‘There was a deserted farm cottage overlooking the western end of Hallowvale, and the firm had it put in order for me. My early reports had convinced them that the Hallowvale plan was feasible, and they decided I should stay and hunt around for snags, especially over the winter months. Snow and winter rains can upset the finest paper calculations as far as my survey work is concerned.
‘Well, the cottage was snug enough: a honeymooner’s dream but lonely for a bachelor. A path led from it round the neighbouring hill and so descended abruptly into Baronsbridge on the other side. This was the path I liked to take, especially as the evenings were drawing in. There was another path which led into Hallowvale itself—through the woods—but I didn’t much care for it. It was gloomy and dark, and about a quarter of a mile beyond the cottage you passed the skeletons of a church and some derelict cottages, all that was left of the old village of Hallowvale. I’m not . . . I wasn’t anyway a very imaginative sort of person, but there was a kind of desolate knowingness about the place, and I avoided this path when I could.
‘Blasting had begun at the eastern end of the valley, and an army of woodcutters was at work cutting down the fir and sycamore plantations, under the stern eye of old Wyke who had sold us the valley but kept a retainer on the timber. My work, now that winter was setting in, consisted of checking and revising my earlier calculations, and it involved a good deal of field-work, wriggling down pot-holes, plumbing underground waterways, testing the altered direction of streams with fluorescein powder and so on. Often I didn’t get back till nightfall, and I found it sometimes convenient to take the path through the woods and past the old village of Hallowvale. I never enjoyed the walk, though. The plantation stopped before you got to the village—but there was a lot of undergrowth among the ruins . . . and . . . and things on the path, brambles, I suppose, that caught the ankles and made walking difficult. The ruined church tower made . . . made noises in the moonlight. . . . Owls I imagined. . . . Then about a hundred yards on there was a kind of . . . of open place . . . beastly . . . a sort of crossroads with the roads vanished, if you see what I mean. And the path sloping up very steeply to my own cottage below the brow of the ridge. It was this open place I loathed in the daylight and could hardly bring myself to pass at night. You see, there was growing there . . . a yew tree.’
That soap-stone look again. I pushed him over another drink.
‘A yew tree,’ he repeated, ‘largish, black as a hearse-plume, and in winter dotted all over with blood-drops of berry. Perhaps it had been clipped by a topiarist a century or more ago—but whatever shape it had once was lost. It had the suggestion of some kind of bird, though; yes, an owl or a bat, some flying nocturnal thing with ragged wings and a shapeless, swollen body. I thought it might have marked the limit of an old graveyard—but it would have to have been a very spacious graveyard, and would have needed to fill it more dead than even the hamlet of Hallowvale could have provided in a thousand years, I should have thought. Perhaps it may have belonged to the garden of a long vanished house—but whoever lived in that house must have been damnably wicked, I felt.
‘I asked old Wyke about the place once, and he wasn’t reassuring. “When you wanted the cottage, I told you as you’d be happier below in Baronsbridge,” he said. “‘Don’t say I didn’t warn you. What’ve you been hearing, lad? About something that flies in the night, I know. Them’s all old-wives’ tales—but I won’t say but it’s lonesome up here.”
‘I’d heard nothing about the place, and Wyke couldn’t be persuaded to say another thing. But after he’d gone I thought over that phrase of his about something that flew in the night. During the autumn gales I had often fancied I’d heard a sound like beating wings, a flapping below in the valley as if some gigantic thing had gone to roost there. I had put it down to the wind playing tricks in the broken plantations at the foot of the valley. On one very gusty night the flapping had seemed to sound just outside the walls of the cottage, and I was woken from sleep by a slithering and tapping at the cottage door and a scratching at the shutters.
‘One late November day my work took me to a cavern on the northern ridge of the valley; a matter of testing how much strengthening would be needed there if the waters of the proposed reservoir reached a certain level. I’d taken a haversack lunch with me; but the job took longer than I’d thought, and the winter sun was flattening itself like a great red leech among the peaks beyond my distant cottage when I set off on my return journey. It was quickest to return by the valley—though I could not hope to make the cottage before nightfall.
‘At first it was easy going. Soon I reached the bulldozer, its silhouette like an antediluvian monster in the dusk. It marked the limit of the woodcutters’ work for the day. One of the men—a little grey-haired chap called Whittaker from Sheffield—gave me good night; he’d evidently stayed behind to set rabbit snares, for wires were dangling from his pockets, and he stuffed something inside his jacket and was pretending to adjust the set of his red bandana neckerchief as I approached. I think I must have taken a wrong path in the steep plantation beyond, for by the time I reached the first of the ruined houses of Hallowvale there was a bright frosty moon which made indescribably horrible the gaping window sockets and the leprous tuft-eared church tower.
‘The brambles were particularly obstructive after I’d passed the church, and once or twice I fell headlong in the path. When I reached that open space, the crossroads you know . . . well, the yew tree wasn’t there. I mean simply that. It just wasn’t there. There was a great hole, like an open grave ragged at the edges where it had stood—but not a sign of the tree. I told myself that the woodcutters must have uprooted it with the winch—though there was no evidence of any such activity: only that great crumbling gap in the soil. It was a horrible tree, and I should have been glad it had gone, if only the hole it had left behind were not inexpressibly worse, a horror of horrors. I thought I saw something white at the bottom of the pit, and was just stepping forward to the brink when I heard again that monstrous flapping in the valley behind me and, it seemed, a thin, inhuman, far-off cry. I didn’t stay to hear more, but set off almost at a run on the last breathless climb to my cottage.
‘I made up a roaring fire and toasted cheese at it, and after supper read until eleven. I don’t think I concentrated much on my thriller. I was straining my ears into the silence for that monstrous sound of wings. Once or twice I thought I heard it—but it might have been a falling branch.
‘I slept that night uneasily. About two I was woken by a rattling and shaking of the cottage door. The wind, I thought; yet when I sat up in bed I realised it could not have been so: the night was quite still.
‘There was a rustling flap, like an enormous bird settling itself on its perch: the sound you hear when you pass a fowl-house at night, but grotesquely magnified. I lit the lamp at my bedside and waited. There was the familiar slithering sound; it seemed this time to come from above me, from the roof. Then I heard a sliding in the chimney, and I saw something snakelike writhing in the grate, something yellowish moving across the floor to my bed. It stopped halfway, writhing frustratedly, trying to flatten itself a little further, trying to gain an extra inch. The thing was a tree-root—a root with the earth still clinging to it. The whole room stank of the graveyard. For a moment the tip of the root quivered and writhed and beckoned; then it was slowly withdrawn, and I heard it coiling itself back up the chimney.
‘After that I just went out like a blown match.
‘I’d have thought it a dream in the morning—but the lamp had burnt itself out at my bedside, and there were bits of earth in the grate and on the hearth-rug.
‘There was a hard frost outside, and there were strange marks in the silver as though snakes had drawn themselves over the turf. On my doorstep there was a scattering of scarlet berries—and a sprig, I’d almost said a feather, of yew.
‘The sound of woodcutting came from farther down the valley. I wanted human company desperately just then, so I set of
f the shortest way. And there was no gap at the crossroad place; the yew tree stood where it had always been, black and secretive and malignant.
‘I found Wyke with the group of men round the bulldozer. He was in a growling rage.
‘“One of the fellows has cleared off. Whittaker, the chap who’s best hand at the winching. You can’t rely on these Sheffield chaps. Just taken his hook and gone. But it’s causing no end of trouble with the men here. They been listening to stories, too. Want to knock off an hour early.”
‘I said I sympathised with them, and I suggested they should start the morning’s work on the yew tree at the head of the valley.
‘The men murmured among themselves, and “Yew tree, indeed!” said Wyke. “Pack of old wives’ tales.”
‘“Old wives tales or not, Mr Wyke,” I said. “I’ll bet you ten guineas you wouldn’t spend tonight in that cottage with me.”
‘Wyke loved guineas—but he hesitated and tried to bluff it out.
‘“It’s all stuff. And I won’t have you upsetting my men with your tales, neither.”
‘But the men were on my side. “It’s a fair wager, Mr Wyke.”
‘“Ten guineas,” I said, “take it or leave it. If you come, bring one of those axes with you. I’ll borrow this one if I may. We can start work on the yew tree tomorrow!”
‘When Wyke came to my cottage at about four in the afternoon, he brought the axe and a clergyman with him. Mr Veering, the rector of Baronsbridge, was a white-haired man with a thin, intelligent face and pleasant manners.
‘“Rector’s interested in these tales, so I’ve brought him, too.”
‘“Hallowvale used to be a part of the parish of All Souls, Baronsbridge, Mr Keith. I have at home a journal kept by one of my predecessors, a Mr Endor. He was Rector here forty years—and died in 1810. Hallowvale was abandoned at the end of the eighteenth century, and Mr Endor’s account of what caused it . . . well, he was an old man, and it is charitable to suppose that his wits were beginning to wander.”
‘I told them what I had seen and heard during the night. Veering looked at me sharply once or twice, and Wyke muttered uneasily, “He’s been listening to gossips’ tales, Rector, that’s what it is.”
‘“The last rector did, I believe, rather indiscreetly speak about the . . . matters contained in Endor’s journal.”
‘“The only gossip I’ve heard has come from Wyke,” I said; “about something that flies in the night.”
‘“Quite, quite. Well, we shall see.”
‘We did. The Thing came flapping about the cottage just after midnight. This time it tried out new tactics. It loosened a couple of tiles, and the roots came coiling down like snakes through the gap and gripped Wyke by the ankle. He yelled fearfully, while Veering and I slashed at the tentacles that held him with our axes. They were horribly tough, and when we had cut through them, the severed tendrils writhed like worms on the floor. The weight on the roof shifted, and we heard it flapping off dismally into the valley.
‘“It’ll come back again,” Wyke cried hoarsely. “It’ll come back and widen that hole.”
‘“The Thing keeps to the valley,” said the Rector. “Endor said it kept to the valley. It came like this, and people disappeared from their homes.”
‘“It’ll come again,” Wyke wailed, “once it’s found a way in it’ll come again.”
‘“We could get to the top of the ridge,” I said, “and over it to Baronsbridge.”
‘“It’ll swoop on us before ever we can get to the top. We’re done for.”
‘“I don’t relish the idea of waiting for it to come back,” said Veering. “Outside the valley, we are in God’s hands. Here . . . we can pray at least.”
‘“And then make a dash for it,” I said.
‘The valley was quite silent. We knelt—keeping as far as possible from those still writhing root tips on the floor—while Mr Veering prayed that we might be delivered from the Powers of Darkness. Then we let ourselves out of the back door and scrambled up the hill. The Thing scented us and came hawking after us. We heard it flapping behind us, and sometimes glimpsed a shape like a huge bird with ropes instead of talons circling over the tree tops or sprawling ungainly on the valley slope. We kept as best we could to cover, but the trees thinned out as we neared the summit of the ridge, and in our last wild scramble to the top it sighted us. I heard a whistling noise as it swooped and a cry from Veering. He had tripped and fallen, and behind him I could make out a great dim mass, slithering and moving over the turf.
‘At first I thought him lost; the Thing had only to pounce again and . . . and then I understood. It could fly no higher: it was caged in its evil valley; it had come to roost below the ridge, and was sending up those long yellow tentacles of roots to take its prey.
‘“Get up!” I shouted. “For God’s sake, Veering. A few more steps and you’re safe.”
‘Already a thin loop had coiled round one foot, and thicker coils wriggled obscenely towards him over the grass.
‘“Use your axe, parson,” cried Wyke. “Your axe.”
‘Veering heard us: there was a thud, an angry whistling, and the next moment we had pulled him to safety beside us.
‘For a while we lay all three exhausted on the ridge path, listening to the slithering of those roots as they sought blindly the victim that had escaped them. Then we turned our backs on Hallowvale, and took the steep path down the other side to Baronsbridge.
‘When we reached the rectory, Mr Veering handed me a quarto volume bound in green morocco leather, and I sat up all the night reading old Endor’s spidery script in the faded sepia ink; while Wyke huddled in a seat by the fire with a Bible on his knees. The trouble, according to Endor’s account, had begun when the yew tree bore its first berries. There was a legend current in his day that in the early seventeenth century a woman from Hallowvale was hanged for witchcraft, and was buried at the crossroad with a stake, a yew stake, through her heart. On the scaffold she vowed that she would come back, flying in the night, and exterminate the village. The last words she spoke before the hangman pulled the noose were: “When the first drop of blood shall be sprinkled on his feathers the owl will go a-mousing.”
‘In the morning we brought several cans of petrol and a stick or two of gelignite to that yew tree above the ruined village of Hallowvale, and we blew the accursed thing up. It screamed as it fell.
‘There were things tangled among its roots, skulls and bones, a rusted sword, an old flint-lock pistol and a gold chain—some rabbit snares, too, and a red bandana handkerchief quite unrotted. But the most awful thing was a great pink slug, cocooned in grey hair—a palpitating, bloated thing that suggested a woman hideously swollen with a dropsy. We poured petrol among the roots and into that vile pit, and set fire to it. The fire burnt all day—and not much remained of the tree or the things . . . the Thing in its roots.
‘When I last looked down into Hallowvale, it was a great tarnished-looking glass of water All the same, when the firm offered me a job boring for water in the great Dust Bowl of Australia, I jumped at it. You can travel for miles there, they tell me, without seeing a single tree.’
I fled, and cry’d out, Death;
Hell trembled at the hideous name, and sigh’d
From all her caves, and back resounded, Death.
John Milton
The Tune in Dan’s Café
AT THAT HOUR it was the only place open in the little town. A gap-lettered red neon sign above the door spelt out DAN CAFÉ, giving off Californian overtones that the drizzle on that greasy sub-suburban road made at once pert and woebegone, like a fiery painted nose on a consumptive clown. The mechanic at the all-night garage had told us it would be a long job before our car was ready: all of ninety minutes. Yes, we might fill up on coffee and bangers at Dan’s place, the next corner beyond the lights.
There was no one in the place when we entered, but the jukebox was wailing sadly in its alcove: a dying moan:
There’s onl
y this thing you gotta learn
Like two times two
That I’ll return to you
Oh baby, I’ll re . . . re . . . TURN
The mechanism whirred: metal claws picked up the record, twisted and slipped it into the trough among the others: cogs whirred again and clicked into immobility and silence.
We chose a table by the window where the neon sign dabbled our hands and the plastic cloth with little pools of blood, and spread over one side of Helen’s face a crimson glow. I thought a bell had rung faintly as we pushed open the door, but this might have been imagination for no one appeared at its summons. We stared out on the emptying street: the drizzle had become a downpour and wind-tugged umbrellas tapped and scratched now and then like great bats on the glass, shadowing for the instant our table. I don’t know why we had chosen this table with its view of the rain-filled street to one further down the warm interior of the café: but somehow it seemed more cheerful than those ranged nearer the little bar with its polished espresso machine and its bubbling cylinders of orange and lemon drink, or by the shallow alcove where the jukebox gleamed. We had chosen this table as if by instinct, and now we looked out on the rain and waited, but no one came.
There was a hand-bell one end of the bar, and a notice RING TWICE FOR PROMPT SERVICE propped against the coffee machine; but neither of us seemed to wish to walk down between the rows of tables, pick up the bell, and shake it. We preferred to wait for someone to appear from the rear quarters; and we looked through that rain-beaded window and made comment on the few passers-by and the weather in unnatural voices that grew purposefully louder as the minutes ticked by, as though we felt someone would be sure to hear us before long and so make unnecessary the journey between the empty tables to the bell.
Where Human Pathways End Page 4
