I don’t know if I write folk-horror. I probably do, but in a way it’s more folk-weird, drawing on lore from before the witch panic days and the re-invented druids. Most of my work in this area is set in a Britain where things long forgotten see a chance to make their mark again. When faith is weak, and the half-world wakes. There are shadows on the moors, and in the alleys; the Children of Angles and Corners are hungry. Doubt, despair and your smallest fears are their meat.
I’ve posted folk-weird vignettes a couple of times (such as the summer rook), and I’ve just sold a related story, The Horse Road, to Lackington’s Magazine for publication in the autumn. These stories’ lighter counterparts, poking fun at Enid Blyton, H P Lovecraft, mad cults and village life, can be found in my Sandra’s First Pony series on the site (check the tag cloud, which may be up to date).
Here’s another fragment from the serious side, the Cunning Folk theme, for your amusement. This time it’s a black dog tale…
Gorse and Rook
The barghest moves soft, moves sly. Her great paws sweep the edges of each tussock of grass, not a broken blade to be found. Her darkness slips between tree and track, a myth in motion. Even if they saw her under the high sun, they would doubt their eyes and find no trace. She is the land and the past, but now she scents a future.
This dusk she is down from the high moors and closer, closer than she has ever come to the Bright Land, the easy, open places where humans sport themselves without fear. Towns and villages, shrill laughter and an assumption that there is nothing outside, nothing beyond them. A forgetting, which she will make remembrance, and blood, so much blood that she will spend a century licking her pads…
Light, and the first signs since the heather. A settlement, just as she remembers them from the long-passed. They knew her in those times, and had spears almost ready, bows not quite strung. She fed well and was gone, soft and sly as her kind were made.
This is a newer place, stronger walls and more light than in the past. A village of the Now, which requires more patience. Brightness burns on poles, glass glitters in every home, and there are fluxes which disturb her, harnessed lightning running through the earth, in the air. Things have changed since she last left the moors.
She takes the slope, not a single paw print clear enough to be found. Slide here, touch gently there. Never be traced. It has been two moons since she fed, a ram and stringy at that, all sinew and gristle. Take too many, and the hill farmers start to notice. That was how it was, until the Children began to speak. A waking Spring, they said, and change. We are returning; all manner of things are returning.
Things like the barghest. So she has left the wild spaces for the Bright Land, because of their words. Others of her clan were considering, raising their muzzles and taking in the new, cold air. She was hungry beyond consideration, and thought herself beyond command.
The houses, the homesteads. She can taste flesh, dry but edible flesh which moves slow and falls fast. Humans inside, down there. She skirts some sort of road, a tarry stretch which irritates her, and comes easy through thistle and meadow-weed…
And best of all, a lone house, brick and stone where the stink of daub would once have pricked the air. On the edge of the village, with some sort of glass thing at its rear. She winds through shadow, a vast black shape, thick-haired and clawed for the deed.
Hssss!
She stops, her huge shoulders bunching with tension. A few feet away, a creature lies in wait. Her black nostrils flare; her eyes, as big as fists, widen.
Centuries ago, she would have called it a cat. A minor hunter, a nonsense. What this is, the barghest has no idea. It smells of cat, but it crouches in the long grass and hisses a challenge, which is unthinkable.
She shifts her eyes to the moonlight. Her challenger is difficult to decipher. It arches its back, showing a pelt of mange and ringworm and torn patches, a tail stripped of half its fur. The animal’s green eyes squint and when it hisses, it shows teeth like a broken henge.
Hssss!
The barghest is lost for a response. This is a cat, it has to be. But… she hesitates.
The animal moves forward, tail twitching. It limps on one of its hind legs, but its claws are extended, ivory razors, and what whiskers it has left are thrust erect into the night…
“I see you.” A voice which does not show fear, sounds from beyond.
She had missed the scent of him, distracted. Someone has emerged from behind the glass place by the house, merely a man who is bent and stumbles as he comes. The barghest tightens, muscles ready for the kill. This will be sweeter than that ram, and satisfying to the Children. Each human that suffers brings a smile to their thin lips…
“This isn’t your place, old ‘un.”
The man is only feet away, his stick raised, and there is something not right in the way he faces her. The barghest growls. Not only is the cat-thing still there, but this man from the Bright Land seems to know her. Does he understand how many lone travellers she has taken? Can he see the ages she has brought darkness and slaughter to the roads across the moors? She starts forward…
“Bad dog.”
He strikes out, rapping her on the nose, and to her own astonishment she hunches, whines at the blow. Cold iron on the tip of that cane, but far worse the command in his voice. Against her will, she lowers herself to the ground.
“There’s nowt here for you. Or your kind. Understand?”
The barghest whines again, looks about her.
“Nowt in this place for you, by gorse and rook, by briar and stone. Dost tha hear me?”
She tries to rise.
“By gorse and rook!” he snaps, a lash that cuts into the thickest pelt, and this time she hears a flutter of wings from high in the nearest trees, a reminding that there are other strengths than hers.
Soft and sly are gone, and her retreat is a slinking, a backing away from something beyond her. The cat-thing yowls disdain, but the barghest has had enough. To the high moors, she thinks, and let the Children do what they will with the Bright Lands…
Harry Cropton looks down at his cat.
“And tha’s a bloody nuisance, and no mistake.”
Puss, known by everyone else in the village as the Executioner, sinks his claws into Harry’s right foot, but finds that once again the old man has remembered to wear his steel-capped boots. Disappointed, the cat lurches off to find a sleeping cow which he can annoy.
Harry nods to himself, for he is cunning and of the folk.
“’Appen it’s started, then,” he mutters.
It was time to check on his tomatoes.
In a couple of days, more weirdness and wonderment, we hope. Do check out our books Cthulhusattva, Carnacki: The Lost Tales, A Study in Grey and others on the right hand sidebar. Like barghests, we are hungry…
You have partaken of the land. Its senses are invoked, its tastes and tongue and nighttime mists permeate my room. The Hound’s eyes of flame gaze out from my computer screen. Damned thing is on the fritz again. That was a lovely bit of shivery goodness, John. Or, maybe, Goodness had nothing to do with it?
You say the loveliest things, Gaia. You should be writing this stuff. 🙂