by Dan Moore
Freddie glanced along the bar to see a middle-aged man in a wax jacket chatting to Gerry McGeady. They turned to stare briefly in his direction before resuming their conversation.
Comforted by the knowledge that he was still the village’s main attraction, Freddie spotted a framed photograph hanging beside the bar. Gazing around the pub’s dank walls, he noticed that there were many olden day photos of the village decorating the place. But there was something about one of the pictures which drew him in.
He strolled over to the photograph, the sight of a huge crowd gathered around two combines interesting him. The crowd, positioned in neat rows, held familiar faces within its ranks. His eyes were immediately drawn to a timid girl positioned two-thirds the way along the bottom row, her sour face familiar to him even in childhood – Rhona, with Elizabeth alongside her.
The focal point of the photographer’s masterpiece was a golden-haired boy positioned at the scene’s epicentre, the heads of everyone else angled slightly towards him. Directly above him a beaming, proud-looking man grasped the boy’s shoulders. The man, Freddie had seen before – the emaciated face gazing out of a window at the manor. The golden-haired boy Freddie hadn’t seen before but certainly looked familiar. Below the photo was a line of text.
The AGM of the Ravenby-le-Wold Farming Society, July 1991
But why does that boy look so familiar? wondered Freddie. Clearly the man was John Davidson, owner of the Ravenby-le-Wold Farming Company. Then the lad must be his son– Freddie felt his throat tighten. Mr Davidson’s son was dead. He was Noel, the boy run down by the combine, and yet… No! He was mistaken. The lad he’d seen leaning against the bale on his first day of work… couldn’t have been Noel Davidson… Perhaps a relation or a lookalike, a coincidence…
‘It can’t be,’ he croaked.
‘I’m sorry?’ said Daisy, awaiting his order, eyebrow arced again, ‘l hope you have ID on you today. I see you got Lucas to buy your first drink.’
‘Guilty, I’m afraid,’ he said, feeling a little numb.
‘You all right? You look funny.’
‘I could do with a drink, that’s all.’
Daisy pulled him a pint.
‘I heard about you and Scarlett.’
Him and Scarlett?! thought Freddie. What about him and Scarlett? There was no him and Scarlett! Why was everyone trying to set him up with her?
‘I don’t follow.’
‘You don’t waste time,’ she said, handing him the pint. ‘Harvey won’t be happy.’
He really didn’t care – he couldn’t erase the image of the lad leaning against the bale from his mind.
‘Hey, Daisy,’ he said, rifling through his pocket for some change. ‘Do you know the name of the farm where Noel Davidson was killed?’
‘Rose Farm, I think.’
His mobile vibrated in his pocket. It was a text, this time from a number he didn’t recognise.
Meet me in the smoking shelter in five minutes
Brilliant! thought Freddie, a meeting in a smoking shelter. But with who?
The storm clouds had begun rolling over the hillside while he’d been inside, and as he left the sanctuary of the pub, he saw blonde hair wherever he looked. Ghosts don’t exist, he kept telling himself. Don’t get dragged into the hysteria! There had to be a logical explanation. He’d find out who the lad was, get a name – put an end to all this nonsense. He refused to accept the alternative – the mad ramblings of Elizabeth and the other scared villagers.
At first he thought the smoking shelter was empty, that he’d been set up, trapped – perhaps by the same person who’d left the note on his Corsa. But as he entered the wooden structure everything had become much clearer. Of course, Jess had given her his number! He felt cornered.
‘I know Harvey threatened you,’ Scarlett said. ‘He won’t do it again, we’ve had words.’
‘What did you see in him?’ he asked. He had no choice but to move further into the dark shelter as the rain streamed down the back of his neck. ‘He’s a thug.’
‘He can be quite sweet, actually.’
‘I don’t think I really got to see a lot of his sweet side, you know, while he had his hand around my throat.’
It was cramped inside, much of the space taken up by a bench fixed to the back wall. He sat down next to her. She spoke, but Freddie struggled to make out what she’d said, her words masked by the rain thudding on the roof. He regretted not bringing a jacket. The air had turned cool.
‘What did you say?’ he said.
She twisted a strand of auburn hair round and round her finger.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said.
He certainly didn’t want to upset Scarlett. She was a laugh and he enjoyed her company. It was her ex that worried him. But if what she’d said was true, that things were cool between them, that Harvey was no longer a threat, surely they could what – be friends? Why had she wanted him to meet her out in the smoking shelter? She didn’t even smoke.
‘I’ll let you off this time.’
‘We should go out sometime,’ she said, her eyes brightening. ‘Go watch a movie or something. I’ll see if Jess and Lucas want to come.’
Have I just been asked out on a date? Freddie wondered. Surely it was custom for the guy to ask the girl?! He wasn’t too enamoured with the idea of sharing the occasion with Jess and Lucas, who’d no doubt spend the evening inspecting each other’s tonsils on the back row. He hoped Scarlett wouldn’t choose a rom-com either. It’d have to be something gory to keep Lucas’ eyes on the screen.
‘Yeah sure,’ he said, smiling. ‘If I can choose the film.’
Suddenly the storm screamed.
‘What’s that?’ said Scarlett.
Freddie watched as she tilted her head. And then he heard it again. Louder this time. Desperate. There was a break in the rain, just a few short seconds, but enough. The storm wasn’t screaming. But nearby, in the village or out on one of the surrounding farms, someone was in trouble. A boy. The screams entered his ears and bounced around inside his head.
‘It sounds like someone’s hurt, really bad.’
7
Dad had promised he could ride alongside him in the brand new combine on the first day of harvest. But how could he wait that long? The top of the range machine had arrived three weeks ago, just days after his thirteenth birthday. He doubted Rose Farm had been home to anything as cool as this for a long, long time.
‘Come on, Harry,’ Dad said, switching the lights off. ‘It’s nearly bedtime. I’ll lock the shed up in a bit.’
‘Just two more minutes, Dad,’ he said, without taking his eyes off the combine. ‘Please?’
‘Ok,’ said Dad, chuckling. ‘But don’t be long, or your Mum will tell me off.’
Harry could hear the rain drumming on the shed roof. He hoped the weather wouldn’t affect the harvest as badly as it had the other year. Even in the dark he imagined himself at the controls, wheel steady in his hands. Dad’s returning footsteps echoed in the big shed but he didn’t want to go in yet, didn’t want to be parted from the combine.
‘I’ll be there in a minute,’ he said.
Dad didn’t reply.
‘I said I’m coming.’
Why wasn’t Dad answering him? He turned to glance over his shoulder, expecting to see Mum glaring disapprovingly in his direction. But the silhouette in the doorway was too tall to be Mum, too skinny to belong to Dad, too blond to belong to either of them. Harry froze. He’d seen the face often enough, heard the tale a thousand times… A great wave of noise erupted from within him, a terrifying scream that went on and on, long after the figure had retreated.
Rumours spread quickly – there’d been another sighting – the third in as many weeks. The sightings had all been at or near outlying farms. This time a thirteen year-old boy had seen Noel Davidson’s apparition down at Rose Farm where, so Daisy had reliably informed him, it all began. The other sightings had been out in the open, in fields, on farm tracks, in back gard
ens. But this time, Noel’s ghost had been spotted inside a tractor shed. Terrified villagers hurried about their business, not lingering, curtains drawn before dark.
By the weekend Freddie had grown tired of the hysteria. He’d been given the Saturday off and decided that he fancied a walk – an opportunity to take stock of what had been a very eventful week. He was seated at the kitchen table, slurping coffee from a vase-sized mug, when Elizabeth waddled in. He looked up to find she was sporting waterproofs and elbow-length gardening gloves.
‘Bit wet for gardening, isn’t it?’ he said.
‘The wind picked up in the night,’ she said, ‘blew a fence over in my vegetable patch. We’ve just been putting it back together. I thought you’d still be in bed.’
‘I couldn’t sleep,’ he said, recalling the nightmare that’d woken him in the early hours, disturbing his sleep thereafter. In the dream he’d arrived back home, climbed the stairs and entered his bedroom – only it wasn’t his bedroom anymore. His bed had gone, replaced by a cot. The baby, Dad and Rhona’s creation, stood watching him through the bars. Despite loathing everything the new member of the household meant for him, he’d smiled at the baby. But the baby had started screaming. The screams transported him back to the smoking shelter, listening to the poor kid, who’d claimed to have seen Noel’s ghost, wake the entire village.
But even he couldn’t deny the striking resemblance between the lad he’d seen leant against the bale and the seventeen-year-old Noel from the photograph in the pub.
‘I’m going for a walk when it stops chucking it down,’ he said to Elizabeth, shaking his head to rid himself of the memories.
‘I didn’t sleep well either,’ she said, eyeing him in the same concerned fashion Rhona so often did. ‘Can’t stop thinking about that poor kid. He must have been scared out of his mind.’
Here we go, thought Freddie, preparing himself for another of Elizabeth’s tales of the supernatural. ‘And down at Rose Farm, of all places–’ she continued.
‘Hmm.’
‘You heard the screams,’ Elizabeth said, unperturbed by Freddie’s interruption. ‘Were you frightened?’
‘You know, the children of this village live in fear, tiptoeing around every corner. They’re terrified because their parents – their role models – fill their heads with garbage about ghosts,’ he said, slapping the table top. ‘Noel Davidson’s ghost isn’t haunting this village because ghosts don’t exist!’
‘Now, now,’ said Greg, kicking his boots off as he strode into the kitchen, ‘let’s not fall out.’
‘Sorry,’ Freddie said, his cheeks burning. ‘But fear is feeding the rumours.’
‘Speaking of feeding,’ said Greg, opening the fridge. ‘I’m going to have a bacon sandwich.’
He couldn’t meet Elizabeth’s eye as she walked past him. As she slipped out of the kitchen, Freddie thought sourly that she was probably going to search for werewolves in the living room.
‘Have you thought anymore about the old outbuildings?’ Freddie asked.
‘I don’t have time to think, Fred lad. I’m too busy!’
He’d pressed Greg plenty on the roadside stall plan, and though he still thought it his best idea for saving Ridge Farm, why not pitch another proposal?
‘Since you’re only using three of the six bedrooms in this house, why don’t you start up a bed and breakfast? You and Elizabeth are always around; it’d be easy money.’
‘We’d only be using two of the bedrooms if I sack you and send you back home, lad.’
He couldn’t help but laugh. Greg’s reply was funny, it really was, but in it he sensed something else – a threat. Greg might as well have replied with, ‘Don’t push it!’ Freddie was wasting his time.
The bell above the door jingled as he entered the village shop. He’d been enjoying the stroll down the hillside, the freedom allowing him a chance to ponder recent events. He’d listened to the local birds singing; paused to watch a hare lift its ears above the grass verge before scampering away. The exercise had loosened his body, which had been still stiff and aching from his first few days of work. It was only as he’d reached the shop that he realised he’d have to scale the hill to get back to the farm. What a chore that would be!
‘What can I get for you?’
He squinted, the dimly lit shop taking a moment to come into focus. A short, bespectacled lady with curly grey hair was studying him from behind a dusty counter.
‘Something sweet,’ he said, releasing the handle so that the door clicked shut behind him. ‘I’m Freddie. I’m staying with Elizabeth and Greg up at Ridge Farm.’
‘Ah, so you’re the young lad I’ve been hearing so much about,’ she said, her eyebrows narrowing as she pushed a set of thick reading glasses further up her nose. ‘I’m Dorothy.’
‘What have you heard? Who’s been talking about me?’
‘Not to worry. Nothing bad. Surely by now you’ve noticed that this village has ears. And I’m well-tuned in to those ears, being as old as the village.’
He glanced around the shop, taking in the array of products crowding countless shelves. Every inch of wall space seemed to have been put to use, though by the thick dust covering many of these products, he guessed a large number were well past their sell by date. He spotted dozens of jars filled with every sweet imaginable on the shelves directly behind Dorothy.
‘Your step-mother also had a sweet tooth.’
The people in this village really do know everything, Freddie thought. ‘Who, Rhona? You remember her well, then?’ he asked, eyeing up a jar of toffees over Dorothy’s left shoulder. ‘She’s hardly Ravenby’s favourite daughter.’
‘She was a kind girl, always remembering her manners.’
‘We are talking about the same Rhona, right? R – H – O – N – A! Rhona McCall?’
‘I’m sure she’s made a good moth–’
‘–step-mum!’
He shuffled across the shop floor to the counter, Dorothy turning to retrieve the jar of toffees he’d been eyeing up. He watched as she placed the jar next to an old-fashioned till bearing giant levers. He’d never seen anything like it. Did the grotesque contraption run on coal? He dug around in his pocket for his wallet. He’d need some cash. He doubted Dorothy did chip and pin.
‘How many would you like, young man?’
‘Enough to make me feel sick.’
Dorothy hummed tunelessly, scooping toffees into a brown paper bag.
‘The last time Rhona bought sweets from this shop has stuck in my memory,’ said Dorothy, placing the bag on a set of brass scales. ‘Clear as day.’
Great! thought Freddie. Yet more reminiscing! He’d had enough of it with Elizabeth. Rhona this! Rhona that! None of them knew her like he did, not the Rhona of late anyway. The Rhona he’d been hearing all about seemed a different person entirely. What had gone wrong in the intervening years?
‘It was such a sad, sad day…’
‘I’m sorry?’
He leaned in, suddenly interested. But Dorothy had either not noticed his reaction or was taking her time on purpose, desperate to draw him in to a story she’d no doubt told a hundred times. She took care in folding the paper bag.
‘We’ll call it three pounds.’
He pulled out a fiver and slapped it down on the counter.
‘Which day was this?’
‘Oh yes,’ she said, pulling on a lever, the till springing open. ‘It was a hot summer’s day. Harvest was in full swing. A group of children came in to buy drinks and sweets: Rhona and Elizabeth, Ursula Hawkins and Noel Davidson – there must have been twenty of them altogether. Rhona would have been about your age.’
‘That must have been around the time of the acc–’ but he stopped himself in time. He didn’t want to offend Dorothy.
She handed him his change.
‘They left,’ she continued, ‘and returned three hours later. Well, all except Rhona, Elizabeth, Ursula, and Noel.’
‘Perhaps they went hom
e?’
He glanced into the eyes behind the glasses. Tears formed, cascading along the canal-like wrinkles etched into her cheeks. She tried to speak, emitting a tiny croak. It took her a few moments to compose herself, to muster the strength required to finish the tale.
‘An hour later Noel– Noel was dead.’
8
He’d assumed Noel had been alone when the combine had pounced. The possibility that others had witnessed the event sent shivers running through his body. How grim.
‘That day seems to have had a big effect on this village,’ he said, opening the bag of toffees. He tilted the bag towards Dorothy, who’d taken her glasses off, cleaning them on her sleeve. ‘Would you like one?’
‘So very kind of you,’ she said, sniffing. ‘But I’ll stick to my humbugs.’
So, what about Rhona? Freddie wondered. It seemed he’d learnt more about his step-mum since arriving in the country than he ever had living under the same roof as her. Had she witnessed Noel’s death? If so, it certainly explained a lot. Perhaps that’s why she’d never had kids of her own – until now, of course. Had seeing a young lad, possibly even a close friend, die so horrifically made her question having kids? Had this been the reason Rhona had erected so many unbreakable barriers around her motherly instincts?
And had all twenty kids seen him die? Could it also be the root of Elizabeth’s madness? He envisaged a village full of traumatised forty-something’s walking around seeing the ghost of Noel Davidson at every turn. No wonder they were all so damn superstitious.
‘Thanks for the toffees,’ he said, turning to leave, ‘and the chat.’
Back out on the pavement he glanced up and down the street. He cursed himself. Was he, too, falling afoul of the paranoia? he wondered. Not every lad with blonde hair was Noel Davidson. He pushed the subject to the back of his mind because, despite being separated from Tiffany for less than a week, he had what could only be described as a date to look forward to.
Delicate fingertips danced along his forearm as the lights dimmed in the cinema. She certainly didn’t mess about, he’d give her that. He heard someone sniggering behind him and turned to see Lucas, who’d insisted the two couples sat apart, winking at him three rows back. Jess was resting her head on his shoulder, focusing dreamily on the screen. They looked like a perfect couple! The noise being blasted out into the hall abated as the final trailer finished. He could hear teeth crunching through popcorn, drinks being slurped, laughter, whispers, and Tiffany saying, in his memories: