Laughter on the Moor

I did not believe the tale.

When your old grandmama spins yarns as well as yarn beside the fire, you believe that only the latter is real. Her first story frightened the children and sent them to bed, but the older ones, such as I, just laughed and begged for another.

As she began this story, however, I felt a dark, sunken weight settle on my mind, and though I believed not the tale, I could not escape the forbidding feeling, the hideous conviction that it was true. I could only account for the sensation by my knowledge that it was possible.

*

Once there was a young lass who had two lovers, and her romantic entanglements were the talk of the village. Other girls had plenty more beaus, but she had just the two. But she was so sprightly with those two hearts that she seemed to juggle dozens.  Flitting like a butterfly between the two boys, she was the light and curse of both of their lives. One day, she’d prefer one; the next, the other; and the next, neither, or perhaps both at once.

But she forgot that she was playing with human hearts, not balls. For she dropped one eventually, as all jugglers do, and it broke.

The lass and the lucky lad had their wedding day, and the wedding celebration lasted for hours, and when they walked away from the party, it was already deep into the wedding night. Eager to reach their new home, they chose to travel across the moor, the quickest way for one who knows the moors well, which the proud husband did. But the Fates were against them that night, for the clouds first hid the moon, then sank to cover the earth.

Finding themselves on a dark, foggy, treacherous moor, the couple was as of yet unafraid. The lass had confidence in her lad, and the lad had enough confidence within him that night for ten such bridegrooms.

But as the mist closed in around them, their lantern light seemed to grow dimmer and dimmer, and their spirits sank like stones in marshland. Cold and dark as mud, this foreboding grew within their hearts.

Suddenly, they were attacked. A fist came out from the darkness and fog, smashing the lantern and casting them into utter darkness. Calling out for his new bride to flee, the lad tried to fight their unseen attacker, but just when he believed himself to have a firm hold on his enemy, he found he was grappling with naught but mist. Had anyone ever been there?

Now the lad was frightened, and he ran off into the foggy moorland, shouting for his lass.

His bride had run away blindly, unknowingly leaving behind the well-worn path and stumbling into the treacherous mist. She ran, and she ran, torn between desperate fears: fearing she should return to her husband, fearing that she should continue; desiring to return, incapable of turning back. At last, she stopped. And saw nothing but the swirl of black night and grey fog.

A wild fear seized her, and she whirled around, catching just a glimpse of the figure behind her. But she stumbled on the slick rocks, falling with a cry into the mire.  She had only just comprehended her situation when a lantern shutter slid open, revealing the scene in a flash and setting the mist on fire.

Framed by this cold hellfire was her jilted lover, for the Fates could not allow anyone but he to find her that night. Relief shone from her face as she called for him to help her.

Silence. And fog. And mud.

Then he laughed. 

He laughed loud and long, and his laugh rang across the moor. He stared and he laughed, cruel delight and fierce mockery shining in his face and sounding in his glee.

Her cries became pleas, and those pleas became sobs, and she sank, lower and lower, unable to escape. But the man just laughed until the muck closed over his beloved’s head, sealing her away from his mocking gaze. 

He tried to turn to leave, his night’s work being only half-finished, but it was then that he noticed the cold encasing his legs. In his triumph, he had failed to realize that he too had been sinking, sinking, sinking. He thrashed and struggled but to no avail. Stopping suddenly, he waited and stared straight ahead as he sank. He made no plea to heaven; he begged no mercy of this world, but he laughed loud and long, even as he sank into his grave.

The next morning, the so-recently happy bridegroom returned to the village, bleeding, battered, and raving. The jilted lover and the little bride were never seen again, and many in the village claimed that they had run off together, her heart having flitted one last time. But in time, the town guessed the truth. For every foggy night since, his cruel laughter has echoed on this moor.

*

I heard this story and laughed myself, startling the other listeners. In an attempt to reason away my unreasonable fear, I denied that such laughter was ever heard. Surely, only a fool would believe such a ghost story.

Many then present claimed to have heard it themselves, clear as day, but I laughed at their superstitions. Determined to prove them wrong, I swore to traverse the moor the next foggy night and find the source of that laughter, be it the winds, the animals of the moor, or my neighbors’ wild fears.

I listened to no reason but my own, and when the mist next descended upon the moor, I set out on my ghastly errand. I tromped and stamped my way through the fog, blustering and bellowing and hallooing for the ghost, loudly, so as to drown out even my own thoughts… and fear. I heard nothing and no one but myself and called myself brave.

I reached what I thought was the opposite end of the moor and surveyed it in my pride, congratulating myself on conquering that old legend of fear. I stood there mocking the world, but as I thought with pride of my triumphant return to the village, I felt the cold creeping up my legs.

That’s when I heard him laughing.