The Path Through the Wood Chapter 1 (Version 1)

Chapter 1

From above, the sea would be all there is, a realm of grey rushing in from where the water is thicker, from where the horizons are flecked with ice. Miles away to the North perhaps, beyond the natural curvature of the Earth, there may exist a definable edge, or an island, desolate and terrible, composed of volcanic rock, spewed from the belly of the Earth millennia ago and thrashed by a resentful sea ever since. From that high vantage point, from that bird's eye perhaps, or from the cockpit of that aircraft, all hints of civilisation would seem as remote as the islands that the sea inevitably retained and the horizon inevitably concealed. I would appear as a bead of water choosing a path down a window, or a glint of light travelling along the edge of a blade.
These are the things that I find myself pondering as I leave the harbour and head out into open ocean, as if those things that are as unattainable as galaxies in the night are somehow brought into being by the simple act of a thought, of a wish thrown against the face of all probability.
There is something good about being out on the sea at such an early hour. Even if there were still people to wake, they would not be waking yet. At six in the morning, I would still be alone with the world.
Out here, with the town wrapped in preternatural darkness, with the hills beyond, black and starkly impressive in the gathering dawn, I can pretend that everything is still the same, that nothing fundamental has changed, that the world continues much as before.
The sky is pink, the sun has yet to fully rise and a calm has settled upon everything. Even now, filaments of daylight are only just beginning to spread over the sea to illuminate the underside of the clouds, catch the crests of each wave to give the impression that there is treasure there. Out over endless miles of ocean, the clouds take on hints of mountain ranges, far off countries, frontier islands.
I draw my coat tighter as I row. Sometime during the night the storms that have kept me ashore for days have cleared. The temperature has dropped from just above freezing to just a few degrees below and a frost has enveloped the coast, dusting everything in fine threads of ice. Even with thick gloves, my hands feel like tiny ice sculptures, perfectly formed yet not truly a part of me, alien and unfamiliar. The chill runs deep within the bones, within the veins and arteries. I imagine my blood, thick as engine oil, slowed into lethargy, working against my heart like treacle.
I strain against the oars. The little rowing boat bobs like a bottle top, responds with creaks and groans of its own, a lexicon of ancient timbers that suffer like dinosaur bones and threaten to pitch me into the sea. A rag-tag gang of gulls accompanies me, raucous and unruly like a gang of children left without supervision. They have learned to follow my boat. They know that once I am finished out here there will be scraps for the taking.
The ocean flows like oil, sensuous and undulating, alive with motion, like bodies moving beneath sheets. I feel it beneath me like a lover, a supple writhing and turning to my presence. There is no anger in the ocean today.
Over the last two years and despite my best efforts to the contrary, my unequivocal need for solitude has become something important to me. It is perhaps the only thing that I have come to rely on with any great precision in this world and the desire for it has played a bigger part in the choices I have made than I am readily prepared to admit. It is perhaps also deeply ironic that amidst so much death, so much faceless tragedy, living alone at the Manor has made me feel more alive than ever.
In the early days it wasn’t so simple. I would listen to the short-wave radio just to hear human voices, just to reassure myself that there were other people out there. These days the radio has become more a part of a routine, something that has become ingrained like the grease in the cracks of my kitchen table or the dirt beneath my fingernails. There is not much to listen to. Only the emergency channels remain, the impenetrable mantra of the foreign stations. There are fewer now than there were in the early months. During that first winter, when the temperatures dropped so suddenly, a great many failed. The breakdown of power is so widespread that I imagine few settlements could spare the fuel for a generator to run a radio.
Despite this gradually creeping silence I do not miss them. I have come to embrace seclusion in the way that other people embrace the need for air. It is my life-blood. This is why I have never been frightened in being alone with the ocean. Since leaving London, something has shifted inside of me, tide-like.
My proximity to water has become something akin to magnetism, something in the bones that reminds me of toothache, a nagging space that refuses to be filled, like the swim bladder of a fish perhaps, that part that keeps me upright. Or a compass that no longer reads True North but instead only points me in the direction of the things I am deficient in. It is as though a part of me, primitive and primordial, never really left the ocean at all, and still feels the pull of every tide.
I reach the first of the orange marker buoys and haul the pots up from the seabed. As the first one breaks the surface I see the little wicker basket full of crabs, alien things, suits of ancient armour, a congregation of Samurais with all of their elegance and honour intact.
Next come the squid lines, with their rows of barbs. There are three this morning, each over a foot long, mottled brown and orange, slippery, pulsating things, all lines running into lines and smudges of weed green and salt white. They writhe desperately about the boat, slick with ink, wrapping their languorous tentacles around my boot. There is little point in prolonging their agony. This has to be done. They have to die in order so that I may live. I take my paring knife and pierce each one through the brain. They flop lifelessly into the cooler box.
My meal for the day caught, I re-bait the pots and drop them back into the gloom. Then, scattering any discarded bait for the gulls, I turn the boat around and begin the return journey back to harbour.

A little way along the coast is a pier, a monument to the sea, not quite part of the land yet not entirely belonging to the ocean. In the grand tradition of municipal architecture, everything is made entirely from concrete. That way it can withstand the English Winter, stand up to the worst of what the sea has to throw at it. It is a worn out thing, suffering the cumulative weight of countless tides, home only to immense quantities of air and the dusty outlines of summer.
At the end is an old fairground, a loose collection of locked stalls and tarpaulin covered rides, presided over by a big wheel, raised against the ocean like an ancient monument. The wind comes in off the sea like a rebellion, sets amongst the broken frame like a pack of hounds.
From here it is possible to take in the broad sweep of the bay, from the hills in the West, where the pier juts uncomfortably into the sea like an elbow in the ribs, to the promenade in the East, where the rocks abruptly give way to the jumble of concrete sea defences that resemble caltrops or a giant game of Nine Pins. It looks very much as though the sea has washed up a lost cargo of tank traps, smashing them on the beach and inadvertently fortifying this stretch of the shore.
Sometimes I am surprised at how little everything has changed, and yet the signs are there. The sea-front promenade is quiet, lined with parked cars. Only a closer inspection would reveal every tyre to be flat, every fuel cap prized open.
I stopped short of siphoning petrol from every car in town. The job was too large for one person alone and aside from the fact that it should be fine for another year or so, provided the tanks remain waterproof, storing too much fuel in one place makes me nervous. It makes me the target of unwanted attention and at the very least, an accident waiting to happen.
In the streets behind the promenade and high into the hills, the houses remain dark, curtains closed. That is something that continues to affect me, the drawing of curtains as a prelude to death, as if privacy was the most important thing in those last hours.
I turn my back on the town, concentrate on the sea instead. It sighs relentlessly, the sound of an expectant crowd, the protracted breathing in and out of a sleeping giant.
There are ships out there, the rusting remains of cargo hulks, container vessels, abandoned by their crews in the early days when they realised that even isolation at sea would not save them. They list precariously now and I have been watching the state of their collapse with gathering interest. They are a useful gauge as to the state of things. From here they look like castles or sea-forts, but they will not last another winter.
I shield my eyes against the glare, against the flashes of light out at sea where the waves break.
Up the shore the shadow of a cloud caresses the beach, travelling like something large and unseen until it reaches the water and slips out over the waves. There must be others out there. I think of Norway, the impossible madness of its coastline, the multitude of islands and inlets, easy to isolate, easy to escape to.
Towards the water line, the beach is studded with jellyfish. There are thousands of them, sand coated and quivering in the wind, decorating the high tide mark like a menagerie of blancmanges. The gulls are feasting there, attracted by the prospect of an easy meal, flighty and nervous in the surf.
Something shimmers and it is as if the perspective of the beach has changed. There is something else, deposited on the sand like a beached seal, an object, a piece of driftwood perhaps or part of an old barrel. The waves are breaking on the rocks that surround the bandstand. The object lies just before them, darkened by the water. The sea performs a slow reveal and my breath freezes in my throat. There is a person out there, a body.

It takes me less than a minute to get out onto the rocks, although it feels like an eternity. The waves splash and surge, toy with the woman laying there, animating her limbs in a macabre imitation of life. She is alive, just barely alive.
I kneel down in the spit and sand beside her, watch her chest rise and fall ever so slightly. She whispers something but I can’t hear what she says. Her grip on life is tenuous, perhaps too tenuous, but what is life without a challenge?

When I get her back to the Manor, I carry her upstairs and place her on my bed. She is light for her size, frail and impossibly thin. I am shocked at how pale she is. Her skin is like alabaster or goose shell, paler than both of those things. It has obviously been several days since she has eaten a descent meal.
Her hair is perhaps shoulder length, held in place by a clip that sports a single seashell, revealing cheekbones that remind me of something sleek and fast.
She wears a thick parka, soaked through and smeared with mud. The pockets are full of sand and there is weed around her neck. She mutters something unintelligible as I ease it from her, revealing bruises that cover her arms and torso. There is blood on her vest from a torn lip. She has obviously suffering some kind of a beating. The sea or perhaps something closer to human has taken her shoes to stop her from running. Her feet sport cuts and bruises where she has tried to anyway. The clear imprint of a rope winds sinuously around her wrists like a memory. I dread to think of what other scars she conceals, physical or mentally.
I take blankets and duvets from the cupboards in the hall, wrap her in them until she is swaddled like a baby. She shivers as I move a lock of hair from her forehead.
I am actually surprised that she didn’t drown. The sea is more than capable of taking a life. Nothing can survive unprotected in these waters for very long, not with temperatures as low as they are. I remember the basics of what it is capable of.
In water that is cooler than six degrees centigrade the human body begins to shut down with increasing rapidity. The extremities go first, the fingers, the toes, then the limbs. A victim feels only a rising numbness, actually begins to feel warm as the blood rushes to the core of the body in an attempt to stave off hypothermia. Only a profound and all consuming urge to sleep comes next.
These are the facts that I cling on to.
There is little else I can do aside from make her comfortable. If she lives through the night I will count it as a minor miracle. It would be a shame for another needless death to occur, a shame for another stranger to die.

I tend to her for the rest of the day, hamstrung by inability. At some point, hypothermia gives way to fever. I manage to get her to take in water and a little chicken broth but it comes back up again. What I need are medicines, antibiotics, painkillers and sedatives, but I used the last of those months ago and the stores that I have been using in town are all but exhausted.
I do what I can do. I carry logs in from outside and light the fire in the bedroom, just enough to keep her warm. Part of the reason I chose such a large house was for the fireplaces in every bedroom.
“Mother.” She whimpers when I mop her brow and the word strikes a hammer blow to my heart, leaves its imprint there like a hot brand or a heavy boot, a reminder of something else I will never enjoy. She slips deliriously in and out of consciousness, muttering things to herself that, half heard, make no sense.
“Shh,” I whisper, “Rest.”
Presently, she sleeps but it is a fitful sleep, full of murmurings and misgivings, the cat-like noises of an animal in pain.

Sometimes I suffer the illusion that I need to learn every little piece of information about a subject in order to fully understand it, in order to become a fully rounded human being. A form of craziness in the face of the unachievable takes hold of me.
When I was young, my father demonstrated to me the principle behind the Native American smoke signal. We made a bonfire, piled it high with damp leaves and kippered ourselves with thick, white, autumn smoke. I memorised each message.
The craziness speaks to me now. It tells me that I must know who the woman upstairs is and why she ended up half drowned, how she came to be washed up on the beach.
In the kitchen I go through her belongings, her clothes, her coat. There is no shame to what I am doing, no impropriety, just a simple investigation of the facts. I need to know who she is. There are a great many things to be uncertain of and if I am being perfectly honest, I am simply no longer sure of what human contact means to me. If I can grasp some form of meaning amongst this girl’s accoutrements, then so much the better.
I take her coat and turn out the pockets. A single pebble clatters onto the kitchen table, large and smooth, eroded by the action of countless tides. It smells of the sea in the way that a pinecone continues to hold hints and allegations of the forest long after it is removed. It is shot through with a bright seam of quartz. I touch it gently with my tongue, taste the mineral flavour of the ocean. Then I place it in my pocket. It will be a treasure, a talisman, something to savour.
On the back of the coat I notice a small mark where a hole has been opened and re-sown. There is something inside, an object, hidden between the outer layers and the lining. I take my knife and carefully make a slit along the seam. Inside the tiny opening I can see a piece of string. I reach inside, reel it in. There is a weight like a plumb line attached to the other end, a small tobacco tin, dented and hopelessly rusted. Flecks of yellow paint remain, an abstract portion of a red logo, a red lion and a ship. When I turn it over, a blind jumble of objects move around inside, a feathery sensation like the coiled potential of clock springs. I try to open it but the lid is damp and rusted tight. I think of the little keepsakes that I carry with me, items from my parents’ jewellery box, the little photo of my brother in its tiny plastic wallet.
It takes me half an hour to get it open, half an hour of working at it with a kitchen knife until I have chipped away the rust. In the end it pops like a nut. Its contents only mystify further.
First there is an expensive looking compass, made of metal and glass. The needle sways as I stare at it, eventually settling on what it assumes to be North. Beneath this is a small key, taped to the bottom of the tin with a piece of black tape that has become so sticky with age that it resembles a piece of liquorice on a hot day. It is made of brass with a red plastic handle, moulded into the form of a company crest. The number ‘4’ has been heat stamped into the plastic, along with the words ‘Coastal Studios’.
Wedged in tightly next to key is a tiny, coiled spring, perfectly formed, a matte black golden spiral coated in a thin membrane of oil. It quivers when I pick it up, impossibly light. It has been included simply to hold the last object in place, to stop it rattling around. This last object is something I recognise, an old fashioned driver’s license, out of date and sporting the photograph of a smiling, well fed looking, young woman who in a former life could perhaps have borne more than a passing resemblance to the woman upstairs. I read her name: Catherine, twenty-nine, unmarried.

At four o’clock the birds begin coming in from the sea, silent, graceful, like formations of bombers, arcing high over the town, heading for somewhere inland, following the sun perhaps.
There is a storm coming. I have been watching the horizon all afternoon, the gathering of clouds, the slow but progressive cluttering of the far distance.
There was a point, not a few years ago, when I would have sworn that a horizon was all I needed. It was what I was here for. The horizon was almost never seen in the city. That was one justification I suppose. London was too close, too immediate. It intruded upon my personal space. This is what I have been telling myself, that the horizon is something that people either forgot or took for granted, like perhaps the taste of descent tap water or even a true silence when the absence of all noise became a just above audible presence in itself.
When I settled at the manor I closed down the top two floors, decided to use only the second floor as my living space, an easily defendable location, easily overlooked by anyone finding their way inside. The five bedrooms on that floor provided more than a sizeable apartment, freeing up the ground floor for storage, for spaces given over to caches of food, tools and farming equipment.
While Catherine sleeps, I light a candle lamp and make my way up to the top-floor. I have the use of battery-powered torches, gas hurricane lamps, but their permanence is temporary at best. Too soon they flicker and allow the darkness back in. This is why I have been hoarding batteries, squirreling them away like nuts in winter. Already they are becoming hard to find. I have exhausted the obvious sources in town. Soon I will have to enter the houses of the dead, confront them in their beds, rifle through their ossified possessions like some sort of cheap grave robber.
That is why I taught myself how to make candles, by dipping lengths of string, repeatedly into a mixture of tallow and animal fat. The results smell awful, but a room lit by candle is infinitely preferable to darkness.
The flame makes shadows of the chandeliers, throws vast spider webs across the ceiling, turns the dust-sheeted furniture into the mourners at a funeral. Already, a thin coating has covered everything, leached right out of the air by the lack of human activity. Sometimes I fancy that I can hear music coming from up here, muffled by layers of plaster, lost within the walls like the biological rumblings of some giant sleeping beast. I tell myself not to create terrors where there are none to be found. The world contains enough ghosts without my adding to them.

I threw out the personal effects of those who had lived here before. I didn’t know who they were and neither did I want to. In that way, it was easy to bury them in the woods at the back of the house, easy emotionally, but back-breaking physically. A six-foot deep hole is deeper than one can possibly imagine when dug by hand. In the end I settled for four feet and buried them in the same grave, using a layer of stones from the beach to deter predators. I didn’t say any words for them. I doubt they would have heard. Those who are dead know only what it is to be dead. Instead, I made a silent vow not to bury anyone else, to ignore the dead as best I could and get on with the business of living.

At the end of the hall is a large drawing room. The shutters allow only the barest slivers of daylight to enter, casting the room in shadow. Dust dances, pirouetting like protozoa, like satellites following their orbits.
I stand at the window there and admire the sea.
November darkness rises up from the horizon, wraps the dunes in an abundance of grey, turns the house into a husk. The coming night is a tangible thing. I could reach out and touch it, run my hands through its velvet folds.
I have never been afraid of the dark. As a child I was scared of being shut in during the hours of darkness but I was never afraid of the dark itself. For me open darkness has never hidden a multitude of unknowns but rather presented a legion of what-ifs. There is something about open darkness that I find quite exhilarating. Now however, something about the night has changed. There is a quality to it that I cannot put my finger on. Something from outside has intruded upon this space.
The rain comes down hard and makes me shiver despite the heavy parka that I wear indoors. There is a thickness to it this evening, something syrupy, the definite mass of ice perhaps.
I am oblivious to its abrasiveness. There is nothing out there that I do not already know, nothing that I have not already seen the pattern of.
Beyond the sea defences and the trees that surround this place on three sides like a stockade, I can see the ocean, a bottle green riot of movement. The marshes remain out of view although I am reminded of their presence, smell their salt water muddiness, an odour of layers laid down by successive tides, something to get used to like the smell of Silage or Liquorice, or Creosote sizzling on a summer fence.
The storm travels fast, propelled by a gale that comes in off the sea, driving the rain before it. Clouds the colour of a bruise march the horizon, bold and immense like a pantheon of gods passing judgement.
The interior of the house has become the last bastion of calm on Earth. The rain rushes up like sparrows against the walls, like a million tiny claws, an echo of white noise. There is a comfort to be had in that. I hear the sea, clawing at the coast as if to call ‘don’t leave me’, when all the time it is the sea and not the land that is leaving. It truly sounds as though the beach has found a voice for itself.
From up here the rocks look like battlements, fortifications. The beach remains as inscrutable as the lines upon the palm of my hand, a perfect domain cleaved in two only by a procession of my tracks that meander out to the brakes, working their way along the shore towards the rocks. They look like an artery, a conduit plugged directly into the ocean.
I watch the waves, aware only of a riot of pure movement, a boiling chaos that makes it difficult to focus on any particular spot. Foam brims and comes apart, waxy like gossamer, surging over the sea wall and across the road, clinging to the buildings like cuckoo spit. The waves throw up their screens of spray and draw the eyes along with them until they hit the beach.
For a moment, I am sure that there is someone out there amongst the waves, a tiny figure, a swimmer waving, deluged by white horses and brimming foam, lost amidst the surf. The image is distorted, half hidden by the inconsistencies of the glass and the mist.
I wipe the grime from the window leaving tracks in the condensation. The rain comes down in obscuring drifts. The image is lost, leaving my eyes to scratch against the darkness. The ocean burns and is empty once more.