Children of the Static #3
It was then we found the hut. But its presence on these forested mountain slopes was odd. The location was so isolated. Up here even the rush of the river was little more than a faint hiss. But the absence of light and birdsong was unnerving.
There were insects, though, beetles scurrying in the dirt, centipedes skittering through weeds and rotten leaves, and spiders weaving webs on the branches of old trees. Creatures that thrived in darkness and decay.
“I don’t like it here,” said Alfie.
Neither did I.
Constructed from timber, the hut was a model of dilapidation. There was nothing here for miles, and certainly no farmland. Perhaps it was once used by lumberjacks to store tools, but not now. Its door looked solid enough, but the hut itself looked rotten and ready to fall apart.
“I want to go,” said Alfie.
I wanted to leave too, not least because I thought I recognised the hut from the TV. I didn’t let on to Alfie. I could see he was already frightened enough.
“Let’s get out of here,” I said, pointing to where a distant meadow was enlivened by golden sunlight.
We turned back the way we came, walking quickly.
I didn’t tell Alfie, but when I glanced back at the hut, I thought I glimpsed a shadow, emerging from behind. It immediately recoiled, as if caught peeping, watching us retreat into the lighter part of the forest.
I hastened my stride.
By the time we reached home, dusk was settling, Bruce was still missing, and Mum and Dad were furious.
“It’s dangerous to go out that far,” said Dad. “I was about to come looking. You could have fallen in the river, broken a limb… got lost out there. We’ve been worried sick.”
“But Bruce,” I protested.
“—is a dog,” my father said. “He could live out there for days. He’s an animal. He could survive a week.”
If he did, we didn’t know it. Because seven days passed, and still he failed to return. It wasn’t till the eighth day we saw him, and that brought us little comfort at all.
***
Alfie and I were watching kids’ television, cuddled up together on the single armchair. It had been months since the incident with the TV children, and whilst we hadn’t forgotten the strange occurrence, we wanted to take our minds off Bruce, and cartoons were the perfect distraction.
Dad had contacted all the neighbours, each a quarter of a mile apart. Two reported barking at night, which gave us hope as there were only a handful of homes on this side of the valley, and Bruce was one of only two pet dogs.
I was eating a bowl of Frosties when the television started to play up.
The problem started with static interference.
We loved Scooby-Doo, so we were annoyed when the picture started to crackle as Fred and Thelma were unmasking a bank robber unconvincingly dressed as a sea monster.
Mild annoyance quickly turned to dread when the static flickered to a black-and-white picture of a ramshackle hut in the woods.
“Turn it off,” said Alfie.
I was about to when a four-legged creature emerged from behind the hut. At first I thought it was a deer. This animal, though, didn’t move like a deer. Deer were graceful. This creature had the gait of a dog.
“Bruce,” said Alfie.
I gasped.
“Here, boy,” said Alfie, shouting at the screen. “Here.”
“He can’t—”
“Yes, he can.”
Bruce tilted his head and raised an ear as if some distant call or sound had caught his attention. But then he went back to sniffing the ground and walked across the screen and out of shot.
“We have to go and get him,” said Alfie.
“Mum and Dad—”
“Won’t listen,” he finished.
He was right, of course. How could we convince two rational adults our lost family pet had magically appeared on our television screen, and from a location so remote it took hours to walk there?
I refused to wait, to gamble on the hope that Mum and Dad would believe us. Dad was convinced Bruce was nearby, due to the neighbours’ reports of late-night barking. But if Bruce was as far out as the hut, they’d never hear him.
I packed a rucksack quietly, careful to avoid waking our parents. Again, I packed a few cans of pop, some crisps, and a packet of cookies, as well as Bruce’s favourite doggie treats.
When we set off, the day was brightening, the sun still rising.
Bugs swarmed in the golden morning light.
I must have swallowed at least a dozen by the time we reached the river, and I marvelled at the size of the dragonflies, too, which zipped across the water like miniature helicopters.
Again, we walked for hours, calling Bruce’s name, praying we wouldn’t have to go as far out as the old hut, but we heard no answering bark.
The trees soon became taller, the woods darker, the forest swallowing us as we did those legions of irritating gnats.
We continued to follow the river upstream until we reached a path leading to the part of the woods which, for some reason, I thought of as older, where the remains of the hut waited in the murk.
“I hate it here,” said Alfie.
The once roaring river was little more than a faint hiss, and I knew we were close.
We found the hut as we had left it.
It was lonely here. Yet I felt like we were being…
observed. But I told myself my mind was playing tricks, that I had imagined that figure peeping from behind the hut the last time we were here.
Still, an unnerving sense of unease took hold of me.
The still air carried a melancholy that seeped into my pores, infecting me with darkness and the bleakest of thoughts.
“Bruce,” shouted Alfie, his cries echoing amongst the tall pines.
No bark.
“Here, boy. Bruce!” I shouted.
My voice echoed in the woods, and I remembered what my father had said about our old television set, that the white noise was radiation from the big bang billions of years before, and the universe was talking to itself.
And I thought of my voice travelling in this valley, reverberating for eternity amongst these impossibly tall trees.
Here, boy. Bruce!...
In near darkness.
Here…
It was the swarming flies that gave Bruce away, not that he knew. We found him close to the hut. His carcass had become flat and leathery, his middle hollowed out and maggot filled.
“Don’t look,” I warned Alfie.
But Alfie did, and immediately burst into tears.
The hut had two boarded-up windows on either side of the door. The dilapidated structure resembled a rudimentary panic-stricken face – like something from the mind of Edvard Munch.
I was still staring down at Bruce’s corpse when a cloud obscured the distant sun, and its shadow fell, darkening the woods by degrees.
I imagined flower petals closing as the temperature dropped, and shivered, holding my nose from the rancid stench of Bruce’s rotting innards.
I couldn’t imagine a more horrid fate than dying here, alone, where the sun’s rays never reached.
“I want to go,” said Alfie, wiping his eyes.
I put my arm around him and turned away from our dead pet.
That was when a flash of light faintly winked amongst the weeds under the grey slate of the sky, close to the hut.
Walking towards the structure, something brittle popped under my shoe, and I discovered dirty pieces of jagged glass littering the ground, hidden by leaves, but concave like the screen of an old television set.
Then I found the rest: a smashed wooden case, its metal dials and buttons rusted and corroded; a slatted metal speaker; a bent but vaguely V-shaped antenna.
I was no expert, but if I had to guess, the TV looked like something from the 1960s.
When most people watched in black and white.
A vision flashed in my mind’s eye: The girl silently smiling, peering from the television set into our living room. Here, around us, the woods were just as quiet.
Alfie yanked my sleeve, and pointed to something yellow, partially hidden by weeds and fallen pine needles. I crouched, deciding not to touch the scarf, but I could still see the pattern of little red kites stitched along its edge.
The forest now was even darker, as if the trees crowded around us, conspiring to prevent our escape.
Goosebumps, I’d read, occurred when tiny muscles in the hair follicles pulled the hair upright.
This helped our hairier ancestors keep warm in the cold or appear larger when a predator threatened.
Whilst this part of the forest was cooler, I wasn’t cold, yet every tiny hair on my neck stood erect.
“Run,” I whispered, pulling Alfie’s sleeve. “Run.”
Our feet thumped hard against the ground as thorns and brambles snared our ankles, tripping us as shadows gained.
I could hear the river. It was distant, but its hiss grew louder with every stride. Alfie, though, repeatedly fell behind, and I kept slowing to usher him ahead. Of one thing I was sure: whatever had happened to Bruce was now happening to us, and unless we made it to the river, we would be next.
We ran maybe three-quarters of a mile before the river came into sight. That might sound a short distance, but my lungs burned as adrenaline sapped my waning energy. I shoved Alfie ahead of me as we climbed the crest of a short incline—and dared to look back.
It was as if the trees were rushing towards us, the effect like a cloud’s shadow falling, darkening the forest with a rapidity quickening with every frenzied yard it gained.
It was evil. I knew it. Alfie knew it. Certainly, poor Bruce had known it too.
Breathless, I spotted the sheet of corrugated metal caught in the brambles at the river’s edge. I raced down to the bank and reached for the makeshift bridge. I positioned the panel between the bank and the small island at the river’s centre.
“Alfie, quick,” I said, holding the panel in position.
My brother ran down the bank, skidding on the wet reeds, and tumbled across the bridge, reaching the mossy island of rock.