The Moor

by Sam Haysom

‘My dad used to take me up here now and then when I was younger,’ said Tim. ‘Just the two of us. We’d get a map and go all over the place, and he’d teach me about navigation and stuff.’ Tim paused, and then turned and stared at Tom. ‘I don’t think we’re going to find Gary.’ He said it softly, almost in a whisper, and the wind nearly carried his words away.

  Despite the rain, Tom’s throat felt dry. ‘Why do you say that?’

  Tim looked out over the moor, squinting into the rain and wind, and didn’t say anything. After a few moments he shrugged, and Tom thought that this time he did look as though he might cry.

  ‘Tim, did you hear anything last night?’ said Tom. ‘Anything weird or strange at all? Did you see anything?’

  Tim moved his head and turned to look at Tom. His eyes were distant. He opened his mouth, seemed about saying something, then closed it again. Tom resisted an urge to reach out and shake him.

  After a few moments, Tim looked down and tried again. ‘I… well, I…’

  He broke off when they heard footsteps crunching through the heather behind them. Both boys turned and saw Mr Stevens, smiling down at them. There was something clutched in his right hand that fluttered in the wind.

  ‘I was sat on the rocks just now and I found this shoved down into one of the cracks,’ Mr Stevens said. He opened his clenched fist to reveal a Nature Valley Granola bar wrapper, which he pinched between his forefinger and thumb. ‘Gary had some of these, didn’t he?’

  Tom studied the bar, frowning. Gary had had those, it was true, but the wrapper looked old to him. Like it might have been stuck between those rocks for a good few months. Maybe longer. Then again, the wrapper was so covered in mud it was hard to tell. For a moment Tom felt a faint flicker of something like hope.

  ‘Yeah, he did have those. It was stuffed down in the rocks, did you say?’

  Mr Stevens smiled and nodded.

  He reached out and patted Tom’s arm with one thin hand. ‘We’re going to catch up with him, son,’ he said. ‘He can’t be much further ahead now.’

  4

  They made camp at midday at the base of Garrett Tor, which was the next one along from Hayworth.

  The going from Hayworth hadn’t been pleasant, and although they’d only covered around six miles, it had taken them most of the morning. After they’d descended from the summit the path had disappeared and the ground had turned into a sea of tussocks – knobbly little mounds that Matt dubbed ‘ankle twisters’. Tom almost did twist his ankle a couple of times, too, and the second time he’d actually fallen over and landed awkwardly on his side. He’d put out his right hand to cushion the fall and it had sunk into the boggy moss, causing brown water to ooze over his fingers. Lying there in the mud as the rain pattered down on his face, a low-level churning of nerves and guilt in his stomach because they still hadn’t found Gary, Tom found himself wondering why he’d agreed to come on this weekend in the first place.

  Matt’s mum and James’ gran had wanted them to go; they’d met Mr Stevens and thought he was a nice man, and they wanted the boys to make friends with Tim to help him feel welcome in his new school. But Tom’s parents didn’t give a shit. They might have said hello to Mr Stevens once or twice when picking Tom up from Gary’s or Matt’s, but they weren’t the sort to stay over for a coffee and a gossip while the boys played GTA in the other room. Tom’s father was a lawyer – a large, serious man who always seemed to be off working somewhere – and his mum’s main group of friends were from her riding club in the New Forest. They kept themselves to themselves.

  No, Tom supposed he’d just gone along because his friends were going, and as the athletic one of the group he was expected to take things like this in his stride. Big Tom, the captain of the Year 8 football team and the first pick for the 100-metre sprint on sports day; he could handle himself.

  Only he wasn’t handling himself now, was he?

  Lying there in the mud, Tom had closed his eyes and felt the rain beating against his skin and in his mind he’d heard that scream again, he’d listened to that scream and seen the red-haired woman in the white dress as she waved at him down a long dark corridor.

  You lost Gary, and now you’ll never find him again, whispered a voice in his mind.

  At that point Tom had felt a hand on his shoulder and opened his eyes to see Matt and James standing over him, looking concerned. Matt had offered him his hand and Tom accepted it, and when Tramper said, ‘Jesus, I thought I was going to have to put you on my back or something!’ Tom laughed in spite of himself.

  He’d laughed in spite of the rain and the mud, and that anxious feeling gnawing in his gut like a rat chewing at the inside of a box.

  They’d carried on through the tussocks until the ground finally levelled off into a sea of rainbow-coloured heather. After a mile or two of big, awkward steps and grit in their shoes, they’d finally found a path again.

  Now they were a few miles on, eating lunch at the base of Garrett. They’d dumped their bags on a flat bit of ground away from the footpath, and were sat around on a relatively grassy patch of earth. Tom had a pasta and tuna meal that he dug out of his pack and tore the foil off to dig in to; the others had similar meals apart from Tramper, who brought out some cling film-wrapped Marmite sandwiches and a Snickers bar. Tim didn’t eat anything.

  Mr Stevens looked disapprovingly at the Snickers James had balanced on his knee.

  ‘Those things aren’t very good for walking, you know,’ he said. ‘Sugary foods like that go right through you; you get a five-minute burst and then you feel more tired than you did before you ate the thing.’

  You’re one to talk about being tired, thought Tom, looking at Mr Stevens. The man was perched on his backpack with his thin hands clasped in front of him, and although he had looked practically energetic that morning, Tom thought he now looked pale and ill. The bags under his eyes weren’t quite as bad as his son’s, but they weren’t far off.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ said Tramper, fishing out a Nutri Grain from his coat pocket. ‘I’ve got the fast burn and the slow burn options. So I’m covered both ways.’

  He grinned and Matt let out a little laugh. Tom wanted to ask them what they were laughing about, exactly; Gary was still missing, and since the granola bar wrapper on the top of Hayworth they hadn’t seen any sign of him at all.

  ‘How do we know we’re still on the same route as Gary?’ Tom asked suddenly.

  They all looked round at him. Matt’s grin faded, and Mr Stevens cleared his throat.

  ‘Well, Gary had a map and I made sure before we started that he knew the basics of navigation,’ he said.

  Tom looked from Mr Stevens to the unreadable expressions on the faces of his friends, and he felt his temper rise.

  ‘Yes, but there wasn’t even a bloody path for a while back there,’ he snapped. He heard James draw in a breath, but he ignored him and kept his eyes on Mr Stevens. ‘What if Gary’s lost, or hurt or something, and we’ve just left him behind?’

  Tom heard the desperation in his own voice and Mr Stevens obviously heard it too, because when he next spoke his voice was gentler.

  ‘Tom, I know this sounds like a horribly blunt thing to say, but if he’s wandered off or decided to go on a different route then we’re still doing the right thing. We’ve stuck to our route and we’re making our way for the nearest road, which means we’ll be able to get help as soon as we can.’

  Tim stood up and mumbled something about going to fetch some water from the river. He grabbed his pack and wandered off away from the group. Mr Stevens ignored him, keeping his brown eyes fixed on Tom.

  ‘Now personally,’ he continued, ‘I do happen to think we’ll find Gareth. We know he was at the top of Hayworth, and even though the terrain hasn’t exactly been plain sailing – you were right about that, Thomas – the visibility’s not as bad as it was and we’ve been able to see Garrett Tor all morning. Even if Gary got confused with his compass, all he’d have to do would be to head in the direction o
f the tor.’

  He smiled, and Tom looked down at his shoes. All at once he felt embarrassed for overreacting. And Mr Stevens was right, wasn’t he? If you thought about it logically – something his dad was always telling him to do – if you thought about it and looked at the facts, what they were doing made the most sense.

  Because Gary’s stuff had been gone, and in real life people didn’t just get abducted by aliens or stolen away by witches; in real life they just got pissed off and decided to wander away.

  Is that what happened to all those children that went missing on Rutmoor? That family, too?

  Tom didn’t know about that, but he felt sure there was a decent explanation. His dad said there was an explanation for everything, no matter how weird it seemed.

  Tom went to take a sip from his CamelBak and realised it was nearly empty.

  ‘Is there a place near here where I can fill up?’ he mumbled. All of a sudden he wanted to be away from the group for a bit, to have his own space for five minutes.

  ‘Head along that way through those bushes,’ Mr Stevens said, pointing in the direction Tim had gone. ‘There’s a little river nearby, and if you follow the path downhill you should find a point where you can fill up safely. Do you want me to come with you?’

  ‘No, that’s okay, thanks. Tim left a couple of minutes ago so I’m sure I’ll catch him up.’ Tom thought that he’d actually do his best to avoid Tim and find a different part of the river to fill his CamelBak, but he wasn’t going to tell Mr Stevens that.

  He stood up and shouldered his bag.

  5

  Tom followed a tiny brown trail that weaved its way between gorse bushes and ran roughly parallel to the river. He’d only been walking for a couple of minutes before he heard it, gurgling along off to his right somewhere. The wind had quietened down a bit and his footsteps were loud and heavy.

  At one point he paused, straining his ears to see if he could hear his friends back along the path, but there was nothing.

  That was good.

  Tom’s dad had been in the TA when he was younger. Tom couldn’t remember the exact name of the division or section he’d been a part of – he wanted to say reconnaissance, but that didn’t sound quite right – but he’d told Tom all sorts of stories about the things he’d done. Nothing really scary, of course – he’d never been abroad to do any fighting – but the training could be pretty intense. Often, Tom’s dad said, they’d go out somewhere and dig themselves in so they could observe something – an enemy camp, maybe, or a building – and they had to spend the whole weekend squashed together in this tiny little trench they’d dug out. Eating, sleeping and spending every minute in a muddy hole being as quiet as possible with hardly any room to move. Once, Tom’s dad had whispered (when he was sure Tom’s mum wasn’t around to hear him say it), he’d woken up to see one of his army buddies taking a shit about a yard away from his head.

  No matter how good the guys in your unit were, you went stir crazy eventually, he said. People losing their tempers. Snapping at each other. Guys just straight up quitting and deciding they’d had enough.

  Tom was starting to feel like he could understand that. Okay, so he’d had sleepovers with his friends before a bunch of times, and once or twice they’d even turned into double sleepovers that lasted the whole weekend, but this was different. This time they weren’t just playing Gary’s PS2. This time they were out in the mud and the rain. This time they were with two people they hardly fucking knew, for Christ’s sake.

  And Gary had disappeared.

  Yes, don’t forget that one, whispered the voice. And who’s fault was that again, exactly?

  Tom shook the thought off and concentrated on the sound of his footfalls. How far had he gone now, anyway? The path had widened out slightly but apart from that it looked exactly the same. He stopped and listened for the sound of the river. Yes, it was closer now. It sounded as though it was just on the other side of the gorse bushes to his right.

  Tom started walking again. He picked up his pace and as he rounded a bend in the path he saw the bushes starting to thin. He could hear the gurgling, louder now, but the grass was so thick and high there was still no sign of the river. He carried on down the path as the bushes continued to thin, rounded another slight bend, and then stopped.

  Tim’s pack was on the path up ahead.

  It was about 10 feet in front of him, lying on its side just off the muddy track. Tom started to move towards it and then stopped himself. The feeling in the bottom of his stomach – that gnawing guilt and anxiety that had been there in the background ever since Gary left – had suddenly stirred at the sight of the pack. Tom hesitated, listening for any sound of Tim. There was nothing but the wind and the gurgling of the river. Why was his bag just lying abandoned on the path like that?

  Tom looked at the pack again and had a clear, nightmarish image of going to pick it up. He’d get right up close and reach out a hand, and the second he touched one of those straps he’d feel something reach out and touch him, something behind him that he wouldn’t even hear coming.

  It was ridiculous, of course, but he couldn’t shake the feeling.

  So what are you going to do, just stand here staring at it all day long?

  Tom took a breath, then took a slow step towards the pack. He paused again, listened, and took another step, then another. It was on the fourth step that he caught movement out of the corner of his eye.

  Tom tensed, feeling heat bloom through his cold skin. He bit his lip in an effort to stop himself crying out and turned his head slowly, preparing to turn and run.

  To his right there was a gap in the bushes, and beyond the gorse there was an open area of smaller bushes and thick grass. The ground sloped down there, and although Tom couldn’t see the river he could hear it clearly and knew it must be there in that dip.

  Tim was standing in the dip, facing away from Tom. He was bending down, and as Tom watched him he straightened up and looked at something in his hands that Tom couldn’t see.

  Tom let out a slow breath and felt the heat drain away from the surface of his skin. It was Tim, filling up his water bottle like he’d said he was going to do. That was all. That was why his pack was on the path in front of Tom – because he’d tossed it down when he’d found a suitable spot to access the river.

  And what exactly had Tom been so worried about anyway, for Christ’s sake?

  You’re losing it, that’s all, he thought to himself. You’re going mad out here.

  Tom walked off the path and though a gap between two gorse bushes, heading towards Tim. The boy had his back to him, still staring at the thing in his hands, and Tom was about to call his name when he saw a glint of light bounce off whatever Tim was holding. Tim twisted it one way and then the other and the glare of light winked off its surface like a signal. Tom squinted. The thing was too small to be a water bottle.

  He took another couple of steps forward across the grass. Now he could see down into the dip. Tim was standing on the bank of what looked more like a large stream than a river. As Tom watched he crouched down by the water again, lowering his hands to the surface.

  Tom took another step forward and a stick snapped beneath his boot.

  Tim jumped up and whirled round, almost losing his balance. His left hand shot inside his front coat pocket and he looked at Tom with wide eyes and a slightly open mouth. For a second they stared at each other, and then Tim let out a shaky laugh and shook his head.

  ‘Jesus Tom, you made me jump.’

  Tom looked back at him without saying anything. He noticed Tim’s hand was still inside his coat pocket. The boy’s greasy dark hair was plastered down over his pale forehead, and his light brown eyes stared out from twin hollows in his face. Tom thought he looked ill.

  ‘Yeah, you really jumped there,’ he said. He saw the way Tim was looking at him and forced himself to smile. ‘I guess we’re all a bit jumpy at the moment.’

  Tim nodded and smiled back. It looked incredibly for
ced to Tom, the type of smile teachers sometimes put on when they were trying not to scream at you.

  ‘What are you doing out here, anyway?’ Tom asked. He tried to keep the question light and casual.

  Tim stared back at him for a moment, then looked at the ground. ‘Just came down to fill up my bottle,’ he said. ‘I’m running low on water.’

  ‘Ah yeah, I remember you saying.’ Tom held up the tube of his CamelBak and waved it at Tim. ‘I’ll come and join you if that’s alright.’

  He walked steadily down the bank. He kept his eyes on the ground as he moved, being careful where he was putting his feet, and he could feel Tim’s eyes on him the whole time. When he reached the bank he looked up and smiled at Tim again. He smiled despite the gnawing in his stomach, which was suddenly so bad it was starting to make him feel sick. Tom went to take his pack off and then paused.

  ‘Hey, do you have a water purification tablet or two I could borrow?’ he asked. ‘Think I’m all out.’

  Tim stared at him for a couple of seconds and then nodded.

  ‘Yeah, I think I might have some back in my bag,’ he said. ‘It’s just up there on the path.’

  ‘Don’t you purify the water you get from the stream?’

  ‘Yeah, but I was just going to do it all in one go when I got back to camp.’

  ‘Ah, got you.’ Tom paused. ‘Are your bottles and your CamelBak all back by your bag too, then?’

  Tim stared at him, then gave a sharp nod.

  ‘I thought I saw you filling something else up when I was coming over,’ Tom said carefully. ‘You were bending down by the stream and you had something in your hands.’

  Tim continued to stare at Tom, his expression unreadable. After a few seconds, that glassy smile returned.

  ‘I was just splashing some water on my face,’ he said. ‘Trying to get some of the sweat and dirt off, you know?’

  Tom nodded. He stared out across the stream, listening to its gentle lapping and burbling. He could hear the wind, faintly, but it was muted down here. He looked back at Tim.