KEEP STRAIT ON

There’s a road in the Suffolk countryside which winds through fields and trees. You might find yourself driving it late in the afternoon one day, not seeing another car for some time. As you come around a corner you’ll see a rough wooden sign, hanging from a stake driven into the verge, and handpainted with the words, “KEEP STRAIT ON”.

As you’ll drive a little further, you’ll see what it refers to, as there’s a turning off to the left, not signed, with a single-lane road winding down between steep banks.

Keep straight on. If you turn off down this road, you’ll find yourself driving for what seems like a very long time, and when you decide to get off this road to nowhere, the only turning is to your left. And the only turning after that, is to your left. And the only turning after that. You should come back on yourself, but you don’t. If you decide to try and turn in the road, you’ll struggle, as it is so narrow, and the steep banks so close. If you manage it, you find that there are no right turns that way either, only left. There’s only ever left.

MR HOBBS

There are quite a lot of painters who live in Brighton, and Mr Hobbs is not one of the successful ones. He’s been skirting the edges of the art world for decades, turning up at openings, especially if there’s wine, having the odd painting in a corner of an unprestigious local exhibition, disappearing for a year or two then popping up again, at a gallery event or at a party where everyone assumes someone else invited him.

No one knows him as anything other than Mr Hobbs, and people in the art world don’t know if he’s shy and very formal, or whether it’s an affectation. The default assumption is of course the latter.

He is obsessive about subject, which is not that remarkable but does mean that he gets called ‘the doorman’ as a nickname when people are gossiping and being cruel, so quite often, and sometimes in his hearing because he’s not important enough not to offend. Every painting includes a door, internal, external, large, small, but always a door.

In the last few years all his paintings have been of a landscape within which a door stands, jarring and surreal. An English meadow, the arctic tundra, a mountainside, all competently but unexcitingly rendered. And somewhere, standing without anything to hold it up, a door.

Mr Hobbs has stopped going to openings, even with good wine, and it’s a long time since he’s been seen standing against a wall at a party, holding a glass, not talking to anyone.

When his landlord finally gets tired of the rent not being paid, and clears Mr Hobbs’ grim little flat, he will throw all the paintings stacked against walls in there into a skip. Finally, after a lifetime of trying, Mr Hobbs learned how to paint a door that he could open and walk through, and he will not be back in this world. He’s somewhere far more exciting, and through a series of surprising events, he’s become a king.

THE ANSWER

There’s an old abandoned house in a village near where you live. It’s not in bad shape, but no one who lives nearby can remember there ever being an occupant.

On this day, 9th March, every year, a stranger walks into the village and up the overgrown path to the old house. He knocks three times, speaks briefly, and then stands at the door for a minute or two, head to one side, as if he is listening. Then he leaves.

Every so often, someone in the village says, “we should ask him what he is doing,” and everybody else says yes, but no one ever does.

There’s a hawthorn grows at the front of the house, and it is always the first in the village to blossom, and the last to lose its petals.

TOVEY’S POND

When does a pond stop being a pond and become a lake? Most people, if asked, would probably say it is about the size. But there’s another way of defining it: a lake is deep enough that the light of the sun does not reach the bottom. Tovey’s Pond in the woods of the Elham Valley in Kent is small and unprepossessing, it’s not pretty and it’s hidden away behind brambles, and most people who live nearby don’t even know it’s there.

But it is a lake, because the light of the sun does not reach the bottom, can not reach the bottom, will never reach the bottom, because there isn’t one. Tovey’s Pond goes all the way down, and it never stops.

No matter how strong the wind, its surface is a smooth black mirror. Drop a stick into it, there will be no ripples. Shout out into the air, and the sound itself will be swallowed down into the water.

Don’t stand around too long though. No one can remember who Tovey was but trust me, sometimes he comes out.

CHANGE HERE

In Margate, or maybe in Hastings or maybe Blackpool, or maybe anywhere by the sea that you go, there is a small, run-down amusement arcade.

It’s not a glitzy palace of high-tech games, a little in-arcade café that sells panini and cappucinos, and rows of golden flashing slot machines. This arcade is small and cramped, and from the outside looking in has a dim green quality to the light that makes it look like if you walk in you will be going under water.

Old slot machines with pull arms slump together in a row. Aging games you’ve never heard of which still only cost ten pence a go flicker and chime fitfully. When you stop and peer through the layer of rain-streaks and grime on the window, it looks as if you’d be the only one in there.

When you step back from the window though, the door to the arcade is open, and that startles you a little, because you are sure that before you stooped to look through the window, it was shut. The wind, of course, you think, even though it isn’t windy.

If you look through the door, down the central aisle, you’ll see a dusty change booth. A thin man in late middle-age sits behind the glass, the light in there even greener than the rest of the place. He’s wearing a worn grey shirt under a knitted tank-top in shades of drab brown. What’s left of his black hair is slicked back, and he wears equally black thick-rimmed glasses. And he stares at you. And stares. And stares. Then after a moment, he opens his mouth and you think he’s going to say something, but he opens it further, as if in a silent scream, and he opens it further, much further, and the time for you to run from that doorway would, alas, have been before he opened his mouth at all.

When the next person walks past the arcade, the door is shut and the lights are all off. When the next person walks past, it isn’t even an arcade any more, just an empty shop.

DROP

While out walking on a sunny autumn morning, you might notice a woman acting a little strangely. She is walking slowly with her hands outstretched and cupped together, as if she is carrying something very fragile, and very precious.

Keep a careful eye on her. If she stumbles on a loose paving stone or slips on wet autumn leaves, she will reflexively put out her hands to break the fall, and she will drop what she holds.

You will see a droplet of what looks like water, sparkling in the sunlight, fall from the gap between her hands like a solitary drop of rain.

It will take longer to fall than you would expect, as if time itself has slowed. This is a good thing as it gives you time to run away as fast as you can.

When the droplet reaches the ground the air itself will open up and anyone nearby will fall through to somewhere else,  before the air closes again, as if an eye has just blinked.

HE IS WAITING FOR YOU

One night, in a dream, you walk through an old city. No one appears to be on its narrow streets that wind between old stone buildings other than you. As an indigo twilight sky begins to fall into darkness, you find yourself walking beside city walls that tower above you. There’s a set of steps which leads up and through the walls, lit by a single soft yellow lamp, and at the bottom is a hawk-headed man.

He stands very still, watching you, and although you have never seen the like of such a thing you know not to be afraid. He is waiting for you.

When you wake in the morning, the dream stays with you all day, and the world feels a little strange, as if your waking life is less real than the one you dreamed. Even years on, you’ll remember the dream every now and then, and the way the soft yellow lamp lit the stairs, and how the hawk-headed man just stood at the bottom of them, waiting.

Sometime in your life you will be in a city just doing ordinary things and terrible events will happen suddenly and violently and you will be in great danger. As you turn a corner, running for your life, you will see a set of steps leading up and away from the street. Standing at the foot of them is the hawk-headed man, very still, very patient. He is waiting for you. Take the steps. Now.

THAT NIGHT

Sometimes you just need to get away from it all, the work and the emails and the concrete and the cars and the feeling that the world is going too fast for you not to fall off the edge.

Your escape is a simple one: a night away, sleeping under the stars or in the woods. You take no tent, just a bivvy bag, and you feel the cold and you listen to the owls and for those few hours, you feel like you can stop thinking, and just be.

There’s a routine you have, before darkness falls. You take a bin liner with you, and spend time picking up litter wherever you are - and wherever you are, there is always litter. Plastic gloves and bottles and cups, lids and cigarette ends and shredded balloons that people launched to commemorate or celebrate but now just litter and choke.

That night, you find more than just litter. As you pick crisp packets out of brambles in a wood, you hear a low whimper, and see a young fox caught in a snare, its leg bloody. You’re not sure what to do but you’re not going to do nothing so you make soothing noises, telling it that it’s ok, that you’re not there to hurt it, stay calm little one, please don’t bite, I am here to help, this may hurt as I pull it away but there there, shush shush.

The fox doesn’t bite, and you find your way to unloosen the snare, and then gently, oh so gently, free it from where it has bitten into the fox’s leg. As soon as it’s free it trots a few yards from you, pauses, looks back. You look at the fox, the fox looks at you, and that night you sleep really well.

Another night, months on, in those same woods, you will find yourself in great danger from a man who sees you as nothing but prey. He has been walking the woods full of hate and crimson violence and spite for the world, and when he sees you, alone, in this lonely place, he laughs because he knows he can do terrible things and will do terrible things and you will not be able to stop him.

But the foxes can, and just before he reaches you they are on him like a swarm, biting his tendons and clawing up his clothes to bite at his face, his neck, everywhere. When he is not moving any more, they trot off, but one pauses, looks back. 

You look at the fox, the fox looks at you, and that night you learn to never see the world in the same way again.

ONE-WAY

There’s a mirror which sits in a charity shop right now. It’s not unattractive, but it’s not particularly attractive either. It’s about three foot across, in a slightly ornate wooden frame which looks quite old-fashioned which may put off many buyers.

Maybe it’s to your taste though and it’s priced quite low because it hasn’t sold for some time, so you might buy it, take it home and hang it on your wall.

Beware.

To you it’s a mirror. To those in another world that you can’t see, it’s a window. And you really don’t want anyone from that world to walk past and see you, because then they might start thinking about how they can come through. And you really, really, don’t want that, I promise you.

So, before buying a mirror from a charity shop this year, put the flat of your hand on the glass. If it feels at all hot, don’t buy it. And whatever you do, don’t accidentally break it.

BEHIND THE CRAG

Sometimes the official version of events and the truth are very far from being the same thing. That can be because someone is lying for gain, it can be because someone is lying to hide an embarrassment, or it could be because the truth can’t be told for fear of the teller being thought mad.

Kilnsey Crag lours over the landscape of Upper Wharfedale, its huge cliff shaped by glaciers  the largest overhang in the UK, and a challenge for the climbers who inch their way up one of the routes on its limestone face.

Behind it though, not visited by climbers or the tourists who visit the village’s tea-shops, is an old quarry, out of sight for most and forgotten by many. It’s been closed down since early this century, and the official version was that the excavations had reached the watertable, and so had to stop.

That may well be the case. But if you’re in the right pub at the right time and you’re talking to the right person after he’s more than the right amount to drink, he might tell you about the time that he worked in the quarry, and how as it got lower they started to see the lights.

Nothing spectacular, just a flicker here or there, white or green, now you see it now you don’t. It was put down to friction between rocks, static, bioluminescence, tired eyes. 

As the quarry got deeper though, the stories started to change. What had been lights now seemed to be misty shapes lit from within, and then as it got deeper the misty shapes became shadows and then one night the shadows walked. No one believed the night watchman, not then, but they did once the shadows started to appear in the daytime, and when they walked across the stone and grew from the ground and that was that.

The official story was probably right though. You shouldn’t believe everything you hear. But still. I’d stick to the tea-shops, and the cliff, and shadows that have a cause you can see.