Back in the early 90’s our family had to move from the beautiful countryside to a former mining town. A blue-collar place where people fought hard just to survive. Industry had long since left and those inhabitants that remained were amongst the poorest in the country. So it was, that the landscape of my youth, once so rich in life and nature transformed itself into concrete apartment blocks and abandoned cars. Stood high on a great hill was the old mines Pit Tower which loomed over the town’s only school. Its red paint cracked with age, its iron frame bent and twisted, on the verge of collapse.
When I was a 12-year-old boy my unwelcome environment became even worse because my father worked as a teacher at the same school I’d attend. The other kids teased me and kept their distance, while I befriended the school caretaker, who was a kindly old man who’d seen much in his time.
A friendship that saved me from what was to come.
It had been only four months since we had moved into town and soon I wandered alone through the green tiled corridors of my school. One day the place seemed quiet, whereas the kids were so boisterous and quick to pick on me, they instead, ignored me. I would have welcomed this relief, had the same invective atmosphere not filled the classrooms enshrouding even the teachers in a cloud of dread.
During the day, I learned that somebody had nailed a scroll to the ornate historic street lamp that adorned our town square. What the scroll said had struck a nerve among the locals who considered it, a joke made in poor taste offending child and adult alike. Resembling an antique circus poster it pronounced that children must ‘Cometh to the town square tomorrow at noon for a day of frivolity and delight with the Black Hare’. Residents removed the scroll from the town square before I could see it myself.
At school a consensus had spread among the parents that the scroll was a prank. The question of why this meant anything at all burned in my mind. As I made my way home, just yards from the entrance to our apartment building something grabbed my arm. I twisted to break free before recognising the face of the anxious man staring at me to be none other than my friend the school caretaker.
His face dripped with sweat, as he whispered,
‘Play it safe, leave school early and go to the town square at noon tomorrow…’
He wouldn’t let me go until I nodded, but he would explain nothing of what I might expect. That night I struggled to sleep, my brain conjured nightmares and yet, fearful though they were, they would not compete with what awaited me the next day.
How I wish I had taken heed of the old man’s warning.
The next morning a different mood had taken hold at school as classmates expressed scepticism about the scroll at the town square. I felt jealous that their parents had spoken to them about the so-called legend of the Black Hare while mine had not.
I thought of the school caretaker and the promise I had made him yet at school among my classmates, it felt absurd to leave them. Yet as noon approached, I noticed that some kids were missing, perhaps they had left to attend the noontime meeting.
I prevaricated for some time and then followed them, I would not arrive in time for noon but then again if I was late, would it matter? When I reached the town square, there were a dozen kids hanging around the ornate lamp. They were laughing, eating snacks and joking with no sign of the mysterious entertainer and its day of ‘frivolity and delight.’
At twelve-thirty I gave up waiting and walked back to school. I was just a few streets away from the town square, now out of sight, when I heard the music.
It sounded like an old carnival tune played out through a music box, yet the sound didn’t carry on the wind but instead played in my head. I winced as the intensity of the music grew, producing a tinnitus effect that sickened me, clouding my vision and ability to hear. From the town square, I heard muffled sounds of laughter turn to screams then silence.
I stayed rooted to the spot before survival instincts kicked in and I fled behind some industrial bins where I crouched and hid. There as I waited, I could hear footsteps running towards me. I gritted my teeth, terrified that some insane assailant might charge straight towards me, but then the sound carried past me towards the other end of the street.
Peering out from my hiding place I saw a child running in terror.
For years I have fought the memory of what happened next, and I still pray today that I might forget it.
The running child stopped at a junction and glanced left to right, faced etched in fear before a huge black figure sped towards him. The speed defied explanation, with long bounding strides and arms stretched outwards beyond all human proportion. It scooped the child in an instant and vanished out of sight.
An agonising silence followed before I left my hiding place and returned to the town square, to my surprise the other kids except the child that fled were unharmed.
None of them would tell me what had happened, but their eyes told me I didn’t want to know. Those that stayed seemed unharmed, but I had not stayed either, which explained their uncertain look towards me.
Then disaster struck…
As I stood among my classmates a terrific rumble shook the buildings of the town square. We turned in unison to see the Pit Tower collapse, carried down the hill by a landslide caused by centuries of mining that had hollowed out the earth.
Coal… earth… dust… careered into an avalanche of devastation that tore straight through the school. The force of the collapse sent a wall of soot and dust towards us, engulfing the town in darkness. Amidst the screams, shouts and blaring car alarms, I saw a figure bound towards me in the mist. Thin arms stretched outwards, followed by a piercing shriek like that of a broken toy,
‘Time to come with meeeeeeeeeee…’
I ran and ran until I fell unconscious some miles out of town. When the police found me I was taken home and put to bed. In the midst of fever, I soon learned the full magnitude of the tragedy that had beset the town. The school had collapsed under the landslide killing eleven while injuring dozens more. The survivors were being treated for inhalation of poisons released from the collapsed mine and yet no harm had come to those children who remained at the town square.
As the evening wore on I received an unexpected visitor. My friend the school caretaker checked on me, relieved that I had survived. After dispensing with his gift of boiled sweets he leaned in close and whispered,
‘Did you go?’
Afraid and ashamed, I admitted to the truth and shook my head.
The old man’s smile disappeared, replaced with a fatalistic expression. He leaned even closer, checking first that my parents would not overhear.
I will never forget his words.
‘The Black Hare will know, and will come for you… survive until midnight.’
As the old man left, I can say I had never felt more alone in my life. My parents would never believe me and I was too ill to make a stand or to escape.
I looked at my bedroom clock, the red LED lights flashed 9.46 pm, it was still early giving it plenty of time to arrive. My bedroom was small, with a wardrobe facing the foot of my bed and a large window running parallel to my side. The second-floor window gave me an excellent view of the street below and the moonlit sky. In the distance, I could see a ring of emergency lights and vehicles buzzing around the ruins of the school.
Time passed at an agonising pace, causing me to flinch in terror at every sound or shadow. It became worse when my parents went to bed and with my door closed, I was now truly alone. I staggered to the wardrobe and checked once more that its doors were latched shut, then looked under the bed and stared out into the street. All seemed quiet while the LED light of my alarm clock flashed its countdown towards midnight.
The time was 11.26 pm and in thirty-four minutes I would be safe.
At 11.27 pm the sound of something rattling inside the wardrobe caught my attention. Rattle-rattle, rattle-rattle. I drew the bed sheets around me and peered through a tiny gap. My blood chilled as I observed that the latch on the wardrobe had released itself.
Then it occurred to me, that the rattling sound was not a rattle, but a tittering sound which now emanated from a visible gap between the wardrobe doors.
The wardrobe doors creaked open and in the terrible darkness I could make out the shapes of my clothes on the hanger and my infant stuffed toys. I held my breath, too afraid to make a sound. The familiar shapes of my possessions would have produced comfort had I not recognised that one of the stuffed toys was not my own. Shaped like a humanoid it had long limbs and rabbit-like ears, with eyes that twinkled in the dark.
I glanced at my alarm clock as the dread inside me grew to hysteria. 11.46 pm flashed in the darkness, still, fourteen minutes left and now it had found me.
I turned to the wardrobe, and there the stuffed toy remained, thank god it hadn’t moved, but this comfort was to be short-lived.
‘Titter… Titter…’
The manic laugh was much louder, but it seemed stifled… obscured by something, obscured by the glass!
Sickened with dread I turned in my bed towards the window, and there I saw it, silhouetted by the moon, staring straight at me. The enormous head was flat and round, resembling a large disc which engulfed the window frame. Its eyes were wide and diamond shaped, comprised of complex patterns and intertwining shapes like those of a hideous kaleidoscope. Its tall ears shot out from its head, while its body seemed hewn together, constructed of black painted wood decorated with colourful polka-dots. It almost resembled a child-like creation yet it felt alien and ancient. An evil depiction of pure insanity.
Its head bobbed towards me, face tapping against the window pane before shrieking like the twisted strings of a broken violin,
‘Let me in gentle friend and we shall play while the grown-ups are asleep.’
I turned away in horror, but as my eyes glanced past the wardrobe, I could see the stuffed toy was no longer there.
The clock flashed 11.54 pm.
I shouted in defiance at the monster in the window and its expression changed from faux delight to one of hungry rage.
My spirits plunged when I caught sight of the window latch, while I was distracted something had opened it. The Black Hare could detect my sense of horror and its huge pupils flashed towards the latch before returning to meet mine.
Its great claw swung to haul up the window, against it I threw the full weight of my body. The wood cracked under the struggle, and inch by inch, the window opened…
With mounting excitement, it sang,
‘Time to come with me now, time to come with meeeeeee!!!’
I was seconds from death but with every ounce of strength I had left, I forced the window down, splintering the frame and shattering the glass. Long arms reached for me through the broken window, its razor sharp claws tearing at my legs as I dragged myself to the bedroom door.
Then it grabbed hold of my ankle, pulling me across the shattered glass on the floor towards its gibbering mouth. In its malevolent eyes, I could see no mercy, only violent triumph. With my strength gone, I became powerless to prevent it from pulling me out the second-floor window to my death below.
Beep Beep Beep blared from my alarm clock, midnight had come. The Black Hare vanished, its plan defeated by less than a second of time. I collapsed from the window, exhausted and bleeding. I can remember hearing the mad commotion of my parents as they burst into the bedroom. I awoke in an ambulance headed straight to the hospital, the rest remained a blur until my full recovery one week later.
A sane person might struggle to understand why I continued to live in this town, or why my parents raised me here afterwards. It was the tragedy of what happened that united the townspeople, and our family, filling us with a determination to forge new friendships and to rebuild what was lost. In the months afterwards, I made lifelong friends among those who once bullied me, while a year later my friend and guardian, the old school caretaker passed away.
Even on his dying day he dared not explain the full story of The Black Hare. As months passed onto years me and the other children who had seen it came to doubt our own memories. The release of poisonous gases from the collapsed mine could have caused hallucinations shaped by the controversy of the scroll and our fear of ‘The Black Hare’ legend.
Entering adulthood, I followed in my fathers’ footsteps and became a teacher like he, except instead of the sciences, my passion was for history. This expressed itself during out-of-school hours with me taking charge of the town’s local historical society.
As I traversed through the mountain of records collected over the years, I discovered a box of historic photographs depicting the townspeople. There was one picture for each year taken from 1905 to 1913, always on the 23rd of September, the date of Harvest Celebration. The last pictures dated 1913, showing two rows of children, sat and standing and yet this picture expressed no joy like the others. Something was wrong and I realised that it was their faces, these children were not smiling but instead, they were afraid.
At first, I thought it was a smudge on the paper, but I observed a strange dark shape on the far left of the picture. I couldn’t make out what it was and used a magnifying glass to discern what it might be. As I marked an outline of what I saw, a pitiless sense of despair engulfed me for I could now see that behind the children, stood a nightmare figure, with long limbs and protruding ears.
Could the Black Hare be real?
Only the oldest in our town would know anything about the local legend and they were the least likely to tell me anything about it. The Black Hare was always a legend the town had wanted to bury but perhaps, the discovery of this photograph might persuade some to share what they knew.
For months I struggled to get any information even with the photograph until a shocking discovery lead me to a breakthrough. I learned by accident that one of the earliest chairmen of our historical society was still alive, committed long ago to a nursing home many miles from town. With no surviving relatives, many had assumed he had long since passed away, having suffered from dementia for many years. At 105-years-old, he would have been a young child in the photograph and despite his condition, he remained my best chance of learning anything more.
I can’t say I am proud of what I did next. Upon visiting the elderly man he was in no state to speak, either by resistance to my questioning or through the state of his illness. This did not prevent me from making a discreet search through his personal effects, and among them, I discovered letters and notes which tell a story never heard until now. I will let you judge for yourself from these extracts I have copied.
“It began on the 1st of March 1912, when the townspeople awoke to discover an ornately written scroll nailed onto the town square. It advised the mothers and fathers of the town to bring their children the following morning. Promising a day of frivolity and delight with ‘The Black Hare’, lest they regret it. The next morning, curious parents arrived with their children only to discover the so-called Black Hare awaiting them with a startling and uncanny visage.
It stood 7 foot tall, painted black with yellow polka-dots and a collar adorned with a red and green bow-tie. The figure appeared to be of wooden construction and yet it moved of its own accord, presumably with the aid of an actor hidden inside.
The Black Hare danced for the children with a peculiar and unnerving gait, its stretched limbs swinging and extending beyond their perceived length. It spoke and sang with a strange voice that possessed an unsettling and high pitched tone that only the children could hear.
The strange entertainer bemused the mothers and fathers, refusing any reward for its performance before vanishing as mysteriously as it had arrived. Not long before the town had returned to its ordinary routine, the first tragedy occurred. A child vanished without a trace. As the months rolled by others would disappear, all of them children.
As the first anniversary of the strange visitor approached, a mother of one of the missing children shared a startling revelation. Of those who had vanished, all of them were children who had not heeded the scroll’s call to meet the Black Hare. Fear spread through our town, so what when a second scroll appeared almost all of the children heeded its call.
Again they played together but now the children were afraid. The high pitched voice no longer sang pretty songs or told sweet stories. Instead, it whispered of sinister acts, of dark and terrible deeds that the terrified children dared not repeat to us for plain fear of their lives. A group of towns people whose children were missing attempted a confrontation against the Black Hare.
Upon their violent arrival, it took off suddenly with an unnatural speed. Its great legs striding quickly through the dense fields that surrounded the town, to the shock and horror of all who saw. One month afterwards, the sole child who could not attend that day, who had been bedridden with illness, vanished never to be seen again.
Determined to seek revenge, the townspeople planned for its return on the third anniversary, keeping watch over the town square for the allotted time that the scroll should appear. They hoped to catch the Black Hare and reveal the murderer inside, but it was not to be.
The Great War saw the men of our town drafted into service, with the women and children forced to work elsewhere at the munition factories. No scroll ever appeared again, and so terrible were the horrors of war that the events of the Black Hare were eventually consigned to legend.”
I pray that whatever the Black Hare was that it never again returns to feast on the misery of our children or to reign further destruction upon our community.”
These notes leave me more uncertain and afraid than I ever was before, and I know that I will always question what truly occurred in my childhood. As I pass the empty desks in the classroom, I am thankful for each day that spares my students from crossing paths with the Black Hare. If a creature with such an irrepressible appetite for children does exist, then it can only be a matter of time before it returns.
I am writing to you now because I feel that time might be coming, for this morning I discovered in that same empty classroom, an object covered in dust… hidden in shadow.
A stuffed toy with eyes that twinkle in the dark.
General