“And that really isn’t your business, Dr. Colbeck.”
Colbeck didn’t push it, though Charles, still staring at the wood, could sense his scrutiny. After a time, he said, “How long ago did this happen?”
“Almost a year ago. I could name the time to the day and hour if you must know. In your capacity as my physician.”
Colbeck didn’t take the bait. He sighed. After a time, he said, “I can offer you little in the way of comfort. I’m very sorry for your loss. I’m very, very sorry. Words are inadequate. But your stay here won’t heal matters between you and your wife. It may not heal at all, and if it does, it will leave a scar, quite a bad one. Sometimes marriages survive the loss of a child, more often not. In cases where one spouse blames the other …” Colbeck shrugged. “In the meantime, it might help to talk about it.”
“Erin was seeing a counselor at home.”
“And you?”
“No.”
“Perhaps you should consider it.”
“Perhaps.”
“I can give you the names of some good people. You’ll have to drive into Ripon for that, but I think the trip might be worth it.”
“That would be fine.”
“But you won’t go.”
“No.”
“Your wife —”
“I doubt it.”
“Well, I’ll ring you with the names all the same,” Colbeck said.
Charles turned to face him. “I should check on Erin now.”
Colbeck nodded. “Ice, twenty minutes on, twenty minutes off, Mr. Hayden. Try to get her up and moving tomorrow. It will be tender for a while.”
“Yes.”
“Good afternoon, then.”
“Thank you for coming out.”
“You’re quite welcome.” Colbeck paused. “At the risk of overstepping my bounds, Mr. Hayden, may I offer you two further pieces of advice before I go?”
“Why not?”
“In the matter of your wife, I counsel patience. These things take time. Fits and starts. Two steps forward, one step back is the rule. But even such halting progress gets you there in the end.”
“And the second bit of wisdom, doctor?”
“I should steer clear of the wood if I were you.”
“Why is that?”
“People get lost, Mr. Hayden.”
“I’ll be careful.”
“Do. And ring me if you need anything.”
With that, Colbeck put his back to Charles. He strode with long steps across the yard to the stile. On the other side, he wheeled around a battered four-by-four — it might have been red once, but had long since faded to a dull, no-color brown — and disappeared into the trees. Charles stood there, knowing that he should do as Colbeck had said and go in to check on Erin. But the doctor’s closing words lingered in his mind: I should steer clear of the wood if I were you.
Charles turned his gaze back to the forest. He had an obscure sense that something was watching him from the line of trees, but when he scanned the wall, there was nothing there.
Nothing else happened that day.
Except that Charles and Erin slept in separate bedrooms, as they had every night since Lissa died.
Except that, somewhere in the deepest trough of morning, Charles opened his eyes.
He stood by the bed, dreaming of a black combe where a shallow stream hurried over a bed of broken stones and a green moss grew. The window had been flung open and a breeze caressed his bare skin, beckoning him toward the deep purple sky where a horned moon hung like a child’s toy, and the night wood, girdling the great house, whispered green thoughts in its green and leafy shade.
When Laura told him of the little creatures in the trees with their daemonic physiognomies, the Helpful Badger said, “All manner of Folk live in the Wood. And they are all abroad under the Moon, for this night they must shrive.”
“They frighten me.”
“They are more often capricious than they are cruel,” the Badger said. He yawned and scratched a flea, adding, “There is only one whom you must fear. When you encounter Him, you must summon all your strength and courage and bring all your wit to bear.”
“Must I encounter Him?”
“The Story requires it of you,” the Badger said.
“But who is He?”
“I dare not say his name. But He long ago seduced the Wood Folk into betrayal and grievously wounded their rightful Lord, whom He banished into the Outer Dark. And now the Wood Folk must bow before him and shrive their sin in secret.”
“How will I know Him when He comes?”
“He wears a crown of horns.”
— CAEDMON HOLLOW, IN THE NIGHT WOOD
It was haunted, of course, Hollow House.
But they were all haunted — Erin and Charles, Cillian Harris, Mrs. Ramsden, too. And though Mrs. Ramsden’s sins and failures and regrets, like those of Ann Merrow or Dr. Colbeck, have but glancing significance in this story, they were each of them protagonists in other tales, with their own dramas, their flights of joy, and their plunges into sorrow. Once upon a time: no life too humble, no event too insignificant.
Every story is a ghost story.
It was the photograph that haunted Erin and Charles, or, more precisely, the loss that it signified. A kindergarten photograph of a blonde girl, three-quarter profile, her hands crossed neatly upon the table in front of her, but otherwise unposed — her giggling smile (no doubt the photographer had ventured some joke), the soft curve of her jaw, her milky complexion — all this trapped behind a spider web of shattered glass.
For Erin, the photo was like a shallow well in a dry season. She dared not drink of it too often — yet she could not help herself. She drew it in her sketchbook time and again, laying out the lines of Lissa’s visage, lending it dimension and form with each careful stroke of her pencil. And then she would turn the picture to the wall and keep working, as if by this obsessive reproduction she could score the image into the tissue of her brain and heart. She would not forget her daughter’s face.
Already she could feel it slipping away.
For Charles the photo was like a jail, prisoning away the grief that could any moment escape to overwhelm him. As long as Lissa was locked behind the glass he could manage his days by rote — not unaffected, but functional at least. Erin feared forgetting. Charles longed for it. The burden of his sin (for so