Monster Pigbeast

i first heard the story of the pigbeast way back in 1982 when i was a young boy,
princess anne had came to open marden quarry as a nature reserve and hundreds of people showed up to see her cut the red ribbon and a glorious summers day...in the daytime the place was a picture...back then the water was clean and clear,and packed with fish...swans and ducks sailed by majestically to a soundtrack of a real frog chorus...but at night...this place got real spooky...only the brave dared walk the dark and narrow paths that ran through the almost sinister trees...and there was a reasonfor hundreds of years it had been said that this place was haunted...by a monster...a pig monsterthe new nature reserve had been a limestone quarry since 1600 and was no stranger to mysterious occurancesover the years terrified witness's told they'd seen the beastit was said it was gaunt to the point of emaciation mostly hidden underneath the tattered robes of a monk with glowing red eyes and a blood soaked snout...an un-natural beast in every sense...half human-half pig with a taste for flesh...its complexion the ash gray of death...and its fiery eyes pushed back deep into their sockets...the pigbeast looked like a gaunt skeleton recently disenterred from the grave....it walked with the aid of a staff but moved like the wind with no sound cept a blood curdling squeal...Upon its ghoulish face,what lips it had were tattered and bloody...barely hiding crooked and vicious fangs which tore flesh from bone...Unclean and suffering from suppurations of the flesh...a walking abomination...a ghost in every sense of the wordThe pigbeast gave off a strange and eerie odor of decay and decomposition of death and corruption enough to paralyse anyone fool enough to wander into its lair...sightings of a pig faced monster had been reported by many terrified local for hundreds of yearsand there was many old books telling the story of the legendme and a few friends from school went to the quarry one summers night to see if what we'd heard and read aboutwas true,for the most part we just walked around scaring each other whilst drinking cans of ace lager and smoking john player specials...but after a few hours something actually happened...we had made a small fire and were sitting around shooting the shit when we saw something move in the trees by an opening...we fell silent and struggled to see what it was then all of a sudden this thing ran across a clearing and disappeared in the undergrowth beyond...a few people screamed and began to run...a few ran in the direction it had went to investigate but it was gone...there was panic...that wasn't a maneveryones account of what they'd see differed...some said it ran on all fours...it was about 4 feet tall...some said taller...some said it was hairy...but what i'd seen was a perculiar little thing wearing a hood...and it moved fasti saw it for a good couple of seconds but then it was gone...the following day at school the story had got around and the fear had turned to exitmentth next night there was dozens of kids at the quarrylooking for the beast armed with penknives,catapults and even gat guns...most had gone home by the time anything happened, everyone will tell you they were there but the truth is there was only about 6 of us left to witness the beast,we'd all been playing on the rope swing that swang out over the water and some of us had falled in and were wet,everybody was ready to call it a night at about 11 o'clock,as we made our way through the trees on the way home,something happenedwe heard a noise...a grunt...everyone froze...my eyes struggled to pentrate the darkness then all of a suddensomething ran from the trees right towards us...everone tried to scatter but it was to late...the thing just ran right into us sending everyone flying...then again it disappeared into the darkness...no one was harmed but everyone was terrified...it all happened in seconds but i got a good look at the thing that had attacked us...i was right...it was dressed in dirty robes and had a large hood covering its face,there was some kind of leather banderlero across it shoulder and it carried a staff or a branch...it had used that to barge me out of the way...when everyone stopped running we were across the horses field and under the safety of a streetlamp...and everyone shared what they'd seen...everyone agreed with my discription...but one of my friends said he'd seen it's face,he said it was the face of a pig...with glowing red eyesfuck...we went to the quarry the following night and saw nothing...then every night that week...nothingeveryone at school was saying your full of shit...but still they went to the quarry each night armed to the teeth to hunt the thingas i recall it was many weeks later when we heard something had happened...the local newspaper ran a story saying a man was walking his dog late one night in the quarry when he came across a monster...he was walking around the side of the lake when something caught his attentionhe discribed just as we had done...hood and allhe said the thing looked like it was crouched over at the waters edge drinking from the lakeand when it saw his dog it ran off into the trees and was gone...the article added the details that there is underground tunnels all over the area and maybe it lived there...one ran a story about a legend of a ghost monk that had been killed by the duke of northumbria for stealing a pigs head...this was big newsthe police were there for the rest of the week...stopping people from entering the quarry at nightbut i'm not sure they believed the reports...but they would soon enougha few nights later me and my friends were sat up in the carpark near the parks entrance when we heard screamswe ran to see what was going on and we saw a group of kids running up to the police at the bottom of the hillwhere that little bridge goes over the waterfall...a policeman stood by his car whilst another sat in itthe kids were crying and said they'd been attacked by the beastwe sat and watched and listened to their story as did the policeman in between talking on his radiothe policeman in the car began to do a three point turnback then there was large trees on both sides of the roadand it was a tight turn he was making,as he reversed his headlights illuminated the treeline and there it wasthe beast...watching like a geordie michael myersthe thing jumped and ran right across the bonnet of his car and leaped into the dense forest beyondthe police,the kids and other people that had gathered ran for there lives behind the car which seemed to breakthe land speed record as it sped up the hill...the place was closed for many weeks after that but i heard stories about sighting of the thing once on a while...then the story just kind of faded awayi went to the quarry quite a bit but never saw the beast again after that nightbut as i got older i walked through the place many times when its dark taking a shortcut on the home from the puband i've heard things moving and felt as though i was being watched...its a spooky placei for one believe the place is haunted...i've seen what lives there and i'm not the only one...and the sight of that thing will stay with me for the rest of my life...