The Accursed Moor | Next Chapter

Apr 2

Apr 2 The Accursed Moor

Book excerpt

And so …

They both ran, legs pumping, lungs screaming, neither daring to look back, a terrible chilled blackness sweeping over them, seizing their minds in its crushing grip, making conscious thought an impossibility. Blind to reason, they sprinted in panic as the night, not yet full, pressed in around them. What should have been a comforting blanket at the end of this mild, mid-summer’s day came to them like a freezing fog, unwanted, concealing their surroundings, making it malicious and terrifying. Whatever it was that hunted them, they needed to see it.

For they could not hear it. Or smell it.

But it was coming, nevertheless. Relentless.

Less than an hour ago they first grew aware of it, its breath coming out of the lush grass as it stalked them. Moving ever nearer, its intentions clear, the steady tramp of its feet through the undergrowth so loud. It stopped within striking distance and silence, like the grave, settled over everything, even the birds, whose songs ceased as if commanded.

“What is it?” she’d asked, holding her breath, imagination raging, old stories and legends pushing aside all her common sense. She looked despairingly at her partner whose face, drained of all colour, gazed at her in confusion and fear.

The single snap of a fallen branch, sounding like a gunshot, so close. Something, a shadowy shape lurched around the periphery of their vision, and circled them.

“Run!” He shouted, and they did, breaking into a run like they had never run before.

Scrambling across the uneven ground, vaulting over smooth, flat, boulders, tramping through gorse, the woman led the way. Fitter, all those years of pounding the local streets in her designer trainers and skin-tight lycra pants were paying off. Behind him, feeling the pace, her partner forced himself on, but unlike her the only exercise he ever did was lifting his beer glass to his lips. Now, it was all coming home.

And whatever it was that hunted them was gaining, all the time gaining.

She reached a small rise and threw herself behind a craggy outcrop, flattening herself against the smoothness of its surface. Sucking in her breath, heart hammering against her chest, she battled to calm herself. Fear, more draining than any weekly session on the treadmill, engulfed her. Where was Jeff, her partner?

Raising her head over the rim, she squinted into the swiftly enveloping night. She spotted him, a forlorn figure, bent double, wheezing in air. She could just about make him out and she knew he was near to defeat.

“Jeff,” she hissed. ‘Jeff, for God’s sake come on!”

“I can’t, Fran,’ he said, voice not much more than a whimper, “I can’t make it.”

“Yes, you can,” she said, emphasising every word. She went to stand up. Something moved behind her and she froze. Damn it, it had circled them, cut off their line of retreat. Fumbling inside her jacket pocket, her hand curled around the cold stubbiness of her Swiss-army knife. It was all she had, but she’d make a damned good show of defending herself.

She whirled around, trembling fingers prising open the short knife. Something flashed through the night, something flat and large. It smacked into the side of her head, opening her flesh, the blood leaking hot and thick. A tiny groan escaped from her throat but before she could understand what was happening, the strength went out of her body and she knew nothing more.

Jeff, lifting his head, knew it had over-taken them, knew it was there, knew the end was close now. He heard the solid thump of Fran’s body hitting the ground and the hopelessness caused him to crumple to his knees, tiny animal-like sounds coming from his mouth. How could such a thing happen, out here, on a lonely stretch of moorland? How was it possible.

It emerged out of the darkness, so big in the night. Impossibly big. Confused, Jeff watched, helpless, as it moved towards him. “Please,” he jabbered, hands coming up in supplication, not caring if it understood or not, crying out his plea to the universe, to God, anything or anyone. “Please, don’t hurt me!”

Ignoring his pleas, the shape loomed closer. Petrified, unable to move, Jeff screamed, and the hunter struck again. And again. Not stopping until all that remained of Jeff’s head was a shapeless, bloody mess. Sated, the hunter threw back its head and howled, a preternatural sound, echoing across the vastness of the moor. Without another glance, it left the scene and disappeared into the enfolding gloom to finish what it had started so many nights before.

It begins …

It might have begun, if it ever did, when Ralph was younger, perhaps fourteen. School, never something he found easy, blurred into a sort of fug by then. Lessons proved difficult and he fell behind, homework something to ignore, detentions the norm. He was failing, everyone told him so, but what was he supposed to do? He didn’t understand any of it, especially mathematics. A foreign language as far as he was concerned, and the teacher, as indifferent as a dead piece of meat, couldn’t care less. She hated him. Miss Stephenson, fat, loathsome. That particular morning she was sat at the head of the class, squeezed in behind her desk, and harangued him for humming. Ralph had not hummed; it was the little shit sitting behind him. Stephenson, ignoring Ralph’s protests, went wild, and the Head teacher, Mr Williams warned him he would ´feel the consequences.’

The next day, Ralph took a frog from the biology lab, slit open its stomach and pinned the amphibian to Stephenson’s desk. He took care to extract the entrails and form them into neat sets of wings.

Stephenson entered the classroom and screamed before she got within three paces of the desk.

The class erupted into laughter, all except Ralph who sat, wallowing in the ecstasy of it, a new awareness coursing through his body. He enjoyed the way Stephenson leaned towards the waste bin and vomited in her disgust. Aroused, his hand moved over the developing hardness in his pants. It was like nothing he had ever known.

Williams put six strokes of the cane across Ralph’s backside. Relishing the pain, erection pressing so hard against his trousers, he beamed at the breathless head teacher. “Will that be all, sir?”

Incensed, and not a little disturbed by the all too obvious bulge in the boy’s trousers, Williams marched Ralph to his office, barked instructions to his secretary, then to the car-park where he threw him into the back seat. A tiny twinge of fear fluttered through Ralph’s scrotum. Where was Williams taking him? To the local quarry, to throw him off a slag heap, beat him to a pulp in a secluded lane, bury him under the undergrowth in the woods? Or molest him? This last thought took away the fear, leaving something delicious in its place.

It was none of these, of course.

Ralph’s mother, answering the head teacher’s violent pounding by ripping the door open, hovered in the doorway. “Oh Ralph, my lovely, what has happened?”

“Madam,” said Williams, unable to keep the quaking from his voice, “I need to speak to you about this—”

“What is it?” asked the owner of a large, booming voice, looming behind the mother, pot-belly heaving against a stained string vest.

“It’s Ralph,” she said, reaching out for her son, crushing him against her ample bosom. “There’s been an accident.”

“No, it’s nothing like that, it’s—” tried Williams again, but the pot-belly was having none of it. He put a filthy finger against the head teacher’s chest and pushed him away.

“Sling your hook,” he spat. “Coming here in the middle of the day, disturbing our rest.”

“Mister …?” Desperate, Williams looked to Ralph. “Is this your father?”

“His father?” The pot-belly cackled.

The mother smiled. “No, no. Ralph’s father is—”

“He’s dead,” said Ralph. The words silenced everyone.

Recovering slightly, his mother stroked her son’s head. “Ooh no, Ralph. He’s not dead, you silly. He’s only—”

“He’s dead to me,” put in Ralph and turned his furious glare on Williams. “Just like you’ll be soon enough.”

Williams went to speak, but before he could utter a single syllable, the mother swung her son into the hall and pot-belly slammed the door in the teacher’s face.

Stunned, Williams stood, not believing what had just happened. Never, in all his years, had his authority been challenged in such an outrageous way. Fuming with indignation, he returned to school in something of a daze. By the time he was safely ensconced in his office, he was already drawing up the papers to have Ralph formally excluded.

As things turned out, Ralph did not go to school ever again.

Meeting a school friend in the local park that weekend, his world took a dramatic turn. Tommy Jiggins, school cross-country champion, top-of-the-class in maths, English and Science, the focus of many a girl’s romantic dreams, treated Ralph like a sort of mascot. “Well, well, Ralphy,” he said as Ralph emerged from the woodland path, “look at you, the all-conquering hero. Expelled I hear?”

“I wouldn’t know. Excluded I think. Me mam got a letter, but she tore it up and threw it in the bin.”

“Stephenson is off sick with stress.”

“Good. I hate that fucking fat bitch.”

Leaning against a fallen tree-trunk, Tommy reached behind him to produce, what seemed to Ralph to be a thing of beauty. An air-rifle. He handed it over and Ralph gazed at it in awe. “Oh my God, I’ve always wanted one of these!”

“I’ll put these on a branch,” said Tommy, producing two large potatoes from his pocket.

“What are we going to do with those?”

“See how good you are.”

Tommy found a branch which sprouted almost horizontally from a tree some twenty or so paces from where Ralph stood and carefully placed the potatoes on top. “Try and shoot them.”

Without hesitation, Ralph squinted down the barrel and loosed off two shots, each shattering the potatoes into a myriad of pieces. Tommy whistled, then said in awed tones, “You’re a natural, mate!”

But Ralph wasn’t interested in potatoes. What he wanted was to explore the many facets of killing. This was a dream come true – an opportunity to explore the true wonders of life. Without a moment’s hesitation, he took to shooting birds out of the trees and found his real vocation as the thrill rushed through him. Salivating, he marvelled at the way the birds plummeted to the ground, tried so hard to get airborne again, wings flapping pathetically for a few moments before death enfolded them. Such scenes brought him so much happiness, more than he’d ever experienced before in his young life.

Watching all of this, Tommy grew edgy, perhaps sensing this was beyond normal. “Stop it, Ralph. It’s too much.” He made to tear the rifle from Ralph’s grip. Ralph swiftly reversed the weapon in his hands and smashed Tommy in the face with the stock before returning, without a pause, to killing more sparrows.

From the corner of his eye, Ralph noticed something large and bulky approaching. A large boy came through the trees, making no effort to conceal his approach, his great heavy boots clumping through the undergrowth as if he wanted to disturb every living thing within ear shot. “You fucking little shit,” he said, ripping the gun from Ralph’s fingers. They glared at one another.

“Give it back,” screamed Ralph, fists bunching.

The other ignored him and Ralph lunged forward, a futile move as it turned out. The boy moved aside with all the skill of a seasoned fighter and hit Ralph hard in the kidneys.

Squealing, Ralph fell and writhed amongst the covering of fallen leaves, whilst the larger boy kicked him repeatedly in the ribs.

Ralph might have wondered who the boy was, why he was so angry, but he could barely think, let alone speak. Out of a red mist of growing agony, the voice came to him full of anger and revulsion. “You think you’re so fucking hard, don’t you, shooting birds? You little shit.” The big boy spat, giving Ralph another kick. Through a haze of tears, Ralph watched him fling the rifle away into the distance before swinging around to stomp off towards his waiting friends.

Ralph rolled over, gasping as the pain in his ribs sent a jolt through his whole body, worse than that electric shock he got when he touched some bare wires in his dad’s abandoned workshop. He cried out but still managed to clamber to his feet, making his way to the undergrowth and the rifle. The burning ache in his side was not the worst of it. The shame, that was what drove him on, what brought the red veil down over his eyes, not of pain this time, but of rage. He returned to the original spot where he’d received the beating, rifle in hand. Huddled up on the ground beside him, Tommy, sat face in hand, the blood seeping through his fingers, managed to speak. “Ralph,” he said, “what are you doing?”

Grinning, Ralph sniggered, “Retribution.” His hands shook as he brought the weapon up to eye-level and peered along the barrel. Squaring up the sight, he took a bead on the back of the big boy’s head, inhaled a deep breath, held it and squeezed the trigger.