by Paul Finch
Feeling guilty at not having done this before, Hazel quickly went back downstairs and straight into the kitchen before anyone could query her. She got everything together, placed it in a wicker basket and covered it with a fresh tablecloth. She also grabbed herself an electric torch.
Then she had another thought.
Perhaps it was a bit silly – maybe an overreaction, maybe a massive overreaction, but Mark had seemed genuinely concerned earlier on. She knew a little bit about his background. He’d been in a few scrapes, to say the least. Surely it would take a lot to discomfort him as much as he’d looked discomforted today? In which case, assuming this menace wasn’t imaginary, she left the basket on one of the kitchen work-tops and trotted back upstairs. As she did, she felt a different kind of guilt – about breaking her word. Before he’d set off on his travels, Mark had strongly advised her to stay in the pub and provide a safe haven for the occupants of Cragwood Keld. Definitely not to go to the far end of the Cradle and up the Track to Annie’s farm. But Mark had only been here two and a half months. He was a good man, but a child of the urban sprawl. He likely had no idea how much they all cared for each other in these rural outlands. Hazel made a mental commitment to teach him that – if he opted to stay with her and give it a go.
And she wasn’t ignoring his concerns either. That was why she was now back up here in the flat, why she was rummaging through the closet among her ex’s old sports gear and fishing tackle. The item she was looking for was right at the back, in a zipped canvas case. She lifted it out. It was old now, not quite an antique, but it had belonged to her father and to her grandfather before him. Slowly and cautiously, she drew the zipper down and extricated the object inside.
It was a double-barrel Purdey shotgun, a twelve-gauge. With its walnut stock, open scroll coin engravings on its sidelock, and blued carbon steel barrels, it was an exquisite piece of craftsmanship, and had been her father’s pride and joy when he’d used to go duck hunting. Even now it was in excellent working condition. Over the years, she’d disassembled and reassembled it several times, oiling it regularly. Both Mark and Mary-Ellen knew she had it in her possession, but while the two cops didn’t exactly approve, they weren’t about to turn her in. Mark would probably do his nut if he knew she kept it in an old cupboard in her lounge, but the truth was she didn’t really have anywhere else.
The one big problem of course, was the absence of ammunition. There was a cartridge box in the closet, on a high shelf. Mark had told her she was supposed to keep the ammunition away from the firearm – but as the box only contained two cartridges it hardly seemed worth the trouble. There’d only been two as long as Hazel could remember. She broke the breech open just to check, then snapped it closed again, slid the gun back into its case, and shoved the cartridge box into her fleece pocket.
Before descending the stairs, Hazel took off her fleece and draped it over her shoulder, to conceal the weapon. No one in the taproom noticed, but in the kitchen Lucy was now hard at work. She’d already spotted the basket of supplies, and when she saw the shotgun as well her eyebrows arched dramatically.
‘Don’t tell anyone,’ Hazel said. ‘But I’m going up to Fellstead Grange.’
‘Annie Beckwith’s place? Why?’
Hazel didn’t mention the cry she’d heard earlier. She was starting to think that had been nothing significant; an animal or some rare bird. There were plenty to choose from in the heart of the National Park. But the others wouldn’t rationalise it that way. They’d try to stop her going.
‘I don’t like the idea of her being alone up there.’
‘Heck said it wasn’t a good idea,’ Lucy argued.
It’s easy for him to say that,’ Hazel replied. ‘He doesn’t know Annie. To him, she’s just a name.’
‘He knows what he’s talking about. Anyway, M-E said she’d go and look.’
‘Will Mary-Ellen take Annie some spare food? Will she suggest she come down here and stay for a few nights in the pub?’
Lucy had no answer for that.
‘It’s not a problem,’ Hazel added. ‘I’m driving to the Ho, and walking up the Track to Annie’s farm. I’ll be forty minutes, tops. And if anyone tries to mess with me …’ she hefted the shotgun, ‘I’ve got this.’
Lucy looked more than a little sceptical. ‘Have you ever fired that thing?’
‘You point it and pull the trigger. How hard can it be?’
‘In this fog you won’t know who it is until they’re right on top of you.’
‘No one’s going to be on top of me,’ Hazel said with an airy confidence she didn’t feel. She pulled a bob-cap on, zipped her fleece and took her gear to the back door. ‘Close the gate after I’ve gone, and make sure you put the bolt on. Then lock the back door and look after our customers. They’re your responsibility while I’m gone. Like I say, I’ll be forty minutes, max.’
Lucy gave her further arguments, but knew from experience that when her Aunt Hazel’s mind was made up, there was no changing it. Hazel had a disarmingly gentle manner, but for several years she’d survived comfortably in an isolated environment which in winter was as challenging as they came. Many was the time Lucy had seen her carrying piles of firewood through the snow, chipping ice from frozen water pipes, fixing broken roof-tiles and gutters, tasks which didn’t remotely faze her. For all her soft exterior, Hazel was gutsy and independent, and she cared about her neighbours; that latter aspect of her character, in particular, was non-negotiable. So in the end Lucy did as she was asked, closing the back gate straight away after Hazel had reversed out through it in her Laguna, and ramming the bolt home; then going back indoors to cook everyone their tea.
Slowly and cautiously, Hazel’s heavy car rumbled its way around the exterior of the pub, joining Truscott Drive, the single lane that ran upward across the green and through the centre of the village. Very little was visible, even with full headlights, the beams draining ineffectively into impenetrable murk. In some ways it was encouraging, she thought, as she finally reached the top of the Drive and swung left onto Cragwood Road. Because whoever she couldn’t see out there, they presumably couldn’t see her either. Though merely thinking in those terms – that there might be someone out there – was surprisingly unnerving.
‘There’s no one here,’ she assured herself as she coasted north through sheets of opaque mist. Whatever had happened to those girls, it had been way up in the fells. Anyway, the police had already admitted they didn’t know for sure what the incident involved. It could have been an accident.
Hazel had told Lucy she’d be there and back in around forty minutes, but in fact so slow was her progress that it took her over twenty to drive the three miles to Cragwood Ho. She pulled up in the car park at the foot of the Cradle Track, and turned off her engine. She was uncertain how she felt about seeing the police Land Rover sitting there. On one hand, it might mean Mary-Ellen had now gone up the Track herself to check on old Annie, which would be great news. But it could also be that she was still on the other side of the tarn, having not yet returned in the police launch, in which case Hazel was still here alone.
She checked her phone. It was just past seven-twenty; evening was now turning into night. Even so, she sat behind her steering wheel for several minutes longer, listening. The silence was absolute, the vapour shifting past her windows in solid palls. Briefly, she could sense the towering, rock-strewn slopes as they rose inexorably to her left and right, eventually reaching the heights of Pavey Ark and Blea Rigg, though all Hazel could see in the glow of her headlights was the dry-stone wall in front of her. When she switched the lights off, even that vanished.
Several more seconds passed, while she worked up the courage to climb out.
She hadn’t expected to be frightened, but suddenly all that stuff about the fog hiding her as effectively as it might hide someone else seemed like over-optimistic nonsense. Feeling as if she was crossing some kind of Rubicon, Hazel reached into the back seat, slid the shotgun from its case and
inserted the two cartridges. Snapping the weapon closed again, she climbed from the car, circled around, took the basket of supplies out from the other side, and shut the door.
The thud of the central locking system echoed in the dimness. She loitered by the vehicle as she listened to it. A few seconds later, she tried both Mark and Mary-Ellen on their mobile phones once more, but again there was no contact. She glanced down across the car park to the other houses. They were only fifty or so yards away, but the blanketing mist concealed all lights. Now that she thought about it, Hazel wondered if she ought to be concerned about the others who lived at this isolated end of the valley as well. Okay, they’d already been given a heads-up by the police, though that was no guarantee Bessie Longhorn would be safe. Hazel made a decision to call at Bessie’s cottage on the way back, and check she was okay. Maybe take her down to the pub for couple of days as well. She might even, if she felt particularly charitable, offer the same option to Bill Ramsdale, though she expected she’d get short shrift on that – which would probably be a good thing. Bessie and Annie would be hard work enough – but wasn’t that what communities were all about?
Hazel switched her torch on and ventured along the wall to the point where the gate and the stile were located. On the other side, the Track snaked uphill into the gloom. It was composed mainly of broken slate, which had deluged from the slopes above, and slithered and cracked underfoot when anyone stepped on it. It closely followed the edge of a barren, rock-filled ravine, and though at this lower level it was broad enough for a narrow-gauge vehicle to pass along it, Hazel didn’t personally know anyone who’d be crazy enough to try that in this weather.
She slid through the stile and started upward, only now realising how challenging a hike this would be. Fifteen minutes minimum, she reckoned, and all the while the gradient increasing. It wasn’t a straight track, either. It bent and looped. The ravine, though it was cloaked from view, lay close on her left and grew progressively deeper, its sides ever more sheer, as she ascended, while the miasma turned steadily thicker. She’d often assumed that, as fog was heavy, the higher up into it you climbed, the thinner it would become. Earlier that day, she’d tried to imagine what this fog would look like from the point of view of a chopper lofting high above the Pikes: bare rocky islands slowly emerging from an oozing grey ocean.
Here and there on her right, clutches of young pine grew amid the jagged piles of slate. She occasionally glimpsed them through the torch-lit vapour, but there was nothing cute or Christmassy about them. Many were fantastically warped and twisted by the wind and cold. Equally unnerving, and for some reason Hazel could never fathom, climbers and fell-walkers traversing this route in the past had chosen particularly hefty shards of slate, some of them three or four feet in length, and had then used smaller pieces to prop them upright on both sides of the path – usually every hundred yards or so. What they were supposed to be – distance-markers, or even some variety of crude outdoor art – she never knew, but the illusion they created was of gravestones. Or, if one of the largest ones – some were maybe as tall as five or six feet – suddenly loomed from the fog, of malformed figures standing close by.
She ignored them as she trudged on, the crunching impacts of her boots resounding loudly. By now she was breathing hard, her knees and ankles aching as she leaned forward with each step, occasionally slipping or skidding. A couple of times she thought she heard movement – a scrape or rattle of pebbles. She would always stop on these occasions, only to be greeted by unearthly stillness. Each time it was entirely possible she’d heard an echo, though it set her nerves on edge. She filched her phone from her fleece pocket to see how long she’d been here, and was dismayed to find it was only a couple of minutes.
Sweat chilling on her body, Hazel dragged herself up the Track, which grew ever more uneven and rugged. Only after what seemed much longer than fifteen minutes, closer to half an hour maybe, did it at last level out again, and diverged into two distinct routes. The left-hand route continued ahead, still rising slowly into the Pikes, but from this point only as the narrowest of footpaths. The right-hand route remained broad enough for vehicle passage, just about, and led beneath the darkly woven branches of several firs, before crossing a low bridge into the rocky corrie where Fellstead Grange was located.
In good weather, this was a stunningly beautiful spot. Fellstead Corrie was a natural amphitheatre in the hillside, its gentle slopes thick with bracken, gorse and springy heather, and ascending on all sides to high, ice-carved ridges. The farmhouse itself stood close to a bubbling pool at the foot of a cataract, which poured from the dizzying heights of High White Stones like a helter-skelter. At its rear there was a network of allotments, greenhouses (mostly dingy with mould and filled with brambles), decrepit barns and sheds which all belonged to Annie, and swathes of overgrown pasture for which there were now no animals to graze upon. The building, which was early eighteenth-century in origin, was large and sprawling, comprising various wings and gables, and built from solid Lakeland stone with a roof of Westmorland slate. Spruced up, it would be magnificent, and in a location like this it would make a superb country house or holiday inn. But in its current state of semi-dereliction, it was an eyesore. Both the walls and roof were crabbed with lichen, the rotted iron gutters stuffed with mosses and bird’s nests. But of course, none of this dilapidation was visible at present.
With the basket over her left wrist and the shotgun cradled under her right arm, Hazel felt her way across the rickety bridge. Fellstead Beck gurgled past underneath, having circled around the farm from the waterfall plunge-pool. A few dozen yards to her right somewhere, it dropped down a narrow gully into the lower valley, eventually at some point – Hazel wasn’t sure exactly where – flowing into the tarn.
On the other side of the bridge, beyond a pair of moss-clad gateposts, she entered the farmyard proper, her feet clipping on aged paving stones as she approached the darkened structure just vaguely visible in the fog. When she halted again, the only sound was the distant rushing of water. Meanwhile, not a single light shone from the eerie edifice. In the icy murk, it resembled an abandoned Viking long-hall; the remnant of some Nordic nightmare rather than a family home. Disconcertingly, the darkness beyond its windows seemed even darker than the darkness outside. Annie Beckwith had no electricity, no gas … but surely she would keep a fire in her living room? Didn’t she even have candles?
Hazel checked her phone again. It was now after seven-forty. Too early even for Annie Beckwith to go to bed. She approached the front door. If the old lady was sleeping, Hazel didn’t like the idea of disturbing her. But she’d not come all this way to turn back without at least trying to make contact. She knocked several times on the warped, scabby wood. There was no thunderous echo inside; the door was too thick and heavy. Likewise, there was no reply.
Hazel tried again – the same.
She fumbled for the handle, a corroded iron ring, which, when she twisted it, turned easily. There was a clunk as the latch was disengaged on the other side, and the door creaked open an inch. To open it the rest of the way, she had to put her shoulder against it, grating it inward over the stone floor.
This was also a tad discomforting. It wasn’t common practice for folk in this part of the world to keep their doors permanently locked, but surely a lone OAP like Annie would do so at night, especially living all the way out here?
‘Hello!’ Hazel called into the blackness.
Again, there was no response.
She sidled through, unbidden, and was hit with an eye-watering stench, the combined aromas of grime, mildew and decay.
Hazel shone her torch around the room, which was so cluttered with broken and dingy furniture that it was more like a lock-up crammed with rubbish than an actual living space. Dust furred everything, so that colours – the fabrics in the upholstery and lampshades and the many drapes and curtains – were indiscernible, each item a uniform grey-brown. And yet, evidence of the fine old farmhouse this had once been
was still there. The fireplace was a broad stone hearth, elaborately carved around its edges with vines and animals, though currently filled with cinders, burnt fragments of feathers and what looked like chicken bones. The mantel above was a huge affair, again constructed from Lakeland stone and heavily corniced, and yet dangling with tendrils of wax from the multiple melted candles on top of it. A mirror was placed above the mantel, so old and tarnished that only cloudy vagueness was reflected there. Ancient sepia photographs hung in cracked, lopsided frames, the faces they depicted lost beneath films of dirt. These added to the house’s melancholy air, but also created the eerie sensation that eyes were upon her. Hazel turned sharply a couple of times, imagining there was someone hidden in a corner whom she hadn’t previously noticed, perhaps peering out through one of those veils of dust-web, eyes bloodshot, yellow peg teeth fixed in a limpid, deranged grin.
‘For God’s sake, woman, what’s the matter with you?’ she said to herself in a tight voice. Her and her bloody imagination. ‘Annie?’ she called out. ‘Annie, it’s Hazel Carter! You know, from The Witch’s Kettle!’
There was no answer, but her voice echoed in various parts of the house. Immediately on her left, an arched doorway led into a passage that Hazel thought connected with the kitchen and dining room, but the blackness down there was so thick it was almost tangible. She ignored it, moving into the centre of the lounge, only to freeze at a skittering, rustling sound. She turned, just as a whip-like tail vanished beneath the web-shrouded hulk of an age-old Welsh dresser.
