Mired-On-Misery

“And a word to the wise, Mr. Andrews,” he said in a thick brogue. The wrinkled old man dropped the heavy ring of keys into my hand, and I wondered again if he had been hired for his looks just to impress the tourists. “Gates are locked for a reason. Sometimes to keeps things in; sometimes to keep things out.”

I nodded as if I actually had a clue what he was talking about, and then he tapped a finger on the side of his melon of a nose and returned my nod with a wink. What the hell was going on? He leaned on the gnarled stick he used for a cane, turned away with no small effort, and hobbled off down the rutted country lane. There was a crooked man, who walked a crooked mile…

It was an Airbnb in northern Scotland, which is to say a few kilometers north of nowhere. I was coming off of a devastating divorce which had precipitated some kind of a breakdown and, consequently, I had been fired, which had opened a window in my schedule for a little overseas travel. It was the name of the village that caught my eye: Mired-On-Misery. By all accounts it was a soggy wide spot in the muddy road that circumvented the Misery Swamp, and whoever had written the text seemed determined to dissuade anyone from visiting. Even so, it called my name. The modern affectation of an online website gave me the opportunity to book this old place that had been a roadhouse for hundreds of years. Hoping for a few days to crawl under a rock and lick my wounds, I had checked the online calendar for availability and found that it hadn’t been booked for a single day. At all. Ever. I took it for a month.

To their credit, they had not sugarcoated the online description. The cottage was every bit as bad as it sounded. The sky was a constant morose shade of gray, and the air was so saturated it felt like a confused fish might accidently swim up into it. There was no escaping the damp inside or out, and never even a brief, redeeming flash of sunlight. In other words, it was perfect for me. I settled in and prepared to sulk for the duration.

Days and nights were an alcohol-soaked blur as I cried and cursed, whimpered and whined, and made the most of my month at Mired-On-Misery. However, as much as I enjoyed feeling sorry for myself in dank rooms behind shuttered windows, even I eventually felt like taking a walk. I stepped out the back door and into a thicket of nettles, brush, and briars. By the look of it this had once been a garden. It was surrounded by a rock wall taller than a man, and I could see hints of an ancient stone walkway, but the swamp was no respecter of boundaries and had claimed the space within the wall for itself.

My curiosity got the better of me and I stepped down from the threshold and into the morass of weeds, hoping to follow the stone path to wherever it led. Easier said than done. The forest of thorns that surrounded Sleeping Beauty’s castle paled compared to this, but I was determined, and also in the mood for a little self-flagellation, so I pressed on. I began to panic as the way behind me seemed to close in and disappear and I found it more and more difficult to see the stones leading the way ahead. I shoved my way blindly through the thorns until, scratched and bloody, I reached a small clearing at the wall where I also found that the stone path had, in fact, led the way to something. It was a gate.

It was built into the wall, arched at the top and hung on massive iron hinges, rusted with age. It had a handle, and below that was a large keyhole. I pulled on the handle and, of course, it was locked. I remembered what the crooked man had said. “Gates are locked for a reason.” Whatever that reason might have been, it probably mattered more years and years ago than it did to me. Since there was nothing but swamp on the other side, I felt no need to pass through the gate.

I turned around and rested my back against the wall, dreading my return push through the brush to the cottage. I took a deep breath, steeling myself for the briar patch, and I shook my head. Something caught my eye. There, on the edge of the little clearing and partially hidden by vines, was a wooden ladder. It looked to be about as old as the gate and, interestingly, the rungs were clear of vegetation, as if they were ready for use.

More to postpone diving back into the thorns than anything else, I decided to climb the ladder to see what was on the other side. At the top of the wall, I was not surprised to see the seemingly endless Misery Swamp. I was, however, mildly surprised to find another ladder leading down the other side, and at its base, a well-worn path. I climbed over and down and stopped for a moment to examine the old gate, which, on this side, was covered in nettles and vines and just as locked as it had been on the other. I followed the path back to the muddy road and then to my front door, glad to have avoided the thorns but at a loss to explain why anyone would take that path to the two ladders that led only to an old, locked gate.

Back inside, I washed up and then tried to return to my rigorous discipline of moping around like a depressed teenager, but my heart wasn’t in it. Despite my best efforts at lethargy and apathy, I couldn’t help but be a little curious about the gate, so much so that I even failed to drink myself into a dreamless stupor for the first time since my arrival. Frustrated by my inability to get truly and deeply depressed as was my habit, I finally flopped into bed where I slept fitfully, if at all. The minutes ticked by well into the early pre-dawn hours, and then I heard it. The unmistakable squeak of rusty hinges.

I must have slept at least a little, but I was up with the sun, bleary-eyed and nursing a massive headache, but curious enough to stumble up the road to the path behind the garden wall. This time, I moved slowly and observed carefully. I found a jumble of footprints on the path as well as a frequent round depression that could only be the base of a walking stick.

At the gate, I was stymied. The path, along with the footprints, went to the ladder, but the ground and the brushy foliage around the gate were undisturbed except for whatever marks I had left the day before. This gate had clearly not been opened, and certainly no one had passed through it.

Brooding, I climbed up one ladder and down the other. There was enough grass in the little clearing to cover the ground, so I didn’t find any tracks, but I did find a burnt match.

I returned the way I had come, and once back inside I realized how tired I was from the night before. I allowed myself what I thought would be a brief nap but didn’t awaken until evening was coming on. Since I was now wide awake and looking ahead to another sleepless night, I decided to drink coffee and stay alert, listening for a repeat of the sound I had heard. I was not disappointed. I heard the creak of rusty hinges presumably swinging open and then shut, and I heard it not once, but twice.

After my all-night vigil, I fell into a deep sleep in the morning. I awoke fully rested and clearheaded for the first time in weeks. I planned to repeat my night’s activity, but this time I wanted a vantage point that allowed me to see as well as hear. This “cottage” had once been an active roadhouse with a tavern and several rooms for travelers. My host had allowed me access to enough space for my minimal needs, but there were parts of the building that stood behind locked doors. With the help of the heavy ring of old keys the crooked man had given me, I was able to explore the rest of the building, and I discovered a second-floor room with a window that overlooked the garden. The room was empty, dusty, and had no electricity, so I hauled in a chair and a side table, along with a quilt and a candle with matches. As darkness fell, I brewed myself a pot of strong coffee, and with that I settled in for the long night ahead.

As the night wore on, I began to question what I had seen by the gate, and especially what I had heard. Even if I hadn’t imagined it, which I probably had, and even if it was some clandestine, suspicious act in the night, which it probably wasn’t, there was no reason to think it would repeat. It takes more than two events to show a pattern, and I was almost certainly wasting my time and a good night’s sleep for nothing.

And then I heard the quiet murmur of voices.

I blew out the candle and leaned forward, peering through the window into the garden below. There were two figures lit by the orange glow of a kerosene lantern. One I immediately recognized as the crooked man. The other was a man unfamiliar to me, old and bent, his head and shoulders wrapped in a shawl to stave off the chill of the damp night. He struggled with a limp, probably an arthritic hip. How he had managed the two ladders was a mystery. As I watched, the crooked man turned a key in the gate’s lock and pushed it open. A pale light like moonlight poured through the opening, although there was no moon visible through the clouds above. The old man in the shawl seemed to brace himself as well as he was able, and then he limped forward through the stone wall. The crooked man pulled the gate shut and locked it. He leaned back against the wall, raised his lantern, and blew it out.

My body seemed to vibrate with excitement. I couldn’t look away from the darkness below even as the minutes turned to hours. Nothing happened, and then nothing else happened, and then even more nothing happened. Still, I sat and stared because the night before I had heard the gate open and close not once, but twice. Finally, there was the quiet sound of knuckles rapping on wood. A match flared and I could see the crooked man touch the flame to the wick of his lantern. With his ring of keys, he unlocked the gate and pushed it open. A man emerged. It was the same man, but the man wasn’t the same. He wore the same clothes, but now the shawl was neatly folded and draped over his arm. He stepped back into the garden standing straight, his stride smooth and strong. He enthusiastically shook the crooked man’s hand, who then locked the gate and led the way up the ladder and down the other side.

The scene repeated the next night with a different man, but to the same effect. He arrived bent and frail; he left straight and strong. The third night it was a woman, her face as wrinkled as a dried fig and her back bent and twisted like a corkscrew. When she returned, she twirled in the lantern light, and then she hugged the crooked man and kissed him on the cheek. She took his hand and held it over her head, laughing while she spun like they were dancing together. Then she coyly took his ring of keys from his hand, pulled the gate shut, and fumbled to find the right key. He stepped up and selected the right one from the bunch so she could lock it, and then they left.

Each day after the night before, I had returned along the path to the gate where there was no sign that it had been opened or disturbed in any way. After watching the dancing woman, I realized that the crooked man had a batch of keys just like mine, so maybe I had the same key that would open the gate. I took my keys to the gate and stood outside the wall. I excitedly yanked down vines and pushed the underbrush aside, and then began systematically to try the keys, one by one. I caught my breath as I felt one click into place, and then I turned it all the way. I pulled on the handle, but the old gate didn’t budge. I pulled with both hands, using all my strength and it began to yield, the hinges complaining loudly. This gate had not been opened for many, many years.

I wrestled it open enough to squeeze my body through and I stepped out into the little clearing on the other side. I looked around me, and everything was just exactly as it should be. I passed back through to the other side and looked around again, and again everything was perfectly normal. Nothing had happened. I don’t know what I expected, but I hadn’t expected nothing. I pushed the gate shut and locked it, and then I stood there wondering what to do next. Of course, there was only one thing left to do.

As I climbed the ladder, I thought about the two men and the woman I had seen pass through the gate and then return, transformed. I wondered what they would do with their gift, how they would spend their renewed life. As I descended the other side, I wondered the same about me. Renewed or not, there was nothing left of my life that I cared about.

I used my key to open the lock and then pushed on the gate. From this side, it opened easily with just the familiar squeak of rusty hinges. Despite the sky above being just as gray and cloudy as ever, golden sunlight poured through the opening. I squinted in the bright light and peered past the wall. There was a green hillside with grazing sheep, and beyond that a small village. It was the same village as here, but the village wasn’t the same. I looked back over my shoulder at the gray sky and the wet thicket of weeds and thorns, and then ahead of me at the glowing colors in the warm sun. I thought to myself that I must surely be losing my mind. Then I shrugged. I had been unhappy for so long it had become a way of life. Would it really be so crazy to choose something else? I squared my shoulders, passed through the gate, and pulled it shut behind me. I left the keys in the lock for the crooked man to find. I don’t need them anymore. I won’t be coming back.