Master of the Moors (18 page)

Both of them shook their heads and
moved away.

Grady took a breath,
leaned down and grabbed the sack by one of the corners. With a
quick glance to make sure Kate and Neil were back far enough, he
yanked on the sack and quickly moved away. The pumpkins rolled out
onto the road, the turnip trundling after, until they came to rest
a few feet away. Nothing moved.

"Did you see it?" Kate
called.

"Was it a rat?" Neil
said.

Grady, frowning, shook his
head. "I didn't see anything." He picked up the empty sack by the
same corner he'd used to tug on it and gave it a shake. Suddenly,
there came a shrill shriek. The groundskeeper yelped and dropped
the sack just as something wormy and black wriggled free. He
watched it plop to the road and glare at him with baleful red eyes
before it scurried away into the thicket.

"Good Jesus," he said
breathlessly and bent over to catch his breath. Kate and Neil fell
into fits of laughter, slapping each other on the back, their faces
contorted with mirth.

"Oh, I see," said Grady.
"I've been tricked. When do I get my treat?"

"I'm sorry," said Kate,
still giggling. "Really, we didn't mean it."

"I'm sure."

"No, really! When you put
the bag in the basement after supper, I saw a rat crawl inside it.
I was going to tell you, really I was, but it just seemed like too
much fun to let you find it for yourself." She erupted into
hysterics. "Besides,
I
wasn't going to try and get it out of there!"

He waited for them to
compose themselves, then draped the sodden empty sack over his
shoulder. "Did you two jokers stop to think about the waste it
would have been had I decided to do a jig on the sack rather than
upendin' it? I'd have destroyed all the pumpkins Mrs. Fletcher
worked so hard on and ye'd be arrivin' at the dance with yer hands
hangin'."

They muttered half-hearted
apologies, the smiles still on their faces. They weren't in the
least bit sorry, and Grady couldn't blame them. Despite the fright
he'd gotten, he had to admit it had been a damn good prank. Not
quite as good as some of the ones he'd perpetrated in his youth,
but a worthy effort. He made a mental note to tell them sometime
about the day he'd set fire to a haystack his father had been
carrying on his back for delivery to a local farmer. The old man
had miraculously managed to walk almost half a mile before he
smelled the smoke, and even then someone had to point out that the
hay was on fire. Grady had gotten himself whipped raw for that one,
but it made for a hell of a yarn.

"Come now," he said,
"let's get these things back in the sack or we'll be out here all
night and yer costumes will be ruined."

"Oh all right," Kate
pouted. The folds of a red outfit showed above the neckline of her
raincoat. She bent down and began to roll the pumpkins toward her
brother, who aimed wild kicks at them.

"For Heaven's sake, pick
them
up
," she told
him.

Lightning flashed.

Grady's breath caught in
his throat.

In the field, something
moved. He had caught only a glimpse of it in the flare of lightning
but he'd been left with the after-image of long lithe shadows, like
giant charred lizards, only moving in a way no reptile ever could,
bounding, loping, running across the moors. He waited, breath held,
for the lightning to come again, but when it did, there was nothing
to see but the empty plains. Whatever it was he'd thought he'd
glimpsed was gone, assuming it had really been there in the first
place. Perhaps he'd only seen costumed children cutting across the
moors to reach the dance hall, but he knew that was a feeble
attempt at rationalizing the images that still flickered in his
mind.

Not children.

Animals.

Hunting.

It shook him so badly that
when he whipped down his hood to give himself an unhampered view
and the wind snatched his cap from his head, he made no move to
retrieve it. Instead, he simply watched as it sailed away into the
darkness beyond the hedge.

"Grady?" He snapped out of
his thoughts to find Kate and Neil struggling with the weight of
the refilled sack. He quickly relieved them of the burden and slung
it over his shoulder.

"One of the pumpkins got a
little split," Kate said. "His nose is part of his right eye now."
She was clearly amused.

"Then you can have that
one," Grady said, and lead the way into the dark on a wave of
protests. Even as he laughed and cajoled with the
children---
would you stop it, they're not
children anymore
---he was on edge, the hair
prickling all over his body. He felt watched, threatened...stalked.
When he quickened his pace, Neil objected and Grady had to force
himself to slow down, even as he waited for something to burst
shrieking from the hedges on both sides of the narrow road. When
they reached The Fox & Mare, he almost collapsed with relief.
Even after learning that Campbell was not inside, he felt better
knowing that the hall was only a little further. When Sarah Laws
slid a tumbler of whiskey before him, he gladly took it to steady
his nerves, and then ventured back out into the storm.

More than once along the
way, he caught Kate staring at him, concern on her face, but each
time he offered her a wink to appease her and bolstered his efforts
to hide his fear from the girl. She was a perceptive one, however,
and he found he had to struggle to make her believe he was not
terrified to the core of his being.

"Is something the matter?"
she asked him, as the raucous sounds of merriment flooded down from
the long narrow building on Gallagher Hill. The hall lights rose
like will-o'-the-wisps in the darkness ahead of them and shadows
capered within the warm squares of the windows. Cheers went up only
to be drowned out by the thunder.

"Not at all."

"You lost your
cap."

Grady smiled. "I have
another one at home," he said and quickly turned. "Neil, we've
reached the hall."

"So I hear."

Grady led them up the
short winding pumpkin-studded incline to the arched main door of
the hall. A paper witch that had been fastened to a nearby oak tree
was wrenched free of her moorings and carried away by the wind as
they went inside. Before the heavy door closed behind them, Grady
looked over his shoulder, waiting for the lightning to show him
what he knew was prowling out there. Then he was inside and bathed
in warmth and good cheer. It was almost enough to melt the chill he
felt deep inside.

Almost.

***

The hall was filled with
monsters. Grady shook his head in wonder at the array of painted
skeletons and wild-haired demons masquerading as children, all
convened beneath the hot spray of light from the lanterns mounted
on the walls. He hadn't expected such a crowd. After all, there
were hardly enough children left in the village to form one. But
then he remembered hearing that the hall in Merrivale had been
knocked flat by the last great storm to hit the moors, and the
villagers had asked to share Brent Prior's for the night. As a
result, a hearty, energetic mob had filled the place almost to
bursting.

Shadows stretched up the
walls and broke their necks on the ceiling. It was an unsettling
effect, particularly when the projectors of those shadows leered
and shrieked at each other before lumbering off into the crowd.
Around the walls stood long rickety looking benches, orange heads
of various shapes and sizes watching the proceedings with fiery
flickering eyes. Before them, bored looking adults tried to make
conversation with other chaperones, who looked just as unhappy to
be here. At the front of the room, dusty old wooden pallets had
been stacked three high to make a makeshift stage upon which sat a
quartet of nonplussed men, who attacked their musical instruments
with an almost psychotic fervor. Grady recognized them as four out
of five members of a local group called The Grass Routes. They
played every year at The Fox & Mare at Christmas and New Years
Eve, though Sarah Laws had hinted recently that she might not be
able to afford them this year, or any year after that, unless
business picked up, which Grady couldn't see happening. That
saddened him. Although the music wasn't exactly to his taste, he
looked forward to the sound of the instruments every Christmas. It
helped break the monotony that was quick to descend on all the
other dreary nights he spent in the tavern and reminded everyone
gathered there that, for a time at least, they had a legitimate
reason to drink like fools.

A portly man with graying
hair approached them where they stood just inside the door. "Good
Lord, look at you lot. You're like drowned rats."

At the mention of rats,
Kate whipped down her hood and glanced slyly at Grady, who growled
at her.

Neil raised his hand in
greeting. "Hello, Mr. Fowler."

"Hello, Neil. Looks like
you caught the worst of the storm, eh?"

"'Tis bad now all right,"
Grady told him. "Thought we weren't going to make it."

"Well, I'm glad you did. I
need to talk to you." Although he was still smiling, it seemed
forced.

Grady knew better than to
ask what it was that Fowler wanted to talk about. It was clear by
his forced composure that whatever it was couldn't be spoken about
in front of the children. He nodded to indicate he understood and
gently forced Kate a few steps ahead of him. "Go get those
raincoats off," he said. "I know you're dyin' to show off yer
costumes, and if you aren't, you damn well should be after havin'
Mrs. Fletcher slave over them fer the past week. Go on, off with
ye."

"You're just jealous
because we couldn't find one to fit
you
," Kate teased.

Neil shrugged. "He didn't
need one. He came as a scarecrow."

Grady felt his patience
wearing thin, and Kate must have seen it on his face because she
grabbed Neil by the arm, weathering his protests and threats of
violence as she led him away. The worried look clouded her face
once more. Grady tried to reassure her with a short wave, but she
turned away and they vanished, two ordinary youths in a dancing,
giggling mob of ghouls and goblins. He felt guilty for having been
so unceremonious in his abandonment of them, and for using Mrs.
Fletcher's labors against them yet again, but the nervousness he'd
felt all day was plaguing him and he'd recognized the same fear in
Fowler's eyes. Something was very wrong in the village, and when he
looked around the room, at the parents milling around their
hyperactive children, he saw an underlying note of worry beneath
their bored expressions he couldn't remember seeing
before.

They feel it
too
.

Doubt quickly followed.
Maybe he was being too hasty in ascribing doom to what might just
be a sequence of events with perfectly rational explanations.
Couldn't it be the storm that had everyone looking so shaken, so
uncertain, as if they feared that any moment now the wind would
tear the roof off the hall as it had in Merrivale and spirit them
all away?

Of course it could.

But the wind hadn't carved
sleek black shadows from the moors, slender oily things that moved
predatorily under the cover of dark. The storm couldn't be held
accountable for that, or for the drawn look on Fowler's face that
told him they'd shared a singular horror, just as they had all
those years ago on the day of the search for Sylvia
Callow.

"What's wrong?" Grady
asked.

Fowler scratched his nose
and looked around. "Can we step outside?"

"
What?
It's pissin' out of the Heavens
out there. Look at me; I'm soaked to the skin! That steady flow of
water you see tip-tappin' against my shoes isn't me takin' a sneaky
leak you know."

"I know, I know." When
Fowler raised his hands in a placating gesture, Grady noticed they
were trembling. "But I'd rather talk about this in
private."

Grady tugged down his hood
and rubbed a damp hand over his face. "All right, but I can tell
you now I'm not at all convinced I want to hear it." He dropped the
sack of pumpkins. "Let me get rid of these fellas. Why don't you
head down to The Fox and I'll meet you there as soon as I tell the
children where I'm goin'. I'm assumin' this won't take
long?"

Fowler looked relieved.
"No, it shouldn't. I'll have a pint waiting for you."

"Make it a whiskey," Grady
told him and, dragging the pumpkins behind him, made his way into
the crowd of goblins.

***

In the cloakroom, Jack the
Ripper was arguing with Little Red Riding Hood. Grady rolled his
eyes as he stepped into the small damp room. Every hook held a
dripping raincoat and by the glow of the single lantern suspended
from the ceiling, they registered as a crowd of flaccid shadows in
the corner of his eye. Again he had to shake off the nagging
feeling that somewhere a clock was winding down, ticking off the
seconds to some unknown calamity. The most banal of objects seemed
sinister, the gloom a blanket beneath which unknown horrors lurked.
Since his glimpse of the things on the moors, his heartbeat had
thundered furiously in his chest, as if he'd run a mile, and he
found himself struggling to remain calm. He didn't believe in
ghosts, ghouls or any of the horrors the children in the hall had
come to imitate. But the strange loping things he'd seen tonight
were not so easily dismissed. Those bounding figures had exuded a
tangible threat, and worse, a threat tailored specifically toward
him and the children. He didn't know how he could come to such a
conclusion. That it was just a strong feeling somehow didn't seem
adequate explanation for the paralyzing dread that crept unbound
within him. There had to be something else. But did it really
matter? Would a fuller explanation or a search for answers really
make them any safer?