Perhaps you share with me, a love
of all things Gothic. Ghost
stories, horror novels and comic books, dark and menacing a la Peter Straub,
Stephen King, Dean Koontz, Edgar Allan Poe, Mary Shelley, James Herbert, Clive
Barker--et al. Maybe, like me, you
feel delight when dusting off a copy of “Creepy Tales” or joy when watching “Nosferatu” wreak havoc in monochrome.
If this appeals to you, then you,
as I did, must travel to Sutherland, Scotland,
especially the north-west corridor which runs from Ullapool
to Durness. A desolate and demented land, bleak with mystery and foreboding.
How I came to be walking a very
lonely stretch of road between Scourie and Kinlochbervie on a dramatically dark and starless night is
a long story, which should, perhaps, begin with Fancesca
Moon.
Francesca,
soft, adroit, high-cheekboned, with a tight thin
smile angled delicately into the beautiful smooth and classic architecture of
her face. She is a confident and
strong woman, like the voice of an Edinburgh
advocate, and determined, like a greyhound running down the Powderhall
hare, magical and elegant, and star struck canines. But, she is also a poisonous and slithering,
deadly snake when crossed. Ready to crucify, to carry the colours,
to burn the enemy at the stake.
My crime? I had, innocently flirted with a girl I had
known from the faculty of engineering at the University
of Glasgow. Devla, slender and
deliciously attractive and green, slid into my arms at a New Year’s Eve ceilidh. She had
smiled at me, wide and wonderful, white bright teeth - a twinkle dancing
between our eyes. Old
friends. Civil
engineering chemistry. Body language oozing mutual magnetic fields. Though nothing, nothing
more.
Our understandings, moi et Ms. Moon, of this very
innocent encounter, differed. So much so
that Francesca went ballistic. Orbito magnifico! I am dumbfounded. We collide - head on
- lights blazing, like unsuspecting cars.
Afterward she slept on revenge, with my best friend Ray sharing the
warmth of her nest.
Urgent decisions are made. Equations in the great scheme of things are
sorted out. I leave. The pump inside my chest
cracking. Fragmenting
into a million, weeping splinters of emotion. I would, I resolved, go backpacking, for a
couple of weeks at least. Strike out on
my own! Survivalist. Go north, from my east coast base in search
of a far northern soul, my world strategically packed in my Karrimor
Trail rucksack, one man tent precariously strapped to the masthead perched in
space behind me. Shelter
from the emotional storm, raging in my head.
Walking away
from it all. Francesca,
the treacherous Ray, Devla. Seeking new frontiers. Creating distance between
me and them. Crossing bridges
with their magnificent angles, sparkling structures and designs. Reaching out across
relentless misery. Light. Space. Torsion.
Sutherland. Above me the stars, a stark glow, are
colluding with the gently falling darkness.
The cosmos - sprawling hyper - folds around me. The initially soft drizzle blows,
increasingly hard, into my face. A
furtively creeping crosswind rises, as night wraps its uneasy shadows across
the brokered landscape. From somewhere
above me rushing water, gurgling hurriedly down from the unseen mountains, is
somehow refreshingly reassuring. The
sweeping, crashing sound of the sea, I know, is not too distant.
I check my watch, a Rotary,
holding the torch aloft at exactly the correct degree of angle for
inspection. Time. Haunting, enshrined by humankind into a kind
of artificial, though nagging, reality. Demented,
like the landscape. Arbitrary
division of all existence into turgid blocks of ever-diminishing life - space. The distant fanfare for the common soul, and
we are all common souls in the end.