The Beast

A man goes seeking a beast

I was back on the moors, among the mist which seemed to wrap around, making my breath laboured. It clung to me, a damp shroud that muffled sound and light, shrinking the world to a grey, sodden sphere just beyond the reach of my outstretched hand. Every inhale felt thin, snatched from the heavy, wet air, cold in my lungs.

I was here to encounter the beast which I saw around three months ago. They called me mad, of course. My family, the handful of villagers who listened politely before exchanging pitying glances, even the local constable who’d humoured my wild tale of something ‘seen in the dusk’. Something too large, too quick, too wrong.

Three months. Three months of sleepless nights, of tracing blurred outlines in my mind, of feeling its phantom presence just beyond the edge of my vision. It had been a fleeting glimpse, a ripple in the heather where no ripple should be, a shadow that moved with impossible speed, and then… two pinpricks of light in the deepening gloom, like dying embers, staring. And a sound. Not a growl, not a snarl, but a low, vibrating hum that felt less like an animal’s throat and more like the very earth groaning in hunger.

I hadn't believed it myself at first. Had the cold played tricks on my eyes? The exhaustion of a full day’s hike? But the memory had clawed at me, refusing to be dismissed. The sheer wrongness of it. It hadn't been a deer, a stray dog, or even one of the ‘phantom big cats’ that occasionally stirred local gossip. This had been… older. More primal. A creature born of the moors' ancient sorrow and primal hunger.

Now, the moors were a stark, featureless canvas of grey. The mist was thicker than I’d ever known it, swallowing the familiar landmarks �" the standing stones, the lone hawthorn, the distant ridge. I navigated by instinct, by the barely perceptible slope of the ground, by the chill that seeped deeper into my bones with every step.

My heart hammered a frantic rhythm against my ribs, a counterpoint to the eerie silence. No birds sang. No sheep bleated. Only the whisper of the wind through skeletal heather and the drip, drip, drip of moisture from bog-sodden grass. My breath plumed white before me, a ghost in the ghost-ridden landscape.

I stopped near the cluster of cairns where I’d first seen it. Here, the mist seemed to condense, swirling around the ancient stones like a living entity. My breath hitched. This was where it had been. This was where it would be.

Fear, cold and sharp, began to prickle at my scalp, but underneath it, a strange, almost manic exhilaration. I wasn't just here to prove my sanity; I was here to understand. To look into those eyes again, and perhaps, for them to look back.

Minutes stretched into an eternity. My muscles ached from tension. Every creak of my jacket, every shift of my weight, sounded deafening in the silence. My eyes strained, trying to pierce the opaque curtain of grey.

And then, I felt it. Not saw it, not heard it, but felt it. A pressure in the air, a drop in temperature that had nothing to do with the outside chill. The mist, previously swirling randomly, began to coalesce, to thicken in one specific direction, drawing my gaze.

A shape. Indistinct at first, a deeper grey against the lighter grey, like a smudge on a dirty window. It was long, low to the ground, and moved with a fluidity that defied its implied mass. It seemed to flow, rather than walk. There was no sound of footsteps, no rustle of heather.

It was closer now. The air thrummed. My lungs burned, but I couldn't tear my eyes away. The shape solidified, just barely. Too large, definitely. Broader than any dog, sleek like a panther but with proportions that were subtly, terrifyingly wrong. And then, they appeared. Two points of light, no longer like dying embers, but like freshly stoked coals, burning with an intelligent, ancient malice.

They stared at me. I could feel the weight of that gaze, dissecting me, measuring me. It wasn't just an animal's curiosity; it was something far older, far more knowing. A shudder ran through me, so profound it nearly buckled my knees.

I wanted to run. Every cell in my body screamed for flight. But I was frozen, locked in that terrifying, silent communion. The beast didn't move any closer. It simply was. A presence that filled the entire space within the mist, dominating, oppressive.

A low sound finally emerged, not from its throat, but seeming to vibrate from the very ground beneath my feet, a mournful, hungry hum that resonated deep in my chest. It wasn't a threat, not exactly. It was a statement. I am here. I exist. I always have.

The eyes blinked, once, slowly, and in that instant, the shape seemed to waver, to dissolve back into the mist. It was gone as suddenly as it had appeared, leaving behind only the damp chill, the silence, and the phantom hum still reverberating in my bones.

I stood there, trembling, for a long time. My legs felt like jelly, my throat was dry, and the cold had seeped to my very marrow. But a strange, fierce triumph bloomed within me. I wasn't mad. It was real.

The moors, I now knew, held secrets far deeper than any geology textbook could describe. And I, for one terrifying, life-altering moment, had been allowed a glimpse into its hidden heart. I had not conquered it, nor had it conquered me. We had merely acknowledged each other. And I knew, with a certainty that chilled me further than the mist, that the moors held many more such encounters, waiting in their endless, shrouded depths.