Darkest Part of the Woods by Ramsey Campbell Page A

didn't."

    "That's because you aren't a woman. How's the girlfriend situation?"

    "Nobody just now."

    "Well, remember if there's anything you want to consult me about I'm as close as your phone." As Sam assured himself that wasn't meant to treat him like a client, his father said "And what are you making of Sylvia?"

    "I'm trying to get used to having her around."

    "Lucky you, or is it?"

    "It's strange with someone else in the house."

    "I wish it weren't," his father said, and cleared his throat of a hint of wistfulness.
    "Anyway, we aren't talking about me."

    "I wish we were."

    "We did explain the situation to you at the time, me and your mother."

    "You can use longer words now."

    "It was simply when the firm moved out of Brichester it was either tag along with them or start again with people I didn't particularly like and at less of a salary into the bargain. I know you understood why your mother felt she had to stay. I thought you understood me too."

    "I didn't say I didn't."

    "It made sense for you to stay with her when Margo could help look after you, and we tried to make sure you saw enough of me. That doesn't stop me feeling guilty, all the same."

    "Why would you want to feel that?"

    "I don't want it at all," Sam's father retorted, only to admit "Perhaps I do if I'm honest.
    Perhaps I don't need to. We'll have to see how you grow up."

    That sounded like a threat to engineer the process. Apparently concluding he'd said enough for the moment, he inserted a compact disc of Beethoven symphonies into the player as the car left Goodmanswood behind. The music had barely announced itself with a flurry of notes when he turned it lower than the wind.

    "Sorry I was late, by the way. I nearly did a silly on the bypass."

    Sam wasn't merely watching but feeling the woods crowd towards him. He was less than fully aware of being expected to ask "What was that?"

    "Tried to dodge something that wasn't there."

    "What?" Sam demanded.

    "It must have been the shadow of a tree or a lot of them. I thought it was someone running in front of the car at first, as if anyone could stretch across the whole road."

    "How could just a shadow make you late?"

    "Because I braked before I tried to take avoiding action. I nearly had a pair of trucks up my nether regions, and after that I needed a few minutes in a lay-by to recuperate."

    "I still don't get it," Sam said uneasily. "It couldn't have been a shadow when the sun isn't behind the woods yet."

    "There are trees on this side of the road as well, old fellow. As a matter of fact I think it was here," Sam's father said, nodding at the trees that staked out the grounds of the Arbour.

    Sam tried and failed to see how any of those trees could have cast a shadow across the bypass, even when the sun was lower. He felt as though the depths of the forest or something they concealed were effortlessly pacing the car. He couldn't think for the Beethoven, which kept repeating itself louder like someone shouting at a deaf person or a foreigner while the treetops seemed to describe shapes more sinuous and patterns more complex than any music.
    He couldn't grasp how long it took the car to pass the woods. He saw them shrink in the mirror as the motorway glittered with traffic ahead, but he felt as if they were dwindling only to reveal more of themselves, to increase themselves somehow. They remained a hovering restless many-limbed presence in his mind and at his back as the motorway reeled Brichester towards him. He was indifferent to the sight of the university towering over streets of repetitive houses until his father said "You'll need to tell me where we're meant to go, old chap."

    That was Worlds Unlimited, which Sam realised now had been the first destination he could think of. "Past the, right," he said. "I don't mean right, I mean right, straight on. Right now, right here." He felt as if he was playing a video game on the monitor that was the windscreen, and clumsily too. "Along,