High Moor (25 page)

30th October 2008. A1 Motorway. North East England. 11.36.

The rain started to fall as John passed the Scotch Corner services. A thin damp mist condensed on the windscreen and fogged the interior of the car. He flicked the windscreen wipers on and turned the heater up to full. The warmth cleared the windows but did nothing to lift the dark mood of the car’s occupant. He turned the radio on and listened to the news broadcast. More nonsense about someone resigning over a radio practical joke that went too far. He snorted and hit the scan button, skipping past classical music and people with stuffy voices talking about something irrelevant. He eventually settled for a classic rock station and relaxed back into his seat.

Flashing amber beacons lined the side of the road and stretched off into the distance where the drizzle imbued the lights with a pulsating orange corona. A lorry, three cars ahead, honked its horn in frustration. The traffic moved forward fifty feet and then stopped again. John drummed his fingers on the steering wheel in time to the music and played things over in his mind.

Someone had sent him a message. The appearance of a werewolf in High Moor, and the encounter with Malcolm Harrison, couldn’t be a coincidence. It could be a trap. But if it was a trap to flush him out of hiding, why now, after all these years?

More to the point, why the hell am I walking straight into it?

He knew the reasons. If this was just a coincidence, then High Moor had a werewolf. Unless Steven was still around, he was the only one who knew about it. The only one who could do anything about it. Then there was Michael.

Michael’s body was stolen from the hospital morgue the day after he died. Steven and his Father assumed it was the Pack removing evidence, but John always hoped that his friend had somehow survived. If it was Michael sending him a message, then he had to go back. Michael would have done the same for him.

The traffic started to move once more, and after a few miles, John cleared the road works. The landscape changed, becoming familiar yet strange. Wind turbines dotted the horizon, and the landscape of his childhood was eaten away by the grey and orange cancer of new housing estates until only sporadic patches of green were visible on the distant hills.

After John left the motorway, the changes became more pronounced. Dual carriageway bypasses replaced old, barely remembered roads. Houses and shops on the outskirts of town had been torn down, only to be replaced with orange brick-and-glass monstrosities that imposed themselves on their surroundings and matched neither the older buildings, or one another. He passed the school, rebuilt after the fire in 1986. Where once, the school fields were surrounded by low wooden fences, they were now encased in a ring of seven-foot-tall steel railings with vicious spikes at the top and a yellow notice stating “Trespassers will be prosecuted.” The place was more like a prison than a school.

The market place in the centre of the town was gone. In its place was an ornate paved square with a bandstand in its centre. Its false grandeur contrasted against the faded squalor of the shopping precinct beyond, with its abandoned, graffiti-daubed shops and litter-filled walkways. Those shops still open were either charity shops or discount chain stores with names like “Poundsaver”. Most of the town now shopped in the large supermarket, built on the site of the old fire station.

Only a few establishments that John remembered from his youth remained. An old hardware store with a hand-drawn sign that had been faded when his father was a boy. A bakery where his mother once worked. A photographer’s studio with paint peeling from the doors and window frame, and a thirty-year-old plastic sign bleached from exposure to the elements.

An old lady, wrapped up in a knee length overcoat and headscarf, pushed a tartan shopping trolley along the uneven concrete pavement. Her face was a creased mask of regret and cynicism, and she hunched her shoulders as she walked in an attempt to stave off the rain and biting cold.

An overweight man in his early twenties, wearing jeans, a Newcastle United football shirt and little else, despite the rain, emerged from a bakery with a large pasty in one hand. He shot John a glassy stare and shoved the greasy food into his mouth. Chunks of filling fell to the floor and splattered across his trainers. The man seemed not to notice.

A gang of youths in hooded tops stood in the doorway of an empty shop, casting nervous glances along the street. A young child, no more than ten years old, cycled past on a BMX and, as he passed the group, he handed them a clear plastic bag containing white powder, then pedalled away as fast as he could. The gang moved out of the doorway and crept away, around to the back of the shopping precinct and out of sight.

John turned off the high street, towards the moor itself, only to find that the once-open expanse was gone. Now, a new housing estate covered the entire area. Even the old mine had been demolished and new properties erected on the site. John wondered if that had been such a good idea.

He drove past the moor and out of the town until the urban sprawl thinned and the tight-packed houses were replaced by open fields and small patches of woodland. John felt butterflies in his stomach. He hadn’t been back to the house since the day after his seventeenth birthday, the day after he killed his parents.

A sudden wave of regret, loss, and guilt surged in his chest, and he pulled the car into a lay-by until the tears subsided and he was able to drive again.

He missed the turning and had to backtrack once he realised he'd gone too far. Thick weeds choked the track. The only indication that it existed at all would have been the overgrown hedges that flanked each side, if not for the fresh tire tracks in the mud and the flattened vegetation.

John reversed the car back onto the main highway and drove another half a mile before he stopped and parked on the side of the empty road. He got out of the car and put on a pair of thin leather gloves. He walked around to the rear of the vehicle, opened the boot, and after checking that he was alone, produced a thin metal torch and a 9mm pistol from one of the bags. He checked the ammunition, chambered a round, and tucked the weapon into the waistband of his jeans. Then, he crossed the road and set off across the fields toward his old home.

He kept close to the hedges and made slow progress, pausing often to listen for any sounds that were out of place, until the woods that marked the boundary of the property came into view. He removed the pistol from his jeans and crouched behind an overgrown hawthorn bush. The air was filled with the sickly sweet scent of rotting leaves. The steady patter of the rain and the distant hum of traffic were the only sounds that he could distinguish. There was no birdsong, only a brooding silence. John took a couple of deep breaths in an attempt to bring his racing heart under control, and then crept through the trees, around to the rear of the house.

The years of neglect had taken their toll. Grasping brambles had overgrown the garden. A mountain ash had sprouted in the centre of what was once a neatly maintained lawn. His mother’s vegetable beds were all but invisible beneath the encroaching weeds. Most of the glass in the greenhouse was gone, and ivy wrapped itself around the aluminium frame until it resembled the green skeleton of a building. The house was worse. Slates were missing from the roof and the chipboard sheets covering the doors and windows had swollen with exposure to the elements until they burst free from the rusted nails that had held them in place.

The grass was flattened in a single track around the house. Someone had been here in the recent past. One person, judging by the tracks. John stayed low and listened for any telltale noises. Any indication that he was not alone, but again, heard nothing out of the ordinary. He picked his way through the overgrown garden and followed the path around to the side of the house. When he reached the edge of the building, he stopped and checked his weapon before he craned his head around the corner.

The front of the property was in no better condition than the rear. A sea of weeds had buried the gravel driveway. A pair of tire tracks led from the lane into the middle of the yard, and then the vehicle had turned around and gone back the way it had come. Two cigarette ends lay next to the tracks. Whoever had been here was gone, for now at least. John put the pistol back into his pocket and walked up to the front door of his childhood home.

He took out his key fob and selected the tarnished brass key to the front door, still on his key ring after so many years, a constant reminder of where he'd come from and what he'd done. The front door had expanded in its frame and required several strong tugs before it creaked open for the first time in a decade and a half.

It took a moment for John’s eyes to adjust to the gloom. The only light within came from the open door and shards of light entering through gaps in the window boards. Fifteen years of dust swirled in the air currents and danced in the light before winking out of existence as it entered the shadows. A small pile of letters and old newspapers were scattered across the faded carpet. John picked them up and checked the dates on the postmarks. None were more recent than 1995. He placed them on a table and headed into the living room.

The scents of rot and mildew, mingled with the faint ammonia tang of rodent urine, filled the damp air. The wallpaper was peeled back from the bare plaster and covered in black mould spots. The carpet squished underfoot. He entered the hallway that connected the rooms of the ground floor. The door to the kitchen was open, and he could see piles of washed dishes that had waited to be dried and put away for over a decade. A recipe book lay open on the worktop, the words buried beneath a layer of dust. His father’s jacket was draped over a chair next to the kitchen table. John remembered his father's cursing when they got out of the car on that cold February day, and he realised that he'd forgotten it.

Long repressed memories flooded back. His mother sitting with him at the kitchen table, trying her best to teach him mathematics and science from old textbooks. His father coming in from the garden with dirty feet and the subsequent tongue lashing that he got.

John left the kitchen and walked to the basement door. He paused, his hand hovering above the doorknob. Annoyed at his hesitation, he grasped the handle and turned it. The stairs descended into pitch darkness. The air was heavy with a musky animal odour, even after so many years. There was no sign of rodent infestation, however. Rats and mice knew that this place had been the lair of a terrible predator and had stayed well away.

He descended the wooden staircase, testing each board before putting his weight on it. The door to his old cell lay open. Cleaning materials: a mop and plastic bucket, along with several bottles of bleach, stood against the wall. John bit back the tears, remembering his father’s face at the window for each and every change, telling him to fight it, to keep control. The last thing John ever remembered when he turned was the disappointment in his father’s eyes as the beast broke through and the change began.

He checked the door and was glad to see that it still functioned. He would need this place in a few weeks, unless he could finish his business here before the next full moon. Satisfied, he turned around and climbed the staircase.

He emerged from the dark, into the hallway, and turned to leave when a shape stepped from the shadows and blocked the open front door.

“You should really lock that door, John. Anyone could walk in.”

“Yeah, it looks like they just did. Is that a gun in your pocket, Steven, or are you just glad to see me?”

Steven took a step forward and shrugged. He reached into his pocket and produced a 9mm pistol that was the twin of the one John carried. He put it on the table, next to the pile of post. “I'm glad to see you. What the fuck do you think? So, John, how have you been? It’s been what? Fifteen years? You don’t call, you don’t write. I was beginning to think that you’d forgotten about me.”

“You know how it is. Time gets away from you. It’s good to see you, Steven. You’re looking well.”

The older man laughed. “That’s bollocks, but thanks anyway. I know I look like crap. Cancer will do that.”

“Is it bad?”

“Only if you consider terminal to be bad."

John nodded. “How long do you have?”

“No idea. Six months to a year, maybe. Two at most. Truth be told, I just don’t think about it.” He removed a pack of cigarettes from his coat and lit one, then broke into a coughing fit.

“Should you be smoking those, considering?”

“Stopping won’t make much difference at this point, and I don’t want to spend my last days pissed off because I’m craving a cigarette. Better to die happy. Anyway, what about you, John? Where the hell did you go?”

“I left straight after the funeral. The police weren’t interested in me as a suspect, and I couldn’t stand to be around here anymore. Not after what I did. And, if I’m honest, I thought you might decide to take matters into your own hands.”

A wry smile played across Steven’s face. “Well, I can’t say that it never occurred to me. I know you didn’t intend to kill your parents and the rest of those people, but the fact remains that you did. There was one slip up, and seven people were torn to pieces as a result. I wasn’t sure whether letting you live was worth the risk.”