“Too dark...” he muttered to
himself, forgetting the last time he’d experienced a night quite like this
one. “Damn it, walk in this? Not a chance, end up in the river...” The prospect of a warming pint of ale was
fading fast, as was his mood. The river continued its sluggish flow, making
barely a sound, oozing stubbornly around the brown plants that persevered in
its shallows; it was now impossible to see the water, ten feet away, and even
the edge of the river bank was obscured by the dark, so the man made the
decision not to move any more. He spread
his cloak out on the dead grass, sat upon it, and stretched his aching
legs. For a time he occupied himself by
remembering all of the songs that would be sung at the party, imagining the
dancing, drinking and flirting that he was now missing. He had been hoping to see Edith again
tonight; perhaps have a dance. He hadn’t
seen her for some months, but he was sure she would be game for some fun. The taste of the freshly brewed ales and
meads hung heavy in his mouth – what he’d give for a nice reassuring pint! The food, cooked by all the women in the
village, would have been excellent.
There would be pies, steaks of aged beef and fresh veal, and venison
taken from the woods over by Ewerby Fen. A roast pig would be crackling harshly
over a fire with onlookers, expectant for apple sauce and roast pork. But his mind began to wander. The heavy
darkness, empty as it seemed, made him feel very isolated. Up until this point his thoughts had been
fixed on the possibilities of the evening; he had not considered the night-time,
which had been creeping like the tide around him, cutting him off from
security. This tide was high now,
completely surrounding him. In response
his ears strained, heard nothing, and strained again. The silence was swelling as quickly as the
dark and he struggled to remember the last noise he’d heard. His own voice, muttering. Before this it had been a startled animal, he
remembered with some comfort. Probably a
rat or vole. But that had been some time
ago. His mood faded entirely as he considered
his position. He was safe enough where
he was – the weather was mild, he was well above the water level and the area
was deserted - but he felt uneasy. His heart made itself known, beating a
little faster than it ought. Looking
around, he looked for a visible point, something to latch onto. In the utter black, he felt a little drunk as
his vision had nothing to hold onto. A
whirl began behind his eyes and deep within his ears. There was nothing that could be seen, other
than the ground he lay on. So he focused
on that. Even so, the darkness began to
change into a glaring, thumping mass that surrounded him. His mind began turning
easily to childhood tales of demons who lived glumly in muddy water, swathed in
thick grey weed, waiting for someone to make a fatal mistake and slide
helplessly into their slimy clutches. He
thought of the tiny folk who carved homes from the rocks near the church and
harvested flowers and moss; folk who bewitched people with their music and
dance and stole them away in the deepest parts of the night, never to be heard
of again. Tales of iron-toothed beings
lurking in dusty barn-lofts and the soft keening of the washer-at-the-ford bubbled up from his past, like marsh-gas. An ancient story that he hadn’t been told for
thirty years, of the strange stones that littered an area around Ewerby church
and their fairy origins, lodged in his mind.
The story told of malicious boggarts that planted stones in the fields
in punishment for the farmers’ hold over the land. The description that his mother created for
the boggarts, in answer to his childish questions, was now stuck firmly in his
imagination, after all these years. They
were grey, hairless and ill-proportioned, with blank eyes and no teeth, and
twelve fingers that were long, sharp and brittle. They had populated every dark corner and
murky patch of forest in his youth.
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