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The house I’ve been put up in is tiny: little more than what would be one full-sized room upstairs split into two tiny rooms, stacked upon another un-split space on the ground. Little dim alcoves have been added on higgledy-piggledy on the ground floor, a bathroom and a corridor-like kitchen. There is one yellowing landline phone on the wall, a small, tinny television, and no internet connection.
There was also an awkward moment when we arrived. My roommate for the trip – introduced as a Gus Balfour, plummy and delighted, while I was a Jack Miller, tired and headachey – had to ask where exactly the stairs were; behind a door I’d assumed was a storage cupboard, opening to a space as narrow as would be expected for one, the stairs winding tightly upward. Our host, a man with a Roscommon accent so thick it toed a wobbly line of incomprehensible to me, yet who had unexpectedly introduced himself as Georg Eriksson, gave Gus a look like he was stupid.
He then showed us to our room, surveyed us both stood in there, and gave another look that softened the earlier one. We were both stupid to him, but we were young, and our scientific interest in the bog his house sat near to the edge of was baffling but ultimately harmless. So as long as we turned a blind eye to the piles of protected peat-turned-turf he had and firmly told us he got from a different, unprotected bog, it was an amusing, perhaps pitiful kind of stupid.
"I don't go to that part of the bog," he'd said. "Not ever."
Eriksson will be kind and courteous to us for as long as we were staying under his roof, insofar as is required by a grudging respect for fellow man, the pressure of cultural etiquette regarding guests, and the fat rent sum he’s being paid by our funders. This I have concluded after three days, approximately eighty cups of tea, and his insistence that we take a thick slab of wrapped ham sandwiches out with us each morning.
-
So far, there have been less astute conclusions drawn on what we are actually there to research: the bog. It’s only to be expected, seeing as the project has only just begun and generally science can be summed up as slow, meticulous and grinding work.
I can’t help but feel frustrated, though. It’s April, not quite warm, and even with our rain macs on there have already been times we’ve had to pack up and sprint to the cover of the trees to save our equipment and scribbled observations. Gus tells me that, according to the team group text which I left as soon as I was added to, no other pairs are having the same issue elsewhere on the bog in their assigned patches.
It makes my skin prickle. It's nothing we can help, an unlucky patch to be given, but I don’t want us to come across as the weak link.
Gus either doesn’t notice this or is so accustomed to success as to not have the same worries. Regardless of how tightly I’m wound, he carries on asking me about where I did my undergraduate, my masters, my previous research, what I do for fun. None of which I want to discuss. This all while regaling me with stories of his own, of how his best friend Algie is also on this project which is apparently excellent news, in between explaining at length every tree and moss and bird in sight.
He likes to talk. Sometimes we’re far away enough doing our different tasks – him researching his beloved plants above ground, me digging things into the peat to read measures – that I can only hear that he’s carried on by himself, chattering away about something or other to do with heather or whatever.
I do like to listen, though. I haven’t even used the little portable radio I’d brought in case of silences.
On our fourth day, we’ve barely been out for twenty minutes when the heavens open and sheets of rain bucket down. We resignedly traipse over to the scatter of trees at the bog’s edge.
“What would we do without these, eh?” Gus asks, and even his usual cheer is coming across as slightly forced this morning. We’re close to falling behind with all this stopping and starting.
“Get rained on,” I reply.
“Well, yes,” Gus concedes, and under his rain hood the tension in his brow fades and he smiles like I’ve said something funny.
Beyond the trees the rain is viscous, wind whistling and cold. It’s like the land doesn’t want us there, I think out of nowhere, which is ridiculous. We’re there to save the bogs, in the long term, and they don’t get an opinion on the matter.
“Oh, now,” croons Gus out of the blue. “Would you look at you.”
I turn sharply to look, inexplicably flustered by Gus’ tone, and find him stroking some leaves. “What?” I ask, because I know he’ll explain it to me regardless, but the stroking is unusual behaviour.
“A hawthorn tree,” he says, thrilled. “Quite a specimen! Most of these are birches, but this is beautiful. Means there are fairies here, too, some say.”
“If you say so.” I don’t have the best eye for telling trees apart, honestly. I can see, though, that this is a different tree than most of the others around us, even if I doubt local folklore. “Want to get your notebook out?”
Gus shrugs. “It's fine. One lone hawthorn doesn’t interesting research make and we’re meant to focus on the main body of the bog, after all. But still! Delightful.” Without further ado he breaks off one of the thin, spiky branches, picks off one of the buds and pops it into his mouth.
The wind suddenly screams and then goes silent. The rain eases to drizzle and then nothing. The silence after the downpour hums; no birds have emerged to sing yet.
Gus, chewing on his snack, looks slightly disconcerted. My heart pounds in my chest for no reason that I can understand. Something above us in the hawthorn’s branches moves, and for a moment my skin crawls with being watched. Gus looks up into the tree.
I have to break the silence. The pressure of it pops and eases as I ask, “You can eat that?”
My voice comes out far more alarmed than I feel at Gus’ behaviour but, other than being a little startled at the change in weather, that must be the reason for whatever that feeling was. People joke that nature is my only and truest love, and they’re almost right, but in truth I’ve never shaken the suburbs-boy sense that all plants not in the supermarket are poisonous.
Gus finally swallows the bud. When he speaks it’s reassuringly with his usual pomp and enthusiasm. “Of course! Full of nutrients.” He plucks another and holds it out to me, “Try one.”
“No, thank you,” I reply, before even thinking about it, flushing half a moment later. I hate to come across as cowardly.
But Gus doesn’t make fun, at least not meanly. He puts the little bit of hawthorn in his pocket. “Keeping your appetite for Eriksson’s sandwiches?” he asks, slyly innocent.
“Fuck off,” I tell him, rolling my eyes. Eriksson’s sandwiches are pleasant enough, and the gesture almost fatherly, but they are numerous and slightly stale – in the bread sense, and the sense it’s the fourth day in a row.
Gus smiles again, the Jack-was-funny smile, and pushes his hood back. “Right then, let’s get back to it.”
I don’t look back at the tree as we walk to our spot.
-
For a week, there’s nothing out of the ordinary at all.
Each day Gus and I get up, have breakfast, accept sandwiches from Eriksson and let him drive us half of the way to our bit of bog on his tractor; take readings and observations and chat, come back half of the way on Eriksson's tractor; eat dinner, occupy ourselves, and go to sleep in our narrow little singles. Neither Gus nor I sleep all that well, it seems, judging from how often I can hear Gus’ breathing isn’t the deep, even breathing of someone asleep. Eriksson's snores rattle the entire house.
I have some strange dreams, too. That tree, that tree but on fire, but pouring water, but a person stepping out from the tree towards me, face shadowed but undeniably beautiful; me stepping back, horrified, and the peat opening up and sucking me in. I wake up half the time furious, at nothing I can pinpoint, and the other halfway out of bed.
Sometimes there are sounds, at night, but I can only assume they’re foxes, or cats, or the house creaking. Or Eriksson snoring, more likely.
Still. It doesn’t rain in strange ways, the wind doesn’t howl, and if I feel a little twitchy it’s easy to put it down to the fact that I’m tired of the same company, the same food, the same wide, gently rolling expanse of land around us.
“We missed meeting up with the others yesterday,” Gus announces one of the days, dismayed, after coming back from a lunch break with his phone in hand. “I don’t know how. Eriksson called to say they phoned the house this morning to see if we were all right. The texts only just came through.”
“Signal?” I suggest. Perfectly possible out here, ignoring that my phone has had perfect signal the whole time. We’ve ventured further into the bog as we cover our assigned patch, so easily signal has been getting weaker.
Gus turns his phone over in his hand a few times, like he’s expecting to see a crack in it. Then he stops and fidgets with the ring he wears all the time instead. “I suppose so,” he says, but doesn’t sound sure. “Eriksson did say he had to call five times to get through. I was fine to send our data in to base with just my data yesterday evening.”
I shrug. "I don't know, then." And I don’t want to say it, but it feels rude not to with how clearly disappointed Gus is, so I say, “Sorry, though. I know it would’ve been nice to meet up with you friend.” I pretend I don’t remember Algie’s name, which is impossible considering how often he crops up in Gus’ stories and how much I already dislike the sound of him.
“No,” Gus is quick to object. He puts a smile on. “It’s fine. You’re perfect company, Jack. And I’m sure we’ll get the message next time.”
I try not to preen, or to worry, and get back to my job.
-
The next meet up with the rest of the team, the text gets through in time.
Eriksson's car broke down with a clunk the day before, or so he says, so Gus calls on his best friend ever Algie to pick us up and drive us over to the chosen pub. It's a half hour there and a half hour back, plus all the time actually at the pub. Suffice to say it's a miracle I don't murder beloved Algie.
The rest of the team seem okay.
-
After that, coming up to the third week of the project, there is something very deeply out of the ordinary.
Gus is far away enough, sweet-talking the moss or whatever it is he does, that I can’t even hear his voice. I miss the sound, but it’s okay. I’ve dug two feet or so into the peat this time with my little spade, feeling like quite the scientist, and it’s almost a cheerful day. The sun is out, for once. I stand up to stretch out my knees and back, feeling ancient, before the serious business starts. When I look down, into the hole I’ve dug, I freeze.
There is a hand in the peat. Not a bog body, preserved and browned and leathery, easily mistakable for stone or an odd clump. A human hand, a little purple but far too fresh for the depth it’s at. A hand with Gus’ ring on it.
I’m too afraid to scream. It can’t be Gus, because Gus is all the way over there, talking lovingly to the plants and the little rodents and bugs that frequent the bogs. Just because I can’t hear him doesn’t mean someone killed him and buried him here. They can’t have; I’ve been here the whole time.
But there’s still a hand in the ground in front of me. I’m not afraid of death, but there’s a hand attached to a wrist, which implies a whole body, someone who must have been killed and hidden away. That’s what scares me. That someone could do that.
Sour sweat pours off of me as I stare at the hand and, like after the rain, even the birds have gone quiet. Abruptly, I’m positive I’m being watched. I can feel it on the back of my neck, so strong someone must be standing behind me. I’m about to turn and ask Eriksson or Gus or some kid from the village a few miles away what the fuck they think they’re playing at, when the hand moves.
It moves. Not a little twitch that I could brush off. Its fingers – the person’s fingers, Gus’ fingers – dig into the peat around it and pull and before I know it, I’m running.
I don’t see Gus where I think he was working. There’s someone going into the bit of trees at the edge of the bog and I can’t see them so well from a distance but it must be Gus, alive and perhaps armed with a gun or a knife or able to call the police or something, so I sprint after him.
“Gus–” I gasp once I break the treeline and the person turns but it isn’t Gus at all.
It’s me.
It’s someone with my face, at least. My exact face, down to the questionable haircut and lined forehead. Someone who stares at me, expression blank other than the fury in his eyes. Even though I was sweating moments before, even though I’ve been running flat out, I go ice cold. How can I be there?
The other-me holds out a hand. Stop. It’s a surprisingly non-aggressive gesture, for the pure rage held elsewhere in other-me’s body. I understand more than just the ‘stop’ in it. It’s a warning; he wants me to stop, but it won’t get violent.
Not yet.
Before I can speak – before either of me can speak, if the other me even can speak – the other me vanishes. I’m left staring at the same hawthorn tree Gus and I had stood by before. Something is in the branches, looking back.
-
I can’t sleep that night.
Gus had found me, doubled over and vomiting up everything in me onto the hawthorn’s roots. He’d fussed over me and rubbed my back and given me my water bottle. Apparently I’d left it with him before and he’d been coming to me to give it back, which is why he wasn’t where I thought he was. Completely mundane explanation.
“You need to stay hydrated, Jack,” he scolded me, still rubbing my back as I washed my mouth out. “It’s not that sunny, but your brain and body will do all kinds of nonsense without enough water.”
It was a good enough excuse for me to take, when I was desperate for anything: I’d imagined it all from dehydration. When I went back to the hole I’d dug, it was empty. Nothing nearby, either, when I dug half a dozen more to check.
But something was watching. I couldn’t see it, not anywhere, but I could feel it.
I can feel it now. Not sure how, unless it's something that can move, can follow. I still can’t sleep.
-
Some sleepless nights and anxious days pass. I haven’t told Gus anything. He’d think I was crazy.
Eriksson has the news on the radio as we eat breakfast at his tiny table. A volcano, which the news presenter is having severe trouble pronouncing the name of, has erupted in Iceland and the ensuing ash cloud has closed the entire European airspace. Chaos and mayhem reign in airports across the world.
It feels almost distant from us, in this house in the middle of nowhere, Ireland, when our project isn’t due to finish for just under another two weeks. We don’t need to go anywhere on paper.
But I still can’t shake what I’ve saw, or rather what I think I saw. Someone that looked like Gus, cold but freshly buried in the peat. Someone that looked like me, someone that was me but couldn’t have been, walking along bold as brass, in the daylight, who told me to stop. To go, to stop tampering, before further action needed to be taken.
That makes it feel close, like a disaster. We could drive if Gus can get through to ask for a lift again, and then get a boat, or just walk away, but this whole thing feels like a sign. If I’d listened to other-me, or whatever it was I saw, we would’ve left days ago. I ignored the warning, so maybe we’ve crossed a line already.
I need to research whatever this is. Madness setting in in your twenties, or hawthorn trees having pollen that makes you hallucinate, or bog gases addling your brain, or the fucking heather or something. There must be an explanation.
We don’t need to go anywhere right now, I remind myself firmly as the news goes on and on and on. The research isn’t done. Neither of those things you saw are real because they can’t be. Your dreams are just bad dreams.
If you’re having some kind of breakdown it’ll be as embarrassing as anything to drop out of the project, but it will be fine.
I pick my way through my porridge, as I have been for the last week. I don’t feel reassured. I don’t feel unwatched.
"Hmph," says Eriksson decisively of the news.
“I’m sure they’ll have sorted it all out by the time we go,” Gus says, brisk and like he can speak it into happening as he wishes, once the reporter moves on to other topics. “We’ll be just fine.”