The Silence that Follows

The man on the moor appeared on a Wednesday morning during winter break. That is, more accurately, he appeared to me at that time and on that date. 

With little to do in the evenings but spend them in a stuffy, low-ceilinged room with my parents as they droned on about town and people I didn’t know, I often took myself to bed early. At least in my dreams, I could catch up with friends, we could take the train to the seaside where it was summer, and I could see Henry again. The consequence: I would wake early. 

I preferred to lie in bed, the down quilt pulled up to my chin for as long as I could stomach the boredom, or until a milky dawn light poured in under the thick curtains and I could watch my breath whispering out into the frigid room.

That morning was like most others; the room was cold, the house quiet. I remained still, listening to the silence, the blanket pulled up. As dawn pushed weakly under the curtains, I slipped a bare leg out to test the temperature. Frost, perhaps fog. My slippers and robe lay waiting, and I put them on and went to the window. 

The curtains were dense, designed to keep draughts out. Opening them would let more chill in, but I wanted to see if there was fog. I enjoyed walking in it. It felt dramatic. Gothic. I imagined myself Cathy: floating towards my Heathcliffe. Or, I was Magwitch: a fugitive hiding from the law, hungry and mud-sodden. 

I pushed a curtain aside just enough to peek my head through.

The fog blanketed the garden and fields beyond, bleak and suspicious. The horses in the paddock were gone, the sheep in the open fields perhaps there, perhaps not. There was no wind, and the trees did not sway or twitch. All was still. It looked bitter. Biting. My breath steamed the window, and I wiped it with the palm of my hand, the icy dampness startling my warm skin.

And there, right through my smear on the window, was a man. At least, I assumed it was a man. 

He stood in the garden just visible through the fog. In his hand, he held a long staff or walking stick, and his face and body were shielded with a wide-brimmed hat and long, dark cape.

I wondered why he was there, in the garden that merged into the field, then onto the moor. Had he been on a walk and stumbled across the field in the fog? Though, it felt too early for such activity. Perhaps he was lost and had come across our cottage, wondering whether to knock and ask for help at the risk of waking us. Or, the location of the cottage might be one he knew and was using to get his bearings.

But he did not move, choosing instead to remain preternaturally still. 

You’d expect a man standing like that to glance around, maybe adjust his hat or scratch his nose. This person made no such movement. 

I felt acutely aware of my presence. Can he see me? Is he looking at me?

There was a rumble, as if a heavy lorry were lumbering down the road that ran alongside our cottage. I felt the vibration through my slippers, and it deepened up through my knees, and into my stomach. The house trembled. My jaw rattled, and teeth chattered, like I was out there with the figure, lost on the moor.

There was a metallic smell so strong I could taste it in my gums. I imagine it’s what the mercury at the bottom of a thermometer smells like. I gagged.

Then, what had begun as a buzz crested into a roar, filling my ears, flooding my senses. I pressed my hands against my ears, to stop the rattle and muffle the noise. The dampness on my palm was still there, and instead of warming against my face, the chill only increased. Spreading. First into my cheek, then my lobe and down the ear canal. Like the icy creep on a window spanning from frame to frame, meeting in the middle of the pane, consuming it. Opaque. And, as the frigid dampness reached and spread across my eyes, that’s what I saw: opacity. My room was masked behind a milky-coloured veil. 

I lost sense of the world around me, hammered by noise, the quaking, and my now shrouded vision. I didn’t know if I was still beside the window looking out. Details became obscured, there was only colour. Meanwhile the vibrations increased in frequency and size. The floor shook, the wooden boards lurching and jostling against each other.

If I called for help, I couldn’t hear it. I couldn’t feel air expelled from my mouth, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t. As the cold penetrated further inside my head, I stopped being able to tell if I was standing. At the same moment, I was both falling backwards and lying down. 

I writhed. 

For hours. 

Or seconds. 

And then, it was over. As if all sound had been removed from the world. An immediate hush. I wondered if I had gone deaf. I must have. How could one person experience such a barrage and maintain all of their senses?

My cloudy eyes cleared.

I had barely moved. The curtain was draped over my tucked legs like a blanket as I crouched against the wall. The noise and vibration were gone. 

I stood up feeling physically well, any trauma I’d experienced apparently only in my mind. 

The curtains, still open, revealed a placid morning, the sun meekly lighting the gardens, the field and the moor beyond. The fog was lifting, burning off. 

The man was gone. Instead, where he’d stood, sat a circle of grey. A frost in a perfect Euclidean circle, etched into the grass. 

Again, I noticed I could hear nothing. Not even my own breath. The world was silent.