Maps of the Lost episode 13
from amongst the leaves
the long wait
If you browse Google Maps for a certain part of rural Lincolnshire and go down to Streetview, you may spot a man, standing on the grass verge by a crossroads. There’s nothing exceptional about him: medium height and build, dark trousers and a big coat, his head bowed and the little you can see of his face is blurred out by Google.
He’s not doing anything, just standing by a road in the middle of nowhere, but you think for a moment about how he conveys a particular feeling of stillness and then you laugh at yourself: it’s a photo. How could he not? Everything is still.
Maybe sometime later, you’ll happen to be driving through that certain part of rural Lincolnshire. Maybe that’s why you looked at the map, maybe it’s just coincidence. It could be weeks, or it could be years later. But you’ll remember the crossroads, even though it’s just like one of dozens out in the country. You’ll remember it because there’s a man standing there, medium height and build, dark trousers and a big coat, his head bowed, and as you slow and drive past, he’ll look up a little, and you’ll realise that it is not Google that has blurred his face.
Drive on though: it is not you he is waiting for, and he has been waiting by that crossroads for a very long time.
Notes From the Cartographer
My favourite time of year is coming.
I can smell it in the air.
Cool, clear mornings, the night stealing in darker by minutes every evening, the first low, hanging mist, grass starry with dew and the promise of frosts to come.
Autumn is in the air: warm yellow lights on in the windows of dark houses, leaves spinning round and round and down, Halloween and the gunpowder stink of fireworks and the woodsmoke stink of bonfires and the not very well-hidden child inside kicking through piles of leaves and relishing the run up to birthday and Christmas, the expectation always the best part because expectation always turns out to be better than the thing itself.
"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." (Ray Bradbury: The October Country)
Welcome to the 13th issue of the Maps newsletter. What could possibly go wrong?
when the bourne rises
If you’re wandering through the countryside of the Elham valley in Kent, you might spot what looks like a large ditch, wending its way along the edges of fields and the sides of the roads.
It’s not a ditch though - or at least, not all the time. This is where the Nailbourne, an intermittent bourne (the local word for a stream), runs. About every seven years or so, water will rise from the bed and within a day or two the river will be in full flow. It has even flooded at times, what was an empty ditch so full that it spills over and into fields and turning roads into fords.
There is an old legend that St Augustine had tapped his staff on the ground and summoned up a spring in a time of drought, but this angered the Anglo-Saxon gods who summoned up a flood. In order to appease the local folk of the Elham Valley who were tired of being caught in this battle between old and new gods, St Augustine kept the spring flowing but decreed that the water would only emerge above ground in the valley every seven years.
There is also a legend that when the Nailbourne does run, it is an unlucky year.
Either or both of those may be true, or they may not be. What is true though, is something which is far older than either.
When the Nailbourne rises, and is in full flow, if you hide yourself in a thicket or copse on the night of the new moon and keep a close watch on the waters, you may see a very small boat, made from bark and reeds, come drifting down the stream. You may also see the very small helmsman and passengers on that boat. But take special care that they don’t see you, or you will get taken by those in the boat and unlike the Nailbourne you will not be coming back every seven years.
a lover lost
She looks like a typical bit of Victorian frippery, a homage to a civilisation long gone, set out by a landowner to accessorise their pond. She gazes endlessly down at the water, and the midges and tiny creatures dance around her in the soft air.
The landowner bought her from an architectural salvage firm, and that firm bought her in an estate clearance, and that estate bought her in an auction, and that auction claimed her from a bankrupt rake whose gambling debts had come home to roost, and that rake inherited her from his uncle who was well-travelled, and who had taken her from beside a small, still pool in Greece, and who did not know that she had stood by that pool for two thousand years, stood and watched its waters since condemned to do so by a vengeful minor god whose son she had beckoned into the waters.
So now she stands by this pond in Shropshire, gazing endlessly down at the water, thinking for ever about the strong, brown curves of her lover’s arms and the way he had held her as she drew him down into the water, because she knew no better, and the midges and tiny creatures dance around her in the soft air.
Maps Traced By Other Hands
Those of you who have an interest in writing as well as reading (or those of you who are readers but like to know what makes writers tick - generally a mistake akin to going down to investigate what the noises are in the basement) might find this a great read.
After all, just look at that line-up - some terrific writers on ‘what drew them to horror, ghost stories, folklore and beyond’, as well as revealing ‘how to craft unsettling fiction which resonates.’
It’s a feast - Jeremy Dyson (League of Gentlemen, Ghost Stories, his own excellent collections), the wonderful Alison Moore (whose novel Missing I found profoundly unsettling), Nicholas Royle who runs Nightjar Press as mentioned in the last newsletter, the brilliant Jenn Ashworth, Lucie McKnight Hardy (whose novel Water Shall Refuse Them is a great folk horror-ish read, and whose short story collection Dead Relatives is out next month) and more.
The book’s divided into three themed sections: Approaching The Uncanny, Land and Lore, and The Ghost in the Machine, with ‘spotlight’ essays in-between on Shirley Jackson, Robert Aickman, and Sigmund Freud, whose work on the ‘uncanny’ (his 1919 essay ‘Das Unheimliche’) is the starting point for the book.
It’s put together by Dan Coxon, a writer and editor whose anthology This Dreaming Isle is also an excellent read (and was shortlisted for both a Shirley Jackson and British Fantasy Society Award) and who edits and publishes The Shadow Booth magazine, and Richard V Hirst, also a writer and editor who’s produced two really interesting music-themed anthologies (one stories inspired by Joy Division’s ‘Unknown Pleasures’ and one inspired by the music of Low).
I’m just about to dive into it and will report back.
The Ooser Speaks
(taken from the wonderful Readers Digest 'Folklore, Myths and Legends of Britain')
In Sussex, where the Pulborough road meets the Horsham to Guildford road, there’s a boggy little hollow called Alford Dene. Many years ago a giant bell was being carted along on a wagon through the Dene but it rolled off and fell into the bog. All the villagers tried in vain to rescue it, but to no avail. So they did the obvious next thing and asked a witch for her advice.
She gave them very specific instructions: haul the bell at midnight, with a team of white oxen, and no one must speak.
The villagers followed the instructions, the white oxen hauled and hauled, and the bell was almost clear of the mud.
Almost.
One villager got over-excited and forgot himself, and shouted out:
‘We’ve got the Alford Dene gurt bell
In spite of all the devils in hell.’
Inevitably, the chain snapped and the bell sank down into the stinking ooze of the bog, never to be seen again.
the night barge
If you take a stroll along the Manchester Ship Canal on a damp early autumn morning when the mist hangs low over the dark water like a blanket, and you feel as if you are the only person in the world because even the dog-walkers have gone home, you may see a darkness in the mist on the water, which slowly takes form as if the mist itself is coalescing, shaping into something you can’t quite make out at first, but then realise that is a long dark barge. Not one of the bright narrowboats which you would see on a canal, but a squat, wide industrial barge, weathered and blackened by time. It makes almost no sound as it moves through the water, and you cannot see anyone on the deck. It slides along, and the mist parts for it.
Even though it’s cold, take off your hat. Pay your respects. That barge is carrying the souls of the dead, more than you could count in a lifetime. They do not take up much room, and the barge is so much bigger than it looks from the outside, a world bigger than it looks from the outside. If you do not pay proper respect, you may find yourself taken on board to be one of the crew, and you will slide through the waters of the world for the next hundred years.
Secrets The Wind Whispers
There is strangeness in the air.
‘High Static, Dead Lines’ (doesn’t that title just grab you on its own?) is a terrific book by Kristen Gallerneaux about sound, technology and the uncanny, described as:
“a literary mix tape that explores the entwined boundaries between sound, material culture, landscape and esoteric belief.
Trees rigged up to the wireless radio heavens. A fax machine used to decode the language of hurricanes. A broadcast ghost that hijacked a television station to terrorize a city. A failed computer factory in the desert with a slap-back echo resounding into ruin.”
The book comes from Gallerneaux’s PhD dissertation, and while academic in its preoccupations and the ‘sonic spectre’, it’s creative in form and range and always accessible and interesting.
From listening to Mars to subliminal recordings, from the creation of radio to hijackings of TV broadcast signals, it’s endlessly fascinating.
This kind of haunted sound and technology thing has been a bit of a preoccupation of mine in Maps (see Michael Kilgolfen, The Hill Has Opened, six, twenty-one, three, eleven as examples), so expect to read more of it.
After all, the spaces between words in this newsletter look empty. But are they?
Are they?
Up On the Hill
There have been a number of ideas put forward to explain the etymology of Baal Hill which lies near Wolsingham in County Durham.
One is that it’s an old way of describing for a pit used for lead smelting. Another is that its derived from the time that the Bishop’s bailiff lived nearby. In Old English, ‘bale’ was a word for a fire or beacon (‘balefire’ or bǣlfȳr was a sacrificial fire), and so perhaps Baal is a corruption of that.
All very good explanations of why the name of this hill has nothing to do a hoarse-voiced demon who ruled over sixty-six legions of lesser demons, and whose name is variously Baal or Bael.
That’s a fanciful thought.
But do take care on a certain day of the year when a walk up Baal Hill might leave you thinking that it is plagued something terrible by flies. It isn’t - usually. But one day a year the flies come from all over the county to form an honour guard for the visit of their lord, and the earth will open and he will walk it.
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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As enjoyable as ever, thank you! And I will be interested to know how you found the Uncanny book. I've added it to my own wishlist.