Just Kids Playing

Part 7 of a longer story written for the Summer Challenge

Scott took the best part of a week to recover from his heavy cold and when he did turn up at the school gates on that warm Monday morning, he still didn’t look quite himself. He joined myself and Charlie in the playground, David was still absent due to his prolonged grieving over the news of the death of his friend Jack, asking straight away about the old barn and what had happened since he was last there. I hadn’t told Charlie about my solo trip to the barn, so felt it was now time to come clean and spill the beans.

“I went there alone last week and had a little bit of a time,” I started.

Charlie looked at me in surprise and shock.

“We agreed that we wouldn’t go there alone!” he exclaimed.

“I know that,” I replied. “It was something that I felt I had to do. Listen, I’ll explain all at lunchtime.”

The registration bell rang and we all moved into our respective lines to be counted and shepherded into forced education for the morning.

Over a lunch that looked suspiciously like sausages in some sort of tomato stew, I told both Charlie and Scott about Jacob as both boy and ghost and how it seemed that I had altered the past. I produced the book that I had taken from home and opened it to the page that I had bookmarked which had the tale of the Barn Ghost before my little rendezvous but now had a tale of a boy falling through ice and becoming trapped whilst skating on a frozen pond in 1904. At this point, I hadn’t read the story thoroughly but wasn’t at all surprised to find that the boy was called Jacob Stevens Jnr and that he was the son of the Jacob that I had met and saved. Both Scott and Charlie looked at me and then the book with doubt but both also knew that this was not a joke or a game because they had direct experience of the magic portal that was the window.

“We should go there after school!” stated Scott suddenly. “I need to know what is going on, once and for all.”

Both Charlie and I agreed. It filled me with trepidation because I hadn’t been near the place in over a week and had tried so hard to convince myself that this whole thing was actually over now that Jacob had been saved from the bull.

Hopefully this trip to the barn will be the final one! was all that went through my mind for the rest of the school day, which cost me a lot of time correcting silly errors in my English Comprehension work.

So, there we were at 3:50pm on that Monday afternoon, once again stood in front of the barn in Godolphin Woods. Scott was the only one to notice that the barn seemed far more accessible than he remembered and after thinking about it for a moment, I had to agree. I looked at the barn itself and after a moment was even willing to bet that the trees and undergrowth surrounding it was smaller and far less intrusive. We all walked inside and Scott noticed that the ladder going up to the upper floor was no longer broken, in fact it was a strong metal one now, not the snapped and broken one that had been there before. I smelt the air and it had a distinctly different aroma now too, it had the smell of fresh hay and recently animals had been here. Suddenly, it all made sense to me, old Farmer Stevens had no reason to abandon the barn in 1865 because his son had survived and he no longer had a grievance with the place. Sure, it may have fallen out of popular use because it was right on the edge of his farmland but it was still in use as a sort of outpost. Scott had by now climbed up the new ladder and had been disappointed to find that there was very little hay up there for him to play on. I joined him and scanned the roof, which was still in a state of dis-repair but was nowhere near as bad as it had been.

When we both returned to the ground floor, Charlie was sat on a bail of hay holding his brown paper box and looking at it carefully. We joined him and he opened it once again, being careful not to damage the wrapping as he did. He took out the bottle of clear fluid and this time opened the bottle. He sniffed at the neck suspiciously and then offered it to both of us. We both took a sniff and concluded that it contained some kind of cleaning product, a disinfectant or kitchen cleaner maybe.

Ok! Too weird…I just want this whole thing over with now! My mind screamed at me and with that, I got up and headed towards the rear of the barn and the window. Scott and Charlie followed and we all climbed up the neatly stacked hay-bales to stand in front of the mystery window, hopefully for the last time. It was then that it occurred to me to take a look through the window before we went through it, supposing that we could.

“Each of us take a look through and tell honestly what you see.” I said.

Scott went first to look and came back with a quizzical look on his face.

“I think it’s Stevens Water. You know, the small lake on the other side of the woods. But it’s all frozen over and it looks like it’s snowing.”

Charlie went next and confirmed that he had seen the same thing and then when I looked through and the result was unanimous, it was definitely Stevens Water. The lake in question was a good half a mile away and on the other side of the woods, so that proved to all three of us that the window was still summoning us for adventure. This time, however, it wanted all three of us to go to the same place and that made us even more keen to go.

The snow was falling quite heavily and sticking to the blanket on the ground that already fallen. It was also bitterly cold, but then that was to be expected when there is snowfall. I thanked my lucky stars that I had stopped off at home before we had gone to the barn and changed into my Wellington Boots. Scott and Charlie hadn’t fared so well, both being dressed in jeans and a polo-shirts and with sneakers on their feet. Ahead of us stood the not insignificant stretch of lake that was called Stevens Water, about an acre in size and frozen absolutely solid. The sky was blotchy but felt very low, weighty snow clouds giving an almost claustrophobic feel but it was still daylight, I figured that it was around midday. I looked around and saw the woods behind us, rising up like ghosts and also blanketed by snow. A battered wind-powered well stood on the edge of the woodland and that gave me a location pinpoint because I was sure that we had not only travelled about a half a mile in distance but we had also travelled about 80 years back in time. This was confirmed in my head when we heard excited shouting coming from the lake.

There were three children skating on the lake and they all looked to be having a whale of a time, skating in circles around each other and in long sweeping arcs. The three interlopers (Us) walked forward to the edge of the frozen lake and stood and watched with interest, secretly Scott wanted his ice skates and to go and join them, but he didn’t actually say so. The ice looked very thick and secure and showed no sign that it was going to crack or break and after about five minutes of standing and watching the other kids, I started to get restless and wondered what, if anything, was going to happen or why we had been deposited here. Another child had joined the three already on the lake, a boy of about eleven or twelve, who looked very proficient on his skates. The other kids let him join them without any fuss so it figured that they all knew each other.

My restlessness was getting worrying now and I actually turned to walk back toward the window when there was an almighty crack and the screams of the four children on the lake. A giant split had appeared in the ice, right down the very centre and the lad who had joined most recently stood still right on top of it. The other three kids had scattered to the edges of the lake and were now looking terrified. It was Scott who acted first, stepping onto the frozen lake and heading out towards the young boy.

“Find me a long branch or something!” he called back to both myself and Charlie and he went. The shock of everything coerced both Charlie and me into action and we raced off to find what Scott had asked for. Charlie found a long scaffolding pole nearly buried in the snow within a few seconds and summoned me over to try and move it and make it useful to Scott in his rescue attempt. The ice gave another lengthy crack and the stranded boy now started to cry. Scott had got himself within ten feet and now turned and looked at us in hope and desperation. From the bank, both Charlie and I used all the strength that we could muster to push the pole out to Scott. With all the luck in the world it was a long shot but this was magic and the pole slid easily to within a few feet of Scott. Now Scott was the biggest of all of us and very strong for a kid of his age and he managed to swing the pole towards the young boy.

“Grab hold and don’t let go!” he shouted as he did so.

The boy saw the pole and understood what was being tried well enough and reached for the pole and grabbed the end of it just as there was a third and definitive crack and the ice at the centre of the lake disappeared into the water below. The young boy screamed but held on to the pole, his legs going into the freezing water up to his knees. Scott heaved with all of his might and swung the pole back towards where Charlie and I were now venturing onto the ice. The boy was able to use his skates for balance and the motion that Scott had created meant he was now heading straight towards us. He skidded to a halt right in front of us and both Charlie and I grabbed the pole and pulled Scott over to join us. He sat down with a thump in the snow and breathed hard, not caring that his jeans were getting soaked through. The boy had stopped crying now but his tears were freezing to his face and he wiped and dried his eyes hurriedly.

“J-J-Jacob,” he stammered. “Jacob Stevens. You guys saved my life!”

“Scott here saved your life,” I replied. “We just helped at the end.”

Jacob went over to Scott and gave him a helping hand up which Scott took gratefully.

“Thank you so much!”

“No problem,” Scott said. “We were sent here to do it.”

Jacob looked confused and I think he would’ve pestered to know more but I got us moving and back to the old barn and our own time. When I checked the book that evening, there was no longer anything written about any accident on the frozen lake.