The Dark Runner

We had several reported sightings of a suspicious character lurking around in our neighborhood. An interview with Rochandan. He is an eye witness, and has a lovely garden in 1 Pleasant street. He tells us more about what he saw and heard and spoke to us from the cozy comfort of his own lush front yard:

While taking a healthy evening walk in our lovely neighbourhood, It just so happened that my feet took me to the Harrow Road (Lovely houses by the way) And suddenly (in the corner of my eye) I saw a dark clad figure, running along on the fences. Now I must say that I have been doing my fair share of travelling in the past years and my feet have taken me to some really dangerous places, but truly, to experience something like this, in our own neighbourhood, right on our own doorsteps. well frankly, it really gave me the shivers.

And the shivers he had, dear reader. He continued while sipping from his cup of tea:

I could clearly hear the creature calling out that *It is true, I am the terror of the night!* and *You can not hope to stop me* and suddenly, just out of the blue (or the dark) *I run so fast, I barely touch the fence posts!* and *I love the smell of mushroom fields in the night!* As I stated earlier, I do have seen my fair share of odd and dangerous things, but i truly don't know what to think about this Dark Runner...

Of course, this reporter treats stories like this with some scepticism and I myself decided to investigate.

As the night grew ever more dark and cold I increasingly became convinced Rochandan was maybe running away with his imagination. Maybe he had a drink or ten ? Or possibly suffered from the effect of a bad pie (more on that in an future article). Or possibly he wanted to buy a house in the street himself and invented a story of a dark figure, just to keep the price down ! Or...

But before I could add another or... I realised there was in fact something running behind me. And behold: a nightly terror ! Yes, there it was. A Dark figure from a story told to hobbit children to keep them inside when evening falls: the Dark Runner!