“Not this way, sir,” the gamekeeper said, his steely gaze still on me.
“But I checked on Google Maps,” I persisted, resistant to this demonstration of petty bureaucratic power.
“I couldn’t guarantee your safety,” he said. “I’ve only just set the traps again this morning.” It was only then I saw the brace of rabbits hung from his belt, his dog patiently ignoring what it would no doubt consider to be a tasty snack, although I couldn’t help my gaze straying to the shotgun again.
“Back up to the house and follow the road round. That’s the way you want to go.”
It wasn’t, but suddenly the autumnal woods – the leaves on the trees now edged with bronze – didn’t seem quite so appealing, and so I obliged.
“Sorry to bother you,” I called back as I set off back up the incline to the house.
“No bother at all,” the gamekeeper said, not moving.
I glanced back two more times, once when I was half-way up the incline and once again when I rounded the edge of the house at the top of the slope. On both occasions I saw the man still standing where I had left him, still watching me.
XIV
Skirting the woods that hugged the slopes east of Lambton Castle, I followed the drive over the River Wear half a mile further on and, certain I was properly alone again, turned off the road and headed east across country.
The rest of the afternoon passed in a comfortable reverie, during which I dreamily appreciated the natural beauty of the estate. Autumn crept across the landscape while my mind went over various plot points of the nascent story, resolving potential problems whilst generating new difficulties and creating a host of original ideas.
Leaving the bounds of the Lambton estate at last, and with a couple more miles to go to the top of Penshaw Hill, I passed through a sleepy village that lay in the trough of the river valley between the gently rolling hills of County Durham.
Other than for the cars parked outside the cottages with curtains drawn, even on a glorious day like today, I saw very few signs of life: a cat, washing itself atop the sun trap of a porch roof; the small village shop, with a rack of postcards outside and the local paper’s latest headline regarding more earthquake tremors affecting the north-east of England; and one rotund gentleman wearing a moth-eaten jumper – despite the sunshine – a pipe protruding from the corner of his mouth.
Just over an hour after leaving the castle I was standing at the top of Penshaw Hill, in the cool shade of the nineteenth century Penshaw Monument, gazing back across the still green hills and knots of bronzing woodland, the afternoon sunlight flashing from the cars and lorries traversing the roads that criss-crossed the countryside. I found Lambton Castle on its rise above the Wear and imagined legless dragons slithering across the ancient landscape, reshaping the topography with their massive writhing bodies.
As I picked out various local landmarks, orientating myself within that same landscape, I felt the ancientness of it, resonating upwards through the very soles of my shoes. For a moment it was as if I could feel the heartbeat of the earth beneath my feet, and I became increasingly aware of my thudding pulse, as if the two had synchronised. And then I imagined those same monstrous worms burrowing, like cyclopean annelids – like the misinterpreted pen and ink illustration in the book of monsters I had so enjoyed as a child – their blind heads burrowing through the soil below, using their preternatural senses to find their way in the all-encompassing, subterranean darkness.
I sat there, caught up in my imaginings, the column against which I rested cool against my back. The monument had needed underpinning in the late nineteen-seventies, due to the earth settling as a result of mining beneath the hill years before that, or something like that. Apparently things had got so bad that the entire western end had to be dismantled block by block so that the damaged lintels could be replaced with reinforced concrete ones.
Or had the damage really been caused by those burrowing annelids, whose rumbling passage through the hill I imagined I could feel even now, reverberating through the soles of my feet?
Enjoyable as my reverie was, time was getting on. I felt the prickle of a chill in the air, and it was going to take me another hour or so to retrace my steps to the castle. So, feeling suitably reinvigorated, and with all manner of ideas squirming inside my head, I set off back down Penshaw Hill, over the ancient, worm-followed ramparts.
XV
By the time I found myself approaching the centre of the village again, my enthusiastic strides had become weary, trudging steps. I was tired and thirsty and in need of a sugar fix.
A bell jangled as I pushed open the door of the village shop and entered its gloomy interior. It was like something out of my childhood, lacking the overly-familiar branded look of a chain newsagent. Chocolate bars were arranged in a tiered, plastic display stand, injection-moulded to look like a bar of chocolate itself.
Just inside the doorway, a glass-fronted fridge hummed to itself in the gloom. I opened it and grabbed a Diet Coke, then selected a snack from the selection on the counter, before finally approaching the till, just as a girl appeared through an open doorway that clearly led to another room out the back.
My heart fizzed with the adrenalin rush of possibilities, and I felt my face flush with the heat of arousal.
If the shop was like something out of my childhood memories, the girl serving behind the counter was like one of the Page 3 stunners from my adolescent fantasies.
She wasn’t tall, but her height – or lack of it – only served to emphasise the size of her breasts, even under the loose sweater she was wearing.
Her pale skin was free of blemishes and she peered up at me with wide, almond eyes – with just the slightest hint of suspicion or disapproval – from beneath the sweep of a fringe of luxuriant hair the colour of dark chocolate.
Her hipster jeans, although nothing special, accentuated the curve of her hips and the shapeliness of her pert bottom. She had to be ten years younger than me, if not more.
“Can I help you?” she asked innocently enough.
“Er, yes,” I said, stumbling over those simple syllables like a love-struck school-boy. “Just these, please.”
Unable to hold her gaze, feeling another hot rush of blood to the head, I diverted my gaze and looked down at the counter, to the spread of local papers and national red tops laid out there.
One headline on some local rag or other caught my eye in particular. Tremors hit Sunderland.
“Earthquakes, eh? In the north of England?” I felt the need to fill the awkward silence, even though I could hear music playing on a stereo or a radio in another room somewhere. “Who’d’ve thought it?”
“I know,” the girl said, ringing the items into the till. “That’ll be one pound thirty-five, please.”
XVI
She came to me that night, as I slept, wearing nothing more than a gauzy gown that barely covered her soft, silken flesh. We lay together with her taking charge of my surging nakedness, straddling my all too willing, thrill-tormented flesh.
She came to me out of the darkness, and the darkness was alive with dancing motes of glittering coral dust. The incense smoke filled my nostrils with its musty odour, leaving my head in the clouds while my loins burned with fire, yearning for her.
XVII
The next day I committed myself to the story again, my lustful dreams having been sated, for the time being at least, in the shower that morning.
After taking only a couple of pieces of toast from the luxurious spread available at breakfast, I headed to the library, with notebook and laptop in hand, and buried myself in the books again.
The Lambton library was a treasure trove of wonders, including works on Roman snake cults, Egyptian mythology, the lives of the saints, black magic and a curiously unintelligible tome that bore the title De Vermis Mysteriis. And books weren’t the only treasures that lay half-forgotten beneath a pall of dust.
Beneath one window stood a glass-topped display case. Inside, resting on top of a l
ayer of faded red felt were several rusted, Iron Age arrowheads (according to the hand-written card positioned beneath them), some photographs of the house taken when it had been used as a convalescent hospital during the Second World War , and large fossils, including a couple of ammonites.
Once again, it was only the delivery of a lunch platter by one of the kitchen staff that reminded me of the time and, come the evening, I took a brief stroll down to the river to give my tired eyes a break before dinner.
And so one day blurred into the next, falling into a self-regulating pattern. But the image of the girl’s smile never left me. And I am reminded of it still, with every new day that dawns.
XVIII
Over the coming days I made more and more frequent trips to the village and its tiny shop, until it was a daily event. I would pick up a paper, a drink, and all too often something to eat as well. Our conversations began to last longer and I finally discovered her name: Catrin.
I rarely saw anyone else in the shop. I wondered if maybe I would have run into more customers earlier in the morning or around early evening. It wasn’t until one of our conversations strayed to the topic that I found out the real reason.
Catrin ran the place on her own - had done ever since her grandmother passed away six months previously. The old woman’s presence remained, though, in the fustiness of the décor and the occasion kitsch ornament dotted about. I felt that her shadow was a hard one to escape.
“I imagine she was a popular member of the community,” I said, hoping I sounded suitably sympathetic.
“Not really,” Catrin confessed, her harsh honesty taking me by surprise. “Not towards the end, anyway.”
“Why was that?” I asked, intrigued.
“So how’s your novel coming along?” she asked in return, forcing a smile and making it quite clear she didn’t want to discuss her grandmother, or the old woman’s popularity, any further.
“Not too badly, actually.”
“That’s good, then.”
“Well, I’ve been inspired.”
“This is a beautiful part of the world,” she said. “On the surface, at least.”
“I wasn’t talking about the landscape,” I countered, making myself blush.
A week later, I asked her out.
XIX
We met up again that very evening at the village pub; a grim place decked out in horse brasses and with nothing but real ale on tap, appropriately called The White Worm. We took a table in the corner of the dining room where we were left alone by the few locals, other than for the occasional suspicious glance cast our way during the course of the evening.
The food was typical pub fare; nothing fancy, but honest burgers and fish and chips. The one unusual item I noticed on the menu was something called White Worm Pie, but I decided to go with a classic quarter-pounder instead, just to be safe. Catrin chose Wear Fishcakes, which the menu said were made from farmed salmon raised in the waters of the Wear.
Halfway through the evening, the gamekeeper I had run into on my journey to Penshaw Hill entered the pub, making me start. Seeing me he doffed his cap, an action I acknowledged with a wave, but didn’t exchange pleasantries, which was fine by me.
Later on, as I was tucking into a dessert of berry crumble smothered in hot custard, I tried to ask Catrin about her grandmother and the shop again, but she steered the conversation back onto the subject of my book. I went with it, revelling in the opportunity to talk about my work.
Jess had been interested like this, once upon a time, when being with a writer was still a novelty for her. But it had been a long time since there had been anyone so interested, who wasn’t trying to get something out of it for themselves. It’s the reason we writers will talk into the early hours at the hotel bar during conventions. We spend so much of our time alone, writing and researching, that when we do get the opportunity to meet up with other like-minded people, we go to town.
“So what chapter are you on now?”
“Oh, it doesn’t work like that,” I said.
“What, you don’t use chapters?”
“I do, most of the time, but I don’t necessarily write the book in the order it will eventually be read.”
“Oh. That sounds very confusing.”
“It can be, at times, but I’ll re-write the book several times before it’s finished and everything will get sorted out in the end.”
“Oh.” I had clearly lost her. “But it’s going well, so you won’t be going anywhere any time soon.”
“No.”
She looked at me with those large dark eyes from beneath the sweeping fringe of chocolate-brown hair. I couldn’t tell if what I saw there was a look of discomfort or fear. Perhaps she didn’t feel the date was going as well I had, up until that moment.
“But that’s a good thing, isn’t it?” I sounded like some desperate, lovelorn student fumbling his way through his first proper relationship.
“I suppose so.”
“You know you’re in it?” I said. It was a cheap trick, but it worked.
“Am I?” She blushed, clearly delighted.
“What can I say? You inspired me.”
“So who am I in the book?”
“You’re a witch,” I said, following the comment up with a wry smile. But I had clearly misjudged how such a comment would be received.
“A witch?” she said, pulling back.
“Don’t take it the wrong way,” I back-pedalled desperately. “You’re the witch, in fact. You’re the heroine.”
The look on her face made it quite clear that I had only succeeding in making things worse.
“So I’m the witch from the legend of the Lambton Worm? I inspired you to write about an old crone.”
“No, no, no, not at all,” I gabbled, realising now where the conversation had gone wrong.
“This is my re-imagining of the tale, if you like. Think of Grendel’s mother in Beowulf - the Gaiman-Avary movie version.”
“I’ve not seen it,” Catrin said icily
“I mean she’s young and gorgeous.”
“But she’s still a witch.”
“She’s one of the good guys. Sir John, the protagonist, can’t defeat the monster without her help. She effectively saves him.”
The evening didn’t really pick up again after that. The misunderstanding had taken root too deeply, and there was no coming back from my apparent accusation. Not for that night, at least.
I still insisted on walking her home.
XX
At the back door of her house we said goodnight in the gathering gloom of dusk, but the peck on the cheek I received for my troubles only served to stir the frustrated burning in my loins as I pictured myself following her inside and fucking her there and then on the sofa.
As I set off for the castle again through the ever-deepening dusk, I resolved to enjoy the fantasies of what I wanted to do to Catrin more fully when I was back in my private room.
I imagined kissing her full on the lips, probing her mouth with my tongue as I freed her breasts from the black lacy bra I had glimpsed every time she leaned forward during dinner at the pub, exposing her glorious cleavage.
I imagined her hands undoing the belt of my jeans and freeing my swollen cock from my boxers. I imagined her stroking it into straining excitement as I slipped a hand inside her panties and caressed her pubic mound, my fingertips finding the wet lips of her parted vagina through the tangle of hair.
I imagined pulling her dress up over her head, ripping off her knickers and pushing her onto the sofa, probing at her moistened labia with the tip of my tongue as she ran her fingers through my hair, moaning with orgasmic pleasure.
I imagined positioning myself between her wide open legs, feeling the nylon of her stockings rubbing against my waist as she raised her legs to accommodate my solid member, guiding it in with yet more urgent caresses. I imagined easing myself into the moist comfort of her, riding her there on the sofa, penetrating deeper with every pounding thrust of my
hips until, the two of us grunting with animal lust, we both came in an explosion of orgasmic euphoria, the serotonin release taking us out of our bodies in that glorious moment of mutual orgasm.
My penis pushing against the fly of my jeans, I set off for the castle at a brisk walk, determined to finish what my imagination had started, under the thundering cascade of my shower again.
Little did I realise how differently my evening was going to progress.
XXI
By the time I crossed the bridge over the River Wear, back within the bounds of the estate, it was dark. The road through the woods was shrouded in shadow, while the track alongside the river was bathed in crisp moonlight.
Having last seen the gamekeeper at the pub I didn’t think I’d run into him now, and so, turning off the road, I followed the track that ran beside the river, that shone darkly like a black mirror, and set off through the moonlight for the house.
I was within sight of the shadowy crenulations when I first heard the sound. The walk by the woods was quiet – other than for the gurgling of the Wear, the rustle of night-time prowlers hunting for food, the single, harsh bark of a dog fox – and then the echoes of distant chanting reached me, carried from the depths of the wood on the breeze.
I stopped and listened, intrigued rather than concerned. But we all know what curiosity did for the cat.
What I should have done was turn around, right there and then, and return to the village, collect Catrin and leave that accursed place, never to return. But instead, my eyes having become accustomed to the dark, I left the river bank and followed the fringe of the treeline up the slope and there, through the clustered tree trunk, I saw an even darker shape, like a sculpted rocky mound.
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