Guardians Of The Haunted Moor (16 page)

Over the
years, Gideon had learned to take witness statements without any
seasoning at all. He nodded gravely. “I’ll bear it in mind. Poor
Dev, though. It must have been tough on you and John.”

“
Yes. How I’m gonna manage him on my own, I’m not
sure.”

“
Shall I have social services pay you a visit?”

“
Please. But ask them not to set too much store by what he says
about me and John. He’s sometimes... very hostile to us, and God
knows neither of us ever gave him any reason.”

Gideon
laid a hand on his arm. Something was off, but this wasn’t the time
to root around after family secrets, and as far as Gideon had seen,
the elder brothers had done their best with the boy left on their
hands. “No, I’m sure of that. Don’t worry, okay? You’ve got enough
to deal with.” Making a mental note to see Dev Bowe as soon as was
decent and let him talk his heart out, he returned his attention to
the field. “Looks like you have a winner.”

“
Oh, that’s right. It’s gonna be Joe Poldue.” Bligh’s face lit
with a smile so full of longing and regret that Gideon’s sinuses
prickled in sympathy. Missing his brother, Gideon supposed, at this
height of the ceremony, and the Dark village version was moving in
itself—a kind of a race to be last, although any signs of slacking
would have been dishonourable, and all the reapers took down their
final row of corn with as much strength as they could muster.
Someone had to lose, though, and thus it was often the oldest or
the least physically able among them who cut down the last shock of
corn. Old man Poldue, whose tobacconist’s shop had been teetering
on the brink of closure for as long as Gideon could remember, stood
up straight in the firelight, proud as if he’d just whipped
Excalibur out of the stone. Instead of a sword, he was waving a
handful of barley over his head. “I have ’un! I have ’un,” he
cried, broke into a fit of wheezy coughing and got out the magical
third repeat into the expectant silence. “I have ’un!”

The other reapers laid down their scythes, a gesture of
surrender and respect. The onlookers came running to the fence, and
Gideon, who had grown up with the rite and knew it better than his
father’s prayer book, couldn’t resist joining in with the roar of
response—
What do you have? What do you
have? What do you have?

“
A neck! A neck! A neck!”

Now
would commence the mayhem. Poor old Joe would have to try and get
his prize, the final neck of corn, into the farmhouse kitchen
without being seen by the sharp-eyed maiden appointed there to keep
watch. This guardian—Jenny Salthouse this year, already at her
station behind the door with an upraised bucket in her hands,
grinning from ear to ear—was authorised to soak the winner to his
skin if she managed to catch him. “Does Joe know about your back
stairs?” Gideon asked Bligh quietly, not wanting to lose his home’s
last baccy and old-fashioned sweet shop to pneumonia. Bligh only
nodded. Tears were rolling down his face. Saddened, still convinced
on some level that there was more to his grief than met the eye,
Gideon patted his shoulder. “I’ll be closing this party down soon
anyway. I want to see everyone back to the village myself. Shall I
pull the plug on it now?”

“
No. No, the cider’s ready in the kitchen, and they’ll want to
weave the neck. Give ’em a little bit longer.” He looked up
suddenly. “You do understand, don’t you—if it had been up to me,
all this could have gone on forever.”

“
What do you mean?”

“
The ceremony, and... all the old ways. The fields and the
land.”

“
Well, you and John have hosted it for years. You’ve been very
generous, and maybe you’ll feel like going on with it next year. If
not, it’s past time someone else took a turn.” Gideon surveyed the
cornfields, laid out in fresh-mown splendour under the sun’s last
light. “As for the land—that’ll go on without any help from either
of us.” A rumble of thunder shook the distant tors. “Weather’s on
the change, just like Granny Ragwen said. I’ll go help supervise
operations in the kitchen.”

He was
on his way across the farmyard when the first drops of rain began
to fall. Almost immediately they dried, leaving only a
constellation of dark marks in the dust. He wished the downpour had
started: this start and sudden cease was like a car being revved
and then jerked up on the handbrake. The air became arid and still.
Thunder rolled again, louder this time, and all around him the
scurrying reapers and revellers came to a halt, exchanging
wide-eyed looks. Gideon drew a deep breath. Then he turned back to
Bligh Bowe, and said without thinking, without taking a second to
wonder at the impulse, “Bligh? I want you to help me get everyone
indoors. Right now.”

“
What? It’s only a shower, isn’t it?”

“
No. It’s more than that. Can you help?”

No. Bligh’s attention had been caught by some indefinable
shift in the atmosphere, some scent borne in on the cold breeze
rising from the darkest flank of the hill. He was transfixed.
Gideon looked around and saw to his relief that there was someone
who
could
help—someone equivalent to ten Bodmin farmers, Gideon’s own
household cavalry, vaulting the wall with easy grace. “Lee,” he
said, reaching out to grab his hand. “Something’s
happening.”

“
Yes, I know. I thought it was just the weather,
but...”

“
No. We need to get everyone to shelter—the kitchen or that
open barn, whichever’s the closest.”

“
Okay. Where’s Pendower?”

“
God knows. Interviewing a scarecrow, I should think.” Gideon
spun round, releasing him, vaguely aware that he shot off into the
darkness, shouting for attention. He should be doing the same
himself. But what was the shadow that had dropped over Carnysen
farm? Not just the sunset, although that had happened abruptly, the
red orb devoured by the jagged horizon and clouds. He stood frozen,
listening, trying to analyse the ozone-laced wind. Something foetid
and fearful, something that whipped him back to a Halloween night
on the moors by the Cheesewring, when he should have been alone—and
he’d felt like the loneliest man on earth—until the night had
thickened and put forth a deeper darkness, darkness with a throat
and a voice...

That
bone-vibrating growl had to be thunder. Small hairs on his nape
tried to erect, and all around him he saw his fellow primates
undergoing the ancient reaction, fluffing out their nonexistent
coats to conserve warmth in crisis, wheeling about to try and find
the source of danger. Lightning flashed, a long, anguished strobe
that turned human shapes to paper-thin cut-outs, dancing moorland
maidens suddenly cast into stone. In the farmhouse, the lights
flickered and went out.

Gideon
grabbed Bligh Bowe. Lee had started a good small panic at one end
of the farmyard, but another one was needed right here. “Bligh! Can
you get people into the house?”

“
It’s dark in there. Dark.”

“
It’s just a power cut. Your generator ought to kick
in.”

“
It’s broken. Just emergency lighting for outside.”

“
That’ll do.” Off among the outbuildings, an engine coughed and
roared, and neon strip bulbs flared along the rafters of the open
barn. Lee was gesturing people inside, encouraging stragglers with
a propelling hand to shoulders and spines. “Look, someone’s
lighting candles in the kitchen. It’s just a storm, but you’re
exposed up here, and I want everybody indoors right now. Do
it!”

Finally
Bligh broke paralysis. “Hoi,” he yelled unsteadily, gesticulating
towards the house. “Get inside, all of you. Come on!”

That
accounted for everyone in the farmyard. The reapers were beginning
to scramble over the fence from the field, but Gideon had barely
counted six out of the baker’s dozen when the storm hit. He darted
into the blackness, aware of Lee as a sudden muscular warmth at his
side, stopping to boost him over the wall and reaching to be hauled
up himself. Lightning split the sky again, revealing a frightened
cluster around Joe Poldue, the old man still clutching his
barleycorn neck. “It’s all right,” Gideon called, making a
half-blinded dash through the stubble towards them. He almost
believed it himself. He had plenty of help now—not just Lee but
Bligh Bowe, who had recovered himself enough to come running to the
rescue, and there in the background was Pendower too, actually
putting away his notebook and laying useful hands on Gideon’s
flock. “Go with Lee and the sergeant, all of you. Bligh, can you
get that gate open for them? Joe can’t climb the wall.”

Pitchblack again, and a growl of something not thunder
twisting up out of the field, stitching earth and sky together in a
nightmare howl made worse for Gideon because he’d heard it before.
Instinctively the group clustered together. Finding Lee within
arm’s reach, Gideon allowed himself a heartbeat’s comfort of
clinging to him. “What the bloody hell is that?”

“
If you don’t know, no-one does.”

“
How do I stop it?”

“
You can’t.” Lee’s arms closed round him: a short, hard
embrace. “It’s not here for you.”

“
Is this what you saw—the black fields?”

“
No. This is just a warning. Christ, Gid, look!”

The next
lightning flash showed Bligh Bowe and Poldue. Bligh was trying to
take hold of him, to steer him towards the gate. But something had
caught Poldue’s eye—something beyond Bligh’s shoulder—and he thrust
the sheaf of corn into Bligh’s arms and turned and fled into the
dark.

Gideon
ran after him. He knew he’d made the wrong choice when a vast hot
presence passed him, buffeting his shoulder and knocking him flat
to the ground. The screaming howl came again, this time joined by a
terrified human voice. He tried to get up, but Joe was clinging to
him like a leech. “Don’t leave me, Constable! ’Tis the
Beast!”

“’
Tis not the... Oh, for God’s sake.” Gideon cleared his throat
of corn-dust and centuries-old vernacular and tried again. “It’s a
storm. Stay right here, Joe, and I promise you’ll be all right.
I’ll come back for you.”

“
I’ll look after him.”

Gideon
glanced up. Pendower was crouching on Joe’s far side, gently
detaching his fingers from Gideon’s collar. He looked as if he’d
been knocked through a hedge. There were scorch marks on his shirt.
He’d lost his cap, and his hair was as much of an electrified mess
as his short copper’s crop would allow. “Bloody hell,” Gideon said.
“What happened to you?”

“
I think I got struck by lightning. But I can hear something
else, like...”

Like a
beast on the rampage. Gideon took his shoulder and gave him a firm
shake before he could say it and terrify Joe still further: the old
man was whimpering now, trying to clutch at them both. “I don’t
know what it is. I just need to know you’re not too freaked out to
help.”

“
Of course I’m bloody well freaked out!” Pendower grabbed Joe’s
arm and hauled it over his shoulder. “I’ve got him, though. You go
and...”

He broke
off, coughing. Gideon couldn’t wait. Either he ran in the direction
of the bestial snarling right now or he too would take to his heels
and vanish into the moorland night, forever disgraced to himself
and the community he was sworn to serve. He pushed upright, found
his balance and set off.

There was barely enough light to see by. Something had hit the
bonfire full on and scattered it to fragments, consuming themselves
and dying in the field’s far corner. He almost fell over Bligh
Bowe. Dropping to his knees, he thanked God that he’d found a whole
body. Somewhere close at hand, something vast was still huffing and
growling: deliberately he turned his back to it.
No. If I conjure you somehow, if it’s me you
bring your messages for—like a proud cat with a dead mouse—I don’t
have to listen.
He leaned over Bligh, who
was flat on his back as if hurled there. His throat was intact but
there was no pulse in it. Gideon checked his airway and began
CPR.

He kept
it up for a fathomless stretch of time. Behind him the air went
quiet, as if some great watching force had finally seen what it had
been looking for and could depart. Rain pattered on his neck, and
then, with a pinging sensation like cold elastic bands being
snapped, big storm-born August hailstones. A hand closed on his
arm. “Sergeant Frayne?”

He
stopped his chest compressions and sat up. “Yes?”

“
Paramedics. You can step aside.”

Gideon hadn’t heard them arrive. Falling back a step or two,
he saw that the lane was ablaze with swirling blue lights. The real
storm was breaking over Carnysen now, hail slamming into the empty
furrows, thunder beginning to peal. The mobile mast on top of
Minions Hill would soak up most of the lightning, but after that
the farm was the highest point. Anyone left outdoors would be in
real danger, a peril Gideon could understand and fix. He waited
until the medic looked up and confirmed what he already
knew—
sorry, Sergeant, he’s
gone
—and then he turned away.

He found
poor Jenny Salthouse crouched beside the wall, her arms folded over
her head. He picked her up gently, sheltered and calmed her until
she rediscovered the use of her legs and went stumbling off to the
gate. That was one. He scanned the field for more. The hailstones
were melting into heavy summer rain, soaking his eyelashes,
half-blinding him. The ambulance lights were sweeping the field
like swallows’ wings. It was empty now, surely, everyone under
cover in the house or barn.