Forest Ghost (17 page)

‘Well, humans are much more cunning than animals,’ said Borys. ‘They know to stop still and stay silent. But ask yourself what is a human doing in a forest like this, running and hiding and shaking bushes?’

He tugged at Diablik’s leash, and whistled between his teeth, and snapped, ‘
Tutaj piesku!
Here, boy!
No chod
ź
, nieposłuszny kundlu!
Come here, you disobedient mutt!’

Jack looked over his shoulder one more time, and as he turned he thought he glimpsed that fleeting white shape a second time, out of the corner of his eye, although it was so quick that he couldn’t be sure. But Borys was right. It had to be an animal. What would anybody in their right mind be doing, playing hide-and-go-seek in the depths of a forest, at this time of day?

Borys gave Diablik another deep sniff at Robert’s scarf. Diablik snuffled around in ever-widening circles, and then picked up Robert’s scent again. Immediately he began tugging Borys across the sand dunes, and the rest of them followed. They kept the trees on their left, although they could see more thick forest up ahead of them – even taller, and even darker. They stayed even closer together now, looking into the trees from time to time, although none of them really knew what they were looking for, or what was making them feel so uneasy.

‘Did you
see
something, Dad?’ asked Sparky, as they came closer to the tree line ahead of them.

‘I’m not sure. But you know what we saw in the woods at Owasippe? That white thing, whatever it was?’

Sparky said, ‘I thought so. That’s what it said in the stars.’

‘What did it say in the stars?’

‘You can’t get away from it. That’s what it said. You can’t get away from it. It’s everywhere.’

‘What is?’

Sparky didn’t answer. Diablik had reached the trees now, and Borys had stopped him and made him sit. He sat there panting, with his long red tongue hanging out.

‘We have a choice now,’ said Borys, in Polish. ‘It is dark in the forest and already we will need our flashlights. We can continue for maybe another half-hour, or else we can mark this spot and come back tomorrow. There is a path only about seven hundred meters in that direction, and a half-hour’s walk will take us back to the place where we left our vehicles.’

Jack understood most of what Borys was saying, but Krystyna quickly translated for him.

‘In that case, I vote we take a rain check,’ he said. ‘Sparks and me, we’re both pretty bushed. And if we don’t hear from Robert by tomorrow morning, we’ll be able to call the police to help us look for him.’

Krystyna said, ‘I agree. I’m very tired, too. I can’t think why Robert ran so far, but if anything was chasing him, it doesn’t look as if it caught up with him, does it? I can’t get a signal on my cell out here. He’s probably back in Warsaw wondering where
I
am.’

The five of them headed eastward, along the edge of the forest. The heavy gray clouds had now covered the sky almost completely, and Borys switched on his flashlight so that he could occasionally shine it into the trees.

‘You don’t really think that Robert is back in Warsaw, do you?’ Jack asked her.

Krystyna shook her head. ‘No. But I can’t imagine what else might have happened to him. I don’t
want
to imagine what else might have happened to him.’

They had walked no more than two hundred meters further when Diablik let out a single sharp bark and dashed off into the forest, only stopping when he came to the end of his leash.

Borys yanked at his leash and called him, but Diablik barked again, and then again, and danced around and around until he was all tangled up, and hopping on three legs.

‘You know what you are?’ Borys shouted at him. ‘You are the stupidest dog I have ever known!’

He stalked after Diablik and freed him from his twisted-up leash. ‘Now, come on!’ he shouted, but instead Diablik scampered off into the trees again, tugging Borys after him. About fifty meters away, he stopped, and picked something up in his teeth. He came trotting back with it, wagging his tail.

Jack heard Borys say, ‘What’s that you’ve got there, Diablik? Here – give it to me! Give it to me, you mutt! What is it?’

Diablik seemed to be reluctant to let it go, and snarled when Borys tried to wrench it out of his jaws, but after a brief tussle Borys managed to pull it free. Almost immediately, though, he hurled it down on to the ground. ‘
Jesus Christ!
’ he shouted. ‘
Jesu
s
! Holy Mother of God! Jesus!
’

‘Borys?’ said Krystyna. ‘What is it?’ She started to walk toward him, but Jack caught the sleeve of her jacket and said, ‘No, Krystyna – wait up. Let me check it out first.’

She turned back to him with an unspoken question on her face, but he shook his head to warn her that Diablik might have found something that she didn’t want to see.

‘All right, yes,’ she said, and let Jack go. As Jack approached him, Borys was still grimacing in revulsion, and furiously rubbing his hand on his pants. He jerked his head toward the thing that he had thrown to the ground. ‘Jesus Christ,’ he repeated. ‘Do you see that?’

At first Jack couldn’t make out what it was, but then he hunkered down close to it and turned it over with a twig. Diablik was watching him intently all the time, panting harshly, as if he was eager to have it back once Jack had finished with it.

It was a severed human foot, with a bright blue nylon sock rolled halfway down it. Whoever had removed it, they had cut all the way through the cartilage where the leg bones were connected to the ankle bone, exposing stringy white tendons like broken elastic bands and raw red flesh. It was no wonder Diablik was so keen to get his teeth into it.

Krystyna came up behind them. ‘What is it?’ she said, boldly.

‘A
foot
,’ said Borys. ‘A man’s foot, by the look of it.’

Krystyna came closer so that she could see it for herself. She stared at it for a long time, with her hand pressed over her mouth in horror. ‘Oh God,’ she said at last. ‘Oh God, I’m sure that’s Robert’s. Robert always wore blue socks like that.’

‘Now I think it
is
time to call the cops,’ said Jack. He took out his cell and slid it open but there was still no signal. ‘We’d better get back to our vehicles, and find the nearest ranger station. You know where that is, don’t you, Borys?’

‘Of course, yes. Close to Palmiry.’

‘You think we should take the foot with us or leave it here?’

‘No, no, we should take it with us,’ said Borys. ‘I will leave a marker so we know where we found it. Diablik would have happily eaten it if we had given him the chance. We don’t want some other animal to walk off with it. There might be other body parts around here somewhere so we don’t want to forget where it was.’

Diablik sniffed the air, and then barked again, and tried to pull Borys even further into the forest.

‘Where are you going now?’ Borys demanded, but Diablik kept on pulling, and barking, and in the end Borys said, ‘Maybe he’s picked up the scent of something else.’

Borys released the brake on Diablik’s leash and Diablik immediately bounded away. He didn’t even reach the leash’s eight-meter limit before he found something else, and picked it up in his teeth, and started to worry it, shaking it from side to side as if it were still alive.

Borys went up to him and again had to wrestle with him to pull it free. Once he had done so, he dropped it immediately on to the ground and called back, ‘The other foot! Shit! It has a blue sock, too – just the same!’

Jack looked back at Sparky, waiting with Lidia by the edge of the forest. ‘I think it’s time I got Sparky out of here,’ he told Krystyna. ‘He had bad enough nightmares when he saw a dog being run over.’

‘OK, you’re right,’ said Krystyna. ‘But if these are Robert’s feet – my God, where is Robert?’

Borys said to Jack, ‘Here, Jack, hold this, please,’ and handed him his shotgun. Jack was surprised how heavy it was. He sloped it over his shoulder while Borys knelt down, unbuckled his large canvas satchel, and took out a crumpled plastic supermarket bag. His nose wrinkled up in disgust, Borys picked up the severed foot and dropped it in. Then he stood up and walked back to the first foot that Diablik had found and dropped that in, too. He twisted the bag in a knot and stowed it in his satchel.

‘All right,’ he said. ‘Now we can go.’

As soon as they started walking back the way they had come, however, Diablik started barking again, and tried to pull Borys back toward the interior of the forest.

‘Heel!’ Borys shouted at him. ‘If there is anything more to find, you stupid dog, let the police find it!’

He dragged Diablik back to the edge of the forest where Sparky and Lidia were waiting, even though Diablik continued to bark repeatedly and tug at his leash.

‘Come on, Sparks,’ said Jack, putting his arm around his shoulder. ‘I think we’ve had enough for one day, don’t you?’

But Sparky looked back toward the forest and said, ‘Diablik wants us to go that way.’

‘I know. But Diablik’s already found something pretty nasty and I don’t think it’s up to us to see what else might be lying around.’

‘What did he find?’

Jack looked over at Krystyna but Krystyna simply shrugged. Sparky was bound to find out sooner or later, so why not tell him now? After all, Jack had never lied to him or hidden anything from him, especially since Aggie had gone. After ‘Your mother has just died’, what could he possibly say to him that was worse?

‘Feet,’ he said. ‘Somebody’s feet. With their socks still on. But no somebody to go with them. Just their feet.’

Sparky nodded. ‘I thought it might be something like that. The stars showed somebody who couldn’t run any more. Mercury turned retrograde in Leo.’

‘I see. What exactly does that mean?’

Sparky drew circles in the air with his finger, first one way and then the other. ‘Mercury is the planet of forward movement. You know, like progress. But when Mercury turns retrograde everything gets snarled up. Traffic, airline schedules, everything. There’s something else about Mercury, too. Mercury is a psychopompos.’

‘A what?’

‘A psychopompos. It means a spirit guide. That’s a being who helps people to cross from the real world into the afterlife.’

‘I’m not too sure I like the sound of that. That sounds a bit too much like dying.’

Sparky looked at Jack without blinking. Jack was beginning to feel seriously bad about having brought him here – to Poland, to this creepy, godforsaken forest – but at the same time he recognized that neither of them had really had a choice.

Unlike other young people, Sparky could never take anything for granted. He needed to understand the workings of the world, both physically and spiritually, and he was never happy until he did. He would never rest until he knew why Malcolm had killed himself. Coming here to the Kampinos Nature Reserve had at least given him a chance of finding out.

‘OK, Sparks … so what are you suggesting?’ Jack asked him.

‘I think we should let Diablik show us what it is that he can smell.’

Again, Jack glanced at Krystyna.

‘What if it’s a body?’ he said. ‘Or parts of a body?’

‘It probably is,’ said Sparky, flatly.

‘Don’t you think it’s going to give you nightmares?’

‘Malcolm gives me nightmares already. He keeps coming to see me in the night.’

‘Malcolm? You didn’t tell me that.’

‘He keeps trying to talk to me, but he can’t because his throat’s cut and all he can do is bubble.’

Borys said, ‘We have to make up our minds, Jack. Soon it will be much darker.’

‘We need to go and look for him,’ Sparky insisted. ‘He may be still alive.’

‘Is this wise?’ asked Lidia. ‘Whoever cut off this poor man’s feet, he could still be here. He might attack us, too.’

‘There’s nobody here,’ said Sparky. ‘There’s nothing.’

‘And what makes you so sure of that?’ Lidia retorted. ‘You are just a boy. This is the first time you have ever been to this forest.’

‘Look,’ said Jack, ‘let’s give it another twenty minutes. If we haven’t found anything by then, we’ll call it a day.’

Diablik was so overexcited by now that he was tangling himself up in his leash again, and although Borys kept snapping at him to keep quiet, he wouldn’t stop barking.

‘All right,’ Krystyna agreed. ‘Twenty minutes but no more.’

The five of them walked back into the forest, with Diablik leading the way and Borys grunting with effort to restrain him. It was much darker now. Borys switched on his flashlight and gave it to Jack, while Krystyna took out a small halogen flashlight of her own. The forest smelled dry and musty and aromatic, and every now and then they heard the spectral
woo!
woo!
woo!
of long-eared owls, followed by the cries of their young, which sounded like kitchen cupboard doors with rusty hinges.

‘I don’t know what I’m doing here,’ complained Lidia, as she stumbled over a patch of scrub. But Diablik suddenly stopped pulling at his leash, and made a whining noise in the back of his throat, and Borys said, ‘Wait. Wait just a minute. I think I can see somebody up ahead of us. Just there, Jack, can you see?’

Jack pointed the flashlight directly in front of them. Borys was right. A man was standing between the trees about thirty meters away, facing toward them. He was balding, with a sandy-looking moustache, and he was wearing a faded blue denim jacket, a tan checkered shirt and jeans. Jack’s flashlight made his eyes glitter, but he didn’t call out to them, or wave, or show any sign that he had seen them.

‘
Robert!
’ cried Krystyna. ‘It’s Robert!’

She hurried toward him, with the beam of her flashlight criss-crossing between the trees. ‘Robert – what are you
doing
here? What’s happened?’

Borys and Jack followed her, but Jack noticed that Diablik now seemed to have lost all his wild enthusiasm for the chase. He was growling softly, and dragging his paws in the sand, so that Borys had to pull him along behind him in a series of jerks.

As they came closer, Jack realized that something was badly wrong with Robert. He was standing at an odd tilt, with his knees bent, and the way that both of his arms were hanging down made him look like he was pretending to be a zombie. He was opening and closing his mouth, and Jack was sure that he saw him blink, but he wasn’t looking in their direction.