Free Black Harvest by Ann Pilling Page A

find he’d ever had. He’d cleaned it up, put it in a little box, and hidden it with the plastic sack under the hedge. When the right moment came, and the old man had calmed down again, he planned to take it up to the caravan.
    “Well, I dreamed about him too,” he said, trying to speak calmly, “but then my father says that you often dream about the last thing that happened just before you went to bed. I don’t think that means anything.”
    “But why is it happening to us , Oliver? That’s the frightening thing. This place doesn’t seem to have the same effect on you. You don’t feel sick or anything, do you? Nobody’s had a proper night’s sleep since we got here, except you.
    “I know. I’ve been thinking about that. Perhaps it’s something to do with your family, something I’m not part of.”
    “But you are family, you’re our cousin.”
    “I’m adopted.”
    “Well, you don’t think we’re imagining everything, do you, Oliver?” Prill said, suddenly feeling quite desperate. “That’s what Colin keeps saying.” She was trying hard not to cry. Actually spelling her fears out was making it worse somehow, not better.
    “No, I shouldn’t think so,” he answered in a flat, uninterested voice, climbing back into his hole. “It’s what my father’s always saying.”
    “And what’s that?” Colin said coldly. He was really irritated by Oliver. He was behaving like a lump of dough, as if these terrifying things happened to lots of people every day. And he was fed up of hearing the sayings of Uncle Stanley and Auntie Phyllis.
    Oliver took a deep breath and spouted, “There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.”
    “And what’s that supposed to mean when it’s at home?” Colin said rudely.
    “Well, he’s always saying that. I think it’s Shakespeare.”
    “But what does it mean ?”
    “Just that everything’s happened to someone, at one time or another, and that nobody should laugh at ghost stories, I suppose.”
    “Nobody’s laughing, Oliver,” Colin said bitterly. He sounded so offhand, so indifferent, he deserved to be bashed over the head with a spade.

Chapter Ten
    P RILL WALKED UP the track to the main road swinging a shopping bag and thinking about her cousin. It was a pity Colin had lost his temper; if Oliver hadn’t rubbed him up the wrong way they might have got somewhere. She had noticed how he’d jumped when Donal Morrissey’s name was mentioned. He seemed obsessed with the old man somehow.
    There was hardly any food in the house. Prill had offered to walk the two miles to the shops in Ballimagliesh and she’d insisted on going alone. “No umbrella, thank you, and no dog ,” she’d said firmly. Jessie had perked up a bit and eaten a huge breakfast. Perhaps she and Alison had got the same kind of bug – all smiles one minute and total misery the next. Now she was desperate for a walk, but Prill left her with Oliver, Colin, and Kevin O’Malley who were all digging enthusiastically. The dog was back on form and driving themmad, jumping down into the hole and scrabbling for imaginary rabbits.
    There was a V.G. supermarket in Ballimagliesh, but Mrs O’Malley had recommended Mooneys’ Stores, at the far end of the village. They sold good bacon there, she said, and home-made bread.
    It was a boring walk. On the right the sea was a snatch of muddy blue across the fields and scrubby farmland sloped up on the left, broken by clumps of trees and the occasional house. The road shot straight ahead as far as she could see and on the horizon, under two enormous elms, she spotted two small figures with hands thrust out. Surely they weren’t trying to thumb a lift into the village? Some hope on a road like this. No one had driven past her since she’d started walking.
    As she drew level they turned and looked at her. They were children, a boy of about fourteen and a younger girl, both swamped in what looked like tattered woolly