Maps of the Lost 19
from that one bench in a particular park...
sticks
There’s a scrubby little bit of wild land where the estate you live on peters out and the next one begins. It’s just at the bottom of your street, and your daughter plays there sometimes, even though you found it hard to let go. There are always other children there and it’s within shouting distance, and now and then you walk down to see if all’s well.
She tells you not to be so silly, that it is safe there, and besides there’s a friend that she has who is made out of the sticks and twigs of the trees, and although he doesn’t play with the children, he’s there in the wild spaces, keeping an eye on them. This doesn’t exactly make you feel safer, but children will be children and you keep telling yourself that having an active imagination is a positive thing and means creativity and doing well at school.
One weekend morning you are working on a report and the door bursts open and your daughter runs in to say that a nasty man with a hood on reached out and grabbed with horrible grabbing hands and tried to drag her off the path, but he got stuck and she ran away.
You call the police, and when they arrive while one stays with your daughter you walk with them down to the little patch of wild land, and show them the path she means.
Off to one side of the path, in amongst the brambles and the sticks and the twigs there’s the body of a man, and where you can see his skin it’s covered in hundreds of tiny punctures.
Notes From the Cartographer
The October Country: “That country where it is always turning late in the year. That country where the hills are fog and the rivers are mist; where noons go quickly, dusks and twilights linger, and midnights stay. That country composed in the main of cellars, sub-cellars, coal-bins, closets, attics, and pantries faced away from the sun. That country whose people are autumn people, thinking only autumn thoughts. Whose people passing at night on the empty walks sound like rain.”
I post that quote somewhere or other every year at this time, and I don’t think I’ll ever get tired of it. It’s a beautiful piece of writing, and it conjures up the atmosphere that anyone who loves the eerie will associate with this time of year, when the dark steals in early and departs late, and the leaves die a beautiful death, and the mist hangs low and long over the fields or creeps from the sea up over the beaches and into the streets while everyone is sleeping. It’s a delicious melancholy, and I love it.
I hope you enjoy this Maps newsletter, as the year begins to fade.
the Dyfi devil
Be careful walking home through Dyfi forest that lies between Dolgellau and Machynlleth late at night, in case you encounter a local legend.
The Dyfil Devil is said to lurk in the forest and there are countless legends of travellers seeing a pair of red eyes, glowing in the dark, or strange scuffling noises in the trees which sound very much as if you are being followed along the path.
The legend is untrue: what follows you along the path isn’t any kind of devil, but it has eaten several.
hail to the king
You’re walking home late at night, through a part of West London that’s near where you live, but not enough to be familiar. You’re a little drunk, and the streets are very empty tonight. As you walk down an empty road between blank-faced houses, you see your shadow stretch out in front of you, painted on to the pavements by the streetlights.
And then you see the top of another shadow, from someone just behind you to the left, and you prickle with tension, because you missed the footsteps behind, and you wonder whether to turn but don’t want to show weakness. The shadow grows in height as the person gets closer and then it is the same height as yours as if the person is next to you, and then you feel the slightest of breezes on a windless night, and the shadow over-takes yours, and keeps going briskly down the street, and it is only then that you stop and you turn to see that the street is empty behind you, and you spin back round to see that the street is empty in front of you, apart a momentary darkness on the pavement ahead, but then turns the corner and has gone.
You have met the King of Shadows, and although you don’t know it, your life will never be quite the same again, because it won’t be the last time.
Maps Traced By Other Hands
It was sad to hear of the death of Peter Straub last month. I really liked Ghost Story, enjoyed Floating Dragon, and Mr Clubb and Mr Cuff have stayed with me as some of the most memorable horror villains. It was lovely to see so many people speaking so fondly of him.
I may have mentioned David Longhorn’s ‘Supernatural Tales’ magazine before (print | ebook), but it’s worth another. There’s a new issue out (the fiftieth, which speaks a lot for the work that David’s put into it and the quality of the magazine) which includes great writers like Steve Duffy, Helen Grant and Lynda E Rucker amongst others. But it’s also worth checking out the ST website during October, as there are lots of links to films and readings of great - or lesser known - stories of the supernatural and the weird.
The Ooser Speaks
(taken from the wonderful Readers Digest 'Folklore, Myths and Legends of Britain')
Be aware, if you are near Dilston in Northumberland. When the last Earl of Derwentwater, James Radcliffe, was beheaded in 1716 for his part in the Jacobite rebellion, it was said that any corn ground near his castle was coloured red, the castle’s gutters ran with blood, and the river Derwent was filled with adders when there had been none there before.
The spectral Earl is said to gallop over the countryside at night with his men. It is not reported whether he stops to talk to his ghostly wife, who taunted him into joining the rebellion by demanding he gave her his sword so she could go in his place, and who now haunts the castle wringing her hands.
who knows where the time goes
In rural Norfolk there is a certain village which is known for its history of witch burning, that you may decide to visit to learn more about this historical atrocity. If you approach it from the south on the day the may blossom has just flowered, you will feel a sudden shiver as you pass the village sign, as if something significant has just changed. You’ll look around you, but just seen the hawthorn and the ash and the clear blue sky, which for once is unmarked by vapour trails.
As you walk into the village, looking for refreshments and the small museum above a shop that your guidebook promised, you might be forgiven for thinking that there is a historical re-enactment taking place. At first you smile at all the people dressed in odd costumes, but become less comfortable the more they look at you with curious and fearful expressions.
By the time you reach the village square, you’ll find yourself surrounded, and shouted at in strange accents, and questioned, and then searched. When they find your mobile phone and see that you have the faces of children captured on this small glass thing, they will do a number of unpleasant things to you, and then they will burn you as a witch.
On the bright side, several centuries in the future and also right now, you’ll be mentioned in a display on the wall of the small museum above the shop.
the rhythm
Beware of sitting on a bench in a particular park in Cardiff. There’s nothing wrong with the bench itself, it’s perfectly pleasant with its attractively weathered wood and poignant bass plate. It’s the bench on the other side of the path that you should watch for. Or rather, who chooses to sit in it.
If it’s a mother and child, taking a break to enjoy a fruit shoot for the latter and a moment not on her feet for the former, don’t worry. If it’s a couple of office workers eating sandwiches in fresh air and sunshine, don’t worry. If though, it’s a man who comes walking up to the bench in an oddly percussive way, almost like dance steps, then no matter how comfortable you are, or how much coffee you have left in your cup, get up, leave, go.
If you stay, he will fold himself onto the bench opposite and look at you and smile. And then with his feet on the floor and his hands on the bench he’ll tap out a short rhythm, over and over for a minute. Then he’ll smile even wider, get back up in a way which looks like him sitting down but reversed on film, and walk off again with those steps which you now realise follow the same rhythm as his tapping.
A strange encounter you might be thinking reading this, but the man walks away so how bad can it be?
If you stay on the bench until he is done, you will find out. You’ll catch yourself at home, tapping out the rhythm on the arm of the couch when watching TV, then doing it with your fingers on the table at a meeting at work, making everyone look at you, and then you’ll be tapping it on the handle of a supermarket trolley, breathing it when you’re running, dreaming it when you’re asleep, drumming it on a steering wheel, reflexively, compulsively, you can’t stop it, and more to the point, you don’t want to stop it.
In time, you’ll begin walking just like he does. And in time, when all of your life has fallen away from you and there’s nothing but the rhythm, you’ll find yourself walking in a certain park in Cardiff, waiting until someone has chosen to sit down on a particular bench.
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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Thanks for reading, and be careful about paths through forests.