Cumbrian Ghost Stories

by Tony Walker

  And her father rose. “Mary-Hannah, Rebecca will not go to that cottage. She will never see Gowan Fell again. That is my word, and that’s final.”

  Her mother was taken aback, for it was rare her husband spoke with such authority. “Then you will go,” she finally said to her husband.

  Rebecca’s father nodded. “Yes, I will go. First thing in the morning.”

  Rebecca felt sudden fear. She remembered the wolf thing she had seen on the path in the moonlight. She remembered the blood on Gowan Fell’s shirt. She reached out and clutched her father’s hand. “Don’t go, father. He is a wicked man, and younger and stronger than you.”

  Her father smiled and held her hand tight. “Don’t worry, ‘Becca. I will not get into a fight. Anyway, I don’t believe the stories about the Fell family.”

  Her mother sat silent.

  He said, “Pagan nonsense is all they are.”

  Rebecca looked at them both. “You never told me what you had heard about Gowan Fell’s father.”

  Mary-Hannah frowned deeper, but Rebecca’s father laughed. “That.” He grinned at her. “They say he was one of the Folk.”

  “The Folk?”

  “They don’t exist. How could they?” He said.

  “Who are the Folk, mother?” She turned to Mary-Hannah as her father wouldn’t give her a sensible answer.

  Her mother shrugged. “The Folk. Country people believe in them. Those that have no education and who have never been to Church.”

  “But what are they?”

  Her mother said, “Man wolves. Men who turn into wolves at the full of the moon and who walk on their hind legs.”

  “Nonsense,” said her father. “Go to bed, my darling. I’ll get the doll tomorrow. You need never see that scoundrel again.”

  She gripped his arm tight. “Please, don’t go, father. At least get some village men to go along with you.”

  He leaned over and kissed her forehead. “Don’t worry, Rebecca. I’ll be fine.”

  The evening sun went down. The birds were in the roof space, flitting and cheeping. Outside owls and bats flew. Rebecca shared a room with her sister who stirred and muttered in her sleep. As she lay, head on the goose down pillow, she smelled the night-scented stocks from her father’s flower garden and she lay there thinking of Gowan Fell. Eventually, towards dawn, she fell into a heavy sleep. When she awoke, the sun was streaming in through the willow lattices in the window that served instead of the glass they couldn’t afford.

  She got up and went through in her night shift. Kirsten was outside in the garden playing with the dog. Her mother was in the kitchen, and when she saw Rebecca, she brought her a bowl of porridge. She handed the steaming bowl to her daughter and bade her sit at the wooden table.

  Rebecca began to eat the porridge. She had forgotten how good normal food was, not the findings of the forest, but proper food farmed and grown by people. After she had finished the bowl and then run her finger around it out of her mother’s sight, she said, “Where’s father?”

  Her mother said, without turning from where she was preparing a rabbit, “He went early to get your doll.”

  Kirsten had come in and was threading Rebecca’s hair through her fingers. “It needs washed,” she said. Then her thoughts flitting like a child’s will, she said, “Daddy’s gone to get my dolly.” She gave Rebecca’s hair a tug, “That you left!”

  “Ow!” Rebecca said, grabbing her hair back. But her heart was full of fear. Gowan Fell was not a reasonable man and her father was old now. Her father might want to avoid a fight, but Gowan might not let him.

  She stood. “I’m going back.”

  Her mother shook her head. “Your father said for you to wait here. He’ll be back by afternoon.”

  “No, mother,” she stood and went to the bedroom to dress.

  She heard her mother say, “You never do what I say, anyway.” Then she turned to Kirsten and said, “When you grow, be a good girl, Kirsten, and always obey your parents.”

  The little girl said solemnly, “I will, mammy.”

  But Rebecca had thrown on her clothes, her kirtle and cloak still dirty with mud and leaf mould from the forest. She ran out of the door, shouting, “I’ll be back soon, don’t worry. I just need to help father.”

  She entered the Old Forest, and went along the forest road through the ragged avenues of oaks and ash, beech and willow, until she came at last to the packhorse bridge. She crossed that and then within an hour was at the deer path that led to the hovel she had shared with Gowan Fell. She felt her stomach churn and anxiety danced its electric dance from her throat to her fingertips. She was breathing more quickly, not filling her lungs, but instead panting lightly as she came to the clearing. Smoke curled through the rough roof, telling her that Gowan was inside.

  She did not knock. Gowan was lying on his bed, their bed as had been. His eyes flickered open. His bare chest was covered in scratches and smeared blood, now dry.

  She grew afraid. “Is my father here?”

  Gowan raised his head. “Ah Rebecca, you’re home.”

  “Is my father here?” she said more stridently.

  He shook his head. “Your father?”

  “Don’t pretend to be stupid, Gowan Fell. He came to get Kirsten’s doll.”

  Gowan reached out his long, hairy leg and with the toes kicked the rag-doll from the bottom of the bed. “This?”

  Rebecca ran over and snatched it. She held it to her chest as if she had rescued a living thing from him.

  Gowan sat up. He was naked. She could see better now that the blood that matted the dark hair on his chest came from scratch wounds, five of them, as if someone had drawn a claw across him. The claw of a woman’s hand in anger it seemed to her. He stood, arrogant in his nakedness. His penis hung long from the dark curling hair of his loins.

  He reached and picked up his shirt. He threw it at her. It was covered in dried blood. “I need my washing done, Rebecca. It’s timely you are home.”

  “I’m not staying. Where’s my father?”

  Gowan Fell, picked at his teeth with his fingernail. Then he shook his head. “The old fool called before. I don’t know what he wanted. I sent him away.”

  “What have you done with him!” she screamed. Her fear for her father rose in her chest and up to her throat. Her head buzzed with terror and anger.

  Gowan Fell smiled and shrugged.

  She ran at him, fists flailing, but he easily threw her down. He stood over her, still naked, then he squatted and brought his face near to hers, the curly dark hair of his beard near her soft face. She smelled meat on his breath. Then he kissed her softly. “I’ve missed you,” he said, standing.

  He turned and began to search for clothes from the heap by his bed. She scrabbled to her feet and looked around the hovel. Her eyes darted this way and that and then she saw it. On the poor wooden table they had used, was her father’s knife, which he’d given her to bring here. She had used it for skinning squirrels and rabbit. She watched Gowan. He had fastened his shirt and was pulling on his deerskin trousers. He still had his back to her. She darted over to the table, grabbed the knife, gripped it facing him and said, “Gowan, what have you done to my father?”

  Gowan Fell turned, apparently unconcerned. He saw the knife. Her hand was trembling. He smiled. “Put that down, Rebecca, you might hurt yourself.”

  “Not as much as you hurt that girl.”

  He raised an eyebrow. “What girl?” Then he laughed. “Ah, the girl from the village. I hadn’t realised you were so jealous.”

  “The blood on the shirt. It’s hers?” Rebecca’s voice was shaking because she feared it might be her father’s. But the blood was mostly dry and if it was her father’s it would not be dry at all.

  “Blood, blood. The world is full of blood. Things kill things, Rebecca. You eat the meat of things I’ve killed. Don’t be so squeamish.”

  “The girl. Is she alive?”

  He shook his head. “Try to free yourself fro
m your jealous imaginings. Come, I will show you where your father is.”

  Her hand trembled as she gripped the knife.

  “Come,” he said, most reasonably. “Round the back.”

  Rebecca knew that whoever had lived there before Gowan had a pen at the back for dogs. But there had been no dogs there since Gowan moved in. Dogs would not tolerate him. They slunk off with their tail between their legs, whining whenever they saw him.

  “You go first.”

  “I have the knife.” She brandished it at him. Her voice shook.

  He grinned. “You won’t hurt me, Rebecca. You haven’t the courage. And besides you love me too much.”

  A ball of fiery anger burst inside her chest and she almost ran at him, but he met her stare and his eyes were quiet and cold. He smiled again, but without warmth. “Go,” he said.

  She went first. Gowan was behind her. They walked out of the front door and round to the left. The bracken was broken down as if someone had been that way recently. Her heart hammered and there was cold sweat between her shoulder blades and on her throat.

  She stopped. She didn’t want to see. “What have you done with him?” she sobbed.

  “Go and look,” Gowan Fell said.

  She shook her head.

  “Go and look,” he said again. But this time he prodded her back.

  She gripped the knife harder. If he touched her again, she would stab him. She exhaled, then she stepped forward. She saw the pen made from stout wood and rope. It was dark in the shade of the hovel with the trees clustering round. She couldn’t make anything out. The door stood half-open. She walked up to it. “Daddy?” she said.

  There was no answer. She heard her breath. She stepped closer. “Daddy?” she said again.

  Then Gowan Fell lunged forward and shoved her into the pen. Before she could react, he had pulled the door closed and fastened the rope lock.

  Rebecca screamed. Her father was not there. She shook with rage and fear and took the knife and slashed at the wood and rope.

  Gowan Fell said, “I need a maid, Rebecca, and you will be her, willingly or no.”

  “I have a knife. I will cut my way out.”

  Gowan Fell gave a low laugh. “You will stay here and work, or I will kill your entire family.”

  She looked in his evil dog eyes and she dropped her father’s knife. It fell to the earth with a thud.

  Gowan let Rebecca out of her cage so that she could cook for him and clean his clothes when she had finished cooking. For the first few days he did not leave the hut, nor her. He watched her even when she was working and then on the second day he let her sleep on the floor of the hut. The pen at the back was becoming cold as summer fled.

  At first Rebecca wondered whether he had some care for her still then she guessed it was because he did not want his servant to die of exposure.

  Around four days after she first came back looking for her father, he left her to go into the woods. She thought then of running home, but she knew if he missed her on his return that he would come looking for her and she did not doubt that he would kill all her family. She hoped that her father was back at home and she longed to see him. She imagined an argument with her father wisely realising that Gowan Fell was younger and stronger and so would win any fight, after all it was only over a dolly.

  She sat outside the hovel in the sunshine. The birds still flitted around her feet, but the sun now had the colour of old gold and the first leaves lay on the woodland paths. She detected a turn from green to brown in the trees and knew they would soon be yellow and red. She knew of an apple tree, not the sour crab apples but good eating apples that must have been planted long ago. She guessed it was too soon for them to be ripe but she thought she would go and look to see how long before she could pick them.

  So she set off away from the hovel, down the deer path and instead of striking on the main forest road, rough as it was, she turned left and followed the stream. The water ran over smooth round stones beside her, clear and cold, not long down from the mountains. As she went, she was possessed by a great despair. She did not know how she would ever be free of Gowan Fell.

  And then she smelled the stink of death. Something was lying dead nearby. Perhaps an old badger or a dead crow. Her nose wrinkled, and she put her sleeve to cover her mouth and walk on. But as she continued on the path, she was walking towards the smell. And then she saw that the hazel bushes to the right were disturbed as if a large creature had stumbled that way. Or perhaps two creatures quarrelling and this was the end result. She had heard of stags fighting to the death, but it was too early in the season for that.

  Her curiosity getting the better of her distaste, she stepped to the side of the path, moved some branches and saw the source of the gagging smell. A decayed corpse lay face down. She recognised the clothes instantly. It was her father. His face was pushed in the muddy grass and his back was ripped open. She saw that he had been partly eaten, as if a creature had begun to consume him but got bored and slunk away. She turned and was violently sick. Then she wailed, spinning around, shrieking her distress to the woods and the sky. She fell to her knees, banging her head with her fists. Tears ran down her cheeks and she cried, “Daddy, oh my daddy.” And she knew Gowan Fell had killed her father. Either as man or as beast, he had killed him.

  She stood and immediately wanted to go and find a shovel to dig her father a grave. There was one at the hovel. She ran to get it, but soon, after only a few yards, her head whirling, she realised that she was lost. Her grief overcame her, and she fell to her knees and sobbed while above her, crows called and the wind shifted in the tall trees. She remained there, her knees damp as the wet sods of grass soaked her dress. All she knew was the pain in her heart, and all for a doll, and all because she had gone with Gowan Fell because she had wanted to be free. Grief ripped her heart.

  A cold rage possessed her. She stood. She was lost in the wildwood. She did not care that she was lost or if she would ever be found, but she had two tasks to complete. First, she had to bury her father, then she had to kill Gowan Fell.

  She wandered, disorientated, until she came to the stream. She followed it down as it ran carelessly on. She was still in the oak wood but soon the ground underfoot became damper and the oaks gave way to other trees. There were ash trees and willow and aspen. Green rushes interspersed the soft grass and her feet sunk deeper. Then she came to a place where her small stream ran into another bigger one. The rocks that stuck out of the ground were granite and the micro crystals shone as the sun struck them. The water glittered and fish moved in the deep places of the confluence. And there in the middle of the water, like a boat cresting an endless wave, a rock of quartz stood. It was fissured and cracked, cloudy in places but the sun illuminated it and it gave back light like some sacred, magic thing.

  And Rebecca remembered the goodwife, the flower face pedlar who had come calling and tried to sell her ribbons. This was the place she had mentioned: ‘At the join of two streams; where the oaks give way to the ash and the aspen.’

  Rebecca stood by the bank and watched the rock sparkle in the light, then, without knowing why she did so, she hitched up her skirt and waded through the water. The water was cold, even in summer, because it was mountain water. It came to her knees and the rocks underfoot were slippery with weed and moved as she put her feet on them. Nevertheless, she made it across to the shining stone. There she hugged it as if it were a person and a rescuer. She felt it smooth under her hands and warm to the touch from the sunlight. She peered into it and saw in a million fractures and imperfections, a whole other universe. Her eyes tricked her into thinking she saw the form of Flower Face deep inside. And she prayed to her: “Mother of the Forests, give me my revenge on Gowan Fell.”

  But nothing happened. The water rushed by. The breeze moved across her cheek. Above the clouds shifted, and the sun shone. Swallows swooped low across the water, catching flies. And she laughed bitterly. There were no gods of the wood, no brother wolf, no siste
r moon, just objects - a dead universe peopled by foolish imagination. How had she thought a stone could help her? It wasn’t even that the stone didn’t care, or the trees or the birds. They were just things without mind or soul. And so another of her dreams left her.

  Rebecca swallowed. She felt the lump still in her throat and the pain of grief in her chest, but her blood ran hot. One thing she vowed; she would have her revenge on Gowan Fell whether there were gods or not.

  She picked her way across the stream’s bed onto the bank and she let her wet skirts drop. From here, she knew her way back to the hut she shared with Gowan Fell. She walked slowly and listened to the singing of the birds but knew it was without meaning. And on her way, she came across a bank where honeysuckle and musk rose grew among white thorn and black. She stopped the smell the roses; beautiful even though they were meaningless. She plucked them; the thorns pricking her fingers. And she grasped a twine of honeysuckle and inhaled the sweet heady scent. She took a sprig of that too. As she walked, she held the two flowers in her hand. She no longer believed in love nor in the benign gods of water and wood. There is no one as empty as an idealist who has lost her belief. But instead of belief she now had hate. And it was hate that drove her now.

  When she came home Gowan Fell was at the door, wearing his good clothes. His collar was loose and his waistcoat unfastened. “I thought I was going to have to come after you,” he said with a wicked smile.

  Rebecca stood, the rose and honeysuckle drooping in her hands. She couldn’t meet his eye lest he see the hate in there and guess what she planned.

  “Come in. It’s time for you to cook.” He stood aside from the door, the bright wicked eyes in his dark, bearded face, watching her every move. She breathed heavily and said, “I’m going to plant these first.”

  “Those dead flowers? They won’t grow.”

  She nodded. “I will plant them first.” And then, she thought, I will kill you.

  He took a step towards her and grabbed her round the wrist. He squeezed until her fingers went white. She gritted her teeth to stop the cry of pain, but he was too strong, and she dropped the flowers.