“The Stranger in the Ditch”

All of that was earlier. In the past. Martin was now driving back to the bed and breakfast alone. He continued to drive through the interminably gloomy weather, trying to put it all out of his mind. But he couldn’t. Something was very wrong and he didn’t know what. It must have been a trick of the rain, shadows reflecting off trees, tiredness? Martin was positive that what he had seen was not real. Still, all the same, he could not deny how perfectly identical the apparition was to his dead wife. The notion made him shudder with fear. What was that? No matter. Just keep driving.

He did. It was two hours since he had killed her, almost three since they’d left the restaurant together, but most disturbingly, it was at least an hour since Martin realised he should have made it back to Two Bridges by now. After all, it was only a few miles down the road from where he had buried her. He ignored that realisation and tried to focus on driving again. I may have driven in the wrong direction, he reassured himself. Probably. I’ll just turn around in the next town and go from there…

He drove and drove. Another fifteen minutes went by.

And that’s when the last thing Martin needed to happen happened. Without warning nor prelude, the revs of his car suddenly dropped and the car cut off completely before it rolled to a stop. It came to a halt in an abutment.

“What the bloody hell is this now?” Martin grumbled as he watched the lights of his dashboard fade into blackness. “Fuck sake!” he then shouted after the car refused to start again. He smacked the steering wheel and just sat there for a moment, looking out at the bleak domed moors.

He tried to start the car again, but it refused. Not even the sounds of ignition could be heard when he twisted the key. Martin rubbed his tired face and prepared to step out into the rain to look at the engine. This is not what I need.

Martin lifted the bonnet catch under his seat, and the bonnet popped up. Then he turned up the collar of his shirt and stepped out to have a look under it. He walked to the front of the car and leaned in under the bonnet. It was dark, and he knew he needed a torch. He had one in his boot. Martin continued to feel around under the bonnet for a couple of minutes. He thought about how he could get the car back, or maybe if he should abandon it. As he was thinking of what to do, suddenly, a low and gruff voice emanated from behind him.

“Seems you’re ‘aving trouble ‘ere,” it said. Martin shot up and darted around to face where it had come from. The last thing he expected was another soul to be out on the roads in this weather. He looked and squinted in the semi-black. And there, standing in the rain, he saw a person. Ten feet away from him was this mountain of a man. At least seven feet tall.

“Jesus! You scared me,” Martin said. There was no response.

Martin had barely made him out because he was not moving. This giant just stood motionless in the embankment, half in the tall grass. He wore an oversized green waxed trench coat that stretched down to his knees. Poking out from the bottom of the coat were wellies that crawled up to the top of the man’s shines. They were caked in thick and greyish mud and gave off the sharp odour of a marsh. He was wide. His posture and proportions seemed to belong to that of a bear rather than a man; a giant bear, standing on its hind legs, looking down at Martin in the threnody of rain. He had huge rotund shoulders, a great bulging belly, and legs like tree trunks. Next to him, by the side of the rut, was a big military-looking trunk encased in faded black leather and wooden corners. It was more of a foot-locker than anything else. One which looked like it came from a few centuries back.

The man had been out there, all this time, in the rain, dragging this trunk around with him wherever he went. He had come from those deep dark woods behind and dragged that thing with him. And that fact unnerved Martin. A large cast-iron padlock hung from the centre of it. Martin looked up at him. The giant’s face was obscured by the low-rimmed cowboy hat that he was wearing. In the rim was a large pheasant’s feather poking up and back from the hat. Martin could only make out the bottom of his face. It was a strangely angular face.

“Didn’t intent on scaring you,” the man said. His jaw was puffed out and too wide, so wide that Martin couldn’t tell where his neck ended and his jaw started. Yet his cheekbones were high and jagged. He had scraggly hair all over his cheeks, and his lips were curiously missing. Instead, there was just a thin black slit for a mouth. His skin was pale and sickly looking. It reminded him of his dead wife’s face.

The giant leered over Martin, and that mouth of his seemed to draw back with anticipation as if it was licking its lips with hunger, or sucking in air, or analysing Martin’s scent, like some wretched basilisk. The man continued looking down at Martin.

“Who are you?” Martin asked meekly, trying to conceal the sheer panic in his voice.

“I live here,” the giant replied casually. The voice was low and metallic. As if the vocals cords he used to produce the sound were not entirely organs of a human. He then looked past Martin at the car. The bonnet was open, and the hazard lights were flashing steadily in the downpour.

“Broken down, sir?” the giant asked in a horribly thick West-Country accent. Martin hesitated and then just nodded, unsure of what to say next. All he could think was where this giant had even come from.

“Suppose I could fix it for ye?” the stranger said. Martin quivered. The harsh voice seemed to travel through him; it vibrated inside Martin’s skull whenever this man spoke. “If’in you got’s the tools to fix it?” The man continued.

Martin knew that he could not be found by police on this desolate road now. There were stains all over him that he needed rid of. He was a walking crime scene. He knew he had to get somewhere safe and clean up. If he was caught, then it wouldn’t take all that long for his story to fall apart in front of him. He needed solitude, safety, somewhere he could get his alibi straight, get his head straight too. After everything that had happened to him tonight, he needed refuge.

Martin looked up towards the towering behemoth of the man standing before him. The great waxed coat was like a tent that had somehow developed legs and began wandering through the marshlands.

Martin nodded. “Um, yeah, sure. I think it’s something to do with the gasket. The coolant must’ve burnt out and fried the goddamn spark plugs somehow. I can get an ignition, but it just isn’t catching, is all,” Martin said politely.

“I understand.”

Martin just nodded, desperate to get out of the situation more than anything. “The tool kit is in the boot,” he said. “I’ll grab it.”

The two walked to the rear of the car, and Martin opened the boot. He reached in and pulled out the toolbox stuffed in with everything someone would need in an emergency breakdown. It contained a torque wrench, a spanner kit, tow rope, everything.

Martin pushed the thoughts of his dead wife out of his head and handed the stranger the box. The stranger took it from his grasp, and, immediately, Martin felt the raw strength of the giant before him. The clasp of his hand over Martin’s as he took the box from his was almost mechanical, vice-like. It squeezed Martin’s hand until he winced in pain and drew his hand back apologetically. The giant did not notice, either that or he respectfully pretended he had not. The pair of them then navigated towards the front of the dead car. Martin afforded himself a look forward, towards the row of black pine trees ahead. All around Martin, he felt the slow creeping-in of his prosecution. The haunting forest seemed to produce the voice of his dead wife all over again.

”You fucking coward,” the motionless black pine trees jibbed to him. “I fucked Paul, by the way.”

Martin shook his head and tried to concentrate on what he needed to do. Jesus, Martin, just get out of this mess you’ve created for yourself. But he couldn’t. He knew, somewhere out there in that darkened wood, his dead wife laid. And he put her there. It was as if the preverbal net was closing in around him. The longer he stayed on this road, with this mysterious stranger and those blood-soaked hands, the sooner he would see the inside of the cell. He needed to get off this foul stretch of road immediately.

“You service this automobile often?” the monolith asked.

“Pretty frequently,” Martin replied, wrapping his arms around his chest to keep the warmth in. The night air was cold and wretched against his bones. Everything was wet and biting.

The giant leaned down under the bonnet and inspected the engine. Martin waited. The rain was beginning to roll down his back, under his collar, and frustration had started to make him fidget. He thought about hurrying the stranger up but soon changed his mind.

The giant tinkered around under it in the dark. He felt the components with his giant, shovel-like hands and sniffed at various aspects of the engine. Then he rose from under the bonnet after a few minutes. The pair just stood there in the torrential downpour for a beat, both looking at each other. It was hard to make out in the darkness, but Martin could’ve sworn that the giant was smirking. His face seemed to twitch with ardour as he looked down at the unfortunate traveller.

“Supposing I can fix this automobile for ye, what’s it worth to me?” the giant said glibly.

“Um, what do you want? I’ve got money,” Martin replied.

“Where be to?”

“Excuse me?”

“Where are you going? A lift in’a town would suffice, I reckon. I been out here so long I cain’t ‘member my own name.”

“Town? What town? Princetown?”

“Yes, sir. Princetown is ‘bout five miles down ‘ere,” he said as he pointed down the road. “It’s on your way.”

“On my way to what?” Martin asked with a distinctly perturbed tone in his voice. How does he know I’m heading in that direction? On my way to where?

The giant then looked forward to the inky blackness. “Will ye take me, if’in I fix yer car?”

Martin cooled slightly. “Okay, yeah, sure. Deal,” he sighed.

“Gurt lush!” The giant said. He grinned and set to work under the bonnet again. Martin waited next to him. There was a lot of grunting and spitting coming from the man; strange noises that sounded like a deer snorting. Along with them, a spanner squeaked as it tightened something. Martin shook his head in dismay and silently pleaded with whatever God he could think of to get him out of this mess. Something, anything, to get him safe…

Sometime later and the giant had managed to get the thing alive again. He told Martin to climb in and try the ignition. He did. Martin twisted the key and, as if it was a brand new car, it growled into motion. Martin laughed. His ride to freedom was so close now.

“You did it. Sir, you are my saviour,” Martin said giddily. He looked up from the dashboard, forward, out at the man standing in the rain. The giant had closed the bonnet and was now just looking at Martin through the windscreen, grinning to himself sardonically. It was hard to remark for definite, given the interminable shroud of rain, but Martin insisted that he saw the man’s eyes twinkling unnaturally. Hints of iron-grey that appeared to be illuminated slightly. His eyes seemed to capture the waning of the moon above.

Suddenly Martin thought about leaving this stranger behind. Something was very wrong with him and Martin felt it, he just could not figure what exactly it was. But it was too late anyway,

The giant had sauntered to the passenger side and climbed in before Martin could make the decision. The car heaved and groaned at the sudden extra weight on its suspension. Joins in the frame seemed to squirm under the tremendous bulk of the stranger. The stranger didn’t say anything as he wriggled into position. He simply looked ahead, wrapping his massive arms around the trunk sitting in his lap; hugging it almost. Now, more than any time previously, Martin noticed the incredibly loathsome stench radiating from the giant. It was beyond stench. It was a sharp, earthy odour that smelt a lot like compost but harsher. It smelt like decaying flesh, gone-off ale, vinegar, onions, all combined with the unmistakable odour of some wretched marshlands. The smell almost made him gag. Without the rain obscuring his features now, Martin could see just how alien and incredibly ugly this mysterious man was. His skin was sallow and sickly looking. His eyes were too far apart and were unnaturally large, even for the size of the man’s elongated skull. They looked like two giant hawk’s eyes wedged into a misshapen and ill skull that looked more like something attempting to mimic a human’s characteristics than be a specimen of them.

Martin sighed once more, put the man’s goatish appearance down to possible inbreeding, and put the car into gear. Of all the goddamn nights to breakdown, it had to be this one! He gritted his teeth and tried not to give in to the anger swelling inside of him. No matter. You’re on the move now. Just get back, clean up, and forget about this whole thing. Drop this man off down the road from your accommodation and do not give him any details about yourself, Martin. 

The pair sat in silence as the car chugged along through the endlessly expanding rain—a constant blur of dark trees and boundless moors half-numbed Martin’s concentration. There was something almost monotonous about the endlessness of it all. He was away with his thoughts anyway. If only Sarah would have just stopped drinking and at least tried to listen to me, he thought to himself. No, forget it, Martin. Forget her. She was a bitch, and now she’s a dead bitch. But what’s the plan? What the hell is my story going to be? Good question.

At some point, the giant snapped Martin out of his pondering when he made an incredibly presumptuous statement. “Strange time to be out here on your own,” the giant muttered in that same awful West-country accent. “Mooost folks like to stay near pubs’ n’ such when the weather’s like she is…”

“I could say the same thing for you.” Martin retorted calmly after a long pause. “Strange time for you to be walking around with that thing.” Martin gestured to the trunk. The giant merely smiled in acknowledgement as he looked forward and caressed his footlocker with an odd sort of affection. Martin shook his head and decided to not indulge the man in conversation. He didn’t need to know any details about this man, nor he Martin. The less he knew, the easier it would be for Martin to keep his story straight. There was manoeuvrability in a tale so vague and ambiguous as his. He could’ve left his wife at the restaurant. They could’ve argued, and he dropped her off at a hotel. Who knew? No one. And Martin wanted to keep it that way. He had to. No details. No pertinent facts.

Minutes went by. Too many of them. As the tense silence slid over the pair again, Martin could not help but think about how long he had been driving on the same road. It felt like at least an hour. But that was impossible. He had barely seen a road sign since he left the manor house with his wife. Come on, how long is this bloody road? Still, the road just kept on coming—an unending stream. The rain, the forest, the gloom all seemed to repeat itself repeatedly with the homogeny of a hamster’s wheel that he felt he was running on. Martin exhaled a groan of tedium.

“I thought you said Princetown was about five miles down this road?” he asked, trying his hardest not to betray his frustration to this creepy man. The giant did not reply for a good few seconds. Instead, he shuffled around in the seat to get himself more comfortable. “Well?” Martin pressed.

“It is down this road,” the giant finally replied. “… It won’t be much longer now, I don’t think.”

The response was not enough for Martin. He gripped this steering wheel tightly, so tight that his hands went white. Then he reminded himself he must remain calm. He thought of the axe he kept in the footwell of his driver’s seat. He thought of the screwdriver in the glove compartment. What’s the difference between one and two murders? Maybe I should just kill this guy too? 

He was prone to angry outbursts. He would be the first to admit that. But he was trying to control them. No. Just keep calm until you’re rid of him.

Martin glanced down at the heavy, dark trunk in the lap of the giant. He started to wonder what could be in there.

“What’s in the trunk?” Martin asked, doing his best to sound gregarious and casual.

“Ere, particulars and such I have collected back-along.”

“Oh… like possessions?”

The giant didn’t reply.

“Can I see?” Martin pressed after a short and uncomfortable pause, just the sounds of the windscreen wipers sweeping from left to right, beating off the heavy rain.

“Do you want to see?” The stranger said in a flat, hoarse tone.

“I think maybe you should.”

“I should?” He replied with a hint of confrontation in his peculiar voice.

“Seeing as I am giving you a lift into town, and you’re making me very nervous. It’s strange that you were right there on the road when I broke down. How do I know you didn’t set that up? How do I know you’re not some axe murderer?”

“And how do I know you’re not either?” The giant replied nonchalantly.

“All I’m saying is it’s strange for someone like you to be walking around in this weather, carrying that thing. Are you a homeless man? An off-grid type?”

“I believe I told you I live here.”

“That doesn’t make a lot of sense to me, though, seeing as I haven’t seen a house anywhere around here the whole time. So, if you please, show me…”

The giant stroked his trunk and just looked down at it. “You know how many souls I’ve come across?”

Martin cocked his head. “What?”

“… They all want the same thing,” the behemoth replied, still smiling to himself.

Martin sneered and glared across that the giant. The giant did not respond to his accusing glare. Martin then drew his gaze downwards towards the footwell that accommodated the giant’s massive dinosaur-like feet, and there he saw it. Martin gasped when he did, and the stranger noticed. It was when Martin spotted something wriggling and writhing out of the bottom of the man’s trousers that he knew he needed to get rid of this stranger right away. There was something oozing and black that was slithering around stealthily from the man’s ankles, exploring the environment with the cautiousness of a woodland critter. The car was dark and Martin couldn’t be sure what he saw was truly there, but in the twilight, he caught a glimpse of a sheen of something wet and slippery down by the man’s legs. Martin then drew his glance over the giant’s chest. The giant’s whole body seemed to be teeming and wriggling under the clothes with tentacles or some manner of worms as if roused by something.

Martin could no longer hide his terror. He took a second to think of what to do next, then, before his brain had even processed a response, he slammed on the brakes. The car screeched and slid to a halt in the rain.

“Okay. Enough. You either tell me who you are or get the fuck out of my car,” Martin snapped.

The giant slowly craned his head right to face Martin. “You want to know?” The giant asked, wiping away a tiny string of dribble from his mouth.

“Yes!” Martin bellowed. “I want to know you haven’t got a fuckin’ body in there or something. And I want to know what you have under your coat!”

The giant flashed his sharp white teeth for the first time. They looked like a row of stained daggers.

“I’ll tell ye, if’n ye tell me something… I think you were up to no good tonight when I found you,” he hissed at Martin. “I believe that is blood on your collar, sir. I believe you have left your baggage in the dirt back-along.”

“What the fuck are you talking about?” Martin replied, trying desperately not to betray his inner fear to the giant. How the hell could he know? ”Were you watching me?” Martin asked, not sure if he wanted an answer.

The pair glared at each other. The giant smiled menacingly. This stranger somehow knew Martin had done something nasty tonight. Was he in that forest too? Martin began to regret pushing this stranger so much. All he wanted to do was get back safely. But things were not going his way this night.

“If you want me to put your mind at rest, then I shall. Here, I’ll show you,” the giant said.

The giant unlocked the cast iron padlock. He gently lifted the lid from the chest. Martin stared at the stranger with bemusement, then he heard it. His face dropped into disbelief when the voice came from within.

“Whyyyy the fuuuuck have weeee stoppedddd here?” Sarah’s low voice emanated from the pit of the trunk.

“Sarah?” Martin asked, completely aghast. He looked at the giant for a moment, then down to the mysterious chest on the giant’s lap.

“She’s waiting for you,” the giant said callously. A strange-smelling vapour rose from the trunk. The vapour smelt like seaweed and something else. Almost sulphuric, acrid.

Martin frowned and put his head up over the trunk. When he did, his face went wide with terror. His eyes smouldered with horror. What was inside was indescribable. No known words could ever explain the numbing terror that swirled in the pit of that awful chest. It was something beyond any mortal realm. It was something eternal. It was death—a mass of churning pallid clouds within. Every conceivable phantasm and monstrous abomination reached up from the trunk to pull Martin in. Martin screamed, but no noise escaped his throat. What came out instead was a silent expression of utter fear, like a yelp without sound.

The giant remained still and watched. His eyes blazed steel grey. Behind the glow, twinkling lights that looked like black stars swirled around in his irises.

“I am he who eats the souls of all life,” the giant growled slowly. His mouth drew back, and his voice began to come out like the hiss of a vile snake. “I live here. I’ve always lived here. I am the first one. And I shall reave your soul and feast on it forever. As I have done so to all the sons and daughters of man. Then you will know my true name…”