GENESIS (GODS CHAIN) (72 page)

This is a stupid search for cattle that never existed! Old shithead—he thinks I’m buttoned up backwards! Here I am, freezing my bullocks off and for what? Nothing! I should be back home getting ready for Church
!

The man was irritated knowing that he had to investigate at least this far, or that otherwise the farmer would be back at the police station tomorrow
.
This annoyance focused his true and hidden feelings of fear as he walked on. It would be too easy to give up, so the constable persevered
despite
his better instincts
,
although somewhere in the recesses of his mind
an alarm
warned him not to go any further.

Walking cautiously along the featureless road as it narrowed, detail all but totally obliterated by the white downfall, he trudged onwards. The man was still warm inside his heavy
coat and trousers, but was conscious that his heavy shoes were letting in water
.
His toes felt sub-zero as he tramped through more falling snow.

Constable Howie was a strong and able man,
but
walking through the snow made this wild goose chase hard work; he panted heavily in the deepening drifts. His breath condens
ed
immediately in front
of his mouth
.
This place is frozen,
he thought
,
looking around. The old track was
a
lonely place
,
made much worse
by the
lack of daylight. It would be
pitch black
at any moment
,
and Howie checked his watch; it was 4 p.m. already.

No other tracks?
The man could not see any sign of footprints,
and
even his own were fast filling up behind him. It was too dark to see properly, and he surmised that there would be nobody and nothing about in these parts today, in any case. Strangely enough, the place seemed...
too still
and too
dead
, he thought
.
T
here were no birds in late song, no sounds at all....

That’s so odd,
he
mused
. The unsettling atmosphere seemed to intensify
in the lack of sound
, almost as if nature was shouting a
silent
warning
.
A
ll that he could hear was his own magnified breathing and the continual crunch, crunch, crunch of his footsteps in the snow and the odd creak or branch breaking off a tree somewhere
deep
in the woods.

His emotions were beginning to get the better of him
.
Howie
had always thought that wearing his police uniform gave him a sort of protection
,
like armour
,
and now he wasn’t so sure. A nice cup of tea back home was in order
...
he felt the looming disquiet sneaking up on him.

The woods grew tall on each side of the narrow track;
the forest
felt intimidating and overbearing as
the branches
curved, enclosing him in a roofed arc. Feeling trapped by these overhanging branches, the man tramped onwards underneath th
e
cold white umbrella, feeling like he was walking through a darkened tunnel.

Trees were bare and lifeless as the snow encrusted branch to twig. Harsh cold bit his face
—
he knew it would only get worse as the temperature dropped and gripped the countryside again this evening. Stumbling below the enclosing dark canopy of trees he trudged onwards
,
following the narrow track around a short right-curving bend. The dimness came closer to him and then suddenly the sky appeared above as
the
cold grey mist cleared quickly
,
before his eyes. His heart lifted at
his escape from
those chilly woods!

Wonderful
—h
e could see again! It was still dark
, of course, but the stars were beginning to glow faintly
. The constable seemed easier
when he
emerg
ed
at the other end of those depressing woods
.
He looked straight ahead and not far away
from
him stood a wooden gate with long icicles hanging unevenly down.
The gate
was closed.
Howie
could see further to the lower fields and meadows
—snow covered
every
thing
and lay thick over the long stone dykes. Even though it was dark and shady, eerie
starlight
reflect
ed
off the white snow
,
making
a blue light that Howie’s eyes quickly adjusted to
. The snow blanket expanded as far as he could see, way beyond the moor.

No cows...well, I expect
ed
that
.
R
egrettably the search for
more
clues has got to be done!
I’ll climb the fence and look around by those
lower dykes
, and that will be enough.
A quick check down there
and
then I’m out of here
—have a
cup of tea and make a short report
!
It will be just a simple case of “poachers”
—
let’s make life simple for us all
.
Sergeant Howie just wanted
a warm drink, and for
his quiet life
to stay
quiet. His feet
felt
like solid lumps of ice
.

It took him another five minutes walking to reach the dykes
,
which
were at the bottom of
a
large
,
white
-
crusted meadow.
He clucked his tongue as he neared—
the dykes appeared to be abandoned and badly maintained, neglected for years, crumbled in places here and there.

Howie thought
that
the
cattle
might
have escaped and wandered off and onto the meadows and moor beyond
,
but then he remembered that no animal or bird ever ventured onto that uncanny place
.
It was
,
as rumour would have it, haunted
.
And even the beasts knew it!
Looking over onto the nearby desolation of Ma
uc
hline Muir, the man could observe far off and away to the lowland hills miles beyond the village. Much closer to him
,
however, were the old quarries that edged onto the moor. A mile away was the prophet monument
,
standing there stalwart like a castle. It dominated the hill approach on the northern side of the village. Standing alone and characteristically slim in its profile
,
the monument
appeared silhouetted
—
silent and dark against the
glinting
skyline.

A few
of the
early stars were beginning to twinkle
brightly
. Only sparingly
did
bare trees gr
o
w on this white wilderness. What the policeman could not observe was the unnatural black mist hidden below eye level, concealed inside the depths of the open quarries close by—the cold
,
grey
mist
disguised the frozen blackness lurking underneath. It had been disturbed from a secret dwelling place
and had been
shifting around continually inside those deep quarries ever since the quake....

Sergeant Howie surveyed the landscape
for
signs of animal tracks. Not even a hoof print could be seen!
He looked up again as the
rising
moon shone through one of the
moor’s
solitary tree
s, which
stretch
ed
up with bare branches.

Even in the summer time when heather is in full bloom
and
the moor was at its most beautiful...there seemed to be always an uneasy tension around that place.
A great battle had been fought here hundreds of years ago, between royalist troops and covenanters. Their ghostly remains were thought to be the reason why animals would not graze on these lands.

Why did he put his cattle down here to graze, bloody idiot! Anyway, it’s time to get going
, the policeman
decided
, feeling small and insignificant here on the muir,
I don’t want to be here any longer, this place is giving me the bloody creeps
.... The man had always stated to others that he did not believe in ghosts.
Still, I don’t like this place.

The man lifted his hat to scratch his forehead as a deathly still silence pervaded from all around. His body shivered violently and his face changed as a feeling of great dread came over him; the man could not comprehend quite why cold beads of sweat suddenly began running down his temples and forehead. The hair on his neck rose and his skin crawled....

T
hen his torso suddenly stiffened! The man’s eyes stared straight ahead, fixed onto the distant monument
.
The constable
then turned his head quickly to look at whatever was behind him.... He opened his blue lips in utter dread, his eyes bulging wide and mouth began to tremble uncontrollably.

Sergeant Howie tried to shriek in terror, but no sound was heard from him as the man’s body dropped heavily into the snow. He was dead! His mouth open
ed
wide aghast
to the sky,
fixed in a silent scream.
His
skin was
an icy,
stone
-
grey in colour
, as if he’d frozen...
. The big man lay petrified behind the stone wall
, hi
s profile
stamped in
the
deep, new
snow.
Darkness blotted o
ut the light of stars as a thick cloud blew in, and s
now began
to
fall
,
transforming his body from a black mass to a white lump to...nothing
. No living thing stirred on th
e
virgin whiteness
of the muir
.