The Moor Inn Fire

By Christopher Best

A roadside burial site, a ring of standing stones and the remnants of derelict mine workings are just a foretaste of what awaits young couple Mark Sheppard and Stephanie Latimer as they find themselves lost on Dartmoor on a cold late September evening. With time and the weather against them, they finally stumble upon The Moor Inn, a sanctuary of wood panelling, rough oak beams and fine ales. The pub’s claim to fame, they soon learn, is a magnificent fire that has been kept alight continuously for well over a century. But this ritual hides a dark secret, one that is hauntingly related by an eccentric old-timer who sits at their table. He draws them into a bygone world, telling of a former tenant’s family torn apart by passion, infidelity, prejudice and tragedy. At the heart of his tale lies the innkeeper’s daughter Martha, driven by unsanctioned love to a terrible act of betrayal.
But what was Martha’s fate? And what her deadly secret? As they become ever more embroiled into Dartmoor’s shady past, Mark and Stephanie are forced to confront their deepest fears, their darker selves, their relationship and their true values.
The Moor Inn Fire is a ghost story, a love story, a murder mystery, a rite of passage and, above all, a celebration of the romance and wild beauty of Dartmoor.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Christopher Best
• Release date: Dec 3, 2017
• ISBN: 9781370775293

Christopher Best

Christopher Best is an author and composer, working in the South West of England. He has written two novels and several collections of short stories. His music work comprises over fifty compositions for a wide variety of media.

Book preview

~ Foreword ~

The circumstances by which I came into possession of these journals are beyond the scope of this foreword (an account I should perhaps make time to write some day). Suffice it to note that they were passed to me on due authority and with the express intention of making them known. My purpose in penning this preamble is only to clarify my role as editor.

On a seemingly innocent day back in September 1980, a young couple found themselves swept up in the most traumatic event of their lives. After a period of recovery and reflection, each agreed to commit their experiences to paper. Not surprisingly perhaps, inconsistencies and duplications between the two accounts abound, but I have chosen not to smooth away these contradictions, nor to unify their writing styles, their manner of storytelling or their approach to depicting dialect. My editorial finger has extended only to correcting the few typographical or spelling errors and to selecting between passages that would otherwise retread the same ground.

I must also emphasise that my modest status as a scholar of local history should not be taken to mean that I corroborate the factual information herein. In leaving the writer’s words untouched, I neither validate nor refute such details. Furthermore, as the reader in due course will discover, I myself appear briefly in these accounts, but as I was never the intended reader, I have resisted any temptation to amend or challenge their depictions of my actions or words.

T.C.

14/10/82

~ Part One ~

~ Stephanie ~

The journey that morning had been, as much as anything, a reconnaissance. Mark had wanted a holiday of swimming, sunbathing and soaking up the sea air. My ideal was walking, exploring, digging up histories and unearthing the very soul of Devon. Our compromise was to split our holiday between coast and interior. After a week of camping near the seaside town of Salcombe, the time had come to get a flavour of the moor, in readiness to up-sticks and pitch tent on a new site.

The first we knew of having arrived was crossing a cattle grid marked ‘Take Moor Care’. Nothing else marked the moment; the high hedgerows and narrow windy lanes differed little from those of the South Hams through which we’d just passed. The road continued on through pretty villages and farms, over little bridges and streams – hardly the rugged terrain for which the national park is so renowned. We decided to head for Widecombe, the little village famed for its fair and its folksong. Only as we crowned the hill ahead of the village did we realise that all along we’d been privy to only half the picture. Rising behind the jumbled rooftops and imposing church tower, the neat pastureland was abruptly and savagely cut by a vast tract of brown earth; like a Constable idyll vandalised by some crazed Abstract Expressionist.

Blimey, Mark had said, slowing the car and pulling off onto the grass. You’d think two planets had collided.

Shall we go down?

Yeah, soon as the pubs open. How about up there first? He was pointing to a rather attractive tor to our right. Great place for our picnic. I bet the view from the top is incredible.

We took to the road again, backtracking a little before turning off and following the sign to a car park. From there we took a track on foot up into the rocks. It was a broad, grassy and easy-going climb. Families with children, dogs – and even pushchairs – milled around the lower slopes, the more determined walkers, ourselves included, rising above them, passing each other along narrower tracks that wove their way between the boulders. With its commanding views of the whole moor, the summit itself had the makings of such a romantic spot. We sat there, shoulder to shoulder, gorging on sandwiches, ginger beers and cider-cake and taking in the sweep of the panorama. Below us to our right spread a thousand little fields; acre after acre of woodland; hardly a road or a dwelling in sight. Over to the left awaited that rolling, barren, almost lunar landscape of the high moor. Romantic, yes, it should have been, had Mark not tried to impress me by attempting to scale one of the rock faces, only to get himself stuck halfway – much to the delight of the other climbers. That was what gave me the impulse to walk. I suddenly felt the road calling us away from these mountaineers, these families, these dog-walkers, these ramblers, and out into less trampled hills.

It was a few hundred yards along this walk, just before a gated footpath, that we came upon the burial mound that marks the real start of our story – a raised bed of stone draped in a thick blanket of grass, dead leaves gathering at its base, its feet to the main road and head set defiantly against the rising moorland behind. Mark barely paused to acknowledge it, but I was quite stopped in my tracks, spellbound to know whose secrets it held and why it had been placed at this lonely spot. Visitors had recently attended the site; the nameless headstone was dressed with fresh flowers, coins and touching obituaries scribbled on handmade cards. A sense of deep melancholy seemed to fill the air, perhaps over a loved one lost in some terrible roadside tragedy.

Mark was well along the footpath by the time I could pull myself away. It took me a while to catch him, stumbling through a leaf-strewn track that was pitted and stony one moment, a veritable quagmire the next. The track became a tunnel through bowing trees, a patchwork of splintered sunlight and deep shadow. The sadness of the grave had stayed with me. These copper-edged leaves, this yellowing light, these semi-naked branches, were all reminders of something I’d sooner put out of mind. In less than a week it would be the equinox, when night catches up with the day. The broken rhythms of rustling leaves beneath my feet felt like a lament to another summer’s passing and a reluctant heralding in of autumn.

Even breaking cover and coming face-to-face with the high moor failed at first to shift my mood. Despite the breathtaking beauty before me, I found myself dwelling only on those who laboured to carve out a livelihood in this stark place: the famers, their cattle, sheep and goats – and of course Dartmoor’s eponymous and best-loved creatures, the ponies. Three of them, grazing nearby, shuffled uneasily in our presence, eyeing us warily as they scavenged, scratching their haunches against the gorse, ears pricked and twitching. If they could speak, what, I wondered, would they have to say about their lot in life? What stories of soldiering on through the moor’s changing seasons? Today their home was generous enough, but a month ago the sun would have baked this land; in a month’s time the rains and winds would pound it relentlessly.

Or would these beasts have just mocked me: me, this newcomer, this spoilt little town girl, not yet hardened to the moor’s harsh ways?

It was the rambler’s exuberant voice that broke into my thoughts. That song again! – the one we’d been singing in the car: ‘…Bill Brewer, Jack Stewer, Peter Gurney, Peter, Davy… and Uncle Tom Cobley and all.’ He came up from the hollow and greeted us warmly. But the coincidence of the song was not all that struck me. While I’d been lost in my brooding something else had been happening to our surroundings. The light, the air, the smells, the colours, suddenly they all somehow felt different.

~ Mark ~

Okay, the moor was all well and good: the climbing, the scenery, the walks. But we’d had barely a week down at the coast and I was already missing the rolling surf and silver sands, the neat white sailing boats and skimpy bikinis. Ironic really – put me anywhere near water now and I’d run a mile.

I remember that dazzling late afternoon sun. Steph had slipped behind me, as she usually did when something was on her mind. She’s a keen enough walker – keener than me to be honest (especially these last few months) – but my natural pace is just that bit faster. I suppose because of my height.

When that goofy walker popped up from nowhere like a jack-in-the-box, he waved and dropped his voice but never quite stopped his awful howling. He was the first person we’d seen since leaving the road. He was a tiny man, bulked out by a padded jacket, the straps of his rucksack biting into his shoulders, the weight of it forcing him over in a stoop. From his shorts sprung two sparrow’s legs that disappeared into thick socks and hiking boots: an effect somewhere between a nibbled chicken leg and the swinging boot from my nephew’s ‘Mousetrap’ set. He had the air of retired military about him; very Eighth Army. Old Monty himself, right down to the neatly trimmed moustache.

The song passed without a breath into his hearty, Good evening there! Were we making for home?

No, we weren’t.

Well we most certainly should be, given the band of heavy weather that was building from the east.

"You wouldn’t want to get stuck out here dressed like that," he offered pointedly, eyeing me up and down. I was quite sure I wouldn’t want to get stuck dressed like him here or anywhere else.

Moments later, a second walker appeared, holding back a few paces as if to distance himself from this man’s inane caterwauling. Unlike the General, he looked quite the seasoned hiker – stout shoes, strong denims, roll-neck sweater, light rucksack. He walked with the effortless grace of someone totally at one with his world.

Where have you set off from? persisted Montgomery.

From a car park about an hour and a half away, Stephanie replied. Near… what was it called, Mark?

I pretended ignorance. Oh, I don’t know. Bulldog Rock?

A pained expression came over the man’s face. Now, here was someone who’d crossed every inch of the moor, traced each footpath and logged every landmark; someone who could direct a fellow traveller to any destination without ever needing to consult a map. A veritable Encyclopaedia Devonia. But… Bulldog Rock?

His companion came to the rescue.

I think that would be Hound Tor, he said softly.

Stephanie was instantly onto him. Oh, yes, that’s what the sign said! I’d wondered if it had anything to do with Conan Doyle. You know, ‘Hound of the Baskervilles’; wasn’t that set in Dartmoor?

Monty butted in before the other could reply.

"Oh no, no, no, not a bit of it. No, the myth behind Hound Tor is much older. Poor bugger – Bowerman, his name was – out hunting with dogs. Got himself tangled up in the midst of a witches’ coven; knocks over their cauldron. The witches of course are absolutely bloody livid, if you’ll pardon my French, miss. One of them transforms herself into a hare and leads the pack into a deep mire. Then, as an added punishment, the old hag turns the lot of them to stone!"

He snorted.

You can see the three dogs forming the peaks of the tor, the quiet one added. And a little way off is another outcrop called ‘Bowerman’s Nose’. Look carefully, and they say you can see the outline of his face in the rock.

And we found this burial mound, covered in flowers. Stephanie told him.

"Down at the roadside? Yes, that would have been Jay’s Grave."

Why bury someone there?

Aha, interesting story, (this from the General). Come on Tom, history’s your forte; you tell the young lady.

Yes, I was going to. Her name was Mary Jay; a farmhand from Manaton way…

"A workhouse orphan, I think you’ll find, Tom, not a farmhand."

Well, the folklore varies. A tough working girl, at any rate.

Point is, Monty interrupted again, wretched thing managed to get herself pregnant, didn’t she. Girls, eh? He paused for dramatic effect. And then, once her employers had disowned her, she jolly well went and hanged herself!

His friend took up the story.

Consecrated ground was thought to be too good for suicides in the eighteenth century, so they tended to go for anonymous sites such as crossroads. When the girl’s bones were disturbed, about 1860 we think, she was reburied on the same spot but in a proper grave.

And here’s a little mystery for you to take home with you, the military man beamed. He gave Stephanie a quizzical smile and twitched his moustache. Those fresh flowers you noticed? No one has the faintest idea who puts them there! Fresh, every day. They’ve even appeared when there’s been snow, but never a single footprint. Motorists claim to have observed a ghostly, hooded figure sitting beside the headstone. Now, explain that, if you will!

Excellent! I laughed. We’ll make sure to keep an eye out for her ghost.

There’s many a ghost on Dartmoor, young man. I’d be heading for home now if I were you, or the pair of you might be joining them! You take good care of your lady-friend now. Au-revoir!

He drew back his lips into the determined grimace of the serious walker before marching off, swinging one of those sticks that appear to serve no purpose. The other rambler waited briefly and then followed, signalling his goodbye with a smile.

Okay, bye! I called back. Stephanie waved politely. Within a minute or so we heard the song strike up again, as shrill and jarring as ever.

~ Stephanie ~

The man was quite right of course. We should have turned back immediately. The moment I saw him check his watch I realised why the light had changed. But it wasn’t just the drawing in of evening. Behind us, a thick wall of menacing cloud had rolled over the horizon. But Mark was already pushing ahead, determined to photograph some bird he had spotted; a buzzard, an eagle – I don’t recall which. And when Mark gets fixated on something there is little one can do. Fortunately, the bird took flight and forced him to abandon the shoot.

Well, okay, I suppose, he sighed. Let’s go. Pubs should be open by the time we get back. How about that one in Widecombe we’d read about? Ruddlestone, was it?

Sounds good, I said, taking his hand. It was the first physical contact between us for some time, in fact since the brief moment we’d held each other on the top of Hound Tor. I wasn’t quite sure if its purpose was to extend affection or to stop him from running off again, but it was a welcome moment of renewed intimacy. For the past week, touching of any kind had been awkward. For a moment we both just stood in silence, not quite catching each other’s eye. Mark was first to break it, murmuring a noncommittal ‘Come on then’ as he began leading us back along the little track through the bracken. It seemed to be a popular route, easy to follow, heavily imprinted with footfalls and bicycle tracks.

My heaviness of heart was finally lifting. For the first time I was able to take in the true beauty of my surroundings: the delicate beauty of yellow-peppered gorse, of tiny pink and purple heathers, of creamy-white grasses and deep green ferns; the tougher beauty of stunted hawthorns and fissured rock. A shift in the breeze sent me flavours of fern and grass and other smells I couldn’t name. The setting sun was now at our backs, lighting up the rising slopes ahead, emphasising every hollow and hillock. We made fun of our elongated shadows, waving our arms around and pretending to be circus clowns on stilts. The moor began to fluoresce, standing out ever more vividly against the slate-grey of the sky as a rainbow slowly took shape before our eyes, faint at first, but gradually engorging with colour until shining resplendent. Through it we could see a flurry of fine raindrops.

Are you sure it’s this way? I asked.

Mark plucked up a fern and began dismantling it. Of course. Trust me. It’s all in here. He tapped his head. Built in compass. We just follow this path. It hadn’t forked at all after we’d left the road from the car park, only that first very obvious right turn where those two tracks crossed.

His hand had found its way back into mine and we continued on quietly for a minute or two, feeling the light rain for the first time. There was no sign of the ramblers now, or of anyone else, and the isolation was beginning to affect me. A thick mist had begun rolling in from the slopes in front of us. I found it rather creepy – I’d never seen mist quite like this before: tangible, like wood smoke.

A disturbing thought slipped into my head. But hang on, I said. We weren’t looking for other paths converging with ours, were we? That’s where we’re going to meet the forks going back.

Mark appeared unruffled and said nothing, so I tried to focus my mind on other things. That poor Jay woman. An unscrupulous employer gets a defenceless working girl pregnant, abandons her, yet she’s the one that ends up destitute and driven to suicide. And then the community refuses even to bury her properly –

A man’s bloody world!

Uh?

I hadn’t intended to speak it aloud. Oh… it’s just that Mary Jay story. So unjust.

Wow, yeah, terrible. Hey, but what about poor old Bowman? The girls got their own back there, didn’t they? Final score: one-all.

It didn’t seem worth being drawn by this. Fairy-tales and an honest legend; two quite different things, I said carefully.

I felt each of Mark’s fingers gradually slipping away. He tutted; What, the ghost and the flowers? You believed that tosh?

You saw the flowers, didn’t you? People claim to have seen a hooded figure by the grave.

Mark scoffed. You mean some lurker in an anorak waiting to catch those flower-power hippies in the act?

"Honestly, Mark, you can be so unromantic, I said. But alright, ghosts aside, I bet the rest of that story’s based on fact."

Yeah, maybe. But that was centuries ago. It’s not going to happen today. Just goes to show how far we’ve come in that time: Women’s Lib; The Female Eunuch; even a woman Prime Minister, of all things.

I could see we were drifting into an argument. But the very fact that you even say that shows just how biased society still is against women. Yes, and look at us. Who’s it going to be sacrificing their career in a few months time? Somehow I can’t see it being you.

"That’s unfair. You know perfectly well that I’d be out of that horrible job to play househusband – just like that. But seeing as you can never hold down… I assume someone’s going to have to earn some money round here…

…Ah.

He stopped. There it was, just as I had predicted: a fork in the path ahead of us. He indicated to the right. It was an offhand gesture but I wasn’t fooled. We walked a little further before he slowed. It had all suddenly turned so unfamiliar, so much more overgrown, great patches of wilting ferns larger than anything we’d seen before.

The track had become a line of buried stones marking the way down into a valley. Only when we saw what lay ahead did Mark finally admit that it had been the wrong fork. The valley floor was given over to a large walled enclosure that formed a near perfect ring; just one entrance and one exit. Within it we could see numerous ruins, like dwellings, each no bigger than a box room. Maybe they had been for livestock or grain; maybe this had been an ancient settlement. Whatever its history, the place gave off a spirituality, a stillness – like the grave at the roadside. I found it oddly magnetic. But drawn though I might have been to go and stand among the ruins, the rain was now falling harder; it was getting late and vital for us to keep moving.

We traipsed back uphill along the granite steps and from there back along what we took to be the earlier track. But how alike all those paths can seem. Had I seen that tree before? Wouldn’t I have noticed such a distinctive display of gorse flowers? I think we must have forked again without noticing because quite suddenly we hit a crossroads.

Now I was genuinely perturbed.

This time Mark chose a route at random, his confidence clearly shaken. I suppose it was some comfort to know, from the smoky orange disk rolling through the mist behind us, that we were heading roughly eastward, back the way we had come, but beyond that we could only trust to instinct. I began to see us wandering the moor all night. And the more lost we got the more angry I became.

I think we both knew at the same instant, as the terrain began to take on a terrible familiarity, that we were in real trouble. How it had happened I have no idea, but there once again were the banks of dying ferns, again the granite setts in the ground and yes, ahead of us, the same mysterious stone enclosure. We had wasted half an hour of precious daylight going around in a circle. My blood was beginning to boil. I knew the signs. I threw Mark a reproachful look to spark some reaction, but he unwisely ignored it. So I just had to let go.

How the hell did you let this happen? With me in this condition? He finally turned to face me. "I should never have trusted you, Mark. ‘All in here,’ you said. Mr Compass! You just couldn’t admit it, could you? And now we’re totally lost."

He was about to protest but I was not yet done. "The trouble with you is you never accept responsibility for anything. Just look at us! Middle of nowhere, almost dark, getting soaked, and you just stand there like you’re some kind of innocent. Innocent? After what you did to me the other week? After what you said? I lowered myself onto a rock and hugged my knees. I still can’t believe you used those words."

Mark groaned. So that’s what this is about. Look, we’ve been through all that already. I’d said I was sorry, that I didn’t actually mean…

"But what else could you have meant? Get rid of the baby, you said. Get rid of the baby!"

Something extraordinary happened as I spat out these appalling words, like an ice-cold hand reaching into my body and closing around my heart. It was as if time had come to a standstill; leaving the rain poised in freefall and the mist frozen in the air, our breath paralysed. Even the birds became silent. The last remnants of the evening’s warmth were sucked into an icy nothingness, as though without motion there could be no heat. Stillness but for one small movement. It lasted only for a second; a figure darting from the shadows some way ahead, only to be promptly swallowed up again by the mist.

At once the spell was broken, as if time had suddenly rushed in to fill the vacuum, leaving nothing in its wake but an impression of a woman, running with wild abandon, her thick, dark hair trailing behind her. I felt a surge of adrenalin and a compulsion to give chase. Only my legs simply wouldn’t move.

But Mark at once darted forward. She must be trying to catch up with the others, he called out. Let’s go after her.

~ Mark ~

So I’m her chaperone now? Her bodyguard? Jesus! We set off on a walk together and suddenly it’s all my fault we get ourselves lost. Well, Steph’s the cradle snatcher; maybe she could’ve played big sister for a change; held my hand, not used this as an excuse to go raking up some squabble we’d had a million years ago.

But did I stand up for myself? No. I did as I always do: took the blame to heart and felt guilty. So naturally, when we saw this woman, I leapt at the chance to make ‘amends’ and get ourselves back on track. But at least that track was a proper one. It was Stephanie’s idea to start ploughing randomly through the heather. Why? I mean, for God’s sake; we couldn’t possibly have come from a direction where there was no path. But off she went – never looked back once. That, in my opinion, is how we got really lost. If we had stuck to a marked track then sooner or later we’d have joined up with the main route back to the road and made it back to the car. And none of what followed need ever have happened.

I broke a mug today; thumped the table so hard that it toppled off and smashed on the floor. Ten minutes of howling downstairs and my Supertramp LP drenched in coffee. I’m having second thoughts about this whole writing project.

~ Stephanie ~

The second time I saw movement it was of little more than a silhouette flitting through the distant shrubs. I may even have doubted whether it was the woman at all, perhaps just a sheep running from the sound of our feet.

The going was far more taxing without a decent trail. Tramping uphill through unbroken heathland was a real challenge to the leg muscles; the spongy turf, waterlogged from the tributaries heading down the slope, sucked at our feet and filled our shoes as we waded on through the growing murk. And all for what? We had now completely lost our guide. I might have thought to question my motives for giving chase so recklessly like that, but emotionally I was still in turmoil. I should not have confronted Mark with his words the way I had. I wished I could somehow wipe that moment from the slate; bottle up my anger again. My shame and fury were so inseparable that I found myself unable to say anything.

At length we fell back to our normal walking pace and proceeded in prickly silence. The visible ground advanced less than a hundred yards ahead, revealing our way step by step, beyond which the moor appeared through the mist only in outline like some hasty charcoal sketch. I imagined some unseen hand fashioning the landscape just moments before we arrived, another quietly erasing it once we’d passed.

The rain and the wind intensified with every step that took us higher. The temperature too had dropped alarmingly. It was already after seven; Mark reckoned that the sun had just set, though there was no way of telling this through the solid cloud cover. Certainly the light was failing fast and distances becoming impossible to judge. I felt exposed and vulnerable.

What if we were to stay out all night? If the temperature continued to fall – if the skies cleared and a frost set in – could we survive it? I tried to remember things I’d heard or read about hypothermia, what the signs were; how to prevent it. And if we succumbed, how long before anyone noticed we were missing? Perhaps as much as a fortnight – when Mark was due back at work. I wasn’t even sure whom we had informed about this camping trip.

A quarter of an hour or so further on uphill and something began to take shape ahead. A grey smudge against a grey sky. Perhaps a line of trees. No, something more solid. As we slowly rose up through the mist an entity coalesced out of the surrounding hills. Its emerging outline gave the impression of some vast crouching beast, paws outstretched, head forward, back arched. A rocky outcrop: more like a hound than Hound Tor, I thought to myself. In fact the two tors were quite unalike. Where the rocks of Hound Tor had thrust upwards like fists of granite, those before us clung to the hilltop in horizontal sheets. With each step the contours reshaped themselves, the head flattening, the profile of a face emerging. It was as though the beast were rising from a slumber, until sat tall and Sphinx-like in outline. Its back curved away out of sight to the left. The head, a single rock that appeared to balance on its convex underbelly, overhung a vertical drop of about twenty feet. I caught sight of something perched on its summit, perhaps a smaller rock; perhaps another wandering sheep. As we approached, the silhouette became clearer and I realised suddenly it was none other than the young woman squatting on the rock. We had followed her lead after all. I felt the same blood rush. The poor creature was hunkered down against the wind and rain. Her hair – long and unkempt – billowed out from beneath the shawl clasped around her head. The clothes she wore were tattered and totally unfit for the foul weather. I called out to her.

At first there was no reaction, but as we came within a few yards she abruptly raised her head, giving us full view of her face. I heard myself gasp. She was younger than I had judged, her broad, tight-lipped mouth setting off a full jaw and strong neck. Her complexion was rough and blemished and her skin deathly pale. But it was her eyes that drew my breath, a stare that passed straight through me unseeing, a look of utter desolation that made my flesh crawl. Yet for reasons I cannot explain I felt myself drawn more than ever towards her, and I began at once to climb the last rock. We were almost at the summit when a sudden blast of rain into our faces forced us to avert our heads. When we looked again the girl was gone. An unpleasant, fetid odour hung in the air.

Mark pushed ahead and scrambled to the top. For a second, I saw his large frame outlined against the clouds as he stooped to regain his breath before climbing down amongst the rocks. There was a commotion and he disappeared from view.

Shit! What the…

I arrived to see him picking himself up off the ground and clutching his right knee.

You okay? What happened?

The bitch bloody well pushed me over, that’s what happened! I think I’ve really hurt myself. What the hell is wrong with her?

You probably just tripped. Look at your shoelace!

I didn’t trip. She pushed me!

I squatted down beside him and reached over to look at his leg. I suddenly pictured him as a schoolboy, emerging from the playground with a pleading wide-eyed stare, dusting off his baggy shorts and picking pieces of gravel out of a nasty graze.

And I think it must have been in that instant that I knew we were going to make it through this ugly episode in our lives.

~ Mark ~

It’s hard now to recapture the wilds of the moor, sat here in my attic room with the rumble of evening traffic drifting up from the street. But at least with these Dartmoor maps and library books I get to see how we became so disorientated. I’ve found the car park, Jay’s grave, the spot where we must have met the ramblers and the tor where I was pushed – one of Dartmoor’s less impressive peaks it turns out, but even these get their share of a blasting from the weather sweeping in off the Atlantic. That’s how they become so worn down, stripped bare and slowly broken into pieces; all those frosts, rains, snows and winds pounding away for millions of years. According to this chapter on Dartmoor’s geology, the shattered rocks strewn about the place are called clitter. I’d have had such fun with that knowledge in A-Level Geography. Cue the smutty schoolboy puns.

Despite my knee, I’d led Stephanie down the far side of the tor like the gallant hero that I am. We’d battled our way through the gale, me holding onto the gut feeling that we were heading roughly towards the car, Stephanie preferring to think we might stumble upon a farm – somewhere we could take shelter and ring for a taxi.

We saw some farmhouses near Hound Tor, she’d shouted. So maybe round here too.

I was about to shriek something back when she suddenly grabbed my arm and told me to be quiet. In those high winds it was pretty impossible to hear anything, but I thought I caught the sound of crying somewhere down below. We listened again. Then, through the driving rain, I saw movement; too dark frankly to tell whether or not it was the girl. We edged closer, but this time my pain got the better of me and I just had to stop.

We were only yards from a large chunk of granite that stuck out like a roof from the hillside above us. I hobbled over, dropped onto the wet grass beneath and drew up my trouser leg. The knee felt very swollen but didn’t appear to be bleeding. I suppose I must have looked pretty dejected, and more than a bit guilty. Stephanie squatted down beside me and put her arm around my shoulder. I turned to her. It occurred to me that it was the first time I’d looked into her face properly all day. Her normally full, thick hair lay flat against her scalp. Her skin was sprayed with water droplets that formed into little rivulets and trickled down her face. I followed one as it literally took a nosedive onto the lapel of her jacket.

I do love her, you know (I wonder when I last told her that). I don’t know why we hurt each other so much. Sometimes when I look at her I can’t decide if I’d actually call her pretty, but at that moment, as at this moment now, I had no doubts whatever.

I put a hand over hers. Look, I’m sorry I got us lost.

Stephanie bowed her head so that her forehead touched my cheek.

I’m sorry too; we were both at fault, she said gently.

I told her that we’d be okay; that as darkness fell it would get easier to spot any lights from farms or roads. I began to stroke her hair. It seemed the sensible thing just to sit tight and take cover for a while. Not the best place, the moor at dusk in the rain, to find yourself lost. I thought: if that woman had been crying then she must be lost too. So I yelled out for her to come and take shelter with us. My voice only just reached my own ears, but we held our breath in case she called back.

It was then that something caught Stephanie’s eye and made her cry out. She waved over to a hill several hundred yards ahead poking out above the mist. I could just about pick out a second, higher hill behind it. At first I saw only its outline, then – like the way stars first appear at night – a solitary light twinkled out near the summit. As our eyes adjusted to the distance we spotted a second speck, rising slowly towards the first, and then a third coming down the other way. All three lights came together and the one moving downhill continued on its way. The other seemed to have stopped alongside the first.

I scrambled to my feet. That’s a house on a main road. I reckon half an hour away, tops.

Oh, thank God. Steph gave me a delicious hug and wiped her cheek with the back of a hand. But what about your leg?

Phwah, just a surface wound. Come on, I’m frozen. And I’ve had enough of this little adventure.

I felt suddenly so positive. Amazing how emotional intensity can completely quash physical pain. It wouldn’t be the last time I’d experience this. I didn’t know that another, far more terrifying instance was waiting for me on the other side of the night.

~ Stephanie ~

It was with such relief and optimism that we set off towards those distant lights. In the lee of the tor, with softer grassland now beneath our feet, the wind behind us, and our goal in clear sight, our spirits soon began to rally. And magically as we descended, the rain steadily petered out. We walked slowly but with purpose, Mark offering the occasional grunt and massaging his knee while I paused for him to catch up.

But our lifted spirits did not last. Soon I was clinging to my thin, zip-fronted jacket. Wet through to the skin and unable now to keep a good walking pace, I could feel the cold creeping like a sickness into my bones and sapping my strength. It dulled my mind so badly that I failed to notice how we had dropped down into the first valley. For a moment I panicked when the house light disappeared.

Down in the gully the mist no longer swirled about but had settled into dense patches. Gingerly, we picked our way through the undergrowth, our view no more than ten yards to either side. It was as if we had become imprisoned within some opaque bubble that tracked our every move, keeping us eternally at its centre and cutting us off from the outside world. Before long we found ourselves shoulder high in bracken, having mistaken its unbroken leaf cover for a clear patch of ground. The more we tried to part the ferns with our hands the more they clung to our legs and tangled around our ankles. We hadn’t a stitch of dry clothing on us by the time we pulled free on the far side.

Ominous looking shapes hung there in the silence – stone walls, boulders and fence posts materialising through the gloom. It was now too dark to read our watches and all sense of time had slipped away. Objects seemed to float in front of me. Could that have been the remains of a building? Nothing like the ancient ruins we had seen before, but possibly a farm dwelling; perhaps part of a barn wall, perhaps the outline of a former doorway or window. Again, that stale rotting odour I had smelled earlier on the tor. Doubtless, there were other things lurking in that semidarkness, but it took all our concentration just to focus on the path ahead. Yet my mind kept straying to the image of the girl on the tor. So many questions. Why had she looked so harrowed? Why did she run from us? Where was she now?

Mark, do you think she was being chased? I blurted out. Was she running away from someone? Was that why she was so terrified of us? Do you think we’re in danger?

Only in danger of catching pneumonia, he scoffed.

No, I mean of being attacked, kidnapped, murdered… or worse.

"Worse? What could be worse than murder?"

I shrugged. I couldn’t say out loud what I’d meant. For a man, maybe nothing could be worse than murder. For a woman, there were violations that were infinitely worse.

And who’s going to murder us? Someone wandering the moors on the off chance?"

It happens. You know: like the Moors Murders.

Oh come off it. That was Saddleworth Moor, hundreds of miles away. And anyway, the children weren’t murdered on those moors; they were just buried there.

Oh, well that’s a great relief! I snapped back. Mark: the master of tactlessness yet again. Was I supposed to take comfort in the thought of those slaughtered children in their unmarked tombs?

With every yard we gained, my certainty of another’s presence grew stronger. It was premonitory, for as I strained to see what lay ahead, a line of dark objects stepped out the mist, like some ritual gathering; a crowd of emaciated hunchbacks clothed in rags. My head told me that it was nothing but a row of gnarly hawthorn trees, but my heart still clung to the deception even after they were well behind us. I simply could not shake off this intense feeling of being watched.

And that was when I saw the girl. Perhaps in truth it was not my eyes but a more powerful sense that made me turn and stride into the blackness after her. Mark must have felt it too, for I could hear his breathing right behind me, the chafing of his denims and the suck of his shoes in wet earth.

Or so I thought, until he called out to me in alarm from yards away. I was stopped dead by the cold hand of fear. How literally that reads, given the bony limb that struck me across the face as I turned. At the same moment Mark let out a cry. I blinked away the stars and saw him pulling frantically at his shirt before a wall of darkness. We had stumbled into the edge of a copse; Mark’s chest had become impaled on barbed wire. My fingertip search of the air located the branch that had assaulted me, hanging low over the wire, and I inched my