The Park

It didn’t have to turn out like this. Or maybe it did. Maybe it was fate, like in a folktale. It felt like being in a folktale – one of the old terrifying gory kind with monsters and sacrificed limbs, not that she had sacrificed anything herself, except perhaps her sanity or if this went on much longer, a stretch in prison.

If only she had not gone running again. What did fitness matter to her now? Why had she moved into a town?! She remembered running in the countryside, the pleasure of rutted paths and seeing the crops grow, but sometimes the sudden feeling of anxiety at a gap in a hedge or the old airfield with its empty huts. She was always so busy and left her runs to the last moment before the light failed and would often have to take a short cut to get home in the twilight. The park had seemed so tame. There were actual closing times and even late on there were still dog walkers or teenagers smoking weed. It hadn’t even been really late, not as late as she’d left it some evenings. That’s why she decided to run the whole perimeter including the Arboretum and that’s why she had to go through the tunnel.

To be fair, it was only a short tunnel under a single lane road which cut through the western edge of the park. It was made of red brick and of course well planted on tis banks leading out into a narrow path between Mediterranean borders. It just gave her the creeps.

She had run past the pond and the bowling green and up the steep bit towards the tennis courts feeling good and hardly out of breath. But the growing gloom where the trees over-hung the path felt ominous and the rhododendrons looks unnaturally still and as if she were looking at them through a grey filter. There was a deep powdery silence except for her own footfall, which made her slow to a jog and then as she heard the first strange sounds, slow further to a hesitant walk. There was the slow clip clop of hooves, a panting heavy breath and a smell that made her nearly retch. Unwillingly her feet kept moving until at the mouth of the tunnel she stopped, frozen, horrified, but unable to stop looking as her brain scrambled to process the inexplicable. Goat legs, a man’s torso, goat head with enormous curly horns. It was on her in a blinking, held her by the arms, its face thrust close. Already in her mind the thoughts had formed:

“it will eat me”

“no”

“I will give it someone else”

He said, or had he said it at all?

“Bring them to me on the full moon.”

She heard herself making a wailing noise, felt her head twist and her body fall back as he let go and she ran, probably her best time ever, all the way home and locked herself in, shaking, sweating, too frightened to get in the shower, go near a window or do anything except cower in the corner.

In the morning she unpeeled herself from the wall and checked out each room. Everything seemed normal. She got changed and got into bed but sat there still wide eyed and afraid to sleep. She checked on her phone for the stages of the moon – waning gibbous – 3 days after the full moon, so she had time.

She watched the shape of the window move across the bed as the sun oved across the sky and felt paralysed.

She didn’t remember falling asleep but woke in the early ours with a start, bed clothes soaked with sweat and the cold dread of recollection on her.

“I can’t stay here” she thought

Her car was on the other side of the park. She was never going anywhere near that park again

She couldn’t leave for good, not without giving up her job, her house, but perhaps she could go away for a week either side of the full moon. Would that be enough? Would she have to keep going away?

There was no way she could ever talk to anyone about this. They would think she was crazy. She took time off work because she couldn’t get out of bed except to crawl terrified to the toilet. Gradually the fear began to recede and she ate and washed and slept again and started to think

“but if I had to, who would I sacrifice?”

She thought of some pretty heinous ex’s but she didn’t actually wish them harm. She remembered her ex mother-in-law, but she was already dead. When it came down to it there were only two people she could happily see suffer and didn’t even know where they lived anymore. Anyway ever if there was a person, how was she supposed to get them into the park?

She took a cab to the station and a train to a seaside town way up the coast. She booked a very nice hotel room with all meals include and channel hopped the hours away for two days until room service opened the curtains for her on the third morning and said:

“Oh. Look at that”

There had been a frost in the night and on the ledge outside her room were a series of cloven hoof prints

The world went grey and the next thing she knew she was on the bed, the hotel manager looking down at her and a GP taking her pulse. Did she faint often? Any health conditions? She made them go away in the end with a promise to see her own GP when she got home. She stood up and went to the window, but the frost was mostly melted now and nothing could be made of what was left.She rang for room service and asked for the lady who had brought her breakfast, but was told she was now off shift. She checked out and went home.

She rang her Mum and told her how much she loved her. She rang her friends and relatives and recalled all the good times they’d had together. She made 3 large donations to charity and wrote out a will although there wasn’t time to get it witnessed. She cried a lot. She went to her favourite restaurant but came home and was sick.

On the night of the full moon she needed a drink. She couldn’t wait alone to be taken in her own home. She went to a pub nearby, planning to go onto a bar which stayed open all night and had a kind of club where teenagers got wasted and shagged each other in the toilets. Not a great place to die but at least not alone and hopefully too drunk to care.

It had been match day and the town had lost – never a good vibe after dark and as she left the pub already 3 pints in, three blokes shouted after he and then, worse, followed. It was predictable.

“ Hey sexy, don’t you like a real man. You a kind of lesbian or something?”

“Come on darling, don’t be like that”

It got worse. They seemed to whip each other up into more abusive language, more violent threats, laughing amongst themselves until one of them, catching up with her pushed her against the wall.

She didn’t even have to think.

“not here” she said, “let’s go into the park. No one will disturb us there”

At no point did she doubt what would happen. She had no concern that she was colluding in her own rape. Even pressed against the brickwork damp and mossy the man’s zip undone and his breath on her neck, she anticipated that smell, that sound of hoof on tarmac, the body being lifted off her and the other two screaming and running.

But oh, the look in those slit eyes, the amusement and the love of the chase.

She walked calmly in the other direction, jumped the wooden gate, walked home and slept a deep and undisturbed sleep.

Lilly

Lilly was in a terrible rush. She remembered to say her prayers when she got up but then she hurried straight off to make breakfast and wash and clean and pack. It looked like she was trying to do all four at the same time. Lilly’s soul was still saying its prayers when Lilly’s body ran out of the front door just in time to catch the bus.

Lilly had forgotten to sit quite still on something before going on a journey. This had happened before, but Lilly hadn’t gone very far. This time she was off to see her parents for the weekend. Her soul did not know this. It was quite a calm soul, but it had dark bits scattered all over like a negative of a distant galaxy and after a while it stopped praying and thought, let’s go to a café, but had no body to go in. My grandma thinks it’s a good job Lilly’s soul wanted to go to a café because usually a peaceful, god-loving soul like Lilly’s would fly straight up to heaven once if found itself without a body and Lilly would have died on her way to her parents. Anyway it turns out that Lilly’s soul did want to go to a café and talk to her friends about important things. It wanted the joy of sharing a strawberry mountain with her best friend, but without a body it couldn’t make the goodness of sharing and eating a part of itself. There was also lurking a desire for a bath, a nice hot cleaning bath with lots of steam and lots of soap. Lilly’s soul hovered in the bathroom and felt funny. It waited.

Meanwhile Lilly had caught her bus and her train and she had been so busy and so nervous that she didn’t notice anything was wrong. On the train she went to sleep and woke up just in time to get out at the right station. That evening she and her parents watched television. Lilly’s soul never stayed around to watch television anyway, so she felt no difference until the next morning when she found it difficult to wake up.

Lilly’s mum made her a bacon sandwich and a strong cup of tea, but Lilly didn’t enjoy it. Lilly’s Dad explained his plans for a herd of pigs and methane powered electricity, but Lilly wasn’t interested. Lilly felt like someone had put a large weight on her shoulders. In the afternoon they went to a garden centre. Lilly looked at the plants but couldn’t imagine them growing. The sun didn’t warm her and the countryside wasn’t beautiful anymore. In church on Sunday Lilly felt nothing. She went home by an early train.

At home her soul was feeling distressed. The dark constellations grew flashing clouds of discontent around them and by Saturday evening candles and paintbrushes began to fall off the mantlepiece. Once Lilly got home on Sunday afternoon she sat down on the settle because she felt so tired. Her soul flew straight into her body and Lilly burst into teams. Afterwards she felt it was lovely to be home.

The Dog in the Forest

Simo was alive, even though he had the death run on his arm. He had married and had kids after that, but no one looked at him the same again.

Sometimes Simo wondered if he was really alive or if part of him was elsewhere. He couldn’t remember being dead or if he really had died. Either way, it was a strange existence now.

He had heard that ants give off a pheromone when they die so that the other ants will come and take their corpse for burial. If an ant got sprayed with the pheromone even while alive, they would take themselves off to the corpse burial ground and lie there until the pheromone wore off.

Perhaps their fellow ants would ask where they had been, perhaps they’d say “god, you smell like death!”

Perhaps Simo’s nature had taken itself off, perhaps he had been living without it for some time before his actual life had briefly stopped He couldn’t tell. Burying and selling land wasn’t really very fulfilling, although it had made him quick money. It wasn’t any use when you are dead.

They had taken him straight to the village hall. There wasn’t a hospital for miles and it seemed clear that he was already dead. They laid him out on a trestle and straightened his limbs as best they could. Noita had come and pronounced him dead and tattooed the death rune on his arm. Thank god they hadn’t actually buried him. He woke up with a groan to the sound of his mother weeping.

It had taken a long time in the hospital after that and when he returned it was true, he wasn’t the same person. He had a slight weakness on his left side and some of his words came out slurred especially when he was tired or cross, but it wasn’t that which people minded. No one would sell to him anymore, his friends were reluctant to get drunk with him.

Noita asked him once if he could see the gods. But how would he know them? Those corner of the eye, slipping behind a tree shapes? A bear most likely, not to be investigated and not to be trusted after a head injury. He did not want to be a shaman and told Noita to go away.

He married a Sami woman and leased his woodland to make some income and people nodded and indicated it made sense without explaining what they meant. They had family and lived on the edge of the village, but his children were close to his wife’s family and spent much time on Sami lands. He was glad for them. He had good relations with his in-laws, but was still a stranger in their culture, nor did he really fit in with his own anymore. He saw his mother regularly as she too was on her own a lot and time went on in this way until his daughter nearly drowned.

She was skating with her brothers and relatives and fell through weak ice. The men hauled her out and took her to hospital, but it was far. His wife called him in hysterics and they spent long hours by their daughter’s bedside watching her struggle with pneumonia and words they did not understand.

He must have nodded off one day or become distracted while his wife went to get food for suddenly his daughter was in front of him, walking towards the door. He thought she must want the toilet, so he too got up and took her hand. In the corridor she looked up at him confused. The lights were kind of fizzy and there was a door left open at the end of the corridor leading straight outside. Although he felt perfectly calm he said “I think we should go back”. She turned with him and they went back into the room.

With a shock he saw his daughter’s body still on the bed with a breathing tube and drip still in place. Yes, how could she have got up? She began to stir and opened her eyes and started crying. Just them her mum and grandpa came in and Simo came to himself in his chair. She made a good recovery after that. Simo decided he had been dreaming and said nothing about it, although sometimes he caught his father-in-law looking at him oddly.

A few years later his mother died of cancer. He spent much time with her reminiscing and putting things right between them. When she was in the hospice he often sat quietly beside her, holding her hand. In the last days she would sometimes open her eyes, look at a space in the room and say “your father’s here” or “Mum!”

It didn’t bother Simo, although he’d never got on with his Father. It didn’t seem to have much to do with him. When she died Simo was definitely awake. He had been watching the afternoon sun slide across the end of the bed, when he noticed her breathing rattle then change to slower and slower breaths and eventually stop. He saw the shape of her lift off the bed, turn to him and then go. He followed her as he had followed her as a child, as the safest place to be.

There was darkness and then green, like looking through an open window into Spring woodland. On this side were his Grandma and Grandpa, his Dad and Uncle who came towards his Mum and gathered her into a hug. There were shaped of light moving between them and around them but these he couldn’t make out.

All of them were moving towards the opening into the other world, the light shining through young beech leaves, the sound of birds and running water getting louder. It was so beautiful and so peaceful, he wanted to go with them, but his Grandma turned and said

“Simo, you have to go back”

And he was back in his body, in a hospice chair crying and the staff coming in to see to the body and usher him away.

After that he avoided hospitals, hospices, the sick and dying. How many times would he be pushed back from that place? He thought of killing himself but was afraid they would refuse him again and he would end up in a worse state in this world. What if he could never die and had to live on without anyone he loved? He would become morose when these thoughts hit him and he would go off fishing to be on his own.

One day his sister came to visit. After coffee she sat beside him on the sofa and said without looking at him.

“You know Aron is sick. He’s frightened of dying, but won’t talk to anyone.”

There was a pause

“You could help him.”

“How can I help him?” Simo was surprised “We hardly speak these days.”

“You know what it is like. You could reassure him.”

Simo tried to remonstrate that he didn’t remember dying at all. She put her hand on his, looked him in the eye and said

“please Simo”

He made a date to have a drink with Aron.

They met in the only bar in the village. They talked of nothing much. Aron got drunk.

“I’m dying.” he said suddenly beginning to cry.

Simo didn’t like displays of emotion and didn’t know what to say. He wished he could get out of here. It was too noisy even tucked into the corner booth.

“What’s it like?” said Aron

Simo thought of everything he could say: “Like the woods on a spring day”

Aron looked him so straight in the face, the most direct exchange he’d ever felt with another human

“Thank you”

stood up and left.

Two days later his sister rant to say Aron had gone out into the woods and shot himself in the head. A quick end.

Simo decided never to speak of his experiences again. He was unsure what life meant for him, this walking between worlds, but he wished it would go away. He withdrew from people even his family. He was pretty sure his wife was seeing someone else. He hardly blamed her.

Often he went deep into the forest to fish, but just sat on the bank, watching the glamour of the surface and the movement of the wind against the current, like a shudder. It was peaceful and sometimes, when it was still and the deep green-grey of the pines was particularly beautiful, he could not be sure which world he was in. Now and then a wolfish dog came to sit with him, Simo would give it food. The dog seemed to have business of its own and would jog off into the forest. Perhaps it was feral. Hard to survive out here without a pack, so Simo wasn’t surprised when it began turning up more frequently. He noticed the dog never followed him back to his hunting hut, but thought sometimes he would like to follow the dog deep into the trees. The autumn began to fade and would quickly turn to winter and Simo was reluctant to go back to the village without him.

The first day of frost, Simo turned from chopping wood to find his father in law standing next to him. It is said that the dead can’t speak, but Simo knew that to be untrue, at least in his case.

“It’s time to go back. Or to go on” and then after a pause “Otso is here.”

He sounded just as he had in life, laconic, unemotional, but now more companionable. He stood for a while and then he wasn’t there.

Simo boiled water and made a drink and thought. He chopped a lot more wood and took it inside. He sat outside as the light faded and then went in, stoked up the stove and put the plank against the door. It started soon after. The hut was bear-proof and had no window, so Simo could only listen. He was a man of controlled imagination and considered this was better than seeing something you shouldn’t looking in at the window, but all the same he began to be afraid. It was a feeling deep in his insides, twisting up his shoulders and the sides of his head. He took out the vodka and had couple of swigs. It didn’t really help.

Something very large brushed against the hut so that it shook. Simo put his head in his hands and wondered how he would last the night Something or many things were walking round and round the hut, sometimes grunting, sometimes just thudding footfall. Some infinite time into the night Simo felt he couldn’t take it any more when a voice from outside said “Simo” quite clearly, not calling him, just naming him. His fear dropped away like a coat taken off and he thought, well what am I afraid of – dying? He unbarred the door and stepped out into the night.

The sky was perfectly clear, the starts burning sharp and white with a full moon setting over the mountains. On the other side of his fish drying rack was the largest bear he had ever seen. It rose on it hind legs. Simo fell to his knees unable to look away. The bear gestured almost like a man to the tree-line where the dog was waiting.

Simo knew if he followed it into the forest, deep into its trackless ways he would not return to the world of men. And if he turned and trekked back to his house, his family, his people, this world would still be there on the edge of his vision. It was all one.

“Otso” said Simo, “thank you” and his heart was light.