Beast of Bodmin , livre ebook
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English
Ebooks
2018
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138
pages
English
Ebook
2018
Vous pourrez modifier la taille du texte de cet ouvrage
Obtenez un accès à la bibliothèque pour le consulter en ligne En savoir plus
Publié par
Date de parution
24 septembre 2018
Nombre de lectures
0
EAN13
9781912643677
Langue
English
Poids de l'ouvrage
2 Mo
Publié par
Date de parution
24 septembre 2018
Nombre de lectures
0
EAN13
9781912643677
Langue
English
Poids de l'ouvrage
2 Mo
THE BEAST OF BODMIN
Mark Edmondson
The Beast of Bodmin
Published by The Conrad Press in the United Kingdom 2018
Tel: +44(0)1227 472 874 www.theconradpress.com info@theconradpress.com
ISBN 978-1-912643-67-7
Copyright © Mark Edmondson, 2018
The moral right of Mark Edmondson to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved.
Typesetting and Cover Design by:Charlotte Mouncey, www.bookstyle.co.uk
The Conrad Press logo was designed by Maria Priestley.
For Dad
for your support at the beginning
sorry you missed the end
Chapter 1
W hile Steve drove the red Fiesta, Debbie looked around at the landscape in the summer dusk.
A June evening here on Bodmin Moor was about as different from one in Ealing as she could imagine. All around the solitary car was a vista of long, gently undulating green and brown-green moorland, dotted with occasional thin trees and narrow stone walls that rose higher in the far distance with rocky, hilly outcrops.
Debbie hoped they could find somewhere to stay before nightfall. She was enjoying the views now, but she knew that this beautiful place would become very creepy indeed once the sun had completely disappeared from the sky.
Steve had come into her life the previous July. They’d had a few weekends away: Oxford, Brighton, even Calais, but this was their first proper holiday. They’d decided on a tour of Devon and Cornwall. She told Steve she got easily sunburnt and right away he said, ‘OK then, let’s forget Majorca or the Canaries; let’s go to the West Country.’ That was just like him; he was just so considerate. She knew he really cared about her. That was one of the many reasons why she loved him.
They’d spent the first week in Devon, staying in Dartmouth before moving to Taunton for two nights, and then they began their journey through Cornwall. Debbie found it exciting travelling from place to place without booking anywhere first, but they left Devon later than they wanted to, and after spending a few hours in the town of Launceston, they reached their destination of Jamaica Inn at just before nine in the evening. At Jamaica Inn, they’d been told that there weren’t any rooms available. Steve had been relaxed and OK about that, and they had dinner there before setting off again. Debbie had been worried that in June, the height of the holiday season, they might struggle to find a place to stay. They’d brought a tent with them but they hadn’t used it yet, Debbie secretly hoped they wouldn’t use it at all; she liked to sleep in a bed, not on a groundsheet. Besides, how could she get all cuddly and affectionate at night with the man she loved if they were sleeping on some bumpy ground in a tent? She loved Steve a lot and adored being with someone much bigger than she was. She enjoyed feeling protected by her gentle giant of a boyfriend who was six feet two inches tall. She herself was only five feet three inches.
‘We should’ve booked somewhere this morning,’ she said.
‘I know; I’m sort of kicking myself for that. We’ll keep going and stay in Truro. That’s inland, so the hotels are less likely to be full, whereas in St Austell, I don’t imagine we’d have much luck. Also Truro’s the only city in Cornwall, so we should be able to get a room there, easily enough.’
Debbie looked at the map. Everything Steve said had made sense, but she was worried it was getting late. ‘Steve, I don’t think we should have eaten at Jamaica Inn. It’s almost a quarter to ten and it’ll be dark soon. We should’ve set off as soon as they told us there were no rooms.’
‘I know, Debs, but I was starving hungry, and that steak really was worth waiting for.’
Debbie tied her long brown hair into a ponytail so she could read the map. ‘How long before we get to Truro?’
‘It’ll most likely take us an hour to get to Truro on this road; it winds like a snake. We’ll be driving in pitch darkness for the last part of the journey.’
‘Yes, I know.’
‘To be honest, I’m feeling a little light-headed after that beer.’
‘You only had a pint, you won’t be over the limit, will you, Steve?’
‘Don’t worry; I’m sure I’m not.’
He wiped his eyes one at a time as he tried to focus on the road. ‘We could camp out instead,’ he added, suddenly.
A twinge of unease pricked the back of Debbie’s neck as he made this suggestion.
‘Steve, do we have to?’
‘What’s the problem? It’ll be exciting.’
‘It’ll be terrifying, you mean. Especially once it goes dark.’
‘Come on, Debs, we’ll be fine. It’s a warm evening after all. We’ll find somewhere secluded and near some greenery; you know, for if we need the loo. We’ve got the tent, and torches, and plenty of water for drinking and washing, and in the morning we’ll find a cafe somewhere for breakfast. I’ll set the tent up, which will only take ten minutes or so, and we’ve still got some bottles of lager left. We can watch the sun go down in the middle of nowhere, completely on our own.’
After Steve said that, Debbie found, rather to her surprise, that she was actually beginning to like the sound of his suggestion of camping on the moors. He made it sound quite romantic.
‘And we can have sex as loudly as we want,’ Steve said, with a smile. ‘After all, we couldn’t last night in Taunton, not with those two old women in the room next one along. Bloody hell, the look they gave us in the corridor in the morning! Anyone would have thought it was a crime.’
Steve carried on driving further along the road, which wound up and down and darted right and then left, then right again. Neither of them spoke for a few minutes. Debbie knew that, quite apart from anything else, they would save sixty or seventy pounds by staying in the tent and their holiday money was limited.
‘I suppose it’ll save us a few quid,’ she said.
‘That’s the spirit,’ he said. He then started looking more intently for somewhere they could camp. Finally, after about another ten minutes, the road went down a shallow hill, at the foot of which Debbie saw a rocky outcrop maybe a hundred yards from the road, with what looked like a small spinney close by.
‘There,’ she said, pointing to it. ‘What d’you think?’
‘Looks great,’ he said. ‘Well spotted.’
He drove down to where the road reached as close as it got to the place Debbie had seen, then he drove the car off the road for maybe fifty yards. They hadn’t seen another car for ages; it really is pretty creepy out here , Debbie thought, but knowing she was with Steve made her feel safe.
They carried their supplies and equipment over to the rocky outcrop and found a secluded place to set up camp. They spent the next twenty minutes or so setting the tent up. This was a task Debbie had imagined she’d soon get bored with, but she was starting to share Steve’s excitement as the daylight slowly disappeared and the sun stood alone in the late summer evening sky. Distracted by the intoxicating views and peaceful environment, she allowed Steve to do most of the work and passed him the tent pegs one at a time as he asked for them; he then hammered them into the ground with the rubber mallet.
She saw some sheep in the distance. There was a wooded area a couple of hundred yards away; but nothing else visible except for endless fields that seemed to her to go on for miles. The sun glowed in a dark red sky that had almost vanished from her view. She wanted to tell Steve to stop what he was doing and enjoy it with her, but on the other hand she wanted the job to be done before the darkness closed in around them; so she just soaked in the beautiful scenery and let him carry on.
Chapter 2
T he camping chair sank into the soft grass as Debbie sat down with her bottle of lager.
‘This is the life,’ she said, with a smile.
‘Coming around to the idea of wild camping now, are we?’ Steve asked.
‘I’m not looking forward to the morning when we can’t have a shower, and I really don’t fancy going in that spinney when I need the loo, though I know there isn’t much choice. But yes, at this moment, I’m enjoying myself.’
Steve smiled. He leaned over to kiss her and clink her bottle with his. She felt as though there was something romantic about being out in the middle of nowhere, just her and Steve watching the sun go down, she wanted this moment to last forever. She held his hand as they enjoyed the silence together.
Minutes passed as the dark slowly surrounded them. She thought that she would be scared once the daylight disappeared, but she wasn’t. She knew she would’ve been scared if she was there with anyone other than Steve, especially now that she couldn’t see more than about twenty feet ahead of her; but now she was very relaxed as she held onto Steve’s hand. As they sat there she couldn’t hear a thing other than the occasional car in the distance, and the infrequent light breeze that whistled through her ears.
She thought of how at this time on a Sunday evening she would normally be getting ready for bed and setting her alarm for six thirty in the morning. Working in a sandwich bar was a job she found enjoyable, but not catching two trains to get there she didn’t; but it was where she met Steve, so she felt as though it was worth the inconvenience. He’d been a regular customer of hers for several months before he nervously asked her out. He’d always come across to her as an extremely confident young guy who probably had oodles of girls chasing after him. If it wasn’t for how nervous he was when he asked her to go out with him, she probably would’ve said no. She found it endearing that although he was a fit and healthy young man who obviously visited the gym and the barber on a regular basis, he wasn’t so sure of himself as to ask a girl out without his hands shaking and his voice trembling. So she said yes, after let
