Hellsborough & The Dark Peak

Hellsborough Chronicles - Hellsborough and The Dark Peak

The semi-mythical Van Hallam's adventures in Hellsborough and The Dark Peak.

The finished version of Dark Peak: Hellsborough Chronicles Book One, is now available in Kindle and paperback formats from Amazon -- or you can download the first 7 chapters for free in ePub or Kindle mobi format from Hellsborough Library

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Introduction » Chapter 1 » Chapter 2 » Chapter 3 » Chapter 4 » Chapter 5 » Chapter 6 » Chapter 7 »

Van is now tripping like -- as he might say -- a monk.

We're starting to get to the nits and details, and as a professional, it's my duty to stay and have one more for the road, as that final (and I'm really hoping it is the last one, I really am ready for my bed) drink is known.

(And after all the excitement of the crosslander, the clown and especially the xaexs, I'm really hoping that Van doesn't invoke some sort of pally after hours drinking arrangement, which I'm pretty sure he has the ability to do around these parts.)

I'd bitten down on this sapling to stop my screaming. I'm sure I did stop, since I had the fear of Dunlockslyn in me, I don't think I'd ever been more scared in me life before then, than I was that night. But I was paralysed, I couldn't move. Whether it was fear, or what, I don't know. You know, when you're a youngen, you here stories. All sort of tales about bogey men and trolls and that sort of thing. And then, when you're there, when you have to face your fears, all them sorts of stories start flooding back into your mind. You know they were just made-up nonsense. You know that they ain't true, that these ogres don't really exist. Don't you? You tell yourself that it's all just the make-believe. But I tells you Pip, you try being somewhere like the Wisewood, at night, in the dark, with your body frozen to the spot, and your mind full of monsters, and you tells me, that you wouldn't be scared, because you would. I'm pretty sure you'd be cacking y'sen, like I was.

I nodded stiltingly, since it was as true as Van had said, I would be cacking my pants sure enough.

Them demonspawn horde approached then, lowing in their murderous tones, mindless dumb demonspawn, crushing the undergrowth under their heavy cloven feet; their eyes burning dark red through the haughty greyness of the murk. They were all around us, I could smell their odorous stench and hear their grotesque snoughing as they cleared their snouts and throats. The clattering and clanging as they sharpened their horns against one another in readiness for spearing mine and Shad's soft flesh. Shad started to make a low growling sound, but this did nowt to dissuade their circling of us. I could hear their throaty breathing and see the burning of them deep crimson eyes that showed no mercy, only cold moronic ruthlessness.

I have a question. Don't you? If demonspawn are such mindless and abhorrent creatures, how do they act with such calculated cruelty -- something which surely, requires complete mindful intent? I'm not going to voice it to Van, he's not even going to pause to answer; it just occurred to me, so I've mentally logged it for further review.

Pip, pay attention! Says Van, not because I'm not paying attention, I didn't think -- but clearly he did.

A low but distinct moaning sound issued from the recesses of the forest behind us then. And this may sound funny in some ways, but this ain't Shad, this is someat else. This is something far more heinous than Shad could ever be. And so I'm being circled by demonspawn about to skewer me on their horns and now I have some sort of grotesque growl scaring the d'divi out of me as well.

But that sound, that subsonic moan -- it reached the ears of them demonspawn, and all of a sudden, they was routed; fleeing in terror. Panic-stricken. Their lowing replaced by contorted, strangulated, screaming -- nothing like their normal dimwitted bass tones. So frantic they were in their efforts to escape from the unseen thing behind me and Shad that one of them ran headlong into a great unyielding yew, breaking its neck; crashing into the undergrowth, where I heard its laboured breathing after the rest of the herd had departed so wildly.

The sound which had frightened them demonspawn was not repeated, but it had been sufficient to start me speculating on what lurked in the shadows behind me. I was still unable to move, held stiff as a board with my back toward this horrible danger, the sound of which had caused them demonspawn to stampede. Shad too appears to be rooted to the spot, maybe he's tangled in the same miasma as I am.

Van stops and stares up into a corner of the bar now. I'm not sure what he is looking for -- if anything. Probably nothing. I feels like I am in something of a fearsome predicament, he says, draining his glass, and inexplicably managing to get table service and our tankards recharged with more ale -- not something I was hoping for.

A few times in the night, I heard faint sounds behind me -- stealthy movement, like I -- we -- are being hunted down, like gnawmards being tracked by a flatface. Shad is bristling and on constant alert, but it all comes to nowt. In the end all the rustling and the leaf chop and the crackling, it all ceases and stops. Then the dew it's rising, and it's the still of them early hours. I don't think I got no sleep -- I was just left to contemplating this situation I was in, and still unable to move a muscle.

I have no idea what is causing me to not be able to move -- this paralysis -- and I've been ruminating on it all night. Maybe them thorns has cut through an important nerve, or it could have been the sapling I had chomped upon -- it could have drugged me with its sap. It could be something else, who knows what you can contract in that murk. All I knew was I couldn't move, I was frozen to the spot. My hope lay in that whatever kept me numb might fade away, or when daylight broke I'd be able to better see what the problem was, and I'd be able to sort it.

I'll tell you Pip, right then in that Wisewood, I feared for meself. I don't think I'd ever been more scared than I was then, bound to that forest floor. Surrounded by the murk and the impenetrable tree branches, with some unseen fetid beast stalking me down in the gloom. Many a time in Hellsborough I've fought myself out of a dark corner -- on some desolate lane or ginnel that I shouldn't have been in -- or ran as fast as my legs would carry me when some wild animal had strayed into the streets during the gloaming or after nightfall; but then I always knew my escape, because I knew every road, every lane, every ten foot, every path, I knew well the lie of the land. Here, in this wooded prison, I had no way out, and only the coming of the dawn would provide me with some sort of salvation. All I could do was wait with fear in me heart and the petrified buzzing of thoughts in me head.

And my mind that night, it did play the worst of tricks on me. Many a time I thought that I was to be eaten alive by the shadow beast. I was awake and could hear everything, yet my body could do nowt to escape, or even move. I'm sure at certain times I may have died of fear only to be resurrected as some revenant, to forever stalk the Wisewood. I imagined meself with my arms of twisted sharp briars, with legs of bandy Ash and a scream forever held in my throat but only ever released as a muted whistle.

And this monster - this me of my twilight nightmare - carried my big old knife in its bloodied and broken hand of thorns.

I sat listening to Van tell me this, and my first thought was of an ancient poem: "Brackenman of Wadsley Common". The common is not so far distant from the Wisewood as the corvid flies, and Van's description certainly bore a distinct resemblance to a creature -- a cryptid, to be sure.

"Bracken Man of Wadsley Common". I researched it in Hellsborough library the next day. Decide for yourself, but to me, it sounds very similar to what Van is talking about:

The Common at Wadsley was ever dark, ancient and sinister.
Its man of bramble, thorn, bracken and briar;
And no one scrambles over the sliding gannister
Bowed legs of ash, four arms of yew and perishing juniper
Down the precipices of its sides, with tangled roots
Swirling fronds of green and purple heather shoots.

So the old poem goes. "Witnesses" of the creature, according to the ancient legends, at least had the Brackenman of Wadsley Common with his half dozen arms and legs made from twisted and bendy tree stalks with his body as a tangle of bramble and briar.

In an account that I read doing my research, a middle aged chap -- he'd been quite wealthy and of high standing, something of an engineer by all accounts, so a trustworthy chap. Not some fly-by-night who was likely to profit from some sort of supernatural tale. This engineer had been out for a few beers (and, if he's like me and Van, likely several more after that) at the Star Inn on Fox lane and had taken the Coal Pit lane back across the common, heading for his home somewhere off the Stubbing.

It is extremely dark up there on the common, and this was a late Autumn evening, so it had been dark for some time that night. The murk hung low and heavy, making it hard for this chap to keep to the path and avoid them rocky outcrops, of which there are many. He had fallen several times, bruising shins and other limbs, but had still managed to get as far as the standing stone circle, at which he paused for a while to catch his breath. He'd ascended to quite some height by that time.

The legend has it, that whilst resting against one of the great stones of the circle, he was attacked by a beast that came forth from the centre of the circle.

The beast had a body of a thistles and thorns, legs of bandy ash and arms formed of twisted briars. Its head was a gorse bush. Its eyes were the orange of burning coals.

The bracken man beast enveloped the exhausted engineer where he stood and encased him in those spiky arms of briar.

The engineer's skin was punctured many times, causing him to almost to bleed to death.

He was found sometime after dawn by a passing knife grinder. The engineer lay on the undergrowth in a sorry state, barely alive. His body -- but not yet his corpse -- had been picked over by scavenging slyfluffs and grizzlers through the night, and corvids as the day broke.

But that's just a legend. The poor bloke probably just lost his way on a murkfull night and fell into a briar patch, succumbing to the thorns and passing out.

I'm sure this is just me, thinking out loud, putting two and two together, and making 19. Anyway, Van is still in full flow, but at least he is over the worst part, it would seem...

From then until possibly midnight or the wee small hours all was silence. Then, suddenly, the awful chatter of the morning come into my ears, and then there came again from the dark shadows the sound of that moving thing, and a rustling of the leaves. The shock caused me convulsions. It was only with the effort of my dead ancestors -- whoever they might have been -- I broke off them bonds that had tied me to the forest floor. It was my mind, my will, that did it; not my muscles, because I couldn't move even so much as my little finger. And I didn't have much in the way of muscle neither. Then something gave, I felt as sick as a rooter, then there was a sharp click as if steel wire had snapped, and in shock, I stood with my back against the tree facing that unknown creature of the murk. Shad too, seemed to have more life in him.

My heart was pounding in my chest, my rib cage heaving from exerting meself so much. My breath was coming in quick, short gasps, cold sweat running down my forehead. I pinched myself and figured I wasn't no revenant yet -- I was still in the land of the living, even if I didn't much feel like I was.

The weird moaning from the depths of the wood brought me back to my senses -- quicker than you'd say Jack Flash I reckon. You know I didn't have much of a weapon, I've said that already, and I had no desire to face this unseen thing, whatever it was. Even with Shad at my side, I didn't fancy any sort of face off with whatever this thing might be. I decided my alternative was running off -- and my decision was made for me by that rustling sound again. In the darkness of the wood and with my imagination maybe distorted, I was being hunted down -- that denizen of the murk was creeping stealthily upon me.

I needed to escape this horrible place Pip. And then, as the first light of the day started to seep through the blackness, I ran as quick as my legs would carry me through the trees and into an opening -- a ley, a clearing in the forest. Not sure why, but courage flooded into my body and me veins. I felt strong, emboldened somehow. On the far side of the clearing, I stopped. Told myself off for what now seemed to be stupid and unneeded mithering. I reasoned in my head that I had lain helpless for many hours within the wood, yet nothing had come at me. If only I was to think a bit clearer and apply a bit of normalness, then I would convince meself that the noises I had heard would have resulted from natural and harmless stuff. Probably just the wind in the trees. At that point, I felt kind of daft, it was just the breeze through the trees all the time, how could I be so silly -- what a daft berk I was, Pip.

I had my modified psycmask, but the murk, it lifted and thinned out a bit, so I tipped the psycmask back and took in a gobfull of that purest of air. I lifted my head and filled my lungs with the damp night air of the wood. I saw stretching ahead of me, what is the most phenomenal landscape. The best landscape in all of the world I reckon. We're so lucky to live around here, Pip -- yet few ever venture out as far as I did, very few.

Rocky gorges, jutted hills, heather-studded moorland, and am just starting out. The Dark Peak landscape -- silvered mountains in the distance, strange lights and shadows upon hillocks and streams, and the spiky details of those stiff, beautiful gorse bushes echoing their vibrant yellow back against the murk. You ain't lived until you've immersed yourself in The Dark Peak, Pip. It's the glory of Dunlockslyn. No Hellsboroughite jellyhead can ever experience its splendour without surrounding yourself in its being, in experiencing the scerm of it. Pip, this is the most wonderful place in all of Dunlockslyn's universe.

And Pip, then -- as I stood with eyes wide open -- for the first time I caught a glimpse of some forgotten world. It can be extreme cold and utter darkness can The Dark Peak, but it can also be such a stunning place -- so different to anything here in Hellsborough. So different to anywhere else on this planet.

Hah, Pip. And so it was with Shad at my side, I finally passed through the remnants of the Wisewood and into that vast and dangerous world that is The Dark Peak.