by Glen Johnson
There’s also Spinsters Rock, Scorhill Stone Circle, Grey Wethers Stone Circles and Drizzlecombe, which is Dartmoor’s tallest standing stone at four and a half meters. There are also the seventeen stones, named the Nine Maidens of Dartmoor – why they are called the nine and not seventeen has no explanation. Supposedly, during a Hunters Moon, (or Blood Moon, the first full moon after the Harvest Moon, which is the closest to the autumnal equinox) these stones have been witnessed to sway back and forth as if dancing.
Occultism abounds in the area, stretching back as far as recorded history. There’s countless tales of witches and covens. One famous local witch was Vixana who nightly conjured up mist to confuse lost travellers, so they would stumble into a stretch of bog and slowly get sucked under.
In January 2005 seven dead sheep were found with their necks broken and eyes removed, and arranged in the shape of a heptagram – a seven pointed star symbol, which has for centuries been associated with the dark arts and black magic rituals. Then in November of the same year it occurred again near Vixen Tor.
Sacrificial examples, such as these, date back to the time of the druids (these being the priestly class in Britain during the Iron Age). The earliest known written description of druids was from the Roman military general Julius Caesar in his work the Commentarii de Bello Gallico; which was his first hand accounts of the Gallic Wars, dated from 50 BC.
Dartmoor teems with reference to the druids. Their presence exists in place names such as the Druid’s Stone, Druid’s Chair, Druid’s Altar, Druid’s Well, Druid Mine, and the Druidical Temple, and not forgetting the village named Drewsteignton; which its original name (Taintona) was first mentioned in the Domesday Book of 1086.
As well as numerous stone formations accredited to the druids, there is also what are called Rock Basins, these were cavities cut into the rock to collect water, and for sacrificial purposes. One on Mis Tor is referred to as the Devil’s Frying Pan.
Strangely, it also has a negative gravity anomaly, due to Cornubian batholith, which is a group of associated granite intrusions which underlie the southwestern peninsula of Great Britain; and the main exposed masses of granite are at Dartmoor.
All in all, Dartmoor has more stories related to the devil, the occult, druid sacrifices and bizarre anomalies than any other section of land in Great Britain. I provide all this information to give you an idea of the region I live in, and the tales that inundate the folklore in the area.
This may all relate to why the Devil came knocking at my door, it was simply a matter of location, location, location, as the estate agents like to say.
*
I have a celebrated twelve horror novels under my belt, and a few awards adorning my walls and shelves. Some of these books have stories similar to myths and legends that prevail in this area. Funny, when I think about it, this is my thirteenth book. Does that have some bearing on what took place?
I have a few other manuscripts I’m working on at the moment. But no more horror stories. What happened changed that part of me for ever.
Why do I write? Some people ask me. I would like to say it’s because I love to read, and also I like to see one of my books in the hands of a passerby. To see the look of concentration upon their face as they read the words that I have placed on paper.
But if I was to be brutally honest, I would say it is for the money. In this day and age everything always comes down to money. Supposedly, the route of all evil.
I have made plenty of money from my written creations. That’s how I can afford to live in such an out of the way location in a big farm house. Some ask: Why do I stick it out, why do I put up with the critics’ sharp tongues when I could retire from writing and simply live off the royalties? But as any writer worth his salt knows, it’s not that simple. Once you have one book in circulation it’s not long before another joins it. A natural high some say. It’s something needing to be done, needing to be written.
And the most asked question: Where do I get my ideas from? As my many ex-wives said, as well as friends and family, I have a very overactive imagination. Even more so now after I was released from his hold on me.
But all in its proper place.
Has not one of the greatest horror writers of our time, Stephen King written almost fifty novels? Each one a masterpiece in its own right. What if he had given up after his fifth novel or tenth novel? This generation would be different, would it not, without the works of his great mind?
Likewise, after only a mere thirteen novels – compared to his fifty – I still can’t steal the laptop away, not just yet. Over the last few years it has been my only companion, a good faithful friend.
I don’t use a typewriter, like you see in the movies; an author clicking away at an old classic machine. As they finish a page they pull it out and stack it on a pile of other crisp white sheets. In reality writing isn’t like that. I make mistakes with my spelling and grammar, just like everyone else (just ask my editor). And with a computer you can go back over, readjusting, correcting and fleshing-out. And with a typewriter there would be only one copy. Way to risky. As I write I back my books up on multiple external hard drives. Also sending them to myself via email, so if anything happened to all my drives I still have a copy in the digital world. Because that’s the other important thing with a laptop; the internet – the writer’s best friend – a world of information right at my fingertips. No more library visits, pouring over old books, or phone calls to collect information. Now it can all be done from the comfort of my desk. God bless Google and Wikipedia.
Maybe it’s because of my passion for writing or merely because of the location I choose to live, is the reason he decided to choose me. I don’t think I will ever know why he picked me. He never gave a reason. Then again I don’t think he needed to, or would have given me an explanation even if I had the courage to ask. And to be quite frank, I don’t think I ever thought to ask. That was my reasoning to start with; it all became apparent towards the twisted end.
*
It would have been many days, if not weeks, before I would have seen another human being, let alone whatever he claimed to be. That’s one of those small details I told you about.
When I opened my door to the intensive knocking on that cold, dark January evening, when most sensible people would be huddled up in the heat and comfort of their home. Not that anyone could even move about in the snow outside. And it was impossible to get to my out of the way house with all the blizzards blowing, snow piling up.
That’s when I saw him standing upon my snow-incrusted doormat. I noticed not one snowflake clinging to his clothing or hair. His black highly polished shoes still glistening from the warm light issuing from my open fire in the room behind me, as clean as if only having just been polished – no snow or mush on them (and no cloven hoof feet). And the fact that besides the freezing cold and drizzling snow, he was wearing no coat of any kind, just a simple black suit jacket that matched his expensive looking black trousers and waistcoat.
“Good evening,” he said, as if having met him on the sidewalk in town. A perfect gentlemanly voice, not one you would expect coming from someone like him. His eyes locked intently upon mine.
I stood transfixed in the small vestibule, looking at this figure stood under the lintel of my front door. The wind and snow was blowing relentlessly behind him. His face lit up by the reflection of my roaring fire. A vile smile on an otherwise ordinary face. Hair still impeccably groomed, not one single hair out of place from the fierce winds. A dry black umbrella held in one of his hands, still folded up with the little popper clipped in place. And most alarming, not one single footprint leading its way to my door. Surely the snow wouldn’t have covered them that quickly?
“May I seek shelter from this stormy weather?” He’d asked, his voice still flat and emotionless. His dark eyes still locked on mine, unflinching. Something about those dark eyes.
Then I simply stood aside, knowing there was nothing else I could do. I could no more of stop
ped him from entering as I could of waved a hand and abated the storm. And that simple act changed my life. If I had refused him entry I might not be alive today to tell the tale – his tale. But of course now I know different, things having already run there course and I am now relating them for the first time.
As he serenely glided past a waft of musk and ancient spices drifted from him.
I stood next to the open door, the wind howling, snow clinging to my back and trousers, making my slippers wet and cold. All the heat I had accumulated rushing out the wide-open door. Doors banging loudly from inside as the wind whipped around the confines of my once sane home.
I would never have the sense of normality again. My life was now forever changed. My fixed natural order in the cosmos had now been radically altered. Destiny was looking the other way.
I watched as he gracefully moved across the room. The way in which he moved was more like a predator than a mere man. After a couple of steps he simply opened his clenched hand and dropped the umbrella as if it was of no significance – social norms not high on his list. He took a high backed seat besides the open crackling fire and gently lowered himself down onto it, crossing his long thin legs, showing of his black socks.
“Please, take a seat,” he simply said. He waved a hand at the empty chair opposite.
I was still in a state of shock. I hadn’t worked out what he was yet, but I knew something was not right. My primeval instincts’ telling me something was very wrong. It took all my will power from simply stopping myself from running out the door, plunging into the cold stormy night, taking my chances out there, rather than be anywhere near him, and that smile of his.
“Please,” he said once again. As he did so this time the door was wrenched from my grasp and slammed shut. I let myself believe for those few precious seconds that it was my imagination taking hold, nothing more than the wind pulling it from my hand. That was until the latch clicked and the bolt locked.
My eyes pried away from the now locked and bolted door, to see him sat motionless, only the wide smile being any movement from his direction. Then his tongue raked over his chapped lips. Like a dead body having just been raised by necromancy, I slowly moved across the room, bumping into a knee-high table in the process, upturning it along with the dead telephone.
“Please sit, Mr. Cain,” he said, in his relaxed modulated voice. I hadn’t told him my name. Had I? But then everyone in the area knew I lived here, but they kept at a respectable distance. Until now. My body answered by taking another high backed wing chair opposite, with its studded buttons in red hard leather. My favourite seat, one I sat in while thinking or simply reading. I never knew why I had another positioned opposite, never having visitors. I think it was for comfort reason. Freudian psychology would say I was creating an illusion that I wasn’t alone.
The two chairs were framed by the large fireplace. There was a thick wooden fire surround that was almost twelve foot across, and five high. The fire nestled in the middle on the grate, and it had two stone seats to either side, if you wished to sit uncomfortably close. I believed they were also used for drying out food and herbs were hung to either side. Firewood was also stacked on each side to keep it dry. There was a carbon copy of it in the large kitchen.
“May I smoke?” he asked, already reaching into the confines of his jacket to remove a packet of unfiltered Marlboros. I knew them well, my chosen brand before I had given them up after losing a brother to lung cancer.
He looked around, his eye skipping all around the room.
“I have –” I coughed, trying to clear my constricted throat. “I have no ashtrays,” I managed to squeeze out eventually. The first time I had spoken, and for such a mundane reason.
“That’s right,” he stated matter-of-fact, “after the unfortunate sickness with your older brother.” He lifted the cigarette to his thinly pressed lips and lit it with a single match he had struck by scraping with his fingernail, like you see in the movies. Smoke encompassed his face, shrouding him from view for a fraction of a second. Then two long plumes of smoke issued from his nostrils, now encircling his lap like the witches Vixens deadly fog.
“What about the ashtray in the cupboard under the stairs?” he asked politely, as if inquiring about my health.
I dislodged an old memory, realizing that yes there was an old ashtray under the stairs in an old cardboard box, right next to the small collection of Christmas decorations I had put away a few weeks ago. I had put the ashtray there years before, stowing it away with some of my brother’s belongings. Not wanting to throw it way because it had been his, even though – in a way – it had been the cause of his death.
In fact it was an ashtray I had bought him on one of my numerous escapades around the world. Thinking back it was a small hand-carved chunk of stone, ground down by the hands of a Mewalky Indian. Traditional, they said, even though I had never heard of ancient Indians using ashtrays. They simply used long decorative pipes and knocked the ash out onto the ground. Everyone has to adapt when it came to making money. But before I had chance to climb to my unsteady feet and retrieve it, he waved the thought aside.
“No problem,” he had announced, as he tossed the match into the fire, and pushed his hand back into the hidden pocket, removing a thick black leather wallet. He then flicked it with his wrist to open it up; he proceeded to use it as an ashtray.
“This will suffice,” he simply said, while pulling long and hard upon his cancer stick, pulling it deep into his lungs, before blowing the blue plume into the fire that then disappeared up the wide chimney.
He stared fixated upon my face, as if studying every inch, every flaw. Until what seemed like an eternity later he once again spoke.
“Interesting stuff,” he simply stated, even though after his initial viewing of the room his eyes hadn’t left mine. Smoke curled out his nostrils, running up his pale elongated face.
It was true, my furniture was unusual. I had collected items from various countries I had visited. Not caring if a particular object went with what I already had, but buying it because I simply liked it, regardless. The overall effect of my large front room was that of a museum. Ancient alabaster vases and statues from all over Egypt, of all shapes and sizes. One of my most expensive objects in the room in a small eight inch high statue of The Dwarf God Bes, which is over four thousand years old. There are tapestries from all over Europe – my favourite being a copy of The Hunt of the Unicorn: the Unicorn is Found. Traditional kilim woven carpets from Turkey and Pakistan. Antique giare’s from Puglia in Italy. Swords from Scotland, from a Ballhead Claymore to a Six Finger broadsword and a Basket Hilt broadsword. There’s big chunky furniture from Germany and Holland, with hand carved Segusino Mexican Pine tables and sideboards from rural Taxco, Guanajuato and Cuernavaca from around Mexico City. And a collection of pictures and painting from all over the world, my most prized being a small ten by ten inch pencil drawing of a rose by Picasso, valued at £45,650 at its last appraisal. There is also numerous trinkets and objects covering almost every surface. I hated starkness it made me itchy. I also hated dusting, which gave it the appearance of an abandoned museum.
Also the whole house had large, thick wooden exposed beams running across the ceilings. The beams in the front room had numerous objects hanging from them, or nailed to them, ranging from old horse shoes to a breech-loading Westley Richards rifle, or nicknamed the Monkey Tail, dating back to 1861.
There was also a vast collection of books and manuscripts that any museum would be proud to own, perched on a selection of Victorian mahogany 1880 open bookcases, with the rare first editions sat inside the glass doors of an impressive William IV mahogany bookcase from the 1830’s.
My ex-wives used to call it a junkyard. Funny thing was though, in the settlements they all tried to get their sticky hands on it all without success.
I cleared my throat once again and tried to speak, only creating a croak like noise that seemed to make him smile all the more. He looked like a Cheshir
e cat sat inside human clothing. And I felt like a mouse that he had just caught out in the open.
“Now aren’t I the rude one, coming here and not explaining myself?” He took another cigarette from the red and white packet resting upon his lap, gave it a tap on the packet, and then lit it from the stub of the last, then simply tossed the old stub into the flames. His eyes never left mine, as if he was waiting for me to make a move and was ready to pounce.
I still hadn’t said much in the way of conversation. My throat seemed to be constricted, as if some unseen force had its hands wrapped tightly around it, trying to squeeze the life from me. It felt like I had an elephant sat on my chest.
“Would you like a drink of anything,” I coughed to clear my throat. “Tea, coffee or something stronger?” It was an automatic question, born from English etiquette I had picked up. I felt stupid the moment I said it.
He simply stared and didn’t bother to reply.
I had sat there so long without speaking that he had finished yet another cigarette. This time he tossed it directly into the flames, while once again reaching for another. A compulsive chain-smoker if I ever did see one. It almost seemed like he needed the smoke to be able to breathe.