The Windvale Sprites (7 page)

*

The journey took the rest of the afternoon and the shadows were beginning to lengthen when Asa eventually arrived on the edge of the Moor. The bike was now a hindrance as he could not cycle across the long grass and so he left it well hidden under a rocky bank. With the bucket and jars slung about him Asa now resembled some kind of one-man band as he set out on to the moor. The rucksack was heavy and he soon decided to look for a likely base camp so that he could dump most of the weight. He headed north towards the stretch of river where Tooth had sighted the sprites most frequently. He came to a point where the ground fell steeply away below a long ridge that sheltered numerous crags and hollows. Asa found one, not quite deep enough to be called a cave but it was well sheltered from the wind and there was room to pitch his tent. Once it was up he tied bunches of grass and reeds to the outside until it looked like a part of the landscape and he put his rucksack inside.

He sat down in front of the tent and spent an hour scanning the landscape through his binoculars. Birds and insects went about their business in the long grass but no sign of the hobby and no sprites.

Before too long his eyes started to droop and, though it was still early evening, the previous night’s lack of sleep and the exhausting journey there was taking its toll. He crawled into his sleeping bag and lay for a while listening to the strange silence of the moor. The wind ruffled the tent and he heard the occasional shriek of a barn owl but before very long he was fast asleep.

It took Asa a few minutes to figure out where he was when he opened his eyes. The yellow light in the tent was unfamiliar and he lay there for a while trying to remember.

Emerging slowly, he blinked in the sunlight and looked around. The air was chilly and the grass was damp with dew but the sky was clear and cloudless with the promise of a beautiful autumn day.

He set up his little stove and heated water for a cup of tea, warmed a tin of vegetable soup and as he ate he thought about the day ahead. The first thing he wanted to do was take a closer look at Benjamin Tooth’s farmhouse. He didn’t expect to find anything there but as it was a definite,
stone-built
part of the story it seemed a good place to start.

He cleared away the stove, zipped up the tent, slung his sack over his shoulder and set out.

As he approached Asa was again overcome by that self-conscious feeling of being watched.

The house was a solid, stone building with a slate roof and, though it had done well to stand up to the ravages of time, the moor was slowly reclaiming it. Grass sprouted between the roof tiles giving it the appearance of a balding thatched cottage and the walls were covered with creepers. At one end a tree had grown up inside the house and burst through the roof where the wind made the branches grow horizontally. An ornate but broken weathervane on a crumbling chimney made the whole place look like a crackpot mechanical device that had been abandoned on the moor. It all fitted in with the description of Tooth and his weird lifestyle.

The front of the house had the look of a stern face frowning down at him and a shiver ran up Asa’s spine. Reaching the edge of what was once a garden surrounding the house he hesitated. The perimeter drystone wall had melted over the years to a long, shallow mound of flat rocks, completely covered in places by a blanket of turf. He picked his way over the boulders and rusty iron railings and made his way towards the entrance.

The front door to the farmhouse was solid wood and, though the rest of the house was crumbling, with windows and shutters hanging from their hinges, the door was locked and impassable.

Asa made his way around the side to where he found a low window with cracked green glass. It was dark inside, but Asa could just make out the shapes of furniture and tattered drapes hanging from the walls.

 

Around the side he found a small outhouse with a door at the back which led into the main building. This outhouse was filled with old tools and what was once a small handcart that had long since separated into its individual components. A jumble of twisted iron parts Asa discovered were animal traps rusted into a solid, tangled mass like a deadly tumbleweed and next to it a pile of wooden half-barrels and buckets. He nervously stepped over the junk towards the door which was open a crack and he peered through. There seemed at first to be music coming from within but he soon realised it was just the wind whistling through holes in the house like a church organ. He pushed the door – it didn’t budge. Either the hinges had rusted solid or there was something behind it, so Asa gave a hard shove. The door creaked and splintered and went crashing to the floor, whipping up a dense cloud of dust and cobwebs. With a new channel to escape by the wind rushed out, blowing dust into Asa’s face. He stumbled blindly back into the junk, sneezing and rubbing his stinging eyes.

Once recovered he gingerly took a few steps into the house.

What he found inside was weird. It was obvious that the remote building hadn’t had a visitor for two hundred years. Instead of the empty rooms and broken furniture that Asa had expected, he found the rooms filled with stuff, piles of it, all covered with a thick layer of dust. He shone the torch around. Mouldy books and stacks of paper, bizarre scientific instruments and rows of bottles and jars covered every surface. It looked as though it had been used as some sort of laboratory.

There were threadbare rugs on the floor,
moth-eaten
hangings on the walls and, on a solid oak table by a window, a bottle of wine and a glass, the contents of which had long since evaporated leaving a dark residue. It was creepy, abandoned in a hurry like the
Mary Celeste
, and so caked in grime that anything he touched stirred up a cloud of dust. To search through everything would have taken weeks and Asa didn’t quite know what he was looking for – anyway, he had the information he needed in the journals. If anything, this discovery was just confirming what Asa already suspected, that Benjamin Tooth was a madman, and an unpleasant one at that.

He was about to head back to the moor when something on a dresser caught his eye. It was a small model of a tricycle intricately made from twisted wire and sitting on a wooden base. Closer inspection revealed it to be not so much a model but a working miniature with pedals and a chain that, though now rusted, had once worked like a real tricycle. Tiny straps, perished strips of leather, had once been attached to the saddle, pedals and handlebars and as he studied it Asa came to realise with horror what it was for. It was exactly the right size for one of the sprites to ride but only after it had been tied to the contraption.

Asa wondered what the ‘scientist’ had been up to, as if the discovery of a new species on the moor was not enough, it seemed as though Tooth had been intent on getting the creatures to perform tricks. This idea, along with the overpowering smell of mould and damp made Asa feel slightly sick and he carefully made his way back outside into the sunshine and fresh air. He knew all he wanted to know about Benjamin Tooth and decided he didn’t much like the man.

The rest of the day Asa spent searching for the sprites in vain. He poked around in countless rabbit holes looking for signs of life but to no avail and if it were not for his earlier encounter he might possibly have given up hope. But he knew they were here and he was determined to find them. As the shadows once again started to lengthen at the end of the day he decided to set the bucket trap anyway by an old warren not far from the tent.

Wearing the gloves, he wedged the bucket into a rabbit hole, placed one shiny coin in the bottom and scattered a few more on the grass around it. Then he put one of Mum’s chopping boards over the bucket, propping up one edge on a twig to which he tied the end of the fishing wire. Then he made his way back to the tent, unwinding the wire as he went.

Once in his shelter he lay down on his front and watched the trap through the binoculars, holding tight to the trip wire, until it got too dark to see.

 

He awoke at first light with his head still outside the tent and dew on his hair and eyelashes. He found he was still gripping the fishing wire in his fist but looking through the binoculars he could see that the lid of the trap was still propped up on the twig.

He set up the spirit stove and cooked some eggs and bacon, which he ate in the chilly morning air as the moor started to wake around him and birds emerged from who-knows-where to chase midges.

He decided to set his trap at a likely looking place he had seen by the stream near some old rabbit holes. But as he rewound the fishing wire he realised with a start that the coins were gone. None on the ground and none in the bucket. He searched in the grass for a short while but was convinced they had been taken, and taken by something nimble enough to get into the bucket and out again without disturbing the trap.

He looked around him. Were they watching him? He
felt
as though he was being watched but, then again, he often did.

He decided to reset the trap in the same position; the wind was blowing back towards the tent, which would disguise his smell. He fished in his pockets for two more coins, placed one in the bucket, one on the grass, and retraced his steps, unravelling the line as he went.

Back at the tent he heaped more grass and branches on the flysheet until not a scrap of the yellow fabric was showing, and settled down to watch.

Hours rolled into each other and before long Asa had lost all track of time. The moor was buffeted by winds and there were fewer birds and insects than the previous day. Occasionally he spotted the hobby negotiating the gusts of wind and watched intently, but when it dived down it reappeared empty-taloned.

The excitement at finding the coins gone slowly waned throughout the day so that by early afternoon Asa found himself nodding off and had to pinch his arm to stay awake. This worked for a while but inevitably he was soon asleep and stayed that way for a couple of hours.

When he awoke the low sun was shining in his eyes and he squeezed them shut again and enjoyed the warmth on his face. It was then that he became aware of something moving close by, a rustling in the grass to his left. With amazing self-control he managed not to sit up and look or even open his eyes but remained still and listened to the noises. Whatever was there seemed to be furtively looking around his camp and checking out his stuff. Then, a fluttering, buzzing sound and a shadow crossed his face and disappeared. Asa continued to lie stock-still until he was sure it had gone and then, as slowly as he could manage, he turned his head and squinted out across the valley.

Even without binoculars he could see that the trap was still set. But then, with a rush of excitement, he spotted them. Sprites, two of them, hiding in the shadow of the overhanging rock not five yards from the bucket trap. They were huddled close together but as he watched, one of them flitted out from its cover, hovered over the trap and then zipped back again. They’re checking it out, thought Asa. They looked smaller than the other two he had seen, maybe they were young ones, and maybe they were more adventurous or foolhardy, because Asa was sure that they knew he was there and that the bucket was some sort of trap. A moment later one of the sprites rose several feet into the air and hovered, seeming to look back across the valley towards him.