Free The Hollowing by Robert Holdstock Page B

son—Alex—is still alive.”
    “We all think Alex is alive. One of us has talked to him. But not me. Come on, now. Save your questions.”
    Richard hefted his rucksack onto his back and followed the enormous man along the bridleway. Lacan walked fast, hair and pack bouncing with each stride. He constantly paused to smell the air, and used his hands like an insect’s antennae, waving his slender fingers as if sensing for a change in the breeze.
    They crossed into the private estates of Ryhope Manor and left the path, ascending the fallow field to Ryhope Wood. As Richard had begun to suspect, Lacan led the way through the tangle of wire to the ruins of the house in the wood, following a narrow path that Richard had previously missed and which led directly to the small garden. In the parlour, Lacan broke open the back of the small radio-like machine, pulling out a roll of white paper covered with ink marks. The Frenchman unfurled a few feet to scan the recording.
    “Looks like one of those hospital traces,” Richard said. “An ECG?”
    “Very like,” said Lacan distractedly. He seemed puzzled. “Something has been generated. Someone has been here. There has been activity.”
    After a moment Richard said, “I was here yesterday morning. I came exploring. I noticed the needle on one of the dials started to dance around. It didn’t seem to be in response to my own movements…”
    Lacan scratched curiously at his long beard, staring at Richard and thinking hard, then shook his head and furled up the roll of white paper. “You came here? Then maybe it was you. You’ve had an effect already. Quite remarkable!”
    “What is this place?”
    Tucking the record into his pocket, Lacan looked around at the ruined room. “This place? It’s where it began. Where it began in this century, at least. A man called Huxley lived here, with his family, a wife and two boys. They didn’t own the house, they rented it. Huxley’s father had been a good friend of the then Lord Ryhope. But something which had been quiet for four hundred years woke up again when George Huxley began to study here, not in this room, but in another part of the building. We’re trying to find what that thing was. The house is called Oak Lodge. The wood around us is very old, very old indeed. This crude piece of equipment,” as he spoke he loaded a second roll into the back of the machine, “this little item is my own adaptation of Huxley’s ‘flux drain.’ It’s a monitor. Very simple, really. It monitors life, new life, spontaneous life, the life of heroes, ghostly heroes which we call mythagos. ”
    The odd word was vaguely familiar to Richard. Of course: Helen had used it, just a day or so before. He repeated the word aloud, questioning it.
    “There are some things you should know,” Lacan said, leading the way outside again. “You have to start understanding soon, if you are to help get Alex out of the wood, and it will take some time. Sit down. Perhaps a little of that brandy would help…”
    *   *   *
    George Huxley and his family had occupied Oak Lodge for twenty-five years, until his death in 1946. He had died leaving two sons, Steven and Christian, but they had both disappeared from the area in 1948, and had not been heard of since. Huxley’s wife, Jennifer, had died tragically some years before.
    Huxley’s training had been as a scientist, initially in the field of psychology (he had studied with Carl Jung for some years), but later broadened his horizons to include research into the dating of archaeological remains and the variability of time. He was a man fascinated, even obsessed by myth, and by the spiritual presences in the wood. He had been a jack-of-all-trades. For many years his collaborator and colleague had been another academic, Edward Wynne-Jones. The two men, during the thirties in particular, had explored the odd nature of the forest and its startling occupants. They had documented its inner realm to the extent