“This has always been such a creative house,” Philippa enthused. “Turner stayed here once, and of course Duncan Greenleaf used to live here, you know, before us.”
Marcus raised his hand to decline a third gooseberry tart. “Duncan Greenleaf?” he asked. “Can’t say that I’ve heard of him.”
“One of the great illustrators of the 1930s,” Roger explained.
“One of the great, great illustrators of the 1930s,” added Philippa. “He’s still alive, as a matter of fact, but the house got too much for him. He must be – ooh – eighty or ninety by now.”
After tea, the rain suddenly cleared, and the house filled up with silvery sunlight. Roger and Marcus took the dogs out for a run – Marcus wearing a pair of borrowed Wellingtons that made a loud wobbling noise when he walked.
They left the house by the garden gate and walked down a narrow lane. Water was still trickling down the stones and the trees kept dripping down Marcus’s neck.
“I love Sussex,” said Roger. “I just wish I could live down here all the time.”
Marcus gave him a tight smile. He couldn’t wait to take off these wobbling wellies and take the first train back to London. The dogs didn’t help, either. They kept running through the fields and the ditches and then hurtling back again to shake themselves all over Marcus’s overcoat.
As they approached a dense stand of trees, however, Roger whistled sharply to the dogs and called them to heel. They came trotting around him, and he fixed them all to the leash.
“Got to be careful around here,” Roger explained. “The ground on the other side of those trees is pretty boggy. Brambly, too. Quite a few people have lost dogs in there. Caught up in the thorns, drowned, who knows what, and once they’re in there, you’ve no chance of getting them out.”
“Can’t you get the council to clear it?” asked Marcus.
Roger pointed up at a small white sign. It read, ‘Strictly Private: No Trespassing’.
“This is the back of Hastings House. All this land belongs to the Vane family. They’ve been here for two hundred years. Very reclusive lot. Big in shipping, mainly. Sometimes you see one or other of them at a charity dinner or something like that, but most of the time they like to keep themselves to themselves.”
“Not the sort of neighbours you can ask for a cup of sugar, then?”
“You could try, but you’d probably get your bum filled with buckshot the moment you stepped through the front gate.”
They passed the trees, and the lane turned into open countryside again. The wind had risen, and the sky was being hurriedly emptied of clouds. In the distance Marcus could see the long backs of the South Downs, a farm, and a small village with a church spire.
“Beautiful, isn’t it?” said Roger, taking a noisy snort of fresh air. High above the downs, the last of the clouds unraveled and fled away, revealing a wan, cream-coloured moon. And it was then, almost at the same time, that the church bell chimed five, and a flock of rooks circled around it, cawing and complaining.
Marcus stopped in astonishment. “It’s here,” he said.
“What’s here?”
“This is the actual place. I can’t believe it.”
Roger smiled and shook his head like one of his Labradors. “Sorry, old chap. Don’t follow.”
“There was this cereal we used to have when I was a boy … and it had picture on the side, a sort of a trademark. A moon, and a farm, and a village with a church spire. I used to spend hours looking at that picture … and here it is. Whoever drew it must have used this place for reference.”
“Well, well,” said Roger. “There’s a coincidence for you.” He picked up a stick and threw it for the dogs, who went streaming off through the long grass with only their black flapping ears visible. “Wonders will never cease, eh?”
“The moon had a spoon and it was eating everything … the farm, the cattle, the fences. And it was eating a small boy, too. That’s what used to disturb me about it. You had to use a magnifying glass to see him, but—”
Marcus suddenly realized that Roger wasn’t in the slightest bit interested. “Well,” he finished lamely, “you wouldn’t have noticed him if you weren’t looking for him.”
They walked as far as the farm and then Roger looked at his watch. “What train do you want to catch?” he asked. “There’s a good one at 6:50, or we can go and have a last drink in the pub and you can catch the 7:45.”
Marcus said, “That’s all right. I’ll catch the early one.” It was obvious that Roger was beginning to think what he had thought from the very beginning: that school reunions have an awkward emptiness all of their own. The feeling of conspiracy has gone: the intense closeness of twenty or thirty young minds, all trying to learn about the world together. Also gone has the blithe belief that life will last for ever.
They walked back to the house. Philippa gave Marcus a bag of gooseberry tarts to eat on the train. A few miles past Haywards Heath station, he opened the window and threw them into the darkness.
He found out from Companies House that Moon Brand Ltd, used to have a factory in Hemel Hempstead, Herts, but they were absorbed in 1961 by Anglo-Amalgamated Foods, and over half of their products were discontinued, including Moon Brand Wheat Flakes. There were no surviving records to show who might have drawn the hungry moon, although Marcus managed to make a photostat of it.
Back in his flat near Wandsworth Bridge, he pinned a hugely-enlarged copy of it on his living-room wall, and sat staring at it evening after evening. During his lunch hours, he went from one library to another, looking up reference books on trademarks, logos and packaging design.
Eventually, in Putney Library, he came across a huge coffee-table book called Advertising & Packaging Art – and there, to his surprise, he found a colour reproduction of the hungry moon. He had never realized that it had originally been painted in colour – on the cereal box, it had always been black-and-white. The painting was unsigned, and neither the caption, the text or the index gave him any clue as to who the artist might have been.
All it said was ‘trademark used by Moon Brand Ltd for their Wheat Flakes, ca. 1937.’
He borrowed the book and took it to his local copy-shop so that he could make a colour copy. It was there, on a wet Thursday afternoon, that he discovered who had painted the hungry moon, and the answer was so obvious that it almost made him slap his forehead like a cartoon character.
The girl who was operating the copier pulled out a sample and said, “Is the colour all right? That leaf doesn’t look very green.”
Leaf, green. Green, leaf. And right next to the leaf was a rusty-coloured watering-can. Dun can. The hungry moon had been signed, after a fashion, by Duncan Greenleaf.
The girl stared at him. “Are you okay?” she asked. “You don’t look very well.”
He was so old and frail that he was almost transparent. He sat by the window, staring out over the gardens, wrapped in a camel-coloured dressing-gown with braided edges, the sort of dressing-gown that only children wear. His nose was large and well-sculptured, and his hair rose from the top of his head in a fine silver flame. He held his wire-rimmed spectacles in his lap as if he no longer cared to see anything very distinctly.
“Duncan, you’ve got a visitor,” said the plump nurse with the pink cheeks.
Duncan Greenleaf raised his head. His eyes must have been startlingly blue once, but now they were faded and glutinous, and Marcus wasn’t sure whether he could see him or not.
“Mr Greenleaf? My name’s Marcus. I’m an admirer of yours.”
“Admirer? You’re not a homosexual, are you?”
“I meant that I admire your work.”
“I haven’t worked for fifteen years, dear boy. A few sketches, that’s all. The eye can see and the brain can understand, but the hand won’t do what I want it to do.”
Marcus sat down opposite him. “I’ve come about the hungry moon. Well, I’ve always called it the hungry moon. The trademark you painted for Moon Brand Wheat Fl
akes.”
Duncan Greenleaf gave a querulous sniff. “What of it? I painted scores of trademarks.”
“I know. But the hungry moon was the only one with a little boy in it. A little boy with only one hand.”
There was a very long silence. To begin with, Marcus wasn’t sure if Duncan Greenleaf had heard him. But then the old man unfolded his spectacles, put them on, and looked at Marcus with an expression that was close to sadness. “Yes. A little boy with only one hand. I’m surprised you discovered him – he was very tiny, wasn’t he? Very tiny indeed.”
“I used a magnifying glass.”
“Yes, you would have had to. I used a magnifying glass to paint it.”
“The background – that’s the view from the back of your house, wasn’t it? The chap who bought it from you is an old school friend of mine.”
“Yes, you’re right. Looking westward, toward Glynde.”
There was another silence. Then Marcus said, “Who was he? The boy being eaten by the hungry moon?”
Duncan Greenleaf slowly shook his head. “It’s an old story, Marcus. One that’s best forgotten.”
“But why did he have only one hand?”
“The other … he lost.”
“Can’t you just tell me what it means? I’ve been thinking about it on and off for years. Now I’ve met you – now I’ve seen where you used to live … the whole thing’s come alive again. Please.”
Duncan Greenleaf shrugged. “They didn’t believe me then. There’s no reason why you should believe me now.”
“Why don’t you try me? Please. I seriously think I’ll go crackers if I don’t find out.”
The plump nurse brought them two cups of weak tea and a plate of soft digestive biscuits. When she had gone, Duncan Greenleaf said, in the lowest of voices, “The boy was my younger brother Miles. When I was fourteen and he was twelve, we both wanted to be artists and we both wanted to be adventurers. We decided to go exploring at the back of Hastings House. I presume you saw the back of Hastings House?
“Miles and I had heard all kinds of stories about the family who lived there, the Vanes. Some of our friends said they were only half-human. They looked quite normal by day, but by night they turned into some kind of dreadful beast. Of course, being boys, we went by night, so that we could see them at their worst.
“We crawled through all of that appalling undergrowth. I lost count of the times I scratched my face and ripped my clothing. It was a bright moonlit night, you know, but parts of those woods were so dense that we lost sight of each other, and we had to keep in touch with our famous owl noises.
“We found ourselves descending into a very swampy part of the wood. The ground was so muddy that I thought that I was going to sink right up to my waist. There were brambles, too – worse than barbed wire. We stopped and decided to turn back; but just as we did so we heard a whimpering noise not far away. It sounded like an animal in pain, so we made our way towards it. After a long search we found a golden retriever lying on the ground. Both of its front legs were caught in a man-trap. Not a gin-trap, mark you, but an actual man-trap with metal teeth. One of its paws was almost completely severed, and the other leg was almost certainly broken.
“Miles and I tried to open the trap with a stick, but we couldn’t find anything strong enough. In the end Miles said that he would run for help if I stayed behind and tried to comfort this unfortunate dog.”
Duncan Greenleaf stopped for a moment. He sipped a little tea, and then he said, “You are only the third person to whom I have told this story. On the night that it happened, I told an inspector of Lewes Police. I told my father. Neither of them believed me, and for that reason I decided that I would never tell it again. The only way in which I could commemorate the events of that night was to include them in my work … and even now, of course, Moon Brand Wheat Flakes have gone by the board. All these sugary cereals they have these days … and the packaging – so lurid!”
“The hungry moon is a work of art,” said Marcus.
“The hungry moon, as you call it, is a work of explanation, and of love.”
Duncan Greenleaf appeared to be losing the thread, so Marcus asked, “What happened then, when Miles went for help?”
“I waited. The poor dog was in such a state that I was sure it was going to die. I stroked it and tried to reassure it. I was appalled that anybody could have sprung such a trap and left it in the woods where any animal could have walked into it. I was still waiting when I heard the noise of somebody coming through the woods – not from the direction by which Miles and I had entered them, but from the direction of Hastings House. At first I thought I ought to call out ‘help!’ But then something deterred me. It was the heaviness of the person who was approaching. It was the way that they came crashing through the bog and the brambles as if they weren’t even worried about being scratched.
“I regret to say that I abandoned the dog and ran to hide between some nearby trees.
“I didn’t have long to wait. The undergrowth seemed literally to burst apart, a whirlwind of leaves and branches and brambles flailing around like spiky whips; and out of this whirlwind came the most appalling apparition that I had ever seen, or ever will see. It was a human figure, of sorts, dressed in a black cowl and billowing black robes. It was immensely tall, but I could see its eyes glittering inside its cowl, and I could see that it had a huge downturned mouth like a shark’s. I was so frightened that I couldn’t move a muscle.
“This terrible creature seized that poor dog and ripped it out of the man-trap without even opening it. It had long clawlike fingers. The dog screamed, but the creature took hold of its ribcage and pulled it apart, as easily as you might pull a chicken’s ribcage apart. The dog’s innards dropped to the ground and the creature fell on them and started to cram them into its mouth indiscriminately, strings of fat and liver and shredded intestine.
“After a while, the creature left its feast and slowly made its way back through the undergrowth, toward the house. I was shivering and sick to my stomach, as you can imagine, and I turned immediately for home. I had only gone a few yards, however, when I heard another scream up ahead of me – and this time, it wasn’t a dog. I ran as fast as I could. I nearly tore out my eye on one bramble – here, you can still see the scar.
“I didn’t have to go far before I found Miles, with his hand caught at the wrist in another man-trap. His face was grey with shock. He must have tripped, and put out his hand to save himself. The steel teeth had gone right through skin and flesh, and his hand was dangling by not much more than few shreds of skin.
“I tried to open the trap, but it was just as strong as the first one. While I was trying, Miles kept begging me to set him free, but I simply couldn’t. And it was then that I heard that rushing sound again, those fearful crashing footsteps, and I realized that the creature in black was coming for Miles.
Duncan Greenleaf took out his handkerchief and wiped his eyes. “There was nothing else I could do. I couldn’t have left him there for the creature to tear apart.”
“So what did you do?” asked Marcus, although he could easily guess.
“I took out my penknife, and I cut off my brother’s hand.”
“Oh, God,” said Marcus.
“Oh, God, indeed,” said Duncan Greenleaf.
“So that’s him … with just one hand, being eaten up by the hungry moon.”
Duncan Greenleaf said, “Somehow I dragged him out of the woods. I took off my belt and used it as a tourniquet to try to stop the bleeding, but he just went on pumping out more and more. By the time my father could call for the ambulance, he was unconscious; and by the time they got him to hospital, he was dead.”
“But your father didn’t believe what had happened? And neither did the police?”
“Grown-ups don’t believe in black monsters with mouths like sharks, Marcus. Especially when they searched the woods and found nothing at all – no man-traps, no dog. And the Vanes, of course, denied all knowledge of s
uch things, as you would expect them to.
“I don’t expect you to believe me, either. Why should you? But let me tell you this: I looked into the history of the Vane family when I was older. In fact it became something of an obsession of mine, and I expect you can understand why. The Vanes made all of their fortune in shipping, in the Mediterranean, and especially Greece. But in 1856 they were financially ruined: they lost several valuable cargoes and made some bad investments in America. However, only two years went by before the Vane’s main competitors suffered some catastrophic shipwrecks, while the Vanes themselves suddenly appeared to have more money than they knew what to do with.”
“I don’t understand what you’re getting at,” said Marcus.
“Simply this: that John Vane, who was the head of the family at the time, went to Thessaly on the borders of Macedonia, and was publicly said to have ‘consulted with business experts’, who assisted him to rebuild the family fortunes. But what ‘business experts’ could he have possibly found in a Godforsaken place like that?”
“I’m sorry. I have no idea.”
“Ah! Thessaly, as you probably don’t know, has always been notorious for its black magic and its sorcery, and for its witches.”
“He went to see witches?”
“Who else, in Thessaly? The Greeks say that these women have the power to ‘draw down the moon’ – to use all the evil aspects of lunar forces to bring poverty and confusion to anybody they want. All they ask in return is a regular supply of living flesh, human or animal. It said in the Illustrated London News that after his return from Greece, John Vane was seen in the company of a tall woman dressed entirely in black, her identity unknown.”
“You surely don’t think that—”
“They’re cloaked in black, Marcus! That’s what it says in the books! Cloaked in black, with teeth like razors, and they live for ever, if you keep on feeding them!”
He stared at Marcus desperately, gripping the arms of his chair. He appeared to be incapable of saying any more.
Faces of Fear Page 4
