Berengaria's Best: The Ultimate Short Story Collection

Y Dannedd*

(originally written for the AmbassdorsUK 2019 Historic Halloween contest. 'Y Dannedd' is pronounced: uh dahn-eth (hard th, like in the))

Danny Clough hated to admit he had a bad sense of direction.

Unfortunately, it was true.

That was why he'd been hiking all over the same set of misty Welsh hills, marching in circles, zig-zags, star formations, and getting nothing more out of it than a pair of very tired legs. 

And a pain in his side. 

And a headache. 

And there was also something not quite right going on in his left shoe.

And then it started to rain.

Danny Clough wouldn't have been Danny Clough, scientist, if he'd have packed himself into his clear plastic rain slicker and squelched his way back down the valley to take shelter in the pub he'd seen on the way up. 

 No, that's wasn't Danny Clough's style at all. Perish the thought.

Stabbing the steel point of his hiking stick resolutely into the thick, verdant moss, Danny Clough started off in a direction he thought he hadn't been yet.

Thought.

The reason he was galavanting through dripping countryside was to find a group of standing stones called Y Dannedd, or in proper words,"The Teeth", which were said to be guarded by a particularly fierce demon. Or sprite. Or witch. Or vampiric sheep answering to the name of Gareth. He didn't know exactly; he wasn't Welsh, thank god. But whatever the backwards locals thought it was, he was there to find it and debunk it.

Danny Clough was a fanatical debunker.

Ever since he'd discovered that Father Christmas was Mr Tarington from two doors down and the Easter Bunny sourced its sloppily-dyed eggs from Sainsbury's, he'd been out to break every silly legend he could find. Crack! Right over his knee. He was an iconoclast, an Avenger of Truth, a sceptic, nay, an unbeliever!

He was also kind of lost.

Maybe that way?

Y Dannedd was a group of prehistoric megaliths. Or perhaps miniliths. Some short, stubby rocks outlining nothing more spectacular than a burial mound, most likely. He'd not been able to pull up any photos of the place -- none seemed to exist. He'd questioned the woman who ran the B&B in the village for more specific information, but she'd gone pale and dashed off to see to some toast in the kitchen without telling him anything.

Exactly the closed-minded, typical behaviour of those lost in the darkness of superstition. Sad really, but that wouldn't stop Danny Clough!

A half an hour and two hills later, Danny Clough was wondering if it wouldn't indeed stop Danny Clough. 

At least for that day. He'd return tomorrow. Hopefully with better weather.

Exactly at that moment, the soupy mist that had been following him on his left parted and he spied two small half-circles of stubby, grey standing stones rising up from a bed of viney, rambling underbrush.

Y Dannedd! Good lord, it certainly looked like two rows of teeth, didn't it?

Danny pulled his camera out and started shooting wide shots from the left, then from the right, then all the way round and back again. 

The mechanic snap and whirr of the shutter didn't fade away into the distance, oddly enough, but rather seemed to ricochet off the mist hanging quietly back, like an audience waiting for a performance to start.

Danny Clough shook his head. Where had that thought come from? Audience? Performance? Wasn't like him to think such fanciful stuff.

He stowed the camera and took out a small pouch that held a set of pruning shears and a trowel. Both tools were decorated with an embarrassing kitten-and-lilacs pattern. So? They'd been on sale at the garden centre and he'd have to clear away the vines to get a good look at the base of the stones, wouldn't he? Tools were tools. Stop sniggering.

Who'd been sniggering?

Danny Clough peered around, suddenly suspicious.

Hills, mist, rain now turned to drizzle, some bloody Welsh stones and a damp Englishman. That was all. He listened hard, hearing nothing but the distant sound of bird calls.

Danny Clough took a deep breath and then a few steps towards the stones.

The undergrowth began to change colour.

At first, it had been the same tough, dark green as the rest of the foliage, but then it rapidly took on a blue cast that melted into an iridescent purple and then into a glaring, intense red the closer he came. 

No, the closer he was pulled.

He wanted to stop, reverse, go back, but his body kept moving forward towards the semi-circles. The colours pulsed like disco lights and then -- even more unbelievably -- the vines untangled, slithering aside like technicolour snakes to reveal a deep, dark pit behind. A pit that resembled nothing more than a throat.

The definition of a word he loathed flashed through Danny Clough's mind:  Cryptid: flora or fauna yet to be documented by science.

Just before the vines wrapped around his ankles, dragging him feet-first towards the now razor sharp and sulphur-yellow teeth, Danny Clough, myth-buster, added his own postscript to the definition: Cryptid: flora or fauna yet to be documented by science....and never will be. I refuse to believe this mad bollocks!

The mist floated forward to surround Y Dannedd like a curtain, obscuring and dampening the gurgles of what was happening deep inside the stone circle. 

After a while, a pair of shears and a trowel came spinning out, tumbling down into a ravine where they joined a collection of picnic baskets, eyeglasses and pocket knives.

A sound like applause rustled through the bushes and grass.

Then there was only silence and the distant chirping of birds.