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 that was possible in their day, leaving a crude map, a fragmentary journal, and many unanswered questions.
From one small, semi-cryptic passage in Huxley’s research journal, which was now in the possession of Old Stone Hollow, it was clear that he had kept a second record, a private journal in which he had recorded aspects of his research, observations and discoveries that he had not wished, or had been too ashamed, to share with the world.
No trace of that second diary had yet been found.
Ryhope Wood was primary woodland. It had been untouched, essentially unmanaged, for eight thousand or so years, a tiny stand of primordial wildwood that Huxley believed had survived by defending itself against the destructive behaviour—slashing and burning in Neolithic times—of the human population that was settling around it. Over the millennia, the concentration of time and spirit in the wood had made it into something more than just trees and bracken, dog-fern and bramble. It had become an entity, not conscious, not watching, but somehow sentient and to an astonishing degree timeless. It communicated not through the normal channels of plant and animal life—the transpiration, the pheromones, the ecological balance of its predators, prey species, and decomposers—but through the eyes and ears and mouths of mythagos, and it was these spirit forms, solid and substantial, though destined for short lives, that gave time, perspective, and fascination to the wildwood.
The word mythago—Lacan pronounced it with the stress on the “a”—was Huxley’s coinage, and derived from “myth imago” or image of a myth. From the moment of first human consciousness, Huxley had believed, the need for heroes, heroic acts, and a belief in the mythological attributes of nature had been the empowering force behind human psychological development. Archetypes common to all human life across the globe had arisen spontaneously in the collective unconscious and each culture had fleshed them out with human or animal attributes appropriate to their own environment and social situations. These characters, often based on historical figures, more often on imaginary but needed figures, had become an integral part of the human mind, existing just across the mysterious boundary between full awareness and that state of acknowledgement of an underconscious process at work—dreams, rituals, visions—that might be called intuition and insight.
Listening to Lacan talk, Richard experienced no real difficulty in accepting either the existence of ancient wildwood, or the persistence of archaic memory. But he baulked for a while at Lacan’s further explanation, that the combination of the two primitive states, powered by the dual tensions between the right and left hemispheres of the human brain, and the aura that existed within unspoiled organic structures, as represented by Ryhope Wood, could produce the solid forms of those mythagos. They condensed out of nowhere, to become real, to become aware, to carry language and purpose, to live a brief life in unnatural conditions before dying and soaking back into the vortices of the forest.
All mythagos were shaped by the moods and needs of the creator. A gentle Hercules would die quickly. A compulsively brutal version would forget the code of honour of the Mycenaean Greeks and become a killing machine. It was a complex creative process that begged caution, but told much about the existence of a realm of “sylvan” time, as well as being able to answer many questions about the nature of the human mind in the past.
* * *
At the edge of his vision, the woodland seemed restless. Richard became aware of occasional movement and it broke his silent contemplation. Lacan had gone back into the house. Richard found him in the room behind the old french windows, checking the tracery of fine wires, polishing the unobtrusive lenses of the cameras positioned around the walls.
“This was Huxley’s study,” Lacan said. He slapped the dark tree that grew from the floor, then reached through the ground ivy to take up a decayed book, its spine too faded to read the title. Tossing it aside, Lacan went on, “It’s a room that is visited often, but by a ghost we can never photograph. As you can imagine, this house is a powerful focus for activity. The echoes of the family that lived here are still in the wood, and they come back to touch the place before dying. We can glimpse them occasionally.” Lacan’s eyes shone as he looked around, balanced precariously on a sagging floor beam. “Such an amazing amount of magic starts with this room, Richard. It has been Lytton’s obsession for many years, now. For myself…” He caught his words and glanced at Richard defensively. “Well, never mind for myself. We all have our dreams.”
He escorted Richard outside again. “We’ve excavated the place. You see? We’ve opened it up like an archaeological site.”
Now that it was explained to him, Richard could see how the cleared spaces around the house formed a pattern. Lacan and his team had cleared “trenches” through the woods. The Frenchman pointed down one narrow pathway. “Through there is a stream. Huxley refers to it in his journal. It was his own route into Ryhope. In his own time the stream was at the woodland’s edge, with a field between here and the house. From his study, he could watch the big trees at that edge, and he saw many creatures and other mythic entities. Then, at some time in the last twenty years the whole wood grew out. At an astonishing rate! It consumed everything in its immediate vicinity, including the Lodge. It is as if it needed to take Huxley into its heart, to eat him.”
“Didn’t the owners of the Manor think that strange?”
Lacan grunted as he swung his leather pa
ck onto his shoulders. “Now there’s a question. And a good one. The Ryhopes know more than they pretend, but they say nothing, give nothing away. It’s very peculiar.”
He walked down the wide path away from the Lodge, and then entered the wood itself. Richard followed at a distance. As Lacan was consumed by shadows he called, “Come on. Let’s get to my camp. It isn’t far, by an old stone shrine. You need to rest, to acclimatise.”
“I’m fine,” Richard said. “I’m not tired at all.”
“You need to rest. You’ll need to adjust. Your eyes especially…”
“My eyes?” Richard queried. He strode quickly and nervously after the other man, into the gloom. “Adjust to what?”
There was silence for a moment and Richard stopped, staring into a well of light that marked a clearing in the trees. Lacan was a tall silhouette in the clearing, watching him. He stepped back to Richard, brushing aside the foliage. Green eyes gleamed intensely as he breathed softly and smiled. “To sights they have never seen before. To a light that illuminates from within.”
And adding only, “Be patient. Write things down. It’s cathartic!” he set off across the glade again.
Lacan’s camp was a tiny clearing in a stand of beech, from the centre of which grew a grey monolith, deeply carved with the crude shape of a horse. Tatters of leather still draped over the stone, tied in places around the yellowed, weathered fragments of bones. This, then, was the horse-shrine.
The light was quite intensely green. Lacan’s shelter was an A- frame made of poles stacked against the low bough of a large tree, a perfect roof-beam. The poles were tied with creeper, filled in with turves, and covered finally by strips of black tarpaulin. Inside this cramped hut were two sleeping bags, skins, bones, brittle wooden weapons, tins of food, empty wine bottles, a clutter of machine bits, and a small camping gaz.
“Not much, eh? But very comfortable when all there is to do is sleep. And this is your sleeping place, my friend. I will be leaving you for a while. But don’t worry. We know you’re here, now. We’ll keep an eye on you.”
Lacan vanished for a while, returning with a plump, quiescent wood pigeon. He seemed triumphant. “There are traps all around,” he said. “Before I leave I’ll show you. This beauty was almost waiting for me. What do you say, Richard?” He held the bird by its breast, allowing the flapping of wings. “Shall we honour that beauty and let her go? Or shall we eat her?” He looked anxiously at Richard. “You must choose. You are the guest in my house, such as it is.”
Richard stared at the bird, so calm in the big man’s hands. “Let her go. I have plenty of dried food. I can last without a killing.”
The Frenchman shook his head, sighed with mock displeasure, then laughed and turned away. “You are the sort of house-guest I usually cannot stand—the one that gives the wrong answer!” His right hand twisted suddenly. “But on this occasion I forgive you.”
Grinning broadly, he tossed the bloody head into the undergrowth and began to pluck the pigeon. “Now you must make a fire. Wood smoke is better for flavour than butane. You do know how to make a fire, do you my friend? You just put two sticks together and rub—”
“I know how to make a fire,” Richard agreed, not knowing whether to smile or frown at the man’s performance.
* * *
After they had eaten, Lacan took Richard through the tight woodland, showing where he had set his traps, three in all, designed to snare rabbits and small birds. “We all become a little prehistoric in Ryhope Wood,” he said.
“Surely not…”
“But fresh meat is so much better than our supplies. If you see equipment, you mustn’t touch. It’s very delicate.”
“I shan’t.”
“You will need two days here, two full days. To acclimatise. So I shall leave at dawn and be back for you at dusk, day after tomorrow.”
Back at the clearing, Lacan used Richard’s tarpaulin to make a second crude shelter, long enough to cover his tall body, all but the booted feet. Richard was to have the comfort of the A-frame. He huddled below the turves, feeling the moisture rise through the earth, feeling chilled, feeling as if he was alone and exposed at night. The fire burned vigorously, and Lacan idly kicked wood from a small pile with his left foot as he relaxed himself below the weatherproofing.
“You may have disturbing dreams. It’s how it begins.”
“Thanks.”
He stayed awake for an hour, then began to doze, still crouching. Movements in the woods alarmed him at some time after that, and he eased out of the shelter and stood, by the glowing embers, watching the pitch darkness around, and the glimmer of stars visible through foliage and cloud above. Whatever was in the woods was moving very deliberately. He hissed Lacan’s name and the Frenchman stirred, muttered irritably in his own language. “Go to sleep.”
“There’s something in the trees.”
“Of course there is. Go to sleep.”
“We’ve got company.”
“Then get down or it might shoot an arrow at you.”
Richard dropped to a crouch, alarmed by the words and startled by the sudden swift movement of a figure around the edge of the clearing. His eyes, adjusting slightly to the darkness, were able to discern the full form of the watcher. A moment’s gleam of eyes, the quiet withdrawal into cover, the surreptitious movement away from the glade. Richard reached for more wood and piled it on the dying fire. Crackling, smoking, the flames took again and Lacan groaned, kicking feebly as if to smother the noise and light with earth that his boot could not find.
“Go to sleep.”
* * *
In the event, Richard didn’t dream at all. He woke at dawn to find Lacan brewing coffee and cutting thick slices from a hard loaf. “But don’t worry,” Lacan said, half-apologetically. “I have something very special to go with it…”
This turned out to be an over-ripe brie. “Some home comforts are always necessary. But my supplies are low. Thankfully, English cheeses can sometimes be quite good.”
So they breakfasted, and Lacan produced water for washing and paper for comfort. Again he said, almost wistfully, “I’ve been too long here. I’m going bosky. I shall have to get out for a while, go and experience some of your exciting English night-life.”
“Not in Shadoxhurst you won’t.”
Again, the instruction to remain within the glade. “It will be very boring. Think of it as a test of character.”
“I brought a book. Helen suggested I did.”
“Good. I repeat, if you wander away from the glade you are in trouble. You’ll get lost.”
“In Ryhope Wood? Hardly…”
“In Ryhope Wood! Definitely! Do this our way, Richard, or I’ll take you back home now. This is no joke.”
“I don’t intend to joke. And I’ll stay here. And see you—tomorrow evening?”
“I’ll bring some wine,” Lacan said with a friendly pat on Richard’s shoulder. “I’d brought some before you came, to greet you in case you made the right decision, but someone must have drunk it while I was sleeping.”
And with that he shrugged on his pack, picked up his staff, and walked deeper into Ryhope Wood, his last words a grunted “goodbye,” the sound of his movement through the forest loud for a few minutes then suddenly gone.
Ghosts
Alone in the horse shrine, sitting in a light-well close to the huge, carved monolith with its equine image, Richard began to realise how wrong it felt to be here. He could hear nothing but the breeze and the birds. Surrounding him was a claustrophobic darkness, through which the thin shafts of sunlight illuminated only colour and shape, without perspective, without definition. He felt trapped. By late afternoon he was panicking, stumbling his way back along the path which he felt sure was the track he and Lacan had followed the day before.
He walked for over an hour. This was not possible! The trees crowded in on him, the atmosphere heavy and resinous. He veered off the path and tangled with sharp thorns. He felt stifled and sick, increas
ingly enclosed, increasingly afraid. He called out, then screamed out, and the woodland shook to the startled flight of birds, then was abruptly silent.
Again he shouted for Lacan, then ran on, ducking and weaving, trying to keep as straight as he could, desperate to find the ruins of Oak Lodge and the way out of this forest prison.
He came back to the horse-shrine, emerging at a run into the clearing, thinking it to be the garden of the Lodge, then stopped in shock as he saw the carved monolith, the A-frame, and the drifting ash from the dead fire.
From the corner of his eye he saw someone, or something, move fleetly through the undergrowth. Startled and frightened, he swung round, but the wood was still. He could hear nothing. It happened again, then: a ripple of activity to his right, vanishing as soon as he glanced that way.
“Who’s there?” he called nervously. There was nothing but silence and dappled light.
This was the beginning of his waking dreams.
He built the fire again and made himself a pan of stew from Lacan’s supplies. He regretted for the first time that Lacan had guzzled the entire stock of wine. He made himself tea instead. He started to feel feverish, his vision blurring, his head beginning to buzz. When he closed his eyes he felt better, but whenever he stared into space the swirl of activity and colourful movement dominated his peripheral vision. It was not nightmarish, nor frightening, but alarming in the extreme. Although he had never taken LSD, he knew of the effect of hallucinogens, and imagined that this was how it must be experienced. Had he unwittingly eaten magic mushrooms? The thought of last night’s meal of wood pigeon came to mind. Had Lacan, in his culinarily unpredictable French way, stuffed the bird with the fungal contents of its own crop? Feeling sick at the thought, Richard reminded himself that hallucinogenic drugs took effect quickly, not twenty-four hours later.
He could not resolve the images. It was as if he saw the activity of people and creatures in a thin strip of highly distorting glass at the corner of his eye. The more he concentrated the more he realised that these were indeed human figures, shifting and blurring as if in a heat haze. Sometimes they came close and seemed to be peering through the glass at him. Sometimes they moved too fast. Faces passed his awareness in an instant: here a bearded man leading two enormous horses, there a youth in long, blue breeches, singing in a wild way; then a cloaked woman, her briefly-sensed glance, as she hesitated before hurrying on, one of sensuousness and curiosity.