The only other possibility I could think of was a dog. It could have been a Labrador or a sheepdog or even a wolfhound. Something big. But it hadn’t moved like a dog and what little I’d seen of it had seemed to be a completely different shape. And when a dog bounds into a hedge it usually makes enough noise to scare off every living thing within thirty yards. And dogs don’t just disappear they are too clumsy and noisy they come leaping back out again with their tongues flapping. And if it was a dog where had its owner been? I hadn’t seen anyone. All dogs had owners I was sure of that.
It was not a dog. It was not a deer or a badger or a fox. It was not a muntjac or a pine marten or a mink. It was something else. It was something that was not in any of the books and I knew this even as I went through the ritual of crossing out the possibilities to placate the insistent demands of my forebrain. I sat at the table with the wildlife book open in front of me and I felt little shivers of fear crackling through my body like electricity. It seemed like a fear much older than reason. It was as if something had been triggered.
I was tired as hell. I stumbled over to the bed and pulled myself into the sleeping bag. I was seizing up again. I would need sleep. I was going to go back tomorrow. I wanted to see it properly. I would not try to go to the town again. I had no interest in the town. I couldn’t think what had interested me about the town at all. There was nothing for me there. The search was somewhere else. I would not go to the town I would go again to the lane by the church and I would sit quietly behind a tree or in a hedge or behind a wall and I would watch and wait until I saw it again. I would see it again and then I would know.
I woke the next morning with a deep irritation inside me. I opened my eyes and some anger was coiling and uncoiling itself in me like a great worm. I felt it in the pit of my stomach I felt it rise through my navel it burnt along the lines of the scratches down my chest. I couldn’t tolerate my physical pain as I had the day before. The pain in my ribs the pain in my knee the pain in my head which never stopped all of it angered me it twisted me around a stick and held me over a fire. I was shifting inside my own body it was like some giant itch I wanted to throw it all off and run. I wanted to scream I wanted to burst out of my small self into the world ablaze. I closed my eyes and saw my mind straining at the bars lashing out at the world all of the smallness and stupidity. I saw it all finally crushed all the people flattened the glory of the end of it all. Skyscrapers falling oceans overcoming the defences the silence descending. I didn’t want this stillness now I didn’t want this warm white stillness I wanted to be the wild man naked in the rain the raging monkey tearing at the flesh tearing at the fucking red flesh. I wanted to rage smash things throw them break through tear it all up bite bite bite until all was torn all was hanging down loose and dripping all was pain all was broke.
I lay in the sleeping bag and watched the crescendo rising and falling fermenting and turning around and around. I didn’t know why it was here or what it had come for. Maybe I had walked too far yesterday maybe it had just been too much. I got out of the bed slowly and moved across the room and when my injured leg caught on the chair I kicked the chair hard across the room and cracked one of its legs. That made me angrier and I swore furiously at myself. There was no food left in the house apart from some soft sprouting potatoes but I still didn’t feel hungry I just wanted water. The water level in the jerry can was low and that made me furious. Why the hell hadn’t I filled it up? The whole thing was just fucking ridiculous look at me here in this fucking place it was fucking ridiculous who was I what was I doing I was sick of it all I was so sick of it. I was sick of myself and my broken body and this giant itch this giant coiling worm I wanted to burn it all down take myself away jump from the roof and fall. That would be a response. That would be some fucking response.
I sat on the cracked chair and breathed deeply until I was calmer. The giant worm was still in there but I tried to let him be. I took the jerry can and went out of the door into the yard. It was as warm and white and silent as it had been for weeks. I went through the gate and down the bank of the combe to the pool where I collected my water. The pool was clear and still and I filled the can from the little trickle of water which became a waterfall when the rains came. I was surprised at how low the stream was.
I went back into the house sat down and drank four or five cups of water. I wasn’t hungry but I thought I should eat. There were a couple of crusts of stale bread next to the sprouting potatoes. I couldn’t be bothered to get the stove going to cook the potatoes so I just ate the bread. I nearly gagged on it. It didn’t do anything about the itch. I still wanted to explode and take everything here with me. I still had no idea why.
But I had work to do. It didn’t matter how I felt I had work to do. I packed a couple of the books into the rucksack I filled the water bottle I put on my boots and I walked out into the heat. I followed the same path I had followed the day before up the stream and onto the moor over and down again towards the lane. The day before I had turned inward as I walked. I had felt every step I took I had experienced my own motion the warm air upon me everything that I was. Today I had no interest in myself. My only interest now was in the land around me. Still nothing moved still I heard no birds. If anything moved at all then I would see it instantly. But I saw nothing all the way to the church.
Of course there was nothing in the lane. I knew as soon as I arrived that I was wasting my time and I was angry with myself for coming. I had seen an animal. Why would I see it in the same place twice? I stalked up and down the lane impatiently looking for signs but I found nothing. I couldn’t find the prints I had seen yesterday. I was hot and angry. I took out my water bottle and drank some of it. I breathed deeply again. My chest rose and fell but the itch clung on like a tick.
I kept going. As I had crossed the moor I had made a plan. I would be systematic about this. I was going to find this thing. I walked down the lane for a further half-mile looking for tracks. Then I climbed painfully over one of the hedge banks and followed it up again on the other side of the hedge looking for marks or shit or black hairs or anything at all. I did the same with the hedge on the other side of the lane. Nothing. I fanned out over the fields then and I walked each field on both sides of the lane. At my slow pace it must have taken me a couple of hours to scan the area around the spot where I had seen the thing. I walked around all the fields over the scrub and the sparse heather around the bent trees over the grasses and the plantain. Nothing. No prints no shit no hairs. No sound no sound at all anywhere.
I wanted to go into the church. I wanted to be entombed by the cold stone to get out of this heat to sit in an empty pew and ease myself. I wondered if I could work the anger and irritation out of me and have the old stale air of that place carry it away through the stained glass and out into the whiteness. I wanted to go in but I stayed outside. I had come here to watch. I sat down with my back against the trunk of the ancient yew in the churchyard. From there I could see out onto the lane to the place where I had seen it and for some way on either side. If it came back here I would not miss it.
The yew must have been centuries old it was hollow at the centre and the wood I was leaning on had been twisted and gnarled by the ages. Its green needles were thick above me its berries scarlet. I drank more water. I said nothing to myself or to the tree or to anyone I could dream of or think about. I just sat and watched the lane and the hedges and the fields and nothing happened for hours or what I thought must have been hours. I had no watch and so time was nothing not even a concept time was nothing and nothing happened. When you sit like this you realise that nothing has its own energy that it moves that nothing can happen like an event or an episode. Nothingness extends itself emptiness moves and when you stare into it things happen to you. I sat with my back against the yew and I looked across the churchyard wall over to the lane. Inside me the worm was still coiling though it was moving more sluggishly since I had settled down.