One early summer morning, five years after she had come to live with Frank, the two of them—as they frequently did—took the Land Rover and a hamper of sandwiches up to the tops, for a day of archeology and botanizing. Over a period of several months Frank had been surveying several minor Bronze Age sites between Nab Farm and Blakely Topping, just outside the southern boundary of the four-square-mile forbidden zone of the Early Warning System on Fylingdales Moor. Private land within the Park was thickly strewn with these ancient sites, mostly cairns and field systems. Many had still not been officially identified, and quite a few of the landowners were unaware of their existence. The Park Committee were only too happy to accept Frank’s skilled, and free, assistance with the mapping and recording of the less important sites, and Frank enjoyed the work. But the painstaking patience it required was more in his line than Jenny’s; she preferred to poke about in the bogland of Nab Farm and nearby May Moss.
On this day she left Frank setting up his equipment under a gray ceiling of cloud, and hiked off briskly through a spur of afforested land to see whether the marsh andromeda had bloomed. An hour and a half later she reappeared, stumbling and panting, to drag a startled Frank away from his work, back through the narrow bit of pine plantation to the stretch of bog she had been scanning for rare plants. Something—perhaps a dog, or a trail bike—had gouged a large messy hole in the peat; and inside the hole, just visible above dark water, what looked like a hand and part of an arm had been exposed. The arm appeared to be covered with long hair.
Frank stepped back hastily, yanking his Wellington boot out of the muck with a rude noise. “One of us had better go after the police.”
“No,” said Jenny, still panting. “We’ve got to dig him out. Never mind why, just help me do it.” Already she was pulling her anorak over her head and rolling up her sleeves.
There were no flies on Frank Flintoft. After one hard look at his wife he began unbuttoning his own jacket.
Apart from a few sheep scattered across the long slopes of moor there was no one to see them delving in the bog. In twenty minutes, using a pocketknife, a plastic trowel, and their bare hands, they had exposed a small body. The body had been laid on its back in a shallow grave, not shrouded or even clothed except in the long, shaggy hair, stained a dark brown by the peaty water, that covered him completely.
While they labored to clear the face, scooping up double handfuls of mucky peat and throwing them out of the hole, Jenny abruptly began to cry silently; and when the body lay wholly uncovered, and they had poured a canteen of water over it to wash it a little cleaner. Frank stood and gazed soberly, then put his arm around Jenny and said gently, “Elphi, I presume.”
Jenny took no notice of the tears that continued to streak her filthy face, except to wipe her nose on her sleeve. “No, it’s another hob, called Woof Howe.” And there at the graveside she began to tell Frank the story which had fallen upon her, entire and clear in every detail, as soon as their digging had revealed the corpse’s form. “I’m pretty sure he meant to bury Woof Howe in the bog over there, on the grounds of the EWS,” she finished. “The fence must have been too much for him—imagine trying to get in there carrying a body, all by yourself, no matter how strong you were.” The moor wind blew upon them, stirring the reeds around the grave; Jenny shivered and leaned against Frank.
“Or I suppose this could be one of the other hobs, that died later on—Elphi himself, possibly.”
“Un-uh, not Elphi,” said Jenny. She spoke in a dazed way, obviously somewhat in shock, and Frank gave her a concerned look. “I really thought the acid in the peat would decompose soft tissue fast—that’s what I told him, I’d actually read it somewhere—but I hadn’t heard then about the bog people of Ireland and Denmark, that were preserved for thousands of years in peat bogs.”
“Ah. And so the result was just the opposite of what you intended.”
“It looks that way, doesn’t it.” She stared down at the dead face. “I’m glad and sorry both.”
“But mostly glad?”
“I guess so.”
“Well,” said Frank, “what shall we do about it then? Notify the police after all, or the Moors Centre?”
“No.” Jenny roused herself and stood on her own feet. “We’ll just bury him again, and try to make it look like this spot had never been touched.”
Frank started, but swallowed his objections. “Sure that’s what you want?”
Jenny stated flatly, “Elphi wouldn’t trust me to keep his secret. I’m going to prove he was wrong. We’ll just cover Woof Howe up again, and smooth out the mud, and leave him in peace.”
“It’s been over fifteen years, love,” Frank could not help protesting. “The other hobs could all be dead by now.”
“I know, but what if they’re not?”
Sighing, Frank gave in. “But we’ll take his picture first at least, all right? I’d quite like to have one.”
“Okay, I guess that can’t do any harm.” So, having wiped the mud off his hands as best he could, Frank snapped several pictures with Jenny’s camera, with its close-up lens for photographing wildflowers, before beginning to push the peat back into the hole containing the perfectly preserved body of Woof Howe Hob.
In a fortnight’s time the reeds had reestablished themselves upon the grave, in another month nobody could have said for certain just where the bog at May Moss had been disturbed. No one’s curiosity was aroused and no inquiries were made; and that would have been the end of the matter, except for this:
About the time the sedge was growing tall again above Woof Howe, Frank stood in the kitchen door and called to Jenny, “What in the name of sanity possessed you to try mucking out the chicken coop all on your own?” He sounded quite cross, for him.
Jenny came into the kitchen carrying a book. “Is this a clever way of shaming me into action? You know I’ve had the bloody chicken coop on my conscience for weeks, but if anybody’s been mucking it out it wasn’t me.”
“Come and see.” Frank led her through the gathering dusk, across the barnyard. There stood the coop, its floor scraped down to the wood and spread with clean straw. The hens clucked about contentedly in their yard. The manure-filled rubbish had been raked into a tidy heap for composting. Jenny stared flabbergasted.
“Do you actually mean to say,” said Frank, “that this isn’t your doing?”
“It ought to be, but it’s not.”
They walked slowly back toward the house, arms about each other, trying to puzzle it out.
“Maybe Billy Davies dropped by after school, thinking to earn a few pounds and surprise us,” Frank suggested. “I’ve paid him to muck out the pigs, and the barn, and he knows about composting . . . but it doesn’t seem his style somehow.”
“I guess it could have been John, or Peter,” Jenny said doubtfully. “Though why either of them would take it upon himself . . . and the only person I’ve actually spoken to about wanting to get around to the job is you. Did you mention it to anybody?”
The thought struck each of them at the same instant.
“Waaaaaaait a minute—” said Frank, and “Good God, you don’t think—” said Jenny; and both were speechless, staring at one another.
Frank found his voice first. “Now, if they’re not all dead—”
Jenny interrupted: “Frank! What if one of the sheep on the commons, that day at May Moss—wasn’t a sheep!”
His eyes opened wide. “Wasn’t a sheep? You mean—and followed us here somehow, found out who you were, and where we lived?”
“Is that possible? Could they do it? What if they could!”
“You said it wasn’t him in the grave, you were sure of it.”
“I still am. It wasn’t him.”
“Well then, who else would muck out a chicken coop without being asked, tell me that!”
By now they were laughing and clutching at each other, almost dancing. Abruptly Jenny broke free and ran up the kitchen steps. She snatched a stoneware jug down fro
m a shelf, filled it to the brim with cream from the crock in the fridge, and set the jug on the top step, careful not to spill a drop.
Further Reading
Anthologies
Faery! edited by Terri Windling.
Demons! edited by Jack Dann & Gardner Dozois.
Elsewhere, Vols. 1-3, edited by Terri Windling & Mark Arnold.
Imaginary Lands, edited by Robin McKinley.
Sorcerers! edited by Jack Dann & Gardner Dozois.
The Unknown, edited by D.R. Bensen.
Unknown, edited by Stanley Schmidt.
Short Stories
Anthony Boucher, “Snulbug,” Demons!
Jack Dann, Gardner Dozois, & Michael Swanwick, “Golden Apples of the Sun,” The Year’s Best Fantasy Stories: II.
Charles de Lint, “Uncle Dobbin’s Parrot Fair,” IAsfm, Nov. 1987.
Lester del Ray, “The Coppersmith,” Unknown.
Gary Jennings, “A Murkle for Jessie,” Best From F&SF 15th.
Henry Kuttner, “A Gnome There Was,” The Best of Kuttner.
R.A. Lamming, “The Ink Imp,” F&SF, May 1980.
Roger Robert Lovin, “The Cobbler,” F&SF, Dec. 1987.
Ian MacDonald, “King of Morning. Queen of Day.” IAsfm, April 1988.
R. Allison Rice, “The Loolies Are Here,” Orbit I.
William Sambrot, “Leprechaun,” Merrill’s Best SF 8th.
Bruce Sterling, “The Little Magic Shop,” IAsfm, Oct. 1987.
Theodore Sturgeon, “Yesterday Was Monday,” The Unknown.
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