There are dark places in the world where dark creatures dwell, supreme and hidden. Out of sight where humans fear to tread nightmares walk. They do not care for all the changes and advances of the world of light, as a spider does not care what becomes tangled in its web. While all around the world moves, in the dark hatred, malice, and hunger stand obstinate and fierce. Patiently the dark creatures wait in their dark places as elemental servants of destruction, permanent and unchanging forces of nature. They make for good stories. Safe in the world of light they can be used as devices to excite. Certainly, this excitement may be heightened by turning out the lights, or gathering outside around a low fire. But this is only pageantry. No more real than theatre. The dark places of the world are not dark simply because of an absence of light. They are dark because they are dark. They are filled with it. These places are places of corruption and sickness, that do not know of joy. Most people go their whole lives getting no closer to the dark places than the stories they hear about them. The dark places are far from the world of light, hidden, in deep caverns, forgotten rooms, on high peaks, and deep within forests.
Forests: the perfect home for darkness. They are already a world apart from that of light. Forests retain their own laws and mastery, and their own secrets. Vast hidden spaces exist in these confines safe from the eyes of humanity. True, for the most part all that is hidden is the simple action of life, leaves growing, turning brown, and falling. Deeper though, in the truly hidden parts of these forests, in ancient valleys where light never shone the darkness dwells. It corrupts the hearts of the trees and other twisted creatures that exist there. They do not suffer the world of light to encroach upon them.
The Forest of Dean is one of Britain’s ancient forests. It is one of the last remnants of the great forest that used cover the entirety of the land. The Forest has seen the Romans come and go. It saw the Normans conquer the land. When King Charles I disafforested swathes of the forest, and riots ensued, the forest stood through it all. Despite much of the land being used to mine coal for the industrial revolution the Forest of Dean endured, and endures to this day.
Nowadays the Forest of Dean is home to thousands of people, and thousands more journey there every year. The people who live there go to their jobs every day, and come home every night, and are thankful they live in such a pleasant place. The tourists flock to the forest to take in its spectacular beauty, play golf, and cycle under ancient branches. Life there is simple and quiet, sequestered in a community that is proud of its forest identity. They think they are safe.
This tale begins with the arrival into the forest of three friends: Jacob, Darren, and Mark. Their arrival was greeted with a swift summer sunrise. As they drove to the top of the hill where lies Littledean they looked out upon the green tree tops that extended for miles in every direction. “A man could lose himself in there,” thought Jacob as his eyes were filled with the size of the forest. He kept this moment of doubt to himself. The friends had been looking forward to this trip for months. After years of hard work, they had finally all graduated from university. With studies behind them, and careers in front of them it was time to have some fun. Hiking, climbing, camping, zip-lining, canoeing, and a never-ending tour of the local public houses were in the offing. This trip was going to be fun.
They soon found themselves in Coleford, one of the larger towns in the forest, where they would be staying for the summer. They had rented a cottage for the trip. It was a true home of the forest, small and understated with a slate roof, a quaint garden, and pleasantly shaded by the tall trees of the forest. The car was parked and their luggage deposited, and so they took the walk into town to pick up some supplies.
Life was good for the friends as they walked along in sunlight. It would be weeks before they had any responsibilities. They noted the forest accent as they passed the locals, and were delighted but confused by how friendly they were. Every one they passed greeted them, a welcome change from London life.
Soon they had what they needed and had returned to the cottage. It was now time to attend to the business of enjoying themselves. The friends left the cottage and entered the forest proper. They passed under the eaves of the trees and found themselves in another world. The light changed. It was as if even sunlight showed deference to the mastery of the forest. Any sound of the outside world vanished. All that could be heard were bird calls, the rustle of leaves, and other mysterious forest sounds that just are. They were thrilled by it. The friends set off along the path with eyes that were never still, trying to take in every tree. Shortly, they came to a meeting of several paths. Without discussion they picked the one that seemed to head deeper into the forest and set off at a pace.
Before long they were lost. Not much longer after that they realised they were lost. Their laughter and carefree wandering had taken them deep into the forest, deeper than they had meant to go. The friends spun around in all directions and could not recognise where it had been they had come from. How would three city dwellers know to tell one tree from another? They did not panic. Why would they? For now, they were just inconvenienced.
Darren and Mark began trying to figure out just where they should go. Jacob found himself drawn in by a path. The trees seemed to lean over that path more than the others, drawing it into an embrace, and into darkness. It led downwards into a valley. The path curved tantalisingly beyond sight. Jacob could almost feel it pulling him down. Was it really calling his name?
“Jacob!” Mark called again, pulling him around and away from the path. “We definitely don’t want that one. We need to go up not down.” Jacob looked back down the path, was it brighter now? He nodded and turned back.
Soon they found their way back to a bigger and more familiar path. From there it was easy to get back to civilisation. The sun was setting, and the evening was pleasantly warm. The forest was bathed in golden light. They laughed at how close they had come to being lost. They laughed.
As the orange glow of a summer evening gave the forest that lazy, easy feeling, the friends strolled to the local pub. Sat in a pub garden with a cold pint on a warm evening, and good friends, what could be better? Very little, and the friends new it. They talked and laughed easily, and were quick to joke with the locals. Foresters being how they are they welcomed the friends. They quickly became the centre of attention, telling them all about themselves, where they had been, what their plans for the summer and beyond were. The foresters told them all the best places they should go, where to spot deer, where to spot boar, where to find a good pub. The friends felt right at home.
The evening became night, the twilight faded to black, the merry became drunk. Jacob went to the bar to order another round. At the bar he found a small, dishevelled man. Despite the warmth he wore a large, muddy coat, and a battered hat that barely covered his matted hair. He smelled of mould and earth. It was as if a mushroom had uprooted itself from some dark and damp part of the forest and come in for a drink (or several as he had clearly had). There even appeared to be moss growing on parts of his clothes.
Jacob might normally have ignored the man. But he was drunk, carefree, and sociable. “Hello,” he said to the man, far more loudly than was necessary. But the talk in the garden was loud and carried through. “What’s your name?” he slurred at the man. The man only grunted not taking his eyes off of the cider on the bar in front of him. “What a strange name. I’m Jacob. I’m not from around here. It’s very nice though. Where do you live?”
“In the forest,” the man grunted out in a thick forest accent. Jacob laughed.
“Well obviously, but like are you from Coleford, or somewhere else?”
“The forest,” the man said again obstinately.
“What actually out in it?” The man nodded slightly.
“That’s mental. What do you do?”
“I look after the forest.”
“Oh, you work for the forestry commission?”
“No.”
“Then what do you do?”
“I look after the forest.”
Jacob was getting confused, and not just from the beer. He was also growing afraid of this strange man whose head had not moved, and whose eyes had not even glanced up. “Who do you work for?”
The man’s lips opened, and spread in wicked leer of a grin to reveal broken, rotting teeth. “They don’t have a name, not really. Some call them ‘Moss People’,” he said with a wheezing rasp of laughter.
The merriment of the garden seemed very far away now. Jacob could not even hear it, and had his eyes fixed on the man. “Who are the ‘Moss People’?” his drunken bellow now reduced to a tense whisper.
“They are the forest, and the forest is them,” the man said and then with a snap his head turned and his eyes had Jacob fixed. They were brown and green, and dead. Jacob wanted to step back, he wanted to get away from this man. Instead he felt like he was falling into those terrible eyes. He could see something in them, he could see the forest. He saw trees being cut down, mines being dug, trees burned, buildings erected. He could feel anger. Mines were collapsed. Trees grew into buildings. Moss crept over the forest floor, and rose up. Creeping, grabbing hands tore at lost travellers. He saw the Moss People!
Jacob sat bolt upright. His heart was pounding and he was covered in sweat, and in bed. For a few moments he had no idea where he was. The Moss People had come for him! Their fingers had grabbed him and were pulling him down into darkness. Now he was sat in a small unfamiliar bedroom with sunlight streaming in through the window. He was in the cottage of course. But how? It had felt like he was about to die.
Slowly and with great care as his fear gave way to a hangover Jacob made his way downstairs. Darren was in the kitchen frying bacon. Mark sat in his pants slumped over a table in the kitchen, and seemed to be in a worse way than Jacob even was.
“Well good morning starshine,” chimed Darren. “I was beginning to think you’d died.”
“Yeah me too,” replied Jacob quietly. “What happened?”
“Well you went to buy another round. But this proved to be too much for you and you passed out at the bar. The locals found that hilarious luckily, and we carried you back here and put you to bed. Then this dickhead decided to see off a bottle of vodka.” As if to demonstrate he was indeed said dickhead, Mark proceeded at this point to throw up in the bucket Jacob could now see he was hugging.
“I passed out?” questioned Jacob.
“Yeah not surprising really, you must have had about 12 pints of that cider. It was, what? 6%?” Darren asked Mark.
“6.8%” replied Mark before throwing up again.
“Nice. But yeah that’d do it,” Darren laughed.
“Was there an old man with me?” Jacob asked, wondering if it had all been some concoction of an inebriated mind. “Yeah little homeless looking bloke was next to you at the bar. He got out of there pretty quickly after you passed out,” Darren said very amused. “I think he was just about the only one you pissed off luckily. Everyone else found it hilarious. I love these people.”
Jacob went and sat down with Mark, at a sensible distance. What had happened? He hadn’t imagined the old man, what if he hadn’t imagined the rest of it? But that was insane. Forest spirits, Moss People coming to claim the souls of those who disturbed their domain. That couldn’t be real, could it? With a slam Darren put a pile of bacon sandwiches in front of him and Mark, that dragged Jacob back into the world of men. “You both look like shit. Eat these and then we can go back to enjoying this holiday yeah?” Darren at least seemed to be unbothered with terrifying forest dwellers. For his part Mark threw up again. Jacob grabbed a sandwich and began to eat. As his hangover subsided so too did his fear. He really must have been drunk he thought. Moss People: what a ridiculous notion. He laughed and ate more sandwiches. Memories of mines being collapsed, and unwary travellers being dragged to their doom seemed to fade into the background of a drunken night, as the friends sat and talked about what definitely had happened. The sun was soaring high into the sky. There was a gentle breeze that took the edge off of the heat. It was going to be a lovely day.
With their hangovers and other troubles from the previous night put behind them, the friends set off. The weather was glorious so they had decided they would spend all day exploring the forest. They packed their bags with provisions so that they would be able to stay out all day if they wanted. It was going to be one of those days all about the moment. They would set off with very little planned, taking the day and the world as it came, with nothing to hold them back. Their lives and the day were theirs.
There is something tantalising about going into the forest. It consumes you into its own world. Once you step under the branches of its trees the world you once knew is almost immediately hidden from you, and you step into a different place, a different time. It is peaceful.
The friends walked for hours. The rest of the world did not matter. It was exactly what they wanted. It was as if they were the only people in the world, with nothing to do but explore this glorious place, and there was much to explore. It seemed to always have something new to offer around every bend, over every hill. They found old mines that had been reclaimed by the forest and now appeared as rifts and ravines snaking through the trees. They found old quarries, towering walls of rock that appeared from nowhere as imposing monoliths. There were lookouts over valleys that displayed the full scale of the forest, a blanket from horizon to horizon, under a blue sky.
They criss-crossed the forest in an aimless fashion, going wherever their interest willed them, ever deeper into the forest. It was a day of laughter, up until it was not.
Ambling down a path they came to a cross roads. Throughout the day when this had happened, they had simply let one of them choose which way to go based on nothing but their gut feeling that they would find something interesting that way. This time it was Darren’s turn. Without any hesitation he pointed down a path. “Let’s go that way,” he said in a voice that was oddly lifeless, and devoid of the laughter that had been in it moments before.
Jacob looked where he was pointing. He could not believe it. The trees seemed to lean over this path so much they formed a roof, coating it in shadow. The path went down into a valley and curved away from sight. The path seemed to pull at him. It called his name. This was the same path they had come to the day before. But how could it be? That made no sense. They must be miles from there, yet he was sure of it.
“I don’t think we should go that way,” Jacob whispered. Darren turned on him.
“Hey it’s my turn, we go where I say,” he said with a sudden venom in his voice. “Come on, it looks cool,” Darren said with laughter back in his voice as he began walking down the path. Jacob looked to Mark, but he was already following Darren down. Jacob had no choice but to follow.
The air was different, he could feel it immediately. There was a stillness to everything. They moved silently down the path. Jacob could feel every part of his being urging him to turn around and leave this place. He was powerless. The friends kept going down the path, around the turn, out of sight, out of mind.
The world had gone wrong, or maybe it had never been right here. They felt oppressed by the forest. The trees leaned over, baring down on them. Looking through them they could see dead leaves covering the floor. The silence was ominous, foreboding. It filled the space around them. Life did not work here.
The path came to an end. It did not reach anything, it just stopped in more forest. The trees were tall here. They reached up to unguessed heights. They stretched upwards to form a ceiling that hid the sunlight. What light there was down here was grey, a haze that clung to everything, dull, decaying. The trees went out in every direction as far as they could see with only darkness beyond.
It was cold. Hadn’t it been summer? Not here. Summer did not reach this place. The cold reached into their bones. Their souls were chilled. Mist rose as they breathed, and their breathing was fast, panicked. The mist spread around them, and grew thicker becoming a fog. The forest was hidden from them. Their friends were hidden from them. They span around searching for anything, unable to make a sound. The fog cleared. Everywhere they looked, as far as they could see, the floor was covered with moss. It was a carpet where none had been before.
They had come for them. They rose from the ground, their ground. Their shape was irregular. As they moved their forms were lost in the background of moss as they looked exactly like it. But they came. Slowly, time was their own, they came for them. They reached out their terrible hands. Somehow, they stretched out and grabbed the friends and held them fast. The moss rose up from the ground, crawling up the feet, the legs, the bodies, of the friends. They looked at the creatures that had them. The last thing they saw as the moss covered them were their eyes, horrible angry eyes, not human, not even animal.
It only took a few moments and then there were no friends left, no humans, only three more Moss People. Three more guardians of this dark place where to set foot means your doom.
The sun set that day as on every other day. A house stood empty, and silent. In the dark of the night the forest continued as it had ever done, as it ever would.
storiesbyadam 