Into the Grey

David Jones stood atop Cefn Bryn, one of the higher points on the Gower Peninsula. It was early spring, or late winter, depending on how you wanted to look at it, and the air was unusually clear for the season. The twenty-or-so houses and pastures that made up Nicholaston spread out at the bottom of the hill, about a hundred feet down, and pressed up against the small cliffs overlooking the bay. Out beyond the bay, ghosting over the dark green Atlantic waters, he could make out a bit of Cornwall. The first time he'd seen that low, black stretch of land, he'd imagined he was seeing Ireland, but an hour that same night in the hostel with his maps spread out over the floor convinced him otherwise. He turned 180 degrees, to look back on the Gower. A nippish breeze picked up a tuft of his hair and tried to reach its fingers down the neck of his coat.

The Gower was considered one of Glamorgan's areas of beauty, but the winter had turned most of the land brown. Down toward the end of the peninsula he could make out a spattering of new growth in the otherwise bare small forests, and the tough grass along the coastal cliffs was always green, but up here there was nothing much beside scrubgrass and bracken, and they were brown. Even still, there was a beauty to the place, especially for someone who had grown up in the flat concrete expanses of a city. The sky was as blue as he'd ever seen it; not just blue, but a radiant, shocking, -alive- blue. The clouds looked clean, and bright, and crisp. Gulls hung over the beaches, turning in the updrafts; he'd heard that there were even wild ponies living up here between the hollows, too -- apparently they were a protected species.

David went a few feet down the leeward side of the hill and unfolded his map on the ground. The map was far too big to be useful completely open, so he folded it back on itself until it showed just the part he needed. There were standing stones near here, and a cairn, according to the markings, but he had seen enough of those to satisfy him in the last two days. He scanned with his finger across the map until he came on 'Arthur's Stone'. Glancing up to fix the direction in his mind, he refolded the map and stowed it in his coat pocket and began gallumping down the hill.

Arthur's Stone turned out to be not too difficult to find -- it seemed to be a tourist attraction of sorts, and there was a well-worn foot path leading to it in a roundabout fashion. It was both cairn and standing stones combined: a half-dozen stones about a foot-and-a-half high sat in a circle, completely supporting a much larger rock that must have weighed as much as a small truck, from the size of it. There was room to squirm between the short stones and lay under the rock if you were one for dares; it looked like someone had done that recently. Someone else had laid a bouquet of flowers on the rock. That took him somewhat by surprise.

Another rock about the same size as the first stood on end a few feet away. David sat down by its sunny side and leaned against it, enjoying its warmth, then pulled an apple from his pocket and ate it as he contemplated the stones. There were two main stories that explained how they had taken their name: the first claimed that the Gower was actually Avalon, and Arthur's Stone was the great king's final resting place. The second said that after Mount Badon, where the Saxons were defeated, Arthur plucked the stone from his boot and flung it back over his shoulder, sending it all the way to Southern Wales. David doubted them both, especially the second. The first he had found many Gower residents liked to believe. Historians said it was the grave of an unknown local chieftain, and of little real significance.

After a while, David lifted himself up and continued on over the Gower, away from Nicholaston. He picked his way between the heath and bracken, and made his way down the hill toward River Loughor's mud flats. On the far side of the river lay Llanelli, a moderately-sized city as far as they went in Wales, and definitely larger than anything on the Gower. He found the worn-dirt trail that was the public footpath and followed it as it led between several homes and set him out on a paved road. He was in a small town about half the size of Nicholaston. Overhead the clouds had begun to fade away, slowly disappearing into the blank grey that would soon be a thick fog. A bit down the road to his right, a two-storied stone and wood building sported a sign naming it the Greyhound Inn. Most of the 'inns' he had stayed in had been little more than a bed-and-breakfast home with a sign out front, but this place had more of an 'establishment' look to it. However, he knew Welsh hospitality did not lack in home or business, and he had no preference. Since it would be dark soon, what with the fog rolling in, he decided not look up the local hostel. He turned up the road and walked up to the front door of the inn, stopping to wipe his boots on the mat outside.

Just inside the door a hallway branched off to separate dining rooms on the right and left side, and to a dark staircase a bit further back. A copy of the same Ordinance Survey map of the Gower that David had in his pocket hung on the wall in a frame, with the Greyhound Inn marked by a red dot. David poked his head into the room on the right and glanced around. A half-dozen or so round tables arranged in no particular order were circled by four dark-wood chairs each. Booths with high backs lined two walls; the other two were taken up by a curved bar that fenced off their shared corner. Between the shelves of glasses and framed photos hanging on the walls behind the bar, a door led back to the kitchen. A large man with long, grey mustaches stood just outside that door, drying out pint glasses with a rag. He looked to be in his fifties, and had an English face. When David stepped into the room he glanced up and smiled. "Hiya."

"Hiya," David said. "Am I too late for lunch?"

"Close, but you made it in time." The man nodded toward one of the tables. "There are menus there on the tables, if you'd like."

David smiled and thanked the man, and picked a table to sit at. He skimmed over the menu and ordered one of the specials, he didn't pay too much attention to what it was. After the man had taken the order and relayed it back to the kitchen, he returned to continue drying out glasses. He seemed a pleasant enough sort, and introduced himself as Andrew Williams, so David gave him his name in return.

"David Jones -- that's a good Welsh name," said the man.

"My parents were both Welsh. Well, not them exactly; I mean, neither of them were born here. I think their ancestors came over a pretty long time ago. But they were both of Welsh blood, if you know what I mean."

The man nodded. "Are you from the States, then?"

"No, Canada. Vancouver." David lifted his backpack to show the flag patch he had sewn onto the front pocket.

The man grinned. His teeth were uneven. "Even better. Americans are nice enough, see, but sometimes they get a bit rude, particularly when they're pissed. Then they act like they own the place, and should be waited on hand and foot. Canadians, though..."

David lifted his cup; "Our mothers train us well, and here's to them."

From back in the direction of the kitchen, a woman's voice called out. "Are you talking to yourself again, Andy? What are you saying out there? Something about Canadians? Leave off 'em, Andy -- they have manners, and they always leave a tip." With the last words a plump woman as old as the man poked her head out from the door to the kitchen. Her eyes fell on David and she clapped a hand to her mouth. "Oh, pardon me, love, I didn't know anyone was in this room." She winked, and her smile gave the lie to her words.

The meal was brought out by a tall, skinny man in his late twenties who gave his name as Gerald. He was the Williams' nephew as well as the cook. By this time David had forgotten what he ordered, and he'd hoped to tell by looking at the plate, but he couldn't. It was tasty enough in any case, and warm. The innspeople left him alone as he ate, so he chewed in silence, but as soon as he pushed back his chair the plump woman, Mrs. Williams, bustled out of the kitchen to clear his place and give him the bill.

"Do you have any single rooms available tonight?" he asked her.

She nodded and told him the price was seventeen-pounds-fifty.

He asked if he could pay in advance and she nodded again, but said, "It isn't necessary, though. Tomorrow morning or tonight -- either is fine, love." The bill said the meal cost four-pounds-ninety, so David gave her a twenty- and five- pound note and told her to keep the rest. Her cheeks reddened but she smiled.

After David had settled his things in his room, he came back down the stairs and headed for the door, stopping to glance into the dining room. Mr. Williams was leaning over the bar, talking to a couple of fellows in heavy coats and caps. From the way they talked, David thought they were probably regulars here. When Mr. Williams noticed David he turned from the men to ask, "Are you going out, then?"

"Yeah," said David, "I thought I'd take a walk along the mudflats for a bit."

The man nodded. "Alright, then. Mrs. Williams and I turn out the lights at twelve-thirty, so you'll want to be back by then."

David looked at his watch. It gave the time as a bit past five. He nodded. "I will."

Mr. Williams glanced out a window. "Have you got a torch with you? The fog is thick tonight, and there won't be much light on the beach." David lifted his hand to show a small flashlight, at which the other man nodded. "'Twill do. Be careful, then." David nodded, and Mr. Williams went back to his conversation.

Outside the air was thick and wet, and appeared to hang like a weightless veil, moving in the slightest breeze. David zipped his jacket up under his chin, and looked around for a sign that would indicate the footpath leading between the houses and down to the River Loughor. After ten minutes of fruitless searching, he decided to change his plan and set out at an easy pace along the side of the road, instead.

The road was only wide enough for two small cars to pass each other, and on either side of the paved surface a shallow ditch preceded a steep bank, almost as tall as David in some places. At the top of the bank long grass poked through a wooden fence, and an occasional tree, half-hidden by mist, stood beyond the fences. The road twisted and curved as he walked along it; he thought there couldn't be more than four or five feet together that were straight. Even when it was relatively straight, it rose and fell along small hillocks. With the fog hiding everything more than a dozen yards off, he began to lose his mark on the direction, but it did not bother him. There were few enough roads on the Gower that it would not be too difficult to find his way back, or at least to a bus stop. Once, a dark cat slunk onto the road, freezing when the beam from David's flashlight caught it and set its eyes a-glow. When he walked toward it, it broke and fled the rest of the way across the road, then bounded up the banks and into the grass. Another time a car came around a curve a bit too fast; the fog absorbed the sound of it until it was nearly on him, and David only had time to hop into the ditch before it zoomed past, nearly crossing where he had just been. The driver did not swerve, or even honk.

As he walked the mist slowly thickened; eventually billowing rolls buried his beam only a few feet from its source, and in the darkness he could barely make out the edge of the road. Grey washed over the sky, blanketing out any last gleam of the moon, and muffling even the normally loud nightsounds of the Gower. The mist clung to his clothes and dampened his cheeks and hair. He stumbled and caught himself on the bank, almost falling face-down into the ditch. He turned to look back the way he had come, and saw only grey. He considered walking back that direction, but he knew there should be a town only a few minutes further on, and it wasn't too late at night to catch a bus back from there.

Even as he was thinking, the fog thinned. It didn't lift or blow away, it was just suddenly less. Shrouds of mist still faded away the road and the grass beyond the banks a ways off, but the stars overhead were clear and the moon bright. David switched off his flashlight; the moon somehow seemed plenty bright to see by now. Looking back to the road, he saw a pale white just on the edge of the grey -- the first sign of headlight beams, he thought. He stepped down in the ditch and began walking again, but the white disappeared and no car came. He didn't think much of it, except to get back out of the ditch, but it happened a second and a third time. The third time he stopped and focused on the white; now it didn't seem to be reflected high beams at all, but maybe something softer, like moonlight playing off a rock. But it couldn't be that either; David had already passed the spot he'd seen the white the first time, and there had been no rock pale enough or large enough. He blinked and the white was gone from view again. David shook his head and crossed the road to look at the place it had been. There was nothing out of the ordinary about the spot.

David blew out a breath and watched it ascend in a cloud. The white was just a trick of the fog, that was all. He shoved his hands in his pockets and looked up at the moon. It was three-quarters full, enough to make the face out. The man in the moon had always looked somewhat smug to David, like he knew something an earth-bound man couldn't. He wasn't any different tonight. David dropped his gaze to the bank on the other side of the road, and there, just beyond the wooden fence, was a glimpse of white. His heart jumped, and it was gone again, but he furrowed his brows and re-crossed the road to stand by the bank just under where the white had been. It was just the fog, he told himself, but it would not hurt to be certain. He found a jut in the bank and pulled himself up so his chin just cleared the fence ... and found himself staring into black, depthless eyes in a face as white as the moon's. With a shout David jumped back from the fence, rolling onto the road. His heart was pounding so hard it was about to rupture his head, and he barely had time to see a full figure in white rise up above the fence before he was running down the road, back into the fog. Dark shapes and claw-like trees passed him by unmolesting; the road twisted beneath his feet, but he kept running, mindlessly running, until his legs felt like jelly and he was sucking air in hard. He didn't stop running then, but his mind came back to him and he tried to remember which way he was running. He didn't have long to worry; another minute and the Greyhound Inn loomed up out of the fog, from the direction opposite David had left it.

The lights above the door washed the fog white, showing night shadows for what they were, and David began to feel foolish. He leaned against a post outside the inn and let his panting die to even breathing. He had not seen a scarecrow in Britain before, but he had no reason to think they weren't used -- it could easily have been a scarecrow. Or kids; kids are kids everywhere, and in his mind kids lived for pranks. There was probably a bunch of them out in the dark somewhere laughing their heads off now. He looked at his watch. Seven-fifteen.

Once he felt reasonably calmed down, David pushed open the door to the inn. He could hear dozens of voices laughing and talking and arguing and getting drunk. He looked in both dining rooms; they were filled -- with men, mostly, though a few women sat here or there -- and in both rooms the televisions showed the same rugby game. Most of the people seemed to be paying at least half of their attention to the game. David walked into the room he had eaten lunch in and looked around. Andy Williams was in there, behind the bar, neck craned to watch the game with everyone else. Some of the men near him were trying to get him to make a prediction on the outcome. David walked to the bar and waited a few moments, then asked, "Do you have any Longbow here?"

Mr. Williams glanced away from the t.v., searching a moment for the voice before spotting David. "Hiya. Didn't see you there. Longbow? No. We've got Blackthorne, though." David nodded and shrugged as the man filled a pint glass with the cider, still talking. "I thought you'd be out for a while yet. It is a bit nippy outside, though. Do you care for rugby?" He nodded toward the t.v. David shrugged again, and the man shrugged, too. "Pound-twenty." After ringing in the sale, Mr. Williams turned back to watching the game.

David took a short drink and was startled to hear a voice address him from behind. "You look a bit peaked, lad. Been running in the fog?"

He turned to see who had spoken. The only person behind him was a short man on a bar stool, looking to be in his sixties, maybe. He had a round, cracked face with squinty, smiley eyes, and he wore a beige overcoat over trousers and a shirt and tie. "Aye, there at the end a bit," David replied. "Something spooked me." He frowned, thinking now that it was out that the confession was not very manly.

The man laughed and his eyes squinted even more, but if he thought David un-manly, he didn't show it. "Ghosts, I'd say! Ghosts frighten me, I'll tell you that." He leaned closer as if to reveal a secret. "There are ghosts on the Gower, you know," he whispered, "or at least one that I've heard of anyway."

Mr. Williams had been refilling a glass for someone else and apparently overheard. He leaned against the bar and grinned at the other man before speaking to David. "Don't trust everything Joe says. Studying at the Uni has filled his head with more stories than he had already." Another man who had been listening added, "He's got more tales than the Brothers Grimm, Joe does. And every one better than the last!"

Joseph chuckled over his pint glass. He didn't seem at all abashed. He pushed out a stool for David to sit on and continued. "I was in the Royal Navy when I was a young man, and I saw all sorts of things, scary and otherwise. I saw what might have been a couple of ghosts, and they scared the life right out of me. I don't believe much of superstition, or religion either -- though I don't mean to offend if you do -- but these very well could have been ghosts -- if they weren't, I don't know what they were. So, having possibly seen one, I can't completely discount a ghost story when it appears in a reliable newspaper, can I? In fact I read the article just the other day, and it drew out a whole history and life story for this particular ghost, the one that lives on the Gower. I can't say it sounds like a complete truth to me, but until I hear something better it's at least believable, partly, if you know what I mean."

David nodded.

"See, they said that a ghost is the spirit of a dead person, and this particular spirit belonged to a lady who had died out on the Gower, near Rhossili. She was Irish, not Welsh, but she had married a Welshman named Jack Davies." Joseph slapped his forehead. "Pardon my manners, lad. I forgot to introduce myself. I'm Joseph Watson. What's your name?" He offered his hand.

David took his hand and shook it. "David Jones," he answered.

"A good Welsh name, Jones. I'm English, of course, not Welsh, but I've lived in Wales the last eighteen years. You're Canadian?" David nodded. "What province are you from?"

"British Columbia," David said.

"I've not been there," said Joseph, seeming a bit sad about it. "Perhaps someday. As I was saying, though, they were telling about this Irish woman; her name was Katherine. This was not too long ago, before the war on the continent. World War II, that is. Her husband was wealthy, but so was she; she didn't marry him for money. They lived out in that great white house by Llanmadoc; have you seen it? Well, it is the largest in the Gower from what I've seen, nearly a mansion, and it was built up next to an old castle. They started to renovate the castle, patching up the stone again, and had it as sort of an annex to the house. The house is a museum now -- it's one of those Cadw Welsh Historical Monuments. Have you been there? It's worth seeing, from what I heard.