Ghosts

The ancient village of Kenfig is plagued by ghosts. Things have reached epidemic proportions. Ghosts drifting in the fields, in the pubs, on the beach, in the houses, in the machines. Shrieking in the dune slacks, knocking on the windows, whispering in the walls. Indeed, Kenfig could even be said to be haunted by the ghost of itself.

Because Kenfig is not really Kenfig. It’s a substitute. The original town disappeared sometime in the middle ages, covered over entirely by the remorseless and relentlessly shifting sands. We live today in the refugee camp. And it’s beginning to seem permanent. But sometimes it’s tempting to think our real lives might still exist, out there somewhere under the dunes, among the arrowheads and amulets, millstones and thimbles. Sieve sand’s pixels and who knows? A flake of something real might catch the sun.

The ghost I’m hunting today gave its name to ‘The Angel Inn’, next to the church in Mawdlam. I’ve heard there’s a story behind the name, but I don’t know it, so I’m sitting in the beer garden looking north towards the castle ruins and asking my fellow drinkers.

Was there a penitent pilgrim perhaps, on his way from the markets of Bridgend to pray with the monks at Margam Abbey? He got lost in the mist on the endless dunes, say, pixy-led and delirious. Bitten by the savage salt wind, all hope draining from his frozen bones like frost until suddenly the fiery angel arose, a beacon in his mind, and led him here. To the shelter of this very door.

No? No. Well then, I’ve heard that this old pub was once a hospice for lepers. The bandaged patients, removed from the world by their terrible sickness; a life in quarantine. Maybe an angel worked here and daily washed their wounds with her tears? Her compassion itself a miraculous cure for a world of hurt and hunger.

Could that be it? Anyone?

But nobody seems to know. Either that or it’s a secret that must be kept. Perhaps the angel is still here, kept safe and cool in the cellar among the barrels of cider and beer. The ultimate contraband. Imagine that, the beast of eternity, shipwrecked on Sker beach, smuggled away, and hidden here.

Meanwhile, a half-cut busker, Gronow, tells me his own ghost story:

“I was about fifteen or sixteen I think. The school found out I’d been mitching, so I was hiding over the dunes from my old man. Hiding from a battering. I hated school. Much rather wander the duneland than sit in the fish-faced rows sucking up the mind-control. I wanted to be a traveller, a troubadour, a gentleman of the road, yeah? A poet, a wandering minstrel. I was head over heels in love with the world and every single bird in it. Heavenly days. But the careers adviser said them things weren’t on the list. How about travel agent? Leisure and Tourism? So I switched off, dropped out, taught myself, never looked back.

 But the ghost? Fifteen years old, and I’m hiding in the woods. It looked like an owl mask, something wearing a white owl mask, standing in the shadows, intending itself to be seen. But it was pretending not to see me. It stood there like a monk in a hood. I stopped still, definitely scared, but doubting. Wondering whether to approach the mystery.

It was man-size I suppose, but with the hooked angelic face of an owl. A hooded owl. A weirdo in an owl mask in the woods. A white monk in a devil’s hood.

I got closer, slowly, quietly as a deer over the brambles and ivy, straining against my nerves and doubts and fears and curiosities, uncatching my clothes from the flicks and fletches and scratches of blackthorn and dog rose, trying not to jinx myself by shaping the wrong thought. Can this be the moment? The moment I meet…a supernatural Thing? An ancient thing with flesh and bones and brains and grievances? My god, surely it is – look! But then I slipped on a mossy rock and the creature turned its alien head and looked straight into my heart like an arrow.

And there, tumbled in the ferns, spluttering among the dust and pollen, I saw it clearly. An ash tree had fallen in a recent storm. Its shattered trunk created the remarkable illusion. It really did look like an owl-headed human stood there in the soft light of the rising moon. A lady-owl. A howling witch.

I hauled myself up, shaking off the sticky buds and stingies, strode forward and touched its twisted face, the wrenched white heartwood of the ash. And then suddenly a breeze like a stranger’s breath whispered against the sweat on the back of my neck. Said my name : Gronow… I careered out of those woods alright.

 But wait that’s not the end. A month or so later and I’m walking down West Road. Night-time. Soft rain falling. And I spotted a stuffed barn owl, just dumped there on the wall of the vet’s surgery. Remembering the ghost in the woods I approached it shiftily. Can I just take it? A masterpiece of taxidermy, abandoned, weirdly, right there on the vet’s wall. Stunning. A souvenir of my scary encounter. It could only be meant for me. A wink from the universe. All the stillness of death on it and yet, its closeness to life, bewildering the senses. That beak, like a razor. Well, I reach out to smooth its breast and the moment my fingers touched those soft feathers – BOOM — it bursts back to life, throws out its big wings and soars into the sodium-lit sky sweeping away silently towards the full moon rising over Sker.

And that, my friend, is a true story. Yes indeed, a story real and true.”

 The tables in the beer garden are covered with empty glasses and crisp packets. Most of the drinkers have disappeared but some hang on for the last of the early spring sun. A chill in the air now, like a key in a lock. Tobacco smoke drifts away towards the steelworks, a hazy mirage on the other side of the Afon Cynffig. It looks like I’ll have to consult the online oracles when I get home. There’s surely information about The Angel there. But for now, why not one more drink to keep us warm as we watch the starlings gathering on the telephone wires? Their voices a wild reel of whirrs and clicks and brash flutes.