‘There are monsters all over those places,’ George said, as he dealt a fresh hand. ‘Legends, stories, the local kids grow up on them, and there’s no doubt in their minds that those monsters are real. Ancient, and real. It’s easier to believe in something when it’s been around for so long, do you think? Like Jesus. Like God himself.’ He gave a dry cough of a laugh. ‘Haven’t you ever wondered what it was like when that monster was brand new to the world? They all have to start out little, and grow, don’t you think?’
‘There’s no room for monsters in the modern world,’ I told him. ‘No place where there could be dragons any more. Everything is explored, and mapped. Satellite technology.’
‘Really?’ He pointed out of the window. ‘It won’t help you out there. You might be able to see it from space, but when you’re on your own two feet, on the moor, in winter, you’re only a few bad choices from death, and they maybe won’t find your frozen body to stick in a coffin for the sake of a fancy ceremony, with your relatives gathered around. If the cold doesn’t take you, the Beast will. Black Jack!’ He smacked down his cards, delighted.
Eventually he lost enthusiasm for both the game and the subject, and we folded down the sofa to make an extra bed. He took off only his boots before crawling under his duvet; I thought of my clean thermal pyjamas, brand new, in my rucksack. But I didn’t want to change clothes in that tiny van, not in front of him. It would feel like letting down my defences. So I removed my own boots, and slid into my sleeping bag, smelling the newness of it, hearing it crackle as I moved.
George turned off the light and, within moments, started to snore. It was comical, a rich, deep sound, and it took my mind away from the things he had said, and the blackness of the moor, separated from me by only the thin wall of the campervan. I listened to him, smiled in the dark, and controlled my breathing: in, out, in, out. Sleep stole over me, and I was glad that the Beast didn’t follow me into my dreams.
A scream.
No—a screech. George had told me of the barn owls. They sounded so loud, so close. I lay in the utter black, cocooned in my sleeping bag, feeling the freezing air on my lips and forehead. George made no sound. It seemed he could sleep through anything.
As the owls screeched on, the suspicion began to grow in me that he wasn’t sleeping at all.
I groped for my rucksack and silently thanked the sales assistant for suggesting the pencil torch; it was clipped to the flap of my rucksack. The beam was a pinpoint of intense white light that trembled with my hand as I swung it over the gas ring, the cupboard, to his bed.
It was empty.
Fear pressed against my ribs, squeezed my throat. My eyes stung with the struggle to see clearly in the torchlight—was that a movement, under the duvet? But how could it be? No, everything was still, and I was alone. Miles from anything I knew. I told myself he must have simply gone out for a walk. The torchlight found no trace of his boots. Yes, a walk. He was unpredictable, a law to himself. A man with a fondness for monsters.
The owls fell silent. They must have flown away, hunting for the small, scurrying voles and mice that ran from sedge to gorse, crouching low.
Then I heard it—a low hum. It moved along the length of the campervan, around the front, towards the door. I snapped off the torch and burrowed deep into the sleeping bag, willing myself into stillness. The hum grew, became a rough, grating sound, as loud and insistent as machinery, and I pictured—what? A monster: teeth, eyes, claws, hardness, heaviness, every terrible imagining that had ever grabbed me and forced itself into my head. This was no escaped cat. It was a living nightmare.
And it was at the door.
I lay still. So still. I listened to it, and I felt it listen for me. I saw, in my mind, velvet black ears, twitching, rotating.
Time ticked on, and it began to move away from the door. The sound lessened, became a soft hum once more, and was gone.
I couldn’t move. George didn’t come back until the dawn had begun to sneak its rosy fingers into the van, and I pretended to be asleep as he moved around, and got back into bed. After a time, he began to snore once more. Still I didn’t sleep. I didn’t think I would ever be able to sleep again.
Over a breakfast of sausages, bacon and eggs, all jumbled together in a filthy frying pan over the one gas ring, I tried to find the words to tell George that I was leaving.
‘A morning out on the moor,’ he said, ‘that’s what you need. There’s plenty to see.’
‘No, I really think—’
‘Stay the morning, and then see what you think come the afternoon. I’ll take you back to the Forest Inn myself. Well, you won’t reach it on your own anyway, will you?’ He laughed, and I hated him. The feeling freed my tongue.
‘You went out last night.’
‘Yes, that I did. I had some business to take care of.’
‘What kind of business?’
He tapped his nose.
‘There was a sound. Outside the van. A—I can’t describe it. Like a hum, that got louder.’
He stopped eating, and put down his knife and fork. ‘Is that right?’ He cocked his head, and I thought he was considering my words, but then it came to me that he was listening, to the growing sound of a car, coming in our direction. I looked through the window, staring into the morning mist, and a Landrover came into view, stuttering over the uneven ground.
‘Anderson,’ said George. ‘Quicker than I was expecting.’
The Landrover came to a halt a few feet away, and a tall, bearded man in a green jacket and a wide-brimmed leather hat got out. He had a capable air about him; he strode around the van with a sense of purpose that appealed to me.
George threw open the door. ‘Morning.’
Anderson nodded. ‘Val told me you had a lady visitor.’
‘You would have thought the tourists would keep her too busy in that pub of hers to pay attention to my comings and goings,’ said George. ‘This is my niece, Eve. She wanted to see the moor.’
‘Is that right? Well, I’m thinking you’ve been too busy for mischief, then. One of the ponies disappeared last night from the travellers’ camp, over by Tarr Steps. No sign of it. But you were here with your niece all night.’
‘All night,’ said George. ‘I don’t know how the poor thing put up with my snoring. It must have been the Beast that got that pony.’
‘Now, George, don’t start that again.’
‘You’re not the police.’ George had a placid tone, but only an idiot would not have found him threatening. ‘You’re a warden. You shouldn’t get yourself involved in these things. You know the travellers will turn this moor into a settlement, given a chance. Keep your nose out, and things will take care of themselves.’
‘Will they?’ They locked eyes, and then the moment passed, and Anderson turned back to me. ‘It was nice to meet you, Miss.’ I saw my chance to get away diminishing; I had to speak.
‘Could you—give me a lift back to the pub, do you think?’
He raised an eyebrow. ‘Of course.’
‘Later this afternoon,’ said George. ‘She means, later today. It’ll save her a walk back to her car, see. About three?’
Anderson nodded. ‘I’ll come back for you then. I’ll be heading back this way anyway.’ And then he turned and walked back to his Landrover, and George shut the door.
‘I would have taken you,’ he said. ‘Right, well, we’ll have to get a move on. Put on your boots. It’s a walk.’
‘To what?’
‘Boots.’
I obeyed, and left my half-eaten mess of a breakfast behind as we started out at a brisk pace, into the heart of the moor.
‘Not far now,’ said George. We had been walking for over an hour, without pause. My legs weren’t used to such punishment, and the muscles burned, even as the intense cold seared my lungs. The landscape looked the same to me in every direction; there we
re no landmarks, only an occasional bare tree, the trunks squat, the branches twisted.
‘Where are we?’ I said.
‘Not far from the Tunnel.’
It didn’t mean anything to me, and I had no choice but to keep up with him. He was my only way back to civilisation.
‘I first told your mother that this place existed years ago. It was at one of your birthday parties, I remember. She wasn’t best pleased to hear about it. She told me not to come back, but I knew she didn’t mean it, not really. She never shut the door on me. She wrote long letters to me, trying to keep me in her life. I think that was because she saw a lot of me in you.’
I pictured that party once more. Your Uncle can’t be around people, she had said. I never imagined she had told him to go. Had she been scared for me? Of his influence?
‘I told her to come and see for herself, and she said I was going mad. Those years out there in the Army, such stress. That’s the word she used—stress. She didn’t understand that I loved it. It never caused me one sleepless night. Worry is something for the people with the day jobs, the mortgages, things to lose, the fear of what’s out there to take away your hopes and dreams. She’d rather live with the fear than face it. But I say—fear only gets worse when you hide from it. I don’t think you should live that way.’
He stopped walking, abruptly, and I realised the ground had begun a gentle sloping downwards that accelerated into a steep valley floor. ‘There,’ he said. The valley ran, like a crack in the surface of the moor, to rocks, piled high, forming a small cave. It had a man-made look about it, incongruous in this setting.
He started down towards it, and I followed suit, feeling the fear of last night returning to me. There was a strange, sweet smell in the air that intensified as we approached the cave; I realised that, just inside the opening, a body lay—the pony, on its side, legs splayed, the white edges of the ribs visible from where the chest and stomach had been ripped open.
I stopped. George went into the cave, and examined the pony. ‘It’s not eaten much,’ he said. ‘Ah well. It’ll get round to it later. I wonder why it came out to the van? Maybe it caught your scent, on me.’
‘Why…?’ I couldn’t speak further.
‘Why have I brought you here? I want you to understand—I found it when I first came out here, to live. It was so small, back then. I was out this way, looking for the rumoured Beast, and it was lying on the ground, so weak, with a gunshot wound in its side. Just a tiny monster, born of some local news stories, but with my help it got well. And now it gets a little stronger every day. Soon it’ll take care of itself. This place needs a proper monster, one to keep the tourists and travellers at bay.’
‘You’re… making a myth?’
‘Oh no,’ he said. ‘I’m not making anything. It’s real. Come in and see.’
He walked into the cave.
I stood outside, wanting to run, not knowing what direction might take me to safety. But part of me wanted to go into that cave. It wanted to see the Beast, to know exactly what slept within, what had come to the van in the night, and smelled me out. I moved forward; just a few steps, enough to bring me level with the dead pony. George was just ahead of me. I could make out the broad outline of his back. He had crouched a little; it wasn’t a large cave, and I became aware of the way it narrowed, and dropped down, further into the ground.
‘It’s dug itself right down in there,’ said George. ‘Perhaps it tunnels, with those claws. Could already have made tunnels all over this moor.’
His voice echoed against the walls of the cave. My eyes began to adjust to the darkness. One more step forward, and I was inside, and a new sound came to me—that long, low hum, from the night before. Rhythmic, heavy, it was a feeling, a trembling of the ground, as much as a noise.
‘It’s asleep,’ said George. ‘You can just see its back. Look.’
A semi-circular shape jutted from the earth. It could easily have been mistaken for another rock, but then I realised there was a regular pattern to the ridge along the central line; scales, perhaps? They shifted upwards and the humming intensified, for a moment, then lessened.
He held out a hand, hovered over the line of the back, then briefly laid his palm upon it. It shuddered, and I knew I had to get out of that place before it woke. I couldn’t bear to see it, to know it. The otherness of it was overwhelming.
I stumbled outside and started back along the valley floor, not caring where I went. I heard George behind me, calling my name, and I didn’t slow, but he caught up with me and pulled me to a stop, holding on to my rucksack. I turned, swung out, and he stepped back.
‘Hold on, hold on, there’s no need to get like that, girl.’
‘Take me back,’ I said. ‘I want to go home.’
‘Well you’re going the wrong way, then, aren’t you? What’s got you so angry? It wouldn’t hurt you. It’s still too small for that yet.’
‘You’re feeding it. You’re taking care of it.’
‘And one day it’ll be big enough to take care of itself, and this moor, and then no doubt it’ll get the better of me.’ He smiled. ‘That’s the law of nature, right there. Not the law of man. I don’t know how many people understand the difference but you do now, don’t you?’
‘You’re crazy. Take me back.’
He gave me a look that I could only describe as disappointment. He had expected better from me. Understanding, perhaps. But I felt nothing for Exmoor, saw no beauty in it. I only wanted to get away, from the cold, the damp, the life and the death of it. If monsters had to exist, I wanted it to be in some faraway place that I never had to visit.
He turned and led the way, and I followed after, keeping my distance. It was a long walk, but he never spoke, or even looked back to check I was following. When we reached the campervan, Anderson’s Landrover was parked outside, waiting for me, and I packed up my belongings without another word to my uncle. If my mother had ever thought that I was like him, then she had been wrong. I had left Devon when I was still so young. There was nothing left of the earth of Exmoor in me.
It was over a year later when a policeman rang to tell me Uncle George had disappeared.
‘The Warden reported him missing a few days ago,’ said the kindly voice. It had a trace of the Devonian accent, such a soft sound. ‘We found his campervan, and everything was untouched. We think maybe he just wandered off and couldn’t find his way back. We’re still searching, but the chances of finding him now are very slim.’
‘You won’t find him,’ I said.
After that, I kept an eye on the news from the Exmoor region. Ponies ripped apart, found in pieces, partially eaten. A member of a camping expedition went missing, and it was blamed on the bad weather. Then, just last week, a man disappeared, and it made the national news. His car was found near the Forest Inn, with dents and long scratches in the side panels. The papers dug up all those old rumours about a Beast.
I suppose that will happen a lot more often, now.
Part Three
Touch Magic, Pass it On
‘Your voice is powerful. Your voice has meaning. If it didn’t, people wouldn’t work so hard to silence you. Remember that.’ Kameron Hurley
‘There’s always a story. It’s all stories, really. The sun coming up every day is a story. Everything’s got a story in it. Change the story, change the world.’ Terry Pratchett
You Are Old, Lady Vilma
Jan Siegal
From: Multiverse
‘You are old, Lady Vilma,’ the young girl said,
‘Your hair should be greying by now,
And yet it’s becoming increasingly red.
This miracle happens – quite how?’
Said the lady: ‘I’m boiling up virgins tonight –
Though I hope that you don’t qualify.
Their blood makes a dye, if you mix it up right,
; Very simple, and quick to apply.’
‘You are old,’ said the girl, ‘as I might have observed.
There should be some lines on your cheek.
Is it botox or filler by which you’re preserved?
Is it clinical, or just Clinique?’
‘In my youth,’ said the dame, ‘the tears that I wept
For men who were not worth the fuss
I stewed in a lotion which I’ve always kept –
The horseshit I add as a plus.’
‘You are old, Lady V – I must tell the truth
For deceit is a thing I despise,
Yet you go home each night with a different youth.
Do you think, at your age, that is wise?’
‘As a girl, the young men that I took to my bed
I loved for a month or a year,
But now I can dump them each morning instead –
You really should try it, my dear.’
‘You are old,’ pressed the girl, with the hint of frown,
‘Your private parts should be concealed,
Yet your can-can last evening brought the house down…
Don’t you think far too much was revealed?’
‘I’ve answered three questions and now I am done,’
Said the dame. ‘I have somewhere to be.
If at half of my age you had half as much fun
You still wouldn’t match half of me!’
Winter in the Vivarium
Tim Major
From: Winter Tales
The angle of refraction through the thick, curved glass made it difficult to see into the bedroom. Byron Bright rechecked the motion sensor strapped to his right arm. A single green dot appeared, faint and unmoving, every couple of seconds. If there was anybody in there, they must be asleep. He pulled himself onto the gantry for a better view.
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