David stepped forward, his boots squishing ominously in the black muck, until he saw what she was pointing at. There was a body beneath the brambles. He crouched down to get a better look, and recognized the garish yellow hair immediately.
It was Winnifred Blundell. Her pencil-like legs protruded gracelessly out from under one side of the bush and her face was turned sideways and was half buried in the black ooze, but the wounds around her neck and chest were clearly visible. He leaned closer to gain a better vantage, and a small cloud of flies rose up as he approached. Her skin was gray and swollen, and he noticed that one of the carrion beetles that now harvested her rotting flesh had become entangled in her yellow hair. She had been dead for quite some time, but what attracted his attention the most was the manner of her death. Although many of the wounds were now obscured by maggots, their odd crescent shape was distinctive and unmistakable.
He straightened when he could take the smell no longer and batted at the flies that now besieged him. His mind was spinning, and for several minutes he just stood, staring at the body and contemplating the implications of the discovery. He did not like the conclusion that he was forced to reach, but the evidence was irrefutable. Something unfathomably rapacious prowled Hovern Bog. In the distant past the inhabitants of the valley had been so fearful of it that they had sacrificed living victims to it in attempts to appease it. It was capable of killing humans and even seemed to do so with relish. But what disturbed him the most was that it was still there. Whatever it was, it, or its descendants, still prowled the bog.
In the background he became aware that Amanda was rhythmically whacking the jawbone she was carrying against a tree. He turned, intending to lead her away from the horrific sight, when the bone finally captured his attention.
“What is that?” he asked.
“Jussa bone.”
“May I see it?”
She looked at him with the same puzzlement with which she seemed to greet all of his remarks and diffidently offered him the ghoulish object. He took it and examined it carefully. As he had previously surmised, it appeared to be the jawbone of a smallish animal, old and bleached white by the sun. What drew his interest, however, were the numerous gouges on its surface, rasp-like grooves identical to the teeth marks in the sternum of the bog bodies.
“Where did you get this?” he asked.
“Over there,” Amanda replied, and started off to show him. Growing increasingly cognizant of the fact that she knew the bog like the back of her hand, he allowed her to guide him. A short distance from where Winnifred’s body lay were numerous other muddy hillocks surrounded by dense vegetation and bounded by the inky rivulets of the bog. The hillocks, he noticed, had a trampled look, and over the entire place there hung a faint but malodorous odor. As he looked at the hills more closely, he realized they were literally covered with bones. Some of the bones were white and appeared to be relatively recent deposits, but as his eyes took in more of the details, he discerned that beneath these there were smaller fragments of bone, discolored and half rotted from exposure to the elements. As he looked closer still, he saw that the very mud itself was largely composed of even smaller bone fragments, blackened and nearly pulverized by wind and time, but evidence of a vast and inconceivable carnage nonetheless.
He also noticed something else. Projecting from various locations on the hillocks were short wooden stakes with pieces of rotting ropes trailing from them. Here and there he also saw snippets of hide and mud-trampled fleece. And suddenly he realized why Old Flory kept sheep.
The place was a feeding ground, and from the look of things its unknown inhabitant had fed there quite a lot. Furthermore, it was apparent that the villagers were well aware that something of voracious appetite lived in their bog. Thankfully, they had apparently de-escalated their sacrifices from human beings to sheep, but he now reasoned that the attitude they conveyed to strangers about the bog had something to do with their fearful and lengthy involvement with the thing.
He turned to Amanda. “Do you know what’s responsible for all of this?”
“Why, Ol’ Bendy,” she replied.
“Who?” he asked again.
“You know, Ol’ Bendy,” she repeated, not understanding why the term held no meaning for him.
“Do you know what Ol’ Bendy looks like?”
She shook her head slowly as her eyes widened with alarm. “Oh, no. If I’d see’d him, he would ’a eaten me.” Growing fearful himself, David asked, “Where’s Ol’ Bendy now?”
Amanda shrugged her tiny shoulders. “I dunno. He don’t come out durin’ the day.”
Thank God for that, David thought to himself as he looked around nervously. “Come on,” he said to the little girl. “We’re leaving.”
“I’ll lead,” Amanda offered and once again hastened off.
When they reached the edge of the bog she ran brightly down the hill ahead of him, and by the time David had himself left the thicket he noticed that she had run right into Old Flory.
“Where ’ave you been?” he demanded angrily and jerked her up by her frail little arm. She let out a cry and he cracked her soundly across the face. “Shattup! ’Asn’t I told you never to go—” He stopped abruptly when he noticed David approaching. He looked at David coldly. “What were you doin’ wi’ ’er innair?”
“I saw her run in. I was frightened for her.”
Old Flory looked down again at the pale and frightened girl. “Now see! ’Asn’t I told you?” He yanked her up again as if she were no more than a little rag doll and pushed her in the direction of the ramshackle cottage “Now, you get ’ome.”
He looked back at David and scowled, searching David’s eyes as if to glean some hint of what he might have seen. But before he could say anything else, David spoke. “You’d better get the constable. Winnifred Blundell’s body is in there.”
“Where?” Old Flory demanded, fear in his eyes.
“
Innair,
” David mocked, tilting his head in the direction of the bog. “Near where you stake out sheep for Ol’ Bendy.”
Old Flory’s eyes widened with surprise, but before he could add any further comment David had strode off. As he walked back toward the camp he turned and saw Old Flory hobbling angrily after Amanda. He reached her and again jerked her up sharply by the arm.
He started yelling at the girl again and David felt a terrible aching in his heart when he realized that he had perhaps made an error in telling Old Flory that he knew about the stakes. He watched angrily, bitterly, as Old Flory continued to drag his helpless daughter all the way back to the house.
Considering in total the events of the past several days had a strange effect on David. He told Brad about finding Winnifred’s body, about the bite marks, and even about the feeding ground, and although the younger man reacted with dismay, his excitement over discovering the two Roman bodies kept him from discerning the gravity with which David viewed the situation. On another occasion, David might have been more conscious of the danger he believed the younger man to be in, would have spent more time stressing the implications of the discovery to him, and even urged him not to pass any more nights in so vulnerable and unprotected a dwelling as a tent. But as it was, the discoveries of the afternoon had left David in an almost trancelike state.
Even Melanie he only told about the discovery of Winnifred’s body in the vaguest terms and left out all mention of the bite marks, the feeding ground, or even the bite marks on the two Roman bodies they had unearthed. She naturally pressed him for more information, but this he stalwartly withheld, and he spent the better part of the evening in seclusion. He had only one thought on his mind. His vision of the centaur had been too mercurial and insubstantial for him to pin down and understand. But the creature that roamed the bog was physical and subsisted on living flesh. And this fact brought his driving curiosity forth full force. Regardless of the dangers, he had to discover what it was. He resolved to go into the bog that night to look for it.
He waited until Melanie had gone upstairs to bed and then he went into the gun room of the cottage. He surveyed the once-dusty cases, now shining brightly from Mrs. Comfrey’s skilled hand, and opened one of them.
He detested guns, mainly because his father had counseled him so firmly to like and use them. Because of that he had never even fired one. But as he removed one of the ancient rifles from the gun cabinet, he realized that they were really quite simple in mechanism. It was as he was searching through the various drawers in the cabinets for bullets that Melanie came into the room.
“What are you doing?” she asked, seeing the gun in his hand.
He found a box of bullets and placed them on the table. He also found what appeared to be an array of paraphernalia for cleaning the guns, and decided it would be prudent to do so before attempting to use the aged instrument. He sat down at the table. “Cleaning this gun, why?”
“For God’s sake, David, you hate guns.”
He kept his eyes trained on the piece of gun batting before him, trying desperately to think of some sort of excuse. “I’m just going for a walk,” he blurted out feebly. “And taking a gun?”
“Well, given what happened to Winnifred Blundell, it seemed like a good idea.”
“Oh, come on, David,” she said. “I’m not a child.” And then she looked at him, her eyes growing suddenly wider. “There’s more to it than that, isn’t there? Something happened today that you’re not telling me?” David sighed and realized that it was useless to keep up the ruse any longer. Taking a deep breath, he told her everything. When he finished, Melanie collapsed into a chair opposite him.
For several minutes she said nothing and just stared absently off into space as she processed the information. And then she turned to him, pale with fear. “David, what in God’s name do you think it is?”
“I’m sure it’s just some animal of some sort.”
“No, it’s not just some animal,” she muttered darkly. “Oh, Melanie,” David chastised as he stood and proceeded to load the gun.
She reached over and clenched his arm. “But what about the centaur!”
The comment hit a nerve in him and he pulled sharply away. “What about the centaur?” he snapped, more rhetorically than wanting an answer.
“Don’t you think it has something to do with this thing?”
“Don’t be ridiculous. How could it?”
“I don’t know. I just think it does.”
He went over to one of the drawers and took out a flashlight. He flicked it on and off several times, making sure it worked, and then started for the door. But before he reached it Melanie caught up with him and grabbed him beseechingly by the arms.
“David, please don’t go. It’s not just an animal. I know it’s not. It’s something beyond us. It’s something unearthly and evil and far more dangerous than I think we’ve begun to suspect.”
He looked down into her eyes and was galvanized by the depth of the terror he saw in them. He too felt a growing and irrational fear about whatever it was that was out there; and a small part of him had even begun to suspect that what she was saying was true—that was part of the reason he was so driven to seek some resolution to the matter. But no matter what he thought awaited him, his obsession to know had been aroused. He had to understand what he was up against, whatever the cost; for the alternative, to drift, awash in a murky sea of questions and ignorance, was a fate far more intolerable.
He frowned, his face full of pain. “I’m sorry, Mel.” And then he left.
Outside, the night was clear and the moon was bright over the lawn. The air was muggy with the grassy smell of the advancing summer, and the crickets, the katydids, and the occasional and mournful call of a whippoorwill added a deceptively lulling cadence to things. He walked out into the lane. As he passed the thicket where he had first experienced the strange pain in his jaw, he glanced at it nervously and again wondered why he had experienced the same enigmatic pain both in Grenville’s house and when he later saw the centaur.
As he neared the moors he remembered Amanda’s assertion that Ol’ Bendy only came out at night, and he found himself looking over his shoulder and glancing uneasily at the extended shadow of every grassy sedge. At the bend in the road where he normally turned left, he turned right instead. He did not want to circle around the part of the bog where their camp was and risk frightening Brad. And besides, he had another destination in mind.
He walked on for another twenty minutes, and when the great wall of the bog finally rose up on one side of the road he found himself steering as far to the opposite side of the lane as possible. To his left he spotted Old Flory’s cottage, with its windows gleaming jack-o’-lantern yellow in the distance, and next to the cottage the ghostly outline of the sheep in their dilapidated pen.
As he paused before an outbreak of thorn apple he saw a truant swallow fold its long narrow wings and drop into the darkness. He looked back in the direction of the lane. He knew that he had to keep his wits about him now and push his memory to its limit. He cocked his gun and entered the bog.
The first several dozen feet he negotiated without difficulty, carefully recalling every twist and turn that he had seen Amanda take earlier that day. But then he ran into trouble. Because of the density of the vegetation, far less moonlight trickled down in the bog than out on the moors, and it was difficult to see various landmarks, let alone place them on the mental map of the maze that he had formed in his mind. He also did not want to use the flashlight, for he knew that its beacon could be seen far off through the bog and he did not want to prematurely alert the creature to his coming. After a moment of deep concentration he deciphered where he was and pressed on.
Not surprisingly, at night the bog revealed yet another side of its ever-changing nature. The buzzing of the flies was now replaced by crickets, the distant croaking of frogs, and every once in a while, the plaintive hoot of a screech owl. Instead of the fly agaric he made out the phosphorescent gleam of armillaria fungi winking on and off like greenish yellow embers along the ridges of dead twigs and bits of bark among the oak litter. Clouds of midges and tiny moths batted around him and occasionally, as he passed, the damp air was loaded with other exhalations, the rustlings and slitherings of other nocturnal denizens of the bog as they moved heedfully out of his way.