by Tony Walker
“John, where are you? The candle’s nearly gone,” he yelled. But there was no reply. He looked at the stump of the candle in its pool of wax. He had maybe ten minutes left. The watch told him they’d been there nearly two hours. He couldn’t afford to stay much longer or he’d be lost there in the dark himself. And with no light, it would be free to come when it wanted.
William shouted again for John. And this time he thought he heard something. He listened hard and shouted and listened again. And then he knew he had heard it - just behind him. Not in the tunnel where it was before, but standing behind him in a direction that cut him off from the way out to the cage. There was no doubt - it was the rustling of silk.
William picked up his pickaxe, and he shouldered his bag. When it was secure on his shoulder, he took the candle with its fluttering flame, hoping that the breeze wouldn’t extinguish it as he walked. He brandished the pick like a weapon. “Whatever you are,” he said. “You’ll not take me.”
He walked, slowly, fearing that at any time it would reach out of the surrounding dark. But he walked out of The Lady’s Gallery, and if the thing was there, it let him leave.
As he got to the main tunnel, the candle flame guttered and died. But ahead - only yards - the electric lights still burned. He could see the way ahead to the Cage and he ran towards it. When he got there, panting and out of breath, he heard the machinery working as the Cage descended. When it got to the bottom, he saw that there were two electricians in it. One of them was Jack Tubman, a man nearing retirement who’d worked down the mine for forty-five years.
“Thank God,” said William. “John Bragg’s gone missing near the Lady’s Gallery.”
“The Lady’s Gallery?” said Tubman. “And what possessed you to go there of all places?”
William told the story and Jack and his mate listened. A knowing look passed between them.
“You go up now Bill. We’ll speak to the foreman and go looking for him.”
The mine managers organised an extensive search, but it did not find any sign of John. After searching as many of the miles of the tunnels as they could, eventually they called the search off.
And then, four days after he disappeared, they found John’s body in the middle of the Lady’s Gallery. As if something had put it there.
Jack Tubman came round to tell William personally. William’s wife offered him tea in the small terraced house and as he sipped it, William asked him. “What did he die of?”
Jack shook his head. “No one knows. He was stone dead, but without a mark on his body.”
William saw his hand was shaking. He said, “Of fear then?”
Jack shrugged. “I don’t know.”
William said, “The poor fool thought it was his dead fiancée.”
Jack shook his head. “I doubt that,” he said firmly.
“Then what was it? If not her.”
“No one knows what it is. But that thing’s always been there. Ever since they first sank the shaft. Whether it came down with us from above, or more likely it was there waiting for us. I don’t know, but one thing’s for sure — whatever he met down there, it wasn’t Dorothy.”
2
The Woman of Wasdale
The sun was still high in the west when we parked up the camper van in the rough gravel car park by the trees on the eastern edge of Wastwater. High summer up in the north and the daylight lasts practically forever. Most day-trippers were gone, and that left the carpark to Sally and me to be our home for the next two days.
After parking up, I stepped out of the van and dropped onto the gravel. I walked across the narrow lakeside road, onto the springy turf towards the lake itself. I glanced behind to see our camper van sheltered by a stand of larches still in full needle. Behind that, the height of Yewbarrow loomed. The larch trees stirred in the slight breeze and a blackbird sang from on high somewhere, duetting with the deep croak of a raven that flew along the cliff-line behind and above. The lake was quiet.
Wasdale is truly an awesome place. When I say it’s awesome, I mean that it inspires awe, not that it’s just okay. Wastwater is little visited compared with the central lakes and so much emptier and wilder. There is a small settlement with two pubs at Nether Wasdale on the seaward side and the famous Wasdale Head Inn way up at the narrow head of the valley.
Dawdling, Sally followed me over the road to the lakeside and we stood, hands on hips, craning our necks to look at the foreboding mountain on the far side with its steep, apparently unclimbable, sheet of scree plunging precipitously down into the dark water.
The lake water was indigo, almost black. Wastwater is the deepest of the lakes and the lake bed continues to plunge down into the inky depths at the same gradient the mountain wall enters the water.
Sally said, ‘It’s almost scary.’
I laughed. ‘It was you who wanted to come here.’ Sally had done the research into where in the Lake District we should visit. I just drove where she told me to go. We stood in silence for ten minutes, then Sally walked to the edge of the water. ‘You can see where it gets deep.’ She pointed at an abrupt change in the water’s colour about twenty yards out. Turning, she said, ‘I read there’s this little shelf and then it drops down really deep to the bottom.’
‘I wouldn’t fancy swimming down there,’ I said.
‘You could always swim back up.’
‘Not if your leg got snagged on something.’
‘Like what?’
‘A tree branch. Some weeds.’
She shook her head. ‘I think nothing grows down there. There’s no oxygen.’
‘So you wouldn’t rot either; you’d be preserved forever.’
She frowned. ‘You’re morbid today.’
I laughed. ‘I’ll get the barbeque on.’
So we ate our sausages and burgers and sat outside with cans of lager watching the night deepen, wrapped in our warm fleeces until it grew too cold and we retired into the van.
Sally was fine with me during the day, full of smiles and light-hearted as she’d ever been, but she never wanted to be intimate with me anymore at night. Even when I attempted to cuddle into her, she stayed rigid and unwelcoming. I’d grown used to it over the past few months, and I suppose after twenty years of marriage, things can get a little stale, but I’d always treated her well. She acknowledged that. She even used to joke that I was worth more dead to her than alive, what with the hefty life insurance policy she’d talked me into taking out. Still, it was only right. Men die before women and I needed to provide for her when I was gone. Thinking over, I tried to reach out for a cuddle again but she wasn’t having it. So, I rolled over and listened to the owls in the trees outside until I fell asleep.
It was pitch dark. A sense of someone outside woke me. I couldn’t say it was a sound; and I certainly saw nothing, but I just had a sense of cold — an intense chill like someone opened a freezer door.
I sat bolt upright with Sally still gently breathing beside me. I was on the window side of the bed and flicked the flimsy cotton curtain so I could see. It was pitch black outside. Clouds must have rolled in to cover the sky because it was now a dense, heavy dark. If you live in a city, you never see a night this dark. It was so murky I couldn’t make out anything outside the window, but weirdly, I knew there was someone out there.
It could have been a fox, but it seemed bigger than that. I got scared because it was so weird. We were so far out in the wilds, with no one about. Maybe it was a sheep, nosing around in the dark, but it was altogether colder and darker in feel than any sheep. And I had the weirdest sensation like electricity connecting with me. Like someone had just put a buzzer to my forehead, but it didn’t stop at the skin or the skull, it came right into my mind. Somewhere inside, a voice said, ‘Marcus.’
My name.
I admit, I panicked, sitting up.
Sally muttered, ‘What? What time is it?’ but I didn’t answer.
The voice said, ‘Marcus.’
That was all. And then
the cold was gone, and the presence vanished.
I’d felt nothing like it in my life before. I’d never heard a voice in my head before.
‘What’s the matter, Marcus?’ Sally snapped. ‘You woke me.’
‘Nothing. Go back to sleep.’
‘Did you have a bad dream?’
‘Yeah. I’m fine. Don’t worry.’
And with that, she turned over and went back to sleep.
But I didn’t sleep. The cold thing, whatever it was, didn’t come back, but my mind started racing about how maybe I was getting schizophrenia or something. But it felt like someone was calling me, like someone had something urgent to tell me. It felt real. And then I thought it felt real to mad people too. That was the problem: their insanity seemed like reality.
I lay there, sweating, my heart racing.
But my fear couldn’t last. I was dog tired. Eventually, I settled, and I fell asleep just as dawn light seeped into the van.
Sally wakened me moving about. I became aware she was doing her make-up. She always looked good. A lot of women in their forties don’t bother, but she’d kept her figure. She’d started going to the gym three months ago and was watching her diet, with the result that we’d both lost weight, which I couldn’t complain about.
‘What was all that about?’ she asked, applying some cream or lotion to her face.
‘What?’
‘You jumping up in the middle of the night.’
I was groggy. ‘Nothing. Just a bad dream.’
‘What about?’
I knew she was squeamish about ghosts and stuff. Either that or she’d think I was a looney, so I didn’t mention the thing outside. It wasn’t real, anyway; I’d convinced myself of that by then. I said, ‘Nothing. I can’t really remember.’
‘Thanks for waking me. It took me ages to get to sleep again,’ she said sarcastically.
In fact, it hadn’t at all. I knew because I’d heard her deep-breathing minutes afterwards.
‘Sorry,’ I said.
‘You’d better get up. We’re going up Scaw Fell today.’
‘Yes, of course.’
‘But I want breakfast first.’
I swung my legs out of the bed. ‘Sure. I’ll put the bacon on.’
‘And black pudding. But first make the coffee.’
I smiled. ‘Of course.’
She was grumpy with me because I’d woken her. She hated not to sleep but more than that; she was terrible before her first cup of coffee. It was in my interest for an easy life if I got coffee and breakfast sorted first.
I pulled on a t-shirt and some shorts. It was going to be a hot day. I opened the van and felt the warmth in the morning sun. I set up the barbeque and got cooking.
And then we went up Scaw Fell. It was a long hike up the mountain, further and steeper than I’d expected, but we made it, even though Sally lagged a bit and I had to wait for her trudging up after me. There was a fine view from the summit. Because the day was so clear we could see all the Lake District but also over to Galloway in Scotland; Snaefell on the Isle of Man; the mountains of North Wales and even over to the Mountains of Mourne in Ireland.
At the top, Sally’s phone rang. I was sitting down with a sandwich and flask and had just handed her a cheese and tomato butty. I thought it was probably one of those phone calls saying you’d had an accident that wasn’t your fault or did you want to trade on the stock market, but she immediately stepped away from me and walked several paces. She lowered her voice, and the call took a couple of minutes for her to finish, then she walked back.
‘Who was that?’ I asked.
‘Wrong number.’
‘Wrong number? You spoke to them for a bit.’
She smiled. ‘I like to be polite. Not just cut them off’
And that was that.
When we got back from climbing Scaw Fell, we were dusty and tired and sunburned. We walked back via the Wasdale Head Inn and I had a pint of Jennings and a burger and chips. No barbeque for us tonight.
Outside the van, we sat again with our books. I like Science Fiction. Sally reads romances. She didn’t really talk much, and I thought she seemed preoccupied. Most likely, I’d upset her again, though I wouldn’t be able to figure out what I’d done unless she told me. And the fact I didn’t know was also usually a cause for complaint. Tentatively, I said, ‘Are you okay?’
She nodded, but didn’t look up.
I waited a while then said, ‘I haven’t upset you, have I?’
‘No. Why what do you think you’ve done?’
I shrugged. ‘Nothing. I just don’t know if I have. I never meant to.’
‘No, you haven’t upset me.’ But she was definitely keyed up. Probably she’d tell me the next day. Then it would turn out I had done something.
The night fell. The owls called. Another beautiful day. We planned to stay at Wastwater one more night after this one. Before that, using this as our base still, the next day we were going to walk over to Ennerdale over the mountains, stay here again in Wasdale and then after that drive south to Broughton in Furness, and find somewhere to camp there at the bottom of Dunnerdale.
That night, I fell asleep quickly, due to the exercise of climbing up Scaw Fell and the beer no doubt. Again, Sally refused to cuddle into me, so I was sure I’d upset her.
In the middle of the night, I woke again and I instantly knew it was back. It was the cold. I hadn’t thought about it all day, but it filled my mind. There was definitely something outside the van — something moving. I felt the same fear zap through me. I sat up.
Sally woke. ‘What is it?’ She didn’t wait for me to speak before saying, ‘Not again, Marcus, for God’s sake. I need to sleep.’
I leaned and lifted the tiny curtain at the window. Tonight at least, there was a moon. I could see the car park and the trees bathed in its baleful light. But all seemed quiet.
‘Marcus,’ the voice came in my head. The same feeling like an electric buzzer in my brain. I slammed the heel of my hand into my forehead to shut it up. ‘Jesus,’ I moaned.
‘What the hell is the matter with you, Marcus?’ Sally was irritated, half sitting up. I’d certainly upset her now.
‘Did you hear that voice?’ I said and that second it came again, ringing like a glass bell in my head. ‘Marcus.’
‘No, there’s no voice. What is wrong with you? For God’s sake. You’ve really woken me now.’
But I wasn’t listening to her. I could feel the cold radiating through the metal wall of the van. I had to see whether there was something outside. Even though I was terrified — terrified of finding something out there, but even more terrified of not, and then I would know I truly was going mad. I grabbed a kitchen knife as I went past the galley and opened the door.
It was cool outside, not cold, but cool. Nothing stirred. I stood for a second with the door open to the night air. Sally was standing behind me looking at me like I was a crazy person.
‘There’s somebody out there,’ I said.
‘No, there isn’t. You’re an idiot.’
‘No, there is.’
‘Marcus.’ It said nothing but my name.
I stepped down the metal steps, the cold triangular struts cutting into the soles of my bare feet. I brandished the knife. ‘Who’s there?’ I yelled into the dark.
There was no sound.
‘See?’ Sally yelled. ‘You’re stupid. Now come in or I’ll shut the door and leave you out there.’
I wasn’t ready to come in, because I felt it. I walked out from the camper van. I couldn’t see it but I felt the cold. Not a physical cold, but an intensity as if something had been so cold for so long, it could never get rid of the chill.
I had the knife pointed in front of me. ‘Where are you?’ I cried out into the dark.
And then she appeared from nowhere. She was a woman. Normal height, but in a nightgown. And water was running off her. She was drenched; her soaked nightgown clung to her, and she looked so cold. Black hair plaste
red her face and her eyes were white like those of a boiled fish. Her skin shone in the moonlight like she was shaped of cold wax. I thought: what the hell has happened to her? Did she fall in the lake?
Then she said, ‘Marcus,’ and vanished.
I was shaking like a leaf when I went back to the camper van. True to her word, Sally had closed the door against me. I half thought she might have locked it in spite for me waking her up, but she hadn’t.
I put the knife down where I got it. She was back in bed when I got back in the van.
‘What the hell is the matter with you, Marcus? Was there anyone there?’ She didn’t wait for me to reply before spitting, ‘Of course there wasn’t!’
I stood, supporting myself on the sink.
‘For God’s sake Marcus, you’re such a wimp. Scared of the dark at your age.’
I said, ‘There was someone.’
Her brow furrowed. ‘Who? Don’t be dull. There’s no one else camping near here.’
But there was something in her voice when she said that. Like she wasn’t sure if it was true. She sounded worried, and I thought: at last, here’s was some care for me. I said, ‘A woman.’
‘A woman? Are you sure? Could it be a man?’
‘No, I don’t think so. She vanished.’
‘Vanished? You’re making no sense. How could she vanish?’
‘I think she was a ghost.’
She let out a long cruel laugh. ‘I always knew you were a simpleton, Marcus. But you’ve surpassed yourself with this.’
I was wrong. She didn’t care. I usually bite back on my tongue, but now I didn’t. ‘You may think I’m stupid, but you still like my money.’
She stopped laughing. Now she tried to be kind. ‘Don’t be silly, Marcus. You’ve given yourself a fright. Come back to bed.’
