Master of the Moor by Ruth Rendell Read Free Book Online Page A

resembled a pale sky scattered all over with puffs of black cloud. And from time to time the moon dulled even further as thin wracks of cloud and then denser masses passed across its face. Once it disappeared altogether, and although a fair degree of brightness remained in the sky, the land became very dark and in this pathless place it was not easy for Stephen to find his way.
    It was when the pale flood of light returned that Stephen saw the man. He was quite a long way off, not far in from the road, and he was standing quite still as if waiting for someone or watching. There was no reason why this man shouldn’t be out on the moor on a fine spring night, except that hardly anyone but Stephen ever was. What was more remarkable was that he was not walking but standing still. The figure remained absolutely still among the little birch trees and right in the path Stephen had mapped out for himself to take. He walked on steadily. Although nothing could be seen of him but a silhouette Stephen was sure the man was looking at him, staring insolently at this approaching form across the intervening, pallid, tundra-like land. Stephen perceived that he had no torch, or that if hehad one he wasn’t bothering to use it, which meant he must know the moor well, as well perhaps as Stephen himself did. He felt a mounting resentment. Although he could see no more than the man’s black outline, he sensed it was a rival he was moving towards, one who saw himself as having rights in the moor, even rights of possession over it.
    Stephen had no clear idea, no idea at all really, as to what he would do when he and the man encountered each other. Now no more than a hundred yards separated them. He wasn’t afraid, though the man was evidently waiting for him, not moving at all. To defy the man, to show him, he began to run this last lap. The man went on waiting, almost as if he were teasing Stephen, and when at last he did move, it was suddenly and with a strange dancing skip. It seemed to Stephen that he was skipping among the trees.
    The moon went in. At one moment the Banks of Knamber were bathed in pale light, at the next a gush of cloud had obscured the spotty yellow orb of the moon. As it vanished, absorbed in the veils of blackness, Stephen stumbled over a twisted root and fell headlong.
    He wasn’t hurt. But when he picked himself up he was shivering in the darkness. Where the man was, gone or waiting for him behind the next tree, he had no idea. It was now impossible to see more than a few yards. He knew roughly where he was, or he knew in theory, and he stumbled slowly along in a westerly direction, sometimes holding onto the trunk of a birch tree. Once he thought he heard a movement among the trees to the left of him, as of footfalls rustling the grass. He stood still and listened but the sound came no more. Then, it seemed hours later, when he sensed or smelt or somehow divined that he was almost at the road, therecame, as likely as not out of his own imagination, the delicate sound of an indrawn breath.
    It was midnight when he came home to Tace Way. Lyn was in bed but not asleep. She came down to him and made him a hot drink and felt his forehead which was burning hot and covered in drops of sweat.
    In the past Stephen had sometimes been like this after being out late on the moor, feverish next day and light-headed. Lyn left him in bed and took the car to work, promising to be back early to give him his lunch. It was to salve her conscience, she thought, and make up for her obsessional preoccupation with Nick Frazer.
    Although she hadn’t seen him again, he was always in her thoughts. In her mind she talked to him, telling him about her life, day-to-day things, carrying on with him a long intimate dialogue. It was in vain that she told herself he was a stranger, a man who had probably by now forgotten her. This revolving of him in her mind led invariably to the same end, the same fear, that he would go away from Hilderbridge