Issue #81

Foraging, Father-in-law, and Deleted

by Simon Collings

Foraging

The path in the wood bore little resemblance to anything on the map Tom was holding. He had thought they were walking east but the afternoon sun was now in their eyes. Sylvia tried her phone. 'No service,' she said. Up ahead they noticed a blue arrow on a tree and they decided to follow it. More waymarks appeared along the trail and they began to hope that they might reach a road. But at a fork in the path the arrows petered out, leaving them unsure what direction to take. They chose the left-hand track, which looked the more used, but after ten minutes they had seen no more markers. They sat on a fallen tree trunk and drank some water. 'I'm scared,' said Sylvia. 'Will we ever get out of here?' 'Wait,' Tom said, 'I think I heard something.' Off in the distance came the distinct sound of someone sawing wood. It was away to their left, among the trees, and they decided to cut through the undergrowth of brambles and bracken. The sawing grew more distinct as they advanced and they soon emerged into a clearing where an elderly couple dressed in overalls, their hair wild and matted, were building a kind of shelter out of roughly hewn planks. 'You found your way then,' said the man. 'Lizzie said you'd probably get in around now.' 'There are some acorns in that bucket over there if you're hungry,' the woman added. The pelts of several rabbits, squirrels and a fox were drying nearby on a rack made from branches. 'They're out foraging at the minute,' the woman said. 'They'll be back soon.' On the side of the bucket which held the acorns someone had painted a blue arrow.

***

Father-in-law

After an hour tinkering under the bonnet my father-in-law Bernard had finally got the old VW going again. The car had rusted overnight and scarcely looked roadworthy, but it was our only means of getting out of Tombstone Valley. Over in the west the sky was growing ominously dark. Bernard looked critically at the attempt I was making to tie the door in place using a pair of his old socks. 'Those knots aren't big enough,' he said with his customary talent for pointing out the obvious. He edged me aside and began to loop the fraying brown wool on itself until we had a knot that would hold. My mother-in-law was lying on a grassy bank nearby. 'Will it be much longer?' she asked. She sounded exhausted, her voice plaintive, and I wondered where my wife had gone. I climbed the bank and looked around but could see no sign of her. Back at the car Bernard was staring at the driver's seat which I'd somehow put in facing the wrong way. As I tried to remove it the car radio crackled into life and Saint-Saens' Danse Macabre began to play. Moments later my wife reappeared. 'Having trouble?' she asked.

***

Deleted

I had thought of Peter as someone I knew well, but when he started calling himself Dr I was puzzled. I confronted him and he claimed he'd secured the qualification at the University of Edinburgh. An enquiry to the relevant authorities revealed no record of a DPhil having been awarded to a Peter Lucas. My interest was piqued and I began to wonder what else about Peter was false. I engaged private detectives and within a few days I had learned that his real name was not Peter Lucas but Lukas Peeters, and that he was Belgian. Further investigation revealed that he had published a number of grisly thrillers under a pseudonym. One of these had been made into a successful film. Our long friendship was another of his inventions, according to the detective agency's report, and I was simply a figment of his imagination. Worse still, he was fully aware that I was spying on him, and had decided to eliminate me from this narrative in a manner which I was about to discover.