THE DEVIL’S HORSEMAN

Clive Underwood didn’t believe in the ghost—but it believed in him.

“Well, seeing as you’ve decided to stay the night, least I can do is warn you about the ghost.”

“Ghost?” Clive Underwood’s eyebrows rose.

“Aye.” The landlord settled himself down in the chair opposite. “This pub’s old, you see. Very old. Some historian bloke a few years ago told me that he’d traced it in some book or other to the mid-fourteenth century. I don’t know if it goes that far back, but it was certainly used as a staging post and a coach-house during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Anyhow, it’s said that old places sometimes retain old memories, and a place like this, well, I bet if the walls could talk, they’d be able to tell a tale or two. You may be wondering where it got the name, ‘The Devil’s Horseman’, now that’s an interesting—”

“Any chance of getting served?” called out a belligerent voice from the bar.

“Be with you in a minute, Derrick.” The garrulous landlord got to his feet. “I’ll tell you some more of the story once I’ve served this gentleman.” He went behind the bar and poured a drink. The landlord and his regular were soon gossiping away, moaning about the weather and cursing the price hikes that the new government had introduced.

Underwood took in his surroundings. He was seated in a comfortable snug, a welcoming fire burning in the wide hearth. The walls were decorated with countless old-fashioned horse-brasses and beer mats. There was a small, glass-fronted cabinet over to his left in which were housed several trophies, no doubt won by the pub’s darts or cribbage teams.

He turned his attention to the three men. The landlord was a dumpy, bespectacled man, probably in his mid-sixties, with a balding head and a cheery grin. The locals were both old, perhaps closer to eighty in age; the one standing at the bar getting his drink was thin and gaunt; the seated one, small and bearded. Something in the smaller man’s facial features and the way his eyes were constantly moving, darting around in his head, made Underwood think of hamsters.

Outside, he could hear the rain lashing at the lead-lined windows, and he silently cursed once more the fact that he had ended up here in the first place. For he had set out across the Peak District from his home in Preston with the intention of visiting his brother in Sheffield, a journey he had made dozens of times. On this occasion, however, he had fallen foul of an uncanny number of road diversions that had forced him out onto ever more minor roads until he had been forced into unknown territory, back roads that were seldom travelled along. Then had come the puncture.

He must have walked two and half miles or so through the rain until his weary feet had brought him to the hamlet of Stickleborough. It had been dark when he had arrived, so all he had been able to distinguish apart from the single public house on the hill had been a shadowy collection of slate-roofed houses, half a dozen or so, certainly no more than that. Neither the landlord nor the two other men inside had cars so they had been unable to drive him to a garage. There wasn’t a phone either.

Silently cursing his ill-luck, Underwood sighed and reached for his pint. At least the ale was good, some local beer he’d never sampled before. There was an opened packet of cheese and onion crisps before him into which the landlord had placed a pickled egg, informing Underwood that it was a delicacy in these parts and that, seeing as they didn’t serve food, he might as well make the most of it.

Wiping his hands on a bar towel, the landlord walked over and took his seat again. “What were we talking about? Oh aye, the ghost.”

“Before you go on, I must tell you that I don’t really believe in things like that.” Underwood took a sip from his beer. “In fact, I’d even go as far as to say I’ve never believed in anything supernatural: ghosts, flying saucers, the Loch Ness Monster. I think it’s all a load of hogwash.”

“You’re entitled to your view, of course,” said the landlord. “But there are things that go on here nobody’s ever been able to explain. In fact, there was a team from York University that came here about three years ago in order to carry out some kind of investigation.” He called to his regulars. “You remember that, don’t you Derrick?” he shouted.

The old codger looked over from where he and his pal sat, engrossed in a game of dominoes. “What’s that?” It was clear he was hard of hearing.

“I’m telling our friend here about the ghost.”

“What?”

“The ghost,” shouted the landlord.

“Are you still rabbiting on about your bloody ghost? You’re wasting your time on the wrong kind of spirits.” Derrick and his bearded pal broke into a fit of laughter and returned to their game.

A wry smile creased Underwood’s mouth.

The landlord waved a dismissive hand. “Ah, take no notice of them.” He leaned further across the table. “What them two don’t know is what happened on the last night of that investigation. Three of them, including the professor or whatever he was, chose to stay in the room at the end of the corridor. They gave strict orders that no matter what was heard, nobody was to open the door of that room, either to go in, or to let them out, until morning.”

A tiny germ of apprehension crept into the pit of Underwood’s stomach. It was a dim, nervous feeling, a very slight trembling that now crept like a rising shadow up his spine. Admittedly, he didn’t believe in ghosts, but that didn’t mean that hearing tales of them didn’t bring a certain unease. It was all to do with setting and environment, he told himself. For no doubt the story he was going to be told would be deemed laughable if related in a busy café in town; but here, in this isolated, storm-battered, virtually empty public house, its horror and indeed believability would be magnified substantially. It was all down to atmosphere, he told himself.

The landlord continued, “And so, they went in and locked the door behind them. I then left them to it. Now I don’t know what they got up to in there, and if there’s a God in Heaven hopefully I’ll never find out, but I think it may’ve been a séance or something like that. For half the night I heard nothing, my room being at the far end of the corridor, nearer the stairs. Then I was woken about three in the morning by an almighty banging. Then came the shouts. I threw on a dressing gown and rushed out, flicking on all of the lights. It was the door! They were thumping on the door, screaming to get out. Screaming they were!”

“But you said they had the key. Why didn’t they use it?” asked Underwood.

“I shouted that at them. ‘You’ve got the key’, I told them. ‘You can open the door’. They shouted back something about: ‘He’s got it now. He won’t let us out’!”

“Who’s ‘he’?” Underwood looked confused.

“The Highwayman, I assumed. The ghost.”

Despite his scepticism, a shiver ran through Underwood. Perhaps it was something to do with the level of sincerity the landlord brought to his storytelling or, more than likely, the environment—combined with the growing realisation that the room in question would no doubt be the very same one he would be staying in. A sensation of sick apprehension grew within him. He was beginning to sweat, the pleasant warmth from the fire now no longer comfortable. Before he knew it, he was feeling a little scared. Of nothing—of everything.

“I stood there, looking at the door, not knowing what to do. I’d given my word, you see, that I wouldn’t open it, and they’d paid good money up front in order to do their bit of ghost-hunting, so the last thing I wanted to do was break my promise and see if I could find the spare key in order to let them out. But their screams were becoming wild and unbearable, terrible to listen to. By this time two of the other students who had been kipping down here in the snug rushed up. Like me, they didn’t know what to do. Suddenly, it fell silent. I could see the fear on the faces of those students who were in the corridor with me. I knocked several times. Nothing.”

There was a moment’s pause. A drawn-out hesitation that made Underwood think that perhaps his informant was intentionally spinning out his yarn in order to create the right level of suspense. He took another sip of beer.

“Well, I assumed that things had quietened down, got back to normal. And that’s when I heard the key turn in the lock.”

Underwood thought that the atmosphere inside the snug changed; became colder. For whereas only minutes before he had been uncomfortably hot, he now felt a damp chill in his bones. He found it hard to relax and digest this ghost story in the way it should have been taken, with a laugh and a dismissive shake of the head. It was all nonsense, he tried to tell himself.

“I stepped back, away from the door, not knowing what was going to come out. It was the professor. The look on his face will haunt me for the rest of my days, I’m sure. He muttered something and shambled towards me, all grey and deathly and hollow-eyed. Those two students that had accompanied him came out next, and I knew then that they’d seen or experienced something in that room. Something had scared them half to death, of that I was certain. Once they were out, the professor gave me the key, told me to lock the door, and never open it again. They had packed up within ten minutes and set off into the cold and the rain, on foot, even though they had a bus coming to collect them in the morning. They refused to spend another minute here.”

Underwood finished his pint. He put the glass down on the table. “And I take it this is the room I’ll be spending the night in?” He did his best to hide any fear there may have been in his voice. The rational part of his mind tried to dominate the darker side, tried to make him believe that perhaps these psychic investigators had made a hoax out of the whole thing, perhaps in order to generate sensationalism to justify their own undertakings. Yes, no doubt that was the explanation—nothing more than acting.

“It’s the only spare room I have.” There was a slightly mischievous smile on the landlord’s face. “But I think you knew that anyway.”

“I had a feeling.”

“You could always bed down here. I could see about—”

“That won’t be necessary. I told you, I don’t believe in ghosts. I will have another pint though.” Underwood waited until the landlord had returned with a second ale. “So who’s this highwayman?”

“Robert Darcy, also known as ‘Black Robert’ and ‘The Devil’s Horseman’. He were a scourge of these parts three hundred years ago. A highwayman with a heart of darkness. Don’t be thinking of any of this ‘stand and deliver’, Dick Turpin nonsense. Darcy was a vicious robber and a killer. I reckon he’d be classed a mass-murderer by today’s standards, as he must’ve killed over twenty, maybe thirty people. Rumour had it he was in league with a coven of witches, and that he’d sold his soul to the Devil in order to make him uncatchable.”

“I take it he was caught though?”

“Caught? In a manner of speaking, I suppose. The authorities laid an ambush for him. They set up a decoy carriage filled with armed riflemen somewhere on the road just outside. Darcy, thinking it an easy target, tried to rob it whilst some of his gang were still in here, deep in their cups. There was a bit of a shootout, but he were clearly outnumbered. The soldiers caught him and clapped him in the gibbet that used to hang on the wall at the back of the pub. One story tells that he spent days there, pelted and abused by the family of his victims before he and his gang were taken to Sheffield where they were executed. An even weirder story, and one that that professor from York certainly believed, was that for some reason or other they dragged him into the cellar, half-beat him to death, and then bricked him up alive in a secret room. Now I don’t know for sure what exactly happened that night all those years ago, but I do know that on nights like this, when the wind howls on the moors and the moon’s full and bright, you can sometimes hear faint sounds like tortured screams from the cellar.”

“Spooky.” Underwood swallowed a nervous lump in his throat. He was beginning to think that the landlord was trying to dissuade him from staying here at all. All this talk of wraiths and spectres—it was hardly gossip conducive to make him want to spend the night here. Now if he’d said: “The bed’s lovely and comfortable, and I’ll make you a hearty breakfast in the morning as well as see about getting someone in the village to give you a lift into the nearest town.…”

Instead, he went on, his topic of conversation becoming more ghoulish: “Aye, it is that. I daren’t go down there unless I have to. There’s a chill feeling you get. As though something’s watching from the shadows, ready to pounce. And I’ve heard other things as well. A terrible horse neighing outside at all hours, day and night. But of course, when I go to look, there’s nothing there. Nor are there any horses within miles of this place. Then there’s the footsteps. Not normal footsteps, mind you, but the sound of booted feet. Jangling, spurred, booted feet that walk the stairs and corridors, treading on the boards overhead. Malcolm over there claims to have seen something out on the road one night not so long ago. A pale, fleshy thing, lit up in the moonlight. He refuses to talk about it anymore. And as for the long-haired, naked thing Derrick saw one night, dancing on the roof, howling at the moon—”

“Do you actually want me to stay here?” Underwood came right out with it. “I mean, forgive me for asking, but you seem to be doing your utmost to try and convince me otherwise. Look, I’ve told you I don’t believe in ghosts or any other things that go bump in the night, but you really seem to be trying to make me seek alternative accommodation. Are you trying to purposefully scare me away?”

“Not at all, sir.” The landlord shook his head. “I’m merely warning you. I’m also covering my own back, as it were. You see, if the worse should happen—”

“What are you talking about?”

“I’m just saying that if the worse should happen, Derrick and Malcolm there will vouch for me when I say I tried to warn you. That’s all.”

“Very well, consider your conscience clear. You’ve told me and I still plan on sleeping here. It’s not as though I’ve much choice now, is it?”

“I guess not.”

Underwood checked his watch, noting that it was now ten minutes to ten. “Right. Well, it’s getting late. As soon as I’ve finished this pint, would you be so good as to show me to my room?”

* * * * * * *

Underwood waited outside in the dimly-lit corridor as the landlord fumbled with the key in the door lock. At first, he thought the man was going to have trouble opening the door, that perhaps he was using the wrong key, but then the lock clicked and he turned the handle, opening the door. It creaked on unoiled hinges, the sound grating on his ears.

For a moment, the landlord was hesitant to enter. He merely stood there at the threshold gazing into the shadowy darkness. With a deep breath, he mustered his courage and stepped inside. Reaching to his left, he found the light switch and flicked it down.

Nothing happened.

He flicked it up and down.

Still nothing.

“Great. No lights. This just keeps getting better.” Contemptuously, Underwood shook his head.

“Maybe the bulbs have gone. I’m afraid I haven’t got any spares, so I’ll nip downstairs and get some candles. I know I’ve got a box of them somewhere.”

Underwood stood, waiting whilst the landlord went to fetch the candles. He gazed uneasily into the dark interior of the room, its furnishings nothing more than barely discernible outlines in the poor light that spilled in from the corridor. Narrowing his eyes, he tried to throw his vision into the darkness, to pick out details. There was a large bed, a chair, a cabinet—

Something moved.

His heart lurched into his mouth. Paralysed by the suddenness and the utter surprise, he pulled back, his eyes wide, staring. There was nothing there, he tried to tell himself, just a figment of his overwrought imagination—a shadow phantom, no doubt brought about by all the talk of the ghostly highwayman. He jumped at the approaching sound of the landlord.

“Got some candles. Should be enough to make the place bright, and, dare I say, cheery.”

Underwood grinned. He hadn’t stayed at many places over the course of his forty-seven years of life, but none of those he had stayed at came close to being as unusual as this place. And the same went for its owner. He was an oddball, without doubt. Perhaps he had lived in this relative isolation for too long, his only company those two old codgers downstairs.

Matches were struck and then, candle in hand, the landlord ventured inside the alleged haunted room.

Now that he could see it better, Underwood was mildly surprised and pleased with what he saw. For this was no crumbling, cobweb-festooned garret with bats hanging from the beams or evil-eyed portraits on the walls. Instead it was a relatively cosy-looking bedroom. It was quite tastefully furnished; nothing extravagant, but certainly adequate for one night. And it would only be for one night, of that he was sure. In the morning, he’d sit and wait by the road and flag down another passing motorist, hitchhike into the nearest town in order to find a garage or somewhere that had a telephone so that he could contact his brother.

The landlord strategically positioned a few more candles, illuminating the room further. “The bathroom’s out the door, second on the left,” he said, lighting a further one. “Right, I’ll leave the other candles and the matches here in case you need them.”

“Thanks.”

“Well. I wish you good night. I’d ask you what cereals you’d like for breakfast, but something tells me, well—” The landlord stepped out into the corridor and shut the door.

“Good God,” muttered Underwood. That man really did think that this room was haunted and that something sinister would happen to him during the night. It was just his luck to end up in this creepy place with its equally creepy owner who would certainly not be winning any gold stars for hospitality. In spite of all that, of what he had been told that evening, the warning the other had been at pains to deliver, he still steadfastly refused to believe in any unnaturalness associated with this place, this room in particular.

Dimly, at the range of his hearing, he could hear the sounds of the three men downstairs in the bar. Their conversation sounded strangely muffled, far more so than when he had stood outside in the corridor, although this was probably due to the thickness of the door, he reasoned.

In his mind’s eye, he could see the landlord downstairs, laughing and joking at his expense. Yes, no doubt he and his cronies were getting real belly laughs, thinking that they had put the fear of God into him with all that ghostly talk. As a stranger in these parts, no doubt he was seen as an easy target, someone to ridicule. Well, let them have their laugh. At the end of the day, they were the sorry souls stuck out here in the middle of nowhere, whereas he would be leaving in the morning.

An unbidden and unwanted nervous fear suddenly sprang on him as he remembered that movement he thought he had seen in the darkness. In the candlelight, he tried to dismiss it further, to reinforce the notion within his brain that it had been nothing more than his imagination. After all, there was nothing here now. And if it had been something, it may have been nothing more harmful than a cat. Yes, perhaps that was what he had seen. Maybe it was now cowering in fear under the bed.

He walked over to the bed, crouched down and looked underneath. There was nothing. Ah well, maybe it hadn’t been a cat, maybe it had just been his imagination after all. Testing the bed for comfort, he found the mattress to be too hard, and it had but one rather flimsy blanket on it. There was, however, a large armchair in the corner of the room, which looked far more appealing. He went over to it and sat down, sinking into its welcoming softness.

He sat there for a while, listening to the dull sounds from below. If only he had brought a book with him from his car when he had abandoned it in the lay-by, then he could spend an hour or two reading. Looking around him, he could see no books or any other kind of reading material. Resignedly, he closed his eyes and started to doze, his chin dropping onto his chest, his tired eyes drooping. He thought he heard a door slam, probably the two locals leaving. Then he was nodding, fatigue pulling him down into a disturbed slumber.

* * * * * * *

The candles had burned low by the time Underwood awoke. His sleep had been filled with troubling dreams which were now mercifully dissolving from his mind, so that now, mere seconds after waking up, he couldn’t remember specifics. That they had been unpleasant he was sure, a fact also supported by the sheen of cold perspiration that dampened his body. He checked his watch, it was now twenty minutes past midnight.

Rising from the chair, he stretched his limbs. It was then that he noticed it. A slight man-shaped outline on the bed where someone—or something—had been lying. After rubbing his tired eyes, he stared harder. There it was—a definite indented outline where some pressure had been put on the cover and the mattress. Had he, in his sleep, wandered over and slept there? Only to sleepwalk back to the chair afterwards. It seemed highly unlikely.

Closing his eyes, Underwood counted to ten, breathed deep, and looked again. The depression had gone! He was just about to head over to the bed for a closer look when he heard a dull clang as of metal on stone from outside the window.

The sound came again, only this time it was less of a clang, more a metallic rattle, like the winching of a length of thick-linked chain, the kind of thing that raised and lowered drawbridges.

Underwood tried to tell himself that it was only the landlord doing something or other in the yard, perhaps moving heavy, metal beer barrels or closing a gate. Curious, he walked over to the window and peered out.

All was dark. Raising the latch, he forced the window open, bringing in the cold, the wind, and the rain. There was nothing there. Then he heard something over to his left, a scraping sound. Just the sound an iron gibbet would make as it swung against a wall. Underwood stood for a moment, not daring to turn his head. Then he quickly glanced to the left. There was nothing there. He breathed out explosively. Just for a moment his heart had seemed to stop. Pulling his head back inside he laughed nervously; that ghost story had really got to him, he thought.

Looking around the room, he saw the candles were beginning to gutter and started to replenish them from the box left by the landlord. As he lit the third, the first two suddenly died. Frowning, Underwood took out another match and brought it towards a wick. It too blew out instantly and he felt a distinct breeze on his face. He had secured the window and the foul weather outside had died down, but there was a wind picking up in the room. As he spun round to see if the door had come open, all the candles went out at once and he was plunged into darkness. He struggled to contain a shout of alarm and his fingers fumbled for a match. Twice, the struck match failed to catch but on the third attempt it fired into life and he cupped his hands around it, sheltering the flame as he scanned the room, a growing feeling of panic threatening to overwhelm him. Turning to look at the bed, he saw for a moment a figure, indistinct but visible, lying on it. He had only the briefest glimpse of a blood-stained jacket and a badly bruised face before he ran for the door, frantically turning the key in the lock. To his relief it opened and he fell through into the corridor, gasping for breath and whimpering.

There was a low laugh from the room behind him as he slammed the door shut.

On legs that had turned to jelly, Underwood half-staggered down the short corridor. “Wake up! Wake up, damn you!” He hammered on the landlord’s bedroom door. He had found the light switch in the corridor and the flood of light helped to calm his nerves a little, but there was no way he would stay in that room the rest of the night.

The door opened and the landlord peered out blearily into the corridor. “What is it? What’s wrong?” he asked.

“That room…the ghost…I can’t stay there.” Underwood spoke incoherently.

“Eh? What are you on about?”

“That room is haunted. There’s something there. I’m going downstairs.”

Before the landlord could reply, Underwood made for the narrow stairs that led down into the bar area. He had to search for a moment or two in order to find the light switch. He flicked it on, instantly bathing the room in brightness. It was as he remembered it, but more importantly it was empty, ghost-free.

Quite suddenly he had the desire to get completely away from this place. He wished he had never set foot inside, and the need to flee out the door, into the night, to keep walking until he came to somewhere else, almost overwhelmed him. It was an urge that he managed to control and sitting down here, in the light, made him think, once more, that perhaps it had all been nothing more than his imagination. There was no doubt that dark stories engendered dark thoughts.

Nerves tingling, he jumped as he heard a door opening above him. Then came the creak of floorboards and the sound of footsteps coming down the stairs. A few seconds later, the landlord appeared and he let out a sigh of relief.

The landlord went behind the bar, poured a brandy and came over with it. Presenting it to Underwood he took a seat opposite. “I’ve got some apologising to do,” he said. “But first, get this down you. It’ll make you feel better.”

Underwood took a sip, grimacing somewhat as the raw liquor burnt his throat.

“I am sorry, sir, what with laying on that story about The Highwayman and all. It’s something I tell all new guests I get. It’s a load of rubbish, you see. A little bit of banter just to give me something to talk about and make this rundown, godforsaken place seem a bit more characterful and colourful than it really is.” The man removed his glasses and gave them a wipe. “There’s no ghost here. Nor was there ever any team of investigators. I just thought to myself one day that a place with a name like ‘The Devil’s Horseman’ should have a ghost, a bit of a reputation, so I made up the story.”

“You—you made it up?”

“Aye, as a joke. But I can see that it’s given you a nightmare, and for that I’m truly sorry. I’ve had dozens of folk stay in that room and none of them have ever seen anything.”

“But I saw something. There was something there.”

“No, sir. It’s just your imagination. But if you’d rather stay down here for the night, then that’s alright by me. I’ll get you some blankets and a pillow and—”

“That won’t be necessary,” said Underwood tersely. “I’m awake now and I don’t intend to go back to sleep.” He finished his brandy.

“As you please, but the offer’s there.” The landlord got to his feet. “Just remember that there are no ghosts here. I’ll see you in the morning.” He made his way back upstairs to his room.

Underwood eased himself into the comfort of his chair.

There was something here, something which if not truly evil was certainly close to it. It was not the evil of voodoo or of witchcraft, which was said to be practiced in the far distant jungles of Africa, and which were things a man could laugh at, so long as he didn’t believe in the weird superstitions of the natives. No, this was something utterly different, subtly more horrible, terrible in a manner that was hard to define. The sensation he had experienced when he had glimpsed the body on the bed had been like an electric shock coursing through him.

A riot of half-formed ideas were running through Underwood’s brain. To be told one thing and then to be told that it had all been nothing but a pack of lies. And yet, he had experienced something in that room. Or had he? Could it be, as the landlord had said, nothing but his own imagination, fuelled by the tale the other had related, which had projected such images and sounds on to his mind?

Everything should have been sane and normal now that the myth of The Highwayman had been exposed as fraudulent, nothing more than fiction created with the sole intent of scaring him. But instead, Underwood could feel the presence of unknown horrors ringing him around, pressing in on all sides, gathering about him in the same way darkness comes creeping out of the far corners of a room whenever a candle burns low.

He tried to shake himself free of whatever power or other was trying to possess him, to make him do things that no clear-thinking individual would dare contemplate. He felt as though he was succumbing to this siren’s song, this unearthly force that was now filling his mind with an inner madness.

Everything was very quiet. The storm had abated, and as he sat there, alone in the bar, he tried hard to shake away the eerie sights he had seen. He was of half a mind to go and pour himself a second brandy when that silence was broken by the sound of a baleful moan from over to his right. Shaking, he turned to look. There was a door, half-open, beyond which was a corridor which he assumed led to the kitchen.

A chill spread slowly over him as he stood staring, listening, his senses strained to the utmost. The shiver came back. His mind was now floundering like a swimmer caught out of their depths, struggling against a dark undertow of frightening possibilities that his rational, logical brain battled to constrain. Little beads of icy coldness ran down his forehead, as, for what seemed a timeless period, he stared transfixed at where the moan had come from.

Nothing emerged from the room beyond and he was about shift his vision when the groan came again, louder this time. What mad impulse made him get him to his feet and head over in order to discover the source of that ghastly sound he didn’t know but, upon throwing the corridor door wide, he saw nothing more alarming than a small, untidy kitchen over to his left and another door some ten feet directly in front of him.

It was the door to the cellar.

It slowly swung open.

Trembling, Underwood stood, eyes wide. His mind was a tumult of terrible thoughts, and fear was a bubbling sensation in his throat. Deliberately, he forced himself to think of something other than the door to the cellar—the cellar, where the landlord had told him The Highwayman had been bricked up alive. But that was just fabrication, he told himself, trying to get it out of his mind. The landlord had said so. So why was he still scared? Why did he remain unconvinced?

A strange compulsion dragged him forward.

Reaching the cellar door, he stood for a moment, peering down into the damp-smelling darkness. That rational part of his mind told him to step away, to go back into the well-lit bar and stay there till daybreak, keeping all of the lights on, having another drink, get plastered—anything but venture down there.

Obeying a power that he was no longer able to resist, Underwood flicked on the light switch and proceeded carefully downstairs. The boards creaked as he stood on them, his right hand trailing down the wall where paint and stained wallpaper peeled and sloughed off in patches like diseased skin. The reek of damp was mixed with the heady, slightly intoxicating smell of ale and cider.

The cellar was small, lit only by the one bare bulb. To his right was the ramp leading to the bolted outer door through which barrels were lowered. Many of those barrels were in front of him, various lines and lengths of tubing leading from them to the beer pumps in the bar. Several crates and boxes of unopened bottles lay heaped against the wall to his left.

Every sense strained to the utmost, Underwood stood there for what seemed an eternity, gazing around him. And then he heard it. A whimpering that came from behind the stacked crates. He screamed silently, inwardly, unable to articulate the terror that clutched at his soul. There was a dull, persistent throbbing in his ears and a stabbing at his temples that wouldn’t go away. And yet, whereas a sane individual would by now have fled, clambered back up the stairs and perhaps run screaming out of the public house, he found himself captivated by the sounds, unable to function rationally, unable to act as common sense dictated.

Crouching low, he moved towards the crates. The sound was getting louder.

Systematically, he began moving the boxes, piling them in the centre of the cellar. The wall space beyond was bare, ordinary.

Underwood stepped back, scanning the length of exposed brickwork.

There was a dark tugging at his brain, an external influence that took possession of him. Looking around for something—and yet he had no real idea what—he found himself going back upstairs and into the kitchen. Pulling open a drawer, he found a metal ladle, several knives, and half a dozen spoons. Gathering up the kitchen utensils, he then made his way back into the cellar.

He used the ladle first, scooping and chipping away at the surface. The first knife he used snapped, but the second proved harder and he scraped away at the mortar binding the bricks. It was relatively easygoing, far easier than he had anticipated, and he seemed to be working now with a certain mechanical efficiency, as though he had become but the tool for something far more driven. Using the handle of the ladle, he tapped one of the loosened bricks in. It fell away, revealing a dark cavity beyond.

Underwood was working hard now, feverishly chipping at the bricks, widening the aperture. The more he cleared, the easier it became. Within fifteen minutes he had created a gap wide enough to insert his head into.

He peered into the bricked-up room. At first he could see little, just the rubble-strewn floor and the dislodged bricks. Then, as his eyes became accustomed to the gloom, he could discern the outline of something lying on the ground in the far corner.

Eagerly, he began tearing at the wall, widening the breach. Still unable to clearly see whatever it was that lay in the corner, Underwood stepped back, reached up and took down the light-bulb on its length of cable. With this in hand, he went back to the hole.

The thing in the corner was a ragged, man-sized skeleton dressed in a tattered coat and wearing scuffed, leather riding boots. Around one ankle, attached to the wall by a short length of rusty chain, was a manacle.

It had to be the long-dead remains of The Highwayman, Robert Darcy.

An inner voice told Underwood to come closer, that there was nothing for him to fear. He obeyed, clambering into the long-forgotten secret room, the length of cable long enough to permit illuminating the interior. Crouching down, he set about gouging away the brickwork that secured the worn bracket to which the length of manacle had been bolted.

Not once did he stop to think what would happen if the landlord were to appear on the scene. Here, before his very eyes, was the physical evidence to prove the latter’s own belief. Just how did one explain or come to terms with that? Under different circumstances Underwood would have been dumbfounded, unable to accept any of this.

The knife he was using broke, its blade shattering. A shard slit his hand.

There was no blood!

Underwood stared. Of all the weirdness he had seen and experienced since arriving at The Devil’s Horseman, for some reason this was the most inexplicable. Grimacing, he pinched the sliver of metal between his thumb and forefinger of his left hand and plucked it out. Perhaps the wound hadn’t been deep enough to draw blood, he told himself.

The unspoken command returned, more urgently, dragging he attention back to the bracket. Using a spoon, he managed to loosen it and, with a tug, he snapped it free.

A green, ethereal mist gathered above the skeleton. It swirled and billowed, thickening, becoming a smoke which solidified into a man-shaped thing, a cruel-faced individual resplendent in a long dark coat and tricorne hat. Shoulder-length black hair, an eye-patch, and a roguish goatee beard completed his devilish, rugged good looks.

“Ye’ve freed me.” The spectre’s voice was cold and chilling.

Underwood was speechless. He stood in awe. Then he looked at the spoon in his hand. It was a poor weapon if things turned nasty. A thought crept into his mind as he tried to explain to himself just what this thing could be. Could it be that this ‘ghost’ had been given some form of semi-existence by the oft-repeated story related by the landlord? For if, as some believed, apparitions were but echoes of past events, trapped like photographic images on certain backgrounds, visible only to those receptive enough to see them, then it wasn’t too much of a stretch to theorise that ideas and beliefs could do likewise: thoughts made flesh, or ectoplasmic in this case. This didn’t quite explain the presence of the skeleton though. Could the landlord have somehow picked up a resonance of this ghost and unwittingly have based his story on forgotten fact?

“Well? Don’t ye speak?”

“You’re a ghost, aren’t you? The ghost of The Highwayman, ‘Black Robert’.”

Something remotely resembling a smile creased the wraith’s mouth. “‘Black Robert’. Aye, that was my name. But tell me, who are ye? I don’t recognise yer attire. And what happened to yer head?”

“My head?” Underwood looked confused.

“Yer head.” The ghostly highwayman pointed to the other’s forehead.

Underwood touched the place in question, alarmed when he felt the dampness. Worried, he examined his fingertips and saw blood, black and wet. Had he banged his head in his desperate attempt to unearth and liberate the ghost? It was certainly possible.

“Were ye beaten too? Or did ye fall from a carriage?”

“I don’t understand what you’re talking about.”

“How did ye die, man?”

“What!? I’m not dead.”

“Hah! And neither am I.” The ghost threw its head back and laughed. There was a certain malice in its mirth. “Of course ye’re dead, and nearing the end of yer time of influence. I was fortunate: another few minutes and ye couldn’t have freed me.”

“But.…” Underwood’s world crumbled away before him. In a dark flash of memory, he saw his hands frantically grasping at the car’s steering wheel as he battled to control it in the storm. The tyres screeched as he skidded, slamming on the brakes. Then came the shattering impact.

A nightmare. It was all a long, involved nightmare. Frantically, he crawled out of the bricked-up room and rushed out of the cellar. At the top, he paused, trying to muster the courage to check his wrist for signs of a pulse. He couldn’t bring himself to do it.

More scared than he had ever been in his life, Underwood reeled into the bar. There was a mirror on the wall. With a sense of grave trepidation, he went over to it.

The reflected image was not him. It couldn’t be. For the man that stared back at him from behind the thin layer of silver-backed glass was bruised and bloody, deathly, a living corpse, a car crash fatality.

Underwood continued to stare, unbelieving. ‘No!’ he cried, although no sound came from his lips. He could not, would not accept any of this. How could he be dead? The dead didn’t get out of their cars and walk for the best part of an hour through the night before entering a public house in order to find lodgings.

Didn’t they? spoke a little voice in his mind. After all, how would he know? How would anyone living know?

No! No! No! He silently screamed. Woodenly, he staggered out of the bar area and made for the stairs. Taking them slowly, he went up and headed along the corridor to the room at the end. He stood at the threshold and beheld his own dead body lying on the bed.

Insanity overwhelmed Clive Underwood as all outward sensation began to dissipate from him, to pour out of him like water from an upturned vessel. He was fading, disintegrating, becoming incorporeal, his time spent as one of the walking dead almost over. And still, he could not accept what was happening to him. He looked at his hands and saw with stunned horror that they were dematerialising before his very eyes. Then his arms and legs. Then, he disappeared entirely, simply phased-out of existence.

* * * * * * *

After the landlord had found the bar empty, he went upstairs and looked in the small room where his guest had stayed. There was no one there. Shaking his head in confusion, he went back downstairs and into the kitchen to fix himself some breakfast. He was halfway through his cornflakes when the bell at the front door began to ring.

“Hang on,” he shouted. He went to the door, unlocked it and opened it.

On the front step was one of his locals.

“Morning, Derrick. Bit early for you to be up and about, isn’t it?”

“Thought you’d be interested in this. Happened yesterday evening, just down the road at that turning off for Houghton. A terrible black spot for accidents that.” The old man handed his morning copy of the local paper over. On it, printed in bold lettering was:

MAN KILLED IN CAR TRAGEDY

47 year old Clive Underwood was pronounced dead at the scene.…

The landlord found himself unable to read any more. His eyes were focused on the unfortunate’s photograph. It was the man who had stayed the night, the one who had been so scared by his tale of ‘The Devil’s Horseman’. He was temporarily struck dumb, his hands trembling.

“You alright? Looks like ye’ve seen a ghost or something.”

“It’s him. It’s the man who came here last night.”

“What man? There was nobody in ‘The Horseman’ last night save for you, me, and Malcolm.”

“But—” The landlord stared hard at the other. “But, surely you saw him? You know, the one we were winding up about the ghost?”

“It were just you, mumbling to yourself over by the fire.” Derrick shook his head. “I may be a bit deaf, but there’s nothing wrong with my eyes. You’re the one who wears glasses.”

There had to be some confusion, thought the landlord. There had to be, for the alternative was impossible, unthinkable. He stared once more at the photograph of Clive Underwood. It had to be someone else.…

Of course his true horror was to come when he discovered what lay in the cellar.…