The Forest

By eleven thirty, the two of us were pretty far gone. We had been drinking since seven, when we had met in the pub and discovered we were both staying in the youth hostel. The pub had closed at ten. From there, we managed to raid the remains of the bar in the hostel’s kitchen before we slumbered into the guard room. 

The near-circular shape of the room was somehow off-putting. Benches, sofas and chairs had been imperfectly arranged around the walls, leaving an empty space in the middle, which we had filled with an available coffee table. On it, we left the remains of our bounty. By now the appetite for alcohol was abating and we would reach for the remaining bottles more from habit than any firm inclination. 

We were walking the trail from opposite directions. This was enough to parent a conversation. We each told the other where we had been, doing our best to illuminate the landmarks in our memory. The hope was that these descriptions would come to life for the other party when they encountered them.

The village was remote – apparently there was only one bus a day – and we had both spent nearly a week in the wild. Looking back, I think this was enough to subtly alter my frame of mind. It had lifted me out of my life in London, so that all the associations, assumptions and instincts of that world became distant, not just physically but psychologically. It was as if I had scraped away the hardened skin on my personality. I sensed he experienced something similar, but now that I think about it, I never found out that much about him. 

He was a little buttoned up and brassy when we first met. I could tell he wasn’t the sort of person who warmed to strangers, but beneath the frosty front, I could detect a deeper source of human warmth and whenever I see that in someone, it makes me want to tempt it into the open. I won’t rest until I do. 

I offered a few jokes, asked the right questions and softened him up. But, as always, the alcohol did the heavy lifting. By the time we had attained to our midnight stupor, I’d say we were about as comfortable as the company of strangers will allow. 

It was only in that room, in the guard room, and after he had necked the quantity of drink we had both forgotten, that the conversation turned strange. I even wonder if my mind, or at least my recollection, has played tricks on me and I have misremembered what was said and what happened. That room, and the circumstance of our meeting, drew out of him something that I doubt he would have otherwise revealed. 

‘This place has a lot of character, wouldn’t you say?’ I said.

‘The village or the hostel? Or both?’

‘Well, both, I guess. But I was talking specifically about the hostel. It’s unusual.’

‘Yes. When I read about it, I got that impression, but now that I am here, I can … it’s reputation is deserved.’

‘Yes, I agree. It has a sense of the past. Of history. I guess everywhere has some sense of history, but this place more than most.’

‘This room is supposed to be haunted,’ he said.

He definitely said this at some point after we had taken our seats, and this claim was the creaking door left slightly ajar that opened the way to what followed. 

‘Really?’ 

‘Most rooms are supposed to be haunted here. That’s what I’ve heard.’

‘Are you scared?’

‘I’m sure you’ll protect me.’

‘As soon as that lamp starts flickering, I’m out the door, mate.’

He mulled on the matter.

‘Tell you the truth, I think I’m too drunk to be scared.’

‘There’s comfort in that.’

‘Yes.’

It was somewhere roundabout here that a thought seized him and set his mind on a new course. I am even tempted to say that it was the influence of a malign spirit. 

‘What are you thinking? I can see that you are thinking.’

‘Yes, I was thinking.’

‘Not unimpressive in the circumstances.’

‘I know, I know. I was thinking …’

‘Yes?’

‘I was thinking … you’ll see how I got there when I say it … from ghosts, I mean.’

‘Then say it.’

‘I mean death and the supernatural. That’s the connection, I suppose.’

‘Go on then.’

‘They say, don’t they … I mean … what I’m trying to say is that there have been studies, I think.’

‘Studies?’

‘Someone in north America did a social study of people who claimed they could remember previous lives.’

‘Oh … okay. ’

‘Most of the people could remember details up to a certain age. Maybe it was four or five.’

‘Uh huh.’

‘I never had anything like that. At least not that I can remember. But, for a long time, some odd things happened to me.’

‘When you were … what odd things?’

‘I had lots of dreams about being chased. In a state of blind panic.’

‘I’ll place a bet that’s very common. Like flying or falling or whatever.’

‘Maybe.’ 

‘You don’t buy it?’

‘It was always Nazis. I was always chased by Nazis. And not always in Nazi Germany. In fact, I don’t think it was ever there. I can remember being chased all around the outside of my family home – the home where I grew up. But in other places, too. It’s a bit vague. On a hill. I remember being chased up a hill.’

‘By Nazis?’

‘In blind panic.’

‘Okay.’

‘Because I was defenceless. I was not armed. And it was just me. There was no-one there too … the sense was that I was alone and being hunted down by a marauding unit of …’

‘SS?’

‘Something like that.’ 

‘You were young. Nazis must have been one of the scare stories. It’s not surprising that they would figure in your imagination. I’m sure they did for lots of children. They still do.’

‘Yes, that’s all true.’

‘But you still don’t buy it.’

‘I don’t know. Maybe.’

‘Did anything happen? In these dreams. Or were you just chased?’

‘No that’s what I was coming to. I was always shot in the head.’

‘I see.’

‘That one I told you about being chased up a hill. I hid behind a large stone or rock. I had my face to the stone and I was crouched right down. On the other side of the stone the Nazis were shooting. They were firing into the stone, quickly drilling a hole through it with each bullet. Until eventually their bullets punched a whole through to the other side and one of them hit me square in the middle of the forehead.’

He reached across to the coffee table and took a slow swig from his bottle of brown ale. 

‘So I think you’re telling me that in a past life you were shot in the head by Nazis.’

‘That’s what I am telling you.’ 

‘I suppose I can see why you might think it.’

‘Yes.’

‘But you don’t have those dreams now?’

‘No. Not now.’

‘You don’t remember when they stopped?’

‘Not really.’

‘Were you four or five?’

‘I was older than that.’

‘Thirty five?’

No, no it’s all gone now.’

‘Maybe it’s unusual. I never had dreams like that.’

‘But it was more than the dreams, you see.’

‘More?’

‘Yes, and for … it lasted … when I was a teenager, or even later – in my twenties, perhaps …’

‘What lasted?’

‘Sometimes when I was awake, I would get … how would you describe it? I would get a spasm, right in the middle of my forehead.’

‘A spasm?’

‘There was no pain. But it was a bit like being shot … or how I imagine it to be shot. In the forehead, I mean. But it was like an echo, a peculiar sort of muscle memory. Because when it happened, I could feel or sense something go, as if all sight and sensation was suddenly collapsed. And yet it wasn’t collapsed because I could still see and sense. It was an unnatural disruption or ending.’

‘Really.’

‘Every time it happened, I … I would spasm, I would jump, you know like an involuntary shock of movement, something entirely beyond my control.’

‘So you …? I don’t … I’m not sure I …’

‘It’s difficult to describe. It was … it was a sensation of  everything ending, but without the means to make it happen.’

As he was saying these things, I was starting to wonder if something was wrong with him. Were the dreams and these peculiar sensations the symptoms of a medical problem, like a tumour that he had blithely ignored, preferring instead this fantastical explanation? But then had he really made it clear to me that this was how he understood his dreams and these sensations? Having spent several hours with him, I would have said, until that point, that he was fairly rational, considered and sensible. Not the sort of person who might rush to occult nonsense. So I decided to ask him directly. 

‘I just want to be … I mean … I wanted to ask you … do you really think that you were shot in the head by Nazis in a past life?’ 

He looked at me with a lightly brushed smile; except it was a smile that masked a steady note of seriousness or an unbroken line of accord with the trail of thoughts he had just uttered. 

‘I don’t know,’ he said. 

‘You don’t know?’

I must have sounded a little incredulous.

‘I can reflect on my own experiences like anyone else. I have no understanding of it really other than technical-sounding words like ‘biochemistry’ or ‘electrical pulses’. But all of it could be brain chemistry. The religion of our age would see it like that, I suppose.’

‘Religion?’

‘What I am trying to say is that, I understand those explanations. We are all taught to know them, to accept them, perhaps even to defer to them. The intuitive sense of it is something to question, hold at a distance and observe. It is never something to trust.’

‘Do you trust it?’

‘A part of me does. But the grown-up groupthink we live with means I am a little divided against myself. So a part of me does think I was shot by Nazis in a past life. Yes, part of me does. I would even say that a part of me wants to believe it. Which for the sceptics is all the more reason to distrust it. Again I understand that, but why would you distrust what you want?’ 

I didn’t want to indulge this line of thought, so I went back to the madness. What he had just said grated against me and I didn’t want to get into an argument. 

‘So … I mean, let’s say it’s true.’

‘Okay.’ 

‘How would that work?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘When were you born?’

‘1978.’ 

‘Right. And if you were shot by the Nazis in a previous life, that would have happened … I guess it could have happened any time between the early 1930s and 1945.’

‘I think it was probably during the war but who can say.’

‘So let’s say you were murdered in the 1940s. And yet you were only reborn in 1978?’

‘I could have led another life.’

‘I guess.’

‘I don’t want to retro-fit my intuitions but another sense I have is that, many times in the past, I have died young. The memory of things seems to fade beyond forty. At this moment, in this life, I have often felt that I am in uncharted territory and I don’t quite know what to do. Or even that I don’t care.’

I laughed. 

‘Am I really having this conversation?’

Without a beat, he replied.

‘Who is to say?’

My laugh had been a nervous attempt to lighten the mood, to shepherd our conversation back to the friendly banter we had discovered and sustained in the pub. Instead, he doubled down, as if he were reaching further and deeper into the dark, dead marrow of his bullet-blown mind. 

‘That’s a … how would you put it? It’s a sombre thought.’

‘What is?’

‘That the trace or the echo of past lives is felt in this one. That fear, that panic, the moment of being powerless and cornered, facing an abrupt end (or apparent end) – all of that lives on, haunting subsequent incarnations, as if it has become etched in your soul.’

‘‘Etched in your soul.’ I guess that’s one way to see it, but not one that many people these days would reach for.’

‘Of course not. We have our own lexicon to draw upon when it comes to explaining and understanding personality. Nature and nurture, I suppose.’

‘Nature and nurture. Exactly.’

‘So you wouldn’t credit the idea that experiences from a past life can shape the way you behave in this one?’

‘I don’t think I much credit the idea of past lives.’

‘You astonish me.’

I smiled. In the moment, I found this small concession to humour comforting.

‘And yet, it kind of makes sense to me. It is as if you have been defined by another’s actions. As if you are permanently pinioned to the wall by the memory of that moment – of that one death.’

‘Except, if what you say is right, that moment was not final.’

‘Exactly. You are exactly right. If I were to really indulge this memory, that’s the conclusion I would want myself – my soul – to reach. The attempt at murder is, in the end, futile and the fear it occasions is a kind of illusion.’

‘So there is no cause to let that memory trouble your soul?’

He let the question hang in the air.

‘The other thing that stays with me is also hard to describe.’

‘Go on,’ I said, reaching for the drink. 

‘In these dreams and sensations, I also … the intent of the murderer is there.’

‘Their intent? You mean their intent to kill you?’

‘No that’s not quite it. In fact, it’s almost the opposite. They don’t really know what they are doing, as if they don’t really understand it. They are acting on … you might say orders, but in the moment it feels more like a blind will or competitive impulse. They want to put me down, to destroy me, to set themselves over me in a final and conclusive sense. It’s a raging, dangerous hubris. A horrible kind of arrogance. And arrogant because it doesn’t really see, it doesn’t truly see. It is a will trapped in the machinations of one ego; which means I am not seen. In a sense, nothing is seen. I am another pulse of life reduced to a state of fear, about to die. That murderer would not allow me to to be whatever I was. Do you understand that?’

‘I think I can understand that, yes.’ 

‘Good. I think everyone can understand it, but whether they heed the understanding is another matter. The frightening thing is that you see that ‘competitive impulse’ – you could call it a killer instinct – you see it everywhere. I see it everywhere, I see it every day in my work. Wherever there is a cause for competition, at least. And I hate it. I have always hated it. In a sense, I wonder if anything is ever truly seen.’

He fell into silence and I stared at him. I could tell that our conversation had ended. He had withdrawn. The darkness had consumed him. A small piece of me was irritated that he was letting the evening conclude in this fashion but I swallowed my tongue. 

In any case, before I had the opportunity to say or do anything more, something extraordinary happened. A small stone landed with a clatter on the coffee table, just next to one of the empty bottles. In quick succession two more fell: one landed on the floor near the table, and a third bounced off the corner of the table and ricocheted across the floor, coming to rest against the skirting board. 

I was startled by the intrusion and it took me a long and lubberly moment to gather my wits. I looked up at the ceiling. I was not sure what to expect, but some sort of gaping wound in the ceiling seemed logical. There was nothing. The entire ceiling was neatly plastered and painted white. The stones could not have fallen from anywhere. I brought my attention back to earth, where I met the gaze of my companion. 

His eyes looked at me sternly and with the bright brilliance of a frightening light.