The Gorse Man

The summer I turned twelve, we moved to a place called Holloway Fen, a low, damp valley that smelled of peat and rotting reeds. Our cottage was a squat, brick building with a slate roof, tucked behind the grand, decaying manor house that stood empty at the end of a weed-choked drive. The manor had once been a gentleman’s farm, with stables and paddocks now swallowed by gorse and brambles. Beyond the paddocks, a dark, sluggish river wound through the fen, and at its bend, a rusting iron bridge crossed to a stretch of marshland that locals avoided. They called it the Stretch, and they said the ground there was treacherous, but they said more than that, if you pressed them, their lips would purse and they’d shake their heads. My father, a man who collected old maps and talked to strangers in pubs, learned that the Stretch had been the site of a quarry collapse a century ago, burying a gang of navvies alive. They never found their bodies. My mother, who had a practical heart and ignored portents, just sighed and unpacked boxes. We didn’t have much choice; the rent was cheap because the manor’s owner had died and the estate was in probate, and the cottage was the only thing we could afford after Dad’s business went under.

Our nearest neighbor was a mile down the rutted lane, a farmer named Old Mabbitt, who kept a few scrawny sheep and a flock of geese. He told us to keep the kids away from the river and the Stretch, especially after rain. ‘The ground there’s hungry,’ he’d mutter, and then spit a wad of tobacco, as if that settled it. But my brother, Petey, who was eight and fearless, and my sister, Lily, who was ten and curious, they didn’t heed warnings. They’d explore the old stables, kicking at rusted horseshoes, and they’d stand at the edge of the paddocks, staring at the gorse tangled like barbed wire under the sun. I mostly stayed inside, reading Dad’s old paperbacks—ghost stories that felt too close to home. I’d watch them from the window as they poked at the gorse with sticks, and I’d see something odd: the gorse seemed to shiver, though there was no breeze. I’d blink, and it would be still.

One afternoon, a storm blew in from the coast, heavy and black. The rain came in sheets, and the fen turned to mud. We huddled in the cottage, listening to the wind howl through the old oaks. Petey and Lily were at the window, watching lightning stitch the sky, when they gasped. They pointed toward the river. Through the glass, I saw a shape moving over the bridge—a tall, thin figure, blacker than the storm, walking with a lurching gait. It was there, and then it was gone, swallowed by the gorse. We waited for Dad to come back from town, but he didn’t. The storm raged for two hours, and when it cleared, the sun broke through, and Dad’s car turned into the lane. He walked in, dripping, his face pale. He said he’d had a bit of a scare on the bridge; he’d swerved to avoid a man standing in the middle of it, but when he stopped to check, the man was gone. He laughed it off, but his hands were trembling. That night, I heard him pacing, and I heard my mother murmur, ‘It’s just the wind.’

A week later, Petey and Lily came back from the Stretch with a story. They’d found a bird—a crow—but it was dead, and its feathers were singed, as if it had been burnt, but there was no fire. They’d also found a small, smooth stone, like a talisman, with a strange spiral carved into it. They brought it to me, and I felt a chill as I held it. It was warm, as if it had been clutched in a hand. I told them to leave it alone, but Lily kept it in her pocket. That night, I had a dream of being underground, in a dark, narrow space, and I could hear a low humming, like a swarm of bees, and then a scratching, like claws on wood. I woke up drenched in sweat. The next day, Petey was missing. We searched the cottage, the paddocks, the stables. Finally, we found him at the edge of the Stretch, just standing there, staring at the gorse. He was pale, and when we called his name, he turned, and his eyes were vacant, as if he didn’t know us. He said only one word: ‘Beneath.’ We brought him home, and he slept for twelve hours, but when he woke, he was himself again, a shadow of the memory of it.

But the Stretch kept calling. I started to notice that the gorse would rustle every time we passed, and I’d catch glimpses of a shape that wasn’t a man nor animal. My parents dismissed it, but I saw the worry in their eyes. The thing began to manifest, to press itself into our small, wan lives. In the night, I’d hear a slow, sucking sound, like something being pulled from mud, and I’d find wet footprints in the hall leading to Lily’s room. I’d speak to her, but she would only stare at the ceiling, and sometimes she’d hum, a low, monotonous note, and I’d see her hand wrapped tightly around that stone. Then my father, out fixing the fence, came back with a strange, hollowed look, and he said he’d seen a figure in the old stables, standing among the rusted tools, watching him. He said it was tall and thin, with skin like crackled mud, and its eyes were pits of blackness. ‘It knew me,’ he whispered, and he began to drink, heavily.

I decided I had to do something. I’d heard from Old Mabbitt a story I’d dismissed but now felt true. He said that after the quarry collapse, a man named Josiah had gone mad and wandered into the marsh, and they found his bones later, but his spirit was said to haunt the Stretch, waiting for the dead to rise. He said that some believed if you dug deep enough, you’d find them, the buried men, but no one dared. And he said that once, a passing preacher had tried to bless the place, but he’d been found dead a week later, his face frozen in a scream, with mud in his mouth. I thought of the white cross I had known as a child, marking an intersection where a man had died, and how we had moved because of that. I thought that maybe there were places that were simply wounds, and that if you fed them with fear, they’d grow.

I went to the Stretch at dusk, against my family’s warnings. I carried a shovel, thinking I could find the site of the collapse, but the gorse was thick, thorny, and it snagged my clothes. As I pushed deeper, the marsh grew soft, and the ground began to squelch. I found a patch of bare earth, black and wet, and I began to dig. I dug for what felt like hours, the sky darkening, the stars blinking in. I struck something solid—a bone, perhaps. I felt a tremor, and the earth around me began to shift, to bubble. That’s when I saw it: a hand, but it wasn’t a normal hand. It was gnarled, with long, blackened claws, and it reached up from the mud, grasping for me. I scrambled back, but the hand seemed to grow, and behind it, a face emerged—not human, but a mask of mud with gaping holes, and it let out a groan that seemed to come from the ground itself. I turned and ran, thorns tearing at my skin, and I didn’t stop until I burst out of the gorse and collapsed on the lane, gasping.

When I got back to the cottage, the lights were on, and my mother stood at the door. She took one look at me and her face went white. She said nothing, but she pulled me inside and locked the door behind us. I expected my father to be there, but he was in the parlor, sitting in his chair, staring, with a bottle in his hand. Petey and Lily were at the kitchen table, both wearing identical empty looks. The stone was gone. That night, I lay in bed, listening to the mud suck at the foundation, and I knew that we had not escaped the curse of that intersection. The bad luck had followed us, or maybe all roads lead to such places. I thought of the man who had burned from the inside out, and I thought that the fire in his jacket was nothing compared to the fire of the earth, which burns slow and patient. In the morning, we packed quickly, leaving behind most of our belongings, and we drove away without looking back. I didn’t check if there was a white cross or a gorse tangle in the rearview; I just held my breath until we hit the main road. And even now, years later, I still hear a low hum at night when I’m near water, and I see mud caked under my fingernails, though I haven’t touched the earth in years. The stone is still in my pocket—I never told anyone I kept it. It’s warm, always warm, and it reminds me that some places are not just bad luck, but hungry, and they will always find a way to call you back.