They Will Know My Name: Book 2

On the night that the contact was made, it was clear and quiet. Usually, in such an isolated, rural setting, the tranquillity of the idyllic landscape could be shattered on a regular basis, whether that be by the screeches of the local barn owls, or the bedlam made by the village idiots crashing around, as they tried to find the way back to their hovels after an evening with the ale. It was not often that you got such velvety, perfect silence; where your own internal bodily functions seemed to go about their business beneath a quilting of down, and the whisper of any breeze was muted by some heavenly command.

Abel Grant saw to the pasture directly beneath the Weald, where the village of Wilmington began and the pristine countryside ran into the tracks of trodden earth and flint-stone walls of buildings. Therefore, he was not one of the idiots. The land was in a prime position, so close to the community barn and alehouse, but so aligned that one could even see the summit stone on top of the hill on clear days. Grant reckoned he could even make out its shape now as he cleared a patch of thicket, this in spite of the darkness. It was to be the first marker; the first oddity that awoke some curiosity from deep within his soul. Something wasn’t right. Something was different.

Though due home for his supper, Grant followed the same compunction that had spotted the distant summit stone and made his way up onto the pasture. He had grazed his cattle on the Weald just the day before, and not noticed anything out of the ordinary. But now he was near certain that the walk up the steep side of the hill at this late hour would be worth his while to make. Even should he find nothing, he just knew that he would sleep easier afterwards. As the incline increased, his boots began to slide against the grass, which was already glossy with dew. It never caught his eye as such, but it had seemed that there was an unnatural, silvery quality to the moisture.

About halfway up the slope, Grant began to doubt whether he had made the right decision. His wife was temperamental at the best of times and would not forgive him in a hurry when his supper went cold. It was as these thoughts began to grow in frequency that he abruptly stopped walking; not as though he had meant to, but like his path had been blocked by some transparent barricade. He stumbled upright and stood there confused for a few moments, his ankles taking the strain upon the uneven bank.

And then it struck him, as though thrown from heaven by God himself. His back spasmed, but he managed to stay on his feet. If they were still his feet. And the velvet of the night was torn to shreds as a brilliant glow radiated out from a spot just outside his field of vision, further uphill and over the top of the Weald. As soon as the light hit his eyes, nothing else seemed to matter to him anymore. All thoughts of home and his wife and his pasture had dissipated, never to return. Thoughts of himself, his body and where it was were similarly displaced, though the forces controlling him had allowed his muscles to relax and for his calloused knees to take his weight as he fell forwards.

Something advanced in his direction out of the light. First a mere corporeal shape, and gradually an upright figure and eventually, as the light dimmed enough for Grant’s eyes to work, something that would have horrified the farmer had he been able to find his on-switch. As it was, no-one else was there to see what Abel Grant saw up on the Weald, and no-one would ever be able to verify exactly what had happened that night.

But he could show them.

The sun rose the next day over the Weald; albeit with some hesitation, though this was not unusual in sixteenth century England. In a time dogged by religious conflict and in a country ruled over by a great and indecisive king, it was a very real fear for many peasants that one day the sun simply would not rise over their green and pleasant land. If you betrayed your God; the Protestant one, to be specific, then it was a very real possibility that along with the heat and light being switched off, your daughters would suddenly get sick and your wife might disappear off with a vagrant. Then again, betraying Henry was unlikely to turn out much better, what with the king sitting just below God himself, and with the added caveat that his roving death squads knew how to use a guillotine.

However, in spite of the apparent peace, there was something wrong upon the pasture of land beneath the Weald. In their pens, the cattle and horses and pigs had begun to move about, knocking against their gates with restlessness, distressed at what seemed to be disruption to their daily routine. Shortly after, the tenant’s wife was alerted to their mowing cries and made her way out to the paddock to investigate. Hands on hips, she looked around and gave a haughty sigh.

Rachel Grant moved about the farm and shouted the name of her husband. She was well aware that he had not come home on time the previous night, and had missed his supper, but had assumed that he had gotten drunk at the pub and had stumbled out that morning before she had awoken, presumably to escape retribution. She was completely unaware of where Abel Grant had been and what he had seen. Indeed, it wasn’t until around two hours later that she finally located the farmer, having dealt with the children, animals and labourers herself. At first, she said nothing; noting with distaste that her husband was scurrying in the dirt frantically, as though trying to burrow away from his angry wife. It seemed his task was being made difficult by an abundance of chalk in the wet soil. She ignored him and went about her own business, stumbling back down the wet bank and seeing once more to her children. They would learn to read and write in the mornings, and help out as best they could with the farming tasks in the afternoon. Any deviation from this routine was liable to make Rachel scowl; she had been educated herself and had only allowed Grant to marry her once he too had learned his a-b-cs.

Therefore, it was strange that her husband should so flagrantly disrupt the rhythm. It was not in his nature either. The Grants had never been the sort to cause a stir, never the sort to bother the local magistrate. They dealt personally with the landowner from Brighthelmstone and handled their business with due care and attention. Were anyone to notice that Abel Grant had taken it upon himself to get drunk and fool around in the dirt, it would mean embarrassment for the whole family, and if there was one thing Rachel wanted to avoid, it was a red face. She still remembered knocking over a milk churn as a little girl, spilling curds across the floor of their larder and staining her green dress. Her father had suggested she be beaten and her mother had pretended to agree. She hadn’t known that they had been teasing her, and what had hurt more than her own clumsiness was that naivety.

Eventually, she was compelled to approach her husband once more, as the hour edged towards noon. He remained where she had earlier found him, fumbling in the dirt up on the hill. Once more, he did not react to the advance of his wife, almost as though he not realise that he had company.

“Abel? Husband?” She tried every name that she had for him, to no avail. Abel Grant continued his now frantic scrounging in what was quickly becoming a small pit. To watch the single-minded farmer scarring his own pasture in such a way was rather a distressing sight, and it occurred to Rachel at this point that she did not want her children to see such a thing. And so she got down and tried to restrain him.

As soon as her fingers made contact with him, it became clear that something was wrong. Her first sensation; the cold, tense shoulder blade beneath Grant’s work-clothes, was an indicator that he was somehow alien, somehow split from her husband’s physiology, and that tallied when considered with his startling change in personality. Grant failed to react for a second time as Rachel tried to pull him back from the hole. Finally, she made some headway; fairly dragging the man back onto the grass, but he outweighed her and was back amongst his chalk and dirt without a moment’s hesitation.

He’s sick, Rachel decided, internally. He’s sick and he needs help right away. Get the doctor. Get the men from the farm. And get him out of the open.

As set and determined as her husband, Rachel ran back to the farmhouse and sent her son with a hastily scrawled message for the physician in Wilmington. Her daughter she roused and ushered out into the yard, where they proceeded to round up the various labourers who made up their workforce and relieved them of their tasks for the day. Used to dealing only with Grant himself, the men shared confused looks as they gathered, but they were loyal to the family that had treated them well and obeyed in silence. Rachel forged her way brusquely amongst them and selected the three largest workers, who willingly followed her back up towards the Weald. On the way, she attempted to explain the situation.

One of the labourers cracked a smile, and was shot a look that should have turned him to ashes. Apologetic, he shrugged.

“He could be searching. Looking for something he has lost, maybe in the dark?” one of the men suggested, rather reasonably. This too was treated to disdain by Mrs. Grant, who was struggling to look beyond her own ‘he’s sick’ revelation.

“He did not answer me. Did not see me. Something is wrong with him, as I told you…”

The workmen were inclined to agree once they reached the farmer. Grant’s work had now resulted in the excavation of an impressive amount of earth from the hillside. It was piled haphazardly around the pit itself, in some places spilling back down into the space vacated, where the farmer hadn’t taken more care in shoring up his progress. Usually a cordial and reasonable boss, the labourers expected the farmer to respond as they greeted him, but as with his wife before, he did not.

“You believe me? Do you see now? I want you to get him out of there…”

They obliged, and a wriggling, squirming Grant was manhandled up and away from his work and carried between the three big men back down to the farm. The labourers grunted and gasped at the strength of their boss, at his determination to escape their clutches. One of them got a look at his eyes and immediately wished that he hadn’t. There was something not right, something that Mrs. Grant already seemed to be aware of. It was as though the eyes had become vessels for seeing, which was odd when you considered that that was just what they had always been, but then when you saw those eyes of Abel Grant it became clear to you that the twinkle of personality was more evident in the eye than in any other part of the face, and that Grant suddenly had none to speak of.

The walk back took longer for Grant’s struggling and by the time they reached the farmhouse, Young Grant had returned with the doctor, a man called Fairing. They got the farmer inside and onto the kitchen table, where the remaining labourers gathered to help restrain their master. The situation was wrong; even to them, now, though they were not doctors or priests. Even as he writhed and squirmed, his movements seemed numbed by some inevitability; suggesting that his frivolous task was not perhaps his own, but one that was required of him by someone else, someone with access to Grant’s bodily functions. As Fairing leaned in to look, Grant struggled on with a stoic patience.

After his initial amusement had seemingly passed, the doctor admitted that he had brought along ether and this was forcefully administered; inhaled as the physician clamped a hand down over the farmer’s mouth. His movements finally slowed and there was relief for the men holding him, who had grown tired and sweaty.

Fairing then undertook a lengthy examination of the man who, now succumbed to the sedative, had finally become still.

“He would appear to be in fair health,” the doctor concluded, leaning forwards to look beneath Grant’s eyelids. The pupils seemed to be dilated.

“Then what should we do, doctor? Send for Father Mackley?”

“I think that this is wise. There would appear to be nothing wrong with your husband’s health. This could mean that his sudden behaviour has been brought on by something supernal, perhaps using your husband’s healthy body as a vessel. I would suggest that you pray for his soul; you and all of your kin. I will fetch the Father.

“But I must also inform the local magistrate of this instance, once I have left the vestry. You understand, Mrs. Grant, it is the law that I pass on all such evidence of numinous intervention, however slight. It may be that a Jesuit spy has simply twisted your husband’s perspectives with their deceit. The authorities must be made aware, in case others among us are at risk, and so provision may be made.

“Alas, do not fear unnecessarily, good lady. If this is God’s will, then you know that we are in safe hands. I know enough of your husband that he is a good man and would not be tempted by the devil. Our Lord will save him, don’t you worry…”

And with that, Fairing departed, his cloak the last thing they saw before he disappeared back out into the yard. And almost immediately after the door had swung shut, Grant came awake and resumed his struggle, the labourers leaping forward once more to hold him back. What was clear, even to those without education, was that the farmer had shaken off the sedative incredibly quickly. They had seen the amount of ether that Fairing had used. It was plain that something was controlling his body. Something not of this world.

In the end, it was simpler for the men to back off and allow Grant his will. Swiftly, he was upright and crashing through the door out into the yard. A sobbing Rachel made to pursue and tried to keep pace as he darted, with that same inevitability, up onto the hillside to resume his digging.

*

What became evident over the course of the next few weeks was that the entity controlling Abel Grant was entirely relentless. As the farmer continued his work down in the dirt, without tools or any kind of assistance, he did not stop once, nor ask for food or water. When it rained and the dirt became mud, he would plough on regardless. They had no choice but to force-feed him; holding him down and stuffing food into his mouth, before covering his gullet so that he would swallow. All work on the farm ceased as the farmer who had once directed it became the central attraction, and people began to gather from miles around to see this unworldly sight. Evidently, Doctor Fairing had not so much kept their counsel as informed the whole county.

“If this is an act of God, the people must see,” the magistrate explained to Rachel, from the spot on the hillside where they now stood every day. “They must witness whatever miracle is to be uncovered by your good man’s dig. Whatever relic we must secure for our church, that will likely save us from damnation and purge us of sin.”

On the first day, she had been at a loss and allowed the interlopers onto their land, but after a worker had asked about being paid, she got her act together and began charging the newcomers for admission to the site. At least while the land made them no money, her possessed husband still could.

She was wholly sceptical of the idea that her husband could be this vessel of God’s word. Just as for the same reason, she was inclined to listen to the new Protestant mass in English, because it made so much more sense than the one in Latin that she could not understand. There was no rhyme or reason behind Grant’s possession; he was not particularly pious, gave alms only at Christmas and had not at any point in his life displayed any behaviour that one might attribute to a prophet. She wished that Fairing would return and perform a second examination on her husband, and when he refused she wrote a letter to a friend in London, enquiring about a second opinion. If Grant was not being so manipulated from afar, it made sense only that he himself was performing these tasks and that he had changed, perhaps permanently. You heard about criminals and vagabonds driven insane by torture and poverty. Why could it not afflict a normal man?

Why, she now asked herself, as she stared at the man in the chalk. Because of what’s in front of your very eyes. Of what takes shape in the earth before you. He could not have known that it was there. He could not have created it. He couldn’t draw a bath. But what in God’s name was it? Why this figure, what was he holding and why was he here?

“You see!” the magistrate now shouted, as the rain began to fall once more from the darkening skies, “You people witness what our brother Abel uncovers. What God has bid him show to us. This mighty image of Man imprinted upon the earth by our Lord and saviour!”

The assembled crowds gathered in closer, the murmurings of vague prayers drifting out of the throng, over the patter of rain. One woman grabbed two handfuls of dirt from Grant’s now extensive piles and shrieked as she hurled them up into the air. A man was down on his knees in the mud and crying into his hands. Several of the recent arrivals had now gotten down in the hole alongside Grant and were attempting to aid him in the completion of his work, scooping away the dirt with their own, unworthy hands, shaping the white rocks to better form this picture that now took shape with the same inevitability as the work of Grant’s own hands, the same unstoppable continuity of a tide or weather front.

The farmer’s work went on even as those around him fell back from exhaustion, as the throng of onlookers began to dissipate in the intensifying rain; the entertainment for the day presumably over with. It was evident to those close to Grant, who remained nearby, that he would be physically unable to go on much longer. The earth had stained much of his skin a reddish-brown, and his fingernails appeared to have long since broken off. It was also a while since they had been able to give him water. Whenever Rachel forced one of the labourers down into the pit, they would return shrugging their shoulders. Whatever controlled the farmer was stronger than any of them, than their respective wills combined. Stronger than Grant himself, as finally told when he stopped, shuddered and fell back, as though electrocuted. Even then, the stolen hands continued their scraping at the dirt edges, but they too eventually became still. Rachel screamed out her husband’s name. Nobody moved.

Fairing was sent for and he examined Grant on the hillside, the labourers having dragged him from the pit. Rachel watched over his shoulder, but already knew the truth.

“He does not react to any stimulus. He breathes not, nor has a heartbeat. It would appear that poor Grant has worked himself to death…” This rather inelegant sentence brought a scowl from the magistrate and a hard stare from Mrs. Grant, who did not have any reason to sob. She had known somehow that her husband would never have recovered from the state that overcame him. At least it had now left him, for what that was worth.

However, it was only the legacy of whatever entity had driven Grant up onto the Weald that week in 1586 that lived on, for Rachel died the following year after a bout of pneumonia, and her children were adopted and brought up with different names. People through the coming ages would stand on the South Downs, on the summit overlooking the village of Wilmington, and ask one another how it came to be that the white figure holding the two sticks was imprinted upon the landscape, as though glowing from some torchlight encased in the earth. And no-one would ever be able to give them a straight answer. Records of the incident involving the Grants were scant, and those made were censored by the magistrate, whose supposed prophet had, in the words of a physician, ‘worked himself to death.’ It would not do to slander God’s name so, as to associate Him with this tragic outcome.

Stories about who the figure uncovered on the hillside was became myth, and myth became legend. Today, the figure remains and is referred to locally as The Green Man or The Long Man of Wilmington.

It has never been formally identified.