I wrote this traditional ghost story to be read aloud on New Year's Eve 2002. This is its first publication anywhere, and it is dedicated to its original audience: Cath, Lara, Miranda, Julian, Dan, and Carlos the dog.

A young man, living on his art in Dalston & Hackney, found that he had enough money for a holiday. This he took in a cottage in Cornwall on his own. He walked by the sea. He listened to the sheep at night. He enjoyed the light on the waves.

After a day or two though, he found that the cottage had begun to unnerve him. He heard things. He heard what he thought were movements. He heard them in the empty rooms at night; but also in the day, half drowned by the sound of the radio he kept in the kitchen. He was puzzled. The long cottage lane, with its fringe of trees against the setting sun, seemed disturbing to him in the evenings. His walks meant less because he spent them thinking:

"It must be the sound the central heating makes." Or: "The pipes. Of course, it's the pipes."

But soon it became clear to him that these sounds were actually the sounds of voices. They were the voices of a man and a woman. And whatever room he was in, he always heard them somewhere else.

He heard very distinctly the word, "Don't."

He heard the words, "I'm warning you, Alex."

He heard the words, spoken in a quiet almost conversational tone: "I'll kill you if you do that."

There was such a depth of promise in those words, such a certainty of purpose, that he failed to sleep that night and in the morning went to the farmhouse, where he knocked on the door and asked to be told the history of the cottage.

The farmer looked at his wife. She looked at the farmer. A couple down from London had lived there, they said. That was the history of it. There was no more history than that. It wasn't an old place. They had come down from London, the two of them. and failed to make a go of it., and failed to make a go of each other too. It was a bad winter.

The farmer laughed.

"There were some arguments in that house," he said, "before they gave it up." But his wife, less amused, said nothing.

No one in the village would tell the young man anything either.

A few nights later he returned from his walk to find that the house was shut against him. His key would not fit the lock. When he looked into the front room, he thought he saw a movement, a white face struggling with some strong emotion.

"Hello ?" He didn't want to call out to loudly. He thought someone might hear him. "Hello ?" Nothing. He stood there a long time. He couldn't see the face anymore. He wondered if he had ever seen it. When he went back to the door, his key fit the lock again. As he stood in the hallway he heard a calm woman's voice say, "Don't you dare come in here. I'll kill you if you come in here."

He heard that voice say that three times, "I'll kill you if you come in here.". The third time he went upstairs and packed his bags. He wouldn't stay there another night. He wanted to be back in Hackney where things were easier to understand. He left the keys with the farmer's wife. She seemed reluctant to let him leave. She made him a cup of tea. "Those two," she said, "arrived here as nice a couple as you'd want to meet. Down from London in their black clothes. But in the end..."

"What ?" the young man said."In the end what ?"

"In the end," she told him, "they fought each other all over the place. She picked up the hammer and he picked up the axe. The business had failed, you see. They fought each other all over the house like animals, and in the garden, and up and down the long lane there. They stalked one another in the dark."

She shivered.

"I saw them," she said. "Hit and chop, all afternoon and evening, waiting for each other, slipping behind the trees."

The young man stared at the farmer's wife. He didn't know what to say. He walked with his luggage to the end of the lane. It was late afternoon. He jumped at every sound. Every noise sounded like an axe or a hammer to him, and the sunset was like blood over the grey headland. I don't know what I might see, he kept saying to himself, I don't know what I might see. But he saw nothing and nothing happened to him, and soon enough he was on the train to London. When he got to the door of his flat, the key would not go in the lock, and he heard two voices say, "Don't come in here. If you come in here we'll kill you." But he had to go in. It was his home.

Now the young man can't rest. His home is full of voices. And wherever he is, in Hackney or Dalston, he sees them, those two white wounded naked bodies that keep pace with him wherever he goes. They slip behind the houses.

copyright M John Harrison 2002