Doctor Who_ Psi-Ence Fiction - Chris Boucher [34]
Even the unfortunate business - what four, maybe five years ago now -
when that corpse was found hadn't frightened him off. A few of the old people who remembered Norswood's reputation had nodded knowingly and muttered about the evil spirit of the place and suchlike rubbish. Frank prided himself on his reasoning though, and once the police were finished -
and were satisfied he couldn't help them -he had gone back to exercising his dog along the ancient, root-rutted paths. The only thing that ever unsettled him, and then only occasionally, was the animal's routine reaction to the place.
His old bitch was plainly frightened and that bothered him sometimes. He couldn't work out why she was frightened. She couldn't know Norswood was supposed to be haunted. She wasn't like those daft old buggers: she couldn't be telling herself ghost stories and scaring herself stupid. She couldn't be affected by the wood's reputation. He could be affected by it of course, and he had considered the possibility that she was responding to some subtle sign of fear in him. It seemed a bit far-fetched, he thought.
Dogs were not that sensitive. He was not that afraid. He was not afraid at all, in fact. Superstition did say that dogs could see things people couldn't see: ghosts and the like. He knew it was nonsense. But then why the hell was she so afraid of the wood? Sometimes that did bother him a bit.
Sometimes it bothered him more than a bit. This was one of those times as it happened.
It must have been the particular way the dog had been shivering that put the thought into his mind. Either that or he had mistaken the time, or it had taken them longer to get here than it normally did. Something. The thing of it was, the wood was somehow darker than he expected. It shouldn't have been this dark this early. He checked his watch. No it definitely shouldn't be this dark. Maybe the weather was changing. Maybe there was a storm coming. The lunchtime forecast hadn't said anything about it, but that didn't mean much. If it was always 100 per cent accurate it wouldn't be called a forecast, after all. He held his watch to his ear just to make sure it was going. It was beating solidly, and rather slower than his heart he suspected.
He took a couple of deep breaths to steady himself.
Typically the dog, having managed to make him a bit uncomfortable -he still didn't want to think of himself as nervous - typically, the old bitch was dawdling now. Pulling against the lead, she was insisting on smelling every last bush and tussock. It wasn't that she was peeing, she was just sniffing.
She seemed to have forgotten completely her initial reluctance to cross the boundary of the wood. She wasn't frightened any longer.
He resisted the impulse to haul her along and, as he waited for her to finish snuffling at what was probably a chunk of stale fox crap, he peered about him. Was it his imagination or was it getting darker as he looked? His eyesight wasn't what it had been but he didn't need pin-sharp distance vision to distinguish dark and light. He rubbed his eyes. It was getting darker. And colder. He shuddered involuntarily. Was it really getting colder or was he imagining things? Mustn't get hysterical here he told himself: that way lies madness and thingy
'Come on girl,' he urged the dog. 'We haven't got all day. Or any of the day by the look of it.' The dog ignored him. No change there then, he thought ruefully. 'Come on, girl,' he entreated. 'We're supposed to be walking. This is supposed to be a walk. Can we walk please?' He tugged on the lead.
The dog tugged back. Frank gave in to his impulse to haul her along. 'You had your chance,' he muttered as she straightened her legs and dug her feet in. 'You don't want to walk, you can slide.'
The dog continued to struggle against the lead as he dragged her along the path and Frank felt like a bully and a fool, but he kept on going because suddenly he wanted very much to get out of the wood. Unexpectedly another feeling had crept up and