Let’s go away for Christmas, she said, just the two of us. Of course I was going to jump at that. Apart from time away from the bickering family, there was the added bonus of getting some tropical sunshine in the middle of winter. I didn’t know she’d meant a week spent in rural England.
I tried to hide my disappointment when she showed me online pictures of the cottage she’d booked. Yes, it looked quaint and cosy, but isn’t that just real estate talk for ‘rundown’ and ‘lacking amenities’? I doubted we’d get mobile phone reception there and I was certain there’d be no internet available. We’ll be having Christmas just like the Victorians.
By the time I’d finished work on 23rd – closing at lunchtime, thank you CEO – I was in a brighter mood and we enjoyed the six-hour drive, tuning into local radio stations and making bets on how long before we heard Mariah Carey again.
To say that the cottage was in the middle of nowhere would have been an insult to nowhere. After leaving the A-road we drove for a further two hours, following winding narrow lanes, crossing cattle grids and getting lost more than once. I think we drove through nowhere and carried on for many miles beyond.
It was dark when we finally reached our destination and we were both tired and cramped so we left the luggage in the car and went straight to bed, crashing out in mere minutes. The following morning, when we stepped outside, we gasped in unison.
The beauty of the landscape was breathtaking. When we had arrived, the view had been hidden in darkness. Now we could see the rolling green fields, a dense forest, a lake sparkling blue and white and, in the far distance, brown hills that rose to meet the multitudes of white clouds. It seemed like another world, or a different time.
For several minutes, we gazed in all directions until the cold morning air forced us into action. We emptied the car and began to unpack, excitedly planning where we would venture first. As usual, I readily agreed with Al’s suggestion – a trek through the woods towards the lake, then a leisurely stroll back over the fields.
While I cooked a hearty breakfast, Al packed a flask of hot chocolate and sandwiches into a rucksack. After eating and wrapping up in our warmest clothes, we set out on our adventure. As we left the cottage boundary, climbing over a stile to reach the rough land beyond, tiny crystals of snow began to drift from the sky.
Dazzled by the beauty around us, we moved slowly as we stopped often to take photographs of the vistas. I had been right about the lack of a phone signal, but at least our mobiles could be used to capture the magnificent landscape. The only sounds were our own footfalls and the wind whispering through the trees. Though the snow grew heavier and the cold wind continued to nip at my cheeks and nose, this was possibly the most serene I had ever felt.
By the time we had covered the half-mile to the forest, the snowflakes were fat and settling. Our feet left shallow imprints on the ground which were covered over in a matter of minutes.
Under the cover of the trees, the light was dim though we found respite from the wind. The scent of the forest – pine and damp mulch – was pungent yet welcoming. Mother Nature at her most raw.
We pressed on, pushing through brambles and passing the odd fallen tree. The floor was uneven, rising and dropping with different gradients. Sometimes we climbed, other times we had to lean back as we descended. Trying to keep to level ground, we meandered through the woods with no discernible direction.
After a while, Al rested against a tall poplar and asked how long we had been walking.
‘I don’t know,’ I said as I fished in my pocket for my phone. The surroundings were too spellbinding to notice the passage of time. The bright screen of my phone was stark in the gloom.
‘Oh my God,’ I said. ‘It’s just after two.’
‘We better head back,’ Al said. ‘It’ll be dark soon.’
I nodded my agreement. We could always visit the lake another day.
Turning about face, we started in the direction we had come from. There were still fresh wonders to behold as we walked: large mushrooms growing at knee height from the trunk of a tree; branches which were wrapped around one another as though in a lover’s embrace; a clearing in which a foot of snow had fallen.
Al pointed at the deep snow and looked at me, puzzled. I answered her question before she was able to voice it.
‘No, I don’t remember seeing that on the way here.’ I felt the stirrings of trepidation in my stomach.
‘How can we have missed it?’
‘There’s a lot to see. It’s possible we were looking elsewhere,’ I said, though I struggled to believe myself.
‘Are we lost?’ There was a tremor of fear in Al’s voice.
‘No,’ I answered weakly.
‘Gordon?’
‘We may be temporarily displaced,’ I said, trying for a smile. ‘But seriously, how difficult can it be to get out of a forest? We just keep walking until the trees stop.’
With that plan in mind, we set off again. The vegetation grew in random and haphazard places, and the ever-rolling ground conspired to ensure we could not follow a direct route. Though we tried to keep going straight, after a dozen or more sidesteps I was convinced our path was too crooked to lead us from the forest. I cursed myself for not downloading a compass app onto my phone, not even sure if there was such a thing or if it would work with no internet signal.
As the daylight waned, the gloom under the trees soon grew too dense for us to walk with confidence. I told Al to use the torch on her phone, using my own to illuminate the few feet ahead of me.
‘It’s getting colder,’ Al stuttered through chattering teeth.
I turned to her, lifting my mobile to see her more closely. The whitewashing of my phone’s light could explain why her face was deathly pale, but not the blue tinge developing on her lips. My heart thudded in my chest as I realised the gravity of our situation. I needed to get Al home, soon, before she succumbed to hypothermia.
She tilted her head to one side, and asked, ‘Can you hear that?’
All I could hear was the pulse pounding in my ears, and I wondered how serious auditory hallucinations were.
‘This way,’ she said, and dragged me in a direction we had not gone before. Or maybe we had; I was so muddled up, I could not be certain where we had just walked from.
The ground rose sharply and, instead of turning around the incline, Al pushed on, dropping to her hands and knees to aid in the climb. I followed suit, scrabbling after her in the same manner. We crested the hill, dirty and panting, our breath billowing before us.
‘This way,’ she said in a voice so quiet I was not sure if she was talking to me or herself.
The sun was gone now and the blackness around us was so deep I could barely see a foot ahead of me. Every movement we made rocked our phones, causing shadows to jump in an endless and dizzying dance.
In the distance, I thought I caught the sound of a bell ringing. Was I now suffering the same affliction as Al? Before I could worry about this further, Al’s phone emitted a double-beep and her torch extinguished. In an instant she vanished, swallowed up in the night.
‘Al?’ I cried.
‘I’m here,’ she answered from the dark. A moment later she stepped into the circle of light cast by my own mobile. ‘My battery died.’
I looked at the screen on my phone. Sixteen percent. In this cold weather, the charge would plummet fast and we would be left in complete darkness. We shouldn’t have used both phones at the same time, I chided myself. That’s something I’ll have to remember for the next time I’m in this situation.
I almost laughed as I vowed never to let myself get in this kind of mess again, but the thought that we may not even get out of this predicament cooled my humour.
The soft tinkling came again, and I raised my head.
‘You heard it too,’ Al said. She grabbed my arm and pulled me – very weakly, I noticed – in the direction of the bells.
Our progress was slow. We were afraid to move too fast as we could not see if a tree or other obstacle was in our way until we were practically on top of it. Moving too rapidly would surely have ended in a painful collision. Every three or four minutes the quiet chiming called again, leading us on.
Eventually, the mud and grass underfoot became lost under a blanket of snow, a sign that we were approaching the edge of the forest. This made walking more treacherous, but the promise of escape lifted our spirits.
I’m not ashamed to admit that when we finally broke free, I cried in relief. The snow-covered land glowed in the moonlight, almost as bright as day, and we could clearly see our route back to the cottage. Although we no longer needed their assistance, the bells called out to us again as if assuring us of the way.
It took maybe an hour to get home, trudging through the deep snow and trying not to slip. Every step of the way, I was worried that the cold would become too much for Al, that she would fall to the ground and I would be unable to rouse her. The feeling grew more intense the closer we got to the cottage, how it would be a cruel fate for her to survive this entire ordeal only to perish within sight of safety.
Thankfully, my fears were unwarranted and we made it to the warmth of the cottage. As Al wrestled to unlock the door, I spotted two thin and parallel lines in the snow. It occurred to me that the bells had stopped ringing now, and that we hadn’t learned their source. They didn’t sound deep enough to have been church bells, they were lighter, somehow smaller.
Al opened the door and staggered inside. I was close behind her, glad to be out of the cold and the wind. And carried on that wind, the strange tinkling came one final time. But it was not alone.
Maybe it was my imagination, but I thought I heard a distant and receding, ‘Ho ho ho.’
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