Mathew Gostelow

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The Night of Iron and Salt

There’s monsters in them trees. Dangerous. Fierce. Merciless. Mindless. And it makes me sick to think on ‘em.

Everyone knows it. All the elders tell us so. Bad things happen in them woods. ‘Cause that’s where the other’uns dwell – lurking in the dark, white and sharp as wolf fangs, between the thorns and grasping branches.

Marian always said different though. Marian said the trees sang church-songs and the leaves whispered secrets. Said the brook was alive and danced like quicksilver on the stones. Father always telled her keep clear o’ them woods. But I saw how the forest made her skip and scamper, made her heart leap when she walked along the fringes. I know my sister was curious and brave. Braver than me, that’s for sure. Too little to be fearful. Too little to understand.

And now she’s gone.

These past few days, when I walk, wary, by the tree-line and listen, the woods is quiet. Frozen hard with frost. Not peaceful. But deadly silent. Nowt like the stillness of an empty church, or the field out back when deep snow falls pillow-soft and muffled. This quiet is a choked breath. Jagged and pained in emptiness. A mouth of shattered teeth about to scream.

No one goes in the woods after dark. That’s the rule. Not even the elders. Even in daytime, Father and the other woodcutters say a quiet prayer afore they set foot. Sometimes, us childers goad each other to run in a ways, and dash back out for the thrill of it. Playing dares. But none of us would ever push our luck. We all know if we stray too deep, we’ll feel the icy touch o’ the white folk’s wicked claws.

All of us are raised to fear the other’uns. Soon as we can listen – we learn about ‘em. Like we learn not to whack a hornet nest with sticks. And never to take apples from the travelling tinker folk. Mothers and fathers, teachers, older sisters and brothers – they all make sure we know. Know how fearful and hateful those other’uns can be. How their skin shines unnatural white. Not just pale, but white. And not just their skin, but all o’ them. Hair straggly-wild like dead scrub grass. Eyeballs like a frost, not a speck o’ colour on ‘em. And yet they say those bleached-out spheres can see at night, clear as day, like cats. They say the breath of the white folk smells like soured milk. And they’ll snatch you like it were nothin’. Twist your bones. Drink your dreams. Shred your skin and make your flesh burn with cold fire. That’s what everyone says. Only Marian never believed it.

The night she vanished, it blew a fierce blizzard – a howling, wailing snowstorm. She went up early, to the room we shared, to read her fairy stories by candlelight. And later, when I went up meself, I saw her shape under blankets, heard her slow breaths.

I wondered how she did it, sleep so sound, untroubled, with the screaming wind outside. I were quaking under quilts, a mix of fear and cold. I dreamed of wild places, crimson blood on snow, hidden hollows filled with teeth. Places where beasts dwell – savage hungry animals that struggle, snarl and fight – unreasoning, instinctive, raging, scared. Thickets choked with poison bramble thorns, weeping thick black venom out like serpent fangs. Ravines where rocks would crush you like a snail beneath a hobnail boot. Lakes and rivers that would swallow you whole, silent, keep your body like a secret in their depths.

Come morning, Marian’s bed were pure smooth and her boots was gone.

Three weeks now it’s been and they’ve not found her. The snowfall from that night is mostly thawed. Just iron earth and frost that’s left behind.

Menfolks went searching every day and every night that first week. Went with dogs and lanterns, shouting her name and stamping ferns flat, deep into the woods. Father led them. He knows that forest better’n anyone. Goes further, knows the trails like lines on his hand. He can tell yer which streams is safe to drink, which mushrooms good to eat. He’s brave and he’s strong and the other woodsmen look up to ‘im.

When I were little, Father learned me the false friend fungus. How it grows on rotten tree trunks, bedded in the bark, looking just like Hen o’ the Woods – the mushroom Mother makes into a stew. But the false friend, that’ll lay you up bad. Too late, you’ll find out your mistake, and by then you’ll be shaking like a leaf, sweating ‘til you soak your sheets. Soon after, you’ll sick out your guts. Just a palmful is enough to kill a man, Father says. Kill him stone dead. Father learned me ways to tell the difference, how to read the gills, how the spores smell, the way the flesh bruises inky-green on the wrong’un. But if you don’t know the signs, you’ll be taken by the sickness in just an hour or two. Father is the only one what knows all this.

Since Marian disappeared, the other childers been looking at me funny. Knowing it was my sister what was gone. Whispering in back o’ class about how the searchers found no trace of ‘er. Not a footprint, not a scrap o’ cloth. Gone, she was. Just a monstrous cold and empty darkness left behind, between the trees.

Some people said she deserved to get snatched. Mad Marian, they called her. Even the kind ones said it – said she were too curious. Made up tales about ‘er, they did. Said they’d seen my sister skipping in the trees at evening time, tasting mushrooms what she shouldn’t, and weaving white flowers in her hair – even though that was a sure way to make the other’uns hunger for her. She should’ve know’d better, they said, havin’ the chief woodcutter for a father. Nobody should look too deep in that wood. Nobody should, that’s what they said.

Days passed. Weeks with no sign. Mother stopped her crying but she still don’t talk at all. Won’t take visitors. Barely looks at father or me. And slowly, surely, the searching all but stopped.

A few nights back though, I woke to the front door’s creak. Midnight, it were, or close to. Cold enough the panes were clouded up by frost. I didn’t move. Just listened. Father’s heavy footsteps. Urgent hissing voices, like furious serpents. Was that Mr Neaves from the mine? His son were in my class at school. Other voices too. A grunt. A whisper. And then the door shut softly, like they didn’t want the night to know.

I crept to my window, breathing faint wisps in the chill air. Outside, father and the other men trudged toward the wood. At the boundary, they paused, glanced about, furtive, then stepped into the dark.

Next morning, I asked him.

“Was you out lookin’ for Marian last night, Father?”

He just gave a grunt, wouldn’t meet my eyes. I noticed his knuckles though – scabbed, rough like tree bark.

“I could help next time,” I said. “I’m old enough. Come summer, I’ll be out o’ school.” Father said no. Firm and final as a slammed door. Telled me I were still just a boy.

“You keep away from them trees,” he said, low, growling with quiet threat. “There’s monsters in them woods.”

Last night though, I disobeyed. I followed him.

Mother, in her grief, never noticed that I’d took my boots to bed. So I was ready. Soon as I ‘eard the hissing whispers down below and the front door latch clacked shut, I were scrambling through my window, out back – careful with my grip on the frost-kissed sill, finding footholds on the black iron drainpipe. I carried no lantern, made no sound, followed close as I dared, knees quaking each time I stopped to crouch from view.

Father and the others met more men near the Malison Bridge. Their breath billowed in clouds as they spoke in low voices. Ten, mebbe twelve o’ them in all, each with a knapsack – heavy, by the looks of ‘em. Hanging low.

The men didn’t speak. Just looked to Father. He in turn looked about him, met their eyes, nodded. And then they stepped inside, letting the dark swallow them.

The woods was different at night. Paths I thought I knew twisted away. The bright moon cast dancing shadows. Roots grasped at my ankles in the dark, and dry leaves skittered by like rats. Frosted branches glowed silver, bared their claws, as mist swirled low like ogre’s breath. I crept, careful, stepping where the menfolk stepped, struggling to keep pace.

We passed a gully I didn’t recognise. A stream that seemed to sing, just like Marian said. Trees leaned close. One old oak had a split right down the middle, exposing rot right through. Inside the cavity, a mushroom glistened wet, seemed to pulse like a slick black heart in the shifting frozen light.

As we pressed onward, I found meself thinking how it was a strange kind o’ search. The men never fanned apart how I thought they would. Never cried out, never shouted Marian’s name. They brought no dogs to catch her scent.

My eyes darted in the dark. This deep, the other’uns would be close. With their claws and fangs, and wicked breath. With their hunger and their venom and their wild and wily ways.

But I wanted to help. Truth was, I wanted to be the one who found my sister. So I breathed deep and pushed onwards, watching the backs of the menfolks, swallowing my fear inside.

Eventually, the trees broke.

A wide clearing. Ringed by ghost-white trunks. And in the moonlight, as the men walked, bold across the space, I could see each tree were bedecked with dangling totems. Old things. Things o’ glass and string and bark and bone. Glinting in the moon’s cool glare, swaying on the breeze. Strange things they was. Beautiful in a way that seemed all wrong. Charged with tinkling magic. I knew right off they couldn’t be trusted. They was made by the other’uns. Didn’t look like nothing you’d see in the village, so they was cursed for sure. Dripping badness. Filling the air with uneasy music. Not right. Not right at all.

I stayed in deep shadows at glade’s edge. Crouched. Trying to still my ragged breath, my racing heart. From my hiding place, I saw them – the other’uns. Dozens o’ them. Across, on the far side o’ the clearing, where the menfolks was walking toward.

They looked just like the stories. I felt my skin prickle goose-flesh at the sight, shudders in my spine. Their skin was so white it glowed where moonbeams struck. Like paper held up to flame. Their limbs was long and spindly – joints fat like knots in string. Necks too long. Eyes too wide. Nostrils punched into the flat o’ their faces. And beneath that, nowt. The creatures had no mouths.

These other’uns was low, twisted. I realised they was chained about their necks, their wrists and ankles, shackled to iron posts. There was men, women, childers. Bound and bent and cowering.

Father and the men spread out, stood close to the wretched, freakish other’uns. Opened their sacks, bringing forth iron bars, nails, lumphammers, woodaxes.

And then they began. No order were given, but each man seemed to know ‘is part.Father swung the axe first, striking a white one’s leg. Not hacking hard enough to sever it, just enough to buckle, split flesh, and break the bone. The thing fell soundlessly, writhing, flailing like a fish in the bottom of a boat.

And then the other men began to kick and beat and swing. Dull thuds o’ crowbars thunking across flesh. Muffled cracks o’ broken bone. Not far from me, two men held a white one down – she looked like a young girl. A third man drove nails through her wrists, long and red with rust, pinning the childer to the ground like a school dissection – her legs kicking wild with the agony of it.

I watched, eyes wide. Hands trembling as shock froze my veins. This weren’t a search. The menfolks wasn’t looking for Marian. This was… I don’t think there’s words for what I saw. The other’uns didn’t scream. Couldn’t scream. Mouthless. Powerless. But they bled. Thick red gobbets spilling on the numb iron earth o’ that clearing. I always imagined their blood were white, different, weirded somehow. But this was thick and crimson, terrifying and familiar.

And all the while their milky eyes pleaded, wide and filled with fear, nostrils flaring, faces contorting as the village men thumped and hammered and gouged, their own faces impassive, filled with righteous calm.

One o’ the men – Neaves who worked the mines – he uncorked a leather flask and poured raw gritty salt into the open wounds o’ the white ones. Their thin, flimsy bodies convulsed and thrashed, gashes in their flesh fizzing and bubbling, skin curling away like parchment set alight, the wounds frothing over, collapsing inwards.

He laughed, Neaves did. Just once. A quiet, heartless snort that rang out, obscene, over the thumps and grunts and crunching blows.

The men carried on like that. Like a sort of brutal machine. Stabbing and hammering at the other’uns, treating them with salt, thrashing them ‘til their skinny white frames hung limp, or writhed on stump limbs, or lay still with empty black sockets where their white eyes once swivelled and cried. So many white folk. Thirty or forty or more.

The menfolks didn’t care about Marian. I realised that then. Nobody were trying to find her. Not even Father, whose face were pure blank. Nowt but hate in ‘is eyes.

My head swam, woozy, fogged by what I’d saw. I trembled. Not from cold, but chilled to my bones, guts tied in squirming knots.

And then a few o’ the men scooped up bodies – the other’uns that had fallen still, crumpled. And they carried them, light, like they were nothin’, out o’ the clearing, not far from where I crouched, unseen.

I crept, low on the cold earth, between the ferns, to where the men halted. Saw them fling those broken bodies into a pit dug there. Big, it were. Long and wide as our classroom at school. And inside, in that dark hole, bodies piled on bodies. White on white on white, streaked with savage scarlet. Dozens o’ them. More. Limbs lolling, loose and broken. Necks twisted, snapped. Death piled deep. Pale mockeries, stinking fearsome wrong.

As I watched, the men flung one more corpse into the pit. Life extinguished like it were nothing. Chucked like scraps for a dog. The face on it, this other’un, hung slack, the head’s angle unnatural, one arm cut off below the shoulder. The eyes though. Them desperate, dead eyes met mine and in that moment I felt a weight of blame inside them. A pure white glare of rage and bitter pain.

I looked up and saw Father, stood at the edge o’ the pit. He snorted, hocked, spat, and turned away.

Sweat ran cold on my spine. Quiet as I could, bent double, I retched sour bile onto the ground. My eyes burned, body quaking. I heaved myself dry, unable to rid my stomach o’ the sickness.

And then I were running. Stumbling blind, falling more than once, furious branches tripping my ankles, cutting at my arms as I barged through thickets.

I don’t know how, but I found the edge o’ the village. Crept home. Snuck in wi’out waking Mother, past Marian’s empty bed, crawled beneath the blanket, heavy with shame and fear, shaking with a sickness. Later, near dawn, I were still trembling when I heard Father’s heavy boots below.

He ain’t spoken to me today. And I ain’t said a word neither. But Father knows I know. Sure as the devil. He sees it on my face. Because I understand it all now.

There’s monsters in them trees. Dangerous. Fierce. Merciless. Mindless. And it makes me sick to think on us.

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Banner Art:
Photo by Wolfgang Hasselmann, Unsplash, 2025