---

 

This writing was accepted for publication in the 108 page perfect-bound ISSN# / ISBN# issue/book “How to Become an Octopus” Down in the Dirt, v200 (10/22) Order the paperback book:

Order this writing that appears in the one-of-a-kind anthology The Paths Less Traveled the Down in the Dirt September-December 2022 issues collection book		get the 422 page September-December 2022 Down in the Dirt 6" x 9" ISBN# perfect-bound paperback book:

The Hill

John Farquhar Young

    “Hello Mr. Harris.” The young girl, perhaps ten years old, frail looking and slightly small for her age, known to the villagers as Stella, edges towards the fence which separates the grey-haired old man’s garden from the lane. Rory Harris, now in his late sixties, casually dressed in a loose-fitting jacket and faded khaki tee shirt, shifts his attention away from the caterpillars which are ravaging his cabbages and observes the diminutive person standing before him. On his wrinkled face a soft smile replaces his frown. The sight of the girl, the only child of a man who died in a road accident barely a year before, always saddens him and reminds him again of the cruelty which stalks the world. He sees she has turned her attention in the direction of a field bordering the villagers call the ‘long pasture’.
    “That’s a strange place,” she says quietly after a long moment.
    “The pasture?” inquires the old man.
    Stella shakes her head. “The hill. The hill beyond that.”
    “Why do you say that, Stella?”
    Another long pause. “Do you believe in ghosts, Mr. Harris?” she asks, her voice barely above a whisper.
    How many months since her father died? Rory is alert to the importance of choosing his words carefully. “Have you seen something odd, Stella,” he says gently.
    Stella shrugs but says nothing.
    Not sure I should encourage her to say more, Rory thinks, but at the same time is irresistibly prompted to continue. “What did you see, Stella?”
    She draws a breath. “I saw my father in the distance, high on the hill. I ran towards him, but then I fell, and when I looked again ... he was gone.” A tear runs down her face and without another word she turns abruptly and makes her way slowly up the lane to her home.
    The small retreating figure prompts a flashback, one of many which have from time to time contorted Rory’s waking moments. For almost forty years he has tried with mixed success to control these brief and vivid episodes.
    Dragged from the present, now again a young soldier, he stands paralysed beside the ruins of the orphanage looking at the flies settling on the small, dust and debris covered bodies strewn around; and then, as he stumbles away, he senses invisible but tangible small presences crowding around, whispering, clinging to him.
    The medical diagnosis: stress related psychosis; the pills useless - and long abandoned. “Too open,” someone said to him in the place they sent him to. “You’re suggestible,” another medic told him. “It’s your wound,” a partially blinded veteran murmured. “Some people lose an arm or leg, or something else. Your mind is wounded.”
    Stress related psychosis. Too open! Too suggestible! My wound! Words! Words, which have circulated in his consciousness down the many years that followed his discharge from military service. Breathing heavily, eyes screwed shut, he re-emerges in ‘his own place’, to the calm of his garden, to the cabbage patch with its caterpillars, to his cottage and the quiet, blue sky. My world!
    A month later: the shock of Stella’s disappearance, the search, the swift discovery of her body, the police enquiries, the sudden intrusion and departure of the media people, the news that the girl had died of natural causes - all this has all been absorbed into the collective thinking of the villagers then as days passed gradually shrugged away. Stella’s mother has moved to stay with her sister in the city.
    Life for the villagers slowly returns to normal, but not for Rory. Since the discovery of the body, his sleep, often troubled, is now shredded by nightmares, and his days, increasingly fragmented by his flashbacks.
    Do you believe in ghosts? I saw my father on the hill. Little Stella’s words come back to him. Dying on the hill! Coincidence?
    A strengthening but ill-defined need (Is it just the curiosity of an old man? he wonders) draws him to the hill then upward to the small clearing between the gorse bushes where the child’s body was found.
    What AM I doing here? he grumbles. As he enters the clearing there is the faint suggestion of a whisper. It lingers for a moment then fades. Only the breeze in the bushes, he tells himself. Too open, too suggestible, words again echoing in his mind, but now as a reprimand and a warning. Control your mind, man! Control your imagination. Just here to look, that’s all!
    For a while he stands, but as he turns to leave, he senses a presence drifting beside him, invisible but too vivid to be ignored. Imagination? And then a whisper, quiet but in its impact shatteringly clear: “Lost, I am lost, my father is lost, help us. Show us a path.”
    Path? What path? An option – and only one, occurs to him. He glances upwards towards the summit of the hill. Higher, I must go higher.
    The whispering continues: Now others come. Show them a path. Presences crowd in on him. He climbs. He reaches the summit. Self-consciously and uncertainly, he points upwards to the sky. “Your path. And now you must go on...all of you, please, just go on,” he pleads. “Just go on.”
    The presences hesitate. They circle around - then gradually, then more confidently, then more swiftly, they rise; and at that instant something seems to leave him and to follow. He senses the presences disperse, and then gently to fade away.
    For several minutes Rory stands, emotionally drained - hollowed out. What have I just experienced? he asks himself. He turns and absorbs the scene below him - the village cottages and their well-tended gardens. Normality!
    And then as he moves slowly and painfully down the hill, he becomes aware of an unfamiliar inner lightness – a new freedom. He senses that he has participated in some form of healing and has thereby been healed. There will be no further flashbacks. He is confident about that.

Copyright of written pieces remain with the author, who has allowed it to be shown through Scars Publications and Design.Web site © Scars Publications and Design. All rights reserved. No material may be reprinted without express permission from the author.

Problems with this page? Then deal with it...