Faux

Chapter 10

Fate seemed to be playing a cruel joke on Benjamin Calhoun when the blue and red lights flashed ahead of him, the police cruiser parked haphazardly outside his office. 

He stopped in the middle of the road and watched two officers step out of the vehicle, one tall and the other short. Two silhouettes remained unmoving in the back of the car and Calhoun felt his blood trickle into ice at their sight. For a moment he saw the Carter boy and the woman he'd found in the forest. The dark shapes their bodies come to life. Like Evie Sutton. A shiver passed through him and he considered turning back to Hoggs, but Charlie would probably be closing up now. It was Sunday after all. With nowhere else to go, and some resolve building in him from the sight of the cops at his porch, he drove on in his Volvo and stopped behind the cruiser.

"Evening officers." He called as he stepped out of the vehicle. They gave him a once over look only this time there was no malice,

"Evening Doctor Calhoun." The taller cop said. Officer Brady. He was definitely in charge. "A-and-E boys are bringing two bodies down found in Eatonbrook Forest. We need you to open the premises for them to use your cold storage for a short while."

Calhoun's body started to shake, even though there was hardly any alcohol present in his body. And it wasn't from the cold either. He managed to control himself enough to get his keys as he walked past the police car. The silhouettes turned out to be Frank Carter and Father Becket, not re-animated corpses as he had first thought. He moved to the door, keys still jingling in his shaking hands. In his mind he was thinking, 'Last time I brought a body down here, one of them walked out alive.' and then he was leading the cops down to his refrigeration basement.

*

Two paramedics from the A & E left the emergency vehicle in the church's car park and followed the cordoned off area into the forest. The moon looked down at them like a luminous toenail.

"This place is damn freaky." one of them said. A super-LED flashlight lit up the yellow tape weaving through the trees and shrubbery.

"Maybe it's a ghost forest. Like in that movie. The Japanese one about the twins in a suicide forest."

"Don't say shit like that man. Freaks me out."

"If someone is apt to see ghosts, it's us. Paramedics. You know that right. Close encounters with the dead unify our souls to the after life. We're practically visible to them."

"Cut that shit man. Come on."

The forest is never quiet. It chirrups and rustles around them as though the air itself is alive. The night sky twinkles as they follow the path to a wider area where police barricades have been set up. Only the area is empty.

"Where the hell are the bodies?"

"...Ghosts. I told you man."

"Shut up about..."

A branch snaps behind them and they whirl about. A woman in black stands there gazing at them. Before either of them can say anything, more twigs snap around them and eyes flash from the forest shadows.

"Oh fu..." The world around them shimmers. The forest becomes a series of worm-like trees and blackened leaves. Hues of colour fill their vision wholly through eyes that aren't eyes. Above them the sky is pitch-black and the moon is an eye closed to half-lid. The eyes around them are sagging bags of skin. Small. Childlike. 

Approaching.

The A&E workers' mouths open but only garbled noises fill the air then the paramedics are back in the forest with their screams intermingling with the forest sounds. Then they are running back to their emergency vehicle.