The Road To Darker Killingbeck

THE ROAD TO DARKER KILLINGBECK

I reached the top of the hill and looked back the way I had came. I gazed at the empty, wild and endlessly free countryside behind and to the side of me, the mountainous shadows in the background overseeing the surface of the land, pockmarked with small lochans reflecting silvery moonlight on their rippling tides. Tiny unseen winds of the night ripping the water on the surface, lifting tiny droplets of water and whispering in the darkness. I was sure I was being watched and the watcher was sure that I knew they were watching me.

Black night swooped down as I turned, the road ahead straight and treeless, night gathering its skirt around me as I prepared to stick my head in the jaws of the beast. The jaws of the beast, how often, I ask myself have I been there? There beside the beast, facing the beast, my heart pounding, the forest dark.

As I stood on that long and lonely road with the black night studded with stars folding around me on all sides I considered all the risks I had taken in my life. The number of times I had teased the beast, the number of times I had taken chances... Maybe, it occurred to me, that this was one risk too far.................................

I sighed, another hill, rising to an even greater height lay before me. I still did not know where I was, and I shivered with cold in the silent moonlight and remembered Marlowe's Faustus.

'O, thou art fairer than the evening air
Clad in the beauty of a thousand stars'

And as if by miracle when I finally reached the top of the next steeply rising brae and after long purchase on its staggering slope (Not Marlowe) I saw Darker Killingbeck.

It's skyline reaching skyward, gothic spires, dark shaped buildings moonlight sparking off its angles, streets and houses, and people aimlessly wandering from home to work and home again like a scene from a Lowry. Existence churning out over and over till the money runs out and the machine breaks down and stops and crumbles like Shelley's Ozymandais.

I walk down into town, a church bell chimes midnight and knock on the door of a house advertising in garish lights 'bed and breakfast'.

I knock the door and wait and a woman, dark and mysterious answers.

"I’m temporarily lost in my memories," she tells me, "Both good and bad. I can see faces from faded photographs. And I’m looking at the stranger in the mirror…" She concludes and tilts her head to the side. "are you looking for a room dear?"