Читать книгу In the Night Wood - Dale Bailey - Страница 27

Charles knew about horrible things. Charles knew about ghosts.

On the way back to Hollow House, he parked in the turnout by the vine-shrouded pillars, the Eorl Wood looming up around him. He sat there, the car idling, his hands clenched on the wheel. Then he picked up the photograph and tore back the butcher paper Mould had wrapped it in.

Lissa gazed up at him, once again imprisoned behind her wall of glass. Only she wasn’t, was she? She’d escaped, after all. He’d seen her at the Yarrow Historical Society. He’d seen her in the Ripon Gazette. As if to confirm it, Charles reached for the newspaper in the passenger seat and unfolded it on his lap. He placed the photo beside it: Lissa and this other lost child, Mary Babbing. Who could say what horrors she might have endured?

A FAMILY’S AGONY, the headline said.

He leaned his head against the headrest, closed his eyes.

When he opened them again, he saw a figure in the Eorl Wood.

It gazed back at him, a green shadow in a green shade. Like a man, but not a man, antlered like a stag in rut. Cernunnos, he thought. The Horned God or King. The avatar of the Night Wood. He stared, breath frozen in his lungs. He blinked. The figure was gone, not there. It had never been there at all.

Charles shook his head. He put the photograph on the seat beside him, crumpled the newspaper into the space underneath, and eased the car into gear. He accelerated between the pillars and sped into the darkness underneath the trees.