Does this mean that Illthwaite was a centre of diabolism? I think not. I doubt if there were more than one or two benighted souls who adhered wholly to what they called the Old Faith. Yet in remote areas full of stone circles and tumuli and other sites once sacred to the gods of the druids, and the Vikings, and the Romans, it would be surprising if some of these simple peasant folk did not occasionally glance back to the old days when a pair of magpies foretold a death and a full moon was the time for curing warts.
Have I not myself seen devout parishioners making their way up the aisle to partake of Holy Communion in a series of strange hops and skips to avoid standing on the cracks between the flagstones? Such foolish superstitions, bred in the bone, are hard to eradicate but it is best to remove their visible objects, and commands were soon given by the Church authorities for the offending stump to be destroyed while at the same time the toppled cross in the churchyard was to be repaired and reconsecrated.
Like many commands from on high, the order for destruction of the stump proved easier to give than to execute.
The first attempts soon ran into difficulties. Experienced woodmen found their axe-edges blunted. Finally Barnaby Winander, the village blacksmith and a man of prodigious strength, swung at the cross with an axe so heavy none but he could raise it. A contemporary account tells us that the razor-sharp edge rang against the stump with ‘a note like a passing-bell’, the shaft shattered, and the axe-head flew off and buried itself in the thigh of a fellow worker.
Winander. Had to be one of Thor’s ancestors. Just as the crucifying Gowders had to be the same as the grave-digging Gowders. Nice family. Come to think of it, probably most of the drinkers in the bar had names she’d seen earlier in the churchyard.
Such a sense of continuity in a changing world ought to be comforting.
Somehow it wasn’t.
This approach was abandoned and fire was next essayed with the blacksmith and his family to the fore once more. Faggots of bone-dry kindling were set all around the stump, flame was applied, the Winanders got to work with the bellows they had brought up from their forge, and soon whipped up a huge conflagration. Yet when all had died down and the ashes were raked away, there the stump remained, just as it had been before, except a touch blacker.
Myself, I see in this not the hand of the devil but the hands of men, and in particular of the Winanders. This family, whose scions are still the principal craftsmen of the village, have been of inestimable value down the centuries. Examples of their high skill are to be found everywhere in the valley. Yet there are two sides to every coin, and it has been frequently remarked in the character of men of genius that their creative sparks fly out of a fiery temperament which can frequently lead them into scrapes. In each generation, the Winanders have bred notorious wild men, ever ready for mischief and pranks and more frequent occupiers of the penitent stool in St Ylf’s than the pew. This Barnaby seems to have been such a one. He could have easily ensured the axes were blunted before being used and the stump was thoroughly soaked with water before the fire with no more motive than a delight in preying on the superstitious fears of his gullible neighbours, and of course a desire to discomfort the parish priest.
Yet it should be pointed out that this Barnaby Winander was the same who undertook the repair and raising of the true Wolf-Head Cross, with what success can be judged by its continued presence in our churchyard these three centuries on.
Finally the stump was hauled out of the ground by a team of six oxen and dragged to Mecklin Moss, which it is recorded opened its dark maw to receive this ill-omened timber like a hungry beast that recognizes the foul meat that best nourishes it.
The other trees of Mecklin Shaw have long since vanished too, victims of the peasant need for timber and the charcoal-burners’ art, and without their constant thirst to drain the soil, the bog land of the Moss has now consumed the ground where they stood. But the legend of the Other Wolf-Head Cross still persists, with three centuries of accretion, fit stuff to while away a winter’s night round the fire in the Stranger House where it may be that it is the tedious repetition of such ancient tales that drives the inn’s reputed ghost to slip out of the nearest door.
A joke! Leave them laughing when you go. Bet his sermons were one long hoot, thought Sam.
Time to go to sleep, but not before the forecast visit to the bathroom which, though still not quite essential, had certainly reached the level of desirable.
Finished, and wondering idly how much of the night some ten-pint men of her acquaintance spent in peeing, she came back out into the gloomy corridor, and stopped in her tracks, all thoughts, idle or not, driven from her mind by what she saw.
The door next to hers, the door to the other guest room, was ajar. A figure was passing through it, slender, silent, clad in black. It paused and the head turned, a dark skull-like outline against the darker dark of the room’s interior. She felt invisible eyes study her. Then it slipped through the gap and the door closed soundlessly behind it.
Memory of Mrs Appledore’s warning about the danger of pursuing the Dark Man came to Sam’s mind, but such things had always been counterproductive. Furious at her fear, she rushed in pursuit, grasped the handle and flung the door open.
Instead of the anticipated darkness, she found the room lit by the ceiling light.
A man wearing black slacks and a black turtleneck was placing a grip on the bed. No ghost, though his hollow cheeks, sallow complexion and shaven head gave him the look of one who’d gone close to the barrier before turning back. Eyes darker than the darkest pure chocolate turned towards her. He didn’t speak.
‘Hi,’ she said. ‘I’m Sam Flood. I’m next door.’
He didn’t answer. She turned away and left.
Back in her own room she looked at herself in the dressing-table glass, her face flushed, her sunbrowned body barely covered by her flimsy Melbourne Uni T-shirt.
I look like I’m on heat! she told herself. What was it I said? Hi. I’m Sam Flood. I’m next door. Jesus!
She checked her door. No lock, just a tiny bolt that didn’t look strong enough to resist a bailiff’s sneeze. Nevertheless she rammed it home and got into bed.
After a while she began to giggle. ‘Hi, I’m next door,’ she said in a breathless little girl Marilyn voice. She choked her giggles into the pillow in case they should penetrate the intervening wall.
And soon sleep brought to an end Samantha Flood’s first day in Illthwaite.
Mig Madero stared at the door for a while after the strange apparition had vanished. Could he have conjured it up himself? Perhaps. To a man who rarely felt the world of spirits was more than an idle thought away, such a thing was not impossible. But the creature’s slight body had seemed full of life. A child of the house, perhaps? A girlchild, from the luxuriant red hair, though the loose T-shirt had given little hint of breasts…
Firmly he pushed the thought from his mind, finished unpacking, sat down on the bed and stared at the wall.
What was it she had said? I’m next door. A weird