The Wishing Pig

The Holloway

This weeks post is a short story I wrote last week. I like to try different things here that reflect my interests and imagination. I retain an interest in folk horror and the uncanny. There is also an audio version for my friends who like to listen. I will say a little more at the end.

We felt the house chose us.

I had walked up the steps first; she a few steps behind me.

The Old Forge wrapped itself around us like a hug. Garrulous, I paid the asking price, no haggling - this was a special place.

Then the waiting, transactions complete, we moved in.

She loved it; knew where all our furniture fitted; I learnt to use a drill; pictures were hung.

On the first night, after bread and cheese, she lit a candle against the dark.

We glanced at each other and smiled.

We knew not the village where our cottage stood, but we knew the town nearby. ‘Twenty-Five-minute Walk to Waitrose’, a neighbour said. Bridport was perfect; just the right size; just the right people; near the sea; West Bay, Eype; Burton Bradstock; Cafés; good places to eat; The Electric Palace; the Arts Centre.

Walditch surprised us.

Chocolate box pretty; occluded in the rain.

That first day; turning left from our house; strolling up to the Village Hall; the church; then we looked up; noticed the hill behind the trees; fields of sheep; a bucolic scene.

We had lowered the average age in the village; the villagers being retired, their vigour surprised us, we watched them stride past, cut hedges, eat sausages.

She was so happy, I didn’t want to break the spell.

After a month I heard the story of the ‘Wishing Pig!’

There are main roads, the A35, and B roads toward Beaminster and the Jurassic Coast; and then their lanes with passing places where bushes buffer boundaries, trees form tunnels that cast shadows, fracture the light.

And there are Holloways.

The second-hand bookshop lacked neither, character nor dust; I picked up a copy of ‘Rogue Male’ by Geoffrey Household; inside the cover was scrawled local interest.

The shop empty, empty without anyone serving. I alone with the books; a man burst through the door, flustered, apologetic; explains he works there, but had, ‘Popped out for a coffee.’ We chat a while; I ask him about the local interest note within the book. He says he doesn’t know; I buy the book; smuggle it home. “No, more books,’ she said, ‘ We need to save money.’

We are ‘Blow ins’, not ‘Born-here’s’ but we are invited to garden parties and the Happy Hour in the village Hall.

It’s a good thing.

Skin in the game.

Local interest - the fugitive, after his botched assassination attempt; travels to Dorset hides in a Holloway; a strange lane into the earth; fringed with tree roots; snaking vegetation.

A past marked prospect of human intent enacting with the natural environment, slowly inexorably wearing away the loam and soil to the bedrock below, uncovering fossils and gems buried in the earth. This is localised dark matter; captured in memory; in daylight people walk the Holloways; at night none dare,

things

are

buried

here.

Dream and memory, skeins of imagination, hypnagogic hideaways.

I imagine the Holloway and the story it holds.

There is a mention of a passage from Walditch to Shipton-Gorge.

I am told the women from the Gorge carried bundles of hemp, grooved this track, wending their way to the rope workshops that provided bread to line bellies. I feel them beneath the surface, on the periphery of my vision.

My preoccupation concerned her, worried the old fears should return; were they caused by the cities; the stress of it all?

‘We were earthed now’, she said, ‘we are in the village.’

I did not mention the Wishing Pig, or what he said.

Money was tight. We manged some work, kept the wolf from the door.

Autumn came; we stared at the rain.

I dreamt of the Holloway and what waited there.

Compulsion a fire; it plays on the mind when there is not enough desire.

Our London friends deserted us; the phone never rang.

I had known soft places where world’s meet; realities inside fragile forms.

She said I needed to get out more, ‘Mix a bit’.

In the pub we drank cider; a storyteller; played the fiddle; glasses were drained; then told his tale as we listened to the rain.

He spoke; of the Wishing Pig; of the covenant made; of the years that passed; of those who didn’t age; of the flesh eaten; of who they betrayed; the faces that remained.

I tried to warn her; my words were constrained; she had not listened; would not be swayed.

We tracked ancient patterns; made our way to the Holloway, through dark lanes.

I walked slowly; she a few steps behind; the light of our torches caught faces and signs.

How could I tell them she had decided to stay?

She, a free person and not mine to gainsay?

The policeman eyes me,

from outside the cell.

And the Wishing Pig whispers,

‘Now you are in Hell.”

The inspiration for this came from my exploration of the Dorset Holloways and also a pig I met after the end of one walk. They fused together in my imagination and this story grounded in a ‘certain reality’.

Next week I will write about the Sweat Lodge and what I learnt there.

*Geoffrey Houshold’s novel ‘The Rogue Male’ is definitely worth a read.

All the best,

David

David Brazier