The Moor…
The Moor lay like a stricken beast, the life drained from its features. A barren, stark and
insensitive thing, no compassion, no care within its hard rocks, its scarred soil a testament to the
abuse it had suffered at the hands of men. Someone once said that a giant vacuum cleaner was
needed, to take away the scree and the numerous bits of jagged, fallen stone that were strewn
across the landscape. Once, it must have been a pleasant place, with trees and forests, streams
and rivers. A place where you could rest and contemplate the beauty and wonder of life. Then
people had arrived, ripped away its soul, uprooted trees, created settlements and homesteads and,
once its riches had been plundered, left. Locusts, stripping away the goodness. Now there was
only the windswept nothingness. It was hard and unrelenting and Ralph loved it.
He loved the solitude. Not many went upon the Moor. The occasional hill-walker perhaps.
But rarely. The Moor was not a friendly place and, like the few people who lived there still, it
was uncompromising and wary of strangers. Many, at night, feared it. There was an atmosphere
about it that was difficult to fathom, and when the fog rolled in and joined with the dark, it
became impenetrable and those who did not know it could so easily become lost. Ralph,
however, was not a stranger. He had lived here for years, one of the few who preferred to keep
himself away from others. Not lonely. Alone.
Many came to analyse and discuss what had happened. The inevitable late-night television
debates, the experts waxing lyrical, regurgitating the wisdom of their books and theories, the
many hours of interviews with prison inmates and the mentally ill. Ralph, however, was to know
none of this, and it would not have been a topic that he would ever wish to consider.
It might have begun when he was younger, fourteen. Miss Stephenson sat at the head of the
class and harangued him for humming. Ralph had not hummed, it was the little shit sitting at the
desk behind him. When the humming came again, Stephenson went wild, told him to go to the
Headteacher. Mr Williams listened, warned him, told him that he would ´feel the consequences.’
The next day, Ralph took a frog from the biology lab, slit its stomach open and then went to
Stephenson’s class and pinned the amphibian to her desk. He took care to ensure that the entrails
were neatly pulled out to form sets of wings that spread out from the dead creature’s sides.
She screamed even before she got to the desk.
The class laughed, all except Ralph who sat with his arms folded, feeling smug. He enjoyed
the way Stephenson nearly vomited in her disgust. His mistake was not joining in with the
chorus of guffaws from his class-mates. When she saw his face, it was clear who the culprit was.
Williams put six strokes of the cane across Ralph’s back-side. When Ralph stood up, he
grinned at the Headteacher, actually relishing the pain. “Will that be all, sir?”
That afternoon, after visiting the school kitchen, Ralph poured sugar into the petrol tank of
William’s car. He’d heard somewhere that a lot of bad things could happen to a car if this was
done. Most of it involved paying out money to get fuel-filters and carburettors fixed. Ralph liked
the sound of that. Nothing like a bit of inconvenience for that bastard Williams to make Ralph
feel better.
It was only when he met a school friend in the local park that his world began to dramatically
change. This friend had an air-rifle, gave it to Ralph to try. Ralph discovered he was a natural,
could plug out the eye of a potato from over a hundred paces. Ralph wasn’t interested in
potatoes. When he turned to killing the birds in the trees, he found his real vocation as the thrill
rushed through him. The way the birds plummeted to the ground, tried so hard to get airborne
again, wings flapping pathetically for a few moments before death enfolded them. That brought
him so much happiness, more than he’d ever experienced before in his young life. His friend
became edgy. Told Ralph to stop. Ralph smashed him in the face with the rifle-stock, then
returned to killing more sparrows.
A large boy came through the trees, hit Ralph hard in the kidneys, ripped the gun from his
fingers, and kicked him in the ribs.
“You fucking little shit,” said this larger boy.
Ralph might have wondered who he was, why he was so angry, but he couldn’t think, let
alone speak.
“You think you’re so fucking hard, don’t you, shooting birds? You little shit.” The big boy
spat, gave Ralph another kick, then flung the rifle away. He began to walk off towards his
friends.
Ralph rolled over. The pain in his ribs sent a jolt through his whole body, worse than that
electricity shock he got when he touched some bare wires in his dad’s workshop. He cried out,
but still managed to pick up the rifle. The pain in his side was not the worst of it. The shame, that
was what drove him on now, what brought the red veil down over his eyes. His hands shook as
he brought the weapon up to his eye and peered along the barrel. Squaring up the sight, he took a
bead on the back of the big boy’s head, took a breath, held it and squeezed the trigger.
The court hearing found him guilty of malicious wounding and he was given three months in
a juvenile detention facility.
When he came out he decided on two things. One, he would always keep himself to himself,
becoming almost anonymous; and two, he’d continue to enjoy killing. The exhilaration at seeing
that big boy hoping around as if he were on fire, clutching his bleeding head and screaming like
a stuck-pig, was a delight. In the middle of the night, buried under the covers, he’d often
masturbate at the image.
Years later, with Mo safely in his bed, the ring on her finger, he’d conjure up that picture as
he made love to her, grunted through his orgasm, collapsed back to stare at the ceiling and smile.
Not much had really changed, despite all the intervening years.
Certainly the Moor had not changed. Eternal, it held no menace for him. He welcomed it, this
barren, desolate place. Often, in the early evening before the sun’s rays gave up the struggle
against the pitch blackness of night, he would stand on a hilltop and stare out across the expanse
and marvel at its unforgiving solidity. Only time would conquer it and time, as we all know, is
infinite. He would not see it change in his lifetime, and that fact too brought him comfort. It was
here before he was born, before his parents, and theirs. It would be here after he was long gone,
forgotten, a mere wrinkle in the fabric of history. But not the Moor. It was permanent,
unchanging and he viewed it, not only as a friend, but as a source of comfort.
Because his life was shit.
Married. Job. Boredom. Ralph hated the normality of it all, the deadly dull routine. He had no
ambition anymore; what was the point? Had there ever been a point, he wondered. He’d gone to
sleep some twenty or more years ago, and he still had not woken up. What could he do? He was
trapped, like we all are.
The knot twisted in his gut, the stress taking hold. It was becoming worse, and he’d noted that
with a slight sense of alarm. He often woke with a deep sense of depression overwhelming him.
Every day the same, the dreary drudge. Work. There had been a time when he simply got on with
it all, without question, but lately, in the grim mornings, in front of the bathroom mirror, he’d
look at his reflection and realise that the years had not been kind. Every day, it seemed, a new
crease would appear under his eyes, or alongside his mouth. And his hair was definitely thinning.
“Dear God...”
There really was no point. What was he now, the worse part of fifty? There was nothing left
to look forward to. True, his job had become part-time, and that helped a little to break up the
routine, ease the daily monotony of that damned office, but life? My God, why had it come to
this, the constant questioning, the rooting around for reasons why. It hadn’t always been like this.
He recalled when he was younger, how he had found wonder and joy in everything, that buzz of
excitement, anticipation. Now, everything seemed old and worn. Like him. Tired.
Except for the Moor. The Moor was the one constant.
He ran a hand over his face and looked across at his car, parked up on the hillside. He sighed.
The little Kia had gone in for its routine service so he had taken the Jinny that morning. Fate.
Things beyond his control. Because the Kia would have probably crumpled on impact. Not so
the Suzuki. It was robust, dependable. Not a comfortable ride by any means, but it ate up the
twisting lanes that criss-crossed the Moor with ease. When he had come over the brow of the
A30 on his way back from work, he reacted too late at the sudden appearance of an animal
crossing the highway in front of him, and he hit it. The impact sent him into a skid, but he
regained control quickly, pulled into the hard shoulder and got out. His whole body shook and it
took him a moment to regain some sense of equilibrium. The night was not yet pitch and as he
squinted towards the road, he could see it laying there, a large black lump, unmoving. He knew
instinctively something was seriously wrong. It didn’t breathe. When he drew closer the
confirmation was clear to see. The deer lay dead, neck snapped.
Without another thought, he went back and checked the car. He could feel a tiny scratch
across the bull-bars as he ran his hand along the metal. He had those bars fitted as an ‘extra’, and
he never knew why. Probably because the garage had said it would look good, and the salesman
convinced him to part with the money. No bull would ever wander across this highway, and if it
did it would stroll, give plenty of warning. Not so the deer. Ralph returned to where it lay. A
little thing, a Chinese water-deer. Delicate and beautiful. In life. In death, up close, he was
amazed at how small it was. When he picked it up and laid it out on the back seat, it weighed
next to nothing. He stepped back and studied it. A thought slowly developed in his mind.
By the time he returned home, it was late. He took the deer straight to the garden shed. He
turned on the light, the naked bulb hanging by a frayed, ancient wire. Ralph gently laid the
animal down upon his workbench, with a kind of reverence.
Two days later, he cut it up and gently fried pieces of thigh and served it with a potato rosti
and green beans. His wife devoured it, the juices running down her chin. “Beautiful,” she said
between mouthfuls. Venison. He had never eaten venison before, and it tasted delicious.
Of course, he never told her where it had come from. She never asked.
Now, here he was, on the hilltop, recalling that moment. The moment he focused his thoughts
and decided not to waste that accidental bounty. He knew the story about the guy near Exmoor
who took dead animals from the road. It had been all over the local news some years back. Ralph
had never given any of that much thought up until now. The memory made him feel somehow
calmer. He and Mo had feasted on venison for the next three nights. Now, it was all gone,
whatever meat that was left beginning to turn rotten. So he had come up here and buried the
remains and he had paused and looked at the face of the deer, at her open eyes, and he knew that
what he had done was good. The guilt of killing her replaced by the fact that it was he, and not
the crows, that had benefitted. With no feeling of guilt, remorse or revulsion, Ralph made the
decision to continue. He would seek out other deaths, collect them, prepare them. It was all so
outrageously simple that he wondered why more people didn’t do it. The savings on the weekly
family shopping bill could be potentially enormous.
He put the old Second World War entrenching tool into his shoulder bag and tramped back to
his home. The night closed in, only the stars to keep him company. But he knew the way, the
ancient by-ways and forgotten paths holding no secrets or dangers to him.
When he past the old, deserted cottage high up on the hill, he paused and debated whether he
should go inside, check it out. A thought stirred in his mind. Something which had been
developing ever since he had first taken the knife to the deer’s flank. Why should he ignore what
was so obvious? Every night animals were hit and killed on the highway. Often, they lay there in
agony until the morning when the crows came and finished them. Sometimes they were crushed
flat by the speeding juggernauts that roared through the night. Sometimes…
Sometimes, they died instantly and, like the tiny deer, they lay there as if inviting someone,
somewhere, to profit from their death. It was all good, clean, fresh food. Not a conscious killing.
Not the deliberate consequence of the hunter’s rifle. Accidental. Unlooked for, unplanned. Death
the only outcome.
And the eating.
Ralph remembered the flavour of that meat and his stomach rumbled at the memory, and the
thoughts came to him once again. Why not profit? There was no harm in any of it. No one would
suffer. Indeed, the opposite would be the case. He would curtail the suffering, bring a swift end
to the pain. If he acted quickly enough. If he was there at the time, the moment.
At that point, Ralph reinforced his decision. A decision he had been pondering ever since the
accident with the deer.
He would retrieve the bodies from the road, those hit by passing vehicles. And he would bring
them back to his home and he would prepare them for eating.
Ralph felt a lightening of the spirit when he came to that decision, a great weight lifted from him.
He had struggled over it, debating with his own morality as to the rightness of what he
contemplated. Well, all that was gone now, the decision made. And as he moved past the old
cottage and veered off towards his own home, he smiled.