I spot the house and chapel to my left as I negotiate the car up the narrow, winding lane. The buildings lie beneath the brooding mountainside of Nant-y-Glôg, and huddle into the crotch of a granite outcrop, as if sheltering from the rain. The sunlight laces its way through the leaves of a tall sycamore tree that stands close to the fast running stream and throws a dappled quilt of dancing scintillates on the strewn gravel beneath.

A narrow deep watercourse divides the property from the road and the tyres of my car scrunch on the crushed rock as I swing the wheel hard over to guide the car over the small vehicular bridge.

A little further downstream, opposite the grey stone chapel, I see the smaller footbridge that provides access for pedestrians to reach the public footpath that runs along the side of the stream. Before the temple was abandoned, this was the only egress for the black-clad, po-faced faithful regulars of the joyless Welsh Presbyterian chapel.

Freja had shown me around the old chapel on a previous visit. It was not long before she and her husband John had bought the deserted building. The property is adjacent to their home and will be perfect for some unspecified, future conversion or development.

'Do you know why the window sills are sloping like that?' my daughter asks.

Without waiting for an answer, she gives the reason.

'It's because the Welsh Presbyterian Calvinists do not believe in any kind of distracting decoration in their places of worship - even flowers. The aslant windowsills preclude anyone from placing flowers in the church'.

We look at each other and breathe a deep sigh of resignation.

'Why do so many Christians set themselves against the elemental beauty of God's world - how pitiful - how pathetic - how unutterably sorrowful? I answer.

We look at the dark pews and grey walls. A few errant shafts of light manage to sneak through the narrow windows. The air is dank and smells of old hymnals and dead ideas.

Freja slides her fingers along the dark oaken handrails that surround the godless altar, 'How could anybody rejoice in the Lord in this dispiriting cicatrise of despondency?'

My son Leif appears in the doorway followed by Freja. They are both smiling in welcome. Soon we embrace and I kiss my son in our family fashion. Freja is her usual animated self. Her youthful skittering intelligent chatter is now replaced by a governed, breezy pragmatic conversational style, no doubt engendered by the necessities of professional caution in her study and teaching of archaeology at university and elsewhere.

The small compact village lies at the far end of a sequestered river valley, my daughter's husband John is away in Turkey and Leif is staying with his sister to keep her company in this isolated abode. Later, my youngest daughter Kirsti arrives with my beautiful auburn haired granddaughter Rosie.

At the dining table, we tuck in to a delicious vegetarian Cornish pasty helped down by a bottle of Spanish red wine. Through the bay window, we see a black bull terrier dog sniffing among the rockery plants.

'Whose dog is that?' I enquire, pointing through the window with only mild interest.

'That's Cerberus, Freja's neighbour's dog,' winks Kirsti, her eyes disappearing upwards into her forehead until only the whites are showing.

'She doesn't get on with him I'm afraid,' she adds conspiratorially.

'Who? The dog?' I say, pretending I don't understand.

'No, his owner silly, Mr. Buddenhardt who lives in the cottage opposite,' she laughs and helps herself to a wedge of pasty.

'Michael! She calls in an affected falsetto voice. 'That's how his wife Angelina calls him when he's pottering in his garden and she wants him in to rub her back.

Michael! It's time to rub my botty-bot!'

'Freja calls him Mr Puddinghead for spite.' She grins and turns to call Rosie to come and take her seat at the table and then continues:

'Apparently, he and his wife are real snobs. The other day he asked a visitor to Maureen's house - Maureen who lives next door but one,' she explains, if he'd mind moving his car because he was spoiling their view.'

'Spoiling their view of what?' asks the little girl

'I don't know,' responds her mother shaking her head, 'view of the mountain I suppose?'

A that moment Freja joins us from the kitchen and falls in with the conversation.

'They're just irritating old farts,' she snorts. 'They even asked the young couple further up the hill whose house is up for sale, if they'd move the For Sale sign further in from the roadside for the same reason - it was spoiling their view. Everyone hates them around here.'

She grabs her plate and selects her food.

'In fact,' she continues, 'they're the only negative element in the whole set-up as far as we're concerned. The place would be idyllic but for them.'

She looks thoughtfully out of the window, her fork still in her mouth.

'I'm sure he's poisoned that beautiful sycamore tree - the one that's growing by the small bridge. He says that the roots have grown into the brickwork of the footbridge and have undermined it. He wants to cut it down, he seems to have a thing against trees, but I said no. In fact the tree is growing on public land and belongs to neither of us, but he seems to think its mine. I haven't bothered to disabuse him of this misconception,' Freja giggles. 'Anyway,' she goes on, 'I'm sure he's poured some poisonous fluid around the bowl of the tree, there's a funny chemical smell around there.' She points a finger through the window. 'Look!' she says. 'Look at the way the leaves have shrivelled and the topmost branches have wilted.'

Leif has been eating silently, but now he raises his head.

'If he has done that,' he explodes, still chewing a mouthful of food, 'he's probably poisoned the stream as well, for the poison will leech down and get into the water.'

'Unfortunately, you've no proof that's the problem,' I say. 'Nobody actually saw him do the dirty deed. The usual method is to bore a hole with a brace and bit into the trunk with the hole pointing down a bit, and then to pour the chemical poison in that way.'

Freja nods vigorously. 'He's already cut down two beautiful elm trees on his own property because he said that they were spoiling his view,' she says bitterly. 'The man's a nutter, every morning just as it's getting light he walks that dog Cerberus over the bridge and along the path on this side of the stream. Come rain or shine - there he is, it doesn't matter if it's pissing down with rain. When John's home, he always wakes him, for he's a light sleeper and the sound of Puddenhead's footsteps scrunching on the gravel always wakes him up. On fine mornings he's dressed in his pyjamas and dressing gown,' she scoffs, 'I'm sure he thinks he's back in Poona in the days of the Raj.'

''Ooooooh! I wouldn't like to be him if the poison does pollute the river,' whispers Kirsti with mock concern. Remember the name of the brook Freja - it's the Gwrach isn't it?

'What's that mean in English? asks Rosie, with eyes open wide.

'Gwrach means witch in Welsh, says Freja quietly - but don't worry Rosie, she adds, as she sees the child's concern - 'There's no wicked witch going to hurt you darling.'

'Serve the bastard right if the spirit of the old witch gets him,' says Leif gruffly as he stabs a piece of potato.

'He needs his balls ripping off for doing a thing like that!' He slides his chair up closer to the window and looks out. 'Blimey! There's going to be one hell of a storm tonight,' he says craning his head to look up at the mountaintops, 'look at those black clouds over Nant-y-Glôg.' 'Make sure all the windows are shut tonight folks,' murmurs Freja urgently, 'when it blows in these parts it really blasts, because the valley acts as a funnel for the wind.'

That night, as I lie in bed I can hear the wind snapping and squalling around gable ends of the house. Every so often, the sound of wild rhythmic banging rives the air as the wind catches some wooden structure in its wild grasp and shakes it in its teeth. An anguished moaning sound flows out from the fireplace, as if the bedevilled wind is trying to enter via the chimney and ransack the house.

In spite of the deafening tumult, my eyelids droop. It has been a long drive down from North Lancashire, and eventually I fall into a fitful sleep.

I am awakened from my slumber by an ear-splitting roar. The whole house shivers as a terrifying series of creaks and screeches ring out above the mad high pitched shrilling of the wind. Rain lashes against the windowpanes. I hear the urgent voice of Leif floating up from outside the house.

'Dad!' Come quickly!'

As I'm buckling my trouser belt, I sweep back the curtain and peer out through the streaming glass into the early morning light. My heart skips a beat as I view the frightful scene below me.

The huge sycamore tree lies athwart the stream. The footbridge is collapsed - and even worse, a man struggles up to his neck in the roaring spate trapped by the root system of the fallen tree. I throw on my coat and almost fall down the stairs and out into the swirling storm. I am buffeted by the wind, as half-crouching I fight my way towards the figure of Leif who is kneeling at the back of his Landrover tying a rope to a bracket.

'Buddenhardt has fallen in the Gwrach. He is hanging on to a tree-root. We're going to try and pull him out with this rope!' Leif shouts, as the wind catches his voice. 'Freja's down by what's left of the bridge with Mr Buddenhardt, although there's nothing she can do. Here! Grab the end of this rope and try to get him to put the loop under his arms with the knot in high up on his chest if possible. Don't worry, it's not a slip knot so it won't crush him.' I hear his words before they are whisked away by the blast towards the glowering mountainside with its canopy of madly flailing shrubbery.

He looks up at me his hair is in streaks over his eyes. 'When he has the rope on - tell me. I'll ease forward slowly to see if we can drag him out. I don't think we'll do it though, for the old guy keeps screaming that his legs are trapped in the roots. I'm scared I'll rip his legs off if I 'm not careful.'

My son gets to his feet and wrenches open the door of the vehicle.

'Go on Dad for Christ's sake hurry up!' He sits in the vehicle and slides the widow open. 'By the way,' he shouts, 'Wave up with your hand for forward, and down for stop - OK?'

'Yes!' I call - 'Understood! I'm amazed and impressed with my son's calm authoritative grasp of the situation. I follow his orders without question.

I run to the lip of the stream where Freja lies full length on the grass peering down at the struggling figure of Buddenhardt.

'He's trapped by the roots of the tree,' she shouts in my ear.'

Glancing down the steep clay bank, I can only see his head and shoulders. The water is twice its usual level and the tree-roots are flailing around in the strong current like ferocious whips.

'Hold on!' I shout down to the terrified face below me. Coffee coloured water surges around him, often engulfing his bald head and then falling back to expose his pyjama clad shoulders as it gouts and gushes over the debris of earth and slate from the collapsed bridge. Roots, torn free from the collapsed bridge structure thrash about above the water like some evil flailing octopus. The lower end of the tree is completely broken off from the upper trunk. Just a few wooden sinews remain to conjoin it to the submerged thick bowl with its Medusa's head of wriggling roots.

'Grab this rope and put the loop over your head and under your armpits,' I scream.

The rope is lowered down towards his outstretched quivering hand, but as it is just a few inches away, a wriggling threshing root emerges from the water and winds itself around the neck of the goggle-eyed terrified victim. A groaning, grinding roar floats up from the impacted mass of soil, slate and masonry that chokes up the abominable flood below us, and then in slow motion the dam begins to slide. The pressure of backed up water is inexorable. With a shudder, the mass shifts as the whole root system begins a slow roll. We watch helplessly as the screaming head of Buddenhardt is dragged slowly beneath the surface of the bubbling water.

There is a moaning sigh and the mass starts to move away, forced by the leaping, burgeoning, mass of brown body of water.

Leif has joined us on the bank, leaving the engine of the Landrover running. We lie there silently on the waterside. Only Freja's sobs and the tentative sound of birdsong break the sudden silence, the wind has stopped.

I hear a whimper and a warm tongue slaps my cheek; it is the black dog Cerberus.

I turn to my daughter and put a quaking arm around her shoulders. She is scraping at the ground with a piece of twig. Now she's pressing something into the soil. Leif and I watch silently as she squeezes a sycamore pod into the loam.

'Well the Gwrach got her revenge,' she says softly. 'The bridge obviously gave way just as he was crossing over for his ritual walk. I see that Cerberus escaped. The poison must have damaged the roots and weakened the strength of the bridge?' Her eyes meet our questioning gaze. 'The seed? I plucked it from that broken branch.' Her green Celtic eyes are shining. 'The Gwrach would wish it so.'

Leif nudges me in the ribs and points a finger at the opposite bank.

'Look! He says hoarsely, 'do you see what I see?

There, dangling on the end of a thin, sinuous, root that protrudes from the collapsed brookside, and swaying in the keening wind, is a pair of pendant bloodied human testicles.