The Forest

The forest seemed to become darker and more impenetrable the further Macleish travelled into it. The trees seemed to move together with side steps, when he wasn’t looking and when he looked back at the path, after looking at the movement of the trees, the path seemed to head off in a new direction from before his gaze was distracted.

The sounds of animal footsteps and growling behind him kept him moving.

He was lost when he came to a cottage in the only clearing. He approached the once white-painted cottage built between two giant rocks under the grand old pine trees. The back of the cottage disappeared underneath the huge flat rock, which lay on a slant up onto the round boulder directly behind. The back of the house seemed to be attached to the large boulder; wood turned to stone and stone turned to wood at the joining. There were gaps where some original boards from the house were missing leaving dark gaps in the house; some of the gaps seemed to run right into the rock in a dark and mysterious fashion making it hard to see where the house finished and the rock started. There were all sorts of patches and repairs all having been painted white and in all different fading states. The chimney was crumbling, black with soot and covered in moss. The windows were dark and covered on the inside with brown fraying blinds. The moss covered roof covered with a carpet of pine needles and a wild creeper that seemed to snake over from the farthest side. The door was at one end partially covered by a crooked portico that had long since let go from its original moorings. The door itself was covered in peeling red paint over green peeling paint and the cobble stones leading up to the old door were all uneven, every one.

The huge trees dwarfed the house and the enormous boulders shaded all the ground around it, but the sun still shone over the front part of the roof and the door. The house looked very old and still, sitting on its carpet of pine needles, there almost seemed to be a mist where the sun didn’t shine. The forest surrounded it on both sides and the boulders obscured anything behind. The view from the front looked down the narrow valley, a grassy slash in the forest with a gentle decent.

The air was thick, still and dank, imbued with a sweet smell of pine. The cottage looked to be tumbling down but some how strangely permanent, decrepit but strong; the strength of time exuding from a fragile shell. It had a strange attraction for Macleish, but there was a sense of privacy. It was such a contradiction that he wanted to see what was inside, what or who, of importance, lived inside this crumbling shell. Why did he feel something or someone special was just behind that facade?

He walked to the front door and as he did he looked down the other side of the house that was hidden to him as he approached. This side was covered in doors all weather beaten and crooked and not looking as though they had been opened in a long time. He passed under the crooked portico and pushed the door open, which it did easily and silently and dust fell from the doorframe, over the cobblestones and the maroon carpet just inside. It was dimly lit with a hallway down the middle with many doorways, which divided the house into many rooms, one after the other. He could see through all the doorways except for the end one, which was closed.

He entered slowly and looked around with each step. On the walls to his left were shelves covered completely with books. On his right another door, this was repeated in each room. Some rooms had chairs and some had tables and some had both. He walked through the house and the carpet felt soft under his feet. It was strangely silent even his movements made no noise. Every thing was covered in dust and nothing looked as though it had been disturb in a very long time. Each room was the same, books on shelves, dust, grey blinds and silence.

He walked through toward the closed door. As he finally reached for the door handle to the closed door, he noticed the other door in this last room was open and another hallway, filled like treasure chest, running off at right angles to the hallway he had just walked along. This was despite the house appearing from the outside to be a rectangle. The door handle began to move with a stiff action and a creak, when out from the shadows a voice suddenly came.

“You can’t go in there,” screeched the voice with a piercing wail. And from out of the darkness and piles of things emerged an old woman dressed in ground length rags.

“What?” he said, quite startled and shocked, as her voice seemed to cut right through him to the bone.

“You can’t go in there,” she screamed again, even more fiercely than the first time, if that was possible. She waved a crook at him, which seemed to appear in her hand from out of no where.

“You caaaaaan’t!” The red veins budging in her eyes, she was suddenly in front of him. She stood between him and the door eye-balling him. She looked as though she had taken on the hounds of hell in her time and won. He certainly wasn’t going to challenge her she was too fierce for that.

“What is this place and who are you?”

“Get out, get out,” she screamed and a gust of wind whirled around her and him. “Get out before it’s too late.”

He stepped backwards thinking he could leave through the nearest door. In this strange building one seemed never to be far from a door, there were doors all along the west wall, after all, leading to the forest. And then as if knowing what he was thinking she said,

“Go back the way you came, leave as you entered.” And then on all the walls were still the shelves, but now all at different heights, all on different angles, rickety and shaking, struggling to keep the old books in place. Books of all sizes and shapes, leather bound and hard backed, some upright, some in rows, some now falling to the floor.

“I mean you no harm, I’m lost.”

“You only think you are lost,” she wailed. “It is all known to you. Stop trying to see. Feel! Then you will know the way.” Then he found himself on the front step and he stumbled backwards and he was out in the forest again.

“You don’t belong here, you are not welcome.” She was on the step. ”You have life ahead of you.”

But where am I, he thought. And how do I get back?

“Take the path… on which you can hear the wind.” She was leaning against the frame of the door. She now spoke in a low voice taking deep breaths between each word and her long dress flapped despite there being no breeze.

“But who are you, how do you know what I’m thinking?”

“Go, go, you need to know nothing more. Gooo aaaway!” Her voice trailed off into a whisper that seemed to be inside his head. She spun around holding her hands over her eyes. “I see no harm coming to you.”