Esther and the Loving Hunter by Carys Crossen
The moon whispered its first warning when Esther was nine.
It had been summer in name only. For weeks, clouds the colour of smoke and pepper had thrown down rain in hard rods and there was no true warmth in the air, only a grudging mildness. But that night, the sky was studded with stars and a pale cheese rind of a moon hung among them.
They were on holiday, Esther, Mum and Dad and Samuel and Hannah, crammed into a caravan in a field somewhere rural. Samuel was sulking because there was no telly to watch football on. Hannah erupted into hysterical tears every time she got mud on her clothes. Dad alternated between seething silences and roars of rage when Samuel and Hannah had exhausted his scanty store of patience. Mum, who had insisted on the holiday, misty-eyed as she contemplated stories around a campfire, treks through gilded countryside, kite-flying atop breeze-brushed hills, had effaced herself in an effort to avoid blame.
Four days in, all three of them had been packed off to bed early after Samuel and Hannah had squabbled over who had tracked cow dung over the skimpy puce carpet. The evening walk through the fields Dad had grudgingly promised Esther, the nature-freak of the family, was postponed indefinitely.
Esther, smarting with the injustice, waited until her parents were silent and still, locked in sullen sleep, before she slid out of bed, into her trainers, and let herself out of the caravan.
The night was muggy, with so little light that the dark seemed a presence rather than an absence. If the moon hadn’t peeped above the horizon five minutes after Esther made her escape and bestowed sufficient silvery light to see by, she might have given into her nameless fears and run back to bed. But she loved the moon. Gran had always told her, the moon is your friend, Esther. The moon watches over all women, to show them their way.
Esther wasn’t sure she believed this, but she had trusted Gran. Consequently, the moonrise lent her courage, and she scurried alongside hedgerows and over dirt paths, sending the local rabbits scattering. Esther moved without purpose, without any true awareness of her surroundings, except when an owl whistled twit-twoo or some creature made the grass rustle as it skated along, or the wind played rough-and-tumble with the treetops. There was a pleasurable frisson of apprehension coiled in her stomach. Many strange creatures lurked in the dark. Hobgoblins, boggarts, witches…
The Horned Man materialised before her as if a shadow puppet had been held up before the moon and its beams. He was gigantic, broad-shouldered, thick-limbed and the antlers growing from his skull had a span wider than Esther’s father was tall. He was composed of shade and gloom and dark so that Esther could not distinguish a single feature in his face. Only the merest spark of moonshine, reflected in his fathomless eyes, betrayed that a living being and not a carven image stood watching her.
Esther froze so completely a wicked fairy might have turned her to stone. She was motionless, voiceless, breathless. She and the Horned Man were two still points as the stars above whirled around.
Something stirred at the Horned Man’s feet. It was a dog, a massive creature with sable fur that seemed to absorb all light just as a black hole would. It cringed forward, and then licked its chops with a tongue so red that for a demented moment Esther thought it was vomiting blood.
The Horned Man spoke.
‘My hound loves you, little girl,’ he said. His voice was rough and deep and with more than a trace of a Yorkshire accent. ‘He wants to play with you.’
Esther did not respond. Every warning ever drummed into her by parents, teachers, aunts and uncles, dance instructors, Brownie leaders about never talking to strangers kept her quiet. And despite her unthinking terror, the insult of little girl stung Esther into contrariness, and she set her jaw.
The Horned Man didn’t seem nettled by her silence, however. His eyes, the colour of mould and rot, slunk from Esther’s face to her feet and back. He edged closer, as if approaching a timid little bird, so as not to startle. As he moved, the moon’s icy beams caught at his face and form and dragged the shadows away.
The Horned Man’s features seemed hewn from craggy rocks, his skin was tanned and leathery, his hair was frosted grey rimed with moss, he was dressed in tattered animal skins and tree bark and bones—animal, bird, human—adorned the motheaten fur cloak slung over his shoulders. The expression he wore might have been a smile on any other face.
‘Come with me, my darling,’ said the Horned Man. ‘Come into the shadows.’
His words were alluring. And Esther felt a thrill of attraction towards the world they hinted at: somewhere wild and dark where bedtimes and scolding and bullying siblings were only memories. Yet her muscles, tendons, even her blood was thrilling with the urge to flee. The Horned Man’s words may have been honeyed, but his eyes stabbed at Esther like a million tiny wasp stings, making her flesh prickle. He looked… hungry. Greedy. Savage.
For an unguessable amount of time they stood staring at one another. Esther didn’t want to go with him, yet she was loath to say ‘no.’ You just didn’t say no to grown-ups. Even Samuel resorted to sulkiness rather than outright defiance. Adults were scary if anyone told them no. Their eyes would blaze, their lips would curl back in a snarl and their voices rose loud enough to shake plaster from the ceiling.
‘Come,’ the Horned Man repeated, impatience barbing to his voice.
Then Esther heard the moon’s whispering.
She never could explain afterwards how she knew it was the moon. Perhaps it was her Gran’s words. Perhaps it was the glimpse of the moon she snatched, over the Horned Man’s right shoulder. It was a feeble crescent, a nail paring discarded on the firmament. Yet its milky light shone with uncanny fervour, a nimbus smudging the sky around it. Esther, young and ignorant as she was, recognised the moon’s power.
And its words.
Run away, Esther! The moon told her. Run fast and run far! The Horned Man will destroy you if he catches you!
The Horned Man, already weary of waiting, made a grab for her.
Esther dodged his brawny hand and fled.
She heard a yell of fury, the snarl of a dog, the wind screaming. But she didn’t stop, didn’t slow, sheer fear lending her swiftness. Esther ran until her lungs and legs burned and the whole night was a blur of purples and greys and black, and there were no paths, no landmarks, no sanctuary till the caravan loomed up before her, a darker bulk against the shadows.
Her fingers fumbled for the latch and by some miracle caught and wrenched it the right way. The door swung wide—she threw herself inside. Shut and locked the flimsy door and dived under the nearest bunk bed. Esther buried her face in her folded arms and waited, stomach convulsing with terror. She was incapable of doing anything else. It didn’t even occur to her to wake her parents (Mum snoring like an asthmatic pig and Dad muttering angrily even in his dreams).
Night had given way to a timid dawn by the time she dared raise her eyes, peer out from her hiding place. The Horned Man had not come. Nor had the hound who loved her. Esther knew they wouldn’t, not when the moon and stars were blotted out by the sun. But what about the next night?
As it happened, that day an ostentatiously bored Samuel climbed a high fence, promptly fell off and broke his collarbone. After five tedious hours sitting in A&E, listening to Hannah’s whines, Samuel’s whimpers and the ceaseless complaints of other unfortunates, Dad declared the holiday at an end. They arrived back home just as the final traces of daylight were dragged from the sky.
Esther waited for the Horned Man every night for several weeks, but he didn’t come. She began sleeping through the night again, stopped jumping at shadows and sudden movements. Her gut unclenched itself.
It was years before she saw the Horned Man again.
Esther was eighteen and off to university to study Art. Her parents grunted farewell, unimpressed by her excellent A-Level results and her acceptance at a prestigious institution. After Samuel failed his exams and Hannah quit university within three weeks, they had adjusted their expectations accordingly. Besides, as her father had pointed out witheringly at least sixty times, there was no money to be made in arty-farty crap.
The whole family were vaguely disappointed when Esther made it to Christmas and beyond without dropping out. She returned to her studies in January, and one weekend, on a drunken whim, went with a bunch of mates to Scotland to stay in a cottage belonging to someone’s great auntie amid moors and mountains. It was a lopsided yet sturdy white painted construction with a horseshoe over the front door. It rained incessantly, so they holed up in the living room in front of a log fire, drinking the whisky they had bought at a petrol station, playing board games and Truth or Dare and having a rare old time.
On their last night, the hour grew late, and the fire grew dim. It was Esther’s turn to fetch the logs from the woodshed, so she threw on an old mac and groped her way outside. She carried a torch, but the meagre little beam was almost obliterated by the steady drizzle and the opaque duskiness of a nightfall tens of miles from any streetlamps, neon signs or traffic lights. She flicked it around, nonetheless, trying to see as much as she could of her surroundings.
Esther made it two-thirds of the way to the woodshed when she saw the Horned Man, outlined in the beam from her torch.
He stood on the other side of the drystone wall that divided the yard from the wildness of the moor. He stood, a baleful silhouette against the purplish black of the landscape and regarded Esther.
Esther halted, muscles and tendons rigid with fear. She had almost, virtually, just about forgotten the Horned Man and his loving hound. Yet as she saw the spreading antlers, the flinty gaze, the shabby cloak, the years slid off her like the raindrops, and she was the timid little girl again, the simplest of prey for the brutish Horned Man and his hound.
The rain, hurling itself down in glassy rods, obscured most of the Horned Man’s features, but Esther could see his smile unfurling itself like a fern.
‘Don’t run, Esther,’ said the Horned Man. ‘I’ve been waiting for you, for such a long time now. My hounds were desolate when you shunned us. They love you.’
His magpie-shrewd eyes glinted.
‘I love you, Esther,’ he rumbled. ‘Come with me. Come into the shadows.’
The Horned Man’s voice juddered through Esther’s chest, vibrated along her veins and stirred her icy blood. Almost without conscious thought, she took a step towards the Horned Man, torch falling from lax fingers to land softly in the mud. Beyond the wall, she could hear something, even above the clatter of the rain—a low, almost mournful howling…
The Horned Man extended his hand across the wall, beckoning Esther closer. She teetered, his words, his gestures oddly compelling but something deep inside holding her as still as the stones beneath her feet. A memory, faint and pale as dandelion seeds, drifted through her mind…
Her Gran, face reddened by firelight, her words gin clear.
‘The fairer that a man speaks, the falser his heart, Esther. Don’t listen to his words. Look him in the eye. They’ll tell you what you need to know.’
Esther looked. The Horned Man’s eyes were the colour of mould and rot, and they slithered over her like slugs. She cringed, unwilling to stay, unable to run.
The clouds overhead, thick as treacle, stirred, parted. A halfmoon glowed in the gap, its light straggling down to illuminate the tableau in the yard. It was a pale, sickly light, but it was enough. Hearing, understanding, movement returned. Esther heard the whispers, the warnings…don’t be fooled, Esther. Run! Run away!
She bolted. It was only a few strides to the front door, but her legs felt as though they had been transfigured into lead. With a Sisyphean effort, Esther dragged her limbs across the muck and the puddles, though the rain and dark and the wind on her face, to the cottage.
Forgetting doorhandles, locks, latches, she flung herself at the sturdy wooden door. By some miracle, it opened at once and Esther literally fell into the hallway. She hooked her heavy legs around the door and slammed it shut with her feet, before scrabbling to her knees to lock it and put the chain on.
One of her friends, Val, found her there half a minute later. Esther was soaking wet and shaking harder than the cottage’s rickety old washing machine, which moved half a foot every time they did the laundry.
‘We heard the door slam,’ Val exclaimed. ‘Are you okay? What is it?’
‘Someone… someone out there…’ Esther managed to force out in-between great gulps of air.
‘Hell,’ muttered Val, helping Esther to stand. ‘Maisie was just saying she’d seen a prowler hanging round. Said it was creepy, he had some sort of headdress on… probably the local weirdo. Let’s make sure everything is locked up and we’ll all sleep in the living room so no-one’s on their own. You go and put the kettle on.’
The students locked up and slept in the living room as planned, but nothing untoward happened that night. The next morning, they packed up and headed back to their halls of residence.
The gang of friends returned to the cottage several times before graduation, but somehow Esther was always busy, and never went with them again.
Esther was twenty-seven. She worked for an insurance company by day and painted in the evenings and at weekends. She had sold a few paintings to an art gallery in Sheffield, a few more in Newcastle and had acquired a small, localised but favourable reputation as an artist to watch. Her subjects varied but bleak and barren moors, rainy nights, a man with stag’s antlers, hounds with bloodied mouths and a silvered moon featured regularly.
Ever since her twenty-seventh birthday, Esther had kept watch for the Horned Man. She did not linger outside once night had descended, eschewed the countryside. She scoured the internet and the local library for information, picking her way through legends, folklore, fairy tales.
Most of what she read was unrelated or inaccurate. There were tales of strange pagan gods, men with horns, wild hunts and changelings. Every so often, Esther would find something that chimed with her experiences. Johann Von Goethe’s Der Erlkönig, about a malevolent woodland being who stole away children. The legend of Herne the Hunter, who hunted human beings during times of injustice. Monsters who emerged from the depths of chilly rivers or who came striding over empty fields and through stormy weather to ravish young women.
None of the stories ever mentioned escaping from these uncanny hunters.
One night, which was not the darkest or coldest of the year, but fairly dark and quite cold, Esther was late going home from work. Her manager had insisted she stay until a presentation for an important client was complete (it had been finished for several days, but the manager in question was skilled at nit-picking and fussing over the colour of pie-charts and fonts used).
Although it wasn’t raining, or even edging towards midnight, the streets were dim and there was hardly anyone around save the odd drunk staggering somewhere unknown or the odd cyclist making a delivery, scooting past with reckless disregard for pedestrians or speed bumps. The wind was strong, blasting rubbish and dead leaves along the streets and knocking pigeons off their perches.
Esther scurried along, a peculiar urge to keep moving preventing her from doing the sensible thing and waiting for the bus. It proved to be a smart decision, for as she strode towards home, following the route the bus always took, there was no sign of the sturdy double-decker she usually caught. So, she hurried on, eager to reach her familiar street, the low wall of her front yard, her front door with the old-fashioned panels of coloured glass.
She was three-quarters there when she heard the yelps of pain.
The noises were high-pitched, agonised, frantic. Esther’s brain told her to ignore it, to hurry home, but her curiosity had always been strong and unruly. She followed the yips away from the main street, down a murky little side alley snaking between two rows of houses and found the cat.
It was lying next to a black bin, sharp pale teeth bared as it sensed Esther’s approach. It was a beauteous creature: its silken fur pale grey bisected by darker stripes, slim tail tipped with white and its frame sleek and elegant. Yet its fur was spattered with blood—vivid, fresh blood, not dried brown blood from an old wound. Her horror rising in her throat like puke, Esther saw the jagged gashes down its back legs, made by teeth and claws. It looked as if it had been savaged by a dog. Several dogs.
Esther stared down at the cat. What to do? Scoop up the vicious-looking thing and rush it to a vet (provided it didn’t claw her face off)? Call the animal rescue centre? Let nature take its course? For precious seconds, she dithered.
The cat stared up at her. For all its blazing fear and fury, there was a glimmer of appeal in its fathomless eyes, a mute appeal for aid. That decided Esther. She shucked off her jacket and laid it gently over the animal. Then, moving as slowly and gently as she could, she crouched down and scooped it into her arms.
She had expected the cat to growl, bite, struggle. But the animal, despite the pain it must have been in, was eerily serene. On the surface, at least. As Esther held it close, she felt its little heart thumping away in double-quick time. Shock, or terror, or both, she thought as she regained her footing…
The cat stiffened in her arms. Its ears flattened along its skull and its eyes were crazed, the whites encircling the dark irises like seawater round rocks. It had spotted a danger, something lurking behind Esther.
Esther knew, even before she turned round, who was lying in wait. She turned to face the Horned Man without a hint of surprise, even as her heart began to gallop, hurling itself against her ribs, beating in time with the cat’s.
The Horned Man stood quietly, regarding Esther and the cat. Around the hem of his cloak, not one, but six, seven, eight and more hounds swirled, their mouths ensanguined, their eyes aglow with bloodlust. Esther knew that only obedience to their master was keeping them leashed.
She stood and faced them, brave and tall.
‘Good evening,’ she said to the Horned Man. For once, she could see his face plainly. Although the alley was dusky, the buttery light cast by the streetlamps on the main road straggled in and lit up the scene.
The Horned Man’s roughly hewn face wore a sneer.
‘Hello, Esther,’ he said. It wasn’t quite a jibe.
‘My elusive Esther…’ the Horned Man drawled. ‘It’s rare that I’ve had to come back for someone twice. I suspected you’d be waiting. That’s why I prepared this… inducement.’
He gestured at the cat in her arms. Esther felt the feline flinch.
She made no response. The hounds snarled and paced.
‘My hounds love you, Esther,’ said the Horned Man. ‘They love you so, they will chase you and catch you, no matter where you try to go to ground. Will you not spare them the exertion, and come with me at last?’
Esther stared at the Horned Man. She gazed at his sharp-tipped antlers, his stony features, his greedy grasping hands. Then she looked down at the poor bloodied cat in her arms. She held it just a little closer, feeling its rib cage rising, falling. She thought of the pain it must have endured at the hands of the Horned Man and his loving hounds.
‘No,’ she said, raising her head as she spoke. ‘No, I won’t go with you.’
And without waiting for an answer, she turned and ran to the other end of the alley and out into the night. There was an iota of appalling silence, and then she heard the baying of the hounds on the hunt.
Esther ran with no clear direction, no intent. Getting away was all she could think of. Unlike in Scotland, her legs felt strong and powerful, and she ran fast. The cat ought to have weighed her down, but the animal felt as light as sycamore keys twirling down from the treetops. She ran on, blind as a mole, gulping air like a landed fish. Behind her, the baying of the hounds increased in volume.
Then the cat nipped her on the arm.
Esther flicked a startled glance down, and nearly dropped her feline burden when it jerked its head towards the left. Directing her. But she rallied, and let her feet veer left, along a path through a scrubby patch of ground between houses. The tarmac petered out and she was running over packed dirt, tree roots, discarded beer cans, crisp packets. It was easier than running on tarmac. She must have picked up speed, for despite the fervent howls from the hounds, they still hadn’t caught up.
The trees and scrub grew thicker, hiding the sky and veiling the horizon. And then they parted like stage curtains and Esther was confronted with water. A river, black as tar and ghosted with silver from the moon shimmering above.
Throw your shoes in the river, Esther! The moon cried.
‘Huh?’ said Esther.
Throw them in the river!
Esther, hopping like a hare, pulled off one shoe and then the other with her free hand, before hurling them as far as she could out into the water. They hit the surface with a plop and sank reluctantly.
The hunt was gaining on them. Esther could hear them, drawing near, crashing through the undergrowth.
Now, hide!
Esther, jolted from her brief stupor, cast about frantically for a hiding place. The cat, savvier at evading hunters than Esther ever would be, nipped at her right arm this time. Esther took the hint and ran to the right along the shoreline, heedless of the rough ground and damp rocks. She drifted to the left, splashing through the wet, soaking her feet and socks.
They reached a clump of trees bending over the river, darkening the waters to raven black. The cat gave a frantic wriggle, nearly leaping from Esther’s arms. But she held onto it, and without hesitation, plunged into the river, gasping from shock at the cold. She waded into waist height, and then ducked down, holding the cat’s muzzle above the water. Together, they held still and waited, the water eddying around them, hardly daring to breathe.
A moment later, the Horned Man shuffled into view. He was hunched over, walking as if it pained him. Esther was bemused. Had he hurt himself? There had been no sign of injury in the alley…
But the alley wasn’t moonlit, and the riverbank was.
Esther smirked a little despite herself and tickled the cat’s chin.
With a visible effort, the Horned Man waded into the river. He reached into the water, pulled out one of Esther’s discarded shoes, and retreated to the shadows beyond the shore. He studied the shoe, then tossed it aside.
For a little longer Esther and the cat lingered, hidden, watching as the Horned Man contemplated the river, before shaking his head contemptuously and turning away. He flicked a gnarled hand, and the hounds fell into formation at his heels, flowing away in search of easier prey.
Esther and the cat stayed in the shallows for a while longer, just in case. But Esther knew, deep inside, that she had seen the last of the Horned Man. That his hunt for her was ended. Just before dawn, she and the cat splashed their way to safety. The ghostly moon was just touching the horizon, about to vanish.
‘Thank you, moon,’ Esther murmured. It was woefully inadequate, but it was all she could say.
The moon said nothing, but Esther knew it had heard her. With a weary smile, she turned to leave the river. Her limbs were weighty with exhaustion, but she felt better than she had in a long, long time. Relief was an amphetamine, buoying her up, giving her energy.
To find an animal sanctuary to treat the cat, to find breakfast, her bed, a hot shower. There was no hurry.
Nothing was chasing her, not now.