In the last chapter I had a shocking encounter with plant life -- this time it's something partway between animal and human...
*
After my return home, I had to struggle hard to conceal what had happened to me. I took a long, hot shower, and for the first time in years I took it in the nude. There seemed to be no point, now, in covering myself up. I had been put back in contact with my body and now I was unable to prevent myself from feeling the sensuality that I had denied myself all through my adolescence. I was a boy, a young man, on the verge of adulthood -- legally, of course, I was at 18 an adult, although I didn't feel like one -- and for too long I had denied myself the knowledge of my own appetites.
It goes without saying that I didn't tell anyone about what had happened to me. Nobody would have believed me and in any case it was too bizarre, too ridiculous to believe. Not to mention too shameful. And I wasn't even sure that, on some level, it hadn't been some kind of hysterical episode, a hallucination brought on by my long habit of self-denial. The one thing I did know was that, as the following days and weeks went by, my urge to return to the woods grew stronger and stronger. I had no idea what would await me there but I knew that one of the reasons it had been so painful and shaming was that I had resisted it with every fibre of being. All of it until the end, when I gave in to the mysterious figures and let them heal me.
So it was that, three weeks later, I returned to the woods, this time with a sense of foreboding and fear but also readiness. I had to see what would happen if I came back of my own accord.
It was a quite different Saturday the second time around. Before, it had been a warm day. This time it was overcast, close and muggy and it threatened to rain. My mother had warned me that it was bad weather for going walking in, but I disregarded her.
I was careful to leave the track at the exact same spot I had left it last time. I was wearing similar clothes as before -- an old t-shirt, shorts and trainers, but I had taken the precaution of taking a spare set in my rucksack. I couldn't be sure that the same strange miracle would happen as happened before.
I went deeper and deeper into the forest and I must have made a mistake in my navigation, because although I walked for a good hour, I never came near anything that resembled the glade with the creepers and the purple flowers. Instead, the topography of the ground seemed quite different. Before, the woods had been flat with thick undergrowth but now they sloped downwards and was riven with gullies and fallen trunks that I had to scramble over.
The air was thick with midges and they irritated me as I walked. But soon I heard the sound of running water and there was light up ahead. I pushed on through the trees and presently I came to a ravine.
There was a river running through the forest. It was about fifteen feet wide and the water was dark and clear. It broadened into an oval-shaped pool with muddy edges. Some sunlight filtered down through the treetops, but basically it was a very secluded spot. The pool tapered at the end where the river entered and at the other end there was a sort of dam made of branches, leaves, twigs and mud which prevented the water from flowing out. I viewed the pool with uncertainty but also with some interest.
I was hot, and tired from walking, and the pool looked inviting. There were no signs of any human trails and no sounds of human activity, just the wind in the trees, the trickle of the water and the fluttering of dragonflies and the occasional bird.
I am not a very good swimmer but I enjoy it. It didn't take me long to make up my mind. I half-climbed, half-slid down the steep sides of the ravine. At the foot of the steep slope, there was a large patch of green grass which sloped down to the muddy edge of the pool.
There was a huge, flat, neatly-sawn tree stump down there, the only sign that humans had ever been this way. I looked around, reassuring myself that there was nobody about.
There was no sign of anyone.
I took off my trainers and socks and left them on the stump. Then I pulled my t-shirt over my head and folded it neatly, leaving it on top, and finally I took off my shorts and placed them on top of my folded clothes as well.
I was wearing only my tight white briefs. I viewed the still, dark surface of the pool. If I got them wet, they would be uncomfortable to put on. And a little sun was falling on the grass. I reasoned that it made no sense to leave my briefs on.
I slid them down my bare hips and left them with the rest of my clothes.
And so, naked, I carefully walked down the slope and gingerly stepped into the water.
It was cool but not cold. I walked further in, feeling it rise up my calves. The shore of the pool sloped away steeply, the further in I went. When I was only nine or ten feet from the edge, it was already up to the tops of my thighs.
I turned and looked back, and then, summoning my courage, I faced front and dived forward with a whoop. The water of the pool closed briefly over my body as I splashed in.
I surfaced and gasped with shock as the water received me. It was colder than I'd thought, but I wasn't chilled. It felt wonderful. I trod water, reflecting that this was the first time I had ever skinny-dipped. I smiled to myself. The water on my naked body felt great. I swam up and down, practising my crawl, exulting in the feeling of being naked in the water in such a secluded and private place.
I don't know exactly how long it was I had been swimming before I began to get the uncomfortable feeling that there was something else in the pool as well as myself.
At first I thought it was a fish. I was swimming underwater, my eyes open, and although the water was clear enough, it was dark towards the bottom of the pool in a way that made me suspect that the pool was a lot deeper than it looked. I fancied that I glimpsed something moving in the depths.
I surfaced and looked at the water, blinking it out of my eyes, slightly nervous. Even in this small pool I was out of my depth and that put me on my guard.
I ducked under again and swam downwards, to reassure myself and see if it was some kind of pike or large fish. But all I could make out was a vague shape of something darting away from me before my lungs could take no more and I had to surface again.
I swam up and down some more, a little uneasily, but I couldn't see anything else, and so after half an hour or so, I was tired enough that I struck for the shore.
And that's when I felt it touch me. Something brushed against my bare leg, something large and slippery and too warm to be a fish. I jerked my leg away and turned in the water, looking back, scared.
The water seemed to have become murkier and I could just about it see it circling me at a distance beneath the surface, something much bigger than a fish, something maybe as big as me, if not bigger. Now, I was genuinely frightened and I turned again and broke into a crawl. The shore got closer and closer.
Then I felt the hand grasping my ankle.
'Ahhh!' I cried, and tugged on my ankle to free myself, but the hand -- smooth, strong and with long fingers -- had a strong grip. I turned in the water, trying to shake it off, and I managed to free my ankle just as I felt my bum touching the bottom of the pool.
I turned around and scrambled out, splashing as I clumsily exited, and I turned, standing on the muddy shore, feeling suddenly a kind of shame, that made me cover my genitals and bum with my hands. I looked at the tree stump.
My belongings had disappeared. My clothes were gone.
Terrified, I turned back and looked at the surface of the pool, backing away from the water, still trying to cover my nudity with my hands.
The surface rippled and then, slowly, it parted, as a form began to emerge from the pool.
It was upright, like a man. It had a large, broad head rather like that of a frog, but also something like a fish, with a crest. First the top of the head came out, then the eyes, which were bulbous and pale, then the broad reptilian mouth. The creature's skin was dark, glistening, brownish-green, shiny with some kind of transparent slime and rubbery-looking. It had a body like a man's, with broad shoulders and long muscular arms. Its torso was muscled and smooth and its fingers were very long and half-webbed. It was looking straight at me and its broad froglike mouth seemed to be leering at me. It was walking out of the water, straight towards me. Its stomach was hard and as its hips emerged from the water I could see that while its legs were jointed almost like an animal's, it seemed to have human genitalia. Hanging between its legs was a long, thick, dark, glistening, ribbed penis, and behind it I glimpsed the creature's testicles. It had flaps of rubbery skin down the sides of legs and it walked out of the water towards me with a loping gait. It reached out its long arms towards me...
I had been almost frozen with horror, but as soon as the creature was no longer in the water and I could see its broad, splayed, webbed feet, I managed to turn and break into a run for the slope.
I had only got a few steps when I heard a grunt behind me and, to my shock and horror, the creature vaulted over me, turning in mid-air, and landed standing up and facing me, blocking my exit. Its inhuman face was staring right at me, its broad mouth upturned at the corners.
'Please,' I whispered to the woods at large, not hoping that anyone would hear me, 'no...'
I dodged to one side and the creature dodged too, blocking my route to the slope that would lead me out of the ravine. It took a step towards me and I backed away, frantically trying to cover myself with my hands. I was acutely conscious of the fact that I was naked and vulnerable with this inhuman creature. My guts were clenched and I was sweating with fear.
It licked its lips with a long, narrow, pink tongue, revealing rows of rounded, froglike teeth. I was sure that it wanted to attack me. As I backed further away, I felt cold rock touching my shoulders and realised that it had backed me against the side of the ravine. There was no escape.
I looked at it, trembling with fear, this nightmare creature advancing on me, ready to wreak who knew what kind of horror on me, its trembling naked prey, and I sank down to the ground and curled up, staring up at it, sobbing in abject fear.
It stopped, and looked at me and blinked its green eyes. Then it opened its mouth.
