The Legend of Van Hallam and the Loxley Kraken of Hellsborough Hole
It was a time of darkness, not the dark ages, much more recent than that, the industrial age is upon us and the chimneys of Hellsborough spew filthy smoke and soot into the air, blackening the sky and obscuring the sun from hitting the pavement below. The weather, as ever is drismal and uninspiring, mist evaporates from the flagstones of the street and the few people that do venture outside, tread gingerly dodging the persistent soak of the rain and the plumes of ground hugging fog.
The kraken lurks in the pool of dark water that sits below the road in the Hellsborough hole. By day, even though the sun rarely bothers her, she sleeps. By night, she hunts.
Local residents, bothered and tormented by the plague of gnawmards that came out after nightfall to feed on the detritus of the public houses and restaurants, ceased to complain about the troublesome rodents. Their number seemed to be diminishing. And it was true, the gnawmards –- some of them the size of small barkers –- appeared to have lessened of late. Previously, they had become so numerous and cheeky that you had to be careful where you stepped, and the bastards would bite. And no-one wants a gnawmard bite, at any time of the day –- and they had started venturing out during the daytime hours, such was the sun’s inability to break through the smoke and smog.
Suddenly though, almost overnight, the horde of gnawmards began to dwindle. The larger ones, often seen roaming like giant grizzlers amongst the bins –- overturning them and causing all sorts of racket, became lesser in number. No carcasses were ever spotted, but that was not thought unusual, gnawmards were supposed to be cannibalistic in their fervour for food of any kind. And so, no explanation was forthcoming as to why the once problematic gnawmards began to die off unexpectedly.
At around the same time, several neighbourhood scratchers went missing. A number of posters were presented on telegraph poles and lamp posts in testimony to their family’s anguish, and their owners' angst. The giant gnawmards were blamed, and maybe the odd suburban sly, but again, the bodies of no lifeless scratchers were ever discovered.
And then there was Bonny. Bonny was a mutt, a much loved mongrel of the canine variety. She was not a large barker, more of a tubby torso’d Jack Russell; her dark colouring giving her a distinct resemblance to one of the smaller wild-clovenfoot –- that had escaped from the parks of rich owners of Hellsborough, and now ran free in the surrounding countryside. Small and elusive, favouring the nocturnal hours, but abundant in number none the less, at least until recently. Bonny was a loyal hound, but had a tendency to slip her leash, or dash out of her owner’s open door given half the chance, and wander about to her own heart’s content, rather than curcowing to the hand of any master. One dark evening, as the sun slipped out of its occluded view, Bonny slipped out of her elderly master’s back door, and despite the fervent searching of many a friend and neighbours, was never seen again. In the days that followed her disappearance, many, including her owner, Professor Charles Dawkins, would ascribe to tales of her midnight howling, but nothing of her was ever discovered, and the howling blamed to be that of the wind through the murk night.
Pal worked and lived at The Mason’s Arms. No one knew Pal’s actual name, but everybody called him Pal, and he had been called Pal for as long as he, or anyone else could remember. The Mason’s Arms was a popular public house and eatery, just at the foot of the Walkley Lane, mere paces from Hellsborough corner. Shift over, a busy one waiting tables and serving ale, he needed to get out of the building and consume some air, even if the air was sometimes not as fresh as desired. He walked briskly, there was a chill on the breeze that tingled the skin, and as his tunic was only of a modest quality, it was easily permeated by the iciness of the atmosphere. He reached the road bridge, where the Loxley river flowed turgidly underneath having breached the rapids further upstream. A small squeeker scampered along the parapet of the bridge and disappeared around a corner out of sight, obviously sensing Pal’s arrival and not wishing for a confrontation.
Out of the corner of his eye, Pal saw –- or at least thought he saw –- movement, and stopped walking, unsure of what the perceived movement might be. Another squeeker, he mused. But, his hearing, rather than his eyesight, advised him that is was something rather larger than the diminutive rodent that he had spotted previously. A fat gnawmard maybe? Or one of the factory scratchers on an extended prowl?
The noise though was not the scuffling or pitter patter of a rodent, nor the guttural hunting sounds of a scratcher, but a sliding, a rough surface being pulled along another rough surface, like sandpaper on sandpaper, a slithering, a sound that reminded Pal of smoothness and roughness at the same time. The sound, maybe, of a giant venomtooth, wrapping itself around the balustrades of the bridge upon which he stood, now barely able to move, as fear began to creep into his nerve endings and affixing his feet firmly to the spot on which he stood.
Pal was unable to move, his fear, the sliding sound that enveloped his ears, kept him rooted to the spot. A vile and putrid smell hit his nostrils and he was unable to stop the stench from inciting the bile and alcohol and remnants of food in his stomach from turn somersaults. He quickly lurched forward, bending himself over the balustrade and spewing his guts into the river below.
It was then, as his violent movements outpaced the sound of the slither and the spittle and vomit flowed from his mouth in chunderous volume and as acrid tears filled his eyes, that he saw -- he thought he saw, the churning of fins and gaping slipper mouths in the water below, and the eyes, the hollow haunting empty eyes of something that his mind could only describe as slipper men.
Octopods of evil.
He pulled himself back involuntarily and ran, legs now working at double time, back to the Walkley lane to The Mason’s Arms. His voice made no sound as he ran, it was all he could do to take gulps of the putrid air and force the oxygen into his lungs to power his pumping legs.
Pal never mentioned what he saw for fear of ridicule and ostracism.
Over the weeks and months that followed, the area remained free of gnawmards and other strange sightings.
But other dwellers of the twilight – those on their way home from the pubs at night, or journeying to places of work in the early morning; those delivering milk and newspapers by lamplight -– they began to see strange happenings.
Traces of slime on the footpaths, in the road ways. Odd sounds coming from the Hellsborough Hole underneath the road, frantic splashing in the water.
As time past, and as Pal began to forget that fright night, his tongue eventually loosened under the influence of drink and the security of The Mason’s Arms, so that the odd tale was told, here and there. And the tales, with the help of the drink and the merriment that egged them on became bolder and darker, and the monsters that lay beneath stranger and more menacing.
But nothing was ever proven. No more Bonny’s went missing. Neighbourhood scratchers had long stayed away, so their numbers were no longer threatened. And yet, the gnawmard problem never returned. Maybe it was because the public houses and restaurants became better at managing their messy habits and viewing their menus with a commercial head, or their customers became better at not discarding their litter, or The Dark Peak District Council’s waste collections became more organised. No one could really say for sure. All of those things happened over the years, so that has to be the answer, right?
But there was always a slight off scent by that bridge over the road. Or rather the hole that lay beneath it.
More time passed. Many decades, or at least a few.
Many things can change in a relatively short amount of time and twenty years, back in those dark days, was a lifetime for some. Pal, a mere young man in the tale above, was now old beyond his years, but still lived at The Masons Arms at the foot of Walkley lane, even if his work now consisted of entertaining the other guests rather than waiting tables.
Pal would spend his days regaling all who would listen with (some would say tall) tales of his life and work and The Mason’s, and much fun and laughter was had by customers and staff a like. It was for this reason that Pal was kept in the pubs employ, such was his magnetism and his love of and for the customers.
His payment was food, ale and lodgings, his work was now as the host without portfolio, the entertaining local, the loveable regular, teller of tall tales and splendid purveyor of far fetched fiction.
Such was Pal’s reputation that he attracted strangers from as far afield as Loxley, Wisewood and Wadsley –- strangers, who would become regular visitors and eventually friends of The Mason’s Arms, people who would return time and time again, and when they came sometimes they would come alone, but depending upon their mood, sometimes they would bring their own friends and neighbours, and so the circle continued and the fly-wheel spun faster and more and more people came to the little pub by the river Loxley near the Hellsborough Hole and Pal’s fame became wider and he became more loved by all around, and his tall tales and his far fetched fiction became wilder and wilder.
One person who enjoyed Pal’s company a great deal was a slender journeyman by the name of Van Hallam.
Although a son of the local area, hence his name, Hallam had travelled far and wide. Travel was Hallam’s currency in times of talk, and he was much as able to tell a good tale as our good friend Pal. And tell he did, they did; bouncing off one another like skittles in a bowling alley, wobbling all the more for the conspicuously large and varied amounts of liquor that passed their lips.
Some said that Hallam travelled from as far afield as Barnsley, but many poo-poo’d this notion, it being a great distance for any mortal to persevere on such a regular basis, but one thing was true without a doubt, Van Hallam had travelled far and wide in a fantastical career that many who listened could only wonder about in awe.
Hallam, despite being born in the Hallamshire environs, in what appeared to be a different epoch, had lived in the largest cities, the most learned cities and the most historic cities in the land, and those, as well as one or two true smelt holes, he had called home. He had stories about the capitals of Finance, Education and Religion, and more besides. He was a collector of addresses, and the stories that went with those experiences of living “abroad”, as anyone who hadn’t travelled further than the end of their own nose was wanton to call them.
And so the legend of the Loxley Kraken of Hellsborough Hole was finally solidified and made real in the words and stories and tall tales and far fetched fiction of the humble Pal and the heroic Van Hallam – and it is re-told here in all its drunken brevity:
The Loxley Kraken and her kin, have been preying on local gnawmards and scratchers, and later some barkers and humans. Van Hallam, on his travels, has acquired the skewer of dunlockslyn –- a corkscrewed sword fashioned by a little mester of the Rivelin valley.
She, the kraken, has created an army of zombie octopoid slipperspawn, which she telepathically controls. The slipperspawn must be overcome by gutting their brains, but there are too many; it is a hopeless task for any individual.
Van Hallam realises that his only route to victory, is to recruit the services of a river blub, which he does in return for promising half of the kraken’s vast fortune –- to be found in Hellsborough Hole.
He rides in the stomach of the river blub, through the slipperspawn and into the kraken’s clutches, from where he emerges and plunges the skewer of Dunlockslyn into the kraken’s single cycloptic eye (which, naturally, is disguised by her multiple eyes).
This maims her long enough for him to use the same weapon to slash off her tentacled arms, dismembering her, before she regenerates.
Van, with the help of the embattled river blub, then spread the kraken’s tentacles far and wide, annihilating her life force and destroying her forever.
And so, Van Hallam defeats the Loxley Kraken, and with the river blub returns to Hellsborough Hole to share their spoils.
And that, my friends, is a fact.