Someone took Priscilla. She and I were camping in the Pennine Hills when it happened. It was our first trip together since we became an unlikely item. I’m twenty years her senior after all, and her lecturer.
“Why don’t we go away together, Professor?” She had asked.
“Go away? As in, run away?”
“Yeah, let’s run away for a while. Just me and you.”
“So, it’s a temporary thing you’re suggesting?”
“Yes. I know a place. It’s secluded and quite beautiful.”
It’s funny that she used those words because I’d always thought of Priscilla, my favourite student, in that way. Beautiful, but alone somehow. Isolated. Untouchable.
The place she suggested was desolate. A vast sea of moorland-covered hills, battered by the weather. No trees to break up the monotony of the surrounds, only wind turbines in the far distance. I recall that the ground underfoot was treacherous, hardpacked dirt veiled by heather. My ankle rolled painfully that first day within an hour of departing from the tarmac road.
“It’s here?” I asked.
“Professor, has it ever occurred to you that you ask a lot of questions?”
“Do I?”
“I can’t tell if that’s a witticism or not. But yes, you do. And no, the place I have in mind is a little further ahead.”
Priscilla vaulted a metal gate and smiled back at me.
It was that night when I first heard the children’s voices. Admittedly, it was past midnight and we’d both had half a flask of whisky each. We had been, shall I say, passionately occupied with each other for a good part of the evening. At first, I thought it was in my imagination, but given what happened afterwards, I can now say with certainty that I heard children whispering outside the tent that first night. No footsteps. No overt intrusion. The owners of those little voices were trying very hard not to be heard. They skirted around the tent in a full circle and then disappeared.
The next day it was raining. We set off further into nowhere on a hike to some trig point around twelve miles away. Priscilla kept pointing out hills and other landmarks which held no interest to me. Bleak is the only word I have for the place.
After noon on the second day, I spotted four small dots on the horizon as the low drizzle lifted. It took a while for Priscilla to spot them, but eventually she made them out. They moved slowly parallel to us, perhaps two miles to the north. The weather drew in before I could spot them with my binoculars.
Having completed the circuit, we returned to the tent and took cover from the rain. A voice interrupted Priscilla soothing my aching body. I quickly readied myself and exited the tent to find a man standing at the entrance. Three children clung to his back, peering up at me.
“Can I help you?” I asked.
The man adjusted his stance and pulled his flat cap lower over his eyes.
“Am jus’ wundrin’ why there’s someone camped on mi field. Is there a sign sayin’ anyone can jus’ unpack a tent an’ set up shop wi’out payin’ me owt? Scared little ‘uns to death, you have!” He gestured at the children.
“I’m very sorry. My friend said we could stay here and it’d be OK.”
“There’s two o’ you?”
“Yes.”
“Where’s your mate, then?”
“She’s inside.”
“She? A lass?”
“Look, we’ll pack up our things and move on. My apologies for trespassing.”
“No, no, it’s reyt. I jus’ thought I’d ‘ave a bit o’ fun wi’ you. I’m takin t’mick. You can do as you please but a bit o’ courtesy would o’ been nice. The little ‘uns were scared ‘alf to death, fella!”
I crouched and tried to apologise to the children, but they hid away from me.
“They’ve made their mind up about you, pal, it’s too late. Anyhow, I’m sure we’ll figure out sumat as recompense.”
He sought out my pale eyes with his flinty ones and smiled. His gaze flashed down to the tent door, flapping in the breeze. The farmer and the children departed, and wandered away beyond the crest of the hill. I felt the need to watch them go.
Priscilla was very keen to hear about the man. I told her he had a narrow face and protruding ears. His eyes were black or very dark brown. His hair was brown. Age-wise, younger than me by five or ten years. She’d been coming here for years and didn’t know of any farmers in the area. The land was technically owned by the region’s water company for a reservoir that was never built. I put the encounter quickly out of my mind, but I could tell that Priscilla was bothered somehow. I wanted her to resume soothing me, but she said she was tired. That night, she sweated and writhed in the grip of a nightmare. I waited for it to pass.
With dawn came another grey day, blustery and overcast. The decision was made to spend one more night in the Pennines, and then head back to the university campus. We roamed alongside ancient stone walls, crisscrossing a valley until we came to a small cairn. It should’ve been pleasant, but something was wrong with Priscilla. She smiled less. Talked less. We sheltered in the lee of the cairn to get out of the wind.
“Are you ok?”
“I’m fine.”
“Sure?”
It was at this point that I noticed how pale she was.
“Didn’t sleep too well.”
I put my arm around her and she leaned into me. Priscilla wasn’t hungry, so I ate something, before the two of us set off back toward the tent. We arrived and hunkered down, listening to the sound of canvas straining in the gale. That evening was far less passionate than the previous one. I must have drifted off, before waking up stiff in the cold. I could hear whispered voices again, no question. I sat bolt upright in my sleeping bag and listened. The words couldn’t be discerned, but there was no denying it now. We were not alone.
“Hello?” I said. The voices fell silent, but a sense of presence remained. I tried to get comfortable again but it was no use. I put on some shoes and stepped out into the moorland night with a torch. I swung the beam in all direction but saw nothing other than swaying heather. No footprints or recently trodden-on shrubs either. I walked perhaps twenty paces out into the heath and urinated. When I got back, Priscilla was gone.
“Priscilla? Priscilla, where are you?”
I shone the torch beam around frantically. After a moment of panic, I could see one pair of fresh bootprints leading to the tent door, and two pairs of prints leading away. I followed the tracks to the ridge that the farmer and his children had crossed the day before. Halfway along a trail through the heather below, were the figures of Priscilla and the farmer. The farmer carried the flat cap he’d been wearing in his hand, so his hair writhed unruly on his scalp. He turned, waved, and slid his hand around Priscilla’s waist. I set off jogging, aiming the beam of light directly in front of my feet. When I came to a stop, panting, I scanned the lower heathland in which I now found myself.
In the new silence, I heard the voices start, but this time there were more. They were questioning, asking, demanding, begging for something. Each voice drowned out the next. Just as I began to question my hearing, small hands appeared beneath the heather. I saw the faces of children looking up at me. Twenty, thirty maybe, there were. They clawed at the vegetation and tough soil to free themselves. I bolted back up the ridge in abject terror. At the top I checked to see if I was being pursued. Swinging the beam down onto the heath, I saw a huge crowd of children standing in the darkness, their glassy eyes fixed on me. There could’ve been fifty or so, but I forget.
I grabbed Priscilla’s bag and ran blind through the darkness until I fell down with exhaustion. I eventually made it back to her car and drove home. My instinct was to go to the police, but I wouldn’t even know where to start. I’d be suspect number one and probably get myself locked up for a crime I didn’t commit. The image of those children stood in the heather continues to flash into my vision periodically. I have no doubt that I’m traumatised, but there’s no time to even consider dealing with that. There’s no time, yet I feel paralysed.
A second image bursts into my mind of the farmer and Priscilla walking off like smitten lovers, eloping by night. Beyond the bizarre turn of events, she seemed to be going of her own free will. She isn’t my wife, nor is she even my partner. She’s barely more than a friend. A curiosity. A plaything would be too far, but ultimately she’s her own person and has agency in this circumstance.
The whole situation is a blasted mess. I hate myself for it, but I can’t face going back there to look for her, nor will I involve law enforcement. I think I may have to get out of the country and put this sorry business behind me. If there is one certainty in all of this, it’s that the eyes of those children will watch me forever. The whisper of the heather is all around me now.