The Moors: Some secrets are better left buried (16 page)

‘Amanda?’ asked Ellie, somewhat timidly, as she pulled at the woman’s shoulder.

Amanda’s eyes were open, but she didn’t move. A heavy stream of blood poured down her face and dripped onto the floor of the car. Instantly, upon impact, Amanda had been taken, ripped away from the world without so much as a final word.

The future that she dreamed of was over.

The life that grew inside of her was gone.

The story that she seemed so destined to tell would never be heard.

*
 

Christian marched down the hill and looked towards Arthur in disappointment.

‘Get these kids back inside
now
!’ he asserted.

Terrified, Arthur immediately did as instructed, feeling every bit as sad as the crestfallen children who bawled as he led them back towards the house.

From the periphery, Elijah limped gingerly as he tended to the gunshot wound in his abdomen. He winced in pain as he touched it. He was alive but wished he wasn’t. The injury rendered him useless as he watched Christian pull Amanda’s body from the car and position it strategically onto the ground, using the claw from his necklace to tear through her skin as though she had been savagely attacked by a rabid animal. Christian then re-entered the house, where Walter had passed, and used the claw to similar effect as he staged a mini-massacre. Finally, he walked over to Karen. The claw would not be needed on her as Elijah had held nothing back. When confronted by such a horrific sight, most people would instinctively look away, but Christian stood silently fascinated by each violent detail. All of a sudden, his concentration was disrupted as her hand twitched. Christian had often seen a dead body move due to misfiring nerves and as he monitored her keenly, the twitching soon stopped. Incredibly, though, her eyes flickered open and she started gasping for breath.

Against all the odds, she was still alive.

*
 

Tony sat nervously at his desk. The sickly feeling he had experienced over the most testing five days of his life was getting worse. Every time the door clicked open on the office floor he would look up expecting to see Amanda and then glare at whoever was stood in her place.

A thousand times he had played out what to say when she finally arrived, though he felt certain when the time finally came, his mind would go blank and he would only think to say ‘I love you.’

As the hours passed, Tony felt his sanity slipping away, and when it reached seven o’clock in the evening, he decided that enough was enough. Their relationship might have been on the ropes and she may very well have been chasing a story, but never did she fail to keep to a schedule without calling with an update.

Something was wrong.

He knew this for certain and so he wrote a note, grabbed his coat and picked up his car keys, placing the message on the desk before finally leaving the office.

Amanda,

Forgive me if I’m overreacting but as I haven’t heard from you, I can’t help but worry. I’m driving down to Devon to check you’re okay. I will stop to call the office every hour
in the event that I miss you in passing, so if you arrive to this note, just sit tight.

I love you,

Tx

*
 

Blue and red lights flashed over the Prince Care Home where paramedics and police officers swarmed around the land like flies, inspecting the bodies and recording evidence. Christian delivered his well thought-out verdict to an officer who took his statement with interest and, as the telephone rang, only Arthur remained to take the call.

‘H-hello?’ he said, awkwardly.

‘Arthur?’ replied the woman, pleasantly surprised to hear his voice.

‘Lydia!’ he said, joyfully, breaking into an immediate grin.

‘They’re letting me out, Arthur,’ she revealed. ‘You’ll be seeing me very soon.’

For all of Christian’s planning, there were three details that he knew nothing about: that his wife would be returning home with an agenda in direct conflict with his, that Amanda’s soon-to-be vengeful partner was on his way to Exmoor and that somewhere, hidden beneath the floorboards of the house, lay the evidence that threatened to expose the family’s most villainous of secrets.

THE END

E p i l o g u e

LYDIA HAD EXPERIENCED THE FEELING several times before. That of
nearly
finding happiness;
almost
tasting success, but it was as though some mystical force was stalking her, tasked with keeping all good things just beyond her grasp for sins committed in a previous life.

Stepping outside of the asylum was indeed peculiar. If she were to hold a conversation with somebody in the outside world, provided she didn’t mention the tragedy that plagued her past or the vivid nightmares that made her so afraid to sleep, they would probably assume she was an ordinary person. Some might even wish to be friends.

Normality – the sense of feeling normal – was a luxury she had not been afforded for a very long time, yet there she was, outdoors and without a warden to dissect her every move. Not for twelve years had she been so independent, although she was not yet completely free from the gaze of the chief warden, who she noticed peering out from his office window above the main entrance, allowing him to judge those who left and entered.

Having skillfully maneuvered a situation where she could blackmail him for her freedom, she felt certain she had not seen the last of him. He was a deeply flawed human being, a man with many perversions and an inner sense of grandeur that Lydia’s recent victory would undoubtedly have threatened, but his retaliation would not come today. That wasn’t how he played things. Like her, he was both a planner and a patient observer. Without any doubt, he would take his time, as he always did with the women in his facility.

Lydia walked to the end of the car park, then the road, then the many fields around her. It started to drizzle but she didn’t mind. To be outside and in charge of her own destiny was strangely empowering and, on that day, there would not have been a soul on earth happier to get wet and meander.

Eventually, she came to a quaint village where everybody’s lives seemed so enviably simple. They held conversations that weren’t rushed and took time to say “hello” to all of those around them, including her.

‘Good morning,’ she replied, shyly, feeling liberated by each brief exchange.

She stumbled upon a café that invited her in with its warmth and sat patiently at a table until a waitress passed by.

‘Can I get you anything, my love?’

‘I have four pounds-sixty. What can I get with that?’ she asked, stacking her coins on the table and pushing them forward as though they were chips in a casino.

The waitress monitored her closely.

Damn it!
Though Lydia, angry that she had lost the normalcy tag so quickly.

‘I can get you the works if you’re hungry?’

‘I need a taxi, too. Perhaps I’ll just have a coffee.’

‘Okaaaaay. White? Sugar?’ asked the waitress, a pencil hovering above her small notepad.

‘Yes. Please.’

The waitress stalled.

‘One? Two?’

‘Oh! Just the one, please,’ confirmed Lydia, blushing as the waitress sighed and walked away.

Lydia decided it was okay. The next person she spoke to would think she was normal for much longer. She sat and enjoyed her coffee, along with the two she ordered after that. It was extraordinary how much the mind wandered when a person wasn’t locked in a dark and dingy room, although she didn’t understand why she still felt like a prisoner, as though her ankles were bound by heavy chains that would let her travel no further.

For twelve long years she had waited for the opportunity to return to the home and exact revenge on the people who showed her only abandonment when they were supposed to show love and who turned their backs on her when she needed them most. They left her to rot in the hands of people who should never have been trusted to care for those with such delicate conditions. Now that she was free, though, she doubted if she had the strength to overcome them. Imagining how she would deal with them whilst scorned was one thing, but physically implementing her ideas was quite another.

I’m pathetic!

I’m weak!

What am I going to do?

Lydia looked around, searchingly, for no reason other than the fact she was at a complete loss. On the table directly across from her was an old man who sat alone as he read a newspaper. As he focused on the sports updates, the front page was clear for all to see.

Exmoor beast claims life of journalist!

Suddenly, all of Lydia’s reservations disappeared. How dare they blame her son for their atrocities! How dare they seek sympathy when they are such malicious, calculated liars!
They
were the guilty ones, and everybody in the home was at their mercy. No matter how Lydia figured it, there was only one person who knew or cared enough to fight for change and ensure the children were no longer subject to the same level of neglect she had been. It would take everything she had, but it was her duty.

‘Another coffee, dear?’ asked the waitress.

‘Actually, I wondered if you could call me that taxi?’

‘Sure! Where you headed?’

Lydia looked back to the picture on the paper.

‘I’m going home,’ she uttered, with a level of conviction that seemed to take the waitress by surprise. ‘I’m going to see my boy.’

A f t e r w o r d

The Moors
is a hugely important project to me. Firstly, because it is the first thing I ever wrote outside of school. I didn’t have to do this piece of work, but there I was as a young man, using my free time to do it anyway. The freedom I felt when creating this new world was like nothing else I had experienced. It was invigorating, and suddenly the daft idea I had about becoming a writer seemed a lot less ridiculous.

Secondly, and maybe more profoundly, I was writing about something I knew. This, as they say, is what all writers should do,  but you don’t necessarily listen to such advice during your teens. After more than a decade of experimental writing, though, it is this very story I have returned to when selecting which piece of work should be marked as my first commercial novel. How funny that the mystical heritage of Devon – the place where I grew up and was so desperate to get away from – has become so integral to my learning and understanding of the world.

The Moors
embraces horror – something I have always been fascinated by. That the story is set in the seventies is largely because this, in my opinion, was the golden age of the genre. Films such as
The Texas Chainsaw Massacre
and
The Wicker Man
made for such uncomfortable yet mesmerising viewing, and these films never quite left me.

In fact, it was whilst delivering bouncy castles during the summer of 1998 that the idea of
The Moors
was born. By day, the house I had visited was a picture of tranquillity, set in the middle of Exmoor on the grounds of a large, wealthy home. However, when I returned to collect the castle that night, the mood was very different. Sinister shadows replaced areas where the sun had earlier thrived and an eerie silence stalked the land around me. It got me thinking “If anything bad were to happen to me now, I’d be completely alone.”

As the trees danced in the breeze and alien sounds were exaggerated in my mind, the way I felt combined with the stories I’d been told about the mysterious Exmoor beast during my youth, and suddenly an inescapable idea began to grow.

I am not a fan of modern slasher flicks or teenage horror books. In fact, what people consider to be a “horror” these days do not compare to the more psychological stories I eagerly consumed during my younger years; stories that have long lived in my mind. To me, that is the trick of a good horror – making something that gets under a person’s skin and makes them believe the concept is feasible; that it could actually happen to them; that it could be real.

The Moors
poured out of me because it is the type of story I myself would love to read, and so my hope is you will enjoy reading the book every bit as much as I enjoyed making it. If you do then please take a moment to review it on Amazon, or post a more extensive review on Goodreads. It can’t be stressed enough how much these contributions help.

A b o u t  t h e  A u t h o r
 

JODY MEDLAND is an award-winning writer who has worked successfully across the advertising, education, film, gaming, literary and television industries.

His debut feature film,
The Adored
, was released in the States in 2013 and has since enjoyed worldwide distribution, including territories such as the UK, Germany, Poland and Uganda. It won Best Film at the Durban Film Festival in South Africa and earned three official selections in Wales, Germany and the US.

Jody is deeply passionate about his literary work and from 2011-2012 he produced and published ten short story books, titled
The Emerging Light Series
– a project that encouraged new writers to create and submit short stories.

It is the ability to wield strong, original concepts that Jody is renowned for among his peers and he is a great fan of dramas, thrillers and mystical stories, which are his genres of choice when writing.