The Moor - Laurie R. King [30]
Had I moved, or had he? And what could he be listening to? I strained for a sound, any sound, even the unearthly banshee noises of the night before, but all I heard was the vague and omnipresent trickling of water, and then the sound of footsteps: retreating footsteps.
"Where are you going, Holmes?" I demanded.
"Just up the rise here to listen. Don't lose the knapsack."
I felt around for the pack, which indeed was no longer weighting down my boot, and when I found it I made haste to put it on.
I waited, fog-blind and abandoned, and amused myself by inventing spectres. Baring-Gould's church grims were not too likely out here, perhaps, given that we were far from either Lydford or the "modern," i.e., thirteenth-century alternative churchyard at Widdecombe, but bahr-ghests seemed just the sort of creatures one might expect to occupy the shifting monochrome on all sides. What of the long-legged Old Stripe? And what was the other spectre Baring-Gould had mentioned? A jacky-twoad? Perhaps there would not be one of those—but if I were to hear anything remotely resembling the footsteps of a gigantic hound, I knew that I should run away shrieking, easy prey for the tricks of the pixies. Fog invariably makes a rich spawning-bed for wraiths and threats and the malevolent eyes of watching foes, but that Dartmoor fog, combined as it was with the very real dangers of mire and boulder and sharp-sided stream, was one of the most fertile sources of spooks and mind-goblins that I have known.
I could not have stood in my position for more than six or seven minutes, but that was quite enough for the internal quaking to reach a point far beyond that which the cold, wet air would explain. Theoretically, I suppose, we could have simply sat and outwaited the fog; even on Dartmoor it must lift sometime. I knew, however, that it would not be possible to remain there for any length of time without being scarred by the experience, because I had no doubt now that Dartmoor was alive, as Baring-Gould and later Holmes himself had intimated, alive and aware and quite able to look after itself against possible invaders.
It was very hard work to keep quiet when I heard the approaching slop of Holmes' boots, but I forced myself to do so. However, I could not entirely control my voice when I answered his call of "Russell?"
"Here, Holmes," I quavered.
"I believe we will find a farmhouse just over the next hill. I can hear a cow and some chickens."
"I still can't see, Holmes."
"Nor can I, Russell. Still, I suppose we'll manage. Give me your hand."
Willingly, I did so, and followed him through the unseen landscape.
We might have made faster time on our hands and knees, but our pride and the sodden state of the ground kept us from it. The cold breath of the moor pressed in on us like the tool of a deliberate and watchful living thing, trapping us, trying us, seeing if it could force us to break and run madly to our destruction. Had I not possessed Holmes' hand, the god Pan might have taken me, leading me astray to the trickling sound of his pipe.
Little more than a mile it was, but for almost an hour we stumbled through the gloom, visited occasionally by the sharp terror of a looming figure, which would turn out to be a standing stone, grey and lugubrious, or a fence post, indistinguishable from the monument. The final of these came after we had found a wall and were patting our way separately and at a greater speed. Abruptly out of the murk there emerged the stark outline of a soul in torment: a thin figure as tall as a man, stubby arms outstretched, head thrown back in a frozen shriek to the heavens. My heart gave a great thud inside my chest, and settled down to a fast thumping only when I realized that I was looking at a moorland cross. Holmes could hardly have missed my gasp, but he said nothing, only the welcome words a moment later, "I believe this is the gate to the farmyard."
Such proved to be the case, when we approached a tiny, heavily lichened