Guardians Of The Haunted Moor

by Harper Fox

  Gideon gave a helpless snort of laughter. “God’s sakes. I do see Bligh Bowe over there, which is weird. He doesn’t look too upset.”

  “Okay. You go do your neighbourly thing with him, and I’ll just melt into the crowd, if that’s all right. See if I can find any stray lambs.”

  Just you be careful. Gideon didn’t have to say it. There were lots of things he wouldn’t have to say to Lee anymore, he realised: a whole expansion of their nonverbal range. Lee nodded, dark eyes lambent in the bonfire’s tawny blaze. Then he slipped away, climbing lithely over the drystone wall into the field.

  There wasn’t much chance of finding Bill Prowse here tonight. The Dark Guldize involved some hard manual graft as part of its celebrations. Only the bystanders had noticed Gideon’s arrival. The men and women busy in the farm’s home meadow were too involved in their labours to look up. Everything seemed peaceful, so Gideon took a slow track around the boundary wall, enjoying the festivities for a moment himself. According to the rules he’d laid down in the village hall that morning, he was going to have to break them up. And that was a shame, because this was one of the most ancient and compelling sights anywhere in the world, let alone Cornwall: a row of men and women hand-scything a field of corn.

  The blades sliced rhythmically through the stalks, catching the last light of the sun. Gideon took note of the dozen or so faces made pure by concentration, and shook his head—these same people could express fifty different opinions on any given topic in the pub, but set them to work on any one of their beloved heritage tasks around the wheel of the year, and they turned into a corps de ballet. Slice and straighten, step. Slice and straighten, step. The scythes were either cherished heirlooms from farming ancestors or lovingly handcrafted blades created in metalwork classes at the village forge. An odd pang went through Gideon’s chest. Like any place on earth, Dark had its heroes and villains, but they were good people on the whole. He’d grown up with them, known their elders all his life, watched his own generation have children, fall in and out of love, debt and divorce. Ordinary people, not to be found anywhere else in the world.

  Not just a dozen or so. Exactly thirteen, including the leader who marched ahead of the line, swinging his scythe boldly from side to side as if harvesting the blood-red air. He was stamping his feet, giving the beat to the Guldize chant, the reapers and all the gathered crowd roaring it back to him. The number would interest Lee, although doubtless it only meant that thirteen people had happened to turn up with their blades. The song itself echoed Lee’s vision in the field where John Bowe had died. Three men came from the west, their fortunes for to try, and these three made a solemn vow, John Barleycorn must die... A cold-footed goose picked its way over Gideon’s grave, and he looked around him, seeking the source of the unease. The clouds massing over the hilltop had taken on a bruise-coloured weight as the sinking sun lit them from below, but nothing was out of place, apart from...

  Gideon sighed. Sergeant Pendower, still neatly turned out in his uniform, was perched on the fence beside Bligh Bowe, rapidly scribbling notes. There wasn’t any point in asking him why he hadn’t tried to stop this gathering, on a curfew night with a dangerous killer somewhere on the loose in the fields. Instead Gideon went and leaned quietly on the fence on Bligh’s other side, and waited until Pendower noticed him. “Oh!” he said at last, and narrowly caught himself from tipping backward into the field. “Sergeant Frayne. I didn’t think you’d be here tonight.”

  “Nor did I, seeing as it wasn’t meant to happen. Bligh, I’m terribly sorry for your loss today. Do you want me to clear this lot off your land?”

  Bligh bent down and picked up Pendower’s notebook. He was a stocky man in his thirties, almost as comely as his brother had been, with the blond good looks so rare on the peninsula. He was smiling politely, but he looked as though he might have been telling Pendower the history of the Guldize festival for rather a long time. “Hello, Gideon,” he said, handing the notebook back. “No, don’t worry. Fact is, I asked the lads to come and cut the field, just as they always did. I didn’t think John would have wanted it to be called off.”

  “OK. But you seem to have the full party going on, bonfire and cider and people wandering in and out of your kitchen... Are you all right with that?”

  He shrugged helplessly. “It was all set up. When people started turning up along with the reapers, I just thought I ought to go ahead. They got the harvest in off the main fields in record time today, knowing the weather was going to change. I owe them.”

  Beneath his moorland farmer’s stolidity, Bligh was nervous as a cat. Hardly to be wondered at after the day’s events, but Gideon’s senses twitched. “Pendower,” he said conversationally, gesturing over the field in the opposite direction from the one Lee had taken. “Lee’s just over by the hedge there, seeing if he can pick up any—er, Pagan vibes from the land. I’m sure he’d like your input.” A little ashamed, he watched Pendower scramble down from the fence and set off as fast as dignity allowed. “Sorry,” he said to Bligh. “Sergeant Pendower’s doing some kind of research project. Hope he hasn’t been a nuisance.”

  “No, no. Just asking about the farm, how long we’d lived here, where we came from—that kind of thing. Seemed very interested in our names, as well.”

  “Ah. Names are his speciality.” Gideon was suddenly sure that Bligh had been relieved to talk to a police officer about anything other than his brother’s death. Well, Gideon wasn’t about to talk to him about it either. “You’ll have had CID with you all today, I suppose.”

  “Yes. Went over the house from cellar to rafters, they did. And kept me and poor Dev stuck indoors all day, answering a hundred questions. I couldn’t even see the point of half of them.”

  “Not quite all day for Dev. I met him up at Granny Ragwen’s this morning.”

  “Oh, God.” Bligh ran a hand over his face. “Yes. He told me about that, as best he could. He was very upset.”

  Gideon gave him a moment. They watched the field together, the progress the reapers were making towards the last few rows of corn. “I’m sure he’s devastated,” Gideon said gently. “He’s a lot younger than you and John, isn’t he?”

  “Yes. Fifteen years. He was our mum’s autumn rose—that’s what she used to call him, anyway. Her last lamb.”

  “How is he tonight? Isn’t all this noise bothering him?”

  “No. I had the doctor out to see him this afternoon, he was so bad. Gave him something to make him sleep. Can I tell you something, Gideon? I said the same to the CID, and it’s important.”

  “Go ahead.”

  “Well, John and I were old enough to cope when Mam and Dad died. But Dev—it knocked him for six. We’ve tried to keep it quiet, but a couple of months after the funeral, he was diagnosed with schizophrenia. He hears things and sees things sometimes, and he talks about them. So... please, anything he comes out with to you, will you take it with a pinch of salt?”

  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.