An Fear Liath (The Grey Man)

Nestled deep in the Cairngorm mountains of the Scottish highlands, among towns with no name lost among the desolate, primal beauty, there is a tale.

A tale whispered by night in smoky pubs by scruffy old men remembering a bygone day.

The tale of the fear liath, the grey man.

I was a young boy of 16 when I first heard it. My parents had taken me on a trip to Europe, the chance of a lifetime, but to a budding young man, the remote highlands of Scotland was the last place I wanted to spend my summer.

To silence my protests, my parents had reluctantly agreed to bring my girlfriend Jenny, and her brother Sam along. I was good friends with Sam, and their parents and mine were close.

“Come on, it will be fun” they cried, until they had cajoled me into reluctant agreement.

The town we stayed in, whose name I have long forgotten, was a picture of dreary, sleepy, monotony.

My parents loved it.

Me, not so much.

We spent our days hiking, taking photos, and enjoying the few amenities that the small village provided.

At night my parents hung out at the bar while Sam, Jenny and I played darts or tried to trick random adults into buying us beer.

One night, as I sat in the dimly lit pub, I heard a voice from the next table over. Raspy and laboured, I knew it was from a heavy smoker even before I saw the cigarette in his wrinkled fingers.

“Saw him again last night”.

The old man rattled.

“Won’t be long now”

“Ah! Whist with that nonsense! You’ve many years ahead of ya yet! Drink ya pint!” his companion implored.

“I saw him”, the old man continued. “I brought him back from the mountain. Clear as day he was. Black as soot, wild eyed, hair like a rake of thistles, it was him.”

“Aye, and were yeh drinking that night too? Whist man, don’t be codding me”.

After some more slurred banter, he men at the next table drank their way into silence, and the evenings brief excitement seemed over.

I woke early the next morning, and joined my parents, Sam, and Jenny, in the living room of our rented cottage.

“Hey, you know what could be fun…” Sam asked, leaning close to prevent being overheard.

“Literally anything other than being in this town….” I quipped.

“We could go check out that mountain, the one that old guy was talking about” Sam ignored my attempt at humour.

“I don’t want to go hiking today”, I protested, “and besides, that guy was just drunk”.

“What’s the matter, are you scared?” Jenny interrupted with a chuckle.

“I’m not scared, I just have better things to do….” I began, but realised my mistake almost immediately. I didn’t have anything better to do, so, to the mountain we went.

The day began warm and I found the hike pleasant, despite my glum mood.

As we climbed higher however, a thick blanket of cloud rolled in and with it, an icy rain. I cursed myself for not bringing my overcoat, but pressed on. It was barely past lunchtime, and I had nothing to do. “I’d rather be wet than bored”. I thought.

Slowly we hiked towards the summit. The green grass and low brush gave way to loose rock and slabs of primeeval stone, although the trail continued.

Eventually, we reached the summit, where we found a small chapel built from the surrounding stones. It was obviously ancient, with no windows or doors, or even any tool marks. Who ever built it just stacked stones from the mountain, and placed a simple metal cross on top.

We sheltered in the church, barely big enough for the three of us, until the weather passed.

I had to admit it was beautiful up here, with a commanding view of the village below. “If only they had wifi, this place might be worth staying in” I joked to myself.

“We better start back” Jenny said, “I heard it gets dark quickly on the mountains”.

We soon realised that Jenny was right. The light began to fade surprisingly quickly for late summer, and we soon found ourselves stumbling over the boulders and loose stones strewn about the trail in the dull grey of the worsening weather.

It was then that we began to feel it for the first time.

It was… a presence, almost like a sensation of being watched. Twice I turned around, expecting to see a shepherd or another hiker, only to see nothing but drab grey rock and patches of sodden grass.

We pressed on, into the gathering dark.

“Do you hear that?” Sam asked.

We all heard it, but he was the only one brave enough to voice our collective fears.

It was footsteps.

Faint, but definite, and getting closer.

When we stopped, they stopped.

There was no discernible direction, they seemed to come from one direction, then another, and another, as if surrounding us.

Then there was the smell. A faint odour, reminiscent of stale sweat and mould. A stench of decay. It wasn’t there when we arrived, but was unmistakeable now.

We quickened our pace, and were soon comforted by the towns dim lights in the distance.

With relief, we returned to our house, leaving the mountain behind.

We avoided that place for the rest of our vacation. It’s stark outline now brought with it a sense of unease, even fear.

We were glad to finally leave the cairngorms. We told each other we were simply bored, but in truth, it was more than that. What had we found there?

As the weeks passed and we returned to our normal, hi-tech life, we forgot the world we had left.

Until one day.

I arrived at Sam and Jenny’s house, where I often spent my evenings, but this time, there was a police cruiser outside.

My heart dropped into my guts as I raced to my friends door and flung it open.

There was Jenny, loudly sobbing, while talking to a police officer.

The next few hours were a blur.

“He’s gone” Jenny told me, through her wails. “I came home, and he was gone”.

Sam was missing. He hadn’t answered his phone, his email, hadn’t left a message, and his things were missing from his room.

Sam wasn’t one to run away, he was happy, and doing well in his life, and besides, he was 15, where would be run to?

I decided to investigate.

His room was bare, save for some furniture and assorted items, but that wasn’t what struck me. It was the smell, the same musty, stale odour that first assaulted my nostrils in the mountains of scotland. It was here.

Sams house was new, there was no reason for it to smell like an unwashed vagrant, but it did.

My heart lurched with realisation.

Sam’s parents had been away for a few days, and Jenny had been staying at a friends house, so Sam was by himself.

If something had followed us back… It would have had plenty of time to…

No, that was crazy…

Sam had probably gone to stay with a friend, or was playing a sick joke, that’s all…

One look at the police officer still searching the house for clues, and Jenny’s terrified, tear streaked face, told me I was wrong.

Something terrible had happened here.

Weeks went by, and we never found Sam. There was no trace. No clues, no ransom note, nothing.

Consumed by their grief, his parents never spoke about him. It was as if he never existed to them. There was no outward manifestation of their grief, just a stoic facade hiding their pain.

Jenny was a different story.

She cried, she screamed, she was inconsolable. She made me promise never to give up until we found him. That was a promise I made easily, and one I intended to keep.

We called the police so many times they stopped taking our calls. We put up posters, canvassed the area, searched online for clues, called Sams friends, his school, everything. He was gone. Not just missing, it was as if he ceased to exist…

That was when we knew that forces were at work here that were beyond our understanding, outside of our reality.

It was the grey man. We had entered its domain, and now he was entering ours.

We were determined to stop this creature, to get Sam back, but we had very little to go on. Just a few urban legends and creepy stories from frightened tourists, nothing concrete, nothing we could use.

Until I felt it again.

Caught in a storm while walking home, I took shelter under an overpass. The rain lashed the graffiti stained concrete and I zipped up my hoodie and huddled against the cold stone, waiting for a break in the weather.

Suddenly, I instinctively tensed and I felt hot breath on my neck, and that same, rancid odour of death and decay.

I ran. Through the freezing rain and piercing cold, I ran and never looked back.

I covered the three blocks to my house in a heartbeat, and slammed the door, locking it behind me.

Gasping, sobbing, I slid to the floor, back against the wall, as if a few feet of stone would protect me from this… thing…

“Jenny!” I panicked, and pulled my phone from my soaking wet pocket. Damn! It was dead!

With a grunt of frustration, I bounded up the stairs and to my room. She wasn’t online. No sign of her on social media, and she wasn’t picking up her cell.

God, no…

Not her too…

My heart pounding in my chest, but emboldened by courage, I dashed out into the storm once more.

I ignored the voices of my parents calling after me, after all, what could I tell them? There was no time.

It was too late.

When I got to Sam and Jenny’s house, it was empty. Just like Sam’s room, there was no signs of violence, no body, just.. nothing…

The presence, whatever I felt, was gone now, in it’s place, a lingering, stale, musk.

I called the police, I called my parents, I called Sam and Jenny’s parents. By midnight, the block was lit up like a christmas tree, police lights and ambulances were parked in every square inch of space.

Somehow, in the early morning, I made it home, and collapsed into a broken sleep.

In the weeks following, my parents brought me to a shrink, to deal with the trauma of what happened. I met with Dr fairburn twice a week, but he never seemed to understand, even when I eventually confided in him about our trip to the mountains.

I was put on medication, which clouded my mind and made me tired, and forgetful, but still I didn’t give up. If I could find the grey man, maybe I could find my friends? I owed it to them…

I searched, and searched, anywhere I could, trying to find the phantasm that had come to plague my thoughts.

Over dinner one evening, as I regaled my parents with my latest research, my father shouted to me “This has to stop! There is no grey man, nothing is chasing you, and you never had any friends!”

“Peter! My mother exclaimed, “Remember what Dr fairburn said!”.

“I don’t care! He needs to snap out of this, I’m sick to death of seeing him up there on that computer ever night getting more depressed and deluded! He still thinks these two friends of his were real!”

“What are you talking about?” I shouted, “Of course they were real! We grew up together, how can you not remember them?”

We shouted back and forth for an hour. My parents tried to convince me that I was suffering delusions, that that was the real reason I was seeing Dr Fairburn. Sam and Jenny didn’t exist, and the house that I barged into was simply a show house on our street that was up for sale, noone had lived in it since the previous tenant passed away two years ago.

It was lies, all lies, I knew it! I knew I wasn’t crazy. Somehow, the grey man, or whatever it was, had done something to them? Or to me?

A week passed, and then two.

Still I persisted. I needed to find the grey man, to find my friends…

But there was nothing. He was gone. The more I searched for him the more elusive he became.

It seemed he drawn by the power of thought, manifested by fear.

So I planned a ruse. I feigned abandonment of my search, stopped talking about him, stopped searching for him, even stopped thinking about him.

It was months before I was trusted to be alone in the house, and I knew that that is when it would happen.

I was completing some last minute homework when I felt the same ominous foreboding, smelled the same rank musk of decay. It was close.

This time is came for me, and I was done running, done hiding.

As it grew closer I felt a connection with it, I could sense its presence, and it’s thoughts…

It spoke without words, my mind filled with visions, images of fear, death, decay.

Closer the grey man crept, and faster came the visions.

A kaleidoscopic slideshow of flashing images, hundreds of people, frozen in fear, captured forever within the dark heart of this spectre.

It was almost upon me now, and finally, the pieces fit.

My heart sank and my courage failed as I realised the truth.

The grey man was thought, made manifest.

The grey man was not a character in a story, it was the story.

The only protection from the curse was to tell the story to someone else, passing on the curse to the listener, perpetuating the myth of the creature, growing its power.

My friends, Sam and Jenny, they were brave enough to resist. They spoke of the tale to noone, and so the grey man caught up with them, and absorbed them into itself.

Now it would come for me, unless…

I’m sorry.

I am… afraid. I don’t want to die, I am too young, I have too much to do.

Now my curse is yours.

Don’t forget the grey man:

Friends visit Ireland/Scotland, hear the story of the grey man from a guy in a bar, go looking for him.

Then they start going missing, one by one, and the author spends his life trying to find them.

Finally, they realise that the grey man isn’t a person, the story is the grey man, and anyone hearing the story becomes his next target.

When the grey man finds them, he erases them from existence, so that noone remembers that they ever existed.

The only way to survive is to tell the story to someone else, but that means that the grey man will come for them too.

The authors friends realised this, and refused to tell the story, meaning they were erased from existence.

The author isn’t as strong, and fears death, fears nothingness, and so tell the story to the person reading it now.

The author should make various memory errors throughout the story, to indicate that they are starting to forget even as they write it, showing that the grey man is getting close.