Ariadne Bell and the Ghost of Farmer Ames

“Come on, hurry up, Bell! It’s freezing out here!”

Thirteen-year-old Ariadne Bell stood rooted to the ground, her fingers twiddling with the long braid of her dark brown hair as she debated whether to run or to walk inside the decrepit barn. After a moment, she decided to walk, taking a tentative step towards the yawning maw of the visage of rotting wood and rusted nails. The skies above the overgrown, abandoned farm were black with ominous clouds, the forest trees beyond the barn swaying in the rising winds.

“I don’t believe it! She’s actually going in!”

“Didn’t think she had the guts…”

This, this is what happens when you play Truth or Dare with that bitch Brittany Allan, Ariadne thought to herself as she crossed the threshold into the barn’s darkened interior. “Damn it,” she cursed as she pulled her hefty windbreaker tighter around her small form.

A brisk, howling wind passed through the gaps and warps of the ancient wood, making it creak and groan vehemently, sending chills up and down Ariadne’s spine. She shivered, wishing that she was in something other than her thin pajamas and the jacket. The dry grass itched her bare ankles as she carefully avoided the crumbled remnants of a plough, her eyes avoiding the rafters above. Never again, I will never play Truth or Dare again, never.

Finally, she looked straight up, right into the rafters. She saw the wooden beams, the brutal scars where coarse rope had once cut deeply in as the coils tightened, and the body had been lifted high above the ground…

Ariadne Bell shut her eyes tightly, afraid of what she would see if she opened them again. Everyone in the small coastal town of Ovid, Maine, knew the story of Farmer Angevin Ames. Of how the brash younger son of one of the town’s oldest families had gone and bought a parcel of land of the Western Wood and built his farm there, an act widely condemned in the pre-Civil War era. No one farmed in the Western Wood, not since the early days, when the Pendrake family had lived there. Angevin Ames had known, but he hadn’t cared – and he paid the price for it. Two weeks after he had first laid his seeds, the unlucky Angevin Ames had been found strung up in the rafters of his barn, his entire body lacerated and slashed to ribbons, with a large pool of dark blood had gathered directly underneath his dangling body. Some said that, beneath the overgrown grass, the patch of land that Angevin Ames had bled on was still stained with the pool of blood, a veritable Mark of Cain upon the land.

Ariadne shivered again. God, I hope I’m not standing on the patch of blood, please, she thought. She opened one eye, then the other, and looked back up. The rafters were still dark, still empty. Outside, the other girls still hollered and yelled at her, impatient and annoyed.

Thank God. Ariadne relaxed, exhaling a sigh of relief. It’s over. Now to get back to Laurie’s house and get some sleep! She turned around to leave the barn, her blue eyes wide and scared. Suddenly, she stopped – in the rafters above, a wooden beam creaked again. But the wind...the wind’s died down… How?

She looked up again and screamed. There, arms spread out to the sides, tied to the rafters, his legs pointed downwards aimlessly, blood streaming from cuts from all over his body, swung the body of Angevin Ames, his lifeless eyes gazing down at Ariadne. She watched, horror-stricken, as vivid red droplets trickled from his feet down to the ground below. Her eyes slowly made their way to the ground, and she shrieked when she saw that she was standing in a pool of congealing blood.

A loud, pained groan drew Ariadne’s attention back up to the rafters. Her entire body trembled as she saw the dead man’s mouth open, his lips beginning to form words.

“Teeth...iron teeth...not the teeth!”

Ariadne’s eyes rolled back into her head as darkness stole in and her knees buckled, and her petite body collapsed to the ground.

...

“Kid? Kid, you with me? WAKE UP!!!”

Ariadne Bell opened her eyes to find a pair of angry, hazel-green eyes glaring down at her. “Aunt Nessie…?” She mumbled groggily as she sat up, rubbing her aching neck. She noted that she was back home, in her own bed, instead of back at the sleepover at Laurie Gilman’s house. “What…?”

“You passed out in the old Ames barn,” Agnes ‘Nessie’ MacLeish explained to her young niece in a crisp voice as she sat down on the side of the bed and handed Ariadne a steaming mug of chamomile tea. She was a tall woman, with shoulder-length hair the color of chestnut, dressed in a red and black plaid flannel shirt and roughened Levi jeans, her usual look. “Laurie and the Dent girl came and got me when you didn’t come back out after ten minutes. You passed out besides that damn plough.”

“Oh…” Ariadne accepted the mug with shaking hands and let the warmth calm her. “Aunt Nessie…”

“You’re lucky, young lady, that Trixie is in Portland for the weekend and that Callie is busy controlling her demon spawn, or else you would be grounded for the next two weeks.” Nessie MacLeish smiled craftily at her niece. “So, what did you see?”

“Who says I saw something?”

“You were heard screaming, Tiny. If you don’t trust yourself, trust me then, you saw something. So, cough it up.”

Ariadne paused as she sipped slowly on her tea. “I…”

Nessie watched her niece carefully before speaking again. “You saw him, then, huh? Farmer Ames?”

The teenage girl nodded once, avoiding her aunt’s eyesight.

“And the pool of blood?”

A silent nod again, the girl still avoiding eyesight.

“Well,” Nessie sighed, her facial features relaxing from that of judgment to that of caring and concern. “You had quite a night, then, huh? Okay, go ahead and go to sleep, kiddo. We will talk about going out into the wilderness in the middle of the night tomorrow, okay?”

“Okay,” Ariadne mumbled in reply, handing her the half-empty mug. As Nessie stood up to leave, Ariadne grabbed her by the wrist and said, her voice strained with fear, “He spoke to me.”

Nessie stopped in her tracks and stared wide-eyed at the teenager. “I’m sorry, what?”

“He-he spoke to me, Aunt Nessie. The farmer…”

“Uh-huh. And what did he say to you, sweetie?”

“Ummm… ‘iron teeth’. He was groaning about ‘iron teeth’, I think,” Ariadne added hastily, drawing the blankets from her bed around her out of fear more than a chill. “I’m sorry, Aunt Nessie, I shouldn’t have done that. But Brittany Allan was being such a b-“

“Language, young lady.”

“A big ol’ meanie, I guess. And then everyone was playing Truth or Dare-“

“Oh, honey, you should have taken the Truth, not the Dare. Has living with me not taught you anything?” Nessie cupped Ariadne’s face in her hands and stared the girl right in the eye. “Telling the truth is a lot tougher than doing some random, insane dare. Believe me, I know. Now sleep, Tiny One. Sleep…”

Ariadne Bell fell asleep at once, snoring lightly as Nessie quietly exited the bedroom and shut the door behind her. Then she leaned against the wall, exhaling a breath of exhaustion as she started down the hallway towards her study. “So he’s talking now? Huh. That’s interesting…”