LITMIR.BIZ

       5 a nice straight country road

      The weather had improved considerably when Mig Madero came out of the pub. Gaps were appearing in the clouds and westward the sun was setting in a wash of pink against which the intervening heights lay in sharp silhouette.

      He took his laptop off the back seat, plugged it into his mobile, got online and checked his e-mail. He had one message from his mother, reminding him to keep in touch. Realizing he was now past his forecast time of arrival in Illthwaite, he keyed a brief equivocating line saying he had safely arrived in Cumbria. Then he wrote an e-mail to Professor Coldstream.

      Max, thanks for suggesting Southwell—everything you promised—good and bad! Ever hear of a man called Molloy? Some sort of journalist, up here asking questions about Father Simeon a few years back, possibly in connection with a book on Topcliffe and his associates e.g. F. Tyrwhitt. Talking of whom, anything new from your man Lilleywhite in Yorkshire? Off to Illthwaite now. Mig.

      His messages despatched, he brought up the map, which confirmed what he knew, that Skaddale with its village of Illthwaite lay on the far side of those silhouetted heights. The most direct route seemed to be via the next township of Ambleside to a village called Elterwater from which ran what looked like a nice straight country road. With luck, he might at last be able to let the SLK really express itself.

      Half an hour later he was beginning to understand why the haddock had been so good. God, being just, had clearly decided that the journey would be expiation enough.

      The only traffic he’d met was a slow tractor, but that had been on such a narrow twisty bit of road that overtaking was quite impossible. Nor did things improve when finally the man pulled in at a farm gate. The anticipated long straight empty stretches where he could gun the engine didn’t materialize. The road wound onwards and upwards, so far upwards that, despite the clearing skies he’d observed earlier, he found himself running into a patchwork of mist whose threads finally conjoined into an all-enveloping quilt. Full headlights bounced back off the shrouding whiteness. Dipped headlights showed just enough of the road to permit a crawling advance.

      Then the road began to go downhill and he thought the worst was over. So much for these so-called mountains, if such low heights deserved the term. Wasn’t there another word they used up here? Fells, that was it. Not mountains but fells. A modest little word for modest little eminences.

      But even as he relaxed, the road began to climb again. Ten minutes later, as the curves became zigzags and an ever-increasing angle of ascent meant that from his low seat he spent as much time looking up at the sky as down at the road, he recalled his mother’s reaction when he’d bought the sporty Merc. She’d objected to almost everything about it but hadn’t mentioned he might find himself driving on worse roads than he’d encountered in the Sierra Nevada. God must be really pissed with him!

      Soon he was back in the mist. Things weren’t helped by the fact that many sheep seemed to regard this twisting ribbon of tarmac as their own personal mattress. Nor were they in a hurry to get out of his way. Slowly they’d rise, stare at him resentfully for a long moment, then step aside with no sign of haste. Some even took a step or two towards the car first and struck an aggressive hoof against the ground.

      Dear God, if the sheep were like this round here, how did real wild animals react?

      Then at last he was on the flat for a short space before the road began to descend. It was still twisty and narrow and steep but the lower he got, the thinner the mist got, till suddenly he was completely free of it. Above he could see a sky crowded with stars and, even more comfortingly, below he could glimpse the occasional twinkle of house-lights.

      Soon he was running along a valley bottom, the road still narrow and bendy but at least it was flanked by walls and hedgerows which kept livestock in their proper domain. He met a couple of other cars and, despite the inconvenience of having to back fifty yards at one point to enable safe passage, he was glad of their company. When he saw the brightly lit windows and well-filled car park of a small hotel, he was tempted to turn in. But a glance at his screen told him he was close to his destination now and he pressed on.

      The next road to the right should take him into Skaddale. He almost missed it, but was driving slowly enough to be able to brake and turn. There was no signpost but as his map showed no other turn-off for miles, this had to be the one.

      After a few minutes his certainty was fading. The road soon grew narrow and serpentine and though he had no sense of rising terrain, he found that once more skeins of mist were winding themselves around his windows. He began to wish he had succumbed to the lure of the brightly lit hotel. To make matters worse, he had begun to experience that strong sense of ghostly presence as he drove up the valley. He resisted it—the last thing a man driving along a narrow road in a mist wanted was the company of ghosts—but the price of resistance was the onset of a bad migraine. It was as if the mist had somehow got into his head where it swirled around wildly, occasionally pierced by dogtooth lines of brightness like the after impression of a light bulb’s filament. The laptop screen was going crazy too. It was all jags of light and swirls of colour, no longer a map, at least not a map of any place you wanted to be. He switched it off. It didn’t help.

      In the end he had to pull up. He felt sick. He lowered the window and leaned forward to rest his forehead against the cool windscreen. He could hear the noise of rushing water, and of wind gusting through trees. And now as his headache eased, there was something else in the wind…voices…angry voices…calling…threatening…and something…someone…running in panic…cold air tearing at his lungs as weary muscles drove him up the steep slope in his effort to outpace the relentless chasers…

      This was worse than migraine. He tried to will the headache back. It would not come. But there was pain very close. He could feel it. Very very close…

      Mig in the car could not move. But there was part of him out there with the fugitive, feeling the cold air tearing at his lungs, branches lashing across his face, runnels of muddy water sucking at his feet…

      And then he was down…stumbling over an exposed root, he crashed to the ground and looked up at the bole of a blasted tree, looming menacingly out of the mist.

      And then they were all around him, feet kicking at him, hands clawing him and hoisting him off the ground and binding ropes tightly around his chest and stomach, till he hung from the ruined tree.

      For a moment, there was respite.

      In the car Mig felt that one last supreme effort would regain the power of movement.

      But now came the pain. In his hands, in his feet, not just the familiar prickling, not even the sharp pangs experienced on the few occasions he’d actually bled, but real, piercing, unbearable pain, as if broad blunt nails were being driven through his palms and his ankles…

      He screamed and threw back his head and tried to fall into blackness away from this agony.

      And in the same moment, the pain fled, he opened his eyes and looked up through the windscreen of the Mercedes at a bright and starry sky with not a trace of mist to be seen.

      And when he lowered his gaze he saw ahead of him, about fifty yards away, a building with windows aglow and a sign which bore the silhouette of a hooded figure and the words The Stranger House.