The Words of the Mouth

  ******

  Mairi and I went to Crete for a holiday. We badly needed to be alone together; the mounting stress and strain of the construction, the obnoxious presence of the building crew, and my almost daily forays in search of materials, had distanced us. I had begun to detect, occasionally, a hardness coming into her manner when she spoke to me.

  After a visit to Knossos, we had travelled inland to a high, flat area about seven thousand feet up. The altitude was tiring, and the people there were different from the hospitable Greeks down by the sea; they were unfriendly and tense, and their attitude began to affect us - we had a really bad argument which nearly resulted in our separating to go different ways around the island.

  That night I had a dream: I was alone in a graveyard back in Lindores, Fife. There were two small standing stones, one white and one dark, They had been moved by a farmer and one of them built into a wall. But these stones had originally been placed there in the distant past to mark the way for the Dead to walk; because they had been moved, the Dead didn't know which way to go, and the Dog of Hades had to come and fetch them. While I was standing there, the Dog came - for ME.

  With a sudden leap of great swiftness, he sprang at me and knocked me down. I awoke, terrified, staring wildly around me for several moments in the unfamiliar hotel room, while Mairi slept on.

  This dream preyed on me until I got back to Scotland. Curiosity compelled me to check out the stones in an Archeological Survey of Fife. To my great excitement, one of them was there, and it had indeed been put into a wall by a farmer. The photograph showed that it was covered with ring-and-cup markings, and some later Roman inscriptions.

  Then I recalled that I had seen this stone a couple of years previously, after it had been removed from the wall and placed in a garage - but at that time it did not have any special significance for me. The identity of the other stone, however, remained a mystery which I continued to puzzle over.

  A few nights later, I was: lying in bed beside Mairi, unable to sleep. Moonlight bathed the tiled roofs, the walls, and the earth with a pale dust. Something made me get up and go to the window and look across the yard.

  With a start, I saw a black shadow shaped like a dog, but as large as a pony, loping down the hill towards me, past the animal shed. The terror of the original dream returned with a shock like a thousand volts; all the hair on the back of my head stood up and I cried out: "GET BACK! AHHH! GET BACK!"

  The thing turned round, and I could see it was just a shadow, a pool of darkness, nothingness.

  I was certain now that these visions meant something; that my unconscious was presenting me with a message; but what was it?

  I crawled, shivering, back into bed and restlessly waited for sleep to come.