The Man on the Hill

In March last year, which you will remember was particularly cold and wet, an old university friend of mine, David, who was vicar at a small church in the North Wessex Downs, emailed asking if I might come and visit him. As it happened my wife was away at a conference the following weekend so, glad not to be stuck in an empty flat, I drove down for lunch on Saturday with the intention of staying the night.

The years had not been kind to David, who I will always picture as a slim and handsome youth; all cheekbones and floppy yellow hair and blue eyes a female acquaintance once described as overwhelming. He was still strikingly good looking in his early thirties when, to the shock of his friends, he gave up a city job and devoted himself to his calling. Now though, a decade and change later, the hair had all but gone, he looked gaunt, and though still tall and slim, had acquired a rag-doll clumsiness, like a skeleton rattling on a rope.

Unlike David the vicarage it was well kept, with the thick tangle of wisteria branches curving above the door and a large magnolia, its full display spoiled by the rain, dominating the front lawn. Beneath the wisteria a balding man it took me a second to recognise as David said that lunch was tuna salad and he hoped that was okay.

We ate and caught up. It had been, we calculated, more than six years since we had last met. When I finally put my fork down he changed something in his voice, a register I imagine he used for sermons, and said 'I invited you here because you are the most rational person I know.'

I took the compliment, though I suspect he might have meant the most fiercely atheist, or even the most prosaic minded.

'Last month one of my flock asked asked if she might get a ride home, for she had, she said, had a fright on the hill. I drove her myself and got the story from her. She had walked in on the footpath which cuts through a field over the hill at the end of the lane, and as she was walking up it she saw a man standing at the top watching her. She said he frightened her. The mud in winter can be bad and I suppose she was watching her footing more than the way ahead and only saw him at the last minute. And of course she was a woman on her own so it was only natural she was nervous, but there was more to it; she had a sensation, she used this word, of evil.

'When she looked again the man was gone. At the top of the hill there was no sign of him. She hurried on but glanced behind her often and finally, just as she was about to leave the field, she saw him back where he had been before, standing on the brow of the hill and still watching her.'

'If you want me to propose an explanation I'm sure I could,' I said. 'It might not even be the same man.'

'No, that is not it.' David said. 'After this two other people, including the lady who does the garden, told me they had had similar experiences, and asked if I would perform an exorcism.'

'Is that a normal part of the job?'

'Not at all,' David said. 'In fact it can be rather frowned upon, but my bishop thinks its harmless and was able to give me some pointers.'

'Scattering holy water and waving crosses?'

'One simply commands whatever it is to leave in Jesus Christ's name. Mark talks about casting out demons along with picking up serpents with your bare hands. "I have given you authority over all the power of the enemy" is in Luke.'

'And you did this? Commanded it to go.'

'I tried... I had the morning free about two weeks ago and so I walked up there. I did not see anything but I felt a definite sense of being unwelcome. I commanded whatever was there to go and thought that would be it but then when I turned to head back down I heard a laugh, a cruel laugh, very clear and right up close.' He indicated to the space above his shoulder. 'I don't mind saying I ran back here. I am certain there is an evil up there and I have to try again, but I daren't do it alone. Will you go with me? Now, before it gets dark?'

I should say I was not very impressed by this story. I could make up explanations: a crow on the wind might sound like laughter; but it is immaterial. We do not appreciate our capacity to fool ourselves. Maybe there was no crow, maybe David simply frightened himself and misremembered, for memory is not a thing to be trusted.

We put on our coats and headed up the lane. Past the church it narrowed and we had to negotiate large puddles which stretched from hedgerow to hedgerow. I had brought a pair of walking boots but found myself envious of David's far more appropriate wellies.

The hedgerows turned to trees and the lane became a muddy footpath through a strip of woodland. David took a turning left over a rather rotten old stile into a field. There was nothing there but bare earth and a waymarker to point the route diagonally across it. Away to our right crows cackled in the trees.

'Look!'

I looked, and there on the brow of the hill stood a man. David and I compared notes later and on these aspects we agreed. We could not see him well because he was in silhouette against the sky. He appeared to be heavyset and we both reckoned him to be in his forties or fifties. David said there was an air of menace about him. I could not help but agree for I had assumed, for no reason I could point to, that he was angry. Prosaic minded as I am, my immediate thought was that he must be the farmer.

We walked on, both keeping our eyes on the figure ahead, who all the time stood still and watched us approach. At some point, not thirty yards from him, I glanced down to catch my footing in the slippy mud and heard David exclaim 'He's gone!'

I started running, anxious to see where he had disappeared to, but when I arrived at the top of the hill there was no sign.

David arrived a few seconds behind me and, after a few heavy breaths, asked 'Nothing?'

'Nothing,' I replied, irritated at the fact.

'Do you see any footprints?'

I did not, but the field was large and the mud well churned up and I did not think this very remarkable.

I looked around. I could see the entire field without obstruction. To the north, beyond the little strip of woodland through which we had walked, I could see the church roof and the tops of a few houses, one of which must have been the vicarage. To the south more woodland descended steeply towards a village, through which ran the main road where a car already had its headlamps on against the darkening weather.

'Could he have made it to the trees?'

'He must have,' I said, but my mental arithmetic said there was no way. The only direction he could have gone without us seeing was too far.

We stood for a while getting our breath back. It was the bareness of the field that made the strongest impression. In summer, with crops in the ground and leaves on the trees, it would have been a fine  place, but with nothing there but the mud it was a lonely spot. The only sounds were the crows and the growing patter of drizzle on our raincoats.

'Well then,' David said. He pulled the bible from his pocket and held it up above his head. 'Whatever unnatural thing dwells in the place,' he said loudly, his tone shifting to sermonising again, 'I command it to go.'

As his word rang out the crows rose from the tree where they had been roosting and, with a great cacophony of calls, wheeled in circles above it. David turned to face them. 'By the authority vested in me by Jesus Christ.' He shouted the words Jesus Christ at the top of his voice. 'I command you to go.'

The crows did not go.

'In the name of Jesus Christ, go!' he shouted again, turning as he did so as to address the command in every direction.

He lowered his arms and then suddenly, for no reason I could see, fell backwards into the mud.

'Something hit me in the chest,' he said as I helped him up.

'I didn't see anything.'

'I can still feel it,' He picked up his bible and brushed the mud off it.

I noticed that the sky was darkening fast. 'Lets get out of here, it's going to rain properly any moment.'

It hit before we reached the edge of the field, a nasty, squally rainstorm that drove sideways into our faces, and we ran for the cover of the trees. We both looked back when we crossed the stile but saw nothing.

At the vicarage David went to change his muddy trousers and said he needed to make a phone call. I found the kettle and made some tea.

'I can't get hold of the bishop,' he said. 'I'm not sure what to do now. I'm told there might be priests who specialise but nobody seems to know any and it's a bit of an awkward thing to ask after. It feels rather a personal failure. Have I not been given authority? Does Christ decline to work through me?'

Years ago, at university, David and I had spent long evenings debating the existence of God. Both of us fuelled by beer and pot and the certainty of youth. Me armed with Occam's razor in one hand and Russell's teapot in the other, regurgitating whatever Richard Dawkins article I had last read. David, never dogmatic but always certain of his faith, and always certain that it had value, happy to meet me point by point. We enjoyed ourselves immensely, and reckoned ourselves at the forefront of intellectual argument. Now, I thought it better to change the subject.

'When you invited me down,' I said. 'I had pictured a cosy pub with a log fire.'

'There is a pub,' he said, 'but it's a long walk.' He looked outside at the rain. “I do have a wood burner though.”

We moved through to the front room where David lit the fire and the our mood lightened and he asked me what I thought.

'Big conclusions require big evidence,' I said. 'I can't explain why you fell, but that seems a very earthly mystery. What do you think?'

He paused. 'Some agent of the enemy, to coin Luke. I am certain of that much. Something which is seen only when it wants to be seen. And malevolent.' 

'A sort of supernatural practical joker,' I said. 'A git from beyond the grave.'

David laughed but then said 'I do think it's dangerous though. It hit me hard.' He stood up. 'I actually have a half decent bottle of wine. Dinner is beef rendang.' He provided me with a glass and went into the kitchen to cook. I pulled out my laptop and checked my emails before looking up and seeing that it was now fully dark outside. I went to close the curtains and that's when I saw him.

The only light was from the window. It picked out the bare branches of the magnolia which stood in a pale circle of its fallen petals, and beyond that, in the shadow of the lane, the shape of a heavyset man standing and watching the house.

I shouted and ran to the front door but when I opened it the lane was empty. The rain had stopped but I was in my socks so went no further than the doorway. David, after making me repeat my hurried explanation, went out and checked down the side of the house and up and down the lane.

'Nothing,' he said.

The moment he stepped away from the closed door though it rattled in the frame as if someone was trying to get in. It was David who threw it open again to look out once more to an empty driveway. As he stood there we heard the handle of the back door turn.

We ran back to it. I stopped to close the front door which meant I was a few paces behind. David reached the back door while it was still being tried from the outside. The back door, unlike the front, was half glazed. David went to grab the handle but instead fell backwards with a cry. I was just close enough behind to stop his head hitting the floor.

'I saw its face,' he said, and his voice, which I will never forget, terrified me more than anything else. 'Dear God! I saw its face.'

There was a crash, and I looked up to see an arm in a blue raincoat sleeve reach through the broken window and a large, strong fingered hand, fingernails filthy with mud, turn the key in the lock.

The tone in David's voice had put me in a panic. I lifted him to his feet and half pulled him up the stairs. The only room in the house which I knew to have a lock was the upstairs bathroom. We bolted the door, which had a thankful solid feel to it, and huddled on the floor together. I remember looking about for a possible weapon but coming up with nothing more lethal than a safety razor.

There was the sound of movement below us, and then there were footsteps on the stairs, slow and heavy, and then the doorhandle turned and the door pressed away from its frame as it was pushed from outside, and then there was nothing. I realised, after a few minutes of quiet, that I was squeezing David's hand as hard as he was squeezing mine.

---

Of the rest there is little to say. A policeman came once I had persuaded David to call them, and a neighbour was alerted to our plight and appeared carrying a sturdy piece of plywood with which to secure the back door. When they were both gone David and I sat down to a joyless meal of burnt curry and overcooked rice before waiting up in embarrassed silence until we felt we might be able to sleep. There was a shame in being so wholly unmanned that meant neither of us broached the subject of what happened. In the morning I lied that I had to return home early and David did not protest.

He emailed that evening thanking me for my help and I vacillated so long over what to write in reply that I never sent anything. Six months later his sister contacted me. David had apparently moved to a community in the Scottish islands. At first I thought he had just gone for a break but it must have been more than that for it turned out she was disposing of his effects.

David had kept a diary. It records that I was due to visit and then, a week later, said He cannot get in but he still comes every night.

His sister, thankfully, asked a very direct question. Did he mean me? And I was able to answer equally directly. No.

I try to remain rational. I did not see any evidence that David was persecuted by anything other than a crazy man and an active imagination. But I can still hear his voice: I saw its face. Dear God I saw its face. It was a voice I did not recognise as my friend. It came from a place broken in ways I cannot comprehend. And that is what keeps me awake at night.