Verified by Darkness on the Mountain
On a solitary walk as a teenager, Maggie O'Farrell nearly met her end.
By Maggie O'Farrell published January 4, 2018 - last reviewed on April 17, 2018
On the path ahead, stepping out from behind a boulder, a man appears. We are both on the far side of a dark lake that lies hidden in the bowl-shaped summit of this mountain. The sky is a milky blue above us; no vegetation grows this far up so it is just me and him, the stones, and the still black water. He straddles the narrow track and smiles.
I'd passed him earlier, farther down the glen. We had greeted each other in the amiable yet brief manner of those on a country walk. I realize now that on this remote stretch of path there is no one near enough to hear me call and that he has been waiting for me: He has planned this carefully, meticulously, and I have walked into his trap.
The day began early for me, just after dawn, my alarm clock rattling beside the bed. I had to pull on my uniform and tiptoe down some stone steps into a deserted kitchen, where I flicked on the ovens, the coffee machines, and the toasters. I sliced five large loaves of bread, filled the kettles, and folded 40 paper napkins into open-petalled orchids.
I have just turned 18 and pulled off an escape from everything: home, school, parents, exams, and waiting for results. I have found a job far away from everyone I know in what is advertised as a "holistic, alternative retreat" at the base of a mountain.
I serve breakfast, I clear breakfast, I wipe tables, I remind guests to leave their keys. I make the beds, I change the sheets, I tidy. I pick up clothes and towels and books and shoes and essential oils and meditation mats. Then, around lunchtime, I have four hours to do whatever I want before the evening shift. So I walk up to the lake, as I often do.
I have no reason at this point in my life to distrust the countryside. I have been to self-defense lessons at the community center in the small Scottish seaside town where I spent my teens. The teacher, a barrel-shaped man in a judo suit, would put scenarios to us with Gothic relish: Late at night, you're coming out of a pub and a huge bloke lunges out from an alleyway and grabs you. Or: You're in a narrow corridor in a nightclub and some drunk shoves you up against a wall. What do you do?
We practiced reversing our elbows into the throats of our imaginary assailants. We dutifully repeated the weak points in male bodies: eyes, nose, throat, groin, knees. We believed we had it covered, that we could take on the lurking stranger, the drunk assailant, the bag-snatching mugger. We were taught to make noise, to attract attention, to yell. We also absorbed a clear message. Alleyway, nightclub, pub, bus stop, traffic lights: Danger was urban. In the country or in rural towns like ours, attacks did not happen.
And yet, this man, high up a mountain, is blocking my way, waiting for me. It seems important not to show my fear. The only option seems to be to keep walking and pretend that everything is perfectly normal. "Hello," he says, and his gaze slides over my face, my body, my bare legs. It is a glance more assessing than lascivious, more calculating than lustful.
I cannot meet his gaze, but I am aware of narrow-set eyes, considerable height, ivory-colored incisors, fists gripping his backpack straps. I clear my throat to say, "Hi." I turn myself sideways so as to step past him: a sharp mix of fresh sweat, leather from his backpack, some kind of chemical-heavy shaving oil that seems distantly familiar.
I am past him, walking away. I am careful to use strides that are confident, purposeful, but not frightened. I am not frightened: I say this to myself over the oceanic roar of my pulse. Perhaps, I think, I have misread the situation.
He is right behind me. I can hear the tread of his boots, the swishing movement of his trouser fabric. And here he is again, falling into step beside me. He walks closely, intimately, the way a friend might.
"Lovely day," he says, looking into my face.
I keep my head bowed. "Yes," I say, "it is."
"Very hot. I might go for a swim." His tone is flat, almost expressionless.
I turn to him as we walk together in rapid step beside the lake. "A swim," I say. "That sounds nice."
He answers by placing his binocular strap around my neck.
A day or so later, I walk into the police station in the nearby town. The policeman at the desk listens, head cocked to the side. "Did he hurt you? This man—did he touch you, hit you, proposition you? Did he do or say anything improper?"
"No," I say, "not exactly, but—"
"But what?"
"He was going to," I say.
The man looks me up and down. I'm wearing patched cut-offs, numerous silver hoops through my ears, tattered sneakers. I have a mane of wild hair into which a retreat guest had woven beads and feathers. I look like what I am: a teenager who has been living alone for the first time, in a forest, in the middle of nowhere.
"So," the policeman says, leaning heavily on his papers, "you went for a walk, you met a man, you walked with him, he was a bit peculiar, but then you got home OK. Is that what you're telling me?"
"He put the strap of his binoculars around my neck," I say.
"And then what?"
"He showed me some ducks on the lake."
"Right," he says, and shuts his book with a snap. "Sounds terrifying."
How should I have articulated to this policeman that I could sense the urge for violence radiating off the man like heat off a stone? I could have said: I want to see your supervisor. I would do that now, at age 43, but then? It didn't occur to me that it was possible. I could have said: Listen to me, that man didn't hurt me, but he will hurt someone else. Please find him before he does.
When the man put the binocular strap around my neck, even though he was saying something about wanting to show me a flock of eider ducks, I knew what came next. I could smell it, I could almost see it there, thickening and glittering in the air between us. I decided I must play along with the birdwatching game. I knew that was my only hope. You can't confront a bully; you can't call them out; you can't let them know that you know, that you see them for what they are.
I glanced through the binoculars for the length of a single heartbeat. Oh, I said, eider ducks, goodness, and I ducked down and away, out of the circle of that strap. He came after me with that length of black leather, intending to lasso me again, but by this time I was facing him, smiling at him, gabbling about eider ducks and how interesting they were. Did eiderdowns used to be made of them, is that where the name came from? They were? How fascinating. Tell me more, tell me everything you know about ducks, about birds, about birdwatching, goodness, how knowledgeable you are, you must go birdwatching a lot. You do? Tell me some more about it, about the most unusual bird you've ever seen, tell me while we walk because—is that the time? I really must be going now, down the hill, because I have to start my shift. I work just there—you see those chimneys? That's the place. It's quite close, isn't it? There will be people waiting for me. Sometimes if I'm late they'll come out to look for me, yes, my boss, he'll be waiting. He walks up here all the time too. Sure, we can walk this way, and while we do, why don't you tell me some more about birdwatching, yes, please, I'd like that but I really must rush because they are waiting.
Two weeks later, a police car drives up the winding track to the guesthouse and two people get out. I see them from an upper window where I'm wrestling pillows into their cases. I know straight away what they are doing here, so even before I hear someone calling my name, I am walking down the stairs to meet them.
These two are nothing like the policeman at the station. They are in suits, their demeanors serious, focused. They want to talk to me in private. I sit on a bed and the policewoman seats herself next to me. The policeman sits at an ornamental wicker table. They are interested in a man I encountered recently on a walk. Would I be able to tell them exactly what happened?
I start at the beginning, describing how I passed him early on the hike, how he headed off in the opposite direction, then somehow appeared ahead of me. They nod and nod, listening with a measured intensity. When I get to the part about the binoculars strap, they stop nodding. They stare at me, both of them, their eyes unblinking. It is a strange, congested moment. I don't think any of us breathes.
"A binoculars strap?" the man asks.
"Yes," I say.
"And he put it around your neck?"
I nod. They look away, look down; the woman makes a note of something in her book.
Would I be willing, she asks, as she hands me a folder, to take a look at some photographs and let them know if I see him there?
"That's him," I say. The detectives look. The woman notes something again in her book. The man thanks me; he takes the folder.
"He killed someone," I say, "didn't he?" They exchange an unreadable glance but say nothing. "He strangled someone. With his binoculars strap. Didn't he?"
The girl who died was 22. She was from New Zealand and was backpacking around Europe with her boyfriend. He was unwell that day so had stayed behind at their hostel while she went off on a hike, alone. She was raped, strangled, and buried in a shallow pit. Her body was discovered three days later, not far from the path where I had been walking.
I know all this only because I read about it in the local newspaper the following week: The police wouldn't tell me. I saw a headline in a newsagent's window, went in to buy a paper, and there was her face, looking out at me from the front page. She had light-coloured hair held back in a band, a freckled face, a wide, guileless smile.
I think about her most days. I am aware of her life, which was cut off, whereas mine, for whatever reason, was allowed to run on. I don't know why he spared me but not her. Did she panic? Did she try to run? Did she scream? Did she make the mistake of alerting him to the monster he was?
For a long time, I dreamt about the man on the path. He would appear in a variety of disguises, but always with his backpack and binoculars. Sometimes, in the murk and confusion of a dream, I would recognize him only by these accoutrements and think, Oh, it's you again, is it? You've come back?
What happened to that girl, and what so nearly happened to me, is not something to be lightly articulated, formed into a familiar spoken groove to be told and retold over a dinner table. It is instead a tale of horror, of evil, of our worst imaginings. It is a story to be kept battened down in some unvisited dark place. Death brushed past me on that path, so close that I could feel its touch. It seized that other girl and thrust her under.
From the book I AM, I AM, I AM: Seventeen Brushes with Death by Maggie O’Farrell. Copyright © 2017 by Maggie O’Farrell. Published by Alfred A. Knopf, an imprint of The Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC.
