Mervin Badman

by Jonathan Antony Strickland

heard soft footfalls head away and stop. Then after a few seconds the footfalls returned and I remember feeling a soft dust being spread around my mouth. Then once again everything turned off and the next thing I knew I was in this pit.

  For an unknown amount of time I lay in jet black darkness, my body to weak to move and a horrible feeling of helplessness seemed to engulf me. The feeling was to get worse as I began to hear movement, movement that sounded close. As if someone or something stood over me, watching.

  Eventually I was able to make slow movements as a small amount of life began to return to each of my four numb limbs. I was still in darkness but knew that if I could regain enough strength to reach into one of my trouser pockets I would find my small reading torch, which I used during the nights when writing in this diary. The same torch in fact that I am using right now.

  I waited and waited for myself to recover, and as I did, so did the shuffling noise of the invisible nightmare which seemed to await me. Just when I thought I was going to crack and scream out loud in terror, an extra minuscule of strength returned to my partially paralyzed body that allowed me to reach down into my pocket and remove the torch from within. With shaking hands I fumbled for the small switch on its side and upon finding it, clicked it downwards. And then I really did scream in terror.

  The small bright light stung my eye's causing a slight pain in my forehead, but this was only a minor pain, and I knew it would cease in a few brief seconds. It was the large lurking black silhouette that stood over me that caused me to scream and choke with fear.

  I consider myself to be a relatively relaxed individual, able to cope with dangers and disasters in a far better ways than many other men in similar circumstances could. And even though I was starting to panic, once I had reached my torch, a rational thought struck me that perhaps it was not some big nasty monster that was going to eat me but instead was either Phil, Ted or perhaps even Greg, returned to see what had happened to his lost friends, and now waited and worried for his hurt comrade. Oh, if only I was not so level headed I might have stuck to my original thought and been that bit more prepared.

  The silhouette in front of me was far to dark to have been cast by a man. Even if the man had been dark skinned there was no way that he would have appeared that black...Jet black.

  The shadows movement was strange and unnatural as well, constantly moving its arms and head in short sharp jerks.

  It hung back in this manner, keeping to the edge of the circle of light that the torch gave off. Watching me as my eyes followed it, wide and bulging with fear. Then without any indication it sprang forwards into the light, its head a mere two feet away from my own and I gazed straight into the face of my tormentor.

  I cannot explain the exact thoughts that went through my head, though I know that it wasn't fear. Not at first. It's hard to put my finger on it really but I think confusion and puzzlement sums up what I felt best. You see, I had half expected to see the big hairy monster I had imagined before, or some evil minion that had escaped the bowls of hell, with sharp claws, fanged teeth and red glowing eyes, the kind that you get in all the old classic horror films.

  Instead the face looked human, though covered with a thick lair of mud. The eyes of the thing where man like as well, though they looked to have once seen better days from there red, bloodshot hue. I then looked the thing up and down and saw that its whole body was naked and covered likewise in mud. Not ordinary mud though, this was the same type that had laced the bottom of the lake. Thick black wet muck, glued to his body so tightly it could have been a second skin. And although its movements and actions were alien there was nothing else to suggest that what stood in front of me was nothing more than a man. A man covered with thick wet pond muck, with a tall wiry frame and an unusually big fat pot belly that didn't seem to fit with the rest of his physical make-up.

  And for a time that is all the thing did. Stand above me, looking me up and down as though it where examining me. For some strange reason it reminded me of the time I had been taken to the dentists as a child, sat in the chair with its black leather cushioning awaiting treatment while the dental surgeon and his vicious looking equipment hovered around my head, his eyes never straying from me, watching constantly.

  Seeing as the mudman in front of me presented no danger (for the time being at least) and I was still far too weak to get to my feet I decided to look about and to gain more information on the predicament that I found myself. In foresight, I wish now I hadn't.

  Laying but a few yards away from me where the lifeless bodies of Ted and Phil, there eyes glazed over and gazing upwards into the blackness. Small pieces of flesh had been removed from there faces, arms and torso's. Blood seeped outwards, covering the actual wounds but from the size and shape of the wounds a horrible thought struck me and I guessed at there cause.

  The mudman who had watched the horror on my face confirmed my fear as he grinned at me. A big sickening grin that exposed his large blood covered teeth. And suddenly fear and panic sliced into me like death's very own sickle and my weakened vocal chords did there best to howl with fear.

  The grin on the face of the man bathed in mud was replaced with a heart warming, comforting smile. Then with a calm and clear voice that suggested age and wisdom the mudman said: "Relax my friend, for although your fate is in my hands. I do not intend to kill you.

  It is me who is old and grey who shall soon die, not you. Me who was reborn over thirty years ago in the same way that you too shall be friend…My friend". The mudman then put his hands onto my shoulders and said: "My son".

  The thing then gave another of its great smiles before continuing: "When I came to this place of wonder I too was like you. Lost, confused and tired before Mervin found me. He then was the one who sought himself a son, a son who would carry on his legend and the legend of his for-fathers. A son who'd keep the precious golden sleep dust from becoming extinct. Keep the legend alive".

  The mudman then looked up into the blackness and his eyes began to glaze over, though not with death like Phil and Ted's lifeless glares. His eyes bore tears, tears that ran down his cheeks and washed away a tiny fraction of muck. Beneath the muck I could clearly see flesh and I knew that this was no monster, at least not the kind I had originally thought. This was but a man, though from what he had done to Phil and Ted, in my eyes he was still (if not more so) a monster to match my original fantasy.

  His hands then came quickly upwards and grabbed hold of my head, with two powerful thumbs he pressed hard into my temples. I yelled out as the pain grew and as I did he breathed out a golden dust, the same kind of dust I'd seen in the cavern. The dust flew from his mouth and straight into my own.

  I inhaled the dust, sucking it deep into my lungs, and as I did, so did the pain in my head seem to vanish. With the pain gone, new alien thoughts appeared in my mind and a voice as evil as what it was ancient said: "Go fourth and become the horror, for mankind needs the darkness of nightmares. The terror that there sciences will never understand. The same terror that will make the night as mysterious and deadly as it has always been, since the day they where spat out and given life unto the planets surface, until the moment the soil of the land reclaims them to it's womb".

  Mervin Badman then took his hands from my head and lay down beside me in the mud. I watched as the mud around him rose up, covering his body before he was sucked downwards, vanishing completely into it the cold dark shroud of filth.

  For some reason at that moment I knew that his body would rot down there and his bones would mix with many others, including his victims and his second farther, indeed all the other Mervin's that now lay dead within the bottom of this pit.

  Just now you may be confused as to why I called him by a name. The reason I have done this is that at the point when he had vanished into the mud, old memories from my childhood came flooding back to me, and then it clicked. I knew who he was. Having spen
t my whole life (but most importantly the time I’d spent as a boy growing up and playing around in Tremwell) my mother like all the other mothers who had told there children the same tale had said on various occasions not to go onto the moors, just in case Mervin Badman was about.

  The legend around these parts goes (if I remember correctly) that a naked nasty man covered from head to foot in mud, captures, kills and eats lost souls who have wandered onto the moors and strayed off the path and into the unknown.

  Mervin Badman captures such poor wretches in his mystical fairy rings. He does this by carrying a small stash of magical spores that he takes from his own specially grown golden mushrooms. These he grows back in his home, said to be an unholy cave where the most primeval of all the seven deadly sins is carried out.

  It is said that to set foot inside the rings of Mervin Badman, a deep sleep will befall you, a sleep set to catch the luckless and careless. The sleep is said to last for two nights and two days and if during this time Mervin does check his traps and finds a sleeping man, women or child, he will take the dreamer back to his lair where he will feast on the sleepers flesh until his belly is fat and full. Any spare flesh will be used to fertilize his magical golden fungi and the bones will be buried down deep within his pit.

  During my time in Tremwell I have heard that the myth has changed, mainly because the children of today are harder to scare with monsters and instead the mothers tell of a man dressed in a dirty muck stained rain-coat with not a stitch on beneath it. If your alone and lost, the mothers tell their children that the man will jump out and flash at them, giggling and laughing like a lunatic. Even the name has changed. Now they call him "Mervin, the dirty old badman".

  The story has even carried around the country, up north they have there own variation of the myth. There the story tells of a man who hunts alone in the woods. This man is not naked, though the backside of his trousers is missing. Up north they call him the bare bottomed bogey man of the woods.

  And that's it really. That's all that's seemed to have happened this fine day. Not one of my usual days I have to admit and not one I'll think I'll forget in a hurry, though secretly if I ever get out of this mess, I hope the memories of it will fade away forever.

  Well…That's that. My encounter with the legendary Mervin Badman…And now I'm stuck. Stuck in a hole with only my two dead friends for company. If only I was a little stronger I could climb out of this hole…out, back outside into the fresh crisp air and yellow sherbet sunlight. But I'm weak. Weak, ever so weak, stuck in a hole full of bones with two dead men I once knew. And there’s voices. The voices are calling me.

  I'm hungry as well, though not as hungry as I was at first. It was only a nibble mind you, a few bites at most. Just enough to get my strength back so as I can climb out of my hole. Besides, Ted and Phil would have rotted away to nothing and I do need the strength if I'm ever going to get out. Ted and Phil won’t mind, not if it means me living and not joining them and the rest in this pit. I think when I'm strong enough I'll bury them here in the mud. Not that I want to understand, but if Greg happens to show up he might just get the wrong impression. Yes, better hide them from Greg. It will be for his benefit more than mine. After losing that beetle of his, seeing Ted and Phil dead might push the poor guy once and for all over the edge.

  I think the voices are telling me that what I've just done too regain the strength back into my limbs is right as well. Though