I glanced behind me. There was a figure in the upstairs window of the house. Carl was standing there watching us, a reflection of the clouds slightly occluding the expression on his face. I raised my hand to acknowledge him, and for a moment he didn’t respond. Then his own hand moved tentatively to the glass.
Turning back, I spread the thin wires of the back fence and ducked underneath, stepping through into the woods, and then followed the others into the tree line. The volume dropped a notch, the quiet rush of the real world fading away behind us. The silence in the woods was eerie, and not for the first time I found myself glancing around as I trailed behind, my heart humming with that strange sensation you have when it feels like you’re being watched.
Which was stupid, of course. There was nobody out here apart from us. But the woods always made me nervous. My mother had warned me it wasn’t safe out here. There was little in the way of pathways, which made it easy to lose your bearings, and even if you didn’t, the land itself was treacherous and unsafe. There were abandoned mines out here, and places where the ground had collapsed, leaving the trees leaning at angles, forming shattered crosses above crumbling pits. These were not friendly woods. Not a welcoming place for children to play.
And, of course, there were all Charlie’s stories about the woods being haunted. The idea of that had wormed its way into my head. It was always Charlie who insisted we come out here, and always him leading the way, taking us along different routes through the trees. I had the sensation he was searching for something here, and frequently found myself peering off to the side or checking behind. It got so dark and quiet among the trees that it was easy to imagine something stalking us out here.
We walked for about half an hour that day. Then Charlie hitched his bag off his shoulder and dropped it in the dirt.
“Here,” he said. “It’s not right, but it’ll do.”
“Where would be right?” I said.
I didn’t expect a reply, and I didn’t get one. I’d become more openly belligerent toward Charlie over the previous weeks, and in return he had begun to act as though I weren’t there or hadn’t spoken.
I looked around at where he’d brought us.
Much of the woods were impenetrable, but Charlie had taken us off-path today and still managed to find what amounted to a clearing. The ground was black and scorched, as though there had been a fire and the land had never quite recovered. The charred trees pointed arrow-straight from the dark soil, the branches high above spreading out like splayed fingers. There was an odd crackle of energy to the place too. I turned in a circle, breathing in the atmosphere, thinking of fairies and monsters. If anything like that had lived in the woods, this felt like a place where they would congregate. There was a sense of expectation to the air, as though the place were waiting for something to appear.
Billy had brought his own bag: an old, stained drawstring sack. He pulled a knife and a Black Widow slingshot out of it, then handed the slingshot to Charlie, but kept the knife for himself, turning it around in his hand and examining the blade. I’d seen the slingshot before, but the knife made me nervous. It was about six inches long, with a serrated edge and a wicked curve at the tip, and the little light that caught the metal revealed numerous scratches on the blade. I pictured Billy in his father’s workshop, following instructions from one of his magazines to sharpen the blade.
The ground chuffed as Charlie kicked at it, searching for a suitable rock to fit the slingshot. When he found one, he hooked the brace of the Black Widow over his forearm, squeezed the stone into the pouch, and pulled the tubing back to its fullest extent.
I heard the creak of the rubber stretching.
He closed one eye for accuracy, and then turned and aimed at my face.
“Fuck.”
I reacted out of instinct, closing my eyes and throwing up a hand. He’d moved so quickly that my mind filled in the rest of the action, and I imagined the explosion of pain in my eye. It didn’t come. When I lowered my hand and looked again, Charlie was smiling at me, aiming down at the ground now.
“Got you,” he said.
“Jesus, man.” My heart was beating so quickly that it was hard to speak. “What the fuck are you doing?”
“Just messing around.”
But the nonchalance in his voice didn’t reach his eyes. He turned and took aim at one of the trees. I swallowed, trying to calm myself down.
If his hand had slipped then, he’d probably have killed me.
So do something.
The urge was there. But he still had the slingshot. And Billy had moved closer to me now. He was prodding the point of the knife into one of the trees. Not stabbing it, exactly, more like torturing it out of idle curiosity, a blank look on his face.
The realization came to me suddenly.
I don’t know these people anymore.
“Goodbold,” Charlie said.
He fired. The trajectory of the shot was too quick for me to follow, but there was an awful crack to one side, and when I looked across I actually saw Goodbold standing there for a moment, one eye punched red, splinters of his skull dusting the air beside his ear. Then it was just a tree again. Charlie’s shot had shattered away a chunk of bark at head height.
“Dead center,” he said.
I shook my head, whether in disagreement or just to clear the vision he’d prompted.
“Not dead center,” I said. “More like an eye.”
“An eye, then. Still straight into his brain—or what passes for it. Your turn, James.”
Charlie held the slingshot out, and James took it hesitantly, scanning the ground for a stone to use. When he found one, he loaded it into the pouch and stood with his feet apart, aiming awkwardly at the same tree Charlie had shot.
“A little to the left,” Charlie said.
Handling a weapon didn’t come naturally to James. I could tell he was already setting himself up for failure, the exact same way he did on the sports field. As he adjusted his aim, Charlie touched his upper arm, gently guiding him.
“A little more.”
Just about whispering now.
“And a little higher as well. That’s it. Now—can you see Goodbold there?”
James had one eye closed, concentrating. “Yes.”
“So do it.”
James released the shot, but pulled it slightly at the last second. The stone skittered off through the undergrowth, and he lowered the weapon, a dejected look on his face.
“It just takes practice,” Charlie said. “Have another go.”
James loaded the slingshot again. “I wish we could do this to him in real life.”
“We’re going to,” Charlie said.
For a moment, the clearing was silent other than the steady chit as Billy continued whittling at the tree. I looked at Charlie. The certainty that had been in his voice was mirrored in his face. He looked calm. And entirely serious.
“What do you mean?” I said. With anyone else, I might have taken it for bravado, but Charlie rarely suggested anything he didn’t mean.
He looked at me.
“We’re going to kill him,” he said.
“I don’t … I don’t think we should do that.”
“Why not? The man’s a bully. And a pedophile.”
“I’m pretty sure he’s not actually a pedophile.”