Free Black Harvest by Ann Pilling

then, when he was too hot to bear it any longer, run down to the beach for a swim. The tide would be just right in a couple of hours.
    Prill’s contribution was more artistic. She was working her way round the walls with a garden trowel, smoothing them over carefully and pulling out all the stones. Oliver worked beside her, stopping now and then to examine his spadeful of earth.
    “Found anything interesting?” she asked him.
    “Only what I showed you and some more bits of china. Oh, and the remains of a dog,” he added casually.
    “A dog? ”
    “Yes. Well, I think that’s what it was. My father dug one up in our garden once, it looked the same. There were just a few bones. I put them in a bag, under that hedge.”
    “Ugh. Do they smell?”
    “No, not really. D’you want to see them?”
    “No thanks. ”
    Colin came over and looked at their end of the hole. The “den” now measured two metres in length and Oliver was widening his bit.
    “It’s not very deep yet, is it? How far down d’you intend going, Oll?”
    “Well, I’d like to stand up in it, when the roof’s on.”
    “It’ll mean a lot more digging then.”
    Privately Colin thought he was crackers. They’d abandon the project long before that point was reached. And yet Oliver was so determined, he was working away like a giant mole, as if his life depended on it. Colin wanted to laugh but part of him was impressed by the small boy’s determination. Prill was right. There was something very odd about Oliver.
    After about an hour Colin chucked his spade down. “I’m boiling. I’m going in for a drink.”
    “Bring us one,” Prill shouted. She had just found her first bit of pottery and Oliver was cleaning it expertly with his toothbrush. Soon Colin was back with some biscuits and a bottle of fizzy lemonade. They all sat dangling their legs over the edge of the hole, swigging from the bottle in turn.
    “Where’s Mum?”
    “In the kitchen, walking Alison to sleep. She says she’s not going out till the doctor’s been.”
    Prill could just see her mother pacing the kitchen floor with the baby flopped over one shoulder. She was trying to croon her to sleep, and reading a book at the same time. Quite suddenly she said to Oliver, “We think there’s something wrong with this house, Oll.” It came out in a loud, impassioned burst. Her cousin went on drinking lemonade and didn’t even look at her.
    Then he said, “Yes, I think there might be. You never know, perhaps it’s haunted.”
    His flat, matter-of-fact voice struck a chill into her. “So you knew something was wrong and you didn’t even tell us?”
    “Well, you didn’t ask me. Nobody’s bothered with me since we arrived.”
    Prill felt uncomfortable and there was a stiff silence. Then Colin said, “Why d’you say ‘haunted’, Oliver? How can people be haunted by a smell, and things going mouldy?”
    He shrugged. “I don’t know. It’s very complicated. But I can tell you one thing, Mr Catchpole’s aunt in Dorset washaunted once, by an old woman, and before she saw her there was always this smell of bacon frying.”
    “Who’s Mr Catchpole?”
    “An old man who lives in our house. He’s a friend of mine.”
    “I wouldn’t mind bacon,” Prill said. “But this smell! Yuk, it’s foul.”
    “I’m sure it’s the smell that’s making us feel sick all the time and giving me these stomach pains,” Colin added. “Perhaps that’s what’s wrong with Alison.”
    “Perhaps,” Oliver repeated, kicking at the side of the hole. Then he said, “But you’ve not actually seen anything, have you?”
    “No,” Prill admitted. “But we’ve had some awful nightmares, and last night we both had the same dream. I thought it was a woman, but Colin thinks it was Donal Morrissey.”
    Oliver jumped when he heard that name. He’d been thinking about nobody else all morning. Much earlier in the day, next to the dog’s bones, he had come across something else. It was the greatest