THE WICKED WITCH OF THE WOODS

Deep, deep in the darkest of forests you are all alone. Silence falls, not a bird can be heard. Faraway, in the distance, is that a twig snapping? Is someone there? The silence is oppressive, it closes in, making your eardrums throb, desperately trying to seek out a sound to hear. If a tree falls in the forest, dos someone hear it scream? The silence is deafening, as if it has weight and substance, in envelopes you and you are suddenly drowning in its treacly grasp.

Shapes and shadows shift in the beams of weak light that filter through the green canopy far above your head. You spin around, and around again, but no one is there, but, something moved, something felt as if it was very close, so close that it could reach out and touch you, transform you and hold you here forever.

Faces and forms appear and disappear in the ever-shifting shadows. Is that a buzzard perched over there? Hunched over… Poised… Holding you in its unchanging gaze. Contemplating its next meal… Ready to strike, screech out its victory to all the other buzzards circling above the canopy, so that they too can dive in and join the fray, the orgy of consumption.

Could it be a waiting warrior? Frozen forever as he paused for a moment to take the breath that turned out to be his last. Forever on guard whilst taken off guard, his armour an ebullient mask to the frail figure within the carapace. Weapons halfway to being at an uneasy at ease, but a moment away from action and violence.

Or is it some more fantastic creature. A terrible lizard, or a sleeping behemoth, or maybe a monster from the darker corners of the imagination, lurking, plotting, waiting to strike…? It might be a creature of the purest instinct, a scavenger, a vicious killer that just wants to eat, its talons paused and waiting to strip your flesh from your bones and devour you. It’s waited an eternity now, and all you have to do is take one more little step…

No, I can see it now for what it is, for what she is. Sitting there, hunched over, frozen in time by her own wickedness when it was found out, her cold spindly fingers clutching at the stirring stock, her cloak wrapped around her against the cold and the rain and the eavesdropping villagers who just want to bind her up, drag her away to their pyre and burn her.

She is the wicked witch of the woods, a dark heart of brutal curses and the old magic, whose spells can turn day into night, light into shade and joy into sorrow and heartbreak. If you are lucky she’ll remain too engrossed in watching her cauldron boil to notice you as you stand there, frozen, not daring to breathe lest you get added to the evil mixture as it boils. She has maybe been there for a thousand years, and might remain for a thousand more until an opportunity comes along and she can gain her freedom once again.

Meanwhile, she waits and she waits and she waits.

For you.

You try to get by her without making a sound, your heartbeat now thudding in your ears which escalate its volume so that it blocks out everything else because they have no other sounds to divert them.

So loud, so loud.

Surely she will hear?

You manage to make just one slight and silent movement to the left, and then another and another. Soon you are running blindly on through the woods, the branches whipping at your face and hands, the thorns tearing at your clothes and flesh. You’ve simply got to get away, as far away as you can before she notices you. Behind you, already the dark powers are circling, forming into a whirlwind of sound and noise and fury. Got to keep running, faster, faster, through those bushes and into the light you can just see beyond.

Then you are back in the car park on an ordinary summer’s day. Families play with their children and eat their sandwiches and laugh with each other in a carefree way. A dozing Labrador idly glances your way as you burst out from the trees, but nobody pays you much attention as you regain your breath and your senses.

You breathe deeply, exhale a sigh of relief but then the wind catches just there merest hint of a distant cackle coming from somewhere behind you, and you find that you are shivering despite the sunshine.