Chapter 10.

At the crest of the hill they found a dead man.
Stokes, as he passed through a growth of nettles suddenly stood on the body and leapt back with a curse. Directly behind him, de Hogue grabbed him and pulled him back almost tripping as his leg caught on his sabre’s scabbard.
“What is it?”
“Another damned corpse!” Stokes replied.
They made their way around the nettles and peered at the dead body in the darkness. Stokes found a bag and passed it to de Hogue. Inside were an apple, gone soft, and a small book. As Stokes scanned the landscape around them, de Hogue opened the cover and peered at the name in the moonlight, eventually he made it out. It read; Nicholas Sedgwick.
“Good Lord” he whispered. “It’s Mary Coleman’s lover. And to think we once suspected him”
“Judging by the smell of him I’d say he’s been dead a few days” Stokes replied. “Aye” de Hogue put the sketch book back into the bag and dropped it besides the corpse. “Well there is nothing we can do for him now. We’ll have to come back tomorrow for him.”
“That’s right” Stokes muttered. He began to walk along the hill top looking for tracks but there was nothing to be found. De Hogue stood by the nettles and stared down the far side of the hill to where the mud flats stretched out in the distance. The tide was out and they reflected the moonlight with long slivers of water.
A movement caught his eye and he stared at it. A shadow was moving along the edge of a field at the base of the hill no more than few hundred yards away. It was some thing indiscriminate in the dark but as large as a pony or a horse.
“Stokes?” he hissed.
Stokes had disappeared, swallowed up by the dark. “Stokes! Where the hell are you?”¨
The other man appeared, running urgently back.
“What?”
“There!” de Hogue pointed and Stokes searched eagerly with his eyes, his rifle to his shoulder.
“I don’t see it” he hissed.
“At the end of the hedgerow now. By the dead tree!”
For a second Stokes was as silent and still as a statue and then once again he was running.
“Come on!” he cried and de Hogue followed him. They ran down the slope precariously neither man taking his eyes from the shape which fled before them. For a minute they could see it clearly, a low dark shape that seemed to move in and out of the darkness, clearly fleeing, and then it was gone.
Stokes and de Hogue still ran down hill, across the field towards it, but as they approached the hedgerow, they slowed down and came to a stop.
“Where is it?” Stokes panted.“I don’t know” de Hogue sank to one knee to catch his breath. He still held a boarding pistol in either hand.
Around them, the darkness moved with the wind. The hedgerow, rustled quietly and the few slight trees creaked as they swayed in the breeze.
The two men remained still as their breathing slowed down to its normal rate. De Hogue felt his heart beat in his neck fading with each pulse as his body relaxed.
Neither man spoke.
De Hogue looked to Stokes who shook his head. There was no sound or movement. Gradually Stokes began to walk, parallel to the hedge row. Because he was right handed, he moved in a cautious crab like gait, keeping his rifle trained on the shadows along the edge of the field.
De Hogue waited.
Suddenly Stokes fired without warning into the hedgerow and the night was pierced by strange high pitched squeal. De Hogue’s hair seemed to stand up on end at the sound, and he saw something move with a staggering motion beyond the hedgerow. Knowing where it was lent him the courage to run towards the boundary between the two fields and as he ran Stokes fired again. The creature on the farther side, what ever it was, was making strange high pitched noises, almost whistling as it lurched along. As it approached de Hogue he fired the first of his two pistols at it, diagonally through the hedge.
At once the creature turned back the way it had come and de Hogue shouted a warning to Stokes.
Stokes looked up and saw the creature break through the bushes, regardless of their thorns. It was the strangest animal he had ever seen, and its mere appearance drove a shaft of uncertainty and fear through him. He snapped the rifle shut, and as it staggered towards on him, on legs like giant daggers, he raised the rifle and realising he could see no head he fired both barrels into its torso. Even as the creature crashed to the ground in a scramble of limbs, kicking up great clods of earth, Stokes went down on one knee and broke open the rifle. As fast as he could he pulled out the two spent cartridges, but even as he inserted the next two, the creature lashed out with a limb and the rifle went flying from his hands.

Stokes fell backwards, swearing in pain. His lower left arm had been opened and blood was suddenly every where. He scrambled away from the flailing monster, pulling out and firing the flint lock pistol in his belt as he did, but with one lurching step, the creature was on him and its fore legs, stabbed down into him again and again.
Even as he cried out in pain, blood welling up in his mouth, it suddenly broke off its attack and was running away. De Hogue appeared in the night, standing over him pointing a pistol and firing it after the creature then dropping down to kneel besides him.
“My God!” de Hogue stared at Stokes in horror. “My God what is it?”
The creature had only been over Stokes for a few seconds, but it had already killed him. Even as Stokes tried to speak, de Hogue knew it was no good. The man’s abdomen had been punctured and torn open and blood was welling up from several wounds. Each by themselves, mortal.
“My rifle…” Stokes gurgled in a choking voice. “Pistols are no good…”
Even as he spoke, he died.
De Hogue shook him gently then fell back onto his heels and hung his head. For several minutes he cried in great sobs that twisted his throat and hurt his chest. Unused to tears he found it difficult to get each gaping sob from his lungs, and as his fingers gripped the grass, he felt his anger building up inside of him. A vein in the side of his head began to throb and he gritted his teeth to stop the painful crying.
Stokes rifle lay there, glinting darkly under the moon and he crawled over to it. It was loaded, and he snapped it shut and rose to his feet.
Taking several more shells from Stokes pocket, he hefted the gun and fired it twice into the sky.What ever the creature was, it was hurt and running, and he wanted it to know he was coming. He emptied the gun and reloaded it and then calmly, he began to walk it.