Spooked

The blood moon hung low in the sky, dressing the moorland in a crimson cloak. The hiker, already regretting choosing the longer path, shrunk into the upturned collar of his coat and shivered. Muted howling could be heard in the distance and he wondered again whether the rumours of wild wolves on the moor were true.

“Mind playing tricks”, he muttered to himself as wisps of ground mist obscured his feet. 

“Superstitious nonsense…there is no beast! No beast! No slavering jaws in the night”

His leather boot sunk into the peaty earth and he felt a shiver of dread roll over him. Instantly stories of walkers straying off the beaten track into treacherous bogs sprung to mind. He himself had seen the discoloured bones of a horse revealed from a bog pit when the waters receded in the height of summer. He retreated rapidly back to firmer ground cursing, “Mustn’t lose the path, mustn’t lose the path.”

The hiker looked around, trying desperately to get his bearings in the changing alien landscape, his breathing harsh in his ears. Moonlight glinted off the lake to his left. At the sight of it, a sob of relief escaped his lips. He knew where he was! He was nearly home. Home. A comforting vision of a small stone cottage, warmth spilling from the windows filled his mind’s eye. Eagerly he started forward at apace, heartened in his efforts.

The light grew steadily poorer, thick clouds blanketed the eerie glow from the moon. Still, the beleaguered hiker laboured on, the ground growing boggy around his feet, but the rolling mist covered everything and his speed kept him from sinking too deeply to notice.

Out of the corner of his eye, the hiker thought that he had seen movement, stunted, wind-twisted trees, appeared as ghostly apparitions looming out of the dark. Skeletal fingers snatched at his clothing.    “I am just seeing things,” he thought. He paused turning. There!  A flicker of something? He turned again. There! The glint of an eye?  There! Muffled breathing? 

Panic set in, he had got turned around and could no longer be certain of where the lake was, or where he was in relation to the lake. Again he thought he heard something, “I will not end up a murder story in some cheap penny dreadful” he muttered.

He staggered, floundering on the uneven ground, tufts of wiry grass tripping him up, noxious gases escaped from the boggy terrain, leaving him lightheaded. Suddenly, without warning, he slipped and plunged almost gracefully into a dark brackish pool. The icy cold water soaked into his heavy woollen coat weighing him down. He struggled frantically trying to gain his footing, trying to grasp anything that he could hold onto to drag his sodden body out of the morass. But every movement simply sealed his fate all the faster, until the water closed silently over his head leaving nothing but a very small trail of bubbles.

Jo Bruce BA(Hons) MCLIP Librarian Oriel High School