Black Harvest. Ann Pilling

paint, and Dad had prised it open with a screwdriver. But now Colin shut it again, anything to get rid of that smell. If it was fertiliser they’d used an awful lot of it. Perhaps the O’Malleys were making up for lost time, with Dr Moynihan’s money.

      He sat down again, his head swimming; the foul smell was still there, though fainter. He felt himself falling forwards and put his hands out flat, to steady himself. The bedclothes were sodden. He stood up and felt them; pillows, sheets and stripy cover were all very damp, almost wet. The sweat of one boy couldn’t have caused all that.

      And there was something else. At the risk of waking Oliver he switched the main light on. He had to be sure. Mixed with the farmyard smell there was a mustiness in the room that reminded him of a cellar, and it was coming from his bed. Then he saw why. The edges of his sheets and pillowcase were softly edged with grey, and a greenish fuzz was starting to form in patches over them.

      He put out a shaky hand and touched it. The cobwebby strands fell away and became a green cloud, dispersing slowly into the clammy air. It was decay.

      Just for a second Colin felt like screaming. Some strange atmospheric condition must be causing all this heat and stench, making a mould form on everything in the room. What he needed was a gust of cold fresh air. He ought to fling the windows wide open, but he just couldn’t bear that smell from the fields.

      At least he could open the door. He stumbled past Oliver’s bed and stubbed his toe on something hard. The sudden pain made him plump down abruptly on to the carpet. His cousin turned over, muttered a jumble of words, but slept on. Colin pulled out something that Oliver had been trying to hide with his bedspread. It was a large glass bottle, the kind used for making home-brewed beer; Mum had discovered six of them at the back of a kitchen cupboard. Oliver had filled the bottle with green leaves, already chewed to tatters by some striped insects that were crawling about inside. There were dozens of them.

      Colin didn’t like beetles much. He noticed with relief that the top of the container was firmly corked and sealed, but in a way the mad activity of the tiny creatures gorging on potato plants in the middle of the night made him feel less panic-stricken. So this was what Oliver had been up to in the afternoon, creeping around secretively, even more silent than usual, shutting himself up in the bedroom with his insect books. What on earth was he playing at?

      His face was very close to Oliver’s bedspread. It too felt damp. There was no sign of the green must he’d found in his half of the room, but he could still smell the mouldiness, mixed up with that sickening rotten smell.

      He knew he would be awake till daylight came so he opened the door and lay down flat on the strip of carpet between the beds, taking slow, deep breaths, trying desperately to calm himself. Having the door open made no difference at all. Heat hit him in the face like the sting of boiling water. He lay there in panic, hating everyone in the house for being fast asleep.

      Prill was asleep, but dreaming. The small green field that sloped away from her window had turned into a vast sweep of dark earth and it was raining. She knew it was autumn, from the trees.

      In the distance someone was moving about, not walking upright but crawling over the soil, like an animal trying to reach its hole. In the dream Prill didn’t move, but suddenly the scene was jerked nearer and she could see everything clearly, right up against her face. The field was planted with some crop that was rotting as it grew. The stalks were bright green but the leaves had turned slimy and dark. The whole field was black, as if a fire had swept over it.

      The crawling figure was a woman, with arms and legs like sticks. She moved painfully, rooting among the scorched leaves, clawing at the soil, putting what looked like clods of earth into her mouth then spewing them out on to the slime of the furrows.

      Prill closed her eyes, willing the picture to go away, but when she opened them the woman was outside the window, her mouth open in a scream and the wet soil dripping out of it. Her ridged yellow fingernails plucked at the pane, and Prill saw her face, with its high, domed forehead, its cloud of reddish hair, the prominent cheeks from which all the flesh had dropped away.

      She was crying out, but Prill heard nothing. She was helpless, cut off, sealed away behind a thick wall of glass through which the woman moved and implored her, bobbing and jerking about like some ghastly marionette.

      She shouted in her sleep and woke up suddenly. She was out of bed and standing by the open window breathing in great lungfuls of air. It was getting light. The small green field was misty, the air fresh and cool. The countryside and sea were very peaceful in the early dawn.

      In the quietness she heard a light click on and then the baby started crying. She had been yelling on and off all night. Prill went down the hall to the kitchen and found Colin there, talking to his mother. He wore nothing except his blue pyjama trousers and his face looked hot. Mum had just stuck a thermometer into his mouth. She looked relieved to see Prill.

      “Oh, hello, love. So you couldn’t sleep either. Now we’re all awake, except Oliver. I’ll have to get a doctor to look at Alison. She’s only had about two hours’ sleep all night. Just look at her.”

      She looked. The baby wasn’t pink, like Colin, she was turkey red and her whole body was tense. Prill picked her up and tried to slip a finger into the tiny hand; she loved it when the little fingers curled tightly round her own. But Alison wouldn’t respond. Both her hands were clenched up into hard little knots, and she was wailing.

      “Has she been eating?”

      “Yes. That’s what I don’t understand. It’s not as if she’s hungry. How can she be?”

      “Perhaps she’s got what I’ve got,” Colin mumbled, removing the thermometer and reading it. “I feel most odd. Oh, that’s funny. My temperature’s not up, Mum.”

      The electric kettle clicked off. “Let’s have some tea,” Mrs Blakeman said wearily. “When in doubt have a cup of tea.” She was trying to sound cheerful but Prill wasn’t fooled, she looked so tired and strained, not a bit like her usual self. She didn’t panic easily. “Do you drink Oliver would like some?”

      “Oh, he’s still dead to the world,” Colin said. “I should think he’s the only one who’s had a good night’s sleep, lucky devil!”

      Prill took the milk jug out of the fridge. The smell made her wrinkle her nose up. “Ugh! We can’t use this, Mum. It’s off.”

      “It can’t be. The O’Malley boy brought it straight up from their dairy. It was chilled. Anyway, I used it at supper, Oliver had some Ovaltine.”

      “Well, it’s off now.”

      Colin took the large brown jug and sniffed, then he carried it to the sink and looked more closely under the electric strip light. The contents of the jug had solidified completely, they were now greyish, and a fine hair was forming on the thick, wrinkled skin.

      He upturned the jug into the sink and a slimy gel plopped out on to the stainless steel. There was a sharp, bitter smell.

      “It must be the fridge,” Mum said, more concerned about the whimpering baby. “Perhaps there’s a lemon. We could have that with our tea.”

      “The fridge light’s on,” Colin said numbly. “And the motor’s going, listen. It’s working all right.” In the quietness they could hear the motor humming gently.

      “This fridge is brand new,” Prill pointed out. “Look, they’ve not even taken the label off it.”

      Colin carefully washed the stinking mess down the sink. Prill came up and looked over his shoulder. “I wish Dad was here,” he muttered, out of the side of his mouth so Mrs Blakeman couldn’t hear him. “I think Alison looks awful.”

      Prill was trying to convince herself that the woman outside the window had been a nightmare. She did not succeed, no more than Colin succeeded in persuading himself that he’d imagined that fuzzy growth on his pillow.

      “It’s this house,” she whispered back.