Maps of the Lost volume 12
from the gap in the hedge
hello dear
You may be walking through the countryside outside Arundel very early in the morning, enjoying that moment when no other person is about, and the animals and birds are out in a world that just for these hours, is theirs alone. If you’re there on a particular day of the year, you might step quietly through some long grass, and round a little copse where rabbits hop and skip on a bank, and then you reach the other side of the copse and there’s a sudden explosion of sound and motion as you startle an animal that was there. You’re so surprised by it at first that you step back and don’t see much other than a dark blur racing away towards the woods down the hill.
Just before it reaches the shadows of the treeline though, you catch your balance and you see it, just for a second: a black deer. Then it’s gone, with a rustle of branches, into the darkness of the woods.
You marvel at what you have just seen, as you have never seen a deer like that before. Then you go on with your walk, because you have to be home in an hour.
There are two ways back home. If you go one way you will see more rabbits, a red kite tracing lazy circles, and some complacent sheep. If you go the other way, you will see more rabbits, a field of cows pondering, and a man with black hair and a black beard, wearing a black tee-shirt and jeans, stumbling out of the woods and hurrying away, with a strange gait as if he is not quite used to his own body.
Notes From the Cartographer
It’s been a strange old month, and writing and coming up with some ideas for Maps has been something of a refuge. The Facebook group’s just reached over 4000 followers, which I never imagined when I started and about a dozen people were reading these few very short and quite strange stories that I just wrote for fun, back in…2015. Can’t believe it’s been that long, though I did let it lapse for a couple of years.
Anyway some light amongst the darkness this month, is that after months of dead ends, frustration and lack of inspiration, almost out of the blue the idea for my next novel bubbled up from my subconscious this week, not quite fully formed but well on the way.
A couple more weeks of arguing with myself in a notebook, finding flaws, discovering new angles, and developing characters, and it’ll be time to start writing. I mention it here because unlike most of my longer fiction before now, this novel is well into Maps territory.
The lights are flickering, the birds watch from the trees, the phone in the village phone-box keeps ringing when you walk past, a child is missing, there’s a long black car and talk of the devil, and if you go walking in the woods up by the Iron Age hillfort you might meet the hawk-headed man who stands by the stair.
flicker, flicker
If you are walking down a particular street in Edinburgh, you may start to experience the feeling that you can see movement in your peripheral vision. You glance about, but there is nothing there to see. Still though, as you walk, you keep seeing a flicker, as if shadows are flying by. You stop in the street for a moment, shake you head, blink. Still there. You quickly turn your head, as if you might catch something out, but nothing there to see. Glum and anxious, you continue walking, worrying about what it might be and planning on phoning your doctor’s surgery for an appointment as soon as it is open.
Don’t worry. There is nothing wrong with your eyes. The moment you leave this street, the fleeting flicker will stop, and you will not see it again. Unless, that is, you happen to return to this street at a time when the shadows are flying about their business.
the gap
It's so inviting, that you can't refuse. You look at it and laugh, think that if anyone was with you, you'd make a joke about a runner who desperately needed to get home to the toilet, but no one is with you.
Instead, you cross the road. The gap is a perfect fit for you. "How can I resist," you say to the hedge, but the hedge says nothing, just rustles. So, you step through, and into the field, just to take a look.Â
The first thing that strikes you is that it's a very big field indeed, and the other side of it feels like a long way away. The second thing is that the owner must be paranoid about the seed being eaten by the birds, because there's at least a dozen scarecrows dotted about, arms outstretched as if crucified on their poles.
That is a ridiculous number of scarecrows, you say to yourself, because no one else is with you, and you take a photo on your phone so you can post about how many there are on Twitter and hope that someone likes it or maybe even shares it, and then you decide to walk to the nearest one to take a photo close up of one to put on your little Instagram feed that no one really takes much notice of.
Partway across the field, you feel stiff, and think you've overdone it with the walk, it was longer than you planned, but you didn't really have much else to do with the hours that weigh heavy on you, but you feel so stiff you have to come to a stop, and you intend to rub your legs but you can't bend over any more, your thoughts get thick, and wooden, and then not very much like thoughts at all. Then you feel your arms pulled as if by invisible cords, up and out, up and out as if you are a bird just about to fly. But you never ever will.
Maps Traced By Other Hands
I was supposed to be in London last weekend, but things meant that wasn’t to be. One of the reasons that was a shame was that I’d have happened to be free on the Sunday afternoon, which was the last day of Ben Edge and the Museum of British Folklore’s exhibition Ritual Britain.
I’ve mentioned Ben’s work on here before, and was really looking forward to seeing the exhibition and bringing back some photos to include here, and on the Maps Instagram. There would have been a nice synchronicity about it too, given the exhibition was in the Crypt Gallery below St Pancras New Church, and an earlier Maps story concerned itself with the caryatids on the outside of the church.
So, sorry, no photos but you can read about the exhibition in this article in the Guardian and see much more of it on Ben’s Instagram. I’m really looking forward to seeing what he does next.
As part of the research for the novel mentioned above, I’ve spent some time this week falling down a rabbit hole of place name etymology, and places in the UK with haunted or demon-struck names. (Those of you who’ve enjoyed Alan Garner’s Thursbitch and the excellent essay Valley of the Demon won’t be surprised by the original meaning of þyrs…).
If you like that kind of thing - and if you’re reading this newsletter, the chances are that you will like that kind of thing - you might enjoy this: ‘Heathen and Mythological elements in English place names’.
(photo of Thursbitch courtesy of John H Darch - for more Thursbitchiana, this is a great read too with some good photos).
The Ooser Speaks
(taken from the wonderful Readers Digest 'Folklore, Myths and Legends of Britain')
In Canewdon, Essex, stands the church of St Nicholas. Local legend has it that as long as the tower of the church stands, there will be seven witches in Canewdon. The last witch who was known was one George Pickingill, who died in 1909. George didn’t have very high ambitions as a witch, according to the story in the book, as his main aim was to extort beer from farmers by threatening to use his magic to stop their machinery from working.
On occasion, a headless witch will materialise by the church, and drift down to the river for reasons unknown. If you should have the misfortune to meet her, you will be whirled into the air and dumped into the nearest ditch.
the new folk
The long reaches of the Essex estuary manage to be both desolate and busy at the same time. Row after row of warehouses, and plants, and refineries are serviced by high cranes, and tankers, and bright lights that burn through the night, but you sometimes wonder whether there are any people there at all.
There's one smaller building that looks unexceptional amongst its bigger neighbours, and if you're standing in the mud on the other side of the estuary you won't notice much about it at all. Once a week, a small van without a logo will pull out of the loading bay and drive away. The van will travel to a different part of the country each time, and it will stop somewhere quiet and the driver will open the doors and four people will get out, and walk off in separate directions.
Those people are made in this building, mostly out of the eels of the estuary, and they are not people that you would ever want to meet. But each week, there are four more of them that walk amongst us.
Secrets The Wind Whispers
I don’t have any recommendations for you this time, but I’m hoping for some the other way round. My listening time has been a bit constrained this month, but I’ve been working my way through all three seasons of the Black Tapes, which I mentioned last newsletter. Am a couple of episodes from the end, and it’s…okay. But I feel it’s been treading water for the second and third seasons, circling around the same themes and ideas a little too much.
There’s still some very impressive research on show around the magic of music and sound and numbers, and little digressions into Pythagorean and other history, philosophy, and sacred geometry.
(https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:AugPi)
One of the things I like about this is that without checking it out myself, I can’t tell what’s drawn from history or occult tradition, and what’s invented. It’s one of the things I liked about the Lovecraft Investigations.
So, anyway: recommendations for spooky audio very welcome, thank you. I much prefer the eerie and unsettling to out and out horror. Some favourites so far: all of Julian Simpson’s Lovecraft series on BBC; London Particular and Murmurs, both also on the Beeb, The Harrowing, have listened to the first season of Old Gods of Appalachia…anything new out there? Do just reply to this email if so.
the birds do
Many years ago, you had lost some weight because you’d been unwell for a while. As you were recuperating, you went for a walk in the woods on a beautiful spring day to try and get a little fitness back.
It was tiring, and frustrating that you could not walk as far as you wanted to, but you didn’t let that spoil it. The sky was blue apart from one faint smudge of cloud to the south-west, and when you looked up you felt as if you could fall into it forever. The trees had burst into leaf and were now an impossible green, so light and full of life, with none of the fading that the long summer sun would bring. Hidden in the growth, a hundred birds sang their hearts out, and every now and then you’d stop, close your eyes, breath in the soft air that tasted so clean, like fresh cold water, and listen to the birds all around you
There was one thing that spoiled it, but you didn’t realise it until you were back home. Somewhere on your walk, the ring you had inherited had slipped away from your finger, a looser fit because of the weight you’d lost while ill. You struggled back round your walk when you realised, out of breath and aching, and the same the next day, and the next day, but you never found the ring.
Now, it is years later, and you live in a place dozens of miles away, which is why you are very surprised when years later you leave the house to go to work, and a magpie stands on a fence post, head cocked, looking at you, and it opens its beak and lets fall a ring, which spins for a moment on the fence post, catching the early morning sun with every turn and then falls to one side and is still.
The magpie ducks its head, and then is in flight, up over the roof and gone. You wait for a moment, not daring to think it, but when you step forward it is what you dared not think.
You probably don’t even remember what it was you did, but at some point you did a great kindness, and even if you don’t remember it, the birds do.
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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