No Sharks in the Med and Other Stories

THE PLACE OF WAITING

I sit here by our swimming pool with one eye on my son in the water and the other on the seagulls lazily drifting, circling on high. Actually they’re not just drifting; they’re climbing on thermals off the nearby fields, spiralling up to a certain height from which they know they can set off south across the bay on their long evening glide to Brixham, to meet the fishing boats coming in to harbour. And never once having beaten a wing across all those miles, just gliding, they’ll be there in plenty of time to beg for sprats as the fish are unloaded.

It’s instinct with those birds; they’ve been doing it for so long that now they don’t even think about it, they just do it. It’s like at ant-flying time, or flying-ant time, if you prefer: those two or three of the hottest days of summer when all of a sudden the ant queens make up their minds to fly and establish new hives or whatever ant nesting sites are called. Yes, for the gulls know all about that, too.

The crying of gulls: plaintive, sometimes painful, often annoying, especially when they’re flight-training their young. But this time of year, well you can always tell when it’s ant-flying time. Because that’s just about the only time when the seagulls are silent. And you won’t see a one in the sky until the queen ants stream up in their thousands from all the Devon gardens, all at the same time—like spawning corals under the full moon—as if some telepathic message had gone out into an ant aether, telling them, “It’s time! It’s time!”

Time for the seagulls, too. For suddenly, out of nowhere, the sky is full of them. And their silence is because they’re eating. Eating ants, yes. And I amuse myself by imagining that the gulls have learned how to interpret ant telepathy, when in all probability it’s only a matter of timing and temperature: Ma Nature as opposed to insect (or avian) ESP.

And yet…there are stranger things in heaven and earth—and between the two—and I no longer rule out anything…

My son cries out, gasps, gurgles, and shrieks…but only with joy, thank God, as I spring from my deck chair! Only with joy—the sheer enjoyment of the shallow end of the pool. Not that it’s shallow enough, (it’s well out of his depth in fact, for he’s only two and a half) but he’s wearing his water-wings and his splashing and chortling alone should have told me that all was well.

Except I wasn’t doing my duty as I should have been; I was paying too much attention to the seagulls. And well—

—Well, call it paranoia if you like. But I watch little Jimmy like a hawk when he is in the water, and I’ve considered having the pool filled in. But his mother says no, that’s just silly, and whatever it was that I think happened to me out on the moors that time, I shouldn’t let it interfere with living our lives to the full. And anyway she loves our pool, and so does little Jimmy, and so would I, except…

Only three weeks ago a small child drowned in just such a pool right here in Torquay, less than a mile away. And to me—especially to me—that was a lot more than a tragic if simple accident. It was a beginning, not an end. The beginning of something that can never end, not until there are no more swimming pools. And even then it won’t be the end for some poor, unfortunate little mite.

But you don’t understand, right? And you never will until you know the full story. So first let me get little Jimmy out of the pool, dried and into the house, into his mother’s care, and then I’ll tell you all about it…

Have you ever wondered about haunted houses? Usually very old houses, perhaps victorian or older still? Well, probably not, because in this modern technological society of ours we’re not much given to considering such unscientific things. And first, of course, you would have to believe in ghosts: the departed, or not quite departed, revenants of folks dead and long since buried. But if so, if you have wondered, then you might also have begun to wonder why it’s these old houses which are most haunted, and only very rarely new ones.

And, on the same subject, how many so-called “old wives’ tales” have you heard, ghost stories, literally, about misted country crossroads where spectral figures are suddenly caught in a vehicle’s headlights, lurching from the hedgerows at midnight, screaming their silent screams with their ragged hands held out before them? Well, let me tell you: such stories are legion! And now I know why.

But me, I didn’t believe in ghosts. Not then, anyway…

My mother died in hospital here in Torbay some four and a half years ago. And incidentally, I’m glad about that; not about her dying, no of course not, but that she did it in hospital. These days lots of people die in hospital, which is natural enough.

Anyway, it hit me really badly, moreso because I had only recently lost someone else: my wife, when we’d divorced simply because we no longer belonged together. It had taken us eleven years to find that out: the fact that right from the start, we hadn’t really belonged together. But while our parting was mutually acceptable and even expedient, still it was painful. And I would like to think it hurt both of us, for I certainly felt it: a wrenching inside, like some small but improbably necessary organ was no longer in there, that it was missing, torn or fallen out. And at the time I’d thought that was the end of it; what was missing was gone forever; I wouldn’t find anyone else and there would be no family, no son to look up to me as I had looked up to my father. A feeling of…I don’t know, discontinuity?

But I had still had my mother—for a little while, anyway. My poor dear Ma.

Now, with all this talk of ghosts and death and what-not, don’t anyone take it that I was some kind of odd, sickly mother’s-boy sort of fellow like Norman Bates, the motel keeper in that Hitchcock film. No, for that couldn’t be further from the truth. But after my father had died (also in hospital, for they had both been heavy smokers) it had been my Ma who had sort of clung to me…quite the other way round, you see? Living not too far away, she had quickly come to rely on me. And no, that didn’t play a part in our divorce. In fact by then it had made no difference at all; our minds were already made up, Patsy’s and mine.

Anyway, Patsy got our house—we’d agreed on that, too—for it had made perfectly good sense that I should go and live with Ma. Then, when it was her time (oh my Good Lord, as if we had been anticipating it!) her house would come to me. And so Patsy’s and my needs both would be catered for, at least insofar as we wouldn’t suffer for a roof over our heads…

Ma painted, and I like to think I inherited something of her not inconsiderable talent. In fact, that was how I made a living: my work was on show in a studio in Exeter where I was one of a small but mainly respected coterie of local artists, with a somewhat smaller, widespread band of dedicated, affluent collectors. I thank my lucky stars for affluent collectors! And so, with the addition of the interest on monies willed to me by my father, I had always managed to eke out a living of sorts.

Ma painted, yes, and always she looked for the inspiration of drama. The more dramatic her subject, the finer the finished canvas. Seascapes on the Devon coast, landscapes on the rolling South Hams, the frowning ocean-hewn cliffs of Cornwall; and of course those great solemn tors on the moor…which is to say Dartmoor: the location for Sherlock Holmes’—or rather Arthur Conan Doyle’s—famous (or infamous) Hound of the Baskervilles.

Ah, that faded old film! My mother used to say, “It’s not like that, you know. Well, it is in some places, and misty too. But not all the time! Not like in that film. And I’ve certainly never seen the like of that fearsome old tramp that Basil Rathbone made of himself! Not on Dartmoor, God forbid! Yes, I know it was only Sherlock Holmes in one of his disguises, but still, I mean… Why, if the moors were really like that I swear I’d never want to paint there again!”

I remember that quite clearly, the way she said: “It’s not like that, you know,” before correcting herself. For in fact it is like that—and too much like that—in certain places…

After she’d gone I found myself revisiting the locations where we had painted together: the coastlines of Cornwall and our own Devon, the rolling, open countryside, and eventually Dartmoor’s great tors, which my dictionary somewhat inadequately describes as hills or rocky heights. But it was the Celts who called them tors or torrs, from which we’ve derived tower, and some of them do indeed “tower” on high. Or it’s possible the name comes from the Latin: the Roman turris. Whichever, I’ll get to the tors in a moment. But first something of Dartmoor itself:

All right, so it’s not like that faded old Basil Rathbone Hound of the Baskervilles film. Not entirely like that, anyway; not all the time. In fact in the summer it’s glorious, and that was mainly when I would go there; for I was still attempting to paint there despite that it had become a far more lonely business…often utterly lonely, on my own out there on the moors.

But glorious? Beautiful? Yes it certainly was, and for all that I don’t go there any more, I’m sure it still is. Beautiful in a fashion all its own. Or perhaps the word I’m searching for is unique. Uniquely dramatic…gloriously wild…positively neolithic, in its outcrops and standing stones, and prehistoric in the isolation and sometimes desolation of its secret, if not sacred, places.

As for outcrops, standing stones and such: well, now we’re back to the tors.

On Eastern Dartmoor my mother and I had painted that amazing jumble of rocks, one of the largest outcrops in the National Park, known as Hound Tor (no connection to Doyle’s hound, at least not to my knowledge). But along with a host of other gigantic stacks, such as the awesome Haytor Rock or Vixen Tor, the Hound hadn’t been one of Ma’s favourites. Many a lesser pile or tranquil river location had been easier to translate to canvas, board, or art paper. It wasn’t that we were idle, or lacking in skill or patience—certainly not my mother, whose true-to-life pictures were full of the most intricate detail—but that the necessities of life and the endless hours required to trap such monsters simply didn’t match up to our limited time. One single significant feature of any given rock could take Ma a whole day to satisfactorily transcribe in oils! And because I only rarely got things right at the first pass, they sometimes took me even longer. Which is why we were satisfied to paint less awesome or awkward subjects, and closer to home whenever possible.

Ah, but when I say “closer to home”…surely Dartmoor is only a moor? What’s a few miles between friends? Let me correct you:

Dartmoor is three hundred and fifty square miles of mists, mires, woodlands, rushing rivers, tors carved in an age of ice, small villages, lonely farmsteads and mazy paths; all of which forms the largest tract of unenclosed land in southern England. The landscape may range in just a few miles from barren, naked summits—several over five hundred metres in height—through heather-clad moorland, to marsh and sucking bog. There, in four national nature reserves and numerous protected sites, Dartmoor preserves an astonishing variety of plants and wildlife; all of this a mere twenty miles from Plymouth to the south, and a like distance from Exeter to the east.

Parts of the moor’s exposed heath contain the remains of Bronze and Iron Age settlements, now home to the hardy Dartmoor ponies; but the river Dart’s lush valley—cut through tens of thousands of years of planetary evolution—displays the softer side of rural Devon, where thatched cottages, tiny villages and ancient inns seem almost hidden away in the shady lee of knolls or protective hollows.

Dartmoor is, in short, a fascinating fantasy region, where several of the tors have their own ghosts—which is only to be expected in such a place—but I fancy their ectoplasm is only a matter of mist, myth, and legend. Most of them. Some of them, certainly…

I won’t say where I went that first time—which is to say the first time anything peculiar happened—for reasons which will become amply apparent, but it was close to one of our favourite places. Close to, but not the precise spot, for that would have meant feeling my mother’s presence. Her memory, or my memory of her, in that place, might have interfered with my concentration. And I’m not talking about ghosts here, just memories, nostalgia if you like: a sentimental longing for times spent with someone who had loved me all of her life, now gone forever. And if that makes me seem weak, then explain to me how even strong men find themselves still crying over a pet dog dead for months and even years, let alone a beloved parent.

And there is no paradox here, in my remembering yet needing to hold the memories to some degree at bay. I missed my Ma, yes, but I knew that I couldn’t go on mourning her for the rest of my life.

Anyway, it was in the late summer—in fact August, this time of year—when less than an hour’s drive had taken me onto the moor and along a certain second-class road, to a spot where I parked my car in a lay-by near a crossroads track leading off across the heather. Maybe a quarter-mile away there was a small domed hill, which faced across a shaded, shallow depression one of Dartmoor’s more accessible tors: an oddly unbalanced outcrop that looked for all the world as if it had been built of enormous, worn and rounded dominoes by some erratic Titan infant and was now trying hard not to topple over. An illusion, naturally, because it was entirely possible that this was just one massive rock, grooved by time and the elements into a semblance of many separate horizontal layers.

And here I think I had better give the stack a name—even one of my own coining—rather than simply call it a tor. Let’s call it Tumble Tor, if only because it looked as if at any moment it just might!

My mother and I had tried to paint Tumble Tor on a number of occasions, never with any great success. So maybe I could do it now and at least finish a job that we had frequently started and just as often left unresolved. That was the idea, my reason for being there, but as stated I would not be painting from any previously occupied vantage point. Indeed, since the moors seem to change from day to day and (obviously) more radically season to season, it would be almost impossible to say precisely where those vantage points had been. My best bet was to simply plunk myself down in a spot which felt totally strange, and that way be sure that I’d never been there before.

As for painting: I wouldn’t actually be doing any, not on this my first unaccompanied visit to Tumble Tor. Instead I intended to prepare a detailed pencil sketch, and in that way get as well acquainted as possible with the monolith before attempting the greater familiarity of oils and colour. In my opinion, one has to respect one’s subjects.

It had been a long hot summer and the ground was very hard underfoot, the soil crumbling as I climbed perhaps one third of the way up the knoll to a stone-strewn landing where the ground levelled off in a wide ledge. The sun was still rising in a mid-morning sky, but there in the shade of the summit rising behind me I seated myself on a flat stone and faced Tumble Tor with my board and paper resting comfortably on my knees. And using various grades of graphite I began to transpose my oddly staggered subject onto paper.

Time passed quickly…

Mid-afternoon, I broke for a ham sandwich with mayonnaise, washed down with a half thermos of bitter coffee. I had brought my binoculars with me; now and then I trained them on my car to ensure that it remained safe and hadn’t attracted the attention of any overly curious strangers. The glasses were also handy as a means of bringing Tumble Tor into greater resolution, making it easy to study its myriad bulges and folds before committing them to paper.

As I looked again at that much wrinkled rock, a lone puff of cloud eased itself in front of the sun. Tumble Tor fell into shade, however temporarily, and suddenly I saw a figure high in one of the outcrop’s precipitous shoulders: the figure of a man leaning against the rock there, peering in a furtive fashion—or so it seemed to me—around the shoulder and across the moor in the general direction of the road. Towards my car? Perhaps.

The puff of cloud persisted, slowly moving, barely drifting, across what was recently an empty, achingly blue sky, and I was aware of the first few wisps of a ground mist in the depression between my knoll and Tumble Tor. I glanced again at the sky and saw that the cloud was the first of a string of cotton-wool puffs reaching out toward Exeter in a ruler-straight line. Following this procession to its source, I was able to pick out the shining silver speck that had fashioned the aerial trail: a jet aircraft, descending toward Exeter airport. Its long vapour trail—even as it broke up into these small “clouds”—seemed determined to track across the face of the sun.

I looked again at Tumble Tor, and adjusted the focus of my binoculars to bring the lone climber—the furtive observer of some near-distant event?—into sharper perspective. He hadn’t moved except to turn his head in my direction, and I had little doubt but that he was now looking at me. At a distance of something less than four hundred and fifty yards, I must be visible to him as he was to me. But of course I had the advantage of my glasses…or so I thought.

He was thin and angular, a stick of a man, with wild hair blowing in a wind I couldn’t feel, some current of air circulating around his precarious position. He wore dark clothing, and as I once again refocussed I saw that indeed he carried binoculars around his neck. Though he wasn’t using them, still I felt he gazed upon me. I tried to get a clearer view of his face but the image was blurred, trembling with the movement of my hands. However, when finally I did manage to get a good look…it was his narrow eyes that left a lasting impression.

They seemed to glow in the shade of the rock with that so-called “red-eye” complication of amateur photography: an illusion—a trick of the light—obviously. But the way they were fixed upon me, those eyes, was somehow disconcerting. It was as if he was spying on me, and not the other way around.

But spying? Feeling like some kind of voyeur, I lowered my glasses and looked away.

Meanwhile, having swung across the sky, the sun had found me; soon my hollow in the side of the hill, rather than providing shade, was going to become a sun-trap. And so I reckoned it was time to call it a day and head for home. Before I could put my art things aside, however, a tall shadow fell across me and a deep voice said, “Aye, and ye’ve picked the perfect spot for it. What a grand picture the auld tor makes frae here, eh?”

Momentarily startled, I jerked myself around to look up at the speaker. He was a dark silhouette, blocking out the sun.

“Oh dear!” he said, himself startled. “Did I make ye jump just then? Well, I’m sorry if I’ve disturbed ye, and moreso if I’ve broken ye’re mood. But man, ye must hae been concentratin’ verra hard not tae hear me comin’ down on ye.”

“Concentrating?” I answered. “Actually I was watching that fellow on the tor there. He must be a bit of a climber. Myself, I don’t have much of a head for heights.”

“On the tor, ye say?” Shading his eyes and standing tall, he peered at Tumble Tor, now bright once more in full sunlight. “Well then, he must hae moved on, gone round the back. I cannae see anyone on the rock right now, no frae here.” Then, stepping down level with me, he crouched to examine my drawing close up. And in my turn—now that the sun was out of my eyes—I could look more closely at him.

A big, powerful man, I judged him to be in his mid-fifties. Dressed in well worn tweeds, good walking boots, and carrying a knobbed and ferruled stick, he could well have been a gamekeeper—and perhaps he was.

“I…I do hope I’m not trespassing here,” I finally mumbled. “I mean, I hope this isn’t private ground.”

“Eh?” he cocked his head a little, then smiled. “What? Do ye take me for a gillie or somethin’? No, no, I’m no that. And as far as I ken this ground’s free for us all. But a trespasser? Well, if ye are then so am I, and hae been for some twenty years!” He nodded at the unfinished drawing in my lap. “That’s a bonny piece of work. Will ye no finish it? Ye’ll excuse that I’m pokin’ my nose in, but I sense ye were about tae leave.”

“Was and am,” I answered, getting to my feet and dusting myself off. “The sun’s to blame…the shadows on the tor are falling all wrong now. Also, the back of my neck was getting a bit warm.” I stooped, gathered up my art things, and looked at the drawing. “But I thank you for your comment because this is just—”

“—A preliminary sketch?”

“Oh?” I said. “And how did you know that?”

Again he smiled, but most engagingly. “Why, there’s paint under ye’re fingernails. And ye’ve cross-hatched all the areas that are the selfsame colour as seen frae here…stone grey, that is. Ye’ll be plannin’ a painting—am I no right?”

I studied him more closely. He had tousled brown hair—a lot of it for a man his years, —a long weathered face, brown, friendly eyes over a bulbous nose, and a firm mouth over a jut of a chin. His accent revealed his nationality, and he made no attempt to disguise it. The Scots are proud of themselves, and they have every right to be. This one looked as much a part of the moors as…well, as Tumble Tor itself.

Impulsively, I stuck my hand out. “You’re right, I’m planning a painting. I’m Paul Stanard, from Torquay. I’m pleased to meet you.”

“Andrew Quarry,” he came back at once, grasping my hand. “Frae a mile or two back there.” A jerk of his head indicated the knoll behind us. “My house is just off the Yelverton road, set back a wee in a copse. But—did ye say Stanard?“

“Paul Stanard, yes,” I nodded.

“Hmm,” he mused. “Well, it’s probably a coincidence, but there’s a picture in my house painted by one Mary May Stanard: it’s a moors scene that I bought in Exeter.”

“My mother,” I told him, again nodding. “She sold her work through various art shops in Exeter and elsewhere. And so do I. But she…she died some nine months ago. Lung cancer.”

“Oh? Well, I’m sorry for ye,” he answered. “What, a smoker was she? Aye, it’s a verra bad business. Myself, I gave my auld pipe up years ago. But her picture—it’s a bonny thing.”

I smiled, however sadly. “Oh, she knew how to paint! But I doubt if it will ever be worth any more than you paid for it.”

“Ah, laddie,” he said, shaking his head. “But I didnae buy it for what others might reckon it’s value. I bought it because I thought it might look right hangin’ in my livin’-room. And so it does.”

Andrew Quarry: he was obviously a gentleman, and so open—so down-to-earth—that I couldn’t help but like him. “Are you by chance going my way?” I enquired. “That’s my car down on the road there. Maybe we can walk together?”

“Most certainly!” he answered at once. “But only if I can prevail upon ye tae make a little detour and drop me off on the Yelverton road. It’ll be a circular route for ye but no too far out of ye’re way, I promise ye.”

As I hesitated he quickly added, “But if ye’re in a hurry, then dinnae fret. The walkin’s good for a man. And me: I must hae tramped a thousand miles over these moors, so a half-dozen more willnae harm me.”

“Not at all,” I answered. “I was just working out a route, that’s all. For while I’ve crossed Dartmoor often enough, still I sometimes find myself confused. Maybe I don’t pay enough attention to maps and road signs, and anyway my sense of direction isn’t up to much. You might have to show me the way.”

“Oh, I can do that easily enough,” Quarry answered. “And I know what ye mean. I walk these moors freely in three out of four seasons, but in the fourth I go verra carefully. When the snow is on the ground, oh it’s beautiful beyond a doubt—ah, but it hides all the landmarks! A man can get lost in a blink, and then the cold sets in.” As we set off down the steep slope he asked: “So then, how did ye come here?”

“I’m sorry?”

“Ye’re route, frae the car tae here.”

“Oh. I followed the path—barely a track, really—but I walked where many feet have gone before: around that clump of standing stones there, and so on to the foot of this hill where I left the track, climbed through the heather, and finally arrived at this grassy ledge.”

“I see.” He nodded. “Ye avoided the more direct line frae ye’re vehicle tae the base of the tor, and frae the tor tae the knoll. Verra sensible.”

“Oh?”

“Aye. Ye see those rushes?” He pointed. “Between the knoll and yon rock? And those patches of red and green, huggin’ close tae the ground? Well those colours hint of what lies underfoot, and it’s marshy ground just there. Mud like that’ll suck ye’re shoes off! It would make a more direct route as the crow flies, true enough, but crows dinnae hae tae walk!”

“You can tell all that from the colour of the vegetation? The state of the ground, that is?” He obviously knew his Dartmoor, this man.

He shrugged. “Did I no say how I’ve lived here for twenty years? A man comes tae understand an awfy lot in twenty years.” Then he laughed. “Oh, it’s no great trick. Those colours: they indicate mosses, sphagnum mosses. And together with the rushes, that means boggy ground.”

We had reached the foot of the knoll and set off following the rough track, making a detour wide of the tor and the allegedly swampy ground; which is to say we reversed and retraced my incoming route. And Quarry continued talking as we walked:

“Those sphagnums…” he said, pausing to catch his breath. “…That’s peat in the makin’. A thousand years from now, it’ll be good burnin’ stuff, buried under a couple of feet of softish earth. Well, that’s if the moor doesnae dry out—as it’s done more than its share of this last verra hot summer. Aye, climatic change and all that.”

I was impressed. “You seem to be a very knowledgeable man. So then, what are you, Mr. Quarry? Something in moors conservation? Do you work for the National Park Authority? A botanist, perhaps?”

“Botany?” He raised a shaggy eyebrow. “My profession? No laddie, hardly that. I was a veterinary surgeon up in Scotland a good long spell ago—but I dinnae hae a profession, not any more. Ye see, my hands got a wee bit wobbly. Botany’s my hobby now, that’s all. All the green things…I enjoy tae identify them, and the moor has an awfy lot tae identify.”

“A Scotsman in Devon,” I said. “I should have thought the highlands would be just as varied…just as suitable to your needs.”

“Aye, but my wife was a Devon lass, so we compromised.”

“Compromised?”

He grinned. “She said she’d marry me, if I said I’d come live in Devon. I’ve no regretted it.” And then, more quietly, “She’s gone now, though, the auld girl. Gone before her time. Her heart gave out. It was most unexpected.”

“I’m sorry to hear it,” I said. “And so you live alone?”

“For quite some time, aye. Until my Jennie came home frae America. So now’s a nice time for me. Jennie was studyin’ architectural design; she got her credentials—top of the class, too—and now works in Exeter.”

We were passing the group of tall stones, their smoothed and rounded sides all grooved with the same horizontal striations. I nodded to indicate them. “They look like the same hand was at work carving them.”

“And so it was,” said Quarry. “The hand of time—of the ice age—of the elements. But all the one hand when ye think it through. This could well be the tip of some buried tor, like an iceberg of stone in a sea of earth.”

“There’s something of the poet in you,” I observed.

He smiled. “Oh, I’m an auld lad of nature, for a fact!”

And, once again on impulse, I said, “Andrew, if I may call you that, I’d very much like you to have that drawing—that’s if you’d care to accept it. It’s unfinished, I know, but—”

“—But I would be delighted!” he cut in. “Now tell me: how much would ye accept for it?”

“No,” I said. “I meant as a gift.”

“A gift!” He sounded astonished. “But why on earth would a body be givin’ all those hours of work away?”

“I really don’t know.” I shook my head, and shrugged. “And anyway, I haven’t worked on it all that long. Maybe I’d like to think of it on your wall, beside my mother’s painting.”

“And so it shall be—if ye’re sure…?”

“I am sure.”

“Then I thank ye kindly.”

Following which we were quiet, until eventually we arrived at the car. There, as I let Quarry into the passenger’s seat, I looked back at the sky and Tumble Tor. The puffs of cloud were still there, but dispersing now, drifting, breaking up. And on that strange high rock, nothing to be seen but the naked stone. Yet for some reason that thin, pale face with its burning eyes continued to linger in my own mind’s eye…

Dartmoor is criss-crossed by many paths, tracks, roads…none of which are “major” in the sense of motorways, though many are modern, metalled, and with sound surfaces. Andrew Quarry directed me expertly by the shortest route possible, through various crossroads and turns, until we’d driven through Two Bridges and Princetown. Shortly after that, he bade me stop at a stile in a hazel hedge. Beyond the stile a second hedge, running at right-angles to the road, sheltered a narrow footpath that paralleled a brook’s meandering contours. And some twenty-five yards along this footpath, in a fenced copse of oaks and birch trees, there stood Quarry’s house.

It was a good sized two-storied place, probably Victorian, with oak-timbered walls of typical red Devon stone. In the high gables, under terracotta pantiles, wide windows had been thrown open; while on the ground floor, the varnished or polished oak frames of several more windows were barely visible, shining in the dapple of light falling through the trees. In one of these lower windows, I could only just make out the upper third of a raven-haired female figure busy with some task.

“That’s Jennie,” said Quarry, getting out of the car. “Ye cannae mistake that shinin’ head of hair. She’s in the kitchen there, preparin’ this or that. I never ate so well since she’s been back. Will ye no come in for a cup of tea, Paul, or a mug of coffee, perhaps?”

“Er, no,” I said, “I don’t think so. I’ve a few things to do at home, and it’s time I was on my way. But thanks for offering. I do appreciate it.”

“And I appreciate ye’re gift,” he said. “Perhaps I’ll see ye some other time? Most definitely, if ye’re out there paintin’ on the knoll. In fact, I shall make it my business to walk that way now and then.”

“And I’ll be there—” I told him. “—Not every day, but on occasion, at least until my painting is finished. I’ll look forward to talking to you again.”

“Aye,” he nodded, “and so we shall.” With which he climbed the stile with my rolled-up drawing under his arm, looked back and waved, then disappeared around a curve in the hedge…

The forecast was rain for the next day or two. I accepted the weatherman’s verdict, stayed at home and worked on other paintings while waiting for the skies to clear; which they did eventually. Then I returned to the knoll and Tumble Tor.

I got there early morning when there was some ground mist still lingering over from the night. Mists are a regular feature of Devon in August through December, and especially on the moors. As I left the car I saw four or five Dartmoor ponies at the gallop, their manes flying, kicking up their heels as they crossed the road. They must have known where they were headed, the nature of the uneven ground; either that or they were heedless of the danger, for with tendrils of mist swirling half-way up their gleaming legs they certainly couldn’t see where their hooves were falling! They looked like the fabulous hippocampus, I thought—like sea-horses, braving the breakers—as they ran off across the moor and were soon lost in the poor visibility.

Poor visibility, yes…and I had come here to work on my painting! (Actually, to begin the second phase: this time using water-colours.) But the sun was well up, its rays already working on the mist to melt it away; Tumble Tor was mainly visible, for all that its foot was lost in the lapping swell; a further half-hour should set things to right, by which time I would be seated on my ledge in the lee of the knoll.

Oh really? But unfortunately there was something I hadn’t taken into account: namely that I wasn’t nearly as sure-footed or knowledgeable as those Dartmoor ponies! Only leave the road and less than ten paces onto the moor I’d be looking and feeling very foolish, tripping over the roots of gorse and heather as I tried to find and follow my previous route. So then, best to stay put for now and let the sun do its work.

Then, frustrated, leaning against the car and lighting one of my very infrequent cigarettes, I became aware of a male figure approaching up the road. His legs wreathed in mist, he came on, and soon I could see that he was a “gentleman of the road”, in short a tramp, but by no means a threat. On the contrary, he seemed rather time- and care-worn: a shabby, elderly, somewhat pitiful member of the brotherhood of wayfarers.

Only a few paces away he stopped to catch his breath, then seated himself upon one of those knee-high white-painted stones that mark the country verges. Oddly, he didn’t at first seem to have noticed me; but he’d seen my car and appeared to be frowning at it, or at least eyeing it disdainfully.

As I watched him, wondering if I should speak, he took out a tobacco pouch and a crumpled packet of cigarette papers, only to toss the latter aside when he discovered it empty. Which was when I stepped forward. And: “By all means, have one of these,” I said, proferring my pack and shaking it to loosen up a cigarette.

“Eh?” And now he looked at me.

He could have been anything between fifty-five and seventy years of age, that old man. But his face was so lined and wrinkled, so lost in the hair of his head, his beard, and moustache—all matted together under a tattered, floppy hat—it would have been far too difficult if not impossible to attempt a more accurate assessment. I looked at his hunched, narrow shoulders, his spindly arms in a threadbare jacket, his dark gnarled hands with liver spots and purple veins, and simply had to feel sorry for him. Rheumy eyes gazed back at me, through curling wisps of shaggy eyebrow, and lips that had been fretted by harsh weather trembled when he spoke:

“That’s kind of you. I rarely begged but they often gave.” It was as if with that last rather odd sentence he was talking to himself.

“Take another,” I told him, “for later.”

“I didn’t mean to take advantage of you,” he answered, but he took a second cigarette anyway. Then, looking at the pair of small white tubes in his hand, he said, “But I think I’ll smoke them later, if you don’t mind. I’ve had this cough, you see?”

“Not at all,” I said. “I don’t usually smoke myself, until the evening. And then I sometimes fancy one with a glass of…” But there I paused. He probably hadn’t tasted brandy in a long, long time—if ever.

He apparently hadn’t noticed my almost gaffe. “It’s one of my few pleasures,” he said, placing the cigarettes carefully in his tobacco pouch, drawing its string tight, fumbling it into a leather-patched pocket. Then:

“But we haven’t been properly introduced!” he said, making an effort to stand, only to slump back down again. “Or could it be—I mean, is it possible—that I once knew you?” He seemed unable to focus on me; it was as if he looked right through me. “I’m sorry…it’s these poor old eyes of mine. They can’t see you at all clearly.”

“We’ve never met,” I told him. “I’m Paul.”

“Or, it could be the car,” he said, going off at a tangent again and beginning to ramble. “Your car, that is. But the very car…? No, I don’t think so. Too new.”

“Well, I have parked here before,” I said, trying my best to straighten out the conversation. “But just the once. Still, if you passed this way a few days ago you might well have seen it here.”

“Hmmm!” he mused, blinking as he peered hard, studying my face. Then his oh-so-pale eyes opened wider. “Ah! Now I understand! You must have been trying very hard to see someone, and you got me instead. I’m Joe. Old Joe, they called me.”

And finally I understood, too. The deprivations of a life on the road—of years of wandering, foraging, sleeping rough, through filthy weather and hungry nights—had got to him. His body wasn’t the only victim of his “lifestyle”. His mind, too, had suffered. Or perhaps it was the other way around, and that was the cause, not the effect. Perhaps he had always been “not altogether there”, as I’ve heard it said of such unfortunates.

And because I really didn’t have very much to say—also because I no longer knew quite what to say, exactly—I simply shrugged and informed him, “I…I’m just waiting, that’s all. And when this mist has cleared a bit, I’ll be moving on.”

“I’m waiting, too,” he answered. “More or less obliged to wait. Here, I mean.”

At which I simply had to ask: “Waiting? I didn’t know this was a bus route? And if it is they’re very infrequent. Or maybe you’re waiting for a friend, some fellow, er, traveller? Or are you looking for a lift—in a car, I mean?” (Lord, I hoped not! Not that he smelled bad or anything, not that I’d noticed, anyway, but I should really hate to have to refuse him if he asked me.) And how stupid of me: that I should have mentioned a lift in the first place! For after all I was there to paint, not to go on mercy missions for demented old derelicts!

“Buses?” he said, cocking his head a little and frowning. “No, I can’t say I’ve seen too many of those, not here. But a car, yes. That’s a real possibility. Better yet, a motorcycle! Oh, it’s a horrid, horrid thought—but it’s my best bet by a long shot…”

And my best bet, I thought, would be to end a very pointless conversation and leave him sitting there on his own! Yes, and even as I thought it I saw that I could do just that, for the mist was lifting, or rather melting away as the sun sailed higher yet. And so:

“You’ll excuse me,” I said, with a glance across the moor at Tumble Tor, “but I’m afraid it’s time…” And there I paused, snapping my head round to stare again at the ancient stack; at its grainy, grooved stone surfaces, all damply agleam, and its base still wreathed in a last few tendrils of mist. “…Afraid it’s time to go.”

And the reason I had frozen like that, albeit momentarily? Because he was there again: the climber on the tor. And despite that from this angle I could see only his head and shoulders, I knew at once that it was the same person I’d seen the last time I was here: the observer with the binoculars—perched so precariously on that same windy ledge—who once again seemed to be observing me! The sunlight reflected blindingly from the lenses of his glasses…

“I paid my way with readings,” said the old tramp from his roadside stone, as if from a thousand miles away. “Give me your hand and I’ll do one for you.”

Distracted, I looked at him. “What? You’ll do one?”

“A reading.” He nodded. “I’ll read your palm.”

“I really don’t—” I began, glancing again at Tumble Tor.

“—Oh, go on!” He cut me off. “Or you’ll leave me feeling I’m in your debt.”

But the man on the rock had disappeared, slipped away out of sight, so I turned again to Old Joe. He held out a trembling hand, and however reluctantly I gave him mine. Then:

“There,” he said. “And look here, you have clearly defined lines! Why, it’s just like reading a book!” He traced the lines in my palm with a slightly grimy forefinger, but so gently that I barely felt his touch. And in a moment:

“Ah!” He gasped. “An only son—that’s you, I mean—and you were so very close to her. Now you’re alone but she’s still on your mind; every now and then you forget she’s gone, and you look up expecting to see her. Yes, and those are the times when you’re most likely to see what you ought not to be seeing!” Now he looked up at me, his old eyes the faded blue of the sky over a grey sea, and said, “She’s moved on, your mother, Paul. She’s safe and you can stop searching now.”

Spiders with icy feet ran up and down my spine! I snatched my hand away, backed off, said, “W-w-what?”

“I’m sorry, so sorry!” he said, struggling to his feet. “I see too much, but so do you!” And as he went off, hobbling away in the same direction he’d come from, he paused to look back at me and called out, “You shouldn’t look so hard, Paul.” And once again after a short, sharp glance at Tumble Tor: “You shouldn’t look so hard!”

Moments later a swell of mist like some slow-motion ocean rose up, deepening around him and obscuring him. His silhouette was quickly swallowed up in grey opacity, and having lost sight of him I once again turned my gaze on Tumble Tor. The moors can be very weird: mist in the one direction, clarity in the other! The huge outcrop continued to steam a little in the sun, but my route over the uneven ground was clearly visible. And of course the knoll was waiting.

Recovering from the shock Old Joe had supplied, determined to regain my composure, I collected my art things from my car’s boot and set off on my semicircular route around Tumble Tor. Up there on the knoll twenty-five minutes later, I used my binoculars to scan the winding road to the north of the tor. Old Joe couldn’t have got too far, now could he? But there was no mist, and there was no sign of Joe. Well then, he must have left the road and gone off across the moor along some track or other. Or perhaps someone had given him a lift after all. But neither had I seen any vehicles.

There was no sign of anyone on Tumble Tor either, but that didn’t stop me from looking. And despite what Old Joe had said, I found myself looking pretty hard at that…

I couldn’t concentrate on my work. It was the morning’s strangeness, of course. It was Old Joe’s rambling on the one hand, and his incredibly accurate reading on the other. I had always been aware that there were such people, certainly; I’d watched their performances on television, read of their extraordinary talents in various books and magazines, knew that they allegedly assisted the police in very serious investigations, and that seances were a regular feature in the lives of plenty of otherwise very sensible people. Personally, however, I’d always been sceptical of so-called psychic or occult phenomena, only rarely allowing that it was anything other than fake stage magic and “supernatural hocus-pocus”.

Now? Well, what was I to think now? Or had I, like so many others (in my opinion) simply allowed myself to be sucked in by self-delusion, my own gullibility?

Perhaps the old tramp hadn’t been so crazy after all. What if he’d merely used a few clever, well-chosen words and phrases and left me to fill in the blanks: a very subtle sort of hypnotism? And what if I had only imagined that he’d said the things he said? For of course my mother, comparatively recently passed on, was never far from my mind…anyone who ever lost someone will surely understand that the word “she”—just that single, simple word—would at once conjure her image, more especially now that there was no other “she” to squeeze her image aside.

Psychology? Was that Old Joe’s special ability? Well, what or whichever, he’d certainly found my emotional triggers easily enough! Maybe I had worn a certain distinctive, tell-tale look; perhaps there had been some sort of forlorn air about me, as if I were lost, or as if I was looking for someone. But alone, out on the moors? Who could I possibly have been seeking out there? Someone who couldn’t possibly be found, obviously. And Old Joe had simply extrapolated.

Stage magic, definitely…or maybe? I still couldn’t make up my mind! And so couldn’t concentrate. I managed to put a few soft pencilled guidelines onto the paper and a preliminary wash of background colour. But nothing looked right and my frustration was mounting. I couldn’t seem to get Old Joe’s words out of my head. And what of his warning, if that’s what it was, that I shouldn’t look so hard? I was looking “too hard”, he’d said and I was “seeing too much”—seeing what I ought not to be seeing. Now what on earth had he been trying to convey, if anything, by that? One thing for sure: I’d had a very odd morning!

Too odd—and far too off-putting—so that when a mass of dark cloud began to spread across the horizon, driven my way by a rising wind out of the south-west, I decided to let it go and return to Torquay. Back at the car I saw something at the roadside, lying on the ground at the foot of the verge marker where Old Joe had seated himself. Two somethings in fact: cigarettes, my brand, apparently discarded, just lying there. But hadn’t he said something about not wanting to be in my debt?

A peculiar old coot, to say the very least. And so, trying to put it all to the back of my mind, I drove home…

Then for the next three days I painted in my attic studio, listening to the sporadic patter of rain on my skylight while I worked on unfinished projects. And gradually I came to the conclusion that my chance encounter with Old Joe—more properly with his rambling, indirect choice of words and vague warnings—had been nothing more than a feeble, dazed old man’s mumbo-jumbo, to which on a whim of coincidental, empathic emotions I had mistakenly attached far too much meaning.

And how, you might ask, is that possible? In the same way that if someone suddenly shouts, “Look out!” you jump…despite that nothing is coming! That’s how. But now I ask myself: what if you don’t jump? And what if something is coming?

Early in September, at the beginning of what promised to be an extended Indian summer, I ventured out onto Dartmoor yet again, this time fully determined to get to grips with Tumble Tor. It was a matter of pride by then: I wasn’t about to let myself be defeated by a knob of rock, no matter how big it was!

That was my motive for returning to the moor, or so I tried to tell myself; but in all honesty, it was not the only reason. During the last ten days my sleep had been plagued by recurrent dreams: of a stick-thin, red-eyed man, gradually yet menacingly approaching me through a bank of dense swirling mist. Sometimes Tumble Tor’s vague silhouette formed a backdrop to this relentless stalking; at other times there was only the crimson glare of Hallowe’en eyes, full of rabid animosity and a burning evil—such evil as to bring me starting awake in a cold sweat.

Determined to exorcise these nightmares, and since it was quite obvious that Tumble Tor was their source—or that they were the outcrop’s evil geniuses loci, its spirits of place?—I supposed the best place to root them out must be on Dartmoor itself. So there I was once again, parking my car in the same spot, the place where a dirt track crossed the road, with the open moor and misshapen outcrop close at hand on my left, and in the near distance the steep-sided hill or knoll.

And despite that my imagination conjured up an otherwise intangible aura of—but of what? Of something lurking, waiting there?—still I insisted on carrying out my plans; come what may I was going to commence working! Whatever tricks the moor had up its sleeve, I would simply ignore or defy them.

To be absolutely sure that I would at least get something done, I had taken along my camera. If I experienced difficulty getting started, then I would take some pictures of Tumble Tor from which—in the comfort of my own home, at my leisure—I might work up some sketches, thus reacquainting myself with my subject.

As it turned out, it was as well that I’d planned it that way; for weather forecasts to the contrary, there was little or no sign of an Indian summer on Dartmoor! Not yet, anyway. There was dew on the yellow gorse and coarse grasses, and a carpet of ground mist that the morning sun hadn’t quite managed to shift; indeed the entire scene seemed drab and uninspiring, and Tumble Tor looked as gaunt as a lop-sided skull, its dome shiny where wan sunlight reflected from its damp surface.

Staring at it, I found myself wondering why the hell I had wanted to paint it in the first place! But…

My usual route across the moorland’s low-lying depression to the knoll was well known to me by now; and since the ankle-lapping mist wasn’t so dense as to interfere with my vision at close range, I took up my camera and art things, made my way to the knoll, and climbed it to my previous vantage point. Fortunately, aware now of the moor’s capriciousness, I had brought an old plastic raincoat with me to spread on the ground. And there I arranged the tools of my business as usual.

But when it came to actually starting to work…suddenly there was this weariness in me—not only a physical thing but also a numbing mental malaise—that had the effect of damping my spirits to such a degree that I could only sit there wondering what on earth was wrong with me. An uneasy expectancy? Some sort of foreboding or precognition? Well, perhaps…but rather than becoming aware, alert, on guard, I felt entirely fatigued, barely able to keep my eyes open.

A miasma then: some unwholesome exhalation spawned in the mist? Unlikely, but not impossible. And for a fact the mist was thicker now in the depression between the knoll and Tumble Tor, and around the base of the outcrop itself; while in the sky the sun had paled to a sickly yellow blob behind the grey overcast.

But once again—as twice before—as I looked at Tumble Tor I saw something other than wet stone and mist. Dull my mind and eyes might be, but I wasn’t completely insensible or blind. And there he was where I had first seen him: the climber on the tor, the red-eyed observer on the rock.

And I remember thinking: “Well, so much for exorcism!” For this was surely the weird visitant of my dreams. Not that I saw him as a form of evil incarnate in himself, not then (for after all, what was he in fact but a man on an enormous boulder?) but that his activities—and his odd looks, of course—had made such an impression on me as to cause my nightmares in the first place.

These were the thoughts that crept through my numb mind as I strove to fight free of both my mental and physical lethargy. But the swirling of the mist seemed hypnotic, while the unknown force working on my body—even on my head, which was gradually nodding lower and lower—weighed me down like so much lead. Or rather, to more accurately describe my perceptions, I felt that I was being sucked down as in a quagmire.

I tried one last time to focus my attention on the figure on Tumble Tor. Indeed, and before succumbing to my inexplicable faint, I even managed to take up my oh-so-heavy camera and snap a few shaky pictures. And between each period of whirring—as the film wound slowly forward and I tried to refocus—I could see that the man was now climbing down from the rock…but so very quickly! Impossibly quickly! or perhaps it was simply that I was moving so slowly.

And now…now he had clambered down into the mist, and I somehow knew that my nightmare was about to become reality. For as in my dreams he was coming—he was now on his way to me—and the mental quagmire continued to suck at me.

Which was when everything went dark…

“What’s this?” (At first, a voice from far, far away which some kind of mental red shift rapidly enhanced, making it louder and bringing it closer.) “Asleep on the job, are ye? Twitchin’ like ye’re havin’ a fit!” And then, much more seriously: “Man, but I hope ye’re not havin’ a fit!”

“Eh?” I gave a start. “W-what?” And lifting my head, jerking awake, I straightened up so quickly that I came very close to toppling over sideways.

And there I was, still seated on my plastic mac, blinking up into the half-smiling, half-frowning, wholly uncertain features of Andrew Quarry. “G-God, I was dreaming!” I told him. “A nightmare. Just lately I…I’ve been plagued by them!”

“Then I’m glad I came along,” he answered. “It was my hope tae find ye here, but when I saw ye sittin’ there—jerkin’ and moanin’ and what all—I thought it was best I speak out.”

“And just as well that you did,” I got my breath, finding it hard to breathe properly, and even harder to get to my feet. Quarry took my elbow, assisted me as, by way of explanation, I continued: “I…haven’t been sleeping too well.”

“No sleepin’?” He looked me straight in the eye. “Aye, I can see that. Man, ye’re lookin’ exhausted, so ye are! And tae fall asleep here—this early in the mornin’—now, that’s no normal.”

I could only agree with him, as for the first time I actually felt exhausted. “Maybe it was the mist,” I searched for a better explanation. “Something sickening in the mist? Some kind of—I don’t know—some kind of miasma maybe?”

He looked surprised, glanced across the moorland this way, and that, in all directions. “The mist, ye say?”

I looked, too, across the low-lying ground to where Tumble Tor stood tall for all that it seemed to slump; tall, and oddly foreboding now, and dry as a bone in the warm morning sunshine!

At which I could only shake my head and insist: “But when I sat down there was a mist, and a thick mist at that! Wait…” And I looked at my watch—which was proof of nothing whatever, for I couldn’t judge the time.

“Well?” Quarry studied my face, curiously I thought.

“So maybe I was asleep longer than I thought,” I told him, lamely. “I must have been, for the mist to clear up like that.”

His frown lifted. “Maybe not.” He shrugged. “The moor’s as changeable as a young girl’s mind. I’ve known the mist tae come up in minutes and melt away just as fast. Anyway, ye’re lookin’ a wee bit steadier now. So will ye carry on, or what?”

“Carry on?”

“With ye’re paintin’—or drawin’—or whatever.”

“No, not now,” I answered, shaking my head. “I’ve had more than enough of this place for now.”

As he helped me to gather up my things, he said, “Then may I make a wee suggestion?”

“A suggestion?” We started down the hillside.

“Aye. Paul, ye look like ye could use some exercise. Ye’re way too pale, too jumpy, and too high strung. Now then, there’s this beautiful wee walk—no so wee, actually—frae my place along the beck and back. Now I’m no just lookin’ for a lift, ye ken, but we could drive there in ye’re car, walk and talk, take in some verra nice autumn countryside while exercisin’ our legs, and maybe finish off with a mug of coffee at my place before ye go on back tae Torquay. What do ye say?”

I almost turned him down, but…the fact was I was going short on company. Since the breakdown of my marriage (it seemed an awfully long time ago, but in fact had been less than eighteen months) all my friends had drifted away. Then again, since they had been mainly couples, maybe I should have expected that I would soon be cast out, to become a loner and outsider.

So now I nodded. “We can do that if you like. But—”

“Aye, but?”

“Is your daughter home? Er, Jennie?” Which was a blunt and stupid question whichever way you look at it; but having recognized the apprehension in my voice, he took it as it was meant.

“Oh, so ye’re no particularly interested in the company of the fairer sex, is that it?” He glanced sideways at me, but for my part I remained silent. “Oh well then, I’ll assume there’s a verra good reason,” he went on. “And anyway, I wouldnae want to seem to be intrudin’.”

“Don’t get any wrong ideas about me, Andrew,” I said then. “But my wife and I divorced quite recently, since when—”

“Say no more.” He nodded. “Ye’re no ready tae start thinkin’ that way again, I can understand that. But in any case, my Jennie’s gone off tae Exeter: a day out with a few friends. So ye’ll no be bumpin’ intae her accidentally like. And anyway, what do ye take me for: some sort of auld matchmaker? Well, let me assure ye, I’m no. As for my Jennie, ye can take it frae me: she’s no the kind of lassie ye’d find amenable to that sort of interference in the first place. So now ye ken.”

“I meant no offence,” I told him.

“No, of course ye didn’t.” He chuckled. “Aye, and if ye’d seen my Jennie, ye’d ken she doesnae need a matchmaker! Pretty as a picture, that daughter of mine. Man, ye couldnae paint a prettier one, I guarantee it!”

Along the usual route back to the car, I couldn’t resist the occasional troubled glance in the direction of Tumble Tor. Andrew Quarry must have noticed, for he nodded and said, “That auld tor: it’s given ye nothin’ but a load of grief, is it no so?”

“Grief?” I cast him a sharp look.

“With ye’re art and what all, ye’re paintin’. It’s proved a poor subject.”

A sentiment I agreed with more than Quarry could possibly know. “Yes,” I answered him in his own words, “a whole load of grief.” And then, perhaps a little angrily, revealing my frustration: “But I’m not done with that rock just yet. No, not by a long shot!”

Leaving the car on the road outside Quarry’s place, we walked and talked. Or rather he talked, simultaneously and unselfconsciously displaying his expertise with regard to the incredible variety of Dartmoor’s botanical species. And despite my current personal concerns—about my well-being, both physical and mental, following the latest unpleasant episode at Tumble Tor—I soon found myself genuinely fascinated by his monologue. But if Quarry had shown something of his specialized knowledge on our first meeting, now he excelled himself. So much so that later that day I could only remember a fraction of it.

Along the bank of the stream, he pointed out stag’s horn and hair mosses; and when we passed a stand of birch trees just fifty yards beyond his house, he identified several lichens and a clump of birch-bracket fungi. Within a mile and a half, never straying from the path beside the stream, we passed oak, holly, hazel and sycamore, their leaves displaying the colours of the season and those colours alone enabling Quarry’s instant recognition. On one occasion, where the way was fenced, he climbed a stile, crossed a field into a copse of oaks and dense conifers, and in less than five minutes filled a large white handkerchief with spongy, golden mushrooms which he called Goat’s Lip. When I asked him about that, he said:

“Aye, that’s what the locals call ’em. But listen tae me: ‘locals’, indeed! Man, I’m a local myself after all this time! Anyway, these beauties are commonly called downy boletus—or if ye’re really, really interested Xerocomus subtomentosus. So I think ye’ll agree, Paul, Goat’s Lip falls a whole lot easier frae a man’s lip, does it no?” At which I had to smile.

“And you’ll eat them?” I may have seemed doubtful.

“Oh, be sure I will!” he answered. “My Jennie’ll cook ’em up intae a fine soup, or maybe use ’em as stuffin’ in a roasted chicken…”

And so it went, all along the way.

But in no time at all, or so it seemed, we’d covered more than two miles of country pathway and it was time to turn back. “Now see,” Quarry commented, as we reversed our route, “there’s a wee bit more colour in ye’re cheeks; it’s the fresh air ye’ve been breathin’ deep intae ye’re lungs, and the blood ye’re legs hae been pumpin’ up through ye’re body. The walkin’ is good for a man. Aye, and likewise the talkin’ and the companionship. I’d be verra surprised if ye dinnae sleep well the nicht.”

So that was it. Not so much the companionship and talking, but the fact that he’d been concerned for me. So of course when he invited me in I entered the old house with him, and shortly we were seated under a low, oak-beamed ceiling in a farmhouse-styled kitchen, drinking freshly ground coffee.

“The coffee’s good,” I told him.

“Aye,” he answered. “None of ye’re instant rubbish for my Jennie. If it’s no frae the best beans it’s rubbish…that’s Jennie’s opinion, and I go along with it. It’s one of the good things she brought back frae America.”

We finished our coffee.

“And now a wee dram,” he said, as he guided me through the house to his spacious, comfortable living-room. “But just a wee one, for I ken ye’ll need to be drivin’ home.”

Seated, and with a shot glass of good whisky in my hand, I looked across the room to a wall of pictures, paintings, framed photographs, diplomas and such. And the first thing to catch my eye was a painting I at once recognized. A seascape, it was one of my mother’s canvases, and one of her best at that; my sketch of Tumble Tor—behind non-reflective glass in a frame that was far too good for it—occupied a space alongside.

I stood up, crossed to the wall to take a closer look, and said, “You were as good as your word. I’m glad my effort wasn’t wasted.”

“And ye’re Ma’s picture, too,” he nodded, coming to stand beside me. “The pencils and the paint: I think they make a fine contrast.”

I found myself frowning—or more properly scowling—at my drawing, and said, “Andrew, just you wait! I’m not done with painting on the moor just yet. I promise you this: I’ll soon be giving you a far better picture of that damned rock…even if it kills me!”

He seemed startled, taken aback. “Aye, so ye’ve said,” he answered, “—that ye’re set on it, I mean. And I sense a struggle brewin’ between the pair of ye—ye’resel and the auld tor. But I would much prefer ye as a livin’ breathin’ friend than a dead benefactor!”

At which I breathed deeply, relaxed a little, laughed and said, “Just a figure of speech, of course. But I really do have to get to grips with that boulder. In fact I don’t believe I’ll be able to work on anything else until I’m done with it. But as for right now—” I half-turned from the wall, “I am quite done with it. Time we changed the subject, I think, and talked about other things.”

My words acted like an invocation, for before turning more fully from the wall my gaze lighted on something else: a framed colour photograph hung in a prominent position, where the stone wall had been buttressed to enclose the grate and blackened flue of an open fireplace. An immaculate studio photograph, it portrayed a young woman’s face in profile.

“Your wife?” I approached the picture.

“My Jennie,” Quarry replied. “I keep my wife’s photographs in my study, where I can speak tae her any time I like. And she sometimes answers me, or so I like tae think. As for my Jennie: well now ye’ve seen her, ye’ve seen her Ma. Like peas in a pod. Aye, but it’s fairly obvious she doesnae take after me!”

I knew what he meant. Jennie was an extraordinarily beautiful woman. Her lush hair was black as a raven’s wing, so black it was almost blue, and her eyes were as big and as blue as the sky. She had a full mouth, high cheeks and forehead, a straight nose and small, delicate ears. Despite that Jennie’s photograph was in profile, still she seemed to look at the camera from the corner of her eye, and wore a half-smile for the man taking her picture.

“And she’s in Exeter, with her boyfriend?”

Quarry shook his head. “No boyfriend, just friends. She’s no been home long enough tae develop any romantic interests. Ye should let me introduce ye some time. She was verra much taken with ye’re drawing. Ye hae that in common at least—designs, I mean. For it’s all art when ye break it down.”

After that, in a little while, I took my leave of him…

Driving home, for some reason known only to my troubled subconscious mind, I took the long route across the moor and drove by Tumble Tor; or I would have driven by, except Old Joe was there where I’d last seen him. In fact, I didn’t see him until almost the last moment, when he suddenly appeared through the break in the hedge, stepping out from the roadside track.

He looked at me—or more properly at my car—as it sped toward him, and for a moment he teetered there on the verge and appeared of two minds about crossing the road directly in front of me! If he’d done so I would have had a very hard time avoiding him. It would have meant applying my brakes full on, swinging my steering-wheel hard over, and in all likelihood skidding sideways across the narrow road. And there on the opposite side was this outcrop, a boulder jutting six feet out of the ground, which would surely have brought me to a violent halt; but such a halt as might easily have killed me!

As it was I had seen the old tramp in sufficient time—but only just in time—to apply my brakes safely and come to a halt alongside him.

Out of my window I said, “Old Joe, what on earth were you thinking about just then? I mean, I could so easily—”

“Yes,” he cut me off, “and so could I. Oh so very easily!” And he stood there trembling, quivering, with his eyes sunk so deep that I could scarcely see them.

Then I noticed the mist. It was just as Andrew Quarry had stated—a freak of synchronicity, sprung into being almost in a single moment—as if the earth had suddenly breathed it out; this ground mist, swirling and eddying about Old Joe’s feet and all across the low-lying ground beyond the narrow grass verge.

Distracted, alienated, and somehow feeling the dampness of that mist deep in my bones, I turned again to the old man, who was still babbling on. “But I couldn’t do it,” he said, “and I shall never do it! I’ll simply wait—forever, if needs be!”

As he began to back unsteadily away from the car, I said, “Old Joe, are you ill? What’s the trouble? Can I help you? Can I offer you a lift, take you somewhere?”

“A lift?” he answered. “No, no. This is my waiting place. It’s where I must wait. And I’m sorry—so very sorry—that I almost forgot myself.”

“What?” I said, frowning and perplexed. “What do you mean? How did you forget yourself? What are you talking about?”

“It’s here,” he replied. “Here’s where I must wait for it to happen…again! But I can’t—I mustn’t, and won’t ever—try to make it happen! No, for I’m not like that one…”

Old Joe gave a nod and his gaze shifted; he looked beyond me, beyond the car, out across the moors at Tumble Tor. And of course, as cold as I suddenly felt, I turned my head to follow his lead. All I saw was naked stone, and without quite knowing why I breathed a sigh of relief.

Then, turning back to the old tramp, I said, “But there’s no one there, Joe!” And again, in a whisper: “Old Joe…?” For he wasn’t there either—just a curl of mist in the hedgerow, where he might have passed through.

And a few minutes later, by the time I had driven no more than a mile farther along the road toward Torquay, already the mist had given way to a wan, inadequate sun that was doing its best to shine…

I had been right to worry about my state of mind. Or at least, that was how I felt at the time: that my depression under this atmosphere of impending doom which I felt hovering over me was some kind of mild mental disorder. (For after all, that’s what depression is, isn’t it?) Even now, as I look back on it in the light of new understanding, perhaps it really was some sort of psychosis—but nothing that I’d brought on myself. I realize that now because at the time I acknowledged the problem, while psychiatry insists that the psychotic isn’t aware of his condition.

In any case, I had been right to worry about it. For despite Andrew Quarry’s insistence that I’d sleep well that night, my dreams were as bad and even worse than before. The mist, the semi-opaque silhouette of monolithic Tumble Tor, and those eyes—those crimson-burning eyes—drawing closer, closer, and ever closer. Half-a-dozen times I woke up in a cold sweat…little wonder I was feeling so drained…

In the morning I drove into town to see my doctor. He gave me a check-up and heard me out; not the entire story, only what I felt obliged to tell him about my “insomnia”. He prescribed a course of sleeping pills and I set off home…such was my intention.

But almost before I knew it I was out on the country roads again. Taken in thrall by some morbid fascination or obsession, I was once more heading for Tumble Tor!

My tank was almost empty…I stopped at a garage, filled her up…the forecourt attendant was concerned, asked me if I was feeling okay…which really should have told me that something was very wrong, but it didn’t stop me.

Oh, I agreed with him that I didn’t feel well: I was dizzy, confused, distracted, but none of these symptoms served to stop me. And through all of this I could feel the lure, the inexplicable attraction of the moors, to which I must succumb!

And I did succumb, driving all the way to Tumble Tor where I parked in my usual spot and levered myself out of my car. Old Joe was there, waving his arms and silently gibbering…warning me about something which I couldn’t take in…my mind was clogged with cotton-wool mist…everything seemed to be happening in slow-motion…those eyes, those blazing evil eyes!

I felt a whoosh of wind, heard a vehicle’s tyres screaming on the road’s rough surface, saw through the billowing mist the blurred motion of something passing close—much too close—in front of me.

This combination of sensations got through to me—almost. I was aware of a red faced, angry man in a denim jacket leaning out of his truck’s window, yelling, “You bloody idiot! What the bloody hell…are you drunk? Staggering about in the road like that!” Then his tyres screeched again, spinning and smoking, as he rammed his vehicle into gear and pulled away.

But the mist was still swirling, my head still reeling—and Old Joe was having a silent, gesticulating argument with a stick-thin, red-eyed man!

Then the silence was broken as the old man looked my way, sobbing, “That wouldn’t have been my fault! Not this time, and not ever. It would have been yours…or his! But it wouldn’t have done him any good, and God knows I didn’t want it!” As he spoke the word “his”, so he’d flung out an arm to point at the thin man who was now floating toward me, his eyes like warning signal lamps as his shape took on form and emerged more surely from the mist.

And that was when I “woke up” to the danger. For yes, it was like coming out of a nightmare—indeed it could only have been a nightmare—but I came out of it so slowly that even as the mist cleared and the old man and the red-eyed phantom thinned to figures as insubstantial as the mist itself, still something of it lingered over: Old Joe’s voice.

As I staggered there on the road, blinking and shaking my head to clear it, trying to focus on reality and forcing myself to stop shuddering, so that old man’s voice—as thin as a cry from the dark side of the moon—got through to me:

“Get out of here!” he cried. “Go, hurry! He knows you now, and he won’t wait. He’ll follow you—in your head and in your dreams—until it’s done!”

“Until what’s done?” I managed to croak my question. But I was talking to nobody, to thin air.

Following which I almost fell into my car, reversed dangerously onto the crossover track and clipped the hedge, and drove away in a sweat as cold and damp as that non-existent mist. And all the way home I could feel those eyes burning on my neck; so much so that on more than one occasion I caught myself glancing in my rearview mirror, making sure there was no one in the back seat.

But for all that I saw no one there, still I wasn’t absolutely sure…

Taking sleeping pills that night wasn’t a good idea. But I felt I had to. If I suffered another disturbed night, goodness knows what I would feel like—what my overburdened mind would conjure into being—the next day. But of course, the trouble with sleeping pills is they not only send you to sleep, they’ll keep you that way! And when once again I was visited by evil dreams, struggle against them as I might and as I did, still I couldn’t wake up!

It started with Old Joe again, the old tramp, a gentleman of the road. Speaking oh-so-earnestly, he made a sort of sense at first, which as quickly lapsed into the usual nonsense.

“Now listen to me,” he said, just a voice in the darkness of my dream, the silence of the night. “I risked everything to leave my waiting place and come here with you. And I may never return, find my way back again, except with you. So it’s a big chance I’m taking, but I had to. It’s my redemption for what I have thought to do—and what I have almost done—more times than I care to admit. And so, because of what he is and what I know he will do, I’ve come to warn you this one last time. Now you must guard yourself against him, for you can expect him at any moment.”

“Him?” I said, speaking to the unseen owner of the voice, which I knew as well as I knew my own. “The man on the tor?”

While I waited for an answer a mist crept into being and the darkness turned grey. In the mist I saw Old Joe’s outline: a crumpled shape under a floppy hat. “It’s his waiting place,” he at last replied. “Either there or close by. But he’s grown tired of waiting and now takes it upon himself. He risks hell, but since he’s already half-way there, it’s a risk he’ll take. If he wins it’s the future—whatever that may be—and if he fails then it’s the flames. He knows that, and of course he’ll try to win…which would mean that you lose!”

“I don’t understand,” I answered, dimly aware that it was only a dream and I was lying in my bed as still and heavy as a statue. “What does he want with me? How can he harm me?”

And then the rambling:

“But you’ve seen him!” Old Joe barked. “You looked beyond, looked where you shouldn’t and too hard. You saw me, so I knew you must see him, too. Indeed he wanted you to see him! Oh, you weren’t looking for him but someone else—a loved one, who has long moved on—but you did it in his place of waiting! And as surely as your searching brought me up, it brought him up, too. Ah, but where I only wait, he is active! He’ll wait no longer!”

Suddenly I knew that this was the very crux of everything that was happening to me, and so I asked: “But what is it that you’re waiting for? And where is this…this waiting place?”

“But you’ve seen him!” the old tramp cried again. “How is it you see so much yet understand so little? I may not explain. It’s a thing beyond your time and place. But just as there were times before, so there are times after. Men wait to be born and then—without ever seeming to realize it—they wait again, to die. But it’s when and it’s how! And after that, what then? The waiting, that’s what.”

“Gibberish!” I answered, shaking my head; and I managed an uncertain laugh, if only at myself.

“No, don’t!” The other’s alarm was clear in his voice. “If you deny me I can’t stay. If you refute me, then I must go. Now listen: you know me—you’ve seen me—so continue to see me, but only me.”

“You’re a dream, a nightmare,” I told him. “You’re nothing but a phantom, come to ruin my sleep.”

“No, no, no!” But his voice was fading, along with Old Joe himself.

But if only he hadn’t sounded so desperate, so fearful, as he dwindled away: fearful for me! And if only the echoes of his cries hadn’t lasted so long…

Old Joe was gone, but the mist stayed. And taking shape in its writhing tendrils I saw a very different presence—one that I knew as surely as I had known the old tramp. It was the watcher on the tor.

Thin as a rake, eyes burning like coals in a fire, he came closer and said, “My friend, you really shouldn’t concern yourself with that old fool.” His voice was the gurgle and slurp of gas bubbles bursting on a swamp, and a morbid smell—the smell of death—attended him. The way his black jacket hung loose on sloping shoulders, it could well have been that there were only bones beneath the cloth. And yet there was this strength in him, this feverish, hypnotic fascination.

“I…I don’t want to know you,” I told him then. “I want nothing to do with you.”

“But you have everything to do with me,” he answered, and his eyes glowed redder yet. “The old fool told you to avoid me, didn’t he?”

“He said you were waiting for something,” I answered. “For me, I suppose. But he didn’t say why, or to what end.”

“Then let me tell you.” He drifted closer, his lank black hair floating on his shoulders, his thin face invisible behind the flaring of his eyes, those burning eyes that were fixed on mine. “I have a mystery to unfold, a story to tell, and I can’t rest until I’ve told it. You are sympathetic, receptive, aware. And you came to my place of waiting. I didn’t seek you out, you sought me. Or at least, you found me. And I think you will like my story.”

“Then tell it and leave me be,” I replied.

“You find me offensive,” he said, his voice deeper and yet more dark, but at the same time sibilant as a snake’s hiss. “So did she. But what she did, that was truly offensive! Yessss.”

“You’re making as much sense as Old Joe!” I told him. “But at least he kept his distance, and didn’t smell of…of—”

“—Of the damp, the mould, and the rot?”

“Go away!” I shuddered, and felt that I was shrinking down smaller in my bed.

“Not until you’ve heard my story, and then I’ll be glad to leave you…in peace?” With which he laughed an ugly laugh at the undefined question in his words.

“So get on with it,” I answered. “Tell me your story and be done with it. For if that’s all it takes to get rid of you, I’ll gladly hear you out.”

“Good!” he said, and moved closer yet. “Very good. But not here. I can’t reveal it here. I want to show you how it wassss, where it wassss, and what happened there. I want you to see why I am what I am, why I did what I did, and why I’ll do what I’ve yet to do. But not here.”

“Where then?” I asked, but I’d already guessed the answer. “At your waiting place? Your place on the moor, the old tor?”

“In my place of waiting, yesss,” he answered. “Not the old tor, but close, close.” And then, changing the subject (perhaps because he thought he’d said too much?) “What is your name?”

I wanted to refuse, defy him, but his ghastly eyes dragged it out of me. “I’m Paul,” I replied. “Paul Stanard.” And then—as if this were some casual meeting of strangers in a street!—“And you?”

“Simon Carlisle,” he answered at once, and continued: “But it’s so very, very good to meet you, Mr Stanard.” And again, as if savouring my name, drawing it out: “Paul Stanaaard, yessss!”

From somewhere in the back of my sub-subconscious mind, I remembered something. Something Old Joe had said to me: “If you deny me I can’t stay. If you refute me, I must go.” Would it be the same with Simon Carlisle, I wondered? And so:

“You are only a dream, a nightmare,” I said. “You’re nothing but a phantom, come to ruin my sleep.”

But it didn’t work! He moved closer—so close I felt the heat of his blazing eyes—and his jaw fell open in a gurgling, phlegmy laugh.

Abruptly then he stopped laughing, and his breath was foul in my face. “You would work your wiles on me? On that old fool, perhapssss. But on me? Old Joe came with goodness in his heart, yessss. Ah, but which is the stronger: compassion, or ambition? The old tramp is content to wait, and so may be put aside—but not me! I shall wait no longer. You came to my place, and now I have come to yours. But I can’t tell my story here, for I want you to see, and to know, and…and to feel.”

“I won’t come!” I shrank deeper into my bed and closed my eyes, which were already closed.

“You will!” His eyes floated down on me, into me. “Say it. Say that you will come to my place of waiting.”

“I…I won’t.”

His eyes burned on mine, then passed through them, to burn inside my head. “Say you’ll come.”

I could resist him no longer. “I’ll come,” I mumbled.

“Say you will come. Say it again, and again, and again.”

“I will come,” I said. “I will come…I’ll come…I’ll come, come, come, come, come!” Until:

“Yessss,” he sighed at last. “I know you will.”

“I will come,” I was still mumbling, when my bedside telephone woke me up. “I will most definitely…what?”

Then, like a run-down automaton, blinking and fumbling, I reached for the ’phone and held it to my ear. “Yes?”

It was Andrew Quarry. “I just thought I’d give ye a call,” he said. “See how ye slept, and ask if ye’d be out at the auld tor again. But…did I wake ye or somethin’?”

“Wake me? Yes, you woke me. Tumble Tor? Oh, yes—I will come—come, come, come.”

And after a pause: “Paul, are ye all right? Ye sound verra odd, as if ye’re only half there.”

God help me, I was only half there! And the half that was there was in pretty bad shape. “Old Joe warned me off,” I mumbled then. “But he’s just an old tramp, an old fool. And anyway, Simon wants to tell me his story and show me something.”

“Simon?” Quarry’s voice was full of anxiety now. “And did I hear ye say Old Joe? But…Old Joe the tramp?”

“Old Joe,” I nodded, at no one in particular. “And anyway, he says that I’m to take him back to his place of waiting. He’s really not a bad old chap, so I don’t want to let him down. And Andrew, I’m…I’m not at all well.”

Another pause, longer, and when Quarry finally spoke again there was something more than concern in his voice. “Paul, will ye tell me where and when ye spoke to Old Joe? I mean, he’s not there with ye this verra minute, is he?”

“He was last night,” I nodded again. “And now I must go.”

“Ontae the moor?”

“I will come,” I said, putting the ’phone down and getting out of bed…

There was a mist in the house, in the car, on the roads, and in my mind. Not a really heavy mist, just some kind of atmospheric—and mental?—fogginess that had me squinting and blinking, but without completely obscuring my vision, during my drive out to Tumble Tor.

I had to go, of course, and all the way I kept telling myself: “I will come. I will, I will, I will…” While yet I knew that I didn’t want to.

Old Joe went with me; he kept silent, but I knew he was in the car, relieved to be returning to his place of waiting. Perhaps he was reluctant to speak in the presence of my other less welcome passenger: the one with his cold fingers in my head. As for that one…it wasn’t just that I could sense the corruption in him, I could smell it!

And in as little time as it takes to tell, or so it seemed to me, there we were where the dirt track crossed the road; and Tumble Tor standing off with its base wreathed in mist, and the knoll farther yet, a gaunt grey hump in the autumnal haze.

I, or rather we, got out of the car, and as Simon Carlisle led me unerringly out across the moor toward Tumble Tor, I knew that Old Joe fretted for me where we left him by the gap in the hedge. Knowing I was too far gone, beyond any sort of help that he could offer, the old tramp said nothing. For after all, what could he do to break this spell? He’d already done his best, to no avail. Half turning to look back, I thought I saw him by the white-painted marker stone which he’d used as a seat that time. Like a figure carved from smoke, he stood wringing his hands as he watched me go.

But Simon Carlisle said, “Pay him no heed. This is none of his businessss. His situation—in a waiting place such as his—was always better than mine. He has had a great many chances, yessss. How long he is willing to wait is for him to determine. Myself, I am done with waiting.”

“Where are you taking me?” I asked him.

“To the tor,” he answered, “where else? I want to see just one more time. I want to fuel my passion, as once before it was fuelled. And I want you to see and understand. Do you have your glasssses?”

I did. Like him, I wore my binoculars round my neck. And I knew why. “We’re going to climb?”

He nodded and said, “Oh yessss! For as you’ll soon see for yourself, this vast misshapen rock makes a superb vantage point. It is the tower from which I spied on them!”

My soul trembled, but my feet didn’t stop. They were numb; I couldn’t feel them; it was as if I floated through the swirling ground mist impelled by some energy other than my own. But all I could think of was this: “I…I’m not a good climber.”

“Oh?” he said without looking back, his clothing flapping like a scarecrow’s in the wind, while his magnetism drew me on. “Well I am. So don’t worry, Paul Stanaaard, for I won’t let you fall. The old tor is a place, yessss, but it isn’t the place of waiting. That comes later…”

We drifted across the moorland, and despite the shadows in my mind and the mist on the earth I found myself scanning ahead for rushes and sphagnum mosses, evidence of boggy ground. Why I worried about that when there was so much more to concern me, I didn’t rightly know. But in any case I saw nothing, and soon we approached the foot of the tor.

Simon Carlisle knew exactly where he was going and what he was doing, and all I could do was follow in his footsteps…if he had had any. But we continued to float, and it was only when we began to climb that gravity returned and our progress slowed a little.

We climbed the knoll side of Tumble Tor, where I had first witnessed Carlisle scanning the land beyond. And as we ascended above the misty moor, so he instructed me to place my feet just so, making opportune use of this or that toe-hold, or to secure myself by gripping this or the other jutting knob of stone, and so on; and even a blind man could have seen that he knew Tumble Tor intimately and had gone this route many times before.

We passed carefully along narrow ledges with rounded rims, through stepped, vertical slots or chimneys where the going was easier, from level to striated level, always ascending from one fearful vertiginous position to the next. But Carlisle’s advice—his sibilant instructions—were so clear, timely, and faultlessly delivered that I never once slipped or faltered. And at last we came to that high ledge behind its shoulder of rounded stone, where I’d seen and even tried to photograph Carlisle as he scoured the moorland around through his binoculars.

“Now then,” he said, and his voice had changed; no longer sibilant, it grated as if uttered through clenched teeth. “Now we shall see what we shall see. Look over there, a quarter-mile or so, that hollow in the ground where it rises like the first in a series of small waves; that very private place surrounded by gorse and ferns. Do you see?”

At first I saw nothing, despite that the mist appeared to have lifted. But then, as if Carlisle had willed it into being, the tableau took shape, becoming clearer by the moment. In the spot he had described, I saw a couple…and indeed they were coupling! Their clothing was their bed where they lay together in each other’s arms, naked. Their movements, at first languid, rapidly became more frenzied. I thought I heard their panting, but it wasn’t them—it was Carlisle!

And then the climax—their shuddering bodies, the falling apart, gentle caresses, kisses, and whispered conversation—the passion quenched, for the moment at least. Their passion, yes…but not Carlisle’s. His panting was that of a beast!

Finally he grew calm, and his voice was as before. “If we were to stay, to continue watching, you’d see them do it again and again, yessss. But my heart was herssss! And as for him…I thought he was my friend! I was betrayed, not once but often, frequently. She gave me back the ring which was my promise and told me her love could not be, not with me. Ah, but it could be with him! And as you’ve seen, it wassss!”

I didn’t understand, not entirely. “She was your wife? But you said—”

“—I said she gave me back my ring—the engagement ring I bought for her. She broke her promise!”

“She found someone she loved better or more than you.”

“What?” He turned to me in a rage. “No, she was a slut and would have had anyone before me! She betrayed me—deserted me—gave him what she could never give me. She sent me my ring in a letter, said that she was sssorry! Well, I made them sssorry! Or so I thought. But now, in their place of waiting, still they have each other while I have nothing. And if they must wait for ever what does it matter to them? They don’t wait in misery and solitude like meeeee! Even now they make love, and I am the one who sufferssss!”

“Blind hatred! Insane jealousy!” Now, I can’t be sure that I said those words; it could be that I merely thought them. But in any case he “heard” my accusation. And:

“Be very careful, Mr. Stanaaard!” Carlisle snarled. “What, do you think to test me? In a place such as this? In this dangerous place?” His red lamp eyes drew me from the stone shoulder until I leaned out over a gulf of air. For a moment I was sure I would fall, until he said, “But no. Though I would doubtless take great pleasure in it, that would be a dreadful waste. For this is not my waiting place, and there’s that which you still must see. So come.” As easily as that, he drew me back…

We descended from Tumble Tor, but so terribly quickly that it was al-most as if we slid or slithered down from the heights. As before I was guided by Carlisle’s evil voice, until at last I stood on what should have been solid ground—except it felt as if I was still afloat, towed along in the wake of my dreadful host to the far side of the outcrop. But I made no inquiry with regard to our destination. This time I knew where we were going.

And off across the moor he strode or floated, myself close behind, moving in tandem, as if invisibly attached to him. Part of my mind acknowledged and accepted the ancient, mist-wreathed landscape: a real yet unreal place, as in a dream; that was the part in the grip of Simon Carlisle’s influence. But the rest of me knew I should be fighting this thing, struggling against the mental miasma. Also, for the first time, I felt I knew for sure the evil I’d come up against, even though I couldn’t yet fathom its interest in me.

“Ghosts,” I heard myself say. “You’re not real. Or you are—or you were—when you lived!”

Half turning, he looked back at me. “So finally you know,” he said. “And I ask myself: how is it possible that such a mind—as dull and unimaginative as yours—lives on corporeal and quick when one as sharp and as clear as mine is trapped in this place?”

“This place? Your place of waiting?”

“No, Mr. Stanaaard.” He pointed ahead. “Theirs! Mine lies on the other side of the tor, half way to the bald knoll where first I saw you and you saw me. You’ll know it when you see it: the mossesss, reedsss, and rushesss. But this place here: it’s theirsss! It’s where I killed them—where I’ve killed them a hundred times; ah, if only they could feel it! But no, they’re satisfied with their lot and no longer fear me. We are on different levels, you see. Me riding my loathing, and them lost in their lust.”

“Their love.” I contradicted him.

He turned on me and a knife was in his hand; its blade was long and glittering sharp. “That word is poison to meeee! Maybe I should have let you fall. How I wish I could have!”

Logic, so long absent from my mind, my being, returned however briefly. “You can’t hurt me. Not with a ghost knife.”

“Fool!” He answered. “The knife is not for you. And as for your invulnerability: we shall see. But look, we are there.”

Before us the place I had seen from Tumble Tor, the secret love nest surrounded by gorse and tall ferns; the lovers joined on their bed of layered clothing; Carlisle leaping ahead of me, his coat flapping, knife raised on high. The young man’s broad back was his target; the young woman’s half-shuttered eyes saw the madman as he fell upon them; the young man turned his head to look at his attacker—and amazingly, he only smiled!

The knife struck home, again and again. No blood, nothing. And Carlisle’s crazed howling like a distant storm in my ears. Done with his rival, he turned his knife on the girl. Deep into her right eye went the blade, into her left eye, her throat and bare breasts. But she only shook her head and sadly smiled. And her eyes and throat and breasts were mist; likewise her lover’s naked unmarked body: a drift of mist on the coarse empty grass.

“Ghosts!” I said again. “And this is their waiting place.”

Carlisle’s howling faded away, and panting like a mad dog he drifted to his feet and turned to me. “Did you see? And am I to be pitied? They pity me—for what they have and I haven’t! And I can’t stand to be here any longer. And you, Mr. Stanaaard—you are my elevation, and perhaps my salvation. For whatever place it is that lies beyond, it must be better than this place. Now come, and I shall show you my place of waiting.”

Danger! That part of me which knew how wrong this was also recognized the danger. Oh, I had known the precariousness of my position all along, but now the terror was tangible: this awful sensation of my soul shrinking inside me. I felt that I was now beyond hope. But before my fear could completely unman me, make me incapable of speech, there was something I must know. And so I asked the ghost, ghoul, creature who was leading me on, “What is…what is a place of waiting?”

“Ah, but that’s a secret!” he answered, as we drew closer to Tumble Tor. “Secret from the living, that is, but something that is known to all the dead. They wouldn’t tell you, not one of them, but since you will soon be one of them…”

“You intend to kill me?”

“Mr. Stanaaard, you are as good as dead! And then I shall move on.”

It began to make sense. “You…you’re stuck in your so-called waiting place until someone else dies there.”

“Ah, and so you’re awake at last! The waiting places are the places where we died. And there we must wait until someone else dies in the same place, in the same way! To that treacherous dog and his bitch back there, it makes no difference. They have all they want. But to me…I was only able to do what I do, to watch as I did in life, to hate with a hatred that will never die, and to wait, of course. Then you came along, trying to look beyond life, searching for someone who had moved on—and finding me.”

“I called you up,” I said, faintly.

“And I was waiting, and I was ready. Yessss!”

“But how shall you kill me? I won’t die of fright, not now that I know.”

“Oh, you won’t die by my insubstantial hand. But you will die of my doing, most definitely. Do you know that old saying, that you can lead a horse to water—”

“But you can’t make him drink?”

“That’s the one. Ah, but water is water and mire is mire.”

“I don’t understand,” I said, though I was beginning to.

“You will understand,” he promised me. “Ah, you will…”

Passing Tumble Tor, we started out across the low-lying ground toward the knoll. And in that region of my conscious mind which knew what was happening (while yet lacking even a small measure of control) I remembered something that Carlisle had said about his place of waiting:

“You’ll know it when you see it: the mossesss, reedsss and rushesss.”

“We’re very nearly there, aren’t we?” I said, more a statement of fact than a question. “The sphagnums and the rushes—”

“—And the mire, yessss!” he answered.

“The quagmire where you killed yourself, putting an end to your miserable life: that’s your place of waiting.”

“Killed myself?” He paused for a moment, stared at me with his blazing eyes. “Suicide? No, no—not I! Never! But after I killed them I was seen on the moor; a chance encounter, damn it to hell! And so I fled. I admit it: I fled the scene in a blind panic. But a mist came up—the selfsame mist you see now—and as surely as Satan had guided me to my deed, my revenge, so God or Fate led me astray, brought me shivering and stumbling here. Here where I sank in the mire and died, and here where I’ve had to wait…but no longer.”

We were halfway to the knoll and the mist was waist deep. But still I knew the place. Andrew Quarry had pointed it out on the occasion of our first meeting: the sphagnums and the reeds, pointers to mud that would suck my shoes off. But it now seemed he’d been wrong about that last. Right to avoid it but wrong in his estimation, for it was much deeper than that and would do a lot more than just suck my shoes off.

And it was there, lured on in the ghostly wake of Carlisle—as I stumbled and flailed my arms in a futile attempt to keep my balance, managing one more floundering step forward and wondering why I was in trouble while he drifted upright and secure—it was there that what little remained of my logical, sensible self took flight, leaving me wholly mazed and mired in the misted, sucking quag.

Carlisle, this powerful ghost of a man, as solid to me now as any man of flesh and blood, stood and watched as it began to happen. His gaunt jaws agape, and his eyes burning red as coals in the heart of a fire, he laughed like a hound of hell. And as I threw myself flat on the mud to slow my sinking: “Murder!” he said, his voice as glutinous as the muck that quaked and sucked beneath me. “But what is that to me? You are my third, yes, but they can only hang a man once—and they can’t hang me at all! So down you go, Paul Stanaaard, into the damp and the dark. And with your passing I, too, shall pass into whatever waits beyond…while you lie here.”

It appeared I had retained at least a semblance of common-sense. Drawing my legs up and together against the downward tug of viscous filth, I threw my arms wide and my head back, making a crucifix of my body and limbs in order to further increase my buoyancy. Even so, the quag was already lapping the lobes of my ears, surging cold and slimy against my Adam’s apple, and smelling in my nostrils of drowned creatures and rotting foliage; in which position desperation loaned voice to what little of logic remained:

“But where are you bound?” I asked him, aware of the creeping mud. “Do you know? Do any of you know? What if your waiting places are a test? What if someone—God, if you like—what if He is also waiting, to see what you’ll do, or won’t do? What if this was your last chance to redeem yourself, and you’re throwing it away?”

“Do you think I haven’t—we haven’t—asked ourselves the very same questionsss?” he answered. “I have, a thousand times. But think on thisss: if the next place doesn’t suit me, I shall move on again by whatever means available. And again, and again…alwaysss.”

“Not if the next place is hell!” I told him. “Which I very much hope it is!”

“Wrong!” he said, and burst out laughing. “For my hell was here. And now it’s yoursss!”

I strained against the suction of the mud. I tried to will myself to stay afloat, but the filthy stuff was lapping my chin and surging in my ears, and I could feel my feet sinking, going down slowly but surely into the mire. Weeds tangled my hair and slime crept at the corners of my mouth; immobilized by mud, all I could do was gaze petrified at Carlisle where he stood like a demon god on the surface of the quag, howling his crazed laughter from jaws that gaped in a red-glowing Hallowe’en skull, his lank limbs wreathed in mist and rotten cloth.

Muddy water was in my nostrils, trickling into my mouth. I felt the hideous suction and was unable to fight it. I was done for and I knew it. But I also knew of another world, more real than Simon Carlisle’s place of waiting. The world of the quick, of the living, of hope that springs eternal. And at the last—even as I gagged at the ooze that was slopping into my mouth—I called for help, cried out until all I could do was choke and splutter.

And my cries were answered!

“Paul!” came a shout, a familiar voice, which in my terror I barely recognized. “Paul Stanard, is that ye down there? Man, what in the name of all that’s—?”

“Help! Help!” I coughed and gurgled.

And Carlisle cried, “No! No! I won’t be cheated! It can’t end like this. Drink, drown, die, you bloody obstinate man! You are my one, my last chance. So die, die!”

He drifted toward me, got down beside me, tried to push at my face and drive my head down into the mud. But his hands were mist, his furious, burning face, too, and his cries were fading as he himself melted away, his fury turning to terror. “No, no, noooo!“ And he was gone.

Gone, too, the mist, and where Carlisle’s claw-like hands had sloughed into nothingness, stronger hands were reaching to fasten on my jacket, to lift my face from the slop, to draw my head and shoulders to safety out of—

—Out of just six inches of muddy water!

And Andrew Quarry was standing ankle deep in it, standing there with his Jennie, her raven hair shining in the corona of the sun that silhouetted her head. And nothing of that phantom mist to be seen, no sign of Carlisle, and no bog but this shallow pond of muddied rain-water lying on mainly solid ground…

“Did you…did you see him, or it?” I gasped, putting a shaking hand down into the water to push myself up and take the strain off Quarry’s arms. But the bottom just there was soft as muck; my hand skidded, and again I floundered.

“Him? It?” Quarry shook his head, his eyes like saucers in his weathered face. “We saw nothin’. But what the hell happened to ye, man?” And again he tugged at me, holding me steady.

Still trembling, cold and soaking wet—scarcely daring to believe I had lived through it—I said. “It was him, Carlisle. He tried to kill me.” As I spoke, so my fumbling hand found and grasped something solid in the muddy shallows: a rounded stone, it could only be.

But my thumb sank into a hole, and as I got to my knees I brought the “stone” with me. Stone? No, a grinning skull, and I knew it was him! All that it lacked was his maniac laughter and a red-burning glare in its empty black socket eyes…

At Quarry’s place, while Jennie telephoned the police—to tell them of my “discovery” on Dartmoor—her father sat outside the bathroom door while I showered. By then the fog had lifted from my mind and I was as nearly normal as I had felt in what seemed like several ages. Normal in my mind, but tired, indeed exhausted in my body.

Andrew Quarry knew that, also knew why and what my problem had been. But he’d already cautioned me against saying too much in front of Jennie. “She would’nae understand, and I cannae say I’m that sure myself. But when ye told me ye’d been warned off, and by Old Joe…”

“Yes, I know.” Nodding to myself, I turned off the shower, stepped out and began to towel myself dry. “But he’s not real—I mean, no longer real—is he?”

“But he was until four years ago.” Quarry’s voice was full of awe. “He used tae call in here on his rounds—just the once a year—for a drink and a bite. And he would tell me where he had been, up and down the country. I liked him. But just there, where ye parked ye’re car, that was where Old Joe’s number came up. He must hae been like a wee rabbit, trapped in the beam of the headlights, in the frozen moments before that other car hit him. A tragic accident, aye.” Then his voice darkened. “Ah, but as for that other…”

“Simon Carlisle?” Warm and almost dry, still I shivered.

“That one, aye,” Quarry growled, from behind the bathroom door where it stood ajar. “I recognized his name as soon as ye mentioned it. It was eighteen years ago and all the newspapers were full of it. It was thought Carlisle had fled the country, for he was the chief suspect in a double moors murder. And—”

“I know all about it,” I cut him off. “Carlisle, he…he told me, even showed me! And if you hadn’t come along—if you hadn’t been curious about my…my condition, my state of mind after what I’d said to you on the ’phone—he would have killed me, too. The only thing I don’t, can’t understand: how could he have drowned in just six inches of water?”

“Oh, I can tell ye that!” Quarry answered at once. “Eighteen years ago was a verra bad winter, followed by a bad spring. Folks had seen nothin’ like it. Dartmoor was a swamp in parts, and that part was one of them. The rain, it was like a monsoon, erodin’ many of the small hillocks intae landslides. Did ye no notice the steepness of that wee knoll, where all the soil had been washed down intae the depression? Six inches, ye say? Why, that low-lyin’ ground was a veritable lake of mud…a marsh, a quag!”

Dressed in some of Quarry’s old clothes, nodding my understanding, I went out and faced him. “So that’s how it was.”

“That’s right. But what I dinnae understand: why would the damned creature—that dreadful man, ghost, thing—why would it want tae kill ye? What, even now? Still murderous, even as a revenant? But how could he hope tae benefit frae such a thing?”

At that, I very nearly told him a secret known only to the dead…and now to me. But, since we weren’t supposed to know, I simply shook my head and said nothing…

As for those pictures I’d snapped, of Simon Carlisle on Tumble Tor: when the film was developed there was only the bare rock, out of focus and all lopsided. None of which came as any great surprise to me.

And as for my lovely Jennie: well, I’ve never told her the whole thing. Andrew asked me not to, said there was a danger in people knowing such things. He’s probably right. We should remember our departed loved ones, of course we should, but however painful the parting we should also let them go. That is, if and when they can go, and if they’re in the right place of waiting.

Myself: well, I don’t go out on the moor any more, because for one thing I know Old Joe is out there patiently waiting for an accident to set him free. That old tramp, yes, and lord only knows how many others, waiting in the hedgerows at misted crossroads on dark nights, and in remote, derelict houses where they died in their beds before there were telephones, ambulances and hospitals…

So then, now I sit in my garden, and as the setting sun begins to turn a few drifting clouds red, I rotate these things in my mind while watching the last handful of seagulls heading south for Brixham harbour. And I think at them: Ah, but you’ve missed out on a grand fish supper, you somewhat less than early birds. Your friends set out well over an hour ago!

Then I smile to myself as I think: Well, maybe they heard me. Who knows, maybe that flying-ant telepathy of theirs works just as well with people!

And I watch a jet airplane making clouds as it loses altitude, heading for Exeter Airport. Those ruler-straight trails, sometimes disappearing and sometimes blossoming, fluffing themselves out or pulling themselves apart, drifting on the aerial tides…and waiting?

Small fluffs of cloud: revenant vapour trails waiting for the next jet airplane, perhaps, so that they too can evaporate? I no longer rule out anything.

But I’m very glad my mother died in hospital, not at home. And I will have the pool filled in. Either that or we’re moving to a house without a pool, and one that’s located a lot closer to the hospital.

And when I think of disasters like Pompeii, or Titanic—

—Ah, but I mustn’t, I simply mustn’t…