I'd walked the Malverns every Saturday and Sunday morning and at any other days I could get up there, for as long as I can remember. I usually started about six in the morning so I could have the hills to myself and enjoy the glimpses of wildlife and the peace, free from the pressure of urban life.

I would start at the car park below British Camp, that ancient fort that had seen much fighting in the past but now was a quiet haven for unwilling urbanites like myself. I would walk up and around the hill keeping to the lower ridge which was always still, bar the escaping rabbits startled by my appearance. From there I would move on to Broad Down to stop for a cup of coffee and a biscuit. I would often see weasels hunting in the long grass, buzzards winging overhead. The solitude from my fellow humans was complete.

But after many months I started to see another walker. At first I thought he was a tramp or someone sleeping rough since he clothes seemed to be rather tatty. He was always accompanied by one of three dogs, either a Blue Roan spaniel, a Jack Russell or a Doberman but never all three dogs together. At first when he saw me he would nod in my direction and then move away and change path so we would not meet. Obviously, I thought, a man who liked his own company. However, after a few months of these occasional meetings I seemed to bump into him more often.

I had changed my walk slightly so that the half way point was on Broad Down where there was a natural seat from where one could sit and watch the sun rise over the common. I assumed that other people must use this place since the depression on the edge of the seat seemed well formed. It was here that I met him; the clothes that I had dismissed as tatty I could see were all good quality, a mixture of old kit, army surplus and some more modern equipment.

He nodded and I started to move away to respect his privacy when he spoke. His voice was very quiet and at first I thought I had imagined it.

"Best place in the world for breakfast" he said.

"Aye," I said, my voice sounding very loud in comparison to his. His jacket and trousers were green: the exact same colour green as the grass mound on which he sat so that he seemed to blend into the hill: a mere outline unless you concentrated very hard and while I looked, he seemed to fade in and out of view.

I rubbed my eyes and thought to myself that I had better cut down on the drinking. The dog, a Jack Russell today, totally ignored me, indeed it seemed unaware of my presence. As I watched it walk down the hill I lost it for a second and then the Doberman appeared in the same place and I could still see only one dog. I turned to my companion to ask about his animals but he was gone, along the slope. I saw a patch of green and brown roughly man shaped it seemed to turn and wave back at me, or at his dog, I was not sure, and then he was gone, I thought, into a dip in the trail. I rubbed my eyes again but thought no more of it but enjoyed the rest of my walk.

The next time I saw his he beckoned to me and I sat down next to him, It was then I noticed his smell, the best way I can describe it was that it was like a damp wood or wood smoke with a slight acid edge to it not totally unpleasant but odd. Down the slope I could see a poncho rigged as a tent. I assumed he must have slept the night a brave thing since the nighttime temperature had been -5C. I offered him a drink of coffee from my flask but he declined.

"Your dogs" I began.

"Dogs?" said he.

"Why do you only come with one dog at a time?"

He laughed and pointed at the dog a Doberman today, he shut his eyes and a frown crossed his face at that moment his jacket, a green Barbour, and the dog seemed to shimmer and the dog changed into a Spaniel and his jacket changed into a army issue camo Jacket. I dropped my coffee cup scalding my arm but I'd hardly noticed.

"They're not Dogs" he said "they are the memories of dogs", he laughed, patted the spaniel and walked down the slope.

I was understandably confused by this comment but my confusion was not to last. As he walked away his outline began to fade until he was just a man shaped patch of green which like mist in sunlight just evaporated until he was gone, nothing remained but the faint musty smell of a damp woodland mingled with the smell of male sweat.

I ran down the hill not knowing what to feel or think. When I had calmed down back at the car I went for a drink in the pub adjacent to the car park.

After two rather large whiskies I started to talk to the barman about what I had seen. I expected him to laugh at me or dismiss what I thought I had seen, for now I doubted my memory of events, but he said:

"You saw old Mordant?"

"Who was he?" I asked.

A local man who walked these hill for sixty-eight years , in all weathers, always with a dog. He didn't talk much but he was a well liked, always ready to give advice or direction or tell people about wildlife or the history of the landscape, weather they wanted to know or not".

"It was very sad what happened."

"What happened?" I asked.

"He had a big row with his wife and came up here to cool down. He had brought his sleeping bag to sleep rough on the hill, something he had done many times, but in the morning he didn't come down. I saw his Land rover still on the car park and went to investigate. I found him apparently asleep but when I tried to rouse him I couldn't. I touched his arm. It was ice cold. He had died in the night. His dog, a spaniel, was with him. It was still alive but very weak. It seemed he had just died. No obvious cause, just old age they said, but he was a fit man, looked after himself, didn't smoke, drank a little too much, but don't we all," He laughed.

"So I saw a ghost, but such things don’t exist", I said.

"Well I think you saw a recording, etched into the place he loved; a recording that reacts because the part of him that couldn't die stayed on the hill, stored as a recurring pattern that some people can see, in the stone of the hills, we have a long tradition of ghosts on this part of the hill and I think he is the latest".

I stayed away from the hill for a while. I was not sure what to think. Eventually I returned. I didn't see Mordant and began to think that he had left the hill. Where he had gone I didn't like to think. I was not a religious man and had no views on heaven or hell, but to Mordant, the hills I felt were both his heaven and his hell. The place he had loved in life but also the place where he had died alone.

Months passed and summer came again. I was on the hill later than normal so that there lots of other walkers. I sat at Mordent’s spot and mine. I saw a family. What had drawn my attention to them was their dog. It was a blue, roan spaniel, which was identical to Mordent’s memory dog.

The family, two grown men and an older attractive lady, their mother I assumed, were walking along Broad Down in my direction. I got up and moved off. As I did, I saw the familiar green-man shaped shimmer of Mordant and a dog-shaped shimmer: the two faint figures seemed to walk alongside the family as he matched pace with theirs, their expressions changed. Up until then they had been sad, sombre even, but as Mordant closed the gap between them, their faces lit up; they started to smile. I noticed that they hadn't noticed the green shade to their side. But the dog had; it moved closer; the memory dog matched step with the real dog. Closer and closer they came and then the two became one; the memory dog slipped into the form of the real dog. Then I noticed Mordant. His shadow was between the two men. His faint, insubstantial arms resting on the shoulders of the men. Then the mother stopped and turned.

"I see now why your father spent so much time up here, it is rather beautiful".

©2005 Stephen Munn