Free Dark Woods by Steve Voake Page A

sound had stopped.
    As he approached the stream, he hid himself behind another tree and listened intently. But all he could hear was a soft breeze stirring the branches and the sound of water tumbling over stones.
    The sky was lightening in the east and the stars were already fading; it would soon be morning. Cal realised how tired he was and remembered how once, when he was small, he had imagined his room to be full of ghosts. He had watched in terror as the dark shapes crept across his bedroom wall until it had occurred to him that it was only the shadow of the curtains, moving in the evening breeze.
    That’s all this is , he told himself. I’m jumping at shadows . Feeling a little foolish, he decided he would get a drink from the stream and then head back to the shelter. With any luck he would get back before Eden woke up and realised he was gone.
    Stepping out of the shadows, he knelt on the mossy ground beside the stream and splashed his face several times before quenching his thirst from the leaking cup of his hands. The cool water soothed him but as he wiped his mouth and raised his head he saw – some way off – someone standing in the stream. His first reaction was to run, but then he realised that whoever it was had their back to him, so he stepped back behind the tree again before peering around for a better look.
    He could tell from the figure’s height and stance that it was a man, although his hair was long and brushed the tops of his shoulders as he leaned forward into the stream. As the sky grew lighter, Cal saw that the man’s hair was dark brown, almost red, the colour of clay or dried blood and he wore an old-fashioned frock coat, but not the traditional black one might expect; this one was the green of algae in a stagnant pond. On his bottom half he wore a pair of breeches which stopped at the knee, covering a pair of long white socks that disappeared beneath them. As the first rays of sunlight rimmed the distant mountains with gold, Cal could see the man’s white socks beneath the surface of the stream and below them a pair of black, pointed shoes with polished silver buckles.
    His coat tails dipped in the water and he moved slowly from side to side, as if he was washing something in the stream.
    Cal looked at the black top hat placed neatly on the far bank and knew, with an awful, sickening certainty, that it was the man from his drawings, the same man he had caught sight of in the shadows of the cell, and that the noise he had heard had been the snip, snip, snip of metal on metal.
    But what did he want with Cal?
    As the sun rose over the mountains, Cal saw dark ribbons twisting through the water and realised that the stream was red with blood. Then the man turned and lifted the scissors he was holding. But they were no ordinary scissors. These were more like shears with long, polished blades as sharp as daggers.
    As the man turned and stared at him, Cal guessed he had sensed him watching all along. Without dropping his gaze, the man raised his arms until the scissors were pointing straight at Cal.
    He nodded slowly, three times, as if to say, Yes, it will happen, never doubt or question it.
    Then Cal was running through the woods, desperate to be anywhere but in this place where the man with the scissors was waiting to drag him down, away from the light for ever.

Twenty-Three
    ‘Take it easy, Cal,’ said Eden, shaking him roughly by the shoulders. ‘Just tell me what happened.’
    Cal crouched beside the shelter, staring back through the trees.
    ‘Cal! Speak to me!’
    ‘He’s here,’ said Cal.
    ‘Who? Who’s here?’
    ‘He had shears, silver ones. He was washing blood from them in the stream.’
    ‘Look at me, Cal,’ said Eden, holding his face in both her hands. ‘Who was washing them?’
    ‘Him,’ said Cal. ‘The man from the cell.’
    ‘Are you sure? It was pretty dark back there.’
    ‘Yeah, it was him all right. He wore old-fashioned clothes. Like someone from a storybook.