A Nest of Nightmares

Phil looked back at the house, getting in alignment with the window, then turned and looked across the field, his eyes narrowed as he tried to calculate distance. Then he began walking slowly, looking down often at the ground. I hung back, following him at a distance and not myself looking for the maze. I didn’t want to find it. Although I couldn’t have explained my reaction, the maze frightened me, and I wanted to be away, back on the road again, alone together in the little car, eating apples, gazing at the passing scenery, talking.

‘Ah!’

I stopped still at Phil’s triumphant cry and watched as he hopped from one foot to the other. One foot was clearly on higher ground. He began to walk in a curious, up-down fashion. ‘I think this is it,’ he called. ‘I think I’ve found it. If the land continues to dip . . . yes, yes, this is it!’ He stopped walking and looked back at me, beaming.

‘Great,’ I said.

‘The grass has grown back where once it was kept cleared, but you can still feel the place where the swathe was cut,’ he said, rocking back and forth to demonstrate the confines of the shallow ditch. ‘Come and see.’

‘I’ll take your word for it,’ I said.

He cocked his head. ‘I thought you’d be interested. I thought something like this would be right up your alley. The funny folkways of the ancient Brits.’

I shrugged, unable to explain my unease.

‘We’ve plenty of time, love,’ he said. ‘I promise we’ll climb Glastonbury Tor before we push on. But we’re here now, and I’d like to get the feel of this.’ He stretched his hand towards me. ‘Come tread the maze with me.’

It would have been so easy to take his hand and do just that. But overriding my desire to be with him, to take this as just another lark, was the fearful, wordless conviction that there was danger here. And if I refused to join him, perhaps he would give up the idea and come away with me. He might sulk in the car, but he would get over it, and at least we would be away.

‘Let’s go now,’ I said, my arms stiff at my sides.

Displeasure clouded his face, and he turned away from me with a shrug. ‘Give me just a minute, then,’ he said. And as I watched, he began to tread the maze.

He didn’t attempt that curious, skipping dance we had seen the others do the night before; he simply walked, and none too quickly, with a careful, measured step. He didn’t look at me as he walked, although the pattern of the maze brought him circling around again and again to face in my direction – he kept his gaze on the ground. I felt, as I watched, that he was being drawn farther away from me with every step. I wrapped my arms around myself and told myself not to be a fool. I could feel the little hairs standing up all along my arms and back, and I had to fight the urge to break and run like hell. I felt, too, as if someone watched us, but when I looked around, the field was as empty as ever.

Phil had stopped, and I assumed he had reached the centre. He stood very still and gazed off into the distance, his profile towards me. I remembered the man I had seen standing in the field – perhaps in that very spot, the centre of the maze – when we had first arrived at The Old Vicarage.

Then, breaking the spell, Phil came bounding towards me, cutting across the path of the maze, and caught me in a bear hug. ‘Not mad?’

I relaxed a little. It was over, and all was well. I managed a small laugh. ‘No, of course not.’

‘Good. Let’s go, then. Phil’s had his little treat.’

We walked arm in arm back towards the road. We didn’t mention it again.

In the months to come those golden days, the two weeks we had spent wandering around southwest England, often came to mind. Those thoughts were an antidote to more recent memories: to those last days in the hospital, with Phil in pain, and then Phil dead.

I moved back to the States – it was home, after all, where my family and most of my friends lived. I had lived in England for less than two years, and without Phil there was little reason to stay. I found an apartment in the neighbourhood where I had lived just after college, and got a job teaching, and, although painfully and rustily, began to go through the motions of making a new life for myself. I didn’t stop missing Phil, and the pain grew no less with the passage of time, but I adjusted to it. I was coping.

In the spring of my second year alone I began to think of going back to England. In June I went for a vacation, planning to spend a week in London, a few days in Cambridge with Phil’s sister, and a few days visiting friends in St Ives. When I left London in a rented car and headed for St Ives, I did not plan to retrace the well-remembered route of that last vacation, but that is what I found myself doing, with each town and village a bittersweet experience, recalling pleasant memories and prodding the deep sadness in me wider awake.