Guardians Of The Haunted Moor Read online

  Guardians Of The Haunted Moor

  Harper Fox

  Copyright Harper Fox 2015

  Published by FoxTales at Smashwords

  Guardians Of The Haunted Moor

  Copyright © July 2015 by Harper Fox

  Cover art by Harper Fox

  Cover photo licensed through Shutterstock

  All rights reserved

  No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from FoxTales.

  FoxTales

  www.harperfox.net

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  This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to persons living or dead is entirely coincidental.

  Table of Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Guardians Of The Haunted Moor

  Harper Fox

  Prologue—Winter Solstice, 2014

  Gideon wouldn’t have noticed the date, except that the Falmouth skies were already dark when he left the police building at four o’clock. Surely the days couldn’t get any shorter. He’d driven down here this morning in the pitch-black too.

  It was enough to depress a man who didn’t have the world at his feet and a cherry on top. He glanced at his mobile. There was the date—21st December, the doorway, the depth of winter and the beginning of the return of the light—and there was the cherry, a text from Lee. He confined himself to one a day when Gideon was on duty, but it was always a good one, something he’d noticed about the places or people around him that would make Gideon laugh or shake his head in wonder. The clouds were heavy with sleet, not like this time last year when bright stars had shone over strange events in the quiet streets beyond the bay.

  The wind moaned around the police station car park. Some joker had found flashing blue Christmas lights to hang above the doorway. Flecks of ice stung Gideon’s neck, and he got into the Rover. Briefly he was distracted by the sight of the trainees and new constables spilling out of the building. What did it say about him, if the policemen were starting to look young to him? He chuckled, then pulled down the rearview to check that his gravitas and his sergeant’s cap were in place. The shortest day had been a long one, teaching this latest crop, and he didn’t want to lose his advantage over them now.

  Yes, he had the world at his feet. As worlds went, it wasn’t massive, but within its limits—from Bodmin to the far west coast, sunny days at Drift farmhouse and firelit evenings at home in Dark village—Gideon had everything. Six months of married life under his belt, only two weeks more of physio and teaching days like the one he’d just endured before he’d be passed fit for full active duty again, his recovery complete. He had a mother, a brother, a small but functional version of the family he’d missed out on as a child.

  He had a baby on the way. Gideon opened his text hurriedly, suddenly afraid that his daily cherry might be news of Elowen, so pregnant now that she could barely waddle across the farmhouse kitchen to fetch her pickled gherkins from the fridge.

  I’m at Roselands, visiting your mum, Lee’s message read. I know she’s coming to us for Christmas, but I felt as if I should. Meet you there if you get out in time. I’ll buy you dinner at Sam’s.

  Sam’s would be nice, though it was Gideon’s turn to buy. They made a pilgrimage there every time business brought both of them to Falmouth, in memory of their first proper date. Doing so without incident was always a luxury. Gideon shivered, wondering if the restaurant’s decorations this year would include the tinsel fish. A deeper unease touched him. Everyone who knew Lee well paid attention when he did something because he felt he should. The reasons would appear soon enough.

  Gideon started the Rover and put her into gear. He’d only had about a year of feeling like a well-loved, loving son, but he didn’t think he could bear to lose Ma Frayne, Methodist minister’s wife and sudden, unexpected proponent of gay rights.

  He set the fear aside. Lee would have spoken to him directly about any premonitions of that nature. Lee’s gifts were in full play after his concussion and encounter with Gwylim Kitto, but they had come back under his control, and he was only your average incredibly talented local clairvoyant once more, running his stage shows and finishing up his popular TV series Spirits in the Stones so that he could concentrate on...

  Gideon pulled his attention back to the present. It wouldn’t look good for Sergeant Frayne to rear-end a citizen with the police truck. Whenever he thought too hard about the next few months, the change about to shake their lives to the foundation, the reason why his own job had become doubly important and Lee’s was going on hold, he became barely competent to walk a straight line, let alone drive. He braked in time and pulled out of the junction into the rainy night.

  ***

  The difference time and circumstance could make to the outsides of buildings! Last solstice, when Gideon had stood out here in the snow, Roselands had loomed above him like a cliff, its ordinary, pleasant Edwardian facade blocking the moonlight. His father had been immured here, imprisoned still more deeply in dementia, threatening to Gideon still as childhood’s memories echoed. His mother had been almost a stranger to him. Since then Lee Tyack had overhauled his life, and the house was just a building, familiar now from countless visits, friendly because his mother was happy and well treated there.

  He exchanged greetings with Mrs Harle the manager, and jogged down the corridor to the visitors’ lounge. Manners dictated that he take off his cap, but the old lady liked to see him in full uniform, especially if her friends were about. Their children might have promising and responsible careers too, but none of them wore it on their sleeve like Gideon. She sat up, beaming, as he entered the room. “Here he is. Have you had a hard day, dear?”

  “No, Ma. Just teaching the kiddies.” He didn’t like to disappoint her, and wondered if he should make up a burglary and a car chase or two. All that would be part of his routine again soon enough, though, and he settled for planting a kiss on her upturned face. “How’s things?”

  “Lovely. Your Lee’s been making us a nice long visit.”

  Yes. There he was, in an upright chair by the table, clearly just as pleased with the uniform as Mrs Frayne, but for his own sweet reasons. Shadows of weariness dispersed as he stood up to accept Gideon’s embrace, the unhidden exchange of a married couple. The residents of Roselands had got over it long ago, and Mrs Frayne soon brought any new ones up to speed by introducing Lee to them, loudly, as “my son’s husband.” There was nobody around to scandalise today, however, except...

  Except the pastor. Gideon blinked, keeping hold of Lee’s shoulders. “Hello, Dad,” he said uncertainly. “It’s, um.... It’s nice to see you down here.”

  “He insisted on coming down. He wanted to see you and Lee.”

  Mrs Frayne was in the habit of speaking for him. In keeping with her nature, she often made him sound far more benevolent than he had ever been. Gideon looked to Lee for confirmation. His beautiful west-coast lad was all about the silver part of his spectrum today, a winter-beach pallor under his skin, his eyes full of strange lights. Lee nodded. “Yeah, he got his carer to help him downstairs. He’s been here all afternoon.”

  No wonder Lee looked tired, more grey visible at his temples than usual. Pastor Frayne normally kept to his room. Ever since his mind had begun to vacate
his body, his physical reality had become little more than a cipher, hard to notice. Today he was here. A presence, heavy and brooding, inhabited his gaunt frame, his stony, hawk-like face. It had a strange attraction, and Gideon went to stand in front of him. “Everything all right, Dad? Would you like me to fetch Ezekiel?”

  He wondered how he’d have felt if his father had nodded, commanded him with all his old authority to summon the elder son. But the pastor had said his farewells a year ago, on a long dark night just like this one, and he remained silent, staring through Gideon and past the wall behind him. Gideon gave Lee a querying glance. “Wasn’t it this time last year...”

  “That he last spoke. Yes. I thought about Zeke too, but he’s not answering his phone.”

  “Okay.” Gideon took a seat at the table by Lee’s side. He gave his ma a reassuring grin, and looked at the scatter of carrier bags around her chair. “Looks like my other half managed to do a bit of shopping as well as visiting the in-laws. Unless you’ve been ransacking the baby-clothes stores, Ma.”

  “Oh, no,” she said comfortably, smoothing out a tiny T-shirt on her lap. “Lee’s just been showing me all the lovely things he bought. All different colours, even though you know you’re getting a girl. It’s good that you’re not...” She paused, and Gideon waited, not daring to meet Lee’s sidelong glance. Her pronouncements were good as gold. “Not stereotyping her gender.”

  Gideon bit his lip. This kid was going to be Cornwall’s new generation, for sure, with her two gay dads and a right-on zealot for a grandma. “We’ll be sure not to do that.”

  “I can’t keep saying her, though, Gideon. She’s due any day now. Haven’t you decided on a name?”

  They had. They’d been planning on telling the old lady next time they saw her, so Gideon drew a breath. But Lee laid a silencing hand to his wrist. “Hang on a second, Gid. There’s one more thing I was meaning to show Mrs Frayne. Saving the best for last, you know?”

  Gideon was far from sure. Lee’s other purchases came from the various boho-chic little businesses that dotted Falmouth’s main street. The bag he was opening now was marked Prowse Prints, an outfit Gideon’s local colleagues busted regularly for creating fake ID and passports. “Not sure you should be shopping there, mate. Supporting crime, and all that.”

  “You’re a fine one to talk. They’re only still open because you thought Daz Prowse would be better off working for his uncle than safecracking with the Bodmin burglary brigade.”

  “There is that. Did Jem Prowse say how he was doing?”

  “Oh, yes. He nicked the cartridges out of the printers and sold them on eBay the first afternoon he was there. Jem had to fire him.”

  “Oh, dear.”

  “Still, he managed to get this little number run off for us. What do you think?”

  Gideon spread out the romper suit Lee handed him and examined it critically. It was made out of a fabric that looked ready to catch light if you so much as looked at it, and would never, if he could help it, touch his daughter’s skin. Then he got why this had been the final flourish in Lee’s fashion parade, and nodded solemnly. “It’s lovely. Tamsyn Elizabeth Tyack-Frayne—don’t know how they managed to fit all that on such a little thing.”

  Mrs Frayne sat up sharply in her chair, almost upsetting her teacup. “Elizabeth? That’s my name, Gideon.”

  “I know, Ma.”

  “You’re giving your baby one of my names?”

  “Don’t mind, do you? A great big cumbersome Kernowek-English name, to go with her huge wardrobe and the five hundred books she already owns.” Gideon went to sit on the arm of the old lady’s chair. He passed her a handkerchief and patted her shoulder. Lee was beaming broadly. “I am right, aren’t I?” Gideon asked him. “We are just expecting one baby—not the half dozen all this would seem to imply?”

  “Just one. A very little one, too.”

  “You’d never think it to see the state of our flat, Ma. My library’s gone. All the things I was going to do in there! Study for my inspectorate, write my memoirs...”

  “All you’ve done in there so far is read old copies of Auto Express.”

  “The cars I could’ve had, Ma! Now I have to drive Lee’s clapped-out Escort forever, just because I have to keep Princess Tamsyn Elizabeth in bibs and nappies, and—”

  “Shut up,” Lee interrupted him amiably, lobbing the awful romper suit at him to catch. “Don’t listen to him, Mrs Frayne. He wouldn’t rest until we’d cleared every book of mine as well as his out of his so-called library, so he could strip it down and paint what he thinks look like ducklings and kittens all over it. Poor kid’s gonna be traumatised for life, with those hawks and panthers glaring down at her.”

  “Oh, dear,” the old lady gasped, caught between laughter and sobs, waving the handkerchief for mercy. “I think I’d better come and have a look at your arrangements, boys. I have done this before.”

  “We were hoping you might.”

  “How is Elowen? I saw her a fortnight ago when your uncle Jago brought her over for a visit, but things change so fast at this stage.”

  “She’s fine. Ready to pop any minute, she thinks, though the docs are still saying New Year.”

  “Well, a woman knows best. My doctor thought you were twins, Gideon, you were so late and so big. But I knew it was just my fine, stalwart son on the way. And when you were born, you...”

  “Please, Ma.” Gideon waved her gently to silence. “Lee doesn’t need to hear all my infant prodigies.”

  “What do you think we’ve been talking about this afternoon? Besides, you’ll be doing the same thing to Tamsyn Elizabeth in a few years’ time.”

  Gideon tried to imagine the years. It was difficult, with his little bird still in the bush, still an abstract baby despite all his efforts for her in the nursery and his visits to Elowen since she’d returned from France three months before. Glancing across, he saw Lee struggling with the concept too—not just the adoption, but the school days, the thousands of changes and shifting realities of bringing up Lee’s niece as their own child. He went back to sit beside him, reaching out a hand. Lee took it, returning his grip fiercely. Between them they bridged the gap. “That’s right,” Lee said firmly. “I’ve got a special book I’m gonna write all her embarrassing anecdotes in, complete with photographic evidence.” His mobile beeped. “Excuse me a second.” He read the incoming text with just the slightest increase of his sea-bleached pallor, then looked up. “That’s Michel. His plane got in on time. He reckons he’ll be at Drift in an hour or so.”

  “Michel?” Mrs Frayne echoed nervously. “Why is he coming?”

  Gideon called up a cheerful sergeant’s smile. Both Lee and his mother looked as though they could use it. “Because he’s a decent bloke, despite his propensity for knocking up his students. He feels responsible, and he wants to make sure that Elowen’s okay.”

  “But if she’s not due until New Year...”

  “He’s got some time off. He’s just over on a visit.” Other than his belief in Michel’s decency, based on the handful of meetings they’d had since last June, Gideon didn’t know what was tearing the French archaeologist away from his latest excavation. “He and Elowen are bound to have things to talk about. She’s taking up her job on his team as soon as she can after the baby’s born.”

  An odd silence descended on the room. The gas fire clicked and rustled in its imitation hearth. The residents’ lift thumped in the distance, and then these sounds also seemed to suspend themselves. Lee raised his head suddenly. “What time is it, Gid?”

  “The time? Er...” Gideon checked his watch. “Ten past five. Why? You getting hungry?”

  “No. It isn’t that.” He drew in a deep, soft inhalation. “Mrs Frayne,” he said distantly, “can you be brave?”

  The old lady turned to him. She met his eyes, and her expression of bemusement firmed up into a resolution Gideon had only seen a few times in his life before, when her overbearing husband had pushed her gentle nature pa
st its limits. “Very seldom,” she said, “but yes, if I have to be. What do you need to tell me, dear?”

  “It’s the pastor. I’m afraid he’s dead.”

  Gideon almost cracked into laughter. The pastor was sitting bolt upright in his chair in the corner, unmoved by talk of grandchildren or the arrival by night of decent, responsible biological fathers. Lee hadn’t even looked in the old man’s direction. His focus was on Mrs Frayne, his expression so gentle that Gideon could have died himself for love of him. Instead he went over and laid two fingertips to the artery at his father’s wrinkled neck. “Fuck,” he said, mercifully too softly for Mrs Frayne to catch.

  All the rooms at Roselands were amply provided with emergency cords. They were large and obvious, their handles made of neon-bright plastic. It still took Gideon a nightmare ten seconds to locate one and pull it, the ice of shock slowing his limbs. He darted back to the pastor’s side—loosened his collar, tipped his head back, made another, more searching check at his carotid. He was more concerned for his mother, whose frailty would scarcely withstand this loss, dropped like a thunderbolt into her tea-time peace...

  He need not have worried. Lee had her. He was kneeling in front of her, holding her hands and all her attention. Gideon knew from experience how that grip could block out the world. Lee would offer no false comfort, deny nothing. He simply parted the waters, like the pier on a strong granite bridge, and protected the fragile human souls around him until they’d found their further shore. “It’s all right,” he said. “You’ll be all right.”

  “Yes. It seems a dreadful thing, though, that he should just have... slipped away like that.”

  “He had no pain. It was time.”

  “You know that, don’t you? You know.”