maps of the lost

BASF P5-90

Everyone of a certain age ends up with a small pile of old video tapes, of weddings and christenings and dance performances and school plays and much loved films, and no VCR to watch them on. The more organised will find a one to borrow, and buy a gizmo that lets you record to digital on a laptop off a VCR, and the more well-off will send a pile of tapes off to a service that will do it for you, and many will do nothing at all until one day they happen on a VCR at a car boot sale that they’re assured is working and is worth taking the chance on anyway, because it’s only twenty quid.

You might find, that in amongst the pile of videos is one that’s not labelled, so after watching some of the best ones you put this one in, just to see if you’d recorded something worth keeping.

You see the static of a blank tape, and are about to press stop when a picture flickers on and off, indistinct and jumpy but you can just about make it out it appears to be a London street, with people running about backwards and forwards, and what at first you thought was interference on the tape is smoke.

You frown, and think what the hell is this. Isn’t any TV programme I can remember recording, and the camera moves as if it is being hand-held, an amateur video shot on a camera that is nowhere near professional standard. You turn the volume up, and can hear what sounds like metal grinding. And screaming. Lots of screaming.

As the shot shudders and jerks around, you can see why. As well as the people running, there are people just lying, arms and legs jumbled at awkward angles. You want to look away, but you can’t, and the camera stumbles forward, swings to one side, up almost towards the sky, then comes back again.

It’s closer to the people lying in the street, broken and pale, close enough to see that one of them is you, and the one lying next to you is the one you had such an intense relationship with years ago, the one that you talked about being forever, but in the end, like a firework, you were both bright for a moment but then done.

You hit the stop button. Sit there for a minute or two, and your hands are trembling.

Seeing the two of you made you remember the street, that day you’d spilled out of a long lunchtime pub session and were hurrying home, both having phoned in sick to your employers. On this one street, you both fell silent. Held hands for comfort, not a promise of what hands might hold later. Something felt strange, and wrong, and when you turned into another street and the world felt right again, you both walked that little bit more quickly until you were home, but for some reason the walk had taken an hour longer than you thought it had.

When you find the courage to play the video again, it’s just static, a snowstorm against black. Mostly. You think.

When The Bourne Rises

If you’re wandering through the countryside of the Elham valley in Kent, you might spot what looks like a large ditch, wending its way along the edges of fields and the sides of the roads. 

It’s not a ditch though - or at least, not all the time. This is where the Nailbourne, an intermittent bourne (the local word for a stream), runs. About every seven years or so, water will rise from the bed and within a day or two the river will be in full flow. It has even flooded at times, what was an empty ditch so full that it spills over and into fields and turning roads into fords.

There is an old legend that St Augustine had tapped his staff on the ground and summoned up a spring in a time of drought, but this angered the Anglo-Saxon gods who summoned up a flood. In order to appease the local folk of the Elham Valley who were tired of being caught in this battle between old and new gods, St Augustine kept the spring flowing but decreed that the water would only emerge above ground in the valley every seven years.

There is also a legend that when the Nailbourne does run, it is an unlucky year.

Either or both of those may be true, or they may not be. What is true though, is something which is far older than either.

When the Nailbourne rises, and is in full flow, if you hide yourself in a thicket or copse on the night of the new moon and keep a close watch on the waters, you may see a very small boat, made from bark and reeds, come drifting down the stream. You may also see the very small helmsman and passengers on that boat. But take special care that they don’t see you, or you will get taken by those in the boat and unlike the Nailbourne you will not be coming back every seven years.

The Long Wait

If you browse Google Maps for a certain part of rural Lincolnshire and go down to Streetview, you may spot a man, standing on the grass verge by a crossroads. There’s nothing exceptional about him: medium height and build, dark trousers and a big coat, his head bowed and the little you can see of his face blurred out by Google.

He’s not doing anything, just standing by a road in the middle of nowhere, but you think for a moment about how he conveys a particular feeling of stilllness and then you laugh at yourself: it’s a photo. How could he not? Everything is still.

Maybe sometime later, you’ll happen to be driving through that certain part of rural Lincolnshire. Maybe that’s why you looked at the map, maybe it’s just coincidence. It could be weeks, or it could be years later. But you’ll remember the crossroads, even though it’s just like one of dozens out in the country. You’ll remember it because there’s a man standing there, medium height and build, dark trousers and a big coat, his head bowed, and  as you slow and drive past, he’ll look up a little, and you’ll realise that it is not Google that has blurred his face.

Drive on though: it is not you he is waiting for, and he has been waiting by that crossroads for a very long time.

Calling the Little Folk

What tradition tells you is that if you trip the bark from three wands of hazel, write the true name of a beautiful fairy three times, one on each piece of bark, and them bury them nine inches in the ground on the top of a hill known to be a fairy hill. The following Friday at moonrise, the fairy you have called will appear on the hill, and be bound to follow you.

What the tradition omits to tell you, is that although she will appear, so will her brothers, and they will not take kindly to your intentions towards their sister.

The Glows

You’ve been out walking in the north Pennines and you misjudged the length of your walk and the time it would take you to finish. It’s dark now and you have half an hour more walking before the bothy you’re going to stay in. It’s not a problem though, you’re well equipped, and your headtorch lights the way in front of you.

When you stop for a drink of water, you turn it off for a moment, enjoy the thick, velvety darkness that you don’t get near a town. As your eyes adjust, there’s enough light to see the greater darkness of the sullen humps of the fells against the night sky. 

When you turn to look behind you, you see two white lights near the top of the hill you’ve just descended. They’re close together, not moving, so not hikers. Car headlights, you think, but how the hell did they get up there? You wonder if it’s a mountain rescue 4x4, perhaps on an exercise. You didn’t see any other walkers around, and you hope you didn’t pass someone injured and not notice them. But surely you’d have heard the sound of an engine from miles away.

You stare at the two white glows for a moment, trying to work out what they could be.

Then they blink, slow and deliberate, and start to move down the hill towards you.

Stick In The Mud

More than a few people have found themselves stuck in the mud in the Stour estuary as it empties out into Sandwich Bay in Kent. It’s thick and it’s glutinous and many people have left wellington boots behind in it, or had to stand there, while the water rises, until the fire brigade come out and rescue them and politely don’t call them idiots. Most of those people will come out of the experience chastened, and wiser to the dangers of the sea and the shore.

Once in a while though, someone will not come out at all. While struggling to free their legs from the suck and the clench of the mud, they will feel fingers in the ooze seize them tight around the ankle, and pull, pull.

Passing Through

In the Orkney Islands there are some standing stones and one has a hole in the middle. Legend has it that if the father passes a newborn baby through the hole from one side to the mother on the other, the child will have good fortune all of its life.

It will. But the baby that the mother receives is not the baby that the father passes through, and in time both may come to realise that.

Front of House

You’re working in a restaurant in the the west of London, waiting tables to support you through hard times as a student.  You’d been serving a table for one, a quiet but polite man who stood out from the other customers that you were serving, and not because he was on his own. There were a lot of business travellers in the hotels nearby, and it wasn’t uncommon to have a customer sitting on their own at a table, reading their Kindle while they ate, or scrolling through their phone, or just looking down at the table, trying not to catch anyone else’s eye in case they got a look of sympathy for being alone.

What struck you about this man, who was unremarkable in every other way, was his expression. He stared into space in front of him, as if he could see something there, something which troubled him very much. Each time you came to serve him, he’d tear his gaze away as if it were difficult, and look at you as if he were drinking you in. Not in any kind of sexual way, no hint of desire there, just as if you were the last other human being on earth.

Your noisy table two down left, and as you’d suspected they would be, they were terrible tippers. You picked up the last of their dishes and took them into the kitchen, came back to clean and reset the table, and the man on his own was gone. 

Toilet, you thought. I’m good at reading people, and he wasn’t a skipper. They’re always nervy, too talkative, you can tell. He’ll be in the toilet.By the time you’d cleaned the other table though, reset it, and served another time a fourth round of drinks, he was still not back. A man came out of the toilets, heading back to his table, and you intercepted him, sorry sir, but was there anyone else in - no? OK, thank you, no nothing’s wrong.

You went to clear his table, putting it down to experience, another tip short, the boss on your case for the cost of a lost meal, thinking you should have seen the signs, and there it was, lying on his table, his phone. You wonder whether he’s had some kind of incident, got confused, wandered off, not realised he hadn’t paid, not realised that he didn’t have his phone. Or maybe he had no cash, but the phone was worth many times the cost of the meal. You couldn’t leave it there, as some other customer would spot it and pocket it, so you picked it up and took it to the office, steeling yourself to explain you’d had a skipper.

Your boss was on the phone though, having an argument about something, so you just held up the phone and mouthed ‘left behind’, and he gave you a curt nod and pointed to his desk with his free hand. You put the phone down and turned to go, and saw the black and white of the restaurant CCTV on the screen on the wall facing your boss. 

There were four pictures in one: front of house, kitchen, outside the front door, outside the back door. In the CCTV for the front of house, you could see the table set for one, and a fuzzy indistinct shadow sitting in the chair where the man had been. You looked closer, but couldn’t make anything out, hurried out and stared at the table, at the chair in front of a plate of half-eaten food. There was no one there. You almost ran back into your boss’ office, ignored his annoyed look, saw a fainter shadow in the chair, fading like mist in the sun, and then it was gone.

Mr Nobody

You might find yourself in South London, trudging through the snow, head down as more sleety flurries turn into larger flakes, when you notice something very strange. Even though you are the only person on the street, you can see footprints forming in the snow, just a few steps in front of you.

You stop, and the footprints stop appearing. You look at them, and there’s nothing out of the ordinary about them, just a average sized shoe print of no discernable type. You wipe snowflakes from your eyes, and think how tired you must be. Of course the footprints were there all along.

But when you start walking again, you know, because you see them, forming in virgin snow, keeping pace with you, just a little way ahead.

You can say, “Good afternoon, Mr Nobody,” out loud and if it is Mr Nobody then you will not see the footprints again but you will have good luck all day and all the rest of the week. If it’s not Mr Nobody though, it’s probably the nameless thing that when it hears your voice will stop, turn back, and eat you.

Baal Hill

There have been a number of ideas put forward to explain the etymology of the name of Baal Hill which lies near Wolsingham in County Durham. 

One is that it’s an old way of describing for a pit used for lead smelting. Another is that its derived from the time that the Bishop’s bailiff lived nearby. In Old English, ‘bale’ was a word for a fire or beacon (‘balefire’ or bǣlfȳr was a sacrificial fire), and so perhaps Baal is a corruption of that.

All very good explanations of why the name of this hill has nothing to do a hoarse-voiced demon who ruled over sixty-six legions of lesser demons, and whose name is variously Baal or Bael.

That’s a fanciful thought. 

But do take care on a certain day of the year when a walk up Baal Hill might leave you thinking that it is plagued something terrible by flies. It isn’t - usually. But one day a year the flies come from all over the county to form an honour guard for the visit of their lord, and the earth will open and he will walk it.