Free The Hollow Land by Jane Gardam

forced the chain forward a few more links. “Dead skeleton,” he said. “That’s not so bad. It’s live skeletons I don’t like.”
    â€œAye. Think of his last hours.”
    â€œD’you think these are our last hours?”
    â€œIf we don’t get clanking and shouting again they are. Go on. Get clanking that shovel against the bars again. Gis hold of the pick and I’ll have a thrust at that chain.”
    Â 
    After the morning’s thistling Old Hewitson had gone off down Quarry Hill with his scythe over his shoulder like Old Father Time, and James alongside. They waited a while on the wooden bridge in the village for Kendal the sweep. When Kendal’s Land-Rover appeared Old Hewitson, James and the scythe were all installed in it and the Land-Rover turned and made for a remote farmhouse on Stainmore where propped against the yard wall there stood a large brass bed.
    The two ends of the bed and the metal base were lifted into the Land-Rover and then everyone went into the farmhouse for tea.
    This took a very long time, for there was a lot to talk about—there is always more to talk about in places where not much seems to happen—and the farmer and his wife did not set them over the yard to the Land-Rover again to say goodbye and thank them for taking the bed off their hands until after five o’clock.
    Then there had to be another long talk from the steering-wheel and by the time they eventually rattled off and reached the village, it was time for the stock market prices and the shipping forecast, had they been interested in either.
    Through the village they went and up Quarry Hill past Light Trees and as far as the culvert bridge over the dry beck.
    â€œNow’s the problem,” said Kendal. “How to get the bed up the fell.”
    â€œI thistled this place this morning,” said Old Hewitson. “We might see if it’ll run along the beck bottom.”
    The Land-Rover lumbered down the bank and into the stream bed. It took its way along with the two old men, now and then hitting their heads on the Land-Rover roof, and James constantly holding his shin. “Good for the liver,” said Kendal.
    â€œNot good for the bed,” said Old Hewitson. “It’s making music like the Sally Army.”
    They passed the foot of the bouse, where James’s geology book still lay surveying the evening sky, and turned the corner at the bottom of the cleft and the broken wire fence. They lifted down the bed, removed the old wire from the gap and fastened the bed-ends and the metal base across the dry beck.
    â€œFits a treat,” said Old Hewitson. “Very handsome. No need to mention it to the authorities.”
    â€œLast a hundred years,” said Kendal, “and very interesting it looks. Just the thing for an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty . . . Hello?”
    â€œWhat?”
    â€œDid you hear something?”
    They stood. The evening, gentle with the warmth of the long day, smelled of gorse and wild thyme and a hundred miles of clean turf. Through the silence came a faint sound of metal, rhythmically hammering from the top of the bouse, and thin and strange lamenting cries.
    At the same moment Mrs. Bateman in her long apron paced into view and stood mournfully shading her eyes and looking into the distance.
    James gave a scream and fled, kicking aside his geology book and vanishing into the sunset.
    He was closely followed by Kendal, who made for the Land-Rover, shouting wildly to Old Hewitson to follow him, and starting the engine.
    Only Old Hewitson—and Mrs. Bateman—stood their ground, and only Old Hewitson saw something come into view in queer jerks at the top of the bouse and watched a rusty and enormous chain emerge from what looked like the very earth itself, gather speed, slide lumpily forward, drop through the air and fall at last at his own uneven feet.
    â€œTurn that car, Kendal,” he cried.