The castle owner sighed.

"Every night for nearly a year there's been a large black figure, like that of someone in a hooded robe, appearing at the foot of our bed," he confessed.

I swallowed hard.

He continued, trying to sound reassuring, "Oh you needn't be afraid. The ghost has never tried to harm us. It just stands there for a few minutes and then fades away like a cloud."

The old man stomped his foot. The other grimaced. He gave the old man a look of helplessness, as he asked him, "And I suppose your're wanting me to tell our visitor about the ghost's red eyes?"

"Indeed. You must!"

"Well," continued the castle owner, "The ghost does have these particularly evil-looking red eyes that do make you think it may be more than an ordinary ghost."

My own eyes grew wider. Immediately I knew there was no way I was going to sleep in that castle. Here I was walking around the world, and the last thing I needed was for the Devil to be crawling into my backpack and tormenting me for the next three to four years.

I glanced at the darkening skies and the leaves blowing madly about the street, and I bade the men a rather disheartened farewell. I doubted I would ever get a invitation to stay in a castle again.

No one else offered me a place to sleep that evening, and I had no choice but to bed down in a forest on a low hill near the village. The winds from the nearby Irish Sea howled, as I pitched my one-man plastic tent. It was strangely chilly for a midsummer's night, I thought, as I tried valiantly to ignore the flapping of the tent, the creaking of the trees' limbs, and the shadowy moonlight playing across my shelter's paper-thin sides.

I started to drift into an uneasy sleep, when a sound like that of a hundred tormented souls groaning in unison tore through my head. Goosebumps pimpled my arms and legs. My lungs froze. And though I didn't really want to do so, I slipped from beneath my blanket and slowly unzipped the tent's door flap.

I peered into the foggy dark. My eyes peered upward into the trees, to discern what was making the strange noises. The fine hairs stood on the back of my neck, as I saw agitated winged figures the size of children occupying the trees' limbs.

The wind screeched as if hinting of a tornado, and as the trees swayed, first to the right and then to the left, the mysterious figures howled in such a deafening manner that my breath rushed from my chest. What were those things?! Could they be demons? Had they been sent by the devil in the castle? Was I now cursed, for having dared to camp so close to the village?

Swirling leaves the size of an undertaker's hands slapped at my face. The entire forest was becoming more agitated by the second. I shuddered at how helpless I was. Surely those things in the trees weren't birds, for they were much, much larger than any ravens or crows. And that moaning sound...It was as if coming from humans.

I snapped my head back into the tent, much like a frightened turtle does when retreating into its shell. From the catacombs of my soul came taunting whispers. If those are birds, then why didn't they make any sounds when you were walking in the woods? How could such a large number of giant birds have appeared so suddenly without making any noise beforehand? Why are they even making that wretched sound? Are they telling me to flee? If so, is there something even more evil coming?

Oh how I wished I had a flashlight. I slipped my pants over my legs. It was time to flee. No way was I going to wait around for those gremlins to tear through the tent to devour my flesh--maybe even my soul! I threw my blanket over my shoulders and clasped one end of it with a hand at the front of my neck. It hung about my torso like some motley cape. As quickly as possible I counted in my mind from one to ten, and once at TEN!dashed from the tent. I screamed much like a child who has met the wrong sorts of things in a darkened graveyard and thrashed my way through trees and wind to a cow pasture. There I made for the nearest fence and hurled myself over its barbed wires with all the grace of a spastic scarecrow--only to be frightened even more by yet another unexpected visitor.

"Aaaahhhh!!!" cried out a man I had caused to go tumbling from his bicycle into a nearby ditch.

"Please don't be hurtin' me!" he blurted from amongst the tall weeds.

"I didn't see you--I'm so sorry," I replied in a sympathetic voice.

He and his bike were upright in a flash. "Then why'd you go jumping off the fence at me like that?"

I couldn't answer, for I was suddenly laughing. Tears welled in my eyes, as I imagined how utterly frightening it must have been for him to have some caped stranger come tumbling head over heels in the dead of night onto the path of his bicycle. Why, it must have seemed as if a vampire had dropped from the sky.

"Surely I'd nearly stopped your poor heart," I said just before I explained the reason behind my sudden appearance.

That got him to laughing, too, as well as to wiping at his eyes.

"Me name's Peter." he said with a hearty handshake. "I'm from Australia, mate. I'm ridin' to the ferry boat station, and I was in a bit of a hurry meself. Only I wasn't fleein' from some birds. I'm tryin' to catch the night boat to Northern Ireland."

"But you'd have been fleeing from those birds--or whatever they are--if you'd seen what I just did," I replied with a nod toward the hill.

"What say we go 'ave a look at the critters," he challenged.

I wasn't so keen to head back up the hill, but he could have cared less about what I thought. In seconds he was over the fence and halfway across the cow pasture. I followed a short distance behind.

Once inside the woods we could just make out that the creatures were still in the trees. Oddly, though, they were silent, even though the trees were still swaying to and fro.

I whispered that this was nothing like what it had been a short while ago. Peter merely grunted and stared intently in every direction above his head. At my tent he finally spoke.

"'ave you a torch in your tent?"

A torch? What in the world could he be talking about? Wasn't the whole scene spooky enough without us waving flaming sticks about?

"You want to make a fire?" I asked confusedly.

He placed a hand on my shoulder. "Sorry, mate. I forgot you Yanks call it a flashlight. 'ave you one of those?"

I didn't. Indeed, I hadn't had a flashlight with me since crossing the eastern USA. I wanted my night vision to be the best possible, in case I was ever attacked at night, and so I'd gone without artifical light sources for many weeks now.

"Any paper and matches then?" he inquired.

I rummaged through the tent and soon handed him a newspaper and a book of matches. He rolled the paper tightly and lit it. Unexpectedly the paper flared and cast a hazy glow across every tree within 20 feet. Together we gasped loudly at the multitude of red eyes staring down at us. The eyes belonged to the largest, darkest, ugliest birds I'd ever seen. I was sure each bird was half my size and more.

Peter remained silent, memerized. But then suddenly from somewhere deep in the forest there arose a lone raspy cry that might easily have come from the chest of a monster. The last pieces of the burning newspaper tumbled from Peter's hand and died on the damp ground. The darkness buried us completely, and the raspy cry multiplied by a hundred. Something huge brushed past my head, as I dived with Peter into the tent. The flapping and snapping and screeching that cascaded over us was like that of an army of angry witches.

No sooner did we zip shut the tent door, then was there...absolute silence. Even the wind ceased. No doubt Peter was thinking the same as I: Are those wretched winged monsters gone for good? Or is this just the calm before the real storm?

I pulled slowly on the door zipper. We peered out, careful to keep our heads inside the tent. We exhaled as one. The birds seemed to have left the forest. Could the Devil and our little corner of Scotland be at peace?

Whatever had happened had humbled the two of us, as was obvious by how little we said on our hike back to the road and Peter's bicycle. Once there, Peter shared a tumbler of tea and a biscuit with me and introduced me to his traveling companion, a gruffish brown teddy bear he called "Ted."

Though I hated to see both Peter and "Ted" ride away into the midnight hour, I did wish them many Irish blessings. Before he left, Peter told me his full name and his address in Melbourne, Australia. Naturally I promised to remember what he said, and to visit him once I reached his neighborhood.

But sometime between then and the dawn's light everything he told me stole away, as I slept in the open...in the cow pasture.

Steven