The Book of Horrors

The Dead Moon

Long ago, in my grandmother's time, the land was all in bogs, with great pools of black water and creeping trickles of green water and squishy mounds of earth that would suck you in if you stepped on them. Well, my grandmother used to say how in her time, a young girl was once dead and buried in the marches. If you want, I'll tell you all about it, just as she used to tell me.

The moon above would shine and shine and when is shone it lit up all the bog-pools, so you could walk about almost as safe as in the day. But when the moon didn't shine, then out came the things that dwell in the darkness and they went about seeking to do evil and harm and mischance and mischief to all that weren't safe at home by their fireplaces. Ghost and ghouls and creeping terrors and crawling horrors, they all came out on nights when the moon didn't shine.

Well, it so happened that a girl had to travel across the bog lands one night. She was very troubled because she had heard all the stories people told about the evil doings that transpired on the bogs.

'' I'll see for myself,'' she said. ''Maybe it's not as bad as folks make out.''

So, sure enough, that fateful night, out she stepped, wrapped up in a black cloak and with a black hood over her long blond hair. She went straight to the bog's edge and looked around her. There was water here and water there, waiving tufts of grass and trembling mounds of earth and great black snags all twisted and bent.

On she went, almost into the middle of the bogs and, looking around her she could see queer things lurking in the darkness, grinning and grimacing at her as she passed. Evil eyes glowered from the darkest corners and the will o' the wisps danced about with their lanterns swinging in the distance. But the moon shone down brightly and its light kept the dark things at bay.

However, the girl had no idea that she chanced to go out across the bog lands on the night of a Blood Moon. That's what they call it when there is a total eclipse of the moon. The moon passes behind the earth and its light is blotted out, leaving just a red glow in the sky where the moon should be. And so it came to pass that when the girl was only half-way across the bogs, the moon faded out and the blood moon appeared and she was plunged into darkness.

Before her, all was dark. Dark but for the glimmer of the stars in the black pools and reddish glow of that bloody moon. The girl drew her cloak tight about and trembled. She was afraid to go forward, but she couldn't go back, being unable to see her way between the darkness. So onwards she went, stepping as lightly as she could from tuft to tuft, picking her way between the greedy, gurgling water-holes. She couldn't see where she was, or where the path was, or how she could get out of the marsh and as she walked, the evil things began to emerge out of their hiding places.

The frightened girl looked around her and she saw nothing but evil shifting, flurrying evil things coming and going here and there, busy with their own ill work. Then the dead folks rose in the water and stared at her with white, twisted faces and hell-fire in their empty eye-holes and the slimy dripping dead hands slithered around, beckoning and pointing and making her skin crawl with their cold wet feel.

And all around her the grinning ghouls and the dead folk and the creeping horrors crawled and crowded. Their voices mocked her and the dead hands plucked at her and ahead, the will o' the wisps dangled the laterns and shook with evil glee as they led her further and further from the right path and closer and closer to the deep holes and the deadly quicks. Shaking with fear and loathing for the things about her, she struggled on towards the flickering lights that looked like help and safety.

Just as the girl came near a big black pool, her foot slipped and she almost trumbled in. She grabbed with both hands at a black snag nearby to steady herself with, but as soon as she touched it, the snag twined itself around her wrist, like a pair of handcuffs, and gripped her so tight that she couldn't move. She pulled and twisted and fought, but it was no good. She was stuck fast, and she couldn't get free.