A Nest of Nightmares

Half-suspecting a joke, despite the apparently genuine note of surprise in his voice, I got up and joined him at the window, wrapping my arms around myself against the cold. Looking out where he was gazing, I saw them. They were indisputably human figures – five, or perhaps six or seven, of them, all moving about in a shifting spiral, like some sort of children’s game or country dance.

And then I saw it. It was like suddenly comprehending an optical illusion. One moment, bewilderment; but, the next, the pattern was clear.

‘It’s a maze,’ I said. ‘Look at it, it’s marked out in the grass.’

‘A turf-maze,’ Phil said, wondering.

Among the people walking that ancient, ritual path, one suddenly paused and looked up, seemingly directly at us. In the pale moonlight and at that distance I couldn’t tell if it was a man or a woman. It was just a dark figure with a pale face turned up towards us.

I remembered then that I had seen someone standing in that very field, perhaps in that same spot, earlier in the day, and I shivered. Phil put his arm around me and drew me close.

‘What are they doing?’ I asked.

‘There are remnants of traditions about dancing or running through mazes all over the country,’ Phil said. ‘Most of the old turf-mazes have vanished – people stopped keeping them up before this century. They’re called troy-towns, or mizmazes . . . No one knows when or why they began, or if treading the maze was game or ritual, or what the purpose was.’

Another figure now paused beside the one who stood still, and laid hold of that one’s arm, and seemed to say something. And then the two figures fell back into the slow circular dance.

‘I’m cold,’ I said. I was shivering uncontrollably, although it was not with any physical chill. I gave up the comfort of Phil’s arm and ran for the bed.

‘They might be witches,’ Phil said. ‘Hippies from Glastonbury, trying to revive an old custom. Glastonbury does attract some odd types.’

I had burrowed under the bedclothes, only the top part of my face left uncovered, and was waiting for my teeth to stop chattering and for the warmth to penetrate my muscles.

‘I could go out and ask them who they are,’ Phil said. His voice sounded odd. ‘I’d like to know who they are. I feel as if I should know.’

I stared at his back, alarmed. ‘Phil, you’re not going out there!’

‘Why not? This isn’t New York City. I’d be perfectly safe.’

I sat up, letting the covers fall. ‘Phil, don’t.’

He turned away from the window to face me. ‘What’s the matter?’

I couldn’t speak.

‘Amy . . . you’re not crying?’ His voice was puzzled and gentle. He came to the bed and held me.

‘Don’t leave me,’ I whispered against the rough weave of his sweater.

‘ ’Course I won’t,’ he said, stroking my hair and kissing me. ‘ ’Course I won’t.’

But of course he did, less than two months later, in a way neither of us could have guessed then. But even then, watching the dancers in the maze, even then he was dying.

In the morning, as we were settling our bill, Phil mentioned the people we had seen dancing in the field during the night. The landlord was flatly disbelieving.

‘Sure you weren’t dreaming?’

‘Quite sure,’ said Phil. ‘I wondered if it was some local custom . . .’

He snorted. ‘Some custom! Dancing around a field in the dead of night!’

‘There’s a turf-maze out there,’ Phil began.

But the man was shaking his head. ‘No, not in that field. Not a maze!’

Phil was patient. ‘I don’t mean one with hedges, like in Hampton Court. Just a turf-maze, a pattern made in the soil years ago. It’s hardly noticeable now, although it can’t have been too many years since it was allowed to grow back. I’ve seen them other places and read about them, and in the past there were local customs of running the maze, or dancing through it, or playing games. I thought some such custom might have been revived locally.’

The man shrugged. ‘I wouldn’t know about that,’ he said. We had learned the night before that the man and his wife were ‘foreigners’, having only settled here, from the north of England, some twenty years before. Obviously, he wasn’t going to be much help with information on local traditions.

After we had loaded our bags into the car, Phil hesitated, looking towards the hedge. ‘I’d quite like to have a look at that maze close-to,’ he said.

My heart sank, but I could think of no rational reason to stop him. Feebly I tried, ‘We shouldn’t trespass on somebody else’s property . . .’

‘Walking across a field isn’t trespassing!’ He began to walk along the hedge, towards the road. Because I didn’t want him to go alone, I hurried after. There was a gate a few yards along the road by which we entered the field. But once there, I wondered how we would find the maze. Without an overview such as our window had provided, the high grass looked all the same, and from this level, in ordinary daylight, slight alterations in ground level wouldn’t be obvious to the eye.