The Staines Moor Horror

It was a Monday evening in April and I had walked into town, partly to get some cash from the machine but more because I just needed to get out of the house. I had things on my mind, some news at work changed the nature of the job, and only the day before a friend had been trying to persuade me to take a role in the city. The idea was attractive, and there were advantages beyond a pay rise, but I had only been at my current place a few months and in my slow way was just starting to form friendships. I did not want to give up on it so soon.

A hazy velvet sunset was descending behind the rooftops, the morning's fog having never fully burned off, and spring was beginning to assert itself with vigour, daffodils had risen in ranks in every front garden and trees were peppered with pink pouf-balls of blossom. I was impatient for summer, I wanted long bright evenings, I wanted to sit outside pubs by the river, I wanted to feel the sun on my skin. I could not take many more nights stuck in front of the television, spring was the promise it was going to get better, every yellow-green shoot I saw gave me hope.

I kept walking after visiting the bank, out behind the cinema and doubling back on the far side of PC World, the previous week I had seen from my car a footpath over a disused railway bridge and I was keen to discover where it went. I headed in roughly the right direction and soon came to a likely looking path. The sign above at gate said 'Staines Moor,' I did not even know that Staines had a moor. The path led me quickly and directly through a small wood, over the old bridge I had seen, under the road I had seen it from, and out onto the moor.

The moor was triangular, hemmed in on two sides by the raised revetments of the M25 and A30, and on the third by the high banks of a reservoir. It was about two or three miles to the far corner. A line of electricity pylons cut through it at a rakish angle and the river Coln wound slow coils across its flat base. The whole thing had the feeling of a wide shallow basin, open to the sky but hidden from anywhere else.

I followed a path that was little more than a raised causeway on the grass, I imagined the moor flooded in winter and I was surprised the ground was not damper than it was. The first thing I noticed, as I left the road behind, was the sound of birdsong. I wished I knew enough to recognise the birds from their songs but could only give them names of my own, the car alarm bird, the lesser spotted mobile phone bird, that bird that sounds like it is laughing at you. Despite the birdsong I saw no birds, but occasional trees and monolithic clumps of hawthorn and gorse might well have hidden them. I kept a keen look out as I walked, I did not want to meet anyone, not dog walkers and especially not gangs of feral teenagers.

The path met and followed the river beneath the buzzing power lines, the Coln looked small and slow, less than twenty feet across. In the waning sunlight it was as smooth as a mirror, reflecting the pylons clearly. Coming towards me on the same bank was a small family, one adult, two kids, and two dogs. I crossed a footbridge to avoid them.

I kept walking, away from the river and across the empty field. It felt ancient, primordial, wild unmanaged scrub unchanged for centuries. I could still see traffic flashing past at the edges, and above me airliners loomed out of the haze on the approach to Heathrow, but only ten minutes walk in I was cut off, a tiny strip of forgotten medieval land in a gap cut between and beneath the slicing thoroughfares of modern life. I walked over dark grass freckled with half furled daisies closing up for the night, in the distance were the shadowy shapes of cows, behind me the sun had gone below the close horizon, but the evenings are long in spring and I kept walking, not wanting to turn back before the end.

A pair of ducks flew over, stubby and quickly flapping like wind up wine bottles with wings, and frequently crows crossed ahead of me, black shapes hugging the ground so close that their wingtips brushed the grass. The birdsong was intense as I ventured into the heart of the moor, from everywhere around me unseen voices called to each other, undisturbed by my presence. The path took me to a point halfway across the long edge of the triangle where the river Coln met and followed the edge of the moor, gathered about this area was a small group of horses.

I'm not entirely a big city type, I was brought up on the edge of small home-counties town within walking distance of working farms, but the majority of my life has been on concrete and behind glass, and seeing the horses, ungoverned and unfenced, made me pause. They were moulting for summer giving them a wild and ragged appearance, and I was conscious of the size and strength of the animals, and of my solitude, but I knew enough to know that horses were friendly, and I was ashamed at my own cowardice and, slowly, I advanced. They let me pass with a little interest, a couple of foals approached to take a look but none came close. I would have liked to have gone over and petted them but it seemed inappropriate, I was meeting them on an equal footing, on their ground, and if they wanted the attention they would have asked for it.

The path led over a small fast moving brook by a tree which had obviously suffered a lightning strike but looked more as if it had grown so cruelly twisted that it had split itself open at the base. I crossed over and off the moor and was led down a narrow path between a wire fence and a thin strip of woodland that separated the path from the river. I felt claustrophobic, tightly squeezed between the fence and the looming trees, but I kept going, curious as to where path led.

Then I heard three loud splashes from the river to my left. Reasoning that my jeans were protection enough from the nettles I cut directly through the woods to see what it was. I popped out at a tiny secluded opening, a willow dipping its fingers in the water and an old concrete fencepost rising from the muddy bank. The Coln was narrower and faster here than it was on the moor, but it was smooth and bore no sign of the three splashes I had heard. I stood and watched for a while but saw nothing and decided to turn back, it was getting dark.

On the moor the haze was regathering its strength now the sun had gone down and a light blue eye level mist hung over the grass. With a flurry of noise a heron lifted up from the riverside where I emerged and flapped away with long lazy beats of its wings. The horses watched me, sanguine and suspicious.

I picked a slightly different path back, along the river and crossing at the other of the two footbridges. The river was black now, slow and viscous, only betraying its strength with occasional rips and ripples around submerged objects. As I crossed it I saw the heron standing at the edge further along, I cut away from bank across the moor, hoping to double around behind the heron and get a closer look. The clumps of hunched gorse, hawthorne, and bramble were more common here, they seemed curious in the half light, like standing stones, like sentient waiting beings, and walking through the crowd of them was an unnerving experience. Twice I glanced back over my shoulder, never sure what it was I was looking for, just a nervous agitation.

I felt unwelcome.

I glanced behind me a third time and heard a loud splash. When I looked forward the heron I had been so amateurishly stalking was gone. I walked quickly to where it had been standing, my eyes wide open for any movement, any sign of it flapping away across the moor, but there was nothing. On the river, around the spot, a wide ring of ripples slowly slid away. There was nothing else.

I began to feel very alone. While I dawdled around watching the heron it had gotten dark and the mist now hid the edges of the moor. I walked along the side of the river, shivering slightly, eager to get back home.

From behind me came the sound of another splash. I looked but saw nothing, and then concentric ripples on the surface of the river emerged from the fog. I walked on, glancing frequently back over my shoulder. Within a minute or two I heard another splash, closer this time, so that when I looked back I glimpsed a little white water and, briefly, the suspicion of a black shape breaking the black surface of the river.

I decided to cut away from the river. I was spooked, I don't mind admitting that, but I was not what you could call scared. I just wanted to get home.

In moments I realised my mistake, I had headed out, head down, over the empty moor without a path to guide me, and now all I could see in every direction was nothing but dark grass and blue mist. I retraced my steps to rejoin the river but heard another splash, larger that the others, and then a different sound, a slick flop of something soft hitting wet mud combined with the sound of disturbed water. The sound continued as I stood rooted to the spot. I realised that all the bird song had ceased, I did not know when, perhaps just then. It is hard to justify how I was so certain, but certain I was, the sound was the sound of something climbing up the river bank.

I turned and quickly walked, across the damp grass, aimlessly through the fog. The whole moor had gone silent now but for my breathing and somewhere, distant, the sound of something moving through the grass. A rhythmic pulse of slippery wet movement. It was a sound I could not pinpoint, and every time I changed direction away from it I soon felt I was heading towards it again. In no time I was completely turned around and had no idea where I was heading.

The sound, was getting nearer.

I jogged on in what I guessed was the right direction, frequently looking back, whipping my head from side to side as I tried to see in all directions at once. I had the terrifying sensation of being stalked, of being prey. Things loomed out of the fog, unfamiliar shapes that caused me to start and jump back twisted into trees and bushes, and always the noise, a permanent squelching and rustling, and dimly, a smell, not strong but distinct, a stench like rotting matter, as one might dredge up from the bottom of an old fishpond or drain.

Then I heard another noise, unfamiliar at first but then comforting as I realised it was the powerlines buzzing in the damp air. All I had to was follow them and they would lead me back to the road. I stared upwards, trying to make them out in the fog, and then the sound stopped. I looked around but saw nothing. The odour I had noticed before had become very strong. The noise renewed far quicker and louder than before.

I ran, as fast as I could now, instantly loosing track of the powerlines. I could see nothing, but I could feel something was there, something just out of site in the fog. Whilst I was looking behind me my foot snagged a root and I fell forwards landing face down on the ground.

I struggled up, the sound closer than ever, and limped forwards, I had sprained my ankle I think and could only hobble. Whatever it was, it was very close now, but still I could not see a thing. I knew, somehow, that I would not see it till it was too late.

And then another noise. At first I thought it was thunder, a sustained, rising rumbling sound that built and built, all around me shapes loomed out of the darkness and raced towards me at frightening speed. It was the horses, the horses had galloped across the moor. I heard the rustling squelching sound stop and then disappear away from me, the horses following, neighing loudly and angrily. They harried it back to the river.

I stumbled on in the opposite direction untill I arrived at a steep bank of earth, I pulled myself up it and emerged, muddy and blinking, by the side of the A30. I limped home.