Darkest Part of the Woods Read Online Free Page B

more often before."

    "So long as it counts now," Lennox said, half turning his head away from the woods as Sam sat beside him. "Care to start off with a promise?"

    Sam found his directness as unsettling as the proposal, but felt bound to say "If you like."

    "Answer me a question when I ask it and I'll tell you some things."

    "Go ahead." When Lennox only cocked his head towards the woods as though listening, Sam had to assume he was meant to prompt him. "How are you?" was the most he felt able to risk.
    "Conscious."

    "Well, good." He hoped to be able to leave it at that, but Lennox gazed in open disappointment at him. "Isn't it?" Sam said.

    "Of what should be the question."
    "Of
    what?"

    "Of the dark there wouldn't be any light without. The dark that's above all this and under it too." As though the relevance ought to be obvious he added "Do you use drugs?"

    "I tried pot the first year I was at university. Too scary for me."
    "What
    scared
    you?"

    "Felt as if I might see things I wouldn't be able to handle."

    "Once you see you go on seeing."

    Sam took that for agreement, and felt he had to respond. "You mean since you touched that stuff in the woods."

    "Most of forty years." Lennox met Sam's dismay at this with a wry grin. "Tell me what you think you know about it," he said.

    "You came to England to research it. You were, you're an authority on mass hallucination. You taught courses on the psychology of popular delusion."

    "Sounds like I must have been damn sure of myself."

    "You wrote a book about it. If you haven't got a copy here I can bring you one."

    "I'm touched. I'll be telling Heather she should be proud of how she brought you up, or you can tell her yourself, but don't waste your time with that book." Lennox cocked his head at a wryer angle still and said "Remind me what I was up to in your town."

    "A professor at the university read your book and wrote to you about all the stuff people were seeing in the woods. And then didn't he die, so you got his job as well?"

    "Are we talking about old Longman? That's who brought me, sure enough. What did everyone think I was doing here again?"

    "Trying to find out why people were hallucinating about the woods."

    "Was that what they were doing? And was I a success?"

    Sam was unable to judge if he was being mocked. "You traced it to some lichen," he said. "If you, if anyone even touched it it got to them."

    "I'll bet I came up with the solution too."

    "Some trees that had mutated because it grew on them, maybe they'd even produced it somehow, they had to be destroyed."

    As Lennox leaned towards him, Sam was startled by a cold smell of decay until he saw the woods stir-there must be a wind. "How many?" Lennox said.

    "About a dozen in the middle of the woods. A lot less than were cut down for the bypass."

    "And that was the end of it, was it, except for me and my friends in here that your professor told me about in the first place."

    Sam wasn't sure if he meant in the Arbour or in his head, towards which he'd raised his contorted hand. "Some scientists took away samples but those broke down before they could get them anywhere, so it was never analysed."

    "Bad medicine anyway," Lennox muttered, "trying to deal with the symptom instead of the cause."

    "I don't think I understand."

    "You said you'd answer a question."

    Sam wondered if this was being offered as some kind of an answer. "If I can."

    "Heather told me you hurt yourself falling out of your tree-house, but what made you fall?"

    "I was nearly asleep."

    "How far up were you, twenty feet? Trying to get closer to something?"

    "Trying to stay clear of the bailiffs."

    Lennox grimaced with impatience. "Why did you fall?"

    At the edge of Sam's vision the woods appeared to flex themselves. Another wind must have stirred them, since the smell of decay had revived, though they weren't moving when he glanced across the bypass. "I thought someone had got onto the platform with me," he