The great woodland was surrounded on all sides by suburbia, the forest fringes cut dead by bricks and mortar. Less than ten miles away was the city's centre where better paid employment could be found. Some still worked the land, but they were few and far between, the work being arduous and offering little reward. Several forest keepers and their families attended his church at High Beach and he welcomed their patronage. They were a breed of their own, these forest minders, as he preferred to call them. Stern men, most of them, almost Victorian in their attitudes; but their commitment to the woodland and its animals was admirable. He felt their harshness came from the very harshness of nature itself; their open-air existence, whatever weather prevailed, and the constant struggle to maintain the correct balance in forest life despite its location, had given them a dourness which few people understood.
The Church of the Holy Innocents was ancient, its grey-stoned steeple badly in need of repair. A small building, its size adding to the historic charm, it was seldom filled to capacity. The Reverend Matthews had presided as vicar for more years than he cared to remember, and he deeply regretted the loss of a stalwart parishioner such as Mrs. Wilkinson. At seventy-eight, she had been one of his more active church members, never missing Sunday service and always attending Morning Prayer; her work for the needy of the parish even in her latter years had been a shining example of true Christianity.
The funeral ceremony an hour before had been well attended, for Mrs.
Wilkinson had been a much-loved character in the community, but now the small graveyard adjoining the church was empty apart from himself and the two grave-diggers. Their shovels dug into the soft mound of earth beside the open grave with dull thuds and the soil falling onto the coffin lid caused a shiver to run through the vicar's thin body. It had the sound of finality. It represented the end of life in this world, and no matter how much he told his flock of the glorious life to come after, he, himself, was afraid.
The doubts had come of late. His faith had once been unshakeable, his love for humanity unscathed through all the bitter times. Now, at the time when his own life was drawing towards its concluding years, be they five or fifteen, his mind was troubled. He had thought he understood, or at least accepted, the gross cruelties of the world, but his body had become fragile, and his faith with it. It was said man was reaching a new point in civilization, yet the atrocities continued and, if possible, seemed more hideous than before. His personal trials had been overcome but, rather than strengthening his spiritual self, had progressively undermined it, leaving him vulnerable, exposed. A question often asked of him by grieving parishioners was how could God allow such madness? His answer that no one understood the ways of God, but ultimately they were just, had given them little comfort; and now it gave him little comfort.
Those such as Mrs. Wilkinson and his dear departed wife, Dorothy, would surely find their spiritual reward, for they epitomized the goodness that still existed. But the heavy sound of earth on wood somehow diminished the ideal; it gave death a stark reality. What if their God wasn't as they thought? He wiped a hand across his forehead, swaying slightly. His parishioners must never know of his doubts -they needed his firm guidance. His misgivings were his secret and he would overcome them with prayer. The years had taken their toll, that was all. He would regain his old beliefs, vanquish the sinful questions, and soon. Before he died.
The two workmen were breathing heavily by now, their task almost completed. He turned away, not wanting to gaze at the shallow indent, death's seal of earth, and looked around at the quiet, sunny graveyard.
The constant rustle of the surrounding trees was more comforting than the sounds of the grave diggers But he was in a depressed mood and he wondered if it was this that made the forest seem so oppressive. The vicar felt he was being watched. Or was he merely exhausted mentally?
Could that be why there seemed to be dozens of eyes watching from the shadows beneath the leafy trees, stripping away his facade, looking deep into his guilt?
He shook his head, knowing he had to repress this dreadful feeling before it broke him. Yet the forest did have a different atmosphere lately. None of his parishioners mentioned it, but he had caught certain looks in the eyes of the forest keepers. An uneasiness as they studied the undergrowth.
He searched the distant foliage and tried to penetrate the dark areas.
Was that a movement? No, just a fern stirred by the breeze. He had to snap out of this destructive mood, had to get a grip on himself. Epping Forest and its inhabitants were his life. He loved the forest. Why then did it seem so menacing?
Brian Mollison was a broad-shouldered, deep-chested, thick-thighed man of forty who hated his mother and detested the children he taught. If he had married if his mother had allowed him to marry he might well have overcome his problem. Love and sexual fulfilment might have smothered or at least diverted his unnatural inclination. But not necessarily.
It had started in his late 'teens and he had managed to keep his odd tendency to himself. Lonely, quiet places -places free of people were best, because then there was no danger. As the years went by he found it wasn't enough. Something was missing. Then he discovered exactly what that something was, and it was, of course, the danger. Or, more precisely, the excitement of danger.
His problem was that he liked to expose his body, or again, more precisely, his genital area. Exposing himself to the elements in secluded places sufficed at first, but exposing himself to people proved to be much more thrilling. He discovered this one day at a new school in which he had been appointed games master. His mother stupid cow had neglected to mend the elastic in the trousers of his tracksuit and when he had demonstrated to the boys it was a boys' school -just how to jump into the air from a squatting position thirty times without a break, the trousers had slipped to his knees revealing all to the delighted pupils.
It could have been the beginning of a persecuted career -at least in that particular school but he had cracked down hard on them. His rage had been more to cover his embarrassment than real anger at the boys, for he realized after he had whipped up his trousers again that his body was responding to the secret pleasure he had experienced. It was just as well the tracksuit was a loose-fitting, baggy garment. Whether he would have been just as nasty to the boys and his future pupils had the incident not occurred was debatable for he was already of an unpleasant disposition, and if his mother hadn't loved him, then he would have been unloved.
Through the years he was very careful with his perversion, for he needed the job as PE instructor to keep himself and his semi-invalid mother silly bitch and the slightest hint that he might be in any way peculiar would mean an abrupt end to his career. Not that he considered himself peculiar. It was more of a hobby.
To stand on a crowded tube train in the rush-hour wearing his loose-fitting raincoat, the one that had bottomless pockets, would almost make him faint with excitement. The thrill of knowing that only a thin layer of material separated his monumentally erect organ from the female body crushed up against him would make his knees grow weak.
It was his breathing he had to control. They often realized what was happening the rod of iron pressure against them could hardly be mistaken for anything else but they usually just flushed with embarrassment and moved away at the next stop, or turned to give him a scathing look which he returned with a stalwart stare. His hard features the short-cropped hair, the heavy jaw, the nose twisted slightly from his boxing days always won the day. He wasn't a man to be tackled lightly.