Cold Boy's Wood by Carol Birch (best books to read for students txt) 📕

the edge of the great forest, full of shapes that wroil and coil in its black border.

The trees grew faces and fingers, arms. These I knew for pareidolia; you’re nothing, I said, mind-games, and ran out again near that cottage where we used to stay – and it was of course now just a sad old ruin, and no one seemed to have lived there for a long time. The windows were boarded up or invisible with dust, the door locked with a padlock, all its old red paint hanging off in strips, and the garden was high with long-established weeds.

You can, of course, love and hate at the same time. I know it. It’s the darnedest thing. That’s an Americanism. Harry used to hate it when I said things like that. ‘For God’s sake, Mother,’ she’d say, ‘if you could hear how ridiculous you sound.’

Four years later Johnny came back.

I was alone in that old cottage where we’d watched the swarm. Harry hadn’t wanted to come. She stayed more and more at her friend Holly’s house these days, and when she was at home she hardly talked. It was all my fault, all. Losing her dad, losing her sister. Who else could she blame? I was sitting on the old bench in the garden, a strange sultry summer evening of silent intermittent lightning, working away with my diamond file, the one I’d saved up for, the one that slid against the silver like a knife on butter, on the leaves for a necklace, and I heard the creak of the gate, and there he suddenly was, the Demon Lover, beautiful as ever with his big brown eyes.

‘Hello, Lorna,’ he said.

He had blood on his face. A visiting ghost.

I said, ‘What do you want?’

‘What do you mean?’ He laughed softly. ‘It’s me.’

And like a ghost he scared me into a state where every passing moment that followed was swollen and too full.

‘How are you, Lor?’

‘You can’t do this,’ I said, and the voice coming out of my mouth arrived from far away, the other side of the heights. ‘Can’t just come back like this.’

‘Lorna – Lorna,’ he said. ‘Can I come in?’

The bench beside me was strewn with bits of jewellery and little sharp tools, beads, string, tiny pliers. I picked up my diamond file and smoothed away. ‘What for?’ I said, testing my voice, and yes, it still came from afar, further still, from up there somewhere in space.

‘What for? Oh Lorna! What for? Please, don’t be like this.’

He spoke as if everything was normal, as if he’d just returned from getting a pint of milk and some bits and pieces from the shop. And I, I was being so unreasonable.

‘What do you want?’ I said.

‘I want to come in.’ He sat down on a garden chair with his bag between his feet and stared at me, wild-eyed, as if I was some strange beast he’d never seen before. ‘Can’t I even come in, Lorna?’

In the Bhagavad Gita, before the great Battle of Kurukshetra, the warrior Arjuna, seeing in both armies the faces of his dearest friends and closest relations, is overcome with horror. In his anguish he turns to Krishna, and between the two hosts, god and warrior debate. Surely, surely, to kill all these people, friends and kin, would be a great sin. Better I should die. Why so? the god replies. Every soul has already lived and died more times than can be numbered. Strike or stay your hand – no matter. The one who kills believes that he is killing. The one who has been killed believes that he dies. They are both wrong, for one doesn’t die and the other doesn’t kill. The soul endures and will be born again. Please let morning come, the cock crow, and all dead people run back to their deep beds.

I knew what he’d done.

He smiled at me, deep in my eyes. ‘It’s so good to see you again, Lor,’ he said.

‘How did you get here?’ My voice was faint. ‘How did you know where I was?’

‘Rang Steve. Said you were here. I was up in Liverpool with Maurice.’

‘Maurice?’

All of these people were never supposed to come back. I was finished with all that.

‘Maurice. We came down from Liverpool together.’

‘What are you talking about?’

‘I came down from Liverpool with Maurice,’ he said again.

Didn’t make sense.

‘Is that where you’ve been all this time?’ Behind him I could see the stars coming out above the woods. ‘In Liverpool?’

‘No no no.’ And he waffled on and on. Half of it just went right through my head without trace. From time to time lightning flickered in the sky, eerily silent. He said he’d been in Ireland these past years. Always stayed in touch with Maurice – Maurice, the pride, the wonder – guess where he’s been. Guess! Istanbul! Fucking Istanbul!

Oh God, give him a medal.

‘Anyway, he’s back now,’ he said, ‘and he’s going to Paris. I don’t know what it is, it’s something important by the looks of things.’

‘Something important,’ I repeated like a machine.

‘Was up north, you know. That’s where he went. Met me in Liverpool and we came down together.’

I laid down my tools and my unfinished leaf.

‘Guess what?’ he said. ‘He was talking about God. Maurice. Can you imagine? I don’t mean in a naff sort of way but like deep, all these concepts.’

‘Did you do it?’ I said. ‘Did you do something to the car?’

‘Of course I didn’t!’

I knew at once he had.

Because he knew at once exactly what I meant. And his face, a wrongness in it, a guilty consciousness. He pressed on with a wild look in his eyes, and all that hardness I’d seen before was gone and there was just this shitscared little weasel who’d caused it all, though God knows what the poor weasel had done to earn its reputation for sneaky weakness. London, they were driving down, drop you here. Then Paris, ultimate destination, gosh how exciting, but the car wouldn’t start,