All The Dark Places

11. The Affected

         The trail wound through the forest and up to the slope of a hill. It thickened with Aspen, Ash, Poplar, Oak and Birch trees. Rosalind noted a few lengths of maple that would make fantastic bow risers and considered picking them up before dismissing the idea, not wanting to carry around the bundle. Rosalind and Scott made their way through the dense thicket of trees until the well-worn trail became wilder and overgrown. 

      "It looks like guests don't hike out this far," she said, looking around at the unspoiled forest. 

Rosalind helped Felicia over a fallen tree branch that blocked the trail. Near the castle, the grounds were manicured. She found it ironic that closer to the groundskeeper's home, the grounds were unkempt and wild. 

      "How far out are we? Two miles? Three?" Scott asked. 

      "Yeah, maybe. I assumed that Toby lived on the castle grounds. I guess I was wrong." 

      "I keep hearing that this Toby guy is a crazy drunk." 

      "He is, but he knows something is up, and that makes him saner than most of the people around here."

      She stepped over a tangle of fallen branches and brushed wet moss from her blouse. 

     "His daughter, Ivy, she seems... different." 

      "Is there a Mrs. Bracks?" Scott asked. 

      "Divorced from what I've heard. Valerie gossips a lot." 

      "And the daughter stayed with the drunk father?" 

      "Now THAT I cannot explain," She shrugged and kicked away a fallen branch. "but he seems to get along with his daughter pretty well. She might be as wild and crazy as he is. She is such a beautiful girl. She would look like a model if she dressed herself up, but I doubt she owns a dress. I like her."

      Scott stopped in his tracks. His face pinched, eyes squinting in the rays of light that filtered through the trees and dappled the ground with pale yellow sunshine. "What the hell is that?"Scott crouched down on one knee and squinted at the trunk of a tree. She stepped toward the tree bark and bent down to examine something dark and wet that stained the bark. 

      "Is that tree sap?" Scott asked. 

     A fuzzy bit of what looked like white moss clumped against the bark and in the center was something sharp.She reached forward and pressed her fingertip against the wet mass. Holding it under her nose, she sniffed and recoiled. 

      "It's blood." 

      "What the hell from?" 

     Reaching out again, she ran her fingertip over the sharp object that embedded in the bark of the tree. 

      "It looks like a horn, or a shard of one, like a goat horn or maybe a ram, and this is..." She pulled some of the white mossy substance from the tree. "This is fur. Some goat has rammed the hell out of this tree." 

      "Why would a goat do that?" 

      "A fight with another goat, maybe, but not likely. Goats that do that are wild mountain goats. There are no mountain goats here. Only domestic farm goats. You know, milk and meat goats." 

      "So, this couldn't be a meat goat?" Scott asked, wrinkling his nose at the smell. 

       "It's still wet, so whatever did this is probably stumbling around pissed off and ready for a fight. And no, not a meat goat. It has, or had, horns and left a shard of one behind."