The Moor

by Sam Haysom

  ‘So anyway, what started off as a seed planted in a local pub and a bit of a joke quickly became more serious. The word “witch” started being mentioned. By eleven o’clock that night they had a group of about 15 or 20 people from the local area –scared and angry people who wanted to get to the bottom of what they’d heard. And that was when the farmer’s wife made her second move. She’d lit the first match and then watched as a small flame grew and took hold, and now she came back in just as people were fired up and wanting to take some sort of action. And she played a very clever game.

  ‘‘We can’t just go out there and confront the poor girl without any proof,” she said. “I wouldn’t want to get her in trouble just because of something I saw.” And she put on her best innocent face and the men patted her on the arm and told her not to worry, and then she retreated into the background again when someone else came forward and made a suggestion – the suggestion the farmer’s wife had clearly been waiting for all along – that a few of them go up to the Brown girl’s farm that very night and see what they could find. See if there was anything out of the ordinary going on.’

  Mr Stevens paused and cleared his throat. He pulled a cup out of the holder in the arm of his chair, took a sip from it, and then put it back. None of the boys spoke. He readjusted his glasses and picked up where he’d left off.

  ‘Now, the story gets a bit fuzzy at this point. The way the historian told it to me, the farmer’s wife had played a very clever game and been over to the Brown girl’s farm before she came down to the village that night. She’d prepared everything. But then I’ve heard the story from other people – local men who swear their great-great-great grandfathers were there at the time and they’d had the real version passed down – that say the farmer’s wife had nothing to do with what happened next. They paint her as nothing more than a local gossip who only wanted to spread some rumours about a girl she didn’t like, nothing more sinister than that. I’ll let you make up your own minds.

  ‘Either way, a group of five or six men left the pub and set out on the two mile walk through the countryside to the farm the Brown girl shared with her uncle. He owned a good few acres and the farm was large and old, and Emily had her own little side cottage away from the main farmhouse where she lived on her own.

  ‘When the men got there they saw a light in one of her windows, a small candle flame, and they split up into two groups and circled the house to see if they could see anything through the windows. One group approached through the front field, and the other went around the back.

  ‘It was the second group that made the discovery. Obviously, no one knows exactly what happened or what those men really found except the men themselves, and they’re long dead. But the story goes that they discovered a circle of old stones in the field behind Miss Brown’s cottage, and in the middle of those stones was a dead rabbit with its eyes removed. Apparently, the belly had been slit from the neck down, and its entrails were spread around inside the circle.

  ‘Well anyway, a couple of the men wanted to break down the door and drag Miss Brown out right then and there, but they were outnumbered by the others. It’s worth remembering that although all this happened a long time in the past it wasn’t the 17th century anymore, and as I mentioned before many of the laws made against witchcraft had been repealed by the 1800s. Lynch mobs and vigilante crimes weren’t brushed off in the same way as they had been a hundred or two hundred years before.

  ‘So the men decided to play it safe. They came back to the village, back to the Horse and Hare where there were still a few people sitting around and drinking – although not the farmer’s wife; she was long gone by then – and they reported what they’d found. After what the people had been hearing all evening about Brown and the state they’d worked themselves up into, no one questioned them.’

  Mr Stevens paused. He reached under his glasses and rubbed his eyes, then repositioned them on his nose and stared around at the boys. He seemed to be measuring each of them in turn, as if making doubly sure they were ready to hear what he had to say next. James realised he could no longer hear anyone else talking around the campsite. The lights had all gone out in the surrounding tents, and the only sound left was the wind.

  ‘It was her uncle that found her, in the end,’ said Mr Stevens. ‘The story goes he came out of his house early the next morning to see to his morning chores and, when he couldn’t find Emily, he walked over to her cottage to wake her up. Only she wasn’t in her cottage.

  ‘The farmer had a key to the back door but he didn’t need it because the door was standing open, and when he went from room to room calling her name she didn’t answer. Eventually he came back out and stood in the doorway, and that’s when he saw one of her shoes lying on the grass, partway down the garden.

  ‘He went over to investigate and saw her other shoe further down, by the base of an oak tree. The bottom of her garden ended in a copse of trees that divided it from the next field over, and as he walked along the little path through the trees he found her stockings and her headband. Eventually he found her dress, hanging from the branch of an elm. It was torn and had blood on it. Then, a little way further in, he found her.’

  Mr Stevens let out a sigh and shut his eyes, just for a second, before opening them again.

  ‘She was hanging by her neck from a large oak at the back of the copse. She was naked, and someone had cut her throat and written the word “witch” in jagged red letters across her stomach. They’d written it in her own blood.’

  Mr Stevens started to say something else, then stopped himself. James stared at him, his stomach suddenly feeling very heavy and full with the meal he’d eaten hours before, and although most of him wanted Mr Stevens to stop talking a small part of him wanted to hear more, to hear every detail Mr Stevens knew.

  His gran had never told him a story like this before. The audiobook he’d swiped from the library had had nothing similar either, nothing quite so real. Even the sick stories Gary liked to tell in the playground weren’t the same.

  Mr Stevens suddenly looked unsure of himself. He took his glasses off, wiped the lenses and looked around at the boys. Then he cleared his throat and stood up.

  ‘Right, it really is time we all got some sleep I’m afraid,’ he said. ‘It’s past midnight. Very early start tomorrow.’

  Gary groaned. ‘But what happened after that? Did the men who did it get in trouble?’

  Mr Stevens glanced down at him as he folded up his green chair. He suddenly looked distracted.

  ‘No, no, they didn’t catch anyone,’ he said. ‘No one in the village wanted to talk about it, and as no witnesses came forward there wasn’t much they could do in those days. No forensics, no DNA – nothing like there is now. Anyway, it really is just a story, Gareth.’ He glanced at James and then over at Matt, who looked pale. ‘Don’t take it to heart. I doubt any of it ever even happened, anyway.’

  He smiled and gestured to Tim, who slowly got to his feet.

  ‘Right, Timothy and I are sharing a tent, and I believe the rest of you have sorted out your sleeping arrangements, so I think we’ll bid you all goodnight.’

  ‘But I thought you said you heard the story from a historian?’ said Gary. ‘Someone who studies local history and knows about all this kind of stuff?’

  Mr Stevens, who had turned away from the fire towards his tent, paused for a moment. For a second there was just the sound of the wind, and then he cleared his throat and carried on towards his tent without turning round.

  ‘Alarms set for 5.30am and I’ll see you all out here for a quick breakfast before we set off,’ he said.

  He unzipped his tent and disappeared through the entrance. Tim glanced back at them with an unreadable expression and then followed.

  A gust of wind blew through the campsite and caused the slowly dying fire to gutter, making their shadows dance in the orange light.

  4

  James lay awake staring at the roof of his tent. He could hear the wind
outside, howling like a dying animal, and the sound of a light rain that had begun not long after they climbed into their sleeping bags. It pattered against the canvas like thousands of tiny fingers.

  He knew the minute he’d climbed into his sleeping bag and Gary had turned his torch off that he wouldn’t be able to get to sleep.

  His mind was still swirling with images from the story Mr Stevens had told. The slim, beautiful redhead with the green eyes. The farmer’s wife twitching back her curtain to see a girl standing in a field, just standing there staring straight back at her in the dead of night while a cat wound its way around her legs. The same girl hanging from a tree with her throat cut.

  This last one was the worst, because although it made James feel sick to his stomach there was also something else, something tied up with the girl’s naked body that he felt deep down in the lowest part of his stomach. In his mind, the hanging girl’s green eyes were still open, staring back at him as if she were accusing him of something.

  After about an hour of checking his watch and listening to the wind mingling with the sound of Gary’s heavy breathing, James had given up even trying to sleep.

  At one point he thought he’d heard a whispered conversation coming from one of the other tents – his mind had shot back to the woman in Mr Stevens’ story and his back had itched with fear before he realised it was probably just Matt and Tom, nothing more than that – but when he sat up in his sleeping bag and strained his ears the whispering stopped.

  James thought about masturbating, anything to take his mind off the sound of the wind and the thought of the dark, empty moor opening up on either side of him like some black ocean, but he couldn’t bring himself to in case Gary woke up.

  James didn’t even want to imagine how much ribbing he’d get if Gary heard him cracking one out in his sleeping bag. He’d never hear the end of it.

  For a long time he lay completely still, staring up at the green canvas of the tent. He was finally starting to drift off, to feel sleep winning out over the whirling thoughts in his head, when he became aware of a subtle change in the sound around him and suddenly realised Gary was no longer breathing in the deep, steady way he had been before.

  James rolled over onto his side and saw Gary’s open eyes watching him in the dark.

  ‘Struggling to get to sleep, Trumper?’

  James couldn’t see Gary’s expression in the tent – there wasn’t enough light – but he could tell from Gary’s eyes that his friend was smiling.

  ‘I’m fine,’ muttered James. It didn’t even sound convincing to him.

  Gary blinked in the darkness. ‘You don’t need to worry about anything tonight, mate,’ he said, and for a brief second James thought he was actually being genuine. Then Gary let out a quiet chuckle in the darkness. ‘It’s tomorrow night you want to worry about. Tomorrow and the night after, when we’re out there in the middle of nowhere.’

  ‘Why don’t you just shut up?’ James whispered.

  ‘Yep, the next couple of nights will be the big ones,’ Gary continued. ‘Mr Stevens told a good story earlier, but he didn’t even get to the best bit. All those stories the locals tell about Emily Brown nowadays, we didn’t hear anything about that. I read them all in that online forum, though.’

  James didn’t say anything. He knew nothing he said would stop Gary now he was in mid-stride. It was easier just to lie there and let him say his piece.

  ‘Some weird stories in that forum,’ Gary continued. ‘A lot of people link that Brown woman to all the disappearances there have been in the years since. Missing teenagers, missing kids. That whole family that vanished back in the ’50s, or whenever it was. Some people think it was the Brown girl that did it, you see – that she wanders across the moor at night looking for all the people who hurt her, and the ones who didn’t speak up against her killers after she was dead.

  ‘She never finds them, of course – they’re long gone now – but sometimes she finds others. And they’re the ones that pay for what those villagers did to Emily all those years ago.’

  James could feel the back of his neck itching and he badly wanted to scratch at it, but he forced himself to lie still and breathe normally.

  ‘Yep, she always finds someone to pay the price in the end,’ Gary said softly. ‘All those disappearances. They said in the forum that compared to other national parks in the UK, Rutmoor has one of the highest instances of missing people. That can’t just be a coincidence, can it?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ James muttered.

  ‘No, I don’t think so. I think there’s more to it. What I think is we’d best keep our eyes peeled when we’re out on the moor tomorrow, that’s all. Especially when it starts getting dark and that storm rolls in.’

  Gary laughed in the darkness of the tent, and James suddenly felt like screaming. He didn’t want to hear any more. For a second he thought he might hit Gary, just leap out of his sleeping bag and jump on the bigger boy before he knew what was happening, but then all at once Gary stopped laughing and rolled over onto his other side.

  ‘Night night, Trumps,’ he whispered. ‘Sleep well.’

  James turned over in his sleeping bag and lay listening to the wind.

  2015

  Thursday, Part Three

  It’s a funny thing, time.

  He first noticed it when he started university and then suddenly found himself going into his final year – that strange elastic property that time has. How it can shoot by in a blur, and even though Freshers’ week feels like a century ago when you’re in your third year, the time in between is still one lightning fast streak, the days and memories running together like a film on fast-forward.

  It’s like that when he thinks about the moor, too. It’s been almost exactly 13 years since that memorable trip with Mr Stevens – the trip that completely changed them forever – but in some ways it feels much more recent than that.

  He can shut his eyes and picture their faces, their teenage faces lit up in the light from the campfire as they sit around and let Mr Stevens’ words wash over them.

  He’s done some research into trauma and has heard it can be like that. Memories that won’t fade; images that seem to actually get fresher in the mind as the years pass.

  He’s had counselling on and off over the years, and for a while he was on citalopram, but while it helps to talk about his symptoms to someone and the pills take the edge off his anxiety, it’s never quite enough.

  Although he can dance around the subject and talk cryptically about what’s going on in his mind, it’ll never be enough.

  Because he can’t tell anyone what really happened.

  Thursday, Part Four

  The train arrives at Southampton Central and stops for a minute while it divides in two. He stays in the front half, which is carrying on south, while the other half will travel off towards Portsmouth in the east.

  The platform outside is quiet, almost empty. A pregnant woman is sat on one bench with a load of shopping bags next to her and a wailing little girl tugging at the leg of her trousers. A guard in a fluorescent jacket hovers near her, staring up and down the platform with an orange whistle clutched in one hand. Two teenage boys are hunched with their heads together further down. Their eyes are fixed on a phone screen while they wordlessly pass a bag of Maltesers back and forth. He watches them for a moment, then looks away.

  It won’t be long now before he gets in to Brockenhurst, and his mum will be there to meet him in the car with that half-worried smile she always seems to have whenever he comes home. It’s like she’s studying him the minute he walks out of the station, searching his face for any minute trace of how he might be feeling below the surface.

  They’re spooky sometimes, mothers. It’s almost as if they can take one look at you and know exactly what you’re feeling – like their bond to you allows them some kind of pseudo-telepathy.

  He’ll have to try extra hard this time to guard his face when he gets off the train.

  If
he gives away anything about how he’s feeling this time – even just a hint of what he’s planning to do – his mum will pick up on it and she won’t stop pestering him with questions.

  Maybe she’ll recognise it’s got something to do with the reunion – the trip to Rutmoor that he makes most years, and which she’s never felt good about him going on – and then she might try to persuade him not to go.

  But he needs to go, that’s the thing.

  He’s got something important to do.

  Thursday, Part Five

  As he waits for the train to divide, his mind goes back to the Friday of that weekend in 2002. Their first day of walking. It’s tricky to pinpoint exactly when things started to go wrong, but if he had to narrow it down – if he had to pick the point when everything began sliding away from them – he’d say it was the argument Tom and Gary had on the Friday afternoon.

  The moment their little group started to split.

  It wouldn’t have changed anything if they hadn’t argued, of course. He knows that now; if it hadn’t been that it would have been something else that triggered everything, and there was nothing any of them could have done to stop it.

  As the train leaves Southampton and starts to cut through the countryside on its metal path towards the New Forest, he lies back against the headrest and stares out at the passing fields.

  He remembers.

  Gary (2002)

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