Maps of the Lost episode 14
from the loneliness of a busy street
gone
It’s daytime in a late autumn, but the light’s never amounted to much, the clouds low and although it’s not raining the air feels wet. Everything is shades of grey. As you walk through the city, everyone’s got their heads down, hurrying to get to wherever they are going.
Your foot hits a slick of rotted leaves on a metal drain cover and slides, and you jerk to stop yourself falling, flailing your arms, and only just get your balance. Embarrassed, you look up to see if anyone has noticed, and everyone is gone.
Cars stand empty on the street, as if parked in a line from the traffic lights. The pavements are deserted. The lights in all the shops are on but you can see that no one is browsing, no one is standing behind the counter. You look down at your own feet to make sure that you are still there, and see your boots, a clot of leaves still stuck to the bottom.
When you look back up, the world is there again, cars move and people shuffle past you and the shop door next to you hisses open and shut, open and shut, as people go in and out.
This has never happened to you again, but there are moments sometimes when you wonder to yourself whether what you see is true or what you saw is true.
Notes From the Cartographer
Hello everyone.
If you do social media and it’s anything like mine it will have taken a spooky turn in the run up to the end of this month, with the odd genuinely eerie thing in amongst the pumpkin spice hummus (this is not an invention - I saw it in Sainsbury’s) and the inevitable cheap tat on Amazon of ‘Sexy Scary Covid Testing Person’ costumes for Halloween.
There is something that feels right in taking a turn to the scary as the nights here in the UK start to draw in and the skies are glum even in the day, as the early morning mists creep across the fields and the wind starts to rattle at the windows. It’s not a coincidence that traditional festivals of the dead and departed are at this time of year.
Much as I love it myself, I’d like to wave the flag though for the eeriness of the bright day, the well-illuminated supermarket, the bustling city street. Freud’s writing on the uncanny, rooted in the interesting semantics of heimlich and unheimlich can be taken as implying that the uncanny, the Unheimlich, happens which something which is hidden is brought to light, when something unfamiliar is brought into the familiar.
Mark Fisher (I think I’ve recommended his ‘The Weird and the Eerie’ on here before) develops that. In Fisher’s view the weird is 'the presence of that which does not belong', while the eerie is 'a failure of absence or a failure of presence'.
In a way, ghosts and the oddities which are the preoccupation of Maps belong in the dark, in misty fields and when the rain lashes at the windows. It’s the time we expect to be haunted, expect the strange, indulge ourselves in it. Yes, the subject of our fear does not belong in the world, but at the same time, if it ever were to - it is now.
That’s why I find it unnerving when I think about the weird, at the times when that presence does not belong. I find the idea frightening that you could be on any busy street, and yet one or more of the people around you could be a phantom, a demon, someone else’s doppelgänger, a shapeshifter, a magician, any of those things - and you wouldn’t know. They’re just there, next to you, in the daylight, on the train or at the bus stop, takeaway coffee in their hand, looking just like any other tired commuter. Except they’re not. And you don’t know that. That, to me, makes the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. This is all very rambling, but I think what it amounts to is: in the deliciousness of the dark nights and the spooky season, let’s not fall into the trap of only dreaming our ghosts in the dark.
the glows
You’ve been out walking in the north Pennines and you misjudged the length of your walk and the time it would take you to finish. It’s dark now and you have half an hour more walking before the bothy you’re going to stay in. It’s not a problem though, you’re well equipped, and your headtorch lights the way in front of you.
When you stop for a drink of water, you turn it off for a moment, enjoy the thick, velvety darkness that you don’t get near a town. As your eyes adjust, there’s enough light to see the greater darkness of the sullen humps of the fells against the night sky.
When you turn to look behind you, you see two white lights near the top of the hill you’ve just descended. They’re close together, not moving, so not hikers. Car headlights, you think, but how the hell did they get up there? You wonder if it’s a mountain rescue 4x4, perhaps on an exercise. You didn’t see any other walkers around, and you hope you didn’t pass someone injured and not notice them. But surely you’d have heard the sound of an engine from miles away.
You stare at the two white glows for a moment, trying to work out what they could be.
Then they blink, slow and deliberate, and start to move down the hill towards you.
On Maps and beyond the Maps
When I first started Maps, it was very rooted in place. Almost every piece (which were usually quite short) was set somewhere in the UK. I’ve been thinking about how it’s evolved and changed in the years that I’ve been writing it. I keep a little log of all stories written (327, if you’re counting, though about ten not published yet) and where they’re set. It’s noticeable that many now are more generic - they could happen in any alley off a city street, any country lane at night. Does that make them feel more resonant to more people? Maybe? Does it lose a little of the charm I think the earlier posts had? Quite possibly. What do you think?
It’s also noticeable that most of the early pieces were a short para or two at most. A lot of the ones I’m writing now are some way over that, and a few long enough to shade over from flash fiction (which it’s not, because OF COURSE all of these are true) into short stories, and I do wonder if they get too long for the format of Facebook which is the main vehicle (although they are all on the web version).
Occasionally I do think that maybe I should have worked up a couple of those as longer short stories and tried to the place them. I’ve had well over thirty short stories published since I’ve been writing, but only occasionally put one out there in the last few years. I’ve been trying to do that a little more since this summer. You can read a recent one here at Ellipsis Magazine, which is something of sideways take on Beauty and the Beast, unrequited passion and ruffled shirts.
If you wanted to read some of my earlier published short stories, I did put together a collection a while back called Ice Age, which is ebook only. Some of the stories in this were in anthologies nominated for awards, and one, Lilies, was reprinted in a Best New Horror anthology. But I think really, it’s a love story, and still one my favourite things I’ve written. You can read that on its own for free, here.
I don’t think I’ve ever promoted my other work through Maps before. So, excuse the ad.
A few years back, Lilies was published in translation in an anthology in Mexico, and an ensuing series of surreal events saw me invited to Mexico City for a book launch. It was a wonderful, strange time, and on my last day, walking through a quite amazing city, I happened upon this.
Azucena is the Spanish for…Lily.
silent pilgrimage
If you take a walk up from Grasmere to Easdale Tarn, and bear right as you come over the hill down to the Tarn, you’ll come to the beck that runs from the Tarn and down into the valley. If the water’s not up too high, you’ll see a set of stones across the beck, and if you are careful and have good balance you can step across them to the other side. There are fewer people there, and you can sit and eat your pork pie or malt loaf in peace.
If you decide to wild camp overnight at the Tarn, the better ground is on the other side, on the ground a little higher up. Flatter pitches, and drier ground. Also, if you are camping on the night of the first full moon after the Spring equinox, you are less likely to see why the stones were put into the stream in the first place, which is a good thing for you. That night the gap between the worlds is very thin, and it is the start of the Gathering, and if you are down by the stepping stones you may see the Folk in procession, leaping where you just stepped, dozens in silent pilgrimage on their obscure business, from one side of the fells to the other. If they see you watching, one will pull out a tiny silver whistle and blow, and you will join the hushed procession, and when the search parties are finally sent out they will find your empty tent. Two of the older Mountain Rescue volunteers will observe your footprints in the soft ground, heading from your tent down towards the beck, and they will look at each other for a moment, shake their heads, and cross themselves before going back to help in a search they know will not find you for seven years.
Maps Traced By Other Hands
I’ve just finished watching Midnight Mass, written and directed by Mike Flanagan who made Haunting of Hill House, and Bly Manor. I watched and for the most part really enjoyed the first, and haven’t got round to the second but intend to. No spoilers here.
It’s great to see networks/streaming services investing in attempts at high quality horror, good budgets, great sets, some talented actors. Without doubt, you can see the money spent on Midnight Mass. The ‘island’ is really well staged, and those of you who’ve been reading these newsletters for some time will know that I’m a sucker for decaying coastal locations, although I will admit to feeling childishly cheated when I found out the set is not an island at all.
There are some terrific performances (Hamish Linklater, who I wasn’t familiar with before this is very very good in every scene he’s in, although every time he appeared I kept thinking oh, it’s Nick Cave) and a few poorer performances (unless the mayor was actually intended to be modelled on Ned Flanders). There’s also a tremendous sense of menace at times, which I loved.
Make no mistake, this is a slow burn show. And I’m up for that. I like slow burn. It’s atmospheric. Night shots, where the camera pans slow across a deserted street, and wait, was that movement just at the edge of frame? A lingering gaze at the church, standing alone.
Slow burn because of the creation of tension and atmosphere? Great. Slow burn because of the gradual revelation of character and secrets? Bring it on.
And that’s where I come unstuck with Midnight Mass, and why for me it’s a potentially great bit of spooky TV held back from what it could have been. Slow burn because of all of the above? Terrific. Slow burn because over and over in every episode characters launch into profound monologues for minutes at a time which are clearly the writer expounding his philosophy on life, death and religion, not so much. Monologues where one character orates to another for three or four minutes without a single interruption, not so much. When does that ever happen in life? Monologues where one character finishes their five-minute teenager after first bong hit theory of life and death, and then the character who has been listening patiently to this (despite weird and terrifying things urgently threatening the whole island RIGHT NOW) launch into their own minutes long monologue in response - again not so much. Not so much at all. If that sounds snarky, it’s because there was so much to enjoy otherwise.
Thinking back, I can see the seeds of that in Hill House, but it was kept in check. For all the promise and beautiful cinematography and in some cases great performances of Midnight Mass, those seeds were allowed to spout and twine self-indulgently around all the good stuff. And at times, choke it out.
Billy Corgan was good as the monster, though.
The Ooser Speaks
(taken from the wonderful Readers Digest 'Folklore, Myths and Legends of Britain')
Somewhere above the high-water mark in Benbecula in the Outer Hebrides, lies the grave of a mermaid. In the early nineteenth century women gathering seaweed saw her swimming in the sea. They tried to catch her, but she easily escaped them. A few days later though, a cruel boy threw stones at her, and she was injured. A little while after that, her small body washed up ashore, the ‘top half like that of a child, the lower like a salmon but without scales’.
Although she was clearly not human, the bailiff and sheriff ordered that she was human enough to be buried properly, in a specially made shroud and coffin. No religious service took place.
it’s still up there and one day it will come back
Blaenavon in south-east Wales grew around the ironworks that were built there in the eighteenth century. The fiery furnaces roared for over a hundred years before they went out forever at the start of the twentieth century. The founders of the ironworks knew the riches that lay in the ground, but alas they did not know what lay amongst them, sleeping in its chrysalis.
It took years, but it awoke and it stirred and it moved, and it finally broke the surface in a spring night in 1822, when only one man saw it. He was a night watchman doing his rounds, and what he saw was so terrible that he ran straight into the works and threw himself into the furnace. The other men in the works were transfixed and horrified, but they still reported that above the roar of the furnace they heard what one of them described as giant wings ascending, beating so hard the winds rattled the walls and the flames of the furnace leapt even higher.
If you walk the bleak moorlands around Blaenavon in the springtime, just after the sun has set, you may be unfortunate enough to feel a sudden heat on your skin and hear an unearthly roar, just before the night around you lights up a terrible orange as a burning man runs past you, consumed by a fire that doesn’t go out but still screaming, pointing, pointing up at the skies.
Secrets The Wind Whispers
I’m still ploughing my way through the many episodes of the Magnus Archive, so no new recommendations to make on the audio drama front.
Instead, here’s audio from Operation Wandering Soul, which was a psyops exercise during the Vietnam War but now sounds like a rare Aphex Twin cut.
in the bottle
There are some parts of the north-east coast where the cliffs, ravines and caves once saw men steal in from the sea at night, hushed voices and dim lanterns, carrying tobacco and rum and anything else that could turn a profit if hidden from the revenue men and sold without paying taxes. The smugglers were hard men and the revenue were hard enemies, and the cliffs, ravines and caves saw heads shattered against the rocks and bodies peppered with shot dumped under piles of stones in the back of a cave.
Some of the smugglers were local, some had sailed the wide world around in the navy, either by choice or by the press gang, and in their travels had been to some strange places.
There’s one narrow ravine up through the cliffs which a gang was climbing on a night when the clouds hid the moon. They were nearly at the top when there were shouts, and the crack of a pistol, and the smugglers skittered and crashed back down through the ravine, racing to find one of their other secret ways off the beach or back in their boat out to sea before the clouds broke and the moon showed them all to the revenue men.
In the rush, a smuggler called Robins slipped on rock and nearly fell, recovered his balance and raced on, not realising that he dropped something out of his pocket. Robins had spent a lot of time in places oceans away from the beach where he was now running for his life, and he had long carried this small dark bottle as a good luck charm. Now he’s lost the bottle, and he’s lost his luck, and on a gallows a short while later, he lost his life.
Exploring the cliffs, ravines, and caves, a small rock fall might shift some rocks from a narrow path that almost isn’t there, and you might see a small bottle, small enough to fit in the palm of your hand, which has somehow survived the centuries. It’s dark, as if stained from the inside, but if you hold it up to the light, you might think, just for a moment, that you see the flicker of movement inside it.
Take it with you, keep it safe, and your fortunes will change for the better.
Whatever happens though, do not cut away the wax around the cork that stoppers it, and take the cork out to open the bottle. Do not, do not, do not. The one that you will have released had been in there for six hundred years, and your turn in there may end up for just as long.
Beyond This Point There May Be Dragons
You’ve been reading Maps of the Lost. Or have you? It’s hard to tell. Maybe this is all just a dream. Or a prophecy, or a forewarning. I hope you enjoyed it. Feedback is always welcome, as I’d really like to shape this newsletter to be what you’d like to read and hear. So, ideas, suggestions and comments welcome. You can just reply to this email if you like.
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(skeleton pic - unknown street artist)
Thanks for reading, and watch for lights on the hills.