SLEEP NO MORE

by L. T. C. Rolt

  It was just at this moment when he stood upon the threshold of the pass that, as it seemed suddenly to grow dark so, as suddenly, he was seized by a wholly irrational and almost overmastering fear. John was not a timid, nor even a particularly imaginative, man, and in all his long experience of walking in lonely places he had experienced nothing like it. It had to do with something which awaited him on the other side of the pass. It was as if something monstrous lurked there, and it required a conscious effort of will to resist the temptation to fly back to the remembered landscape he had left behind. The weather itself might have been in league with his unreasoning fears, for as he pressed stubbornly forward through the narrow defile the whole character of the evening seemed to change. It became difficult to believe in that sunlit square where he had alighted not three hours before. The sky had become totally overcast and every vestige of colour had drained out of the landscape, to leave it as sombre as the sky. A sudden chill wind, driving a scud of rain before it, blew through the pass into his face as through some draughty corridor in which a distant door has been thrown open. This forced him to lower his head, and when he raised it again he found himself looking down into the head of the valley.

  What he saw did nothing to assuage his misgivings. He thought he had never seen a more forbidding prospect. He might, he thought, have been looking down into the dolorous pit of some vast, abandoned quarry. The tops of the mountains that enclosed the valley were already hidden beneath curtains of hurrying cloud, but so steep were their slopes that all he could see of them were a succession of desolate screes surmounted by frowning crags and precipices already dark with rain. The clouds were rapidly coming down; already coils of white vapour were beginning to spiral among the higher crags. A sudden clatter of falling stones on the scree immediately to his right made him start, and he looked up in time to see what looked like a bundle of wool come bouncing out of the mist and over the crags until it slid to rest on the screes below, where it lay very still. It was some time before the stones of the scree adjusted themselves by stealthy crepitation, and it became quite still once more. How typical of this appalling place, he thought, that the only evidence of life should be the death of a sheep!

  He began hurriedly to extract a waterproof cape from his haversack, and had hardly got it on before the storm broke in sudden and almost unbelievable fury. The rain lashed down, stinging his face as he blundered almost sightlessly down the track. So dark and lowering was the sky that at this rate, he reflected ruefully, it would very soon be pitch dark, and he cursed himself as he realised that he had brought no torch. Not only had darkness fallen surprisingly early due to the sudden change in the weather, but he realised now that he had grossly underestimated the distance involved. He guessed that Llanvethney must still be at least six miles further down the valley.

  The storm had now become a positive cloudburst which no protective clothing could possibly keep out. Cold rivulets found their way down his neck, and even his stout boots were soon squelching. In this wet misery he began to doubt if he could possibly succeed in reaching his destination that night. Had not Alan once mentioned a Youth Hostel somewhere between the head of the pass and the floor of the valley? If so it would make a good emergency port in the storm, if only he could find it. Unfortunately, he had no idea on which side of the track the Hostel lay; nor, as yet, could he see a single light in the fast-gathering darkness.

  At last, however, John sighted away to his left beneath the invisible mountain wall a single light shining out, and so wet and lost and wretched was he by this time that he instantly determined to make a beeline for it whether it was the Youth Hostel or not. Surely even the dourest of Welsh hill farmers would scarcely refuse him shelter on such a night. He could just distinguish a gate to the left of the track and through this he passed, plunging down a steep slope in the direction of that solitary light. As he did so he remembered too late that this was the side of the valley which had the stream at its foot and, sure enough, he soon heard above the steady roar of the rain the chuckling of a mountain torrent in sudden spate. Yet still the light lured him on so, somehow or other, he managed to slip and slide down the steep bank, to wade knee-deep through the boulder-strewn bed of the stream and to scramble on all fours up the muddy slope opposite. There were other unseen hazards to be surmounted, such as old thorn hedges and sheep fences topped with strands of barbed wire, before he finally found himself standing on a rough farm track, terraced along the slope, which obviously led in the direction of the light.

  A few moments later John Hardy was knocking at the door of the farmhouse. The light streamed out from a curtained window to the left of the door, its fellow on the opposite side being in darkness. There was a sound from within of hob-nailed boots scuffing on flagstones, followed by the rattle of door-bolts being withdrawn. The next instant he found himself confronting a very strange little figure indeed, whose face was thrown into high relief by the light of the paraffin lamp which he held before him, and who peered over it into the streaming darkness. He was so dark-skinned and dark-haired that he might have been a true Romany, yet so short in stature as to be almost a dwarf. He stared disconcertingly at John with unblinking eyes that were black as sloes, and seemed furtive and filled with suspicion. He spoke very rapidly in a sing-song, lilting tongue that John did not recognise. This struck him as very strange because, although he had no command of the Welsh language, he had heard it spoken often enough. Also, he had understood from Alan that Welsh was no longer spoken in this part of the border, so that it struck him as odd that this strange little man, if he was indeed speaking some archaic form of Welsh, apparently knew no second language. However, plastered as he was in red mud and with water running out of his boots, John needed no words to express his plight and so, somewhat grudgingly, the little man stepped back and motioned him to enter. He did not lead the way into the lighted room from which he had obviously emerged, but opened a low dark doorway on the opposite side of the stone-flagged central passage. Signalling the other to follow him, he led the way into a typical small Welsh farm parlour, setting the lamp down on the circular central table.

  John would have greatly preferred the homely warmth of the farm kitchen which, as he fondly supposed, lay on the opposite side of the passage. Seen in the dim light of a single lamp, this typical Victorian parlour looked sombre and unwelcoming to a degree and, needless to say, there was no fire in the black and highly-polished grate. He also thought it curious that, in his dripping and muddy state, he should be shown straight into the ‘best parlour’. There must, he concluded, be some very good reason why he was not to be allowed to share in whatever was going on across the passage. Nevertheless, he reflected philosophically, at least he had a roof over his head, which was something on such a night.

  As soon as he had set down the lamp, his host had straightway left the room, closing the door firmly behind him as though he had other and more urgent business to attend to. Left alone, John removed his cape and his sodden boots and stockings, laying them down beside his haversack in the empty firegrate, before selecting the least uncomfortable looking of the Victorian chairs and settling down to make the best of such cold comfort. He could still hear the steady roar of the rain outside.

  Chill and unwelcoming though the room was, particularly to such a damp and benighted traveller, John must have fallen asleep from sheer fatigue, for he awoke with a start, subconsciously aware that some new sound had aroused him. Glancing down at his wristwatch he saw that it was just after midnight. He sat motionless, listening. The buffeting of the storm seemed to have ceased, and in its place he thought he could hear a very unusual sound indeed, which seemed to come from that lighted room across the passage. It resembled, he said, a kind of monotonous chant, although it was quite unlike any form of chant he had ever heard before. It seemed to have a primitive wildness about it, although he could not have explained why he thought this, except that one voice was clearly distinguishable from the others by its curious timbre, which he described
as a cross between a rasping chuckle and the bleating of a large goat. Although under the circumstances it was a disquieting sound to hear, he was not particularly frightened. It was what happened next that caused the hairs on the back of his neck to stir.

  First of all there was the sound of what John took to be the back door being flung violently open and then slammed to again with a thunderous crash. Instantly the murmur of voices ceased as though that mysterious company held their breath in fearful suspense. For a full minute the house was wrapped in a tense, expectant silence; then there came the sound of earth-shaking footfalls pacing down the flagged hallway. It was, John recalled, as though some ancient and gigantic stone statue had suddenly been endowed with terrible life and was stalking through the house. He remembers staring at the door of the room and praying that it would not open, and that this monstrous thing would pass it by. Loud and startling as a trumpet blast a great voice suddenly cried out, ‘Fear not me, fear what follows me.’ Then John heard the front door open and slam shut with a violence that shook the house, and all fell silent once more.

  It was at this juncture that, with what strikes him now as an inexplicable act of courage or foolhardiness, John opened the casement window of his room and gazed out into the night, although it was pitch dark and he does not recall what precisely he expected to see or hear. Some shadow or sound of that huge presence which had just left the house? Or some presage of that greater fear to come which it had prophesied? At first he could hear nothing except the steady, sullen drip of water from eave to downspout, but then his ears detected a curious sound in the air, seemingly coming from directly above the house. At first it was as if some great flock of migrant birds was wheeling overhead in the darkness, whistling and piping like so many lost souls. The sound gradually grew in volume, however, and as it did so it became loud with menace, an eldritch screaming very terrible to hear. Now it was as though there blew over—or out of—those sheer mountain walls that hemmed in the valley a great wind of such force that the very crevices of the crags and the stones of invisible screes became its vocal chords, screaming and yelling in a unison of violence, ‘Fear what follows me.’ And now indeed, as he freely admits, John became terror-stricken. There was something so utterly monstrous about this sudden crescendo of tumult in the high air: it was like no storm he had ever known. It was as if the mountains themselves had transformed or perverted a natural element into some tremendous diabolical force.

  John shut the window, and as he stood rocking on his feet in the centre of the room he caught a glimpse of his white face in the mirror above the fireplace and scarcely recognised it as his own. He had closed the window not a moment too soon. Outside he heard the screaming reach an ultimate pitch of menace before merging into a great roaring sound as a mighty wind rushed down upon the house from the mountain. It struck with a force that made every door and window rattle; it was as though the house had been grasped and shaken by some gigantic hand. By this time John was on his knees upon the floor. The window blew in with a crash as the house was struck by a second and even more tremendous blow. Before he lost consciousness he remembered seeing the walls of the room suddenly bellying inwards and the lamp sliding from the table with a crash, plunging all into a chaotic darkness.

  John awoke to feel the sun hot upon his face. The recollection of the previous night filled his mind with a sudden panic, and then the memory of that nightmare, if such it was, gradually receded. Yet still he hesitated to open his eyes; for if it was indeed a nightmare, then surely he would still be sitting in that Victorian chair in the farm parlour and not lying in the sun. On the contrary, if it had indeed been no nightmare he would be lying miraculously unhurt, amid the ruins of the farmhouse. At length, very warily, he opened his eyes and sat up.

  He found himself lying on a smooth and gentle slope of close-bitten turf, his haversack, cape, boots and stockings upon the grass beside him. A little distance away to his left was a shapeless mound of grey stones, and beside this grew a clump of nettles and an ancient yew tree, sure signs of bygone human habitation. But of any recent ruin there was no sign whatever. The near-level slope where he sat formed the mouth of a steep cwm carved by a streamlet out of the mountain at his back, so that it formed a sort of natural amphitheatre from which he could look down over the valley below. There, directly beneath him, ran the swift flowing stream which he had crossed with such difficulty the previous night and there, up the opposite slope, was surely the gateway by which he had left the track over the pass, which he could see running diagonally along the opposite side of the valley. He shook his head in bewilderment as one who surfaces after a dive, not knowing where reality had ended and the dream had begun.

  It was a perfect spring morning. The brilliant blue sky was flecked with innocent little cotton-wool cloudlets that drifted serenely along, the smaller ones dissolving as he watched them in the gathering heat of the sun. He saw their shadows moving along the slopes opposite, and noticed that above the screes and crags a more gentle slope extended upward towards the long, level skyline of the mountain ridge, a slope green with fresh bracken fronds and thickly populated with sheep and mountain ponies, many with small foals at heel. These higher slopes, made invisible by low cloud the previous night, now transformed the appearance of the valley. He watched a pair of buzzards soaring effortlessly on motionless moth-like wings upon an up-current of air above the crags opposite. Although the floor of the valley to his right was treeless, immediately to his left the stream disappeared in a little brake of alders, and he could see that beyond this the valley became progressively richer and well-wooded. There were glimpses of old farmsteads of pinkish grey stone or whitewash, and of blue pencils of woodsmoke spiralling upwards from morning fires.

  So striking was the contrast between the beauty of the scene now spread before him and his first impression of the valley when seen from the head of the pass the previous evening, that John, although no philosopher, could scarcely avoid speculating upon it. What had appeared under that darkening stormlight to be so malign now seemed to have become wholly beneficent and of a heart-lifting beauty that seemed almost paradisial. Were good and evil purely human concepts, and did this little world that he surveyed include them both?

  He put on his socks and boots, rolled up his cape and, shouldering his knapsack, set off down the valley. Within the first few yards he had struck a long-disused track which had obviously led into the mouth of the cwm and must have been the one he had found on scrambling up the bank the night before. He judged correctly that if he followed it he would ultimately join the main track at a point lower down the valley. He had only just regained the latter and begun to stride out towards Llanvethney when he saw coming towards him up the hill a Land Rover driven by a very worried-looking Alan Brett. On seeing John coming towards him apparently none the worse, Alan’s face relaxed into a broad grin.

  ‘Gosh, am I glad to see you!’ he exclaimed as he drew up beside John, leaning over and opening the door on the passenger side. John threw his rucksack into the back and clambered in.

  ‘Where did you tuck yourself away last night when that storm hit you?’ Alan asked. ‘I guessed you’d be at the Youth Hostel, and it was when I called there just now and found you weren’t there that I began to get really worried.’

  John made no immediate answer to his question, and such reticence was so unusual that Alan looked keenly at him and judged correctly that he should forego any further cross-questioning, leaving the story to come out in his friend’s own good time. So without further comment he reversed the Land Rover into a gateway and the two drove on in companionable silence down towards Llanvethney Priory.

  The further they went the more beautiful the valley became, the more luxuriant the meadows and trees along its floor and the more majestic the sweep and curve of the mountains that enclosed it. The loveliness all about him loosed John’s tongue, and he tried haltingly to explain to his friend the extraordinary contrast between the valley as he saw it now and his first impr
ession of it as he entered it by the high pass the night before. In reply, Alan chuckled, ‘ “An angel satyr walks these hill”,’ he quoted.

  ‘Who wrote that?’ asked the other sharply.

  ‘A chap named Francis Kilvert,’ explained Alan. ‘He was curate of Clyro, just the other side of the Wye, in the 1870s and used to do a lot of walking in these mountains. It appears, rather enigmatically, in the diary that he kept, which was published just before the last war.’

  ‘I think I understand what he meant,’ replied John after a short silence.

  It was not until that evening, when the two friends were comfortably ensconced in deep armchairs on either side of a blazing log fire in the big drawing room of the Priory Hotel, that John told his old friend the whole strange story. Throughout, Alan listened with the utmost attention, never speaking a word until John had finished. Then, after a moment’s silence, he asked, ‘If I were to show you a large-scale map of the area, do you think you could pin-point the site of this mysterious farm where you stayed—or thought you stayed?’

  ‘I am sure I could,’ the other replied, whereupon his friend unfolded a map, two and a half inches to the mile, and spread it before them. It did not take John long before he had marked the spot with the point of a pencil. It was too easy; here was the line of the track descending from the pass, the stream running down almost parallel with it and, beyond it, the dense contour lines which marked the steep slope of the mountain. There was only one indentation in those contour lines, and that must surely indicate the steep little cwm in which he had found himself that morning.

  No sooner had he marked the place than Alan exclaimed in an awed voice, ‘I thought as much. Ty yr Deol!’ Then, in answer to his friend’s look of blank incomprehension, he explained, ‘Ty yr Deol; that means “the house of vengeance”.’ He got to his feet, opened the doors of a large glass-fronted bookcase, searched for a moment, and then drew out a green-backed book.