To the Mournes for an autumn stroll. I’d not been walking long when the mist took an interest in me. It had been slouched on the far side of a small valley. Now it wandered over, as a bored cow will when you cross her field. Then my eyes stopped working. The hillside was gone, the flushing burn was gone. My ears weren’t performing well either. Sounds arrived late and out of breath.

Bemisted on that hillside, I remembered de Selby’s Country Album, particularly his dictum that “A journey is an hallucination.” I began to see what the great man meant. Distance collapsed in the pearly muddle. My legs were working, but was I truly moving? All I had to go on was the scrap of path beneath me, and who was to say that this section of fitted stone was not the very same one I had traversed thirty seconds before? Worse, it was possible that while I was still, the land was in motion. When the mist cleared I might find myself on the flanks of Carrauntoohil or atop Scafell Pike. This would be unnerving and inconvenient. 

I’d got the creeps, and once you’ve got the creeps, there’s nothing to do but endure them

I did my best to quash those thoughts. Such distractions lead to people sauntering off cliffs. I could imagine the headlines: Hack falls off mountain – environmentalists bemoan damage to landscape. No, better to keep a clear head. But this was no easy thing. I’d got the creeps, and once you’ve got the creeps, there’s nothing to do but endure them.

Other people didn’t help matters. Oh yes, there were other people about. They should have been a comfort. Instead, I found them creepy. There’s something odd about that. After all, I must have read hundreds of novels in which a figure “emerges from the mist.” So many fictional characters have emerged from the mist that no self-respecting novelist today could write such a thing. Like all clichés, it’s boring. Yet a cliché in print can still spook you on a hillside. 

This is how someone emerges from the mist. You notice a clotting in the wash of whites and greys. For a moment it’s hard to judge whether this is happening fifty feet ahead or directly in front of your nose. At the centre of the clot appears a twisting ribbon. As the seconds tick by, the ribbon thickens and darkens and twists a little more. Some tiny blasted tree, you think, gasping out a life in a granite cleft. And then the tree walks towards you, shrinking as it comes, until it transforms into a bearded man in a bobble hat and miniscule shorts. He’s gone as quickly as he came, soaked back into the mist. Most are content with a nod and a smile as they pass, but you’ll get the occasional waver in the distance. These are the souls of hanged men trying to lure you into a bog. They should be ignored.

The mist thinned after an hour or so. I crossed the dry-stone wall that runs across the Mournes and down into a saddle of rock and heather. Slieve Binnian’s vast granite pate loomed ahead. I cheered up considerably. Visibility was still poor, but at least I could see people coming from a healthy distance away. The creeps began to recede. That was when I saw the occult symbol scratched into the earth.

This is going to sound like total nonsense. All I can say is that I saw it and photographed it. A circle perhaps ten feet in diameter, with a small triangle at its centre and two larger triangles protruding, horn-like, from one side. There was the suggestion of a further shape between the horns, now rucked up by wind or foot. A couple were examining it when I arrived. “Is that … what do you think that is?” I asked. “Yeah, weird,” said the guy. The woman shrugged. Neither of them seemed particularly interested and they soon went on their way. Alone with the sigil, I felt the creeps flood back. Wiccans, I reassured myself. Dreadlocked Alliance voters with part-time jobs in candle shops. Just Wiccans. Nothing to worry about. 

Still, that was the moment I decided to turn back. The trick with the creeps is to know how much you can take. If you’re not careful, they’ll invite themselves into bed with you. Better to leave before that happens. As I walked back the mist rolled away, revealing a small lough and the long sweep of the reservoir beyond. I watched the eiderdown oblong canter down the valley and gave it a little wave goodbye, wondering who it was going to pick on next.