THE CASTELLMARCH MAN

RAY CLULEY

Atop Raiders Hill in Radnorshire stands a solitary stone that some believe resembles a weeping figure. According to folklore, the shadow it casts as the sun goes down points the way to a cave of hidden treasure, stolen goods hidden by thieves waiting for a safe time to sell. Whether the stone figure weeps because it was never able to find this bounty, or because it grieves some greater loss, nobody knows, though of course there are stories to accommodate both possibilities. There are certainly plenty of caves in the area and the hills and mountains make for rewarding hikes.

Geo-cache findings: a toy car, a single glove, and a tarnished silver ring.

The Hayward Stables Guesthouse was a converted farmhouse with similarly renovated outbuildings, sturdy stone structures with heavy wooden mantles and beams. The door frames forced you to duck and the sash windows rattled in their frames when the wind was high, but it was cosy. All of the rooms were tidy, with instantly forgettable décor. Upstairs was carpeted thick enough to muffle footsteps whereas downstairs was all stone floor. A wide parking area extended around the back, and further down the track was an old stable that had been converted into a large storage shed, or barn, Charlie supposed. In the year since his last visit very little about the place had changed. Even the weather was the same: rain, rain, and more rain.

The food, though. That was different. Then again, perhaps the food was exactly as it always had been and he simply couldn’t remember right; most food tasted bland to him these days, although he would have expected farmhouse fare to have been hearty and full of flavour, whatever his mood. The wine, of course, was fine. He’d worked his way through most of a bottle of red already. He’d probably order another.

It appeared there were only two other sets of guests staying at The Hayward Stables, judging by who had come to dinner. Maybe others had opted for bed and breakfast only (and maybe there was someone bedded down in the old stables—ha!). A large stone-floored dining room had been set with rows of mismatched tables and chairs, each piece of furniture up-cycled from something tatty to something deliberately dishevelled and shabby-chic. A young couple were trying to coax one child into eating and another into settling down, and they weren’t doing a bad job. Another couple, middle-aged, sat only a table away from Charlie and bickered in hushed tones. The focus of their altercation was hidden beneath the noise of the nearby children and the persuasions of the parents, but the man seemed to be taking most of it, drinking his dark ale and listening, interjecting whenever moved by a particularly forceful point. The woman was a stern kind of beautiful, but maybe that was unfair. Maybe that was only because of her current mood: maybe she was usually more serene. Charlie used to get quite aroused whenever Lyndsey was angry, he didn’t know why. He’d never told her that. Perhaps he should have.

Occasionally the husband caught sight of Charlie noticing and smiled politely, embarrassed by the quiet argument. They had bonded earlier over a complaint about the slow service, though neither party had voiced their concerns to anyone else but each other. While they’d waited for their food the man had joked, “Shame the stables are empty, I could eat a horse,” and Charlie had laughed far too much. The man had noted the half empty wine bottle while Charlie raised a glass to toast his agreement, and to excuse his own reaction.

He pushed a piece of sausage around the gravy on his plate and loaded it with mashed potato but found he was no longer hungry. He never really had been. He laid the fork down just as the bickering woman wiped her mouth with a napkin she cast down like a gauntlet before excusing herself from the table. Charlie admired her legs briefly. The man made a half-hearted attempt to call her back, his volume restricted by public company. He looked around to check if they’d caused a scene. The young couple were far too busy with their own family but Charlie had nothing better to do and he offered a tight-lipped smile in sympathy.

“She doesn’t like the weather,” the man explained.

Charlie looked at the window but the curtains had been drawn against the dark. He knew it would be raining, though. Or had just been raining. Or was about to rain. It had been raining for days. Mostly only brief showers and a pathetic drizzle that was more like mist, hanging in the air, but it was all still rain just the same. “Welcome to Wales.”

“Is it always like this then?”

“I’m not from here,” Charlie said, and remembered the man in the barn, though he tried not to. “I think this is fairly typical weather, though, yeah.”

“We’re having a bit of a stay-cation,” the husband said.

“Ah.”

Charlie didn’t care much for conversation, but the new silence between them felt uncomfortable so he said, “Well, there’s plenty worth seeing around here. Lots of interesting places if you know where to look.”

“What brings you here?”

My wife, Charlie thought.

“Treasure-hunting,” he said. The man tilted his head for more, so Charlie added, “Geo-caching?”

“Sorry.”

Charlie waved the apology away. “Bit of a hobby,” he explained, and took another sip of wine.

It had begun as a joke, a nerdy pastime to get them both out of the house, away from the sofa and the TV. It gave them weekends of fresh air and exercise that was more fun than the gym. It gave them a chance to get to know each other again as they drove around the country, looking for geo-cache “treasures.” Charlie told the man some of this.

“There’s a website that provides coordinates for wherever you decide to explore, and a GPS will take you to each concealed geo-cache,” he said, pausing to refill his glass. “Just a Tupperware tub or something, filled with an assortment of keepsakes. You take something, you leave something, you sign the notebook, and then you look for the next one.”

“And this is a thing? People do this?”

Charlie nodded. “It’s fun.”

It had surprised Charlie to discover how much he enjoyed finding these secret places. Lyndsey had admitted the same, so it was to their mutual amusement that what had begun as a joke became something of a more serious pursuit, with weekly jaunts up and down the country. There were geo-caches hidden everywhere. They found them in trees, under hedgerows, submerged in ponds and rivers. They found them hidden behind road signs, tucked beneath old stone walls and concealed in ruined buildings. And as they searched, so they came to know hidden areas of the land, beautiful places off the beaten trail. They became tourists in their own backyard, learning more about their country. It always surprised Charlie just how much there was to discover. Every nook and cranny of Britain held a secret, it seemed.

“There are these clues,” Charlie said. “Sometimes just coordinates to follow but sometimes something more cryptic. Those were Lyndsey’s favourite. She liked to figure things out.”

She had me all figured out.

“Lyndsey? That your wife?”

They both looked at the empty seat opposite Charlie. The plates were clean, cutlery still napkin-wrapped.

“Yeah. We came here this time last year. This is sort of an anniversary.”

“Well, congratulations.”

Charlie smiled a thank you into his wine, thinking, not that kind of anniversary. He tapped the wedding ring he still wore against the glass. He’d recently had it engraved with GPS coordinates. It represented their lives better than dates. The place where they met and the place where they parted suggested a journey that was both literal and metaphorical. Dates, he thought, would have seemed too much like an epitaph.

Charlie took a pouch of tobacco from the pocket of his chair-backed jacket and excused himself for a cigarette. He offered the pouch but was glad when the man declined. He didn’t want to know him any better than he did already, and he’d shared too much about himself as it was. He left his wine and jacket to make it clear he was coming back, but he hoped the man would be gone by then.

The Church of Saint Brynach in west Dyfed, Wales, was founded in the sixth century. Its churchyard boasts the Nevern Cross, which dates back to the tenth century. Fashioned from dolerite, the cross stands 13 feet high and is beautifully carved, knotwork and ringwork and geometric patterns making it one of the most impressive carved crosses in Britain. The first cuckoo of the year is thought to land on this cross to announce the coming of spring. Also in this churchyard is “The Bleeding Yew.” Its trunk bleeds a red resin believed to be the blood of a monk wrongfully hanged from its branches.

Geo-cache findings: a plastic bird, a colouring book of Celtic designs, and a packet of sweets (out of date).

It wasn’t raining, but Charlie still sheltered beneath the small roof at the back of the guesthouse because the sky was thick with cloud. The moon appeared occasionally but only briefly. There was plenty of light, though, thanks to an automatic security bulb that had come on as Charlie stepped outside. It illuminated a vast puddled stretch of gravelled ground and four parked cars. One of them was a people-carrier which he guessed belonged to the young couple with kids, or maybe the owners of the guesthouse, though there was also a mud-splattered Land Rover that he thought might have belonged to them. The Audi was probably the bickering couple’s car. The other vehicle was his. For a moment he thought there was someone sitting inside—on the passenger side, Lyndsey’s side—but it was only the coat he’d draped over the seat. Not his new one, just his old waterproof, pale grey with bright orange reflective strips up the sides and arms, and absolutely hideous because those were the rules, according to Lyndsey, right up there with good hiking boots and a packet of mint cake. Every rambler, hiker, and apparently geo-cacher, had to have a vile waterproof jacket of clashing colours, preferably something that folded to the size of a handkerchief or packed itself away into its own pocket somehow. Lyndsey’s had been orange and pink. It made her look like one of those sweets you used to be able to get from the corner shop, a rhubarb and custard. No, a fruit salad; rhubarb and custards were the other ones, the ones that lasted forever.

He rested the tobacco pouch on a nearby windowsill and set about rolling a cigarette. He tried not to look at the old stable but failed, glancing up at the dark shape of it several times between stages of the cigarette’s construction. He would take another look inside before he left. He didn’t particularly want to, but he was retracing his steps and the stable was a big part of that. Plus he needed to check if there was anybody in there.

He looked at the car again instead, hoping once more for that illusion of a passenger on Lyndsey’s side, but the coat draped over the seat was just a coat.

Lyndsey didn’t drive, but she was a fantastic navigator. Rather than rely on any conventional kind of sat-nav, Lyndsey used an app on her mobile phone with the volume down and provided her own range of voices, using outlandish, often terrible, accents, mimicking celebrities and sometimes people they both knew. Sometimes she made up characters, like Farmer Jones (that be the wrong way, lad) and Lady Wetherby (oh, do be careful, driver). She changed the voices whenever Charlie laughed. It was a game they had.

“Oh. No,” she’d say, her voice overly robotic. “You do-not. Want. To-go. That. Way.” Or she’d urge, “The other way, the other way!” in a voice filled with feigned panic, all the while calm as she looked out of the passenger window at whatever part of the countryside they were passing through.

“This is not the right way.”

“It is.”

“At the traffic lights, make a U-turn.”

“There are no traffic lights.”

“At the next junction, go off-road.”

“In this car?”

“At the next dealership, purchase a new vehicle.”

That’s how she was.

“Warning: we are low on fuel.”

“We’re fine.”

“Warning: we need coffee and chocolate or we will become annoying.”

“Become annoying?”

“Advisory: coffee and chocolate will lead to sexual gratitude.”

“That would be tempting if you weren’t Stephen Hawking.”

She’d laughed at that, loud and sudden and surprised, then covered her mouth with both hands. “Oh, that’s wrong.”

“I just don’t find him attractive.”

“You’re not supposed to find anyone attractive.”

“What about—”

“Anyone else attractive.” Then, serious, “You do still find me attractive, right?”

Charlie smiled. He was standing outside, in the cold, smoking in full view of the stables that marked the beginning of the end, but he was also back in the car, back with Lyndsey who was asking, “Are we there yet?”

“Nearly.”

“What about now?”

“Nearly.”

“What about—”

“Lynds ...”

He looked over at the converted stables.

It was a large but surprisingly squat building, with a sloping roof of corrugated metal. He remembered how it drummed with the rain. Inside was a vast open space. If there had ever been stalls for horses they were gone now. In fact, there was little to suggest they were ever stables at all, other than the name of the guesthouse, and he supposed that could have been a deliberate misnomer, something quaint and countrified to lure the tourists. The inside had smelled wet and warm, bales of summer-baked hay wrapped in plastic yet somehow releasing an aroma so that rain seemed to mix with sunshine. There was a metallic smell, too, and oil, from a vehicle that was not quite a tractor sitting guard in the open double doors, the tines of its threshing machinery like some medieval war machine to keep people out. It hadn’t deterred them, though. If only it had.

Those doors were closed now, the machine tucked away inside, if it was there at all. Charlie exhaled a final stream of smoke with a sigh. If the fucking thing had been parked away properly in the first place, the giant doors shut, then they never would have gone inside. They’d have forgone the novelty of the setting and had sex back in their own room instead, only yards away.

Charlie dropped what remained of his cigarette and twisted it dead under his heel.

You look angry.

It sounded like Lyndsey’s voice, but it was only in his head. Still, it made him smile. “You look angry” had been one of their geo-cache clues last time they were in Wales. It had looked like a code at first—Ydych yn edrych ynddig—but it wasn’t long after crossing into Wales that they’d realised it was simply Welsh. Ydych yn edrych yn ddig, you look angry, became a game so that whenever one of them said it in the car, thinking aloud, trying to figure it out, the other would offer a reply. It’s just the way my face looks. You stole the covers last night. I’m trying to fart.

Not all of the locations came with clues or riddles, but those that did were Lyndsey’s favourites, and she never Googled the clues or read the message boards in the community forum, nothing like that. She never cheated, not when it came to geo-caching. They figured them out together, just like they did everything else.

“You look angry” was a clue for St. Brynach Church.

“St. Brynach Church, named after—wow—St. Brynach,” Lyndsey said. “Sixth century chapel, famous for the Nevern Cross or Great Cross of St. Brynach, one of the finest in Wales, thirteen feet high ...”

Lyndsey liked to research everywhere they went, but only after they’d arrived, to avoid what she called spoilers. While she read to him from her phone, Charlie used his to take pictures. He’d usually manage a few secret ones of Lyndsey before she spotted him, and then she’d strike ridiculous poses or give him the dreaded duck-face pout. At St. Brynach’s she hadn’t noticed for ages, too busy searching among the gravestones, so after he’d taken a few shots of her bending over he turned the phone around for a secret selfie or two he’d send her later.

“You look angry.”

As Charlie was contorting his face into an ugly sneer he’d assumed she’d caught him, but looking up, still sneering, he saw that she had her back to him among the graves. She patted one of them before turning to face him.

“You look angry,” she said again. “Cross. Angry is cross. Get it? The Nevern Cross, probably. And you is probably yew tree. The one I told you about, the one that bleeds.” She pointed and said, “Yew lead the way.”

Charlie gave her one of his pity-smiles. “Shut up, I’m hilarious.”

Among the gravestones, Charlie said, “Honey, I love doing this with you, but I’m not digging up a grave. I’ve got my limits.”

Yet here he was, a year later, digging up what should probably be left alone.

He contemplated another cigarette but it began to rain again, so he went back inside.

Dryburgh Abbey, in Scotland, stands as a remarkably complete set of ruins. It contains paintwork that dates back to its construction in 1150 and remains one of the most beautiful examples of Gothic architecture.

According to legend, a woman who lost her lover made a home in one of the vaults and swore never to look upon the sun again until her lover returned. Learning he had died, she only ever came out from the vault at night, living a half-life of loss and loneliness.

Geo-cache findings: a heart-shaped fridge magnet, a novelty pen, an ornate thimble.

Whatever the couple had been bickering about was either resolved or temporarily forgotten by the time Charlie returned to his room. He was reminded of how thin the walls were by the sounds of their passionate make-up sex. Or maybe it was angry sex. “Fuck you” sex, Charlie thought, unamused by his own pun.

You look angry.

It sounded like good sex, whatever it was.

Charlie undressed and stretched out on his own bed. He matched his rhythm to the sounds from next door, masturbating to the squeak and creak of their bedsprings and looking at a photograph of Lyndsey he had on the bedside table. Eventually the woman’s climax drew a scowling one from him and he was able, at last, to sleep.

Croagh Patrick is a holy mountain that rises 765 metres above sea level and overlooks Clew Bay in Ireland. It is believed that St Patrick made his way here from Aghagower and spent 40 nights on its summit praying and fasting and casting out demons. Time has altered the legend so that demons have become snakes instead.

Geo-cache findings: none (not yet visited).

In the morning, Charlie skipped breakfast and went out to his car for the geo-cache he’d left on the back seat, a little of the secret life of Lyndsey and Charlie West. Deliberately awful poems Lyndsey used to leave for him around the house (I love you like blue loves sky, oh me, oh my). A strip of photo booth pictures, Lyndsey flashing her boobs (never breasts, never tits), pictures they used to keep on the fridge and had to remember to take down every time they had visitors (and forgetting on more than one occasion). A length of rope (look out for snakes!). He’d considered leaving his wedding ring too but he couldn’t bring himself to do it, not yet. There was no comments book inside either because this would be a geo-cache he never registered online. If anyone ever found it, it would be the owners of The Hayward Stables during some clean up or sort out. Putting it here was entirely for his own benefit. Like flowers on a grave.

The car was still wet from last night’s rain. Puddles the size of small lakes blotted the gravelled drive and the early morning air held the smell of wet grass. Charlie took a deep breath of it and looked to the sky. Grey, but not raining, and somehow clean looking, as if grey was its usual colour and it had just needed the blue washing out.

Charlie hadn’t bothered to lock the car—there was nothing left he couldn’t bear to lose—and he was glad not to ruin the peace of the country morning with the electronic blip-blip of central locking. He retrieved the container from the back seat and closed the door again, its soft thump the only sound to disturb the quiet except for the crunch and scrape of gravel underfoot as he made his way to the old stables that might never have been stables.

The large doors were closed. Would they be locked, though? Were they more careful since the Castellmarch man? He doubted it. As he neared, Charlie looked out for a coil of chain wrapped around the handle grips or a large padlock clasped closed, or both, but there was no such thing. He tucked the Tupperware box under his arm, wedged high into his armpit, looked around for anyone who might see him, and gripped the door with both hands. It was a large one that slid across, essentially a moving wall more than a door, and he expected it to be heavy, but it moved easily and quietly, its bearings well-oiled. He opened it only enough to step inside and closed it again behind him.

For a moment it was pitch black dark. He heard birds waking up above him somewhere and smelled the damp sweet aroma of hay and feed and maybe manure, the sharp tang of petrol and machine oil, but he saw nothing. Eventually his eyes adjusted to the gloom, grey light filtering in through rusted holes in the metal walls and roof and through the sheets of newspaper that had been stuck over a large window. Most of the floor space had been taken up by a temporary holding pen made up of boards held between breezeblocks. There was no sign of any livestock, but as a veteran geo-cacher Charlie recognised the pellets of sheep droppings. At the back of the building, a stack of stored hay. That was where, a year ago, he and Lyndsey had enjoyed a private moment, a secret moment that turned out to be less secret than they had supposed. And over there, between the hay and a workbench cluttered with tools, that had been where the Castellmarch man had loitered. Unseen, at first, bedded down in a spill of hay and bundled blankets and tarp.

They’d been walking the grounds, exploring the fields just before dusk. It had been good to just walk together without searching for a geo-cache—there weren’t any locations nearby, not then—and they had held hands and talked and made new promises to each other. To try harder. To do more fun stuff. She would be faithful, he would be more spontaneous. As they’d neared The Hayward Stables, Lyndsey had picked up the pace, claiming she wanted to get back before proper dark and the inevitable rain but walking with an urgency that suggested something else.

“You need to pee, don’t you?”

“Maybe.”

They only made it as far as the stables or barn or whatever the building was before Lyndsey had to relieve herself. She squatted behind a plastic rain barrel and a leaning stack of wooden pallets.

“Watch out for ropes,” Charlie had warned.

Back when they’d first started geo-caching, one of the treasure boxes had been hidden among the roots of fallen tree. Lyndsey had crouched beside the trunk, reaching for an opening in the soil, but before she could finish a feeble joke about rooting around she’d leapt away with a scream of “Snake!” and the two of them had fled. The “snake” turned out to be a length of dirty rope, some coiled excess from what had been used to secure the geo-cache container to the tree stump. Charlie had teased Lyndsey about it forever since. This new teasing as she peed saw her hand come up from behind the water barrel to give him the middle finger.

“You look angry,” Charlie said. An old joke by then, but one they still used occasionally.

“There aren’t any snakes in Wales,” Lyndsey said, standing and pulling her jeans up with her.

“You’re thinking of Ireland.”

She’d put her hand to her chest in mock distress, gave him another one of her voices, temporarily Irish. “You mean there are snakes in Wales?”

“Baby,” he’d said, “Wales has fucking dragons.”

Worse than dragons.

While Lyndsey buttoned up, Charlie joked that she shouldn’t bother. At least, it had started as a joke. But because she’d stopped to “joke” back—“Oh yeah? Why’s that?”—instead of simply dismissing his suggestion, he’d taken her by the hand and pulled her towards the open door. Her only protest had been an unconvincing, “We can’t,” but it turned out they could, and they did, rougher and wilder and louder than they had been in a long time. Proof, if any was needed, that they still had something. Reassurance, for Charlie, that she was still interested in him beyond the comfort and companionship of a long term relationship. Reassurance for her, he supposed, that he could still be passionate and commanding.

Afterwards, panting from where she lay bent over a collapsed bale of hay, Lyndsey had expressed surprise and gratification with the exclamation, “Fuck.”

“Again? Okay, five minutes.”

She had made a pathetic backwards slap at him without looking, exhaling a laugh that had little sound as she tried to catch her breath, but Charlie had already stepped away from her to get dressed again. He swatted her behind, gently this time, and placed her clothes beside her. He kissed her back, and when she rolled over with an exaggerated sigh, he kissed her breasts until she sat up. They were criss-crossed with lines from where she’d been pressed against the hay and strands were stuck to her sweaty skin. He helped her brush them away until she brushed him away, slapping at his hands.

“If you want to help you can find my shoes.”

They had been such a struggle to remove in the heat of the moment, stuck in her jeans, that Charlie had thrown them aside when they were finally off.

“Charlie?”

“Yeah, I’m looking.”

He was peering into the shadows on the ground when Lyndsey called to him again, quieter this time, but with a new tone that made it sound more urgent;

“Charlie.” She had her t-shirt on but also held her arm across her chest while the other hand pushed her jumper and jeans into her lap, between her legs.

“Lynds?”

She didn’t answer or turn to face him and finally Charlie saw what she was looking at. Who she was looking at.

The Castellmarch man.

He was wearing a hat, that fucking stupid hat with the flaps that came down over the ears. He was wearing an old army jacket, too, the type that was fashionable when Charlie was young if you wanted to prove how alternative or grungy you were. Army surplus with deep pockets, faded green (and if you were particularly rebellious or quirky, maybe you had a foreign flag stitched into the shoulder). His jeans were scruffy. Charlie couldn’t see the man’s boots properly but they were probably DMs.

“Oh, shit, sorry,” Charlie said, “we just—”

“It was raining,” Lyndsey said, slipping down from the hay bale to hide the lower half of her body. When that part of her was out of view she immediately stepped into her jeans, underwear be damned. It hadn’t been raining, not quite, but it was now. It drummed loud against the roof.

The man exhaled forcefully from his mouth so that his lips trembled. Charlie couldn’t tell if it was disbelief or amusement or anger or what.

“Sorry,” Charlie said again, casting a quick look around again to ensure they had everything. He saw a pile of makeshift bedding, tucked away in the dark. A spill of belongings were spread across the ground nearby.

The man scratched at what he had of a beard and said, “Not from here.” Charlie didn’t know if he meant them or, judging by the rough bedding, himself.

“No, we’re just ... no. You? You staying here as well?”

Partly Charlie was trying to ascertain whether he and Lyndsey were in any kind of trouble. He was fairly certain the man was not one of the owners, and though there was a chance he was a farmhand or something, Charlie supposed the man was actually homeless, or a traveller, bedding down for a night out of the rain. Whatever and whoever he was, Charlie wanted to distract him from Lyndsey who was subtly trying to dress herself.

The man stamped one foot a couple of times and dragged it back across the floor as if trying to scrape something from his boot.

“I’m from Castellmarch. I told you.”

Lyndsey shared a look with Charlie. It was a mildly judgemental look, as in she’d judged the man was mildly mental.

“I mean, I didn’t tell you I was from Castellmarch,” the man said, “just that I’m not from here. ‘Not from here.’ I said that.”

“Right.”

The man nodded. He looked at Lyndsey, dressing.

“So, is that in Wales then?” Charlie asked. “Castellmarch?”

“Castellmarch is in Abersoch, across the sea.” He pointed in a direction that meant nothing to Charlie.

“Oh, right. Is it an island?”

The man laughed. “Abersoch’s not an island.” He looked at Lyndsey who had just plucked items of underwear from the ground, bunching them into a tangle of lace and straps and bra cups which she tried to hold casually. He grinned at her as if they shared a private joke or secret intimacy. “He thinks Abersoch is an island.”

“He’s not very clever,” Lyndsey said, with a quick smile.

“Hey,” said Charlie, “I’m right here.”

“It’s not an island,” the man explained. “It’s across the bay.”

“Okay.”

“I’m going to Carreg Castle.”

“Okay.”

Lyndsey was looking for her shoes. Charlie made a show of helping her so that he was too busy for further conversation.

“How about some music?” the man asked. He reached down to the array of things scattered on and around his bed. Charlie expected a radio but the man produced a flute, no, a whistle, a recorder or something, but surely he wasn’t going to—

The man began to play.

The look Lyndsey gave Charlie was loaded with amusement, a smile in her eyes that acknowledged just how strange all of this was turning out to be. They would have fun, later, talking about it, the look said. She’d probably add this man to her repertoire of sat-nav character voices, Charlie thought.

The whistling was shrill but the open space of the large building seemed to soften it a little, lending a haunting echo that wasn’t exactly unpleasant within the drumming sound of rain. There was a melody, and the man played with a burst of enthusiasm that made it lively at first, but his joy dwindled quickly and he stopped as abruptly as he had begun. “Do you know that song?”

Lyndsey shook her head. Charlie said, “No,” and wondered if they’d been expected to sing along or dance or something. He wondered if they’d offended him somehow.

The man’s scowl was only for his whistle, though. “That wasn’t the song I meant to play,” he said, pocketing the instrument. “I think it’s broken.”

Lyndsey laughed, partly in case it was a joke and partly because this was all just too weird. Charlie laughed a little with her, glad when the man smiled because now it meant they were laughing with him instead of at him. Kind of.

The man withdrew a pouch of tobacco from his coat pocket. He offered it but they both shook their heads no.

“Don’t smoke,” Charlie told him.

“What are you looking for?”

Lyndsey said, “My shoes.”

The man put his tobacco aside and crouched out of sight. When he stood again he had two hiking boots, one in each hand. He held them by his sides.

“Great,” said Lyndsey, “Thanks.”

The man made no move to offer them, though. “Want to hear a joke?” he said.

“We better get back inside,” Lyndsey said. She reached for her shoes. The man made an underarm gesture with one of them. He did it a second time but didn’t throw.

“Go on, then,” Charlie said. He meant go on, throw the boots, but the man used it as an excuse to tell his joke, Lyndsey’s boots held by his sides.

“Two men in a pub, right? One of them, he goes to find a table, see, and the other one gets the drinks in. ‘Pint for me and my donkey.’”

Charlie nodded—clearly they had to listen to the joke as some part of an exchange—but when the man kept repeating the character’s drink order, Charlie nodded again to hurry the man along.

“So this happens a few times, same one going to the bar and saying ‘pint for me and my donkey,’ until eventually the other guy comes to the bar instead. Before he can order, the barman says, ‘Your friend over there keeps calling you his donkey.’ And the customer, he nods and says—”

Charlie knew the joke, he realised, but it had taken until now for him to remember the punch line. The man still surprised him, though.

“‘Oh, hee-aw! hee-aw! hee-always calls me that!’”

The man brayed loud enough that each hee-aw! sounded like a scream, a shrill then guttural cry bouncing around in the confines of the barn. The sudden noise and volume startled both of them, as did the way the man thrust his head forward for each outburst, his lips peeled back against large slabs of teeth. Lyndsey had recoiled, pressing herself against a wall of stacked hay bales, wide-eyed. Charlie took her hand.

“Do you get it?” the man asked them, and without waiting for a response he said again, “He always calls me that. Hee-aw!” The final cry dissolved into laughter and Charlie laughed as well this time. Not at the joke, but in a kind of anxious release.

The man wiped tears from his eyes, still offering the occasional chuckle and sigh.

“Okay,” Charlie said, “boots now, yeah?”

The man nodded. “You have a spirited filly,” he said.

“Sorry, what?”

“Spirited,” the man said. He looked at Lyndsey. “This filly likes a good ride.”

“Hey,” said Charlie, and, “Fuck,” said Lyndsey.

The man laughed again. To Lyndsey he said, “Eager filly!” and to Charlie, “You ride her well,” and then he tossed the boots. He threw them underarm, but he did it quick and Charlie had to twist and turn to try to catch them, missing both. Lyndsey gathered them up and pulled them on quick, laces loose, and Charlie turned her by the shoulders, guiding her outside and away, pushing her ahead of him. Behind them, the braying laughter of the man followed them out into the dark.

Charlie reported him to the owners. He did that much, at least. He gave them a slightly edited version of events in which he swapped post-coital surprise for seeing someone sneaking into the outbuilding and in the morning their breakfast was served with the reassurance that the man was gone. As to whether he’d been sent on right away or asked to leave that morning, the owners had been rather vague about that. “It happens sometimes,” the wife had said, adding, “we should really keep it locked, I suppose.”

Well, they still don’t lock it, Charlie thought, and he was glad. He found a place behind the workbench where a metal brace and a supporting beam crossed (x marks the spot) and there, in a small nook close to the wall, he stowed his geo-cache of memories.

Sadie’s Lane in Dorset, England, is reported to be one of the most haunted roads in the county. It came by its name in the early eighteenth century when a farm girl called Sadie Young allegedly rode her horse to its death as she raced to meet a lover who had abandoned her. Pitched from the fallen animal, Sadie was also killed and is said to haunt what is now a busy relief road. The location has since attracted several other ghosts, each of them linked to tales of heartbreak and loss. It is now a popular suicide spot.

Geo-cache findings: a selection of pressed flowers and a chess piece (rook).

Leaving the outbuilding, stepping from the dark into a morning still fresh and clean and grey, Charlie was greeted by last night’s couple approaching their car (the Audi). The woman smiled, the kind of polite smile you give to strangers with whom you share a certain level of intimacy, like those in the same train carriage or a doctor’s waiting room. If she’d known just how intimate they were, now, after last night, she probably wouldn’t have smiled, Charlie thought. Or maybe she would. Maybe she was well aware of how loud they’d been. Today she was dressed in a jeans and jumper ensemble that was practical yet still somehow stylish, more town clothes than country. Charlie admired how the denim fit her.

“Beautiful, eh?” the husband said to Charlie. “That fresh country air.”

Charlie nodded, more in hello than as an answer. “Morning,” he said, stepping to his own car.

“Thought we might look for some of those interesting places you mentioned,” the man said. He waved a folded leaflet to support his point. Charlie had seen a limited selection of them fanned out on a table in the dining room.

“Be sure to visit Carreg Castle,” Charlie said, slipping the name in with little fanfare. The man opened up the leaflet to look but Charlie gave him directions anyway, hearing in his head one of Lyndsey’s wonderful sat-nav voices in echo. “Just heading there myself, but I recommend you try it around sundown. It’s a bit spooky, but beautiful. Romantic.”

“Thanks,” said the woman, and this time her smile was a little warmer.

“Yeah, appreciate it,” said her husband.

Charlie prepared a cigarette, concentrating on the task until he heard the double thunk of car doors closing, then he watched them for a moment, a silent movie behind the windscreen. They seemed happy now, but then so did many couples. Anyone could look happy if they buried their secrets deep enough. Charlie watched them reverse out of the parking area. For a moment, when she turned around in her seat, the woman looked like Lyndsey. That quick profile and final look at Charlie that disappeared as they turned away and were gone.

Charlie smoked his cigarette. He didn’t smoke in the car because Lyndsey wouldn’t have liked it, but seeing her waterproof parcelled up into itself on the backseat he leaned in to retrieve it, careful to hold the roll-up outside the whole time. He turned the coat out, unzipped it open, and shook it into shape. He draped it over his on the passenger seat. From the corner of his eye perhaps it would seem as if she accompanied his drive. It was a pathetic hope, but strangely soothing.

“Okay,” he said, finishing the cigarette, and though there was no one to say it to but himself, added, “let’s go.”

For a lot of the journey the roads passed through open country-side, fields dropping into valleys or climbing into hills, distant sheep scattered like chewed lumps of gum. Tiny towns or perhaps villages passed so quickly that moments later Charlie wondered at their existence. Eventually, though, the hills closed in and the road cut its way through trees and shadow. The lanes became choked with mud and vast puddles made sections into shallow rivers. The hedgerows pressed close, sometimes scraping the car on tight corners. Charlie tried to focus his attention on the road, assessing when to slow down, when to speed up, balancing the risks of soft ground and floods by fluctuating between two speeds in a sort of compromise against getting stuck and losing control. He rushed through puddles in a shushed-thunder of spray that drummed underneath the car and spread in sheets either side.

On the back seat, another geo-cache container rattled as it slid left and right with the corners and jumped with the bumps and dips of the road. There was only one item inside.

He’d been hiding geo-caches up and down the British Isles for most of the last six months, building up to this moment. Little boxes of their life together, here and there. Their old GPS from back before they simply used apps on their phones. A half-eaten mint cake, which neither of them liked because it made their teeth feel funny but which they bought anyway because it was one of the rules, like the hideous waterproofs. He wondered how many people had walked past them, these secret geo-caches, never knowing what was there, and he thought, well, life’s like that, isn’t it? Everybody has a story you don’t get to hear. Even in a relationship, there were things you didn’t learn until far down the line together, or things changed, and maybe you didn’t always like what you found. Lyndsey had thought she knew all there was to know about Charlie, and he used to think the same of her. For him, that familiarity brought comfort. For her, it was different.

He slowed the car just as an oncoming vehicle turned into the road ahead, blocking the entire width. The driver made a token effort to move aside, but there was no way they were going to squeeze past each other. Charlie checked behind and manoeuvred the car backwards.

“Attention: this vehicle is reversing.”

That’s what Lyndsey would have said as Charlie manoeuvred the vehicle back. “Bleep! Bleep! Attention: this vehicle is reversing.” Then the warning again. And then the bleeps. And then the warning again, and then the bleeps, until—

“Lynds.”

Her name sounded lost with no one to answer it. Charlie looked at the empty seat beside him but the waterproof there remained simply a waterproof, hanging like a thin corpse. An empty shroud, trying too hard to be bright and cheerful.

The other car followed Charlie, keeping close as if Charlie might change his mind, pushing him back. As soon as there was room, it pulled out and passed. If there was a thank you, Charlie didn’t see it.

“You’re welcome.”

He changed gears from reverse to first and the car rocked in place. That was all. For a moment he thought he was stuck—“Come on”—but all he’d done was stall it. Overcompensating with the revs, he sent a fantail of mud spraying behind as he pulled away again. Better to lose control than get stuck in place, he thought, hurrying towards something he’d never find with nothing left to lose but himself.

Carreg Cennen Castle can be found in the village of Trap about 4 miles from Llandeilo in Carmarthenshire, Wales. It stands on a limestone precipice and within its bowels there is a tunnel which leads to a well said to hold mystical healing properties, particularly regarding ear and eye complaints. Visitors to the castle often cast corks and bent pins into the water in order to be healed.

Geo-cache findings (four out of five caches): a novelty key ring, a decorative bookmark, a plastic toy knight, a packet of crayons, a rubber sheep, a deck of pornographic cards, a two-pound coin, two bottle openers, a candle.

The first time he’d seen Carreg Castle was between the stutters of the windscreen wipers, leaning forward to peer through the glass as if a few more inches would allow him to see it more clearly. Back then, the sun had barely been out all day and what there was of it was sinking behind the hill the castle stood upon, the sky taking on the deepening blue tones of early evening with some red shining behind and between the ruined walls. Part of the hill dropped away as a sheer cliff so that the castle walls on one edge seemed to merge seamlessly into the precipice.

“Spooky,” said Lyndsey.

This time it looked postcard-picture-perfect. The sky had cleared by the time he’d reached the castle, the sun having burnt away the misty haze of the early hours to reveal a sharpening bright blue sky dotted with clouds that hung motionless in a panorama that was beautiful and all so completely wrong. It should have looked ugly. It should have been pissing down and miserable and the end-of-the-world.

There had been a sequence of geo-caches here. It happened that way sometimes, especially with popular landmark locations. Clues to one revealed clues to another, and so on, giving you a good walk while building to what usually turned out to be an anti-climax. But then geo-caching was never really about what you found at the end. It was the journey, as clichéd as that seemed. The spending time together. It was learning more about your own country, the secret spectacles of home. Learning more about each other, and hoping you liked it.

They’d found the first geo-cache easily. Some of a stone wall had fallen and tucked amongst the rocks was an ice cream container bearing a strip of masking tape across its lid that declared, simply, “geo-cache.” Inside they’d found yet another Welsh key ring (this time a flat rubber oval with Carreg Castle in bas-relief), a decorative bookmark (or quitter’s strip, as Lyndsey used to call them), and a plastic toy. The toy was an armoured knight. He held a lance before him and his legs were unnaturally bowed, a half-circle scoop as if there had been a horse below him as well at some point. They took the horseless knight and left the key ring and bookmark, adding a yo-yo for whoever came next. Take something, leave something, move on. Another strip of masking tape inside the container provided a new clue and they followed it to the next location, and then again, and so on, until they were at the castle. It had become something of a silhouette in the fading light, and a cool evening breeze tousled Lyndsey’s hair as she looked down at the glowing phone in her hand.

“We better get a move on if we want to get the last geo-cache. It’s in the castle somewhere and it’ll be closed soon.”

The castle was privately owned but still open to the public. “It has a tea room and everything,” Lyndsey told him, scrolling through information on her phone, offering Charlie the highlights. She gave him details about the accidental sale of the castle, gave him particulars of its history and structure, its six towers, the drawbridges, the chapel, all of it, speeding through centuries.

“It’s mostly limestone here,” she said, “and there’s an underground tunnel that’ll take us to where the last cache is, I think. ‘150 feet of tunnel leads you to a well, believed to hold mystical healing powers.’ That’s what it says. You throw corks or pins in and make a wish. It’s particularly good at healing ear and eye complaints, apparently. Which is why I think the cache is there, because of the clue. ‘You’ll do well to keep your eyes open.’ Which is a crap clue but it makes sense.”

“Why corks and pins?”

She shrugged. “Doesn’t say.”

Charlie wondered at what else it didn’t say as he made his way towards the castle again. As he walked among the shake holes, sunken depressions in the soil and cracked stone, he also wondered how Lyndsey made her decisions about what to share and what to not, and would she have left him anyway if it hadn’t been for the Castellmarch man.

At the castle, Charlie descended into a gloom that suited his mood. The stone stairs were slippery with old rain and the castle’s outer wall close beside him seemed like it was leaning, as if it wanted to push him over the edge. He imagined falling. He’d imagined it lots of times. But he didn’t fall, and soon he was standing before a long narrow gash in the cliff face. Hardly any light penetrated the passageway, especially with his body blocking what there was of it, and he didn’t have a phone this time to illuminate the way; he’d never replaced his, and the police still had Lyndsey’s. Knowing how much darker it would become, he didn’t bother waiting for his eyes to adjust and simply plunged right in.

“Here we go.”

He was swallowed into nothing by the darkness. Arms out at his sides, he used the walls to guide him deeper. The stone was smooth and dry but very cold. He stooped, remembering how low the passageway became in places, and sometimes he was more comfortable turning sideways, but eventually he came to the standing pool of water where Lyndsey had joked about Gollum. She’d hissed “My precious …” into his ear in the dark.

“I expected an actual well.”

Charlie backed up a few steps and sat. He was wearing his new coat, which was long enough to offer him some protection against the cold stone. In one of its deep pockets was the Tupperware geo-cache he’d brought, shallow but long, perfect for what it held. He checked his watch, its light casting an eerie green glow that only seemed to make the dark darker.

He was early.

He waited.

Charlie had shone the light of his phone around the perimeter of the pool that first time. There were shapes floating on the surface and gathered at the edges. Corks. Some of them had pins pushed through them. Back then he’d had to psych himself up to put his hand in the water, and he’d gasped at the temperature. This time he merely reached out and caressed the surface of the pool, making small waves in the darkness. He felt a cork or two against his palm. He had stabbed himself last time on pins at the bottom of the pool, reaching for a geo-cache they never found. He’d dropped his phone, swearing. For a moment the light had stayed on at the bottom of the pool, and he’d grabbed it up again quickly, as if speed could stop it from becoming more wet. Tried to shake it dry.

“What?” Lyndsey asked. “What?”

“Dropped my fucking phone.”

“Yeah, but why?”

“Well I didn’t mean to.”

“I mean, did you hurt yourself? Did something bite you or something?”

There’d only been the brief sting of pins. “I’m okay.”

“How’s the phone?”

It was fine, until he pressed a button to check if it was fine, and then the screen went black and the torchlight went out.

“Shit.”

“Well done.”

“Ssh.”

“You shush.” Lyndsey had lit the tunnel with her phone instead but Charlie took it from her and plunged them back into the dark. He found Lyndsey’s arm. Her hand. He pulled her close and found something else and she’d said, “Hey!”

“We’ll have to grope our way out.”

“Funny man.”

And they had kissed. He remembered that very well. Sometimes, when he couldn’t sleep, he’d close his eyes as tight as he could to replicate the utter darkness of that moment and he’d remember the kisses they’d shared under the castle, buried in its rock. He couldn’t tell any more if they only felt like final kisses now, in retrospect, or if he’d known it even then.

“We should pick up some rice when we get out,” Lyndsey said, breaking away. “For your phone.”

“Does that actually work?”

He felt her shrug. “Saw it on Facebook so it must be true. Absorbs the water or something. You remember Jenny from—”

“Ssh.”

“No, I’m telling you a fascinating story.”

“I think someone else is here. Listen.”

They strained their ears to hear. Charlie turned his head and, for some reason, opened his mouth. He found that helped sometimes. This time it did.

“Hear that?” he whispered.

“Yeah, someone’s coming.”

And yet neither of them felt relieved. Maybe because whoever was coming did so without a light.

As if they’d agreed it between them, neither of them called out or made any noise, and though Charlie had Lyndsey’s phone he didn’t even consider using its light. He backed away, deeper into the passageway, pulling Lyndsey with him, keeping close to the wall.

It was the Castellmarch man, of course. For a while he was only the scrape of footsteps, but somehow they’d known. Why else would they have remained so quiet? Why else had they tried to hide, when the normal thing to have done would have been to greet whoever else had come to this special place?

He was singing something softly to himself. Welsh words, unfamiliar, but Charlie thought he recognised the tune.

Lyndsey’s breath was warm in Charlie’s ear. Her mouth was so close that he felt her lips on him as she said, “It’s him.” He went to turn his head, to whisper back, but she held him still and said, lips to his ear, “It’s the Castellmarch man.”

The voice in the darkness with them was suddenly quiet, and though Charlie hadn’t been able to follow the song properly he could still tell it had stopped mid-line.

“Somebody’s there,” said the man.

Lyndsey squeezed Charlie’s arm tight but the two of them remained quiet. There was nothing to be afraid of, he thought. Not really.

“Who’s there?” the voice called. “Why are you spying on me?”

They waited, silent, holding their breath and each other’s hand.

“WHO’S SPYING ON ME?”

Charlie said, “We’re not spying,” and lit up the dark with Lyndsey’s phone. Her grip on his arm tightened and they saw, together, the man crouching at the pool, that hat in his hands, and—

Charlie thought he saw … He thought, but he must have been wrong. He thought he saw the man’s ears, long and pointed and furred, twitching at Charlie’s voice. Horse’s ears. Then everything was a chaos of movement and noise. The Castellmarch man leapt to his feet, literally bounding up and across at them on all fours. He knocked Charlie aside and into the wall, hitting him harder than he’d have thought possible for a man of such build. Charlie dropped the phone, but not into the pool this time. Its light stayed on, but the device was kicked several times in the to and fro of a scuffle. Lyndsey cried out, and swore, and Charlie yanked at her and pushed at the other, and they splashed through the shallows of icy water as the man cried out, “You saw me!” his voice bouncing around and back at them in the confines of the tunnel. “You saw me!”

Up close, Charlie saw the man definitely had horse ears. They stuck up from lank hair that swept from his head and down his back like a mane. He had one arm around Lyndsey from behind and then he leapt up so that he was on her back. Charlie tried to grab him, push him away, pull him down, and Lyndsey turned around, tried to run, tried to shake the man off. The Castellmarch man gripped her firm, though, fierce, his legs around her waist now. He reached down between her breasts with one hand, holding a bunch of her jumper in his fist, gripping at her ribs, and the other held a tangle of her hair, and he was laughing or he was screaming, it was hard to tell, all his noise coming out shrill and echoing back at them. His eyes were wide, and he frothed at the mouth, Charlie thought, and he rocked against Lyndsey’s back, urging her on, pulling at her hair to guide her direction as she tried to run from him though he clung to her. Charlie saw her stagger the way they’d come and he pushed after them as the man’s cries whinnied back and forth in the dark.

Near the entrance they became a hectic silhouette. Lyndsey was bent under the man’s weight but still on her feet, ricocheting off the walls of the tunnel either side as the man held himself fast against her, upon her, one hand twisted in her hair and his groin rocking against her as if dry humping her back, playing giddy-up. In a panicked pirouette, Charlie saw his wife’s head turn, saw her look at him a final time, the Castellmarch man leaning over with his cheek against hers and his ears, those stupid fucking twitching ears, and then the two of them were gone. They dropped away into open space and Charlie had to pull up hard to stop from following them over the edge and down.

Charlie had called out his anguish then, but now it was little more than a soft mewling sound in the dark as he remembered. Take something, leave something, move on, he thought. Lyndsey had been taken, he had been left behind, and if anyone had moved on then it wasn’t him.

There had been no bodies down there, but in his dreams there were. Sometimes Lyndsey’s, sometimes his own. Sometimes he saw her carried away, the Castellmarch man’s bandy legs striding in great bounds. Sometimes it was Lyndsey who fled, carrying this strange man with her. The police found no trace of either person. They probably weren’t even looking any more, but Charlie was. Leaving his geo-caches with clues only Lyndsey would understand, looking for her up and down the country. He wondered if she was looking for him. Just as he wondered, sometimes, about that final look she gave him. Sometimes he remembered fear. Other times, excitement. Occasionally what he saw, or thought he saw, was relief.

Charlie removed his wedding ring and, sitting on the ground, traced his finger over the engraving inside, the coordinates marking their life together. One of them was this one, Carreg Castle, where the water was said to hold mystical healing properties. The eyes and the ears and maybe, Charlie hoped, the heart.

He cast his ring into the water. There was barely any splash at all when really it should have thundered. Then, from his pocket, he took the final Tupperware container. He was wearing a new coat and the pockets were deep. From another he took the hat.

In that struggle a year ago he had torn the Castellmarch man’s pocket and something had fallen from it. He had it now, in this final container. His wooden flute, or whistle, or recorder, whatever the fuck it was.

He took the instrument from its box and put it to his lips and played. It didn’t take him long to get the tune right. Maybe it would call them back, isn’t that how it worked in the old stories? Maybe one of them, at least, would come. Someone.

Anyone.

He played and he played until, finally, he thought he heard something. Voices, coming to him in the dark. He raised one of the flaps of the hat he’d put on and turned his ear to listen.

Yes. Voices. A man and a woman. He thought perhaps they were bickering, but that was okay. That might be better, actually.

He pocketed the whistle and the hat and stood. Take something, leave something, he thought. He pressed himself against one of the walls, hiding in the dark it made, and he waited.

In Abersoch there is a seventeenth century mansion that goes by the name of Castellmarch. According to legend it was once the home of one of King Arthur’s knights, March Amheirchion, who had the ears of a horse. He kept them hidden, but occasionally someone would discover his secret and March (whose name means horse in Welsh) would be forced to kill them. He hid the bodies in a nearby bed of reeds. His true nature was finally discovered when a boy made a flute from one of the reeds and the only song the flute could play was “March Amheirchion has horse’s ears.” Nobody knows what became of March Amheirchion, but it is believed he had several children and that his line continues to this day.