Master of the Moors (9 page)

Neil imagined the house up
ahead---an oblong of cold stone, as Grady had once described it to
him, and wondered if today was the day when he'd come home to find
his father awake. He doubted it, and realized that, for now at
least, he didn't mind that their father was bed-bound. He relished
the freedom that came with having him confined to his room. There
were no orders, few chores, and a distinct lack of discipline due
to Mrs. Fletcher and Grady's unwillingness or inability to dictate
household policy. Their father had never ruled Mansfield House with
an iron fist, but there were still things he had forbidden Neil to
do, and as a result, the boy had yearned to do them all the more,
his curiosity inflamed.

Stay off the
moors
, his father had said,
There are plenty of other things you can find to
do to occupy your time, but I won't hear of you mucking about out
there. It's full of dangers, and it's no place for a boy who can't
see.

A boy who can't see...

The memory of his father's
words filled Neil with resentment. It had been just one of an
endless parade of inferences designed to make him feel useless,
helpless, an imposition on those forced to guide him. Before his
father fell ill, every rule had been doubled for Neil, every simple
command punctuated with sympathy for the poor little blind boy
until he'd felt compelled to prove his competency. But his body
hadn't been possessed by the same need, and each attempt to prove
himself only succeeded in justifying his father's treatment of him.
It frustrated the boy until he was forced to choose an alternative
route---if he could not venture out on his own, he would not venture
out at all.

The house became his
prison; everything he touched quickly grew ugly in its familiarity.
The sawing of mouse claws in the walls threatened to drive him mad;
the wind gurgling through the gutters, the rain tip-tapping on the
window, the always distant rumbling of thunder that became
malicious laughter, the subtle shifting of the slates on the roof,
Mrs. Fletcher's humming, Grady's tuneless whistling, the swishing
sound of Kate turning the pages of one of her blasted books, the
floorboards groaning, the flutter of candle-flames, his father's
voice, insisting Neil let someone take him outside, the grumbling,
the clucking of tongues, Kate's relentless teasing...all of it
became a whirlwind of noise, a cacophony that might deafen him with
the banality and intrusiveness of it, until he couldn't endure it
any more.

Everything changed on
Kate's birthday. Their father fell ill; the house grew quiet and
even as time passed and the seasons changed, the gleeful racket
never returned. Neil went outside, alone. On the first occasion, he
decided to see if he could make it as far as the village but
stumbled, fell, and ended up clawing his way back to the house in
silent terror. As expected, Grady and Mrs. Fletcher were
outraged.

Neil didn't
care.

There were countless
attempts after that, few of them allowing him to make it any
further than the tree at the end of the lane. Then, one morning,
after much arguing, he allowed Kate to accompany him, not to guide
him, just to stay with him as he tried to reach the village. He
fell and smacked into a low branch, opening a gash on his forehead
large enough to make Mrs. Fletcher blanch later at the sight of all
the blood, but he persisted, stopping only when Kate caught his
arm. He pulled away, about to launch a volley of insults her way,
but her voice gave him pause. "We're here," she'd said. "You made
it."

"Of course I bloody well
made it," he'd snapped, but was secretly ecstatic.

From then on, he ventured
out on his own and used the sounds of nature to guide him. Grady
fashioned for him a sturdy cane from an oak branch, and though Neil
had resisted at first---reminded once again of the impotency and pity
with which people tended to view him---he soon saw the sense in it,
and after a time, that thin piece of oak became his faithful guide,
its tapping preferable to the coaxing and muttering of any human or
the whining of any hound.

Now that cane caught
against a large flat stone, jarring Neil from his thoughts. He had
veered off course, and quickly righted himself, using the stick to
find the narrow space between the stone markers Grady had set along
the path to prevent him from wandering off onto the
moors.

The moors.

He could hear it out
there, encroaching on the house, and clearly remembered Kate
laughing at him when he'd told her what it sounded like. "A muted
voice," he'd said, "like it has a secret to tell, but can't find
the words. And when there's fog, it sounds like it's breathing."
Kate had found this so utterly hilarious, he'd had to pull her hair
to quiet her, and had refrained from mentioning it again, or
sharing with her the other sounds he'd heard, those whispers that
drifted in through his bedroom window at night, calling to him,
daring him to seek out their origin. There was something on the
moors, he knew, something that scared the villagers enough to make
them leave their homes and everything else behind to be rid of it.
Something ugly and hungry had scared them away, something that
moved beneath the veil of dark and fog. The Beast of Brent Prior,
perhaps. Neil smiled at the thought. Mere fancy, of course. He
didn't believe in such things, but liked to imagine great big
ancient hounds darting across the moors at night, snatching silly
old sheep away before they knew what had hit them.

The smile faded when
something invaded his imaginings, and his senses.

As he'd traversed the
path, the autumnal smell had intensified. Up until now, he'd
ignored it. After all, it was autumn, and the path was lined with
trees that had laid down a thick carpet of foliage to die at their
feet.

But this was different.
The smell was too strong, too cloying to be natural.

It summoned a memory of
the summer before, when Neil had awoken to a faint, unpleasant
smell that had grown stronger as he descended the stairs for
breakfast. His nose had led him to the closet beneath the stairs,
but when Grady investigated, he found nothing and couldn't detect
the odor Neil had described. A week later, with the temperature
outside slowly rising, the smell was horrendous. This time, when
Grady opened the closet door, he noticed the stench and after a
short search discovered a badly decomposed rat inside one of his
old forgotten work boots.

Now Neil detected the same
stench again, woven into the natural scents of wood smoke and dead
leaves. Had something crawled beneath the leaves to die? Reason
suggested so, but doubt nagged at him.

He's here.

It was a foolish, childish
notion, but it persisted.

He's here, watching you.

No, he's not. You're being ridiculous.
Why would he follow you?

Because he's mad.

He quickened his pace as much as he
could without tripping himself up.

The house was close, he
knew by the slight angle the path had taken, eager to deliver him
to the door.

Behind him,
blood-chillingly close, leaves crackled beneath a footfall not his
own.

A gasp caught in his
throat as the cane betrayed him. He stumbled, almost fell but
managed at the last second to steady himself. The wind
strengthened, making the bones of the trees clack with more
urgency. He whirled, cane raised defensively.

"Who's there? Kate, is
that you?"

It would be just like her
to try and scare him, but unless she'd been rolling around in dead
things, someone else was standing there watching him.

"Who are you?" he said,
forming a picture in his mind of what his unseen pursuer might look
like, but the pieces refused to come together.

Stop it. If he knows you're
scared, it'll only encourage him
. He
didn't know where the wisdom had come from; he was certainly too
frightened to have conjured it up by himself, but he heeded it
nonetheless.

"C'mon then," he said,
gritting his teeth and swishing the cane in a threatening arc.
"What are you waiting for?"

Only the wind replied. He
waited for another few moments, the cane still raised and trembling
in his hand, and now new doubts entered his mind. Maybe it really
had been just the leaves that he'd smelled, and maybe
something
had
crawled beneath them to die. It certainly wouldn't be
anything unusual, and far more credible an idea than a total
stranger following him home where anyone who happened to be looking
out the window might see him.

"Imbecile." He lowered the
cane and turned back in the direction of the house. It wasn't far
now. He would be there in a few hurried steps.

More leaves crackled, then
again, and again, so close Neil knew if he turned and waited a
heartbeat the follower would be upon him. He whirled and, with a
cry equal parts fear and rage, whipped the air before him. There
was a sudden smack and the cane halted halfway through its arc so
unexpectedly that Neil lost his grip on it and staggered
forward.

He raised his head, arms
out in front of him, terror playing havoc with his thoughts.
He caught it
, he thought,
struggling to keep the dam of panic from breaking.
And now he's going to use it on
me
.

He flinched and let out a
startled yelp when someone grabbed his hand. He struggled, kicked,
flailed and screamed, knowing beyond a doubt that he was going to
die, so impossibly close to the house. Nails dug into his sleeve,
fingers clutched at him, forcing open his hand. Terror overwhelmed
him. The man had followed him and would kill him, for reasons
unknown. He had read Neil's thoughts somehow and he would leave the
boy's battered and bloodied body buried beneath the leaves so
that
he
would be
the dead thing the others would smell when the heat
returned.

In his personal darkness,
he imagined a darker shadow looming over him.

Leaves crackled. Closer.

Neil's scream became a
sob. "Why are you doing this to me?"

Then the wind faded,
sighed through the leaves and fell still for a moment. It was long
enough for Neil to realize he was alone again, and that his cane
had been shoved back into his hand. In the distance, he heard the
faintest sound of leaves crackling underfoot.

"Who are you?" Neil
whispered, the tears warm against frozen cheeks.

The memory of the
stranger's voice was the only reply.

We'll have ample time to discuss our
secrets.

***

"So, you went shopping,"
Donald said.

Tabitha glared at her
brother as he sauntered over to meet her. His thick rubbery lips
were stretched into a mocking grin, revealing large yellow teeth,
his peaked cap pulled down over large ears made red by the cold.
Snot leaked from the bulb of his nose. "Well?" he asked again when
she didn't answer. He fell into step with her as she made her way
toward the house, a large two-story building with a gabled roof.
The white shuttered windows looked like tired eyes peering through
the veil of ivy that smothered the walls and reached into the
gutters with delicate fingers.

"It's quite obvious I went
shopping," she said, hoisting the box to give him a better look.
"Now leave me alone."

"Well, well," Donald said,
stuffing his hands into his pockets. "Aren't we contrary? I was
just trying to show a little interest in my sister's life, that's
all."

Tabitha clenched her teeth
to keep from responding. She knew if she voiced the insults that
frolicked across her tongue, he'd pull her hair, or punch her in
the arm, not hard enough to draw blood or leave bruises, of course,
just enough to hurt and make her flirt with the notion of crying.
Worse, even if her parents were in plain view of his persecution of
her, they would shake their heads and go back to whatever they were
doing. Donald had always been their favorite and apparently that
gave him permission to abuse her whenever he saw fit without fear
of punishment.

He kept abreast of her
when she walked faster and she felt the combination of fear,
loathing, and self-disgust roil within her. At last she reached the
door, but as she raised her hand to the latch, he grabbed it and
spun her firmly around to face him.

"You're not being very
friendly today, Tabby."

"Don't call me that." She
avoided his gaze.

"Why not? Is it because it
reminds you of a cat? I wouldn't imagine you'd mind all that much.
After all, you do have a lot in common. Both sly, and cunning, and
always eager to catch a mouse." He giggled maniacally and she tried
to pull free of his grip. He tightened it and moved closer, until
she could smell the tobacco from his clothes.

"You've been smoking," she
said and watched him shrug.

"So what? You've been
doing a lot worse, haven't you?"

She closed her eyes and
thought,
one of these days I'll hit him
back. I truly will. One of these days I'll bloody his nose for
him
.