If You Go Down to the Woods

Mission: Find Sadie

List of essentials:

Torch

Mobile Phone (£2.75 credit)

Compass

BB Gun and full pellet bottle

Big Stick (to push nettles out of the way)

Whistle

Sadie’s Teddy – Mr Rabbit

Denzel read over the list slowly, checking each item against the contents of his backpack to ensure that he hadn’t forgotten anything. His hands shook slightly as he secured the BB gun strap across his chest, the body of the weapon hanging loose against the small of his back. The small plastic bottle of additional pellets had been tucked into the pocket of his jogging bottoms, the little nozzle turned in so that it pressed reassuringly against his thigh. Earlier that afternoon, he had crawled through the amassing chaos of the garden shed to dig out his wellies (and did his best not to panic when he saw a spider fall out of them after he knocked them against the wall). He had also hung his winter coat from the back of his chair so that he would be ready to leave without making too much noise when the time came.

Glancing at the Star Wars alarm clock on his bedside table, he waited until it blinked 02:00 in danger-warning red before tiptoeing to the open gap between his door and the frame. He had just started to sleep with the door shut and without his night light (which had kindly be donated to his little sister as a gesture of big-brotherly protectiveness), but he had convinced his parents to leave the door open again ever since Sadie had gone missing... They hadn’t argued, wanting him to feel safe. It worked in his favour now, letting him slip away without the clunk and drag of a heavy door being opened.

Holding Mr Rabbit firmly to his chest, Denzel took agonisingly slow steps towards the stairway, supporting part of his weight on the banister and missing the third step entirely to make sure it didn’t squeak. Him and Sadie used to make a game of it, counting one step up, one step back, two steps up, two steps back, one step up, two steps up and QUACK! Denzel’s throat tightened a little at the memory and he pressed Mr Rabbit’s rusk-scented fabric to his cheek.

He didn’t understand why someone would want to take her away. There had been that one boy at school who said that a social worker was going to take them away because they didn’t have a mum... but Daddy James and Daddy Luke had sat down with him to explain that it wasn’t true, that no-one was going to take him away and that Harry Belmont had only said it because his parents were something called ‘homophobic’. Denzel didn’t really understand completely, but he’d nodded anyway because Daddy James had the same angry-nice face that he wore when someone cut him up in traffic or when someone said that their cat was a nuisance. He had the same angry-nice face when the reporters kept asking him questions that he didn’t want to answer. It was like he was trying his best to hide his teeth behind his lips while stretching them out into the widest smile possible. It was a pretend smile, one that really said: “I want to say a bad word but I have to be nice”. Instead of asking the thousands of questions buzzing through his head, Denzel had nodded his head and asked if he could have some ice cream. Maybe if he’d asked those questions, he’d know why someone took Sadie. Maybe if he knew what a ‘homophobic’ person looked like, he’d know what to look for when he was in the woods.

He had to go to the woods. It was his mission. He would follow the path that him and Sadie had cycled down with Daddy Luke, look for clues, then come back when his watch said that it was 05:00. He would be tired tomorrow, but he didn’t care; he didn’t feel like going to school anyway, and he didn’t want Sadie to be alone in the dark. She hated the dark. She always cried if the power went out in a storm or if one of their dads accidentally pulled the door closed when they said goodnight. He didn’t like the thought of her being all alone in the scary woods without him, too scared to look for help because it was too dark.

The image ignited a new wave of bravery in his chest and he turned the key in the lock, carefully creeping outside into the cold street. The world looked so different at night. The streetlamps made everything easy to see, but it looked like everything had been painted in blue and black shadows; as though the whole world had turned into one of those backwards photographs that Grandma had shown him. He couldn’t remember what they were called. But he remembered that they were black where they should be white, and white where they should be black. Just like the world at nighttime.

Treading slowly and quietly along the driveway, Denzel hitched his backpack up onto his shoulders and made his way along the street. He tried to keep close to the walls and hedges as he passed the familiar houses - ducking below the hedge of Mrs Applegate’s house, almost crawling as he tried to crouch below the sightline of Mr Maddock’s front wall, leaping quickly across the spaces where gates hung open or where driveways opened up between him and the sleeping houses. He needed to be careful. If one of their neighbours saw Denzel walking alone at night, they would call his parents and they’d stop him before he got to the woods. They would tell him off, but that didn’t matter. What mattered was that Sadie would still be out in the dark, on her own.

Diving across the space between Marcus Adams’ house and Mr Garret’s hedge, Denzel caught a flicker of movement to his left. He froze in a crouch behind the wall, listening carefully for the sound of someone moving. But it was quiet. The night still and undisturbed. Steeling himself, he leaned forward and twisted his upper body to glance around the edge of the wall. He could see the expanse of neatly mown grass, the little gathering of gnomes that lived on Mr Garrett’s lawn, and… a pair of yellow eyes glinting from the shade nearest the wall. Denzel gasped and reached for the BB gun, the plastic stock clattering too loudly in the still night air. He risked turning his gaze back towards the plastic gun, manoeuvring it around to his front, but by then the yellow eyes had closed the distance. Denzel gripped his weapon tightly and watched as a shape detached itself from the shadows.

“Frankie?” Denzel whispered as the overweight tomcat padded closer. “Frankie, you scared me!”

The cat ignored the scolding and headbutted Denzel’s arm affectionately. The boy breathed a sigh of relief and stroked the cat’s tabby-striped fur for a moment before getting to his feet; in the unusual landscape of his own neighbourhood, it was reassuring to see a familiar face.

“Go home, Frankie. I’ll be back later,” Denzel instructed, continuing on his path towards the woods.

The cat followed amiably in his wake, stopping when Denzel stopped and keeping pace when his owner darted across the open driveway of the next house. Denzel stopped and weighed up his options; if he took Frankie with him, then the cat might get lost in the woods. But he couldn’t risk walking Frankie all the way home and then coming back out, someone was bound to see him walking up and down the street. Besides, letting Frankie back into the house might create enough noise to wake up his parents.

“Ok, you can come with me, but you have to be quiet,” Denzel warned in a whisper.

The cat didn’t argue with him, so Denzel took that as an agreement. He nodded and let the BB gun hang loosely at his side, holding it against his leg to dampen the noise when he needed to run. He didn’t want his weapon to get caught like it had earlier, and the gentle clatter of its barrel against his belt wasn’t too much of a problem once he broke away from the last of the houses on his street.

The streetlamps stopped for a long stretch, leaving the path to the woods in total darkness. He almost missed it, his eyes adjusting to the sudden vacuum between Ash Tree Crescent and Oak Wood Lane. But he finally spotted the outline of the kissing gate peeking out of the blackness, the tiny silver plaque staring out like a dull, blind eye in the night.

Reaching into his backpack, Denzel took the flashlight into his clammy hands and held his breath as the light burst through the darkness. On the ground a few feet away, grass and fencing suddenly emerged; the blackness around the spotlight seeming all the darker now, as though the shadows hadn’t been destroyed by the light, but simply pushed out of the way so that they hugged the edges of the lamp-beam and waited to collapse back into the space. It reminded Denzel of a mission marker in a video game, showing him where he had to go. He made it a rule, as long as he kept the light on the path and kept at least one of his feet in the mission marker, the monsters wouldn’t be able to get him. But that thought made him scowl and he shook his head firmly; monsters didn’t exist. They were just a baby idea for kids who hadn’t grown up enough to know better. There was nothing in the shadows to jump out at him, and the light was just a light. But it made him feel better to think of the spotlight as a mission marker all the same, at least then he would feel like he was going in the right direction and he would be focused on the path. If he looked out in the darkness for too long, he might see something that led him off the track, and he would be lost too.

While thinking out the rules to his little game, Denzel had already reached the kissing gate. He pushed it with the flat, soft expanse of his palm and flinched when the damp wood creaked loudly through the dark woodland landscape. It was a warning to whatever was hiding, that a human boy was approaching; a warning for all the squirrels and rabbits to take to their hidey holes.

‘Or a dinner bell for whatever might like to eat small boys’ an insidious thought insisted.

Denzel slipped around the gate as soon as the gap was big enough, gently easing the wood back into place so that it wouldn't crash against the post. Aiming his mission marker back at the floor, he followed the little patch of too-bright mud and grass along the makeshift path. Frankie followed close at his heel, watching the small human with curious eyes.

"You have to listen carefully, Frankie. Sadie could be far away or tired out from crying, so we have to listen for the smallest little sound," Denzel explained to the patient tomcat.

Following his own instructions, Denzel kept his attention fixed keenly on the sounds around him. He had always thought that the night was a quiet time, that everything went to sleep (except for owls and hedgehogs). But the world was full of sounds that he couldn't remember hearing during the day: crickets and bird cries that didn't sound much like the "too-it too-woo" of owls. Even his footsteps crunched loudly against wet gravel and mud. Overhead, leaves hissed and whispered rumours to each other as he passed.

A boy. A human boy. Alone in the woods. All alone.

Frankie meowed reassuringly from somewhere near Denzel's ankle, but the boy didn't dare turn the torchlight onto his cat for fear of losing the path. Instead, he crouched slightly and offered his free hand, smiling as the cat rubbed into his touch. The soothing rumble of his purr blocking out the strange unfamiliar sounds of the night, even if it was just for a moment.

Not alone. Frankie could see in the dark and Denzel had a torch. They were just taking a walk and seeing if they could hear Sadie. That was all. He would be careful with his footing and would pay close attention to the path, and everything would be fine.

Frankie chose that moment to stiffen and spring into the undergrowth with a dry rustle of unseen leaves. Denzel stopped and glared into the darkness, his grip tightening on the flashlight.

"Frankie?... This isn't the time to hunt mice and scrirrels." Denzel hissed in a half-whisper.

Denzel shifted his weight anxiously, looking at the circle of his flashlight beam. If he was quick, maybe it would be ok. The path was going to run away the moment he moved the light. That would be silly.

Letting out a sickly, breathless laugh at his own thought, Denzel planted his heels firmly into the gravel. The scrape of rock on rock vibrated up his legs as he dug little trenches with his heels, reaching for a nearby branch for additional grounding before he carefully swept the light sideways into the woods.

A whimper bubbled from his throat, his head swimming with the sudden depth of the world. No longer hidden by darkness, the woods crowded around him for what seemed like miles. For a heart-stopping moment, he was struck with the possibility that he might have followed the wrong path, that he might have walked into a overlapping spiral of walkways. If he couldn't be sure which path he had followed, he couldn't be sure which path would lead him out. Perhaps he would be trapped here forever; wandering the paths and walkways until he died of starvation or a cold.

Was that how Sadie had gotten lost too?

"Ow…"

A voice, tiny and distant, floated out from the trees. Denzel's blood was pulsing too hard in his ears, making him doubt for a moment whether he'd heard it. There was a rustle nearby and, as he turned to look for the source, a tiny light caught his eye. Low to the ground, barely visible.

"Sadie?!" He called out, wincing as the dull shallow sound of his voice was swallowed up by the blanket of textures and still air.

Pulling one foot from the safety of its hollow, he tested a step into the underbrush. If he stepped off the path, he would be breaking his rule, and he didn’t even know if it was really Sadie. It could be anything. But it could also be Sadie’s keychain. He couldn’t walk away and pretend that he hadn’t seen the little light on the floor, not when he’d come out here to look for any sign of his sister. If he had found a clue, then he had to investigate. Before he could rally his courage, the light moved slightly and Denzel jerked back, almost losing his balance. He cast his gaze back to the little glowing light, watching carefully for any sign that it could be getting closer. But the light had stopped moving now and Denzel could hear movement in the underbrush.

Pulling his backpack around, Denzel took his whistle out and tied the lanyard to the branch he had been holding. That way, he could shine his torch back to the path and know where he needed to go. Confident that the whistle was tied securely, Denzel pointed his torch back towards the small light and began picking his way through the underbrush. As a patch of brambles snagged at his jeans, he huffed and lowered the light so that he could pick apart the trap of branches and thorns. When he lifted the torchlight once more, another thin, breathy whimper floated through the darkness to his ear.

“It’s ok, Sadie. It’s just me. It’s Denzel,” he called out, his feet landing more confidently as he picked up his pace. “I’m almost there, and then we can take you home.”

In his haste, Danzel caught his foot on a tree root and pitched sharply forward, crashing into the underbrush. The impact thudded through his chest, winding him. He lay in darkness for a long moment, focusing on the steady in-out of his own breathing until it had regained its usual rhythm. He rubbed his grazed palms against his coat and hissed as the grit scratched his palms. Unable to wash the dirt away, he gave up and reached for the torch which had landed a few feet away. But his hand stilled in its action, his breath stopping completely as his mind struggled to understand the shape that had been illuminated by the lamp’s powerful beam.

The limp, soft figure was propped up against the nearest tree. Her black trousers were coated in mud, but Denzel could make out their school crest embroidered onto the polo shirt. He couldn’t tell if it was Sadie. He didn’t see how it could be. Her face was all wrong.

There were craters and gouges in her cheeks, her lower lip torn away completely to reveal the tiny pearls of her teeth. And her eyes, usually deep brown, had gone glassy and clouded; as though someone had replaced them with smoky, poorly made marbles. Denzel gave a wavering cry, backing away from the limp figure. His shout disturbed Frankie and the cat gave an ‘ow’ of protest before he resumed pawing at Sadie’s shoulder and chest. His paws pushed at her arm so that the tiny Spongebob keyring wobbled sickly in the loose claw of her dead hand.

Mission complete, he thought hysterically. He had found her…