralyzed with fear. Thank God.”

  “And your doctor says it’s because you need your medication adjusted.”

  “Yes, that’s his initial impression. But I don’t believe that’s it. I would like to believe it, but it just doesn’t ring true. I’ve been on lithium a long time and I’ve had to have the dosage adjusted before, but I never ever experienced anything remotely like this. Not even when I was full-blown manic. I’m sure my lab-work will bear me out.”

&
nbsp; “Where were you when you heard this … call of the wild?”

  “Home. Quietly reading poetry.”

  “And your house sits at the edge of the woods,” he said. “And correct me if I’m wrong, but there’s nothing but woodland between your house and Widow’s Ridge.”

  “Right. Actually, I’m just outside Dogwood city limits. That new development—what’s it called? Mountain Villas?”

  “Mountview Villas.”

  “Whatever. I think it’s a little closer to Widow’s Ridge, but it’s a couple or three miles off to the side of my house and a little higher up the mountain, so it’s not really between me and the ridge. But what’s your point?”

  “I guess I don’t have a point, love,” said Thorn. “I’m just thinking out loud. Pointless speculation, I suppose. But still …”

  “But still, you’re entertaining the absurd notion that a mythological creature is alive and well, and living in those woods,” she said. “I know. I am too.”

  “For the record,” Thorn said with exaggerated bluster, “I am a man of science, and as such, I most certainly would not engage in fanciful speculation of that sort. But off the record?” He spread his large hands. “I’m thinking the same thing you are. Thinking but not believing.”

  A cold tingle ran up Sharyn’s back and crawled into her scalp. She shuddered, then rubbed her arms as if to warm herself.

  “For the sake of argument,” he said, “let’s play this out. Let’s say there is an aeons-old god roaming our hills. Perhaps he’s come from another time, or another physical dimension. According to the brightest minds of modern physics, such a notion is mathematically possible. So he’s out there, issuing his call. But to what end? What does he want? What brings him to our world?”

  “If we’re talking about Pan, he wants orgies of beastly sex. He wants nymphs to worship at the altar of his loins. He wants to wield his celebrated phallus. The Horned God is a horny god.”