Qinmeartha and the Girl-Child LoChi

by John Grant

  Every location in this nightmare place contained the same amount of pain.

  ~

  There were more stars in the sky than was possible.

  At least, that was Joanna's first thought when she looked up from the side of the tor at the velvet of the night. The Moon, close to the full, had set a couple of hours ago, and the last vestiges of its milky light were gone from the horizon. The tor itself was invisible, although she could feel its bulk near her. She and the two younger Gilmours had taken her bumped red Mini on the spur of the moment, after the pubs had closed, and driven out here onto the moor. Now they were in the middle of an area that seemed of infinite extent and totally devoid of people, except for the distant whisper of the traffic on the A38 and the occasional flash of headlights, somewhere far away, as a farmer headed for home. The darkness made the world featureless. Rather like my recurring dream, thought Joanna as she breathed deeply of the cold air – it was as if she were inhaling cold, pure starlight. Only there the sky is one single ceiling of fire, and here it's blackness spotted with ice crystals. How jealous my friends there would be if they could see me now.

  "They say there are ghosts out here," said Steve cheerfully at her side.

  "You can see why," Tony said. She'd borrowed an old fur coat from her mother – synthetic fur, of course – and the fluffy ruff around her neck made her look like an Elizabethan portrait. "I bet the tor is haunted. And there're those funny constructions near the road back towards Ashburton – rings hollowed out of stone, and little cones. I bet our prehistoric ancestors knew a thing or two about the ghosts around here and built those megaliths to propitiate them."

  "I bet our prehistoric ancestors are the ghosts around here," said Joanna, and the three of them laughed. She felt what Tony was feeling, though: as if millions of tiny eyes might be peering at them inquisitively from the crevices of the tor. Yet the sensation didn't repel her – rather the other way around, in fact: it was as if Ashburton were undetectably dying, so that it was preferable to be out here in the presence of the dead. Or something. She didn't want to dwell on it for too long. No – one other realization: there was a taint of something like malice around the village, but that was completely lacking around here. The ghosts of the tor weren't friendly, but on the other hand neither were they malevolent: their existence was too divorced from that of mere human beings, their mentalities too different, for them to bear their mundane counterparts either good or ill will.

  "Werewolves as well, I should think," said Steve. "And the Beast of Dartmoor."

  "I thought it was Exmoor that had the Beast," said Joanna.

  "Oh, I'm sure Dartmoor has one as well," breezed Steve. "In fact, I'm sure that Dartmoor says to Exmoor, `Huh! Anything you can do I can do better, because I'm bigger than you. You've got the Beast – well, I'll show you: I'm going to have hundreds of them.'"

  Joanna giggled at the thought of the squabble. "Hundreds of very small, perfectly formed Beasts?" she suggested.

  "No, tishwash, woman!" He patted her too roughly between the shoulder-blades. "We're not dealing with any little soft, cuddly, children's-tv-style monsters here. The Beasts of Dartmoor are bound to be enormous, ravening creatures, with their naked fangs dripping luminous goo in the moonlight – isn't that right, sis?"

  "If you say so, Steve," said Tony's voice from the darkness. She sounded bored of her brother.

  "They're like werewolves, only a lot viciouser and a lot less susceptible to reason. That's what I think. Can't you see them, Joanna? Can't you hear them?"

  He threw his head back and let out a long, vibrating howl. The sound vanished into the night, echoless.

  "Stop that," said Tony calmly. "You'll have the cops out here to see what's going on."

  "Piffle! There aren't any plodders within twenty miles of here!" He let out another yell, even louder than before.

  Joanna felt an edge of ice running up her spine. The ghosts of the tor might be real – in fact, she was perfectly willing to concede, now, that they were – but they didn't frighten her half as much as this overgrown youth imitating something much darker, something crueller, something born from the human imagination rather than from the timeless rocks.

  "Yes, do shut up, Steve," she said, hearing the uncertainty in her own voice. "It's ..."

  She couldn't bring herself to admit out loud that he was scaring her, but it must have been obvious at least to Tony that this was what she'd been trying to say.

  "Yes, put a fucking sock in it, Steve. We're out here to enjoy ourselves, not to watch you put on the fucking Gang Show."

  But: "Can't you imagine them, Joanna?" he whispered. She could feel the wind of his breath on her ear. "Can't you see them playing in the moonlight, dancing and fighting and spinning around each other, secure in the knowledge that no one can see them? Doesn't it make your blood sing to think of them doing that, Joanna?"

  "No."

  "Not even a little bit?"

  "No. It just reminds me that I'm cold."

  She felt him retreat from her. The night seemed to have grown even blacker, because now she could make out nothing at all of her two companions.

  "Think of them," said Tony – not Steve this time. "Think of them playing so free under the stars." Tony's voice had taken on extra sibilants.

  "Stop pissing about, you two." She should have left a light on in the Mini, but she hadn't wanted to spoil the starscape. Now she hadn't a clue where the car was. "Unless you want to have to find your own way home on foot."

  Steve's response – she was pretty sure it was Steve – was yet another of those long ululations. The noise seemed to be travelling away from her, as if he were sprinting across the rough surface of the moor. She could envisage him with his arms thrown out to either side and his head arched back, yelling madly at the sky like an animal.

  Like a werewolf.

  "Tony," she said, no longer trying to conceal the nervousness in her voice. "Tony, for God's sake can't you try to get your brother under control." She tried a good-sport laugh, but it didn't sound very convincing.

  Tony said nothing, but there was an answering howl from the direction in which Joanna had last seen the girl.

  "That's synthetic fur you're wearing," she bellowed. "Not the real stuff."

  There were answering howls on both sides. More than two of them, it seemed. She looked directly upwards at the stars, half-expecting to see strange silhouettes occulting them; but the sky was impassive.

  "This isn't funny any more!" she screamed. "Stop it! I thought you were my friends!"

  There were certainly more than two people raising their voices in that long, bestial chorus. Half the moor seemed to be alive with noise. And it wasn't just the howling. Sometimes she could hear heavy, ragged panting, like big dogs make when they've run themselves to exhaustion.

  The car must be down that way. I'm sure that's how we came up from the road. Just keep your senses together, lass, and you'll find your way out of here. No problem. Think of Dunkirk. Think of getting to the lavs at a rock festival. Think of how brave Aunt Jill would be, in these circumstances.

  She turned her ankle on a stone and let out a yip of pain as she went down. Her body hammered against the hard, cropped ground, and for a few seconds she was incapable of breathing. The wild cacophony of the werewolves – she was certain by now they were werewolves – continued unabated.

  She rolled over onto her back. Just a couple of minutes ago she'd been bathing in the cool disinterest of the stars; now she found it loathsome.

  "Stop it, you two!" she screamed. "For the love of God, just stop it!"

  Now she could hear their paws. On the rough grass of the moor itself, cropped short by ponies and sheep, the wolves' feet made a steady swishing noise, like intermittently running water. When they crossed the road, though, their claws skittered like gravel thrown onto a sloping roof. There seemed to be hundreds of the creatures milling around her.

  But she couldn't see anything.

  And they seemed
to be making no move to attack her.

  The agony from her ankle was subsiding quickly – she couldn't have hurt it badly. Keep collected, Joanna, she seemed to hear Aunt Jill's voice saying to her. Keep collected and you'll be able to find a way out of this. Pretend it's something you're more accustomed to – imagine it's an interview for a job you don't much like but have to get ... that your life depends on your getting it! Which was just about the case, thought Joanna dourly. But Aunt Jill's voice wasn't finished with her yet. Think! it urged. Use the evidence of your senses. Think, girl! Think!

  It was easy enough for Aunt Jill to say that: she was well and truly dead and out of it all. She wasn't lying on her back in the middle of Dartmoor with nothing visible but the stars overhead and just the sound of a million werewolves in her ears. And the beasts were coming closer to her now, as if earlier they'd been afraid of her human-ness but were now learning to conquer their shyness. She felt a hot gust of wind against her cheek, and smelt rotting meat.

  Oh, all right then: she'd think, just like Aunt Jill told her to. She'd use the evidence of her senses. Sight wasn't going to do her any good, but hearing ...

  The brittle sound the werewolves made as they slid on the hard tarmac of the road.

  The Mini was parked on the road.

  She rolled onto her belly and started to writhe forward, serpent-like.

  The pack knew what she was doing immediately. Interspersed among all the other noises there were now whimpers of doubt, as if none of them had known she could move. She tried snarling herself, just to give the creatures something to think about, but the sound came out thin and pathetic.

  She pulled herself up onto her hands and knees. Her handbag tangled with her arm, and she coughed with astonishment to discover she hadn't lost the thing somewhere back in the blackness. There were cigarettes in there – ye gods, but she could do with a cigarette right now.

  Silly idea.

  But there was a box of matches nestling alongside the Lambert & Butler's. And wolves were supposed to be terrified of fire – werewolves maybe likewise, although she was less certain of that.

  She scrabbled at the catch of the bag, bending one fingernail back, almost tearing it. Suddenly the clasp leapt open, spilling some of her stuff out onto the ground.

  She patted her free hand around on the grass, feeling for the matches. No, dammit – that was the little travel box she sometimes used for Tampax. Ah – there they were.

  One of the creatures came pounding past, very close to her. She kicked out at it, missed. Now that she had the matchbox in her hand she was beginning to feel more assured. She let out the most ferocious yell she could manage, and this time it was nothing like the forlorn little bleat she'd produced earlier.

  There was an answering chorus from the wolves, but she persuaded herself that she could detect further signs of uncertainty in their sounds.

  She fumbled the matchbox open – the tray was the right way up, for a wonder – and tugged one of the matches out. She ran her finger along the length of it, feeling for the smooth knob of the head.

  Gotcha.

  Letting a smile spread across her face, she deliberately ran the match-head hard along the abrasive strip.

  Nothing.

  She felt the match-head erupt beneath her fingertip.

  She heard the little explosion.

  She dropped the match as the flame seared her hand.

  But there was no light.

  ~

  She awoke to the sound of a doorbell, ringing insistently.

  She sat up in bed, instinctively gathering the bedclothes around her shoulders. What time was it? She must have had a few too many at the Blue Horse last night, because she couldn't remember putting on her pyjamas and getting into bed. Yet her head wasn't nagging her, the way it had too many mornings these past ten days or so.

  Whoever was at the door pressed the bell again, a long, long peal.

  "I'm coming," she said crossly. "Have a bit of patience, can't you?"

  She fell into her dressing-gown and made for the landing. As she passed her dressing-table she saw the time on the alarm clock there: 11:32 said the red numbers accusingly.

  She had slept in. She must have needed the rest, that was all she could think: Aunt Jill's death and then the funeral and the way Vic Gilmour had been so creepy the other night and then ...

  And then there'd been last night, out on the moor.

  The wolves.

  The werewolves.

  The matches that wouldn't light.

  She didn't know if she wanted to answer the door. If she was going to find Steve Gilmour standing there, his smug smile already in place ...

  On the other hand, it might not be Steve Gilmour, and she desperately needed some human company, someone whose words – whatever they were talking about – would wash away the memories of the terror she'd felt out on the moor when she'd realized that not even a burning flame would puncture the darkness.

  She pattered down the stairs in her bare feet, feeling the friendly roughness of the old carpet.

  It was Ronnie Gilmour.

  "Come in," Joanna said. "I'm in a mess, the flat's in a mess, you won't believe the ..."

  Ronnie grinned. "Heard you three had quite a night of it," she said. "Steve was all for coming across here himself to find out if you were all right, but I told him this wasn't any job for a mere man. Besides, I didn't think you'd thank him for seeing you with a hangover."

  "I don't have a hangover."

  "Well, you should, if half of what my pair have told me is true. Come on, let me in and I'll make you a cup of coffee."

  "Yes. I said yes. Do come in. Make yourself at home. I haven't moved things around since my aunt ... since Aunt Jill, you know ... so you shouldn't have any trouble finding things. I'll throw on some clothes and ..."

  "Are you sure you're all right? Tony said it was quite a crack you took on your skull. Maybe you should have Dr Grasmere take a look at it before you go bounding around like this."

  They were in the kitchen by now, Joanna poised to dash on upstairs to her room. Ronnie did indeed seem to know her way around, filling the kettle with one hand as she reached out with the other for the coffee jar. Joanna had a brief hallucination that it was Aunt Jill standing there, not this woman whom she hardly knew, but then everything returned to normal. Maybe she had taken a bump on the head after all. That was the trouble with concussion: it made you forget the fact that there must have been something that had concussed you.

  "I'll just be a moment," she said weakly. "I'll just throw on my jeans."

  "Take as long as you like." Ronnie was smiling at her, much as Aunt Jill would have done.

  "No, I'll be just a minute." It was abruptly very important to Joanna that Ronnie should realize this. "I really won't be more than a minute or two."

  Ronnie turned back to the kettle.

  In her bedroom, Joanna stripped out of her pyjamas, then realized she needed to go to the loo. Naked, she darted across the landing. On the way back, walking more casually, she chanced to glance downstairs, and saw Ronnie Gilmour on the lower landing, gazing emotionlessly up at her. She put on a smile and dashed back into her own room.

  These Gilmours are getting to be a bit much, she thought hotly as she struggled into her blue jeans. (If my bum weren't so big I wouldn't have so much trouble getting into my jeans. Tomorrow I start slimming. Definitely. Cross my heart.) The bloody woman comes charging in here as if she owned the place, then starts peeping-tomming at me. I've a good mind to ...

  Downstairs, she said: "Sorry about that. I forgot to put my dressing-gown on."

  "It's all right," said Ronnie easily, passing her a mugful of coffee. The mugs were Joanna's innovation since the funeral: she was collecting the naffest she could find. This one welcomed her to Paignton with a picture of a man with his willy sticking out of his y-fronts. "I shouldn't have been looking. But I was just worried about you, you see – we're all worried about you. All us Gilmours, you know."
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  "I'm not sure how much I do know you Gilmours," said Joanna slowly. She ought to ask Ronnie through to the drawing-room, but for some reason she didn't want to.

  "Well, of course, it's only been a few days, but I'd begun to hope that ..."

  "What did Steve and Tony say happened to me last night?" Joanna interrupted.

  "Can't you remember?"

  "No." Well, put it this way, I'm certainly not going to tell you what I remember. They're your children, after all.

  "The three of you went out for a drive on the moor after Jas chucked you out of the Blue Horse."

  "I remember that bit." Joanna took a sip of her coffee. It could have been Coke for all she knew.

  "And you parked out there by one of the tors, and Steve had a bottle of whisky with him."

  "And I don't remember that bit."

  Ronnie coughed. "Well, maybe it's better if you don't remember some of the next bit, either."

  "No. Go on. I want to know." She tapped the rim of her Paignton mug against the tips of her lower teeth. "I want to know everything."

  "Well, you all three got a bit ... well, tiddly, don't you know, and – well, perhaps Steve and Tony are a bit more used to drinking than you are, or maybe they'd had less back in the Blue Horse, but you suddenly were very ill."

  "Sick, you mean? I puked?" I didn't. If I had there'd still be some of that scummy saltiness in my mouth, no matter how hard I scrubbed my teeth later.

  "No, not exactly that – or, at least, I don't know about that. Do you really want me to go on?"

  "Every last bit of it."

  "Well, you started ... you know, making up to Steve, making up to him in a very sort of physical sort of way, if you understand my meaning. Don't get me wrong!" Ronnie Gilmour held up her palm to forestall any objection Joanna might make. "I don't make any moral judgements. You and Steve can get up to whatever you want to. But not, I don't think, in front of Tony."