The Woods
by R. T. Simpson

Dean shifted his ample frame as gently as possible, he’d been sitting motionless for the best part of half an hour and he was well on his way to losing all feeling in his backside. Which, in its own way was a blessing - he no longer noticed the dampness of the forest floor, which had succeeded in working it’s cold, clammy way through to his skin.

The soft crunch of leaves his movement caused earned him an annoyed scowl from Brian, sitting nearby. Total silence was demanded, but Jim chanted on undisturbed in the pentagram anyway. Dean made a show of ignoring Brian and, as instructed, continued to focus on Jim - fixing him with a hard stare.

* * *

This, as usual, had all been Jim’s idea. He was the driving force in their little group of outcasts. They were the social rejects of school politics. Dean was the fat kid who became the ritual object of ridicule during sports, especially in changing room away from the stabilising influence of any teachers.

Brain was the smart kid who handed in all his assignments early, answered all the teachers’ questions in class and still allowed his mother to do all his clothes shopping for him. Just as for Dean, sports were a bane on Brain’s school life, his mother worried about him constantly and was constantly packing him off to school with a note excusing him from any outdoor activities.

He paid for that almost as badly as he paid for his circular, wire rim spectacles.

And then there was Jim. The poor kid who wore badly fitting, hand-me-down clothes from his older brother and boots with the tread worn completely away. His shoulder length hair was lifeless and perpetually greasy. He almost, always smelled like he needed a shower.

He was their leader, smart in way that Brain would never be and fearless - or so it seemed. Three weeks after Jim had first come to the school he received his first beating - the local bullies’ form of extending a welcome. Jim had fought back, but six against one had produced the inevitable result. As punishment for daring to fight back they beat him that little bit harder.

A week later, the ringleader of that gang was attacked near his home. Several ribs had been broken along with his jawbone and his left arm - his attacker having set about him with a cricket bat, or so he claimed. It’d been dark and he never saw his attacker, but the obvious conclusions were drawn.

The police were brought and Jim was questioned, but never charged. To the schoolmates who quizzed him about the attack, he would simply reply, "No comment," with just the hint of a smile touching one corner of his mouth.

No one messed with him after that. People simply gave him a wide berth - too distasteful to talk to, too dangerous to make fun of.

Dean and Brian naturally gravitated towards him. He was a fellow castaway on the sea of school politics and they banded together to make life at school just that little but more bearable.

* * *

The rumours that surrounded the woods went back forever. Everyone knew a handful of stories, all concerning a friend of a friend, or dating back to "when my dad was a kid," nothing substantial, nothing provable.

With the suicide eighteen months earlier being the only exception.

It’s made the papers, even the tabloids, reporters had flooded into the area to bring their town its fifteen minutes of fame.

The dead man was never identified - apparently no dental records of him existed and no one ever reported anyone of his description missing. He wasn’t local, and none of the locals had seen him around town.

He’d been found hanging from a branch, suspended by his tie fifteen feet above the ground, He’d been there a few days and was apparently starting to stink the place up. If some of the rumours that flew around the school were to be believed, then maggots had made a meal of the man’s softer tissue. According to the rumours his eye sockets and moth were full of them.

A grisly tale, even without the exaggeration, but what brought the story to the attention of the country was what wasn’t found.

Tracks.

Despite the soft ground of the forest floor, almost perpetually muddy around the late winter, early spring months, not a single one was ever found, either belonging to man himself, or to anyone else. The ground around the tree was entirely undisturbed. There weren’t even any marks on the tree to suggest someone had climbed up.

The suicide became a murder investigation, but additional evidence was never found and the story, and the investigation, were both quietly forgotten.

Except by the locals.

The rumours and legends surrounding the woods enjoyed a brief renaissance, which spread to the local papers, they printed several, fairly in depth, articles on other strange occurrences associated with the woods, some dating back to the 1700’s when the town was initially founded.

Jim had arrived in town just as all this was dying down and became quietly fascinated with the subject. Always a fan of the supernatural, he was delighted to find himself with a ghost story he could explore. He collected the articles from the newspapers held in the local library and did some extra digging of his own.

As the weeks passed and the research mounted, Jim became increasingly convinced there was something to the stories. His interest became a passion. He spent hours wandering through the woods looking for something, anything that would lend more weight to his theories. He spent several hours each day at the local library - heading straight there after school. Or staying on at school to use their computers to surf the web for every scrap of information he could find.

Dean and Brian noted the change in their friend’s behaviour, but he refused to tell them what he was up to. Not until he was ready.

Finally, after three months of research, Jim announced to his friends that the woods were the home of a Djinn, and he planned to summon it.

The reaction this prompted was wholly predictable and Jim was prepared for it. He waited patiently for Brian and Dean to stop laughing. When they did Jim went through his evidence in exhaustive detail.

They didn’t buy it first time, or the second, or even the third time.

It took several weeks for Jim to convince first Brian, and then Dean that attempting to summon a being no one believed in was worth a try. He went for their weak spots - telling them a Djinn was capable of granting wishes to those who summoned it. Brian could wish to be cool, and accepted by his peers. Something he’d secretly craved since he was 10 years old.

Dean was harder to convince, but under pressure from both Brian and Jim, and with the promise of not being fat anymore, he’d eventually folded. But Dean didn’t go down without a fight.

‘It’s all based on legends and rumours,’ he’d protested.

‘Every legend contains a grain of truth,’ countered Jim immediately.

‘But that truth might not be what you think it is,’ warned Dean, but the battle was over, and as usual Jim had won.

* * *

And so now they sat in a tiny clearing in the middle of the woods. Jim chanting, Dean and Brian filling some obscure role in the ritual and waiting. The minutes ticked by uneventfully - as Dean expected they would, and he found his attention drifting away from Brian and off into the forest.

The little pool of light generated by their electric lanterns was enough to illuminate the trees bordering directly onto the clearing, but nothing beyond - it almost appeared that the trees themselves were holding the darkness at bay, not the light.

As he watched, the void seemed to strain against the wooden cage, bowing in past the trees to invade their tiny, lighted haven. A shiver shot up his spine, but he knew it was his mind playing tricks on him. Blinking several times he suddenly realised the void was moving. Something twisted and writhed outside the wooden cage, straining against the bars.

The shiver returned with a vengeance as the temperature around him seemed to plummet. Holding his breath, he watched, transfixed by the darkness and what lay beyond as the tender fingers of fear wrapped themselves around his stomach and began to squeeze.

Tense moments ticked by until the first tendrils of mist reached from within the forest to roll across the clearing. Dean relaxed, releasing the held breath in a whoosh, forming a cloud of vapour in front of his face. The touch of fear receded as Dean realised he’d been letting his imagination get the better of him.

He turned his attention back to Jim, still sitting in a vague attempt at the lotus position in the centre of a pentagram constructed from twigs. And still chanting some mumbo-jumbo of supposed occult significance.

Suddenly Dean felt foolish. This was a complete waste of time and he should never have allowed himself to be talked into this, and it was getting cold. The chill of the night air had penetrated his clothes and reached his skin. If he sat here much longer it would extend its reach to his bones. He clambered decisively to his feet, and almost sat straight back down again as his legs refused to work correctly.

‘What the hell do you think you’re doing?’ demanded Brian in a hushed tone.

‘Going home,’ retorted Dean. ‘It’s nearly one in the morning, my mum is going to kill me.’

‘Sit down,’ hissed Brian. ‘We’re nearly finished.’

‘You’re going to have to finish without me,’ said Dean decisively. There was no way he was going to let himself be brow beaten into submission.

Jim opened his eyes and stopped chanting as his face twisted into a scowl. ‘Thanks a lot Dean,’ he snapped. ‘That’s the whole night wasted, and we were so close!’

‘My arse Jim, you’ve been at it for nearly an hour and where the hell is this magical being that’ll grant our every wish? I don’t know why I let you guys talk me into this crap in the first place.’

‘It’s not crap!’ shouted Jim defensively. He struggled to his feet, like Dean he had some difficulty making his legs do what he wanted. ‘The legends date all the way back to Roman times, the locals…’

‘Enough Jim! You’ve told me all this already. I don’t care any more. I just want to go home and go to bed and forget all about the legends, and forget all about tonight. So can we please, just get the hell out of here?’

‘You’re being a dick,’ snorted Brian.

‘Up yours, four eyes,’ shot back Dean automatically.

‘Fat arse,’ countered Brian as he rose to his feet.

‘Virgin!’

Jim sagged as his two friends continued trading insults. Their bickering marked the end of any endeavour. Jimmy knew the routine all to well - it would continue for several minutes until it culminated in a sullen silence, which neither of them would break without an apology from the other. There was only one thing left to do. ‘Enough!’ he shouted, and was rewarded by the cessation of hostilities. ‘Let’s gather up the stuff and get out of here.’

‘Jim!’ protested Brain.

‘Let’s just do it,’ said Jim, suddenly feeling old and tired. ‘There’s nothing else we can do tonight. We’ll have to try another time.’

‘Without him,’ said Brian, firing a dark glance at Dean.

‘Suits me,’ retorted Dean.

‘Don’t start,’ warned Jimmy taking a few menacing steps towards them, just to force the point home.

His two friends took an involuntary step backwards and then froze as their feet seemed to become anchored to the ground, an odd expression marching across their faces - disbelief? Jim couldn’t tell, it didn’t last long enough for him to get a proper look, but what followed was plain enough. Fear.

Dean whimpered quietly as Jim regarded them quizzically. Their reactions didn’t make any sense until he realised they weren’t looking at him, they were looking over his left shoulder at something behind him.

It was at that moment Jim became aware of the smell. A dank, musty odour, with overtones of rotting meat mingled with sweat. It was how he imagined the man strung up by his tie must have stunk when he was found. He inhaled sharply as fear gripped his stomach and chest, sucking in more of the stench, which seemed to catch at the back of his throat.

As his heart beat louder and faster, reverberating in his ears, Jim realised he could feel it now. Standing only a few paces behind, just watching and waiting. It had caught his two companions, snared them the way a rabbit is caught by the beams of oncoming headlights, and now it was waiting to see what Jim would do.

Dread washed over him, amplified by the adrenaline pumping through his system, and bringing with it a taste of bile. Jim realised what was going to come next, but he hesitated. These were the quiet moments between sanity and chaos, the calm before the storm. Looking behind him would end that - suddenly each second between now and then seemed priceless.

A low guttural moan escaped Brian’s his lips as from behind Jim, a twig snapped. In the silence it sounded like a gunshot, but the implications of this sound were far worse. It had taken a step forward.

He could feel a chill on the back of his neck and he knew, without doubt, he was feeling its breath, if he reached behind him he knew he would be able to touch it. In his mind he could see it reaching out for him, it’s presence becoming more intense by the moment as that hand closed on Jim’s shoulder. Suddenly he couldn’t bear it any longer.

The moment was over, the storm was here and Jim turned around to face the reality of the legend’s grain of truth.

©2002