The Concealed Culture Deep Within (part five.)

As she had finished up her coffee, a part of her head was telling her to get a hold of herself. So what? At the end of the day, it wasn't unknown for any parent to have to put up with their child disappearing off for hours at a time, not telling their mum or dad where they were going, or indeed what they were going to get up to be doing.

Yet, Lucy's mind had been convincing her that Josie was up to something, and hoped against her very own life that she was had not gotten herself involved in some kind of illicit activities. Okay, Stumpton was a small and very quiet village but, Josie was a child all the same. The school she attended (that is when she actually turned up there) certainly had received a good educational report with the authorities but, all the same, did every school around the world know what the kids in their care, actually got up to when they were there?

Probably not. Although most schools would try to get every concerned parent into believing that they did know, all the same.

Lucy walked up to the coat hooks in the hallway to pop her coat on. It was not raining out there at the moment but, it was certainly cold enough not to put one on anyway. She hoped against all hope that she wasn't going to find her daughter popping pills, or god forbid, injecting herself, out there in the seclusion of the woodland area, But trying to pull her senses back into some sort of common sense, she asked herself whether she would even find her daughter within the woods. But then, there was not anywhere else her little girl would have gone off to in Stumpton. After all, the small village did not even have a youth center or a cinema, and she had definitely checked and had it confirmed, that Josie certainly wasn't there today anyway. At the end of the day, logic won outright, her daughter had to be in the woodlands somewhere.

Closing the front door behind her she started to make her way down the street, passing the doctor's surgery a few minutes further on, and then made her way off to the right to head toward the public access way into the woodland area.

As she arrived at the outlying area that marked the wooded area the heavens seemed to open and a downpour of rain unexpectedly and with any prior warning, unleashed itself upon the entire area. Cursing that she had not put her wet weather coat on before leaving the house she hunched her shoulders and fastened up her coat, trudging onward into the heavily shrubbed outlying grassy area.

As she navigated her way through into the depths of undergrowth below her feet she was not entirely certain as to why she was actually doing this, the common land was known to be a vast spread around the area, compared to the much smaller village itself. The actual experience of walking through this area was encapsulating, to say the very least.

She found herself asking herself, why she was actually in here as, at the end of the day, she still saw her young daughter as that mild-mannered excited little girl, who wouldn't say 'boo to a goose.' But, after the death of Josie's own father in that fatal car crash, she had started to notice little changes to her behavior every so often. Josie more often than not began wandering off a lot, started isolating herself within her bedroom when back at home, didn't laugh as much as she used to (and every day before her husband's death, she, no matter what would always find something that amused her.) Having not really taken any active notice of this, she wondered whether she really was supposed to have done it. You know paid more attention to her needs and feelings. Come to think back on those changes, she began to see now that Josie had even stopped eating as much as she used to too.

'Damn, why could I not see any of this!' Lucy guiltily thought to herself.

Despite the rainstorm that had all of a sudden begun to be let loose on the village, the woodland was uncannily devoid of any signs of it. Sure, due to the thick vegetation and volume of trees within, the mass overhead canopy that the surrounding wildlife naturally provided, it all appeared so very eery to experience walking through. Strangely though, Lucy couldn't work out as to why not even a single sport of rain wasn't making its way through the green overhang. The whole scenery reflected something out of an alien world as if she had suddenly and unexpectedly, been transported off from her own familiar world and on into some other environment. Her auditory senses betrayed her own thoughts as she continued rustling on through the undergrowth. She heard nothing around her, no wind, an absence of any wildlife, not even the odd bird. Years back she could recall having romantic walks with Elliott, her husband when they had experienced the brightness of the common together. She recollected the numerous singing of the birds from high upon the trees, the sun peeking through the green canopy overhead but, today, there was none of that. Lucy remembered that somewhere nestling within the heart of all this there was a stream meandering through, its own presence used to be given away by the consistent sounds of its ongoing trickling. There wasn't even the often before seen squirrel scampering across from tree branches.

It simply seemed out of the ordinary, as if something had either died here or something had scared the natural inhabitants away.

Lucy began unzipping her coat, 'no rain in here okay it's definitely weird but, might as well make the most of it then,' she mused to herself.

Getting deeper within the common, Lucy began shouting out her daughter's name, to begin with, nothing. As we continued through she continued to call out her name.

'Josie, it's your mum, are you in here love?'

No response still.

Repeating her calling out for what felt like an hour, Lucy started to feel an awkward and disturbing emotion welling up within her. If her daughter was indeed inside the common land somewhere, then why was she not replying to her mum as she searched? Her search was rapidly becoming fruitless. Emotional fear was now beginning to shift into a higher gear.

'Where the hell was her daughter?' she started worryingly, now beginning to fear for the worst.

************

Josie gazed about her in awe. She felt no fear, no pain. Everything around her was dark. Yet calm, immensely calm. Nobody was ever going to believe any word that she ever came out with about this.

The enshrouding darkness was disturbing but she wasn't experiencing the faintest sign of any fear. Darkness had always been a scary & unsettling time after her father had not returned from work that evening after she had been told by her mum, that he had died on impact when the paramedics had arrived on the scene. But if that was the case, then why did she not feel any of that fear & loathing of the darkness right now?

Josie had no watch on her wrist, but she had remembered that her mobile was in the back pocket of her jeans. Pulling it out she gazed at its screen to take a look at the current time. Peculiarly she saw nothing, the screen, that had usually displayed a digitized image of her parents together was no longer showing. In fact, even the mobile was dark, with no light image whatsoever. Pressing down on any of the handset controls there was nothing.

No sound, no click, no vibration, just nothing.

'Had the battery died?' she wondered to herself.

'That could not be it,' she affirmed to herself, 'I charged it last night. It was a full battery this morning,' looking around her all was still just dark, up close she could just make out her arm in front of her as she held it up. Everything, wherever she was, simply appeared so ethereal to her.

'Strange,' she thought to herself, 'what is going on here, where am I, this certainly cannot be the common anymore, but...'

From seemingly out of nowhere, a calm, quiet, almost surreal voice, could be made out as if it was coming from within her own body herself. It simply did not make any sense at all. Josie felt like she was dreaming and would wake up at any minute. The last thing she could remember was that she had gone to her family doctor's surgery with her mum at some point, but couldn't recall anything after being in that consultation room.

'Do not fear me for I have no intention of harm to anyone,' began the ethereal voice which, Josie was still unable to sense any of its origins. To the girl she imagined it just to be within her, then it was everywhere all-encompassing this strange, alien environment. All at once. Josie had been able to have summoned up enough strength and courage to utter a few words.

'Wh.. wh.. who are you?' stuttering her words, despite feeling some amount of courage.

'Fear not for we are watching, no more,' responded the seemingly disembodied voice from wherever it was. The young girl almost as suddenly began to recognize the tones of whoever, whatever, was speaking. In her mind she imagined that it couldn't be, her father was dead, but everything right down to the inflections made her think of him alone.

She decided to ask anyway, 'am I dreaming, are you there Dad?'

'Yes, my little girl it is me. They chose me to speak as they believed me to be less fearful toward you through all this. For now, do not mention this as there are those in your world who would fear us being here,' came back the words of the somewhat unknown. Right at this moment in time Josie had so many questions now flooding through her mind that she was desperate to ask, and wanting, no, needing, answers to them all.

'Er Dad, er, I need to know,' her words trailing off as the unknown voice began speaking once more.

'For now, I must leave you but remember, in time, everything will become clear to everyone,' the voice that seemed as much around her as it did within her, suddenly began trailing off into the darkness from where it had first originated from.

************

Lucy was now beginning to really worry about the whereabouts of her daughter that afternoon. She hadn't seen her since they were together at the surgery. Trailing through the woodland undergrowth, she had already tired herself out working her way through the heavily overgrown and tree-lined habitat. Thinking that maybe she ought to start heading back home now, as she had not seen any signs of her young daughter being anywhere within the common area, she slowly turned around from where she was, and headed off back to the outlying area at the open area to the woodland, to make her way back toward the main village, and on back to home. Wherever her daughter was, she would most certainly return home in time, after all, one thing Josie always made certain of, was that she always turned back at home for mealtime in the evening, despite her recent strange behavior where she now simply just picked at her meals hardly touching it.

Almost as if time had suddenly played with her mind, walking through the outskirts of the common and back through the village, it all started to replay the same scene that she had already been met with, after walking out from the surgery earlier in the day. Once more as she was still too far away to recognize any of the faces, she could see lots of the villagers milling about close together, chatting away with each other ten to the dozen. A few minutes further down the path as she finally made it back into the little shop-lined area, once more the villagers stopped abruptly, disappearing back into their respective houses.

Not even caring now about what was actually going on, she had given up caring about any of it. Nobody remained out to talk about it and neither was she even up to find out what it was all about. Lucy was tired, hungry, and worried, about what to do next. She had not received any single response from her daughter, not even any trampled areas within the common, to show her any indications that she was there, or even had been there today. Arriving back at home she slid the key into the door to open it, kicking it closed and chucking her coat on the floor. Inside, the house remained silent.

'Josie are you home,' she shouted.

Waiting in the hallway for a few minutes, Luch received no response from within the house. She had half hoped that her daughter would have replied, suddenly then running down the stairs from her bedroom but, no, nothing happened. The house was empty and no one was home. She muttered to herself in a half-hearted and reassuring way that, maybe her daughter had gone to school after all. Perhaps the teacher she had spoken to earlier had just not seen her arrive there. Of course, kids were quiet in schools these days, and just maybe the form teacher had not heard her ring registration for the afternoon period of lessons

Either way, it was still too early for the school day to have come to an end yet. And far too early to make a call to the local police station, to report her missing...

************

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Stay tuned for the next installment of 'The Concealed Culture Deep Within.'

If you missed the first three parts of this story, you can click on the links below, to catch up.

Part one:

Part two:

Part three:

Part four: