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Old 03-18-2022, 11:03 AM   #5 (permalink)
Trollheart
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Extract from "Fork in the Road" (approx. 6,000 words)

There’s no two ways about it, a dark forest is a scary place to get lost in, even if you’re an adult. Peter was not: he had just recently celebrated his eighth birthday, and while in his mind this might mark him out as no longer a child, in the eyes of the world, the law and of course his parents this is exactly what he was: a child. And not only that, but a lost child too. He knew he should not have wandered off into the wood, but there was something about it that seemed to call to him, as if a voice issued from within the thickets, a siren call that emanated from the darkness and sought to pull him into itself. He had told himself he was not frightened, and this was partially true – when he was outside the forest, or even on the fringes, where he could look back through the tall spruce and sycamore trunks and see the faint lights of the village where he lived, where the comforting sound of traffic making its way up and down the road still came to his ears, and while he could still consider himself connected to the world outside the wood.

But as he had advanced into the thick stand of trees, brushing leaves and the occasional branch away from him, his feet ever less sure as the hilly path turned to a broken, pitted, uneven track of soil and mud, the confidence he had felt on stepping into the wood was deserting him rapidly, and his heart began to hammer as he realised that, dark as the wood was, and having stumbled several times and so become disorientated, he was not at all sure he could find his way back. The trunks of the trees seemed to crowd together, as if purposely blocking his retreat, and forcing him on, deeper and deeper into their domain. Suddenly something fluttered in the gathering gloom – a bird, a bat, something other, he had no idea, but the sound was enough to unnerve him – and he shouted, backing up against one of the larch trees that lined the path ahead.

That was when he saw him.

His heart jumped, and he was not sure whether he should take this as a good or bad sign. One of the things Peter’s mother had always impressed upon him about the forest, presumably in the hopes of keeping her son from exploring that dark place, was that it was a known haunt for what she termed “bad men”. Drug pushers, rapists, paedophiles, perhaps even murderers were known – according to her – to frequent the place and conduct their dark and nefarious business under the lowering eaves. She had frightened her young son with the dread warning that a little boy could be killed and buried in the forest, and nobody would ever find him.

Naturally, this had only made Peter want to investigate the dark, forbidding and forbidden place even more, so he grasped the first opportunity that came his way, part of him perhaps hoping, in that macabre way kids have, to come across one such unmarked grave, the final resting place of some unlucky boy or girl who had fallen foul of the demons of the forest, buried there among the trees and the buzzing insects, another statistic, another unsolved crime, another son or daughter whose parents would never have closure.

A small, mostly unheard or at least ignored voice inside him had whispered that he could become that very victim, something for another kid in the future to come searching for, a curiosity to be explored even as he now explored, but of course like all kids he paid the internal warning no mind.

Not, that is, until the figure appeared before him, seeming, to his childish and (though he refused steadfastly to admit it to himself) terrified mind, to rise up out of the very earth, like a dark tree himself, but one which had grown at an impossibly accelerated rate. He would have said, later, had he been questioned, that the man wore black, but of course here in the depths of the forest, with daylight already fading and little if any sun making its way into the dense copse, he could not tell for sure. But the clothes the man wore looked... wrong, somehow. He tried (as his heart pounded and sweat filmed his hands) to work out why, what was wrong with them, but concluded that it was hardly important. Maybe they looked old, like maybe out of another era? Maybe. He certainly wore the kind of hat Peter had seen in books about Victorian London, a tall, shiny one.

Few people in Yorkshire wore hats, and any that did favoured the typical northern flat cap. This was the fifties; with the war over the trend for wearing the likes of Hombergs, Bowlers and Fedoras was dying out, and while some men still wanted to cover the head, hats were not seen as the status symbol or denoter of class that they were ten years ago. Of course, the city gents in London wore, as they probably always would, bowler hats. But this wasn’t London. This was Cottingley, in the West Riding of Yorkshire, no place further from the centre of political and financial power that was the nation’s capital. So to see a man wearing any hat other than a cap – especially one of those old top hats – well, it marked that person out as... different.

The man stepped forward, seeming to flow like mist, though that could have been a combination of Peter’s fear and the gathering darkness, and smiled at the boy. Peter did not like the smile, but strangely, it made him feel less apprehensive, less frightened. In a clear and cultured voice, the man asked “Do you know who I am, boy?”

Peter shook his head; words would not come, and anyway, he didn’t know the stranger’s identity, had never seen him before. The smile widened and the man swept his tall hat off, bowing low. “Then please allow me to introduce myself,” he grinned. “I’m a man of wealth and taste.” When the boy looked blank, a frown crossed the man’s face, and, as if annoyed with himself for the slip, he muttered “Oh, right. Won’t be written for another, what, thirteen years? In that case,” he spoke out loud again, and again directing his attention towards Peter, “I have many names, but I believe you often call me the Devil.”
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