Haunted Fields by Dan Moore Page A

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.
    â€˜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.
    â€˜Come on, Harry,’ Dad said, switching the lights off. ‘It’s nearly bedtime. I’ll lock the shed up in a bit.’
    â€˜Just two more minutes, Dad,’ he said, without taking his eyes off the combine. ‘Please?’
    â€˜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.
    â€˜I’ll be there in a minute,’ he said.
    Dad didn’t reply.
    â€˜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 gardens. 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.
    â€˜Bit wet for gardening, isn’t it?’ he said.
    â€˜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.’
    â€˜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