Darkest Part of the Woods by Ramsey Campbell Read Free Book Online Page B

thought more than two young students were chattering and giggling in the corridor until the American voices outdistanced their echoes. Margo held the door open for Sylvia, who was loaded with three large shopping bags. "Sam,"

    Margo called and put a quick though jokey finger to her lips. "Do you know who this is?" she asked in a whisper that would have reached the limits of a bigger room.

    Sam leaned his hands on two pages of The Secret Woods and raised himself into a crouch. "Where did I see her before?" he wondered aloud.

    "Let's get reacquainted outside, shall we?" Heather said and left Nick and Sarita to staff the desk for the evening.

    Sam started when she touched his arm to move him. Once they were all in the corridor and the door was shut, Margo said not quite impatiently enough to leave affection behind "It's your aunt Sylvia."

    "I know," Sam said, and turned to Sylvia. "I was just looking at you."

    "Well, don't be shy of each other," Margo cried.

    Aunt and nephew performed a hug that struck Heather as, at least on Sam's part, awkward. As they separated Sylvia asked him "When were you looking?"

    "You're on your book I was reading."

    "Heather was as well. Seems like it has a new lease of life."

    "I feel as if we all have," said Margo. "She must have brought it with her, mustn't she, Heather?"

    "I don't know who else could have."

    Sylvia took Sam's arm. "I'm going to be rooming with you if that's all right with you,"
    she said.

    "Can't see how it couldn't be."

    Perhaps it was his apparent confusion that inspired her to say "You've raised yourself a real knight, Heather. Remember when you told me one lived behind the house?"

    "I can't say I do."

    "When I was little and I asked who Goodman was and why it was his wood."

    "I still don't remember."

    "Now, girls," Margo protested, "you aren't going to start arguing as soon as you're back together."

    "I think I rather grew out of knights. I'll be happy if Sam's just a good person," Heather said, and hurried Margo and Sylvia past his embarrassment, out of the door he was holding open.

    A dusk that she could taste was settling over the campus, rousing floodlights in their burrows at the foot of the sandstone facade. "You'll have had enough of me for one day,"
    Margo said to whoever might have. "Somebody call me tomorrow and we'll fix a date for dinner very soon."

    "Can I visit dad tomorrow?" Sylvia said.

    "So long as you don't let him know in advance that you're here," Margo said, apparently no more certain than Heather if the question had expressed eagerness or nervousness,
    "otherwise he'll never be able to sleep."

    She left Sylvia with another hug and restrained herself to a single backward glance. As Heather's party made for the Civic, Sylvia nodded at Sam's limp. "The wounded knight," she mused. "Mom was telling me how you hurt yourself fighting for the trees."

    "Fell out of one, that's all."

    "I doubt it's anything like all, Sam."

    He was silent as a tree-stump until Heather took out her keys. "Shall I drive so you can talk?" he suggested.

    "Girls in the front, boys in the back," Sylvia said at once.

    Heather was silent while she drove through the evening migration. Indeed, nobody spoke until most of Brichester had withdrawn over the horizon and the woods loomed ahead like a storm cloud fallen to earth, its eastern edge flickering with headlights on the bypass.
    Abruptly Sylvia said "When were you last in the woods, Sam?"

    He took so long to reply that Heather almost urged him to speak up. "Must have been yesterday," he said.

    "You didn't say you'd been there," Heather objected.

    "Granddad wanted me to."

    "In that case it was kind of you. Will you have much to tell him?"

    "I don't know what he'd want to hear."

    "The truth, I should think, unless there's anything that might distress him."

    "Don't a lot of things?"

    She would have had to lean sideways to observe Sam's face. Ahead [57 the interior of the woods was fluttering with elongated