Not Far From Aviemore

by Michael Reuel

  IV

  The Devil’s Footprints

  From the northern heights of Scotland to the south coast of England we go, but surprisingly we do not find warmer conditions, for Devon in the winter of 1855, and the night of February 8th in particular, was, as with much of the rest of Britain, in the grip of a heavy snowfall.

  The mystery of The Devil’s Footprints cannot be disputed to have occurred, corroborated not just by a number of people but, in fact, a number of towns and villages.

  I give the first paragraph of The Times of February 16th for how the story was reported at time:

  Considerable sensation has been evoked in the towns of Topsham, Lympstone, Exmouth, Teignmouth, and Dawlish, in the south of Devon, in consequence of the discovery of a vast number of foot-tracks of a most strange and mysterious description. The superstitious go so far as to believe that they are the marks of Satan himself; and that great excitement has been produced among all classes may be judged from the fact that the subject has been descanted on from the pulpit.

  The arrival of heavy snowfall had brought with it a strange discovery, that amongst the various bird and mammal tracks that thanks to the snow were no secret to the dawn, so too appeared the marks of some creature that had moved at furious speed and leaving hoof-like tracks that were found to go on for many miles.

  Measured at around two inches in length, the marks did not resemble the footfall of a person, being compared as most closely resembling that of a donkey. However, each track appeared singularly and with an eight-inch stride, not side-by-side as would be expected from a quadruped. Whatever made the tracks would appear to have walked them in a human fashion, or else hopped from town to town, though as no one then knew of an earthly creature that could make such marks many residents were soon linking them to Old Nick and afeared to leave their homes at night; soon calling the marks ‘The Devil’s Footprints’.

  The possibility of a new weather phenomenon was understandably high amongst the many theories debated by intellectuals of the time. Could some type of falling moisture have caused the marks?

  It might have seemed the most sensible assumption for the marks showed superhuman abilities of manoeuvring, being able to jump lightly over a fence, or to proceed over the roofs of houses rather than taking a lengthy detour. In studying the detail, however, it would be accurate to admit that this theory does not stand up to common sense for the marks were not scattered randomly, as falling moisture might be expected to, even to the extent where the marks – and this might have been what most disturbed those dwelling in the region – seemed to purposely approach the doors of many houses before ‘retreating’, as the article states, though perhaps ‘leaving’ might also be speculated upon given the many other unearthly qualities their maker made. Tracks that showed a conscious direction ruled out the likelihood of moisture, suggesting that the tracks had to be caused, as tracks usually are, by some kind of creature. A creature, it may or may not be important to note, who would have gone completely undetected had it not been for the event of snowfall.

  Many other experts, scientists, naturalists and zoologists, were consulted and debate would continue for many years over the marks, but a solution was never found and if any modern academics have come up with an answer then this writer has been unable to trace it.

  Adam first encountered the tale as a teenager, having found a book on supernatural tales in his Christmas stocking, easily the most memorable of which was a chapter on ‘The Devil’s Footprints’; the event still related by enthusiasts of the paranormal even if other professional circles have long abandoned the debate.

  For some reason his young mind could not leave the story to rest, even though at the time it was not clear there should be a link to his own. Belief in fate was not even something he had questioned back then, but those of us inclined to agree there are forces in the universe that seek to help us might place great importance on this coincidence and the birthday photograph it eventually led him to.

  The photo itself would have already been familiar to him, from times when family occasions and evening visits resorted to the showing of photo albums that most people fortunate to have something that resembles a family unit will be familiar with: this is a photo of Adam on the beach; this is a photo of Adam taking his first steps, etc., etc., and then, this is a photo of Adam on his sixth birthday.

  There it was plain to see. No one else in the living room, as the photo made its rounds, paid any attention to the marks; Aunty Elsie saw only her nephew smiling up at the camera, surrounded by presents on the floor of his bedroom and looking delighted at the battery-powered car he was holding. Studying the image, despite recalling family photo viewing as being incredibly tedious, he would later be grateful not to be on autopilot during the experience, for it was then that he spotted the markings and recognised them for what they were. Recalling the shape of the hooves that had terrified inhabitants of South Devon in 1855, he felt the hairs on the back of his neck stand up as he beheld two such markings lurking within the frame beside his smiling and unsuspecting features. From that day on whatever bonds he had with his parents would become frayed and taut, but he no longer believed it was because his soul was being punished in some way; at last he began to consider himself for what he was, the victim and the abused.

  In hindsight he would blame this mailing service from Hell for his life’s dynamic becoming unnatural, his emotional fabric distorted by a haunting that perverted all life’s prospects. As an adult it was not that he felt friendless, but he sensed he was adrift of his generation and the colourful lives they seemed to boast. Had he never discovered the photo it was likely he would have reached many wild and clumsy conclusions and have been paying the price of them for the rest of his days, but the revelation of the devilish hooves still being active in the world handed him a drop of understanding that he did not suppose his tormentors were conscious of. Gradually the distress he felt began to turn to anger, he stopped thinking of himself as forsaken and instead came to believe he had been cursed.

  Conducting further research into Old Hag visitations meant that, for the first time, Adam was able to consider he was not alone in having the eyes of malicious beings upon him. From then on it was no longer inconceivable he was the victim of abuse that demons of hell seek to inflict upon whomever they can.

  History teaches us that war and conflict has been a constant of man’s earthly experience. In this respect, if we accept that a spiritual world exists, there are no obvious safety nets for us to assume that the war upon our souls does not remain just as potent as religious books record in days of old?

  For Adam, it seemed he might have found his pocket compass, a gift of knowledge that gave him an advantage other sufferers might never achieve. How to use it was not an obvious question, but he did not suppose the bastard had turned to make sure the tracks of its endless chore were hidden and so there must be some potential to disturb the bonds they had set on him.

  Not for a single day longer was he then disposed to being a passive victim; it was a fight from that point onwards, whether the playing field was physical, spiritual or psychological, he was committed to posing whatever challenge he could. There were many debates and angles to consider, however, before being able to assess where the battlefield should be and if the foe could be drawn there, but the first mystery was in part answered. It seemed clear that whatever had made those marks in South Devon over 150 years ago had arrived in his bedroom on the night of his sixth birthday. Decades of great – what might once have been unimaginable – transformation had offered no further clue on what the creature might have been. For himself, he hadn’t yet felt reason to jump to the same conclusions of nineteenth-century superstition – to suppose Lucifer himself was the culprit. Being aware of the existence of two malevolent beings that no holy book spoke of, Adam was inclined to take Hamlet’s perspective when he said:

  There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,

  Than are dreamt of in your philosophy
.

  It seemed far more likely the Prince of Darkness had employed or enslaved some hapless postman from amongst the many dark souls of his collection. He could only suppose this to be the case, of course, but he had no desire for some holy crusade against the Devil himself; rogue and unhinged minions, on the other hand, might be defeated and he took courage from their desire to always have him paralysed, wondering whether without total control they might prove far less fearsome.

  In retrospect he wished he had pursued the matter earlier, having carried his pocket compass for many years without using it for direction. Instead he had presumed his scientific qualifications and profession to be a landscape in which the challenges of his personal life were not welcome. He had even once ticked ‘atheist’ on a form asking for his religious beliefs, even though in presuming the universe to be soulless he was in effect writing off his own claim to sanity, endeavouring to belong to two life philosophies that should have instead been used to enrich each other.

  Disappointed in himself for having lived a lie and failing to realise it sooner, he was determined to make up for lost time. His pathway to liberation was now before him at last and, although demons from Hell might gloat at his choosing such a perilous journey, he believed he had a slice of wisdom his enemies had not foreseen that meant it was just possible the odds he faced could be defeated.

  So at last we can reach an explanation as to why Adam was packed and ready to turn up in the Cairngorms and why the Fear Liath Mòr has anything to do with abuses only ever confined to his bedroom.

  A plethora of unanswered questions remained, but he intended to make as much ground as was needed on each of them until the bonds upon his soul were no more, or else die in the attempt.

  The pursuit would mean tearing up the rulebook and discarding the pride of the scientist to work with proof only. No longer was he proving himself to a community – he was battling a foe and, as when Florence Nightingale observed that keeping hospitals clean would result in more survivors, there were similar observations Adam could suppose without fully comprehending the reasons for them.

  The pantheons of ghostly and paranormal happenings of past and present (and in some cases future) proved more painstaking to research than someone used to the pursuit of a more respected field of science might want to admit, in no small part because much of the material led into entirely fresh areas of study, such as folk tales and legend. Few truths lead to such a wide range of reading, for chroniclers of the paranormal often recorded accounts indirectly, being shy of the landscape in which they risked to tread; or else accounts are subject to massive misinterpretation from whatever life’s philosophy, superstition or faith the chronicler subscribed to. Emptying the mind would prove key to moving forwards unburdened by any ignorance he too possessed, although conversely his most significant breakthrough came because he had not discarded the voice of the day’s leading scientists in taking up what supposedly should have been a separate field.

  In the autumn of the year 2007, as Adam sat considering some of the possible causes of poltergeist activity, a delivery of the Neuroscience journal contained an article on a story that had leading physicists throughout the world in quite a state of excitement. The focus of the article was the work of Jonathan Bagger and Neil Lambert, who had that year published a paper on the subject of M-theory: an advanced form of String theory that attempts, no less, to explain the structure of the universe by expanding on Einstein’s theory of general relativity. Championed by many celebrated theoretical physicists – such as Stephen Hawking and Leonard Susskind – Bagger and Lambert’s own conclusions on M-theory had put the science community in pandemonium with their claim that the universe is made up of eleven dimensions.

  Adam himself had been aware of the many String-theory related speculations and was familiar with the idea of extra dimensions unseen by those only able to exist in three or four (Einstein, for example, thought that Time might be the fourth dimension). This was the first time anyone had suggested eleven dimensions and scientists remain poised to debate the matter for many decades, if not for as long as life exists. Thankfully we do not have to debate it here, but for Adam the publication proved timely in coinciding with his own speculations regarding the realms ghosts and ghouls might belong to. It seemed he suddenly found himself asking the right question at the right time. What if the spirit world, or consciousness if you prefer (seeing as these could very well be one and the same thing) was one of the said eleven dimensions?

  Why clutch at straws attempting to interpret the word of God filtered down through centuries of religious sects and denominations when he had the thinking of Bagger and Lambert to back him up? Knowing that M-theory would remain the most hotly debated topic amongst physicists until the next Einstein or Hawking came along to advance that work further, it seemed that to ignore such a conclusion, even if purely conjecture, would have been an absurd choice for a man of his learning to take – while also giving him a unique perspective amongst paranormal investigators.

  Although suspecting he would never see the day when he would be able to raise the subject of ghost stories and String theory in the same sentence – in terms of his own analysis, at least – the gulf between science and spirituality was nevertheless under attack. At last it might be that his private and professional life could merge and, if he could only find the threads to link them together, he might be on the road to discovering something – anything – that could transpire to affect his predicament.

  A second lease of life found Adam then. No longer a passive being to whatever the world threw at him, no longer a human sponge, but a new man fighting for his place in the world and demanding the power to influence his course of existence.

  Upon setting out he soon discovered there were very few areas into which paranormal experience would not venture. The average reader might feel they have a keen grasp on the nature of ghost stories but Adam discovered that public thought had sidestepped many of the more bizarre accounts. In transporting eyewitness accounts into fiction, details were often formularised or had stranger elements ignored; there were, in fact, far too many avenues of unexplored thought in which for one person to effectively specialise.

  So it proved that, just like historians often end up focusing their life’s work on the reign of one monarch rather than the history of that monarch’s nation, Adam also concluded he would need to narrow his scope in order to make more ground. His original outlook he did not regret, however, for there were many subcategories of the supernatural he doubted even the most active imagination would be liable to conjure. The existence of arse ghosts, for example; being, as one might imagine, a spirit that haunts a chosen arse and apparently notoriously difficult to exorcise. There are also those who would attest to the existence of haunted household appliances, ghost aliens, bird-faced humanoids and resurrected pagan gargoyles. Adam considered them all sceptically though appreciated that his own story probably seemed no less bizarre.

  The most surprising observation, once he had dug deeper, was that very little of even the most perverse material appeared to be solely the result of Internet hype or pure fallacy. The online community’s debates do not show off the human race in a good light if any alien species are paying attention but, nevertheless, wherever Adam tried for a story’s origins he very rarely unearthed nothing. Soon he realised that what was occurring owed nothing to fabrication – web designers are not that dedicated to content – but to unrefined plagiarism, purged from ancient texts and folk tales for the sake of filling empty web space for fantasy addicts who did not really understand what they had; what should be classed at metaphor, fable, allegory or spoof, or what belonged to history, myth or fiction.

  Old Hag syndrome itself has been depicted in Renaissance and medieval art and continues to be a niche area of study today. Adam was at last able to give his sickness a name and found that he was far from being a lone victim. Though seldom a topic of conversation, the syndrome has nevertheless been recorded all round the globe and ha
s been for centuries – for some reason more prominent in African males than anyone else, but found in developed societies also.

  Of the horny accomplice no name could be found and so Adam has taken to calling him ‘Rape-a-boo’.

  Supernatural rapes on women are recorded, gang rapes even, but he could find no account of the Hag and Rape-a-boo being attracted to anyone other than males. The rape is not always present, in fact in most cases it seems that the milder chest-sitting form Adam experienced for a few years is the more common; the Hag sits on men’s chests and tries to suffocate them or stops them from waking when their consciousness feels the need. In lesser forms men hear its laughter in their sleep or see her face in the room. Every now and then one of these spiritual afflictions opens up the door for the faceless accomplice, who some debate is actually an extension of the Hag’s will itself, and once it turns up buggery commences… buggery is all they are ever interested in.

  It became incontestable that immobilisation was, as well as being essential in the pursuit of anal aspirations, the reason for the harpy’s persistence and years of grooming.

  By establishing a psychological conflict and using primitive fears as a potent weapon, the hag competed with whatever barriers of protection the forces of good gifted a child’s soul until it succeeded in making a sexual slave of them. Adam was one such victim to be enslaved by this trap and he knew the bonds were quite firmly in place.

  For a time those bonds became his chief concern as he searched for a way to break or interrupt their hold on him, promising himself to attempt all forms of mental effort to affect the dynamic of their attacks, as a child might attempt to wish a deceased loved one back into existence. Never had he truly addressed the issue of what would transpire if he did gain control of his nerve endings in their presence. Whether they would disappear or demand to be confronted directly? – a question that remains unanswered and a battle long overdue.

  One alien abduction story proved an inspiration to him, however, during which the abductee succeeded in breaking the bonds extra-terrestrial technology had placed upon him. Similarly Adam spent many miserable nights looking to break down their stranglehold by sheer will alone, even though he suspected the tale made up.

  The attempt could not have been any more of a failure – if anything only inviting more attacks. Whatever emotions, whatever state of mind he sought to bring to the conflict: love, hate, despair, bitterness, sorrow, faith in God, faith in other gods, his favourite music; nothing broke the spell, not holy books, symbols, prayers before bed, whale noises, diet, clothing, even hard drug taking – something he had never tried before and feared almost as much.

  Exhausted and utterly miserable from the effort, it seemed that sheer will was not going to free him from the Hag’s clutches and so he was forced to regroup.

  A different approach to a less obvious solution seemed necessary. A man trapped under a piano might not be able to free himself with physical effort, but if he can reach his mobile phone he might be able to call in outside assistance.

  So it was that instead of thinking of solutions he began to think of scenarios. It was then that he came up with the idea of creating a domino effect. Would it be possible to surreptitiously draw other spiritual powers into the Hag’s malevolent games? Not in the shape of a Sunday service or an exorcising priest, but with something darker and far less predictable.

  Surely there were powers in the spirit world more deadly than a hag with an unfaltering obsession for buggery? If not then God’s universe – or the eleven godless dimensions if you prefer – is really not that impressive or worth studying further.

  This wild presumption would lead him to his next task, wherein he would become an active part of the study rather than its subject; this is the fieldwork that will take place in the landscape of the Cairngorms.

  Who better to depend upon than the Goliath of the ghost world to induce a domino effect upon the spirit dimension? If some supernatural activity remained upon the heights of Ben Macdui then who better to disrupt the Hag’s game than what the ancient Highlanders named the Fear Liath Mòr?

  That task was now poised to begin as we join him in departing Kismet Lore for an expedition that clashed with his professional instincts, but this troubled him not. Whenever doubting his sanity he thought of one-legged badgers and this gave him the willpower to proceed with the strength of his own convictions. He thought of one-legged badgers because this had been one of the prime theories of those nineteenth-century journalists who sought to dismiss the Devil’s Footprints story. Journalists, he reflected, were listened to far more readily than intellects with a taste for the paranormal – which he had to admit he had become. Questioning his sanity might prove a regular occurrence considering he was a scientist, but thinking of one-legged badgers convinced him he was just a bit saner than the general population. Too much time spent doubting his grip on reality would be a waste of his mental agility, for on reaching his destination he would be faced with the task of unravelling the enigma of the Big Grey Man.