Free Master of the Moors by Kealan Patrick Burke

his
prison; everything he touched quickly grew ugly in its familiarity.
The sawing of mouse claws in the walls threatened to drive him mad;
the wind gurgling through the gutters, the rain tip-tapping on the
window, the always distant rumbling of thunder that became
malicious laughter, the subtle shifting of the slates on the roof,
Mrs. Fletcher's humming, Grady's tuneless whistling, the swishing
sound of Kate turning the pages of one of her blasted books, the
floorboards groaning, the flutter of candle-flames, his father's
voice, insisting Neil let someone take him outside, the grumbling,
the clucking of tongues, Kate's relentless teasing...all of it
became a whirlwind of noise, a cacophony that might deafen him with
the banality and intrusiveness of it, until he couldn't endure it
any more.
    Everything changed on
Kate's birthday. Their father fell ill; the house grew quiet and
even as time passed and the seasons changed, the gleeful racket
never returned. Neil went outside, alone. On the first occasion, he
decided to see if he could make it as far as the village but
stumbled, fell, and ended up clawing his way back to the house in
silent terror. As expected, Grady and Mrs. Fletcher were
outraged.
    Neil didn't
care.
    There were countless
attempts after that, few of them allowing him to make it any
further than the tree at the end of the lane. Then, one morning,
after much arguing, he allowed Kate to accompany him, not to guide
him, just to stay with him as he tried to reach the village. He
fell and smacked into a low branch, opening a gash on his forehead
large enough to make Mrs. Fletcher blanch later at the sight of all
the blood, but he persisted, stopping only when Kate caught his
arm. He pulled away, about to launch a volley of insults her way,
but her voice gave him pause. "We're here," she'd said. "You made
it."
    "Of course I bloody well
made it," he'd snapped, but was secretly ecstatic.
    From then on, he ventured
out on his own and used the sounds of nature to guide him. Grady
fashioned for him a sturdy cane from an oak branch, and though Neil
had resisted at first---reminded once again of the impotency and pity
with which people tended to view him---he soon saw the sense in it,
and after a time, that thin piece of oak became his faithful guide,
its tapping preferable to the coaxing and muttering of any human or
the whining of any hound.
    Now that cane caught
against a large flat stone, jarring Neil from his thoughts. He had
veered off course, and quickly righted himself, using the stick to
find the narrow space between the stone markers Grady had set along
the path to prevent him from wandering off onto the
moors.
    The moors.
    He could hear it out
there, encroaching on the house, and clearly remembered Kate
laughing at him when he'd told her what it sounded like. "A muted
voice," he'd said, "like it has a secret to tell, but can't find
the words. And when there's fog, it sounds like it's breathing."
Kate had found this so utterly hilarious, he'd had to pull her hair
to quiet her, and had refrained from mentioning it again, or
sharing with her the other sounds he'd heard, those whispers that
drifted in through his bedroom window at night, calling to him,
daring him to seek out their origin. There was something on the
moors, he knew, something that scared the villagers enough to make
them leave their homes and everything else behind to be rid of it.
Something ugly and hungry had scared them away, something that
moved beneath the veil of dark and fog. The Beast of Brent Prior,
perhaps. Neil smiled at the thought. Mere fancy, of course. He
didn't believe in such things, but liked to imagine great big
ancient hounds darting across the moors at night, snatching silly
old sheep away before they knew what had hit them.
    The smile faded when
something invaded his imaginings, and his senses.
    As he'd traversed the
path, the autumnal smell had intensified. Up until now, he'd
ignored it. After all, it was autumn, and the path was