by Tony Walker
‘You say "used to”. Must have worked then.’
He frowned. ‘Well, they say it drove him away, but I reckon it’s an omen for you not to go.’
‘What’s an omen?’
‘The cross.’
‘They put it up centuries ago, but it’s still an omen for me?’
He was irritated. ‘Yes. Look at the weather, man.’
I continued with my breakfast. ‘I don’t believe in the Devil. Besides, I already told you, it’s my last fell in Cumbria over two thousand feet. I’ve climbed all the rest.’
He still kept trying to put me off. ‘Honestly, It’s a dismal climb,’ he said. ‘A long slow trudge over bog and moor.’
‘It’s the height that counts. The cross is right at the top?’
He nodded. ‘Yes. More coffee?’
Bringing the pot to fill my cup, he said, ‘So why this time of year? Don’t get me wrong, I’m always glad of the business, but really it’s the end of December, not even New Year.’
I grimaced. ‘Family trouble. Had to get away.’
‘Sorry to hear that. You seem a nice bloke; hope it’s nothing too traumatic.’
I nodded. ‘Thanks for that George. Not sure everyone agrees I’m a nice bloke though.’
His brow furrowed. ‘Does anyone know you’re here?’
I shook my head. ‘Nope. I left in a hurry.’
He looked as if he would say something, but then didn’t and instead left me to finish my breakfast in peace.
Then it was time to leave. I fetched my pack and outdoor clothes from the quaint bedroom with its ancient, uneven black painted floorboards and door that didn’t fit properly. On the way out, I saw the guest book and penned a good review. George appeared.
I said, ‘There’s a column here for my address. You don’t need my address do you, really?’
He shook his head. Then grinned. ‘Don’t worry; I’ve got your address from the online booking form.’
That hit me. How unfortunate, but I’d been in such a weird mental state when I left home, and then booked this place from the travel lodge. I can’t have been thinking straight. Maybe I gave a false address? I shrugged and prepared to leave.
He tried one last time as we stood at the door by the Christmas Tree. The lights blinked golden among the tinsel draped branches. There was even a fairy on the top. ‘Just get the bus to Penrith from Alston. I’ll give you a lift to Alston. Then you can get a bus to your B&B for tonight from Penrith.’
I shook my head. ‘I’m walking. I’m determined.’
He sighed. ‘Some people are pig-headed. Don’t say I didn’t warn you when you have to call the mountain rescue out.’
I slung my pack on my shoulders. ‘I won’t be calling the Mountain Rescue out. I’m self-sufficient.’ I opened the pub door and almost changed my mind as the rain instantly drenched me with a runoff from the gutter. Almost, but there was never really any danger I would change my mind. I peered out. It was cold and wet and dim, but I had good gear and it really was my last fell to walk. I wanted to get it done before the year broke and died.
George said, ‘See? The weather’s evil.’
I merely grinned. ‘Weather can’t be evil. Just bad.’
As I stepped out into the elements, George said, ‘Watch out for the Devil.’
I laughed. ‘Like I said, I don’t believe in the Devil, George. By the way — great breakfast.’
He waved ruefully, stood looking from the open door, and then when the cold and the rain were too much for him, closed it and got on with clearing up my breakfast dishes.
Then I was alone with the elements. The first part of my journey was along a narrow lane. It was technically fit for vehicles but heavily rutted with grass growing in the middle. I didn’t see any vehicles for the hour I was walking along it, head down, trying to shield my face from the rain by angling my hood away from it. I didn’t see any people either. Determined, I climbed slowly up into the moors.
They call this place England’s last wilderness and they are right. The Lake District can be hostile in poor weather but at least it’s got its softer side. Here in the Pennines, it was just moorland and bog, sedge, rush and the constant whining wind. The only marks of man were the ancient, lichen covered limestone walls that lined the lane and the rusty barbed wire that topped them. Sheep wool was snagged here and there on the wire. But there weren’t even any sheep.
Grey and cold and wet, the morning went on, and I climbed with it, higher and higher.
With nothing external to draw my attention, my mind turned inward. It was true that Cross Fell was the last of the high fells in Cumbria on my list, and it was also true that I had wanted to finish them all before the end of the year. It was like tidying up my affairs. That’s how I saw it now.
Truth was that I had more or less given up on climbing Cross Fell, or at least putting it off to a more clement time of year. Then Jess revealed she had cheated on me. She told me on Christmas Eve just as I was putting the kids’ presents in the stockings to hang on the end of their beds as they slept.
‘I’m really sorry, Steve, but I just don’t love you any more,’ she’d said.
To give her her due, she was crying though I don’t know whether that was because she felt sorry for me or herself.
The story was as tawdry as I imagine they normally are. A new bloke had started at work. That was in the Spring. Then as Summer came, they’d got on better and better. I bet he made her laugh. I bet he flattered her. Thinking back, I remembered a work away weekend for team building. They’d stayed at an Outward Bound Centre in the Forest of Bowland. I bet that’s when they got to know each other really well. Really well.
I had no evidence that anything happened then, but looking back, she’d seemed different after she came back — nicer to me if anything.
Greg, that was his name, had even given her a lift home one night in September when she’d had to work late. He’d been sitting in the car as I opened the door to her. I think he even waved at me. There’s a name for people like that. Brass-necked. But I could think if a worse one too.
Now, I realise I must have been stupid not to think any ill, but we’d been together since we were sixteen: childhood sweethearts. A match made in heaven.
And now I was in hell. The wind howled. The rain drove against my hood and got in my face. I was even climbing a mountain that was home to the Devil. Once anyway.
As I walked, measuring my thoughts by the tread of my boots, I glanced out through the screen of rain. The road now was a rocky track. I wondered what the hell I’d thought by coming up here at this time of year.
At this altitude, piles of snow lay at the road edge, melting away in the rain. At least it wasn’t snowing, that would be worse, but probably if it had been snowing, I wouldn’t have ventured out from the pub. I would have taken George’s advice and sat there all day sipping Cumberland Ale by the Christmas Tree. But that wouldn’t have solved anything.
Yes, snow falling would have saved me from setting out. If it had been honest and fallen when I was safe inside and not waited until I’d already started. Now it waited in ambush. Drops of ice mingled with the rain. A few hundred feet and it would be snow.
The weather really was hellish. I wasn’t actually cold yet because of my various clothing layers, but it was pretty miserable walking through this. I was climbing and now as the altitude increased there was the sting of sleet in the rain. I could see almost nothing. The low cloud and the rain obscured vision at about fifty feet. At least I could see the rocky path underneath my feet. It was a good path. The only good thing about the day.
I trudged on. I wouldn’t be calling out the mountain rescue team. I guess I saw the cold and rain and bleak, endless moorland as a fitting way to end. When your wife goes off with another man, fitter, stronger, better-looking and better-paid, you question everything. You feel a failure. You start to catastrophize until life has no options, but one. I planned on getting to the summit at least.
Jess said that after Christmas, she would move in with Greg and she would take the girls with her — my two daughters. That broke my heart. I said I’d fight it and that I’d keep the kids with me, but she said I would need a lawyer, and they were all shut for Christmas. I’d tried. I’d rung all the local ones, but they were closed for Christmas, the season of joy and good-will to all men. That led to other things.
And then I’d left to come to Cumbria. I hated conflict and confrontation, so I’d let her go without a fight and let her take my daughters with her. I hated myself for that. I’d left to make it easier for her and Greg to steal my life. What a gutless bastard. Brave enough to climb a mountain alone in winter, but not brave enough to fight for what was mine. Running away up a mountain. At least it was a beast of a mountain.
I walked on. To my right, a tumble-down ruin emerged from the low cloud. It must have been a shepherd’s hut at one time, or God forbid a house, but who would have wanted to live up here where the weather is hostile eight months of the year? Looking at the stones, then at the sleet, I wondered whether the inhabitants died of exposure.
In the pub last night with old George and his bacon and sausages and the Christmas Tree, and the pint of real ale last night, I’d had something to distract me, to warm me, to give some comfort. Now, my thoughts dragged me down. The weather was sapping me. If anything, the weather got worse. The rain was definitely sleet now and as I climbed on higher, there was more and more snow in it.
What a lonely journey this was. I saw no one else. But who else would be stupid enough to come out here except me? Higher and higher I went, and then I thought I heard someone’s voice in the wind. It was weird; it wasn’t someone calling for help. It didn’t sound like a cry of pain. It sounded like someone shouting a name. I even stopped and turned round. I listened. There was definitely something in the wind. As I listened to the keening notes that played between the wind’s whine, it didn’t even sound human. It probably wasn’t. Not an animal either. It was most likely the wind through some stones somewhere out of sight in the billowing mist. I looked down there was snow around my boots, just a line of it, but it spoke of things to come.
It was gloomy. Today would be very short. A very short interlude of grey day between the deepest black of night and night. The sound came again. If I listened, I could almost hear words.
I was high now. Not that there was any view, just fog and moorland on every side. I could believe they thought this place had been the haunt of demons. Up here on my own, hardly able to see in front of me, I it was easy to believe in monsters.
Onward, onward, onward. The rhythm of my feet increasingly inaudible against the rising wind. And now the sleet was snow. The reeds and rushes either side of the path were catching snowflakes on their stems. It was cold. I had good gloves and my hood was up. My boots were waterproof and my feet were dry, but where the wind hit my face, it was cold enough to cut skin, and snow blew into my mouth as I breathed.
Still that voice in the wind. I must have left whatever group of stones that might have been making the sound behind, but still the shrill edge of unseen singing kept on with its unearthly words. Words that if I listened, made the sounds of my name. It unnerved me. Maybe someone calling me out for my crime?
I thought I saw a shadow behind, but with the visibility being so poor; it was hard to be sure. Then I became convinced that someone was following me.
I came to a big band of boulders. The path went between then, but the boulders stretched out on both sides of it like a runway. I had a guidebook to the walk, but I wasn’t taking it out now. I remembered reading it last night. That’s where there’d been a mention of the cross, but I hadn’t paid attention to the legend. I was interested in practicalities only. The book said there was a band of big boulders in a circle around the summit of Cross Fell. It said that until that point the path was relatively good, after that it said the summit was a ‘trackless waste of bleak bog’.
I passed through the circle of boulders, as if entering a magical realm, but not Narnia or Tolkien’s pleasant Middle Earth, the place I’d entered was a realm of dark magic, a realm of cold and snow like the hell of the Northmen who’d once colonised this land.
Almost immediately the path failed. I tried to pick my way along a sheep trail between clumps of bog and reed. My boots sank in ankle deep and I pulled them out with a squelch. I had to be careful, though this was the most promising looking path, sheep weren’t interested in going down mountains and this sheep trail could be a dead end. I just wanted to reach the summit.
Then I heard the voice again calling me. It was just the wind. I had to focus. I was still climbing. The summit levelled out, and I was still on the right trajectory. I would keep on picking my way uphill through the snow. More snow loomed out of the fog. Freezing fog with a pitter-patter of snowflakes. I couldn’t see the path at all now. No sheep hoofmarks easier. They’d been smarter than me and had found shelter somewhere. I heard the voice call, ‘Steve, Steve, Steve.’ It was like someone was wailing after me — some banshee spirit of fog and cold that lived up here.
The snow wasn’t massively deep, but it covered the bog and I sank into the soft mud again, each effort of dragging my feet out weakening me further. Death became more than an outside chance now, but that was okay.
“Steve, Steve, Steve…” the voice called. I ignored it, focusing on putting one foot after another. I needed to reach the summit.
I got the weird idea that this voice knew what I’d done. I stopped, fighting down panic. I really couldn’t see anything. I got a fleeting idea that it would be sensible to turn back, admit I was wrong and find George’s fire and ale. But it was too late for that. The wind howled. The snow battered me. The die was cast.
But my stupid brain wanted completion. I could just lie down here and let it be over, but it wouldn’t be right. If I didn’t reach the summit, then it would be a defeat, and I didn’t want another.
I turned into the wind and got a faceful of snow, cold, clinging and freezing me. My breath billowed out. I took out my compass. I judged the fell top was southwest of me. I took out the map. Peering, I saw the circle of boulders. I saw the path marked where it crossed them and then in a red dashed line; the path was supposed to continue on, as broad and clear as it was down in the village. Except it wasn’t the path didn’t exist now. Not in the way I could find.
I looked up from the map, looked back where my footprints marked where I’d been and then round to the southwest. I must be near the summit now. Maybe I would see the cross, if it still existed, or at least some cairn to show the summit.
Fog wreathed the place and snow fell within it. The fog boiled and moved driven by the wind, but the wind never blew it away, there was fog forever, and snow and snow and snow. My heart hammered.
Then I saw him.
There was a man behind me in the fog. I couldn’t make out anything but his size and shape at the edge of visibility. I called out, ‘Hello! Who’s there?’ But the figure didn’t answer. Instead, my name on the wind insinuated itself into my ears again.
“Hello!” I called again. “Is that somebody?”
It was somebody. A person. It wasn’t a sheep. But he didn’t answer. I stepped out, feet crunching into new layers of snow. I wanted to get towards him. Maybe it was a standing stone in the mist, but maybe it was a man. And then I wanted to get away. A man might try to save me, and I didn’t deserve to be saved.
But as I walked, the shape walked too. He was behind me now, following me up the slope towards the summit. Once I got there, I would hide. I would sit behind a rock and just wait until I was covered. Nobody would find me. They said hypothermia it was a sweet death — a sweet cold death.
I walked, and he followed, not getting closer, but not falling further behind either.
What if he wasn’t mortal? What if the stories of the Devil up here true? But I didn’t care. I wanted the mountain to punish me for being such a failure of a man.
The spectre followed me th
rough the fog, as I stumbled over stones, feet sticking in sucking mud, hardly able to see anything. I needed the summit. Then I could rest. I fell once, full length, but picked myself up, gloves covered in mud and ice. He was still visible, as if he was waiting for me to go on.
He was about thirty yards away, back to me as he walked on, far more sure-footed than he should have been across this terrain and in this weather. We walked, or rather he walked and I stumbled and then when I stopped, he stopped. I called out again but again he didn’t answer. The howling on the wind had stopped too. No more names. Just the shape stood behind me.
It was as if he was waiting in judgement. I judged myself. I didn’t need him to do it.
Then from the mist the shape of a broken stone cross of immeasurable age unpicked itself. I had reached the summit. He stood there behind me. It was clearly a man wearing a black coat. I could see now. His clothes were totally unsuited for this place. When I studied his face it was at first hard to focus on, as if made from the mist itself. Then my heart jolted.
‘This can’t be right,’ I yelled. ‘It just can’t.’
It was Greg.
But it couldn’t be Greg. It simply couldn’t. My mind reeled. If it was Greg then he’d won everything. He had my wife and my kids with him. He had my house; he probably even had my car.
I filled my lungs to scream at him, but the frigid air filled them and set me to coughing.
Greg stood there mocking me.
I stood there in the howling wind. I was by the cross. Just me, the cross and Greg. And he mocked me. A loser. A loser who slunk away to die rather than fight for what was his.
In the ancient days, the guys who set up this cross really believed in the Devil. And they really believed he haunted this mountain. Instead of cowering and admitting defeat, or slinking away to die like defeated dogs, they had carved this enormous stone cross and dragged it and carried up the way I had come. It was an enormous effort. And even if I didn’t believe in their Devil, it was all the same: I had devils of my own, but instead of fighting them, I’d run away.
