The Bog

by Talbot, Michael

  He walked up to the top of the first hill and then the next, and it was only when he had reached the promontory of the tallest hill that he stopped and looked out over the valley. There was every likelihood that if the man were a Roman envoy he would have set up his camp here. Not only was there plenty of room for the soldiers, but also the prominence of the bluff afforded a clear view of anything that approached. As he looked out over the vista he wondered again what could have so savagely overcome a Roman soldier and military strategist who no doubt would have taken every precaution to protect himself.

  Suddenly, as David mulled over the thought, in the thicket at the foot of the hill he heard a sound. He looked down at the wall of brush, but saw nothing. As he continued to look at the thicket he heard another sound. Something was definitely moving behind the bushes. He started down the hill, and the very moment he initiated his advance whatever it was that had been watching him took off. He too broke into a run, but it wasn’t until he had nearly reached the thicket that he saw what it was. Running at breakneck pace and heading deeper into the bog, was the little girl Amanda.

  Fearful that she was headed toward certain disaster, he continued after her.

  “Hey!” he yelled. “I won’t hurt you. Stop!”

  It was of no use. She continued blindly on. When he first entered the thicket, his feet pounded against solid ground, but a little ways in, the ground became wetter. Not thinking of his own safety, he continued.

  Amanda moved like a wild thing, like a rabbit or a deer that had been frightened out of hiding, and as he crashed through a tangle of alder buckthorn he saw that she was already some distance ahead. He penetrated deeper into the undergrowth and was once again transfixed by the primeval beauty of the bog. Along a fallen cedar to his left, luxuriant masses of rusty woodsia grew and tubers of bladderwort nestled among the spreading roots of the larger trees. Ahead, in a shaft of sunlight, the delicate little crosiers of a royal fern uncurled, and beneath a rock a boreal bog orchid with a raceme of small but exquisite white blossoms perfumed the damp air.

  He leaped over one of the stagnant black rivulets of the bog, and as he came pounding down on the other side he was relieved to find that the ground did not vanish deceptively from beneath his feet. He pressed on.

  Finally, realizing that he was pushing his own luck: far beyond its limit, he paused, and his boots sank several inches into the spongy ground before stopping.

  “Amanda!” he called out. “Please!”

  Perhaps it was the desperation of his entreaty, or perhaps the fact that he had called her by her first name, but he saw the flicker of white far ahead come to a stop.

  “Amanda, I’m not going to hurt you. I just want to tell you that you’re in danger in here. The bog is not a safe place to play in.”

  The patch of white moved again, and he realized she was coming toward him. Within moments the dirty but angelic face appeared among the briar. He looked down and noticed that he himself was cut by the brambles and flecked here and there with blood, and there were pieces of plant debris caught in his hair. But although her hair was disheveled, it was free from such chaff, and her skin, he noticed, had also fared far better than his.

  In her hand he observed for the first time that she carried what looked like the jawbone of an animal. She looked up at him shyly, but a definite curiosity shone in her cheerless brown eyes.

  For several moments neither of them spoke and they just stared at each other like two creatures of the forest slowly negotiating their territory. Finally he broke the silence.

  “You don’t need to worry. I’m not going to hurt you.” She looked at him suspiciously.

  David smiled. “Come on, I know you can talk. I heard you, remember?”

  For the first time a flicker of recognition passed through her face and she nodded timidly, seeming to recall the incident several nights previous.

  Realizing that she was shy, he continued. “The only reason that I chased you just now is I was worried about you running into the bog as you did. You know, it’s very dangerous in here.”

  She stared at him perplexedly, as if she were startled that anyone should care about her safety, but still she remained silent.

  He decided to try a new approach. He decided to ignore her. Picking up a stick, he sat down next to one of the stagnant bog ponds and started to dab lightly at its surface. As he continued to pay her no mind he once again became absorbed in still other features of his surroundings. He noticed that shiny scavenger beetles covered the muck of the shallower portions of the pool, and a mob of back swimmers jostled across its watery surface. Still deeper in the dark mirror he saw the real lords of the pool, rough-skinned newts in various stages of development with pink, frilly gills and pebbled orange bellies scraping slowly across the bottom.

  The bog was also rich with smells, the deep muggy scent of wet earth and vegetation, and sounds, the high stridulations of the cicadas and the distant buzzing of the flies. Suddenly one of the buzzing sounds grew louder, as a dragonfly swept past his face and narrowly missed the floating web of a filmy dome spider. It was a short-lived victory, for it immediately landed on the gelatinous cap of a bright-orange toadstool David recognized as the deadly fly agaric. The bog, in many ways, was a treacherous place.

  As he continued to gaze at the arboreous landscape it became easy for him to imagine that the Batrachian age of great fern forests and endless swamps had never ended. In the pool before him a bubble of marsh gas erupted from the ooze and rushed upward in a swirl of silt, only to break the surface and vanish, with nothing to mark its passing but a tiny pop.

  Out of the corner of his eye he noticed that Amanda had finally sidled up beside him.

  “You know, I really won’t hurt you,” he said, turning to face her.

  “Then why were you chasin’ me?” she inquired unexpectedly.

  “I told you I was afraid for you. The bog is a very dangerous place.”

  She thought this over carefully and then looked down at the stick he was wafting in his hands. “Why are you pokin’ at the water?”

  “Just for something to do.”

  “Wo’ ya like to see wha’ I found?” she asked.

  “Sure,” he said, happy that he was gaining her trust.

  But before he could say anything else she had again bounded off deeper into the bog.

  “Hey!” he shouted as he once more had to break into a run to keep up with her.

  Several times, as they pressed farther into the green labyrinth, she would point at a bed of lilies or an innocuous-looking clearing and announce simply, “Sink.”

  Finally they reached a large and muddy clearing encircled by an almost impenetrable wall of blackthorn and mountain ash, and Amanda stopped. As they stood there for a moment David slowly became aware that another smell now mingled with the background scent of the place. It was an unpleasant smell, a fetor of putrefaction not unlike the stench that had begun to filter through the cottage. Equally foreboding, he noticed that the cacophonous buzzing of the flies had grown even louder. Amanda pointed at a large clump of brambles.

  David stepped forward, his boots squishing ominously in the black muck, until he saw what she was pointing at. There was a body beneath the brambles. He crouched down to get a better look, and recognized the garish yellow hair immediately.

  It was Winnifred Blundell. Her pencil-like legs protruded gracelessly out from under one side of the bush and her face was turned sideways and was half buried in the black ooze, but the wounds around her neck and chest were clearly visible. He leaned closer to gain a better vantage, and a small cloud of flies rose up as he approached. Her skin was gray and swollen, and he noticed that one of the carrion beetles that now harvested her rotting flesh had become entangled in her yellow hair. She had been dead for quite some time, but what attracted his attention the most was the manner of her death. Although many of the wounds were now obscured by maggots, their odd crescent shape was distinctive and unmistakable.

  He stra
ightened when he could take the smell no longer and batted at the flies that now besieged him. His mind was spinning, and for several minutes he just stood, staring at the body and contemplating the implications of the discovery. He did not like the conclusion that he was forced to reach, but the evidence was irrefutable. Something unfathomably rapacious prowled Hovern Bog. In the distant past the inhabitants of the valley had been so fearful of it that they had sacrificed living victims to it in attempts to appease it. It was capable of killing humans and even seemed to do so with relish. But what disturbed him the most was that it was still there. Whatever it was, it, or its descendants, still prowled the bog.

  In the background he became aware that Amanda was rhythmically whacking the jawbone she was carrying against a tree. He turned, intending to lead her away from the horrific sight, when the bone finally captured his attention.

  “What is that?” he asked.

  “Jussa bone.”

  “May I see it?”

  She looked at him with the same puzzlement with which she seemed to greet all of his remarks and diffidently offered him the ghoulish object. He took it and examined it carefully. As he had previously surmised, it appeared to be the jawbone of a smallish animal, old and bleached white by the sun. What drew his interest, however, were the numerous gouges on its surface, rasp-like grooves identical to the teeth marks in the sternum of the bog bodies.

  “Where did you get this?” he asked.

  “Over there,” Amanda replied, and started off to show him. Growing increasingly cognizant of the fact that she knew the bog like the back of her hand, he allowed her to guide him. A short distance from where Winnifred’s body lay were numerous other muddy hillocks surrounded by dense vegetation and bounded by the inky rivulets of the bog. The hillocks, he noticed, had a trampled look, and over the entire place there hung a faint but malodorous odor. As he looked at the hills more closely, he realized they were literally covered with bones. Some of the bones were white and appeared to be relatively recent deposits, but as his eyes took in more of the details, he discerned that beneath these there were smaller fragments of bone, discolored and half rotted from exposure to the elements. As he looked closer still, he saw that the very mud itself was largely composed of even smaller bone fragments, blackened and nearly pulverized by wind and time, but evidence of a vast and inconceivable carnage nonetheless.

  He also noticed something else. Projecting from various locations on the hillocks were short wooden stakes with pieces of rotting ropes trailing from them. Here and there he also saw snippets of hide and mud-trampled fleece. And suddenly he realized why Old Flory kept sheep.

  The place was a feeding ground, and from the look of things its unknown inhabitant had fed there quite a lot. Furthermore, it was apparent that the villagers were well aware that something of voracious appetite lived in their bog. Thankfully, they had apparently de-escalated their sacrifices from human beings to sheep, but he now reasoned that the attitude they conveyed to strangers about the bog had something to do with their fearful and lengthy involvement with the thing.

  He turned to Amanda. “Do you know what’s responsible for all of this?”

  “Why, Ol’ Bendy,” she replied.

  “Who?” he asked again.

  “You know, Ol’ Bendy,” she repeated, not understanding why the term held no meaning for him.

  “Do you know what Ol’ Bendy looks like?”

  She shook her head slowly as her eyes widened with alarm. “Oh, no. If I’d see’d him, he would ’a eaten me.” Growing fearful himself, David asked, “Where’s Ol’ Bendy now?”

  Amanda shrugged her tiny shoulders. “I dunno. He don’t come out durin’ the day.”

  Thank God for that, David thought to himself as he looked around nervously. “Come on,” he said to the little girl. “We’re leaving.”

  “I’ll lead,” Amanda offered and once again hastened off.

  When they reached the edge of the bog she ran brightly down the hill ahead of him, and by the time David had himself left the thicket he noticed that she had run right into Old Flory.

  “Where ’ave you been?” he demanded angrily and jerked her up by her frail little arm. She let out a cry and he cracked her soundly across the face. “Shattup! ’Asn’t I told you never to go—” He stopped abruptly when he noticed David approaching. He looked at David coldly. “What were you doin’ wi’ ’er innair?”

  “I saw her run in. I was frightened for her.”

  Old Flory looked down again at the pale and frightened girl. “Now see! ’Asn’t I told you?” He yanked her up again as if she were no more than a little rag doll and pushed her in the direction of the ramshackle cottage “Now, you get ’ome.”

  He looked back at David and scowled, searching David’s eyes as if to glean some hint of what he might have seen. But before he could say anything else, David spoke. “You’d better get the constable. Winnifred Blundell’s body is in there.”

  “Where?” Old Flory demanded, fear in his eyes.

  “Innair,” David mocked, tilting his head in the direction of the bog. “Near where you stake out sheep for Ol’ Bendy.”

  Old Flory’s eyes widened with surprise, but before he could add any further comment David had strode off. As he walked back toward the camp he turned and saw Old Flory hobbling angrily after Amanda. He reached her and again jerked her up sharply by the arm.

  He started yelling at the girl again and David felt a terrible aching in his heart when he realized that he had perhaps made an error in telling Old Flory that he knew about the stakes. He watched angrily, bitterly, as Old Flory continued to drag his helpless daughter all the way back to the house.

  Considering in total the events of the past several days had a strange effect on David. He told Brad about finding Winnifred’s body, about the bite marks, and even about the feeding ground, and although the younger man reacted with dismay, his excitement over discovering the two Roman bodies kept him from discerning the gravity with which David viewed the situation. On another occasion, David might have been more conscious of the danger he believed the younger man to be in, would have spent more time stressing the implications of the discovery to him, and even urged him not to pass any more nights in so vulnerable and unprotected a dwelling as a tent. But as it was, the discoveries of the afternoon had left David in an almost trancelike state.

  Even Melanie he only told about the discovery of Winnifred’s body in the vaguest terms and left out all mention of the bite marks, the feeding ground, or even the bite marks on the two Roman bodies they had unearthed. She naturally pressed him for more information, but this he stalwartly withheld, and he spent the better part of the evening in seclusion. He had only one thought on his mind. His vision of the centaur had been too mercurial and insubstantial for him to pin down and understand. But the creature that roamed the bog was physical and subsisted on living flesh. And this fact brought his driving curiosity forth full force. Regardless of the dangers, he had to discover what it was. He resolved to go into the bog that night to look for it.

  He waited until Melanie had gone upstairs to bed and then he went into the gun room of the cottage. He surveyed the once-dusty cases, now shining brightly from Mrs. Comfrey’s skilled hand, and opened one of them.

  He detested guns, mainly because his father had counseled him so firmly to like and use them. Because of that he had never even fired one. But as he removed one of the ancient rifles from the gun cabinet, he realized that they were really quite simple in mechanism. It was as he was searching through the various drawers in the cabinets for bullets that Melanie came into the room.

  “What are you doing?” she asked, seeing the gun in his hand.

  He found a box of bullets and placed them on the table. He also found what appeared to be an array of paraphernalia for cleaning the guns, and decided it would be prudent to do so before attempting to use the aged instrument. He sat down at the table. “Cleaning this gun, why?”

  “For God’s sake, David,
you hate guns.”

  He kept his eyes trained on the piece of gun batting before him, trying desperately to think of some sort of excuse. “I’m just going for a walk,” he blurted out feebly. “And taking a gun?”

  “Well, given what happened to Winnifred Blundell, it seemed like a good idea.”

  “Oh, come on, David,” she said. “I’m not a child.” And then she looked at him, her eyes growing suddenly wider. “There’s more to it than that, isn’t there? Something happened today that you’re not telling me?” David sighed and realized that it was useless to keep up the ruse any longer. Taking a deep breath, he told her everything. When he finished, Melanie collapsed into a chair opposite him.

  For several minutes she said nothing and just stared absently off into space as she processed the information. And then she turned to him, pale with fear. “David, what in God’s name do you think it is?”

  “I’m sure it’s just some animal of some sort.”

  “No, it’s not just some animal,” she muttered darkly. “Oh, Melanie,” David chastised as he stood and proceeded to load the gun.

  She reached over and clenched his arm. “But what about the centaur!”