The Beast of Soggy Moor

by Martin Howard

  Shaun blinked in surprise, then followed. He hadn’t expected Bitzer to be so fearless, but the sheepdog was running ahead, snuffling and woofing with excitement as the trail got stronger. There was a yelp, then a growling, slobbering sound.

  Bitzer had found something!

  Puffing with effort, Shaun raced through the mist until he caught up. He emerged from the fog to find that Bitzer had wrestled his prey to the ground and was shaking it roughly, drops of slobber flying through the air as he sank his teeth into it.

  Shaun bleated. What had Bitzer found? Was it the beast?

  Bitzer looked up happily. Between his teeth was a large bone. His eyes darted left and right. Was the beast near? It couldn’t have his bone. He would defend it with his life.

  Shaun tapped a hoof and bleated. Why, he wondered, would there be a bone out on the moor unless . . . unless . . . it was one of the beast’s victims!

  Shaun watched as understanding dawned in Bitzer’s eyes. The bone dropped from his mouth. Horrified, he spat and spluttered, wiping his tongue with both paws.

  Shaun shook his head and crept into the gloom again. Bitzer traipsed after his friend and walked straight into him.

  Shaun was as still as a statue, staring.

  There was something in the darkness ahead: a long shape with two spiky looking claws. Or were they teeth? A strange muttering drifted through the fog:

  The beast! And it was calling for its mate.

  Bitzer whimpered and glanced toward the safety of his doghouse. Shaun nudged him. This might be their only chance to surprise the beast. He was going to attack!

  No! Bitzer’s ears stood up in fright. Shaun would be snapped up in a single bite!

  Too late.

  Shaun launched himself at the strange shape, clinging on for dear life as the beast gave a bloodcurdling screech and tried to shake him off.

  Bitzer heard a loud thump!, then Shaun bleating in shock.

  And again: THUMP!

  With one last glance over his shoulder at his doghouse, Bitzer screwed his courage. Shaun was in trouble. Bitzer bounded to the rescue, only to skid to a halt.

  Shaun hadn’t found a beast at all. He had found an old lady with pink hair, sitting on a bench. Upset at being attacked by a sheep, she had Shaun over her knees and was thumping his tail with her handbag. Bitzer snickered, wincing as the bag landed on Shaun’s bottom with another hefty whack.

  “Errroffoutofit,” the old lady mumbled, glaring as Shaun finally managed to struggle off her lap and totter away toward Bitzer.

  Ten minutes later Bitzer was still giggling. Shaun muttered to himself, annoyed. Suddenly, he stopped walking.

  Another dark figure loomed out of the fog. Shaun poked Bitzer. It was his turn to tackle the beast. Bitzer’s giggles trailed off. Whatever the creature was, it was so big that its head was lost in the mist above. Shaun poked him again. What was he waiting for?

  Bitzer squeezed his eyes closed, wondering what it would be like to be gobbled up. He crept nervously toward the dark shape. Perhaps if he was quiet whatever it was wouldn’t notice him.

  Snorting behind his hoof, Shaun patted him on the shoulder. Bitzer cried out and opened his eyes. He had caught a tree. A poster had been pinned to the trunk.

  Shaun shook his head sadly. The beast had claimed another victim. This time a poor little kitty.

  Shaun gulped. He nodded toward the barn. Perhaps they ought to think about making their way back?

  Bitzer tilted his head to one side, as if he was thinking about it, and then nodded slowly with a quiet woof. Obviously, they both wanted to find the beast, but it was difficult to see anything in this terrible fog.

  Then, trying not to look as though they were hurrying, the two of them started walking back toward the farm. Just a nice, quiet evening stroll.

  OW-OW-OW-OW-oooooooooo!

  Bitzer tore past Shaun, running for his life.

  A second after that, Shaun overtook Bitzer, bleating loudly as they passed the old lady again. The beast was coming! She had to save herself!

  Tutting under her breath, she carried on with her knitting.

  The Flock had gathered. In the middle of the barn, several objects had been covered in a white sheet and an old wooden box was set before them. Shaun rapped the box with a stick.

  None of the Flock took any notice. Hazel was too busy outlining a plan for catching the beast. The sheep should dig a deep hole, cover it with leaves and put a pizza in the middle.

  Bleating loudly, the Twins suggested moving somewhere the beast would never find them, like a tropical island paradise. They were already wearing their snorkels and fins.

  Nuts’s plan was even simpler. If the Flock made him some armor from old pots and pans and put a saddle on one of the pigs, he would ride into battle against the beast.

  Shaun tapped the stick again and bleated loudly. The Flock needed to listen! As long as the beast was out there, no one was safe.

  Finally, silence fell.

  With a flourish, Shaun pulled away the sheet to reveal a diagram that spread across three blackboards.

  Ta-da!

  The Flock held its breath. What was it? Some sort of carnival ride?

  Shaun bleated. No, it was a trap. A trap from which the beast would never escape. A trap that would save the animals of Mossy Bottom Farm!

  Tap, tap, tap, tap. The tip of Shaun’s stick moved across the diagram. The beast would enter here, setting off this gizmo, which would move that widget and make the thingy whirl around, and so on and so forth.

  The Flock gasped. All eyes were on Shaun. They would have to work hard, he bleated as he marched up and down in front of them with his hooves behind his back. There was a lot to do. The beast would be on the prowl again that very night, hunting for another victim. The trap would have to be built today. Luckily, the Farmer would be out at Mossy Bottom Market.

  Shaun looked around at the wide-eyed sheep. Any questions?

  All the sheep shook their heads. Except Hazel. She raised a hoof, bleating nervously. Shaun’s trap looked a teeny-weeny bit on the complicated side. Couldn’t they just dig a hole and cover it with leaves and put a pizza in it?

  Shaun tapped a board again. This beast wouldn’t be fooled by a hole in the ground covered with leaves, but it would be be fooled by a trap as complicated as this.

  A familiar sound started in the distance. It was the rattle and clank of the tractor. The Farmer was leaving. It was time to get started!

  Disappointed, the Twins took off their snorkels.

  Confused chickens and puzzled pigs looked on as the Flock formed a chain of sheep. What were they up to now? The Flock was making a mechanical sheep robot with laser eyes to hunt the beast, clucked the chickens. The pigs squealed mockingly. The sheep were obviously creating a beast-detecting tank. Why else would they need a wind-up record player?

  Shaun ignored them. He was bleating directions at the sheep like a sergeant major. One by one, bits of old junk passed along the chain: a moldy slipper, a bicycle wheel, a record player, ropes and knotted string, an old scythe, a deflated football . . . on and on it went.

  Dripping with sweat, sheep carried the stuff out onto the moor, past the place where Shaun and Bitzer had found the bone — they gave the old lady on the bench a wide berth — until they came to the tree. After looking at the distant horizon of Soggy Moor, Shaun had decided it was the perfect place for a trap.

  As the pile of junk grew, Bitzer ticked each item off his clipboard, occasionally poking one of the sheep and pointing back to the dump. The trap did not need a singing fish, a dead plant, or a rat, no matter how happy the rat, named Barnaby, was to help.

  A startled bleat made Shaun look up.

  Before work could start again, Shirley had to be rescued from the runaway shopping cart, Timmy untangled from his kite string, and Nuts pushed off the record player, where he was crying “Wheee” and going around and around and around until he was dizzy.

  Eventually, however, the trap began to
take shape. Sheep in welding helmets and heavy gloves leaned over the shopping cart, sparks flying. When they had finished, they lifted their masks, grinning and high-fiving. The first part of the trap was ready.

  Bitzer put another tick on his clipboard and moved on to where Shirley was gluing cracked mugs to a bicycle wheel. Another tick.

  With spectacles perched on the ends of their noses, the Twins chewed pencils and watched a tennis ball roll down a length of rusty drainpipe. One shook his head. It was wrong, all wrong. After replacing the tennis ball with a turnip, they tried again. Success! Bitzer added yet another tick, and moved on. Behind him, sheep handed a rope to the chickens and told them to heave.

  Meanwhile, Shaun erased a set of complicated equations and started again. If a mug divided by a rubber duck equaled x, and a length of hairy string was y, then, taking into account the weight of a small fish, z must be an old rain boot. A pig snatched the chalk out of his hand and corrected the board: x over y equaled a broken umbrella. Tutting, Shaun crossed out the pig’s math and added a spoon.

  The pig gasped. Shaun punched the air. Not only would the trap work, but he had proved that the whole universe was held together with hairy string.

  The chickens began clucking in panic. Bitzer ducked as the shopping cart swung past at head height.

  He peered over Shaun’s shoulder, nodded and ticked his clipboard. He didn’t understand the math, but it looked impressive. It was definitely worth a tick.

  When the last string had been tied and the record player wound up, Shaun stood back to admire the Flock’s handiwork. Chickens and pigs and even the ducks gave a round of applause. One chicken raised a wing, clucking. It was really, really nice. But what was it?

  Shaun grinned and bleated. It was a trap. And it was perfect!

  All it needed was bait.

  Nuts stuck his arm in the air, hopping from one foot to the other in excitement and bleating loudly. He really, really wanted to be the bait.

  Shaun ignored him, looking around the Flock for a sheep who looked tastier and less . . . well . . . peculiar. His gaze settled on Shirley. She was plump and juicy, just the sort of sheep to tempt the beast into the trap.

  As if she could read Shaun’s mind, Shirley scowled back fiercely. There was NO WAY she was going in the trap!

  Behind her, Nuts jumped up and down.

  Shaun’s gaze moved on to young and tender Timmy. Before he could open his mouth, his vision was filled with the angry face of Timmy’s Mum. Don’t even think about it. With one hoof, she prodded Shaun in the chest. It was his trap, why didn’t he sit in it and wait for the beast?

  Shaun sighed. His eyes scanned back and forth across the Flock and finally rested on Nuts. All right, he agreed. Nuts could be the bait.

  Nuts spun around the moor in joy. He was going to sit out in the cold all night, waiting for a ravenous monster to pounce on him. It was thrilling!

  By now, the sun was slipping down toward the horizon. Soon the beast would be on the prowl, and the Farmer would be back from the market.

  With nervous glances toward the farmhouse, Bitzer flapped his paws and herded the sheep back to the barn while Shaun showed Nuts to his place. He must sit in the middle of an empty kiddie pool that had been put in exactly the right spot. . . .

  Nuts’s eyes crossed with the effort of thinking. He bleated slowly. What if the trap didn’t work properly? What if he needed to escape?

  Shaun gave him a pat on the back, and waved a hoof at the tangle of ropes and strings and kites and old drainpipes and rubber ducks and a shopping cart. What could possibly go wrong?

  “Baaa,” said Nuts, nervously looking around. The beast was late.

  Out on the moor, something moved.

  Back in the barn, the Flock gathered around Shaun and Bitzer. Everyone was jittery. Bitzer was trying to look cool, which was difficult when he kept covering his eyes at the slightest noise. Hazel’s teeth chattered, and Shirley was biting her hooves, although Shaun thought she might just be hungry. All they could do now was wait.

  Outside, an owl hooted.

  The Flock ran to the door. It opened with a creak, just enough for the Flock and Bitzer to peer out into the night. Shaun’s eyes strained to see, but the trap was too far away. He could just about hear Nuts’s anxious bleat.

  YES! The crazy contraption had wound the record player up. Shaun could hear the scratchy sound of a song called “You Are My Sunshine” in the distance. Any moment now the breeze would catch Timmy’s kite. . . .

  “Woof!” Bitzer pointed in excitement as he caught a glimpse of a silhouette. The Farmer’s old underpants soared above the tree, dragging the old scythe behind them. It cut through a string that was holding —

  Sheep high-fived when they heard the distant plop of a rubber duck, setting off a mechanism that involved a deck chair, a broken umbrella, and a plastic model of the Eiffel Tower, which knocked out a peg that held the upside-down shopping cart in place.

  Cheers filled the barn as the cart dropped down, trapping whatever was beneath it.

  THE BEAST HAD BEEN CAUGHT!

  Sheep hooked front legs, swinging each other in a jig. No more beast! At last, they were safe. Excited noises could be heard across the farm. Roosters crowed, pigs squealed, ducks quacked, and the Farmer stuck his head out of a window, bellowing “Hurrupoorot!”

  Shaun put a hoof to his lips, tipping his head and flapping his other hoof for quiet. He wanted to listen.

  To what?

  The Flock fell silent, leaning toward him. What could Shaun hear?

  Shivering, Shaun stared into the night. That was the problem.

  He couldn’t hear anything: No growls of a beast trapped beneath an upside-down shopping cart and — even worse — no Nuts.

  Outside, the moor was strangely, eerily silent.

  A procession of anxious animals wound through the gap in the wall and across the moor. Chickens clucked and wiped tears from their beaks. Timmy’s Mum dabbed at her eyes with a hankie. Bitzer pulled his hat off. Shaun felt a lump rising in his throat as he remembered Nuts’s eager face. He should have listened to Timmy’s Mum. He should’ve faced the beast, not Nuts.

  Mist curled around the shopping cart in the faint light of dawn. One of its wheels squeaked as it spun slowly in the breeze.

  Shaun gulped. There was no sign of Nuts. By some freak accident, he must have been caught in the trap with the beast. Shaun tried not to think of the poor sheep’s last moments: the flashing claws and fangs gleaming white in the moonlight as the beast —

  With a yelp, Shaun almost jumped out of his wool. A face was pressed against the bars of the shopping trolley: an evil, hissing, spitting face. The beast was still in the trap — and so was Nuts!

  They had to get Nuts out of there before . . . Shaun blinked, surprised.

  The beast was much, much smaller than he had expected, and Nuts wasn’t screaming in terror. He was grinning and waving. He was alive! And he had made . . . a friend!

  Nuts smothered the little beast in sloppy kisses. The beast scratched his face with sharp claws as it yowled and fought to get away.

  Shaun gave Bitzer a questioning look. He couldn’t help noticing that the beast wasn’t particularly beastly. There was only one head. Its claws, while sharp, weren’t as long as pickaxes.

  In fact, the beast looked exactly like Mr. Mittens, the missing kitty. Shaun pointed to the poster that was nailed to the tree.

  Bitzer shook his head firmly. He had seen the actual shadow of the actual beast. He made a shape with his paws. It had been huge!

  Hmm. . . . Shaun crossed his arms and looked doubtful.

  Hazel gave an urgent bleat: Look out!

  The breeze had blown the last shreds of mist away, and the rising sun cast the shadow of a huge creature across the ground. As one, the Flock gasped as the figure opened its cruel beak and . . . chirped!

  With a bleat, Shaun pointed to the tree. No, this wasn’t the beast either, it was just a small robin, its shadow stret
ched out by the angle of the sun.

  Shaun bleated thoughtfully. Had Bitzer really seen a beast with five heads? Or just the shadow of a cat stretched out by the moon?

  Bitzer shuffled his feet and gave Shaun an ashamed grin. He might have exaggerated just a teeny-weeny bit about the number of heads, but — but —

  Arrrooo-ooow! Ow-ow-ow-ooooooooo!

  The Flock cowered. Bitzer held up a paw. There! The beast was real.

  Shaun scratched his head. In bright daylight, the beast’s wail sounded familiar. Exactly like a sound he’d heard just a few days ago when the Farmer had his wheelbarrow accident. Sure enough, the Farmer could be seen, through the kitchen window, hopping around and clutching his toe as if he had just stubbed it. Shaun thought about the Farmer’s other recent mishaps. . . .

  Shaun blinked as he remembered the bandage around the Farmer’s nose yesterday. The Farmer was clumsy. Might he have cut himself while trimming his nose hairs the night Bitzer had seen the beast’s shadow? Had the second howl been the Farmer jumping into a bath without testing how hot the water was again?

  Hmm. With another suspicious glance at Bitzer, Shaun plucked the clipboard out of his paws. He riffled through the pages. After finding the one he wanted, he counted the chickens. As he suspected! There were none missing. Bitzer had miscounted.

  The bone they had found must have been one of Bitzer’s, the wailing was just the clumsy Farmer, and the beast . . . well, the beast was the shadow of a small but very nasty cat that needed to be returned to its owner.