CW: death/murder

Sprawling moorland is the most peaceful sight in the world, until they tell you there are bodies buried out there. At this point, the folded banks and shrub-mottled hills immediately assume an obvious evil. You wonder, then, if this evil was always visible, and if, in this way, all countryside views are forever tainted.

I am overwhelmed by things that stay the same for a long time. Perhaps it is because we do not. There was a dilapidated farmhouse in the village where I grew up. It dated back vaguely to the 1600s, and there were plans to knock it down, replace it with houses. Before they did, I intended to drive back and drink up the sight of it one last time. For some reason the thought of doing so filled me with a sad dread. Nevertheless, I knew I must. 

I won’t tell you the make of my car, so as not to betray the When of this story, nor the name of the moor, so as not to divulge the Where, but please picture a short line of vehicles winding cautiously along the endless S of the road. To build a road here –– to cleave the moor down the middle for mechanical benefit –– seems like a dreadful trespass, but I try to remind myself that even the most skyscrapered of cities was once a marsh or a wood. Still, there is something singular about the moor, and it imposed itself on our minds as we wound that endless S. Finally we crammed the cars and the van into a lay-by, and stepped out to face the bracing chill. It seemed the ethical thing, to expose ourselves to the moor’s elements, rather than to prolong cowardly shelter in our metal trespassers. Somebody uncreased a map on the bonnet.

Somebody else handed out sticks. Not expensive telescopic rods, only branches borrowed from someone’s garden. Mine forked at the end like a catapult, or a dowsing rod. One of our number wielded a perfectly straight branch, which he used for the moment as a hiking aid. He was a strange man, that was what everybody was thinking (they said as much, afterwards). I wasn’t sure who he was, or in which car he’d come. As the rest of us took our share of gloves and plastic-flask tea, he stood at the edge of the lay-by staring out across the moor.

The map was on the bonnet and somebody was repeating our cause. The police had failed; we would not. The lad’s mother had been locked all this time in a broken state of suspended mourning, unable to progress and yet finding rest impossible, totally at sea. Our community needed an answer, a body. We would find her son.

The sun was low and still tired, squinting at us in lax curiosity as we formed our little row of searchers. We stood two yards apart from each other, waving our branches to compensate for the gaps. The strange man stood at the far end of the row. Our cold breath glowed; the sun was taking more of an interest now, waking up and making everything orange. We set our feet into the grass and advanced, like a troop of hapless Tommies going over for the first (maybe last) time. 

As we trudged carefully over lilacs and sundew, prodding gingerly amongst the huddled hedgehog-clumps of moor grass, I noticed our stranger beginning to veer off in a different direction. Still he held his branch like a walking stick, not bothering to probe. I whispered to my immediate neighbour and we gazed after him. I called the attention of the other men, and together we followed in our stranger’s slow wake. 

The sun craned overhead for a better look, and finally our stranger stopped. He scraped at the ground for the first time with his branch, and then stepped back. He had uncovered a mound, an unnatural piling-up of the soil. Cautiously we knelt, digging slowly with a trowel. 

There was no mistaking the body. Time and insects had made their changes, but the size and the clothes evidenced his identity. Somebody went back to the cars, and returned two hours later with a couple of policemen to relieve us of our duty. We walked in a curious, silent mixture of satisfaction and dispiritment. It was only upon reaching the lay-by that we realised our stranger was gone. Nobody saw him leave –– but, then, as I pointed out, he hadn’t been the focus of our attention. He must have slipped silently away. Some of us were superstitious; others were suspicious. I didn’t want to think about it. We found the body. That was all we’d set out to do. The sun agreed, drooping and dimming at the opposite horizon, sapped of energy. The gravel crunched: more policemen and a hearse.

I said my goodbyes to the men, but I didn’t go straight home. I drove three hours to the village where I grew up. It was dark and moonless, and there were no streetlights, but I could see that the farmhouse was gone.