Just Kids Playing

Part 6 of a longer story written for the Summer Challenge

Because I seemed to be the only one of us who hadn’t brought anything back through with me from my trip, I have to confess that I felt unsure that it had actually happened. The memory of the events that I presumed had happened with the charging bull and the killing of the young boy were very fresh and felt real enough but the lack of physical evidence had put me firmly in two minds.

I lay in my bed musing and not even thinking about the time, which when I woke was 7:04am and my mind must’ve wandered so that the next time I checked, it was 7:55. I jumped up and went to wash and get dressed for school, my mind now racing about whether I had been given any homework to complete that I could cobble together at the breakfast table. As it turned out, yesterday had been a good effort on my part and there had been nothing left to complete or even read, so I was able to refocus on my main issue whilst I munched my way through some toast and drank some lukewarm tea. In the end I turned up at the school gates only about ten minutes later than my regular time, so that wasn’t too bad.

Scott had not turned up by the look of it so I was greeted by Charlie and David. Charlie had not brought his brown paper box with him but David opened his bag and showed us both the framed picture of his friend, Jack. He told us quietly that he had carried it everywhere with him for the last two days and had even slept with it on his pillow, an image that neither of us could properly comprehend. It was at this point that I felt obliged to speak of what was on my mind.

“I didn’t get to bring anything back with me, I wonder why that was?” I mused aloud.

Charlie and David both looked at me and then each other before offering nothing more than shrugs in response. The bell rang for us all to get into lines for registration and as we went to our respective places, I said to both.

“We will not go down there today. Scott isn’t here and it doesn’t feel right.”

Charlie and David both nodded their approvals and we went our separate ways until lunchtime.

Where I sat in the classroom was right next to the door that opened onto the teacher’s office and I overheard (with some careful listening) a phone call with the school secretary. I heard her confirm that Scott Parsons would be in today as he has a heavy cold and that she hoped he would be better soon. Now I was definitely glad that we weren’t going to the barn after school. As it turned out that day, it seemed that the Gods of weather agreed because it absolutely lashed down with rain and there were even rumbles of thunder in the distance. At the end of day bell, I saw Charlie and David briefly. We agreed that as soon as Scott was back to school, we would venture back down to the barn but that none of us would go there alone in the meantime. With that, I took to my heels and ran home, avoiding the worst of the rain by the high hedgerow on both sides of the pathway. That evening I got to start my Lego car project and actually forgot all about the barn, at least temporarily.

My sleep was deep that night but I did wake early with quite a sweat on. The clock told me that it was 6:16am and I heard movement and voices from downstairs. I went down and saw my dad sat at the table working his way through some cereal. He looked up as I entered the room and sat down. I didn’t get to see a lot of him because he was always away to work before I usually awoke and by the time he had got home in the evening, I was upstairs in my room either reading or doing homework. I decided there and then to tell him about the barn. What I got was the stock response that I had become so used to.

“Not now, Kevin. I have to go to work. Talk later, OK?”

I went back upstairs knowing perfectly well that if I had protested or even tried to carry on then I would be blamed for everything going wrong at his work that day and we would never get to talk anyway, so I left him to it but I stopped at the top of the stairs next to the small bookcase that lived there. I had noticed a book that I hadn’t seen before titled ‘Godolphin – Myths and Legends’, so I grabbed it and went into my room. I read solidly for the next hour and a half and was completely absorbed by the passage about the ghosts of the woods. There are lots of stories about Godolphin Woods that are very common, The White Lady Ghost at Godolphin House being the most famous. Scott claims to have seen her a couple of times but his stories were considered to be nothing more than the imagination of your average ten-year-old. It was then that I sat bolt upright in my bed. The passage read;

Farmer Stevens lost his only son to a horrible accident in the summer of 1865. His son, Jacob, was gored to death by a raging bull whilst tending to hay in one of Farmer Stevens’ remote outbuildings, he was just thirteen years old. There is legend that says the boy haunts the site of the now abandoned barn, shouting “Wild Bull!” at anyone who gets too close, but these have never been substantiated. Farmer Stevens, who was at pains to not talk about the accident right up to his own death of a heart attack in 1890, left the barn to go to rack and ruin but refused to knock it down or even work anywhere close to the site from then onwards.

Below the text there was a picture of the barn. I looked at it closely, recognising straight away that it was a picture of the barn that I ran to, the barn that I had been in to witness the goring of Jacob and his death. Now there was a connection, the only problem was, was that I had no clue as to why us four boys had all become involved in it. I made a decision there and then that I needed to visit alone.

Today was Friday and it was overcast but not raining. Today it was David’s turn to be absent along with Scott who was still recovering from his heavy cold. David, as I have already told, had received the news about the death of his best friend Jack from his father who had then decided it was best if he stayed away from school today. I showed the section of my book to Charlie who went a shade of white when reading it that would’ve matched a ghost. He said very little else and went away to join some of his other friends, leaving me alone with my thoughts.

I ate alone at lunchtime, at a small side table that was only big enough for two anyway and that was fine by me. I knew that I had to go back to the barn on my own, to at least put my own mind at rest. I knew that it could be dangerous going alone but I really felt that I had no choice. At the end of the school day, I went home and dropped my schoolbag off and changed into sturdy wellington boots. I grabbed the Myths and Legends book and set off for the barn.

Luckily for me, I found my way there without any problems and was also helped by the fact that we had trampled a path there anyway. I had bookmarked the page that showed the picture of the barn from 1865 and although it was black and white, I knew it was the same building. It was still surrounded, almost buried, in the woods on three sides and once again, I wondered how anything at all was visible from the rear window, let alone what we had each seen. I listened closely for any sounds at all but heard nothing other than nature so I walked inside. As soon as I had passed out of the natural daylight, I heard it.

“Wild Bull!”

I turned a half circle and faced out of the barn and there was Jacob, as clear as day, standing in the doorway. He looked sad and his eyes were wide open, registering a look of frightened disbelief. I then noticed that his chest was caved in and there was a gore-hole going straight through him. My mind screamed at me at that moment to get out of there but I was glued to the spot,

You haven’t gone through the window yet! This is real!

Jacob walked toward me and I felt the real need to actually crap myself but held firm, both inside and out. Jacob made one more shout of ‘Wild Bull!’ and then fell silent, standing directly in front of me. A ghostlike hand reached out and grabbed mine and I could actually feel it, not like a touch but more like a presence, and he led me to the rear of the barn. I knew in my heart that we were headed for the window and went willingly but now scared stiff. We both climbed up onto the hay-bales and went through the window in single file, coming out in front of the barn but in 1865. Jacob was a real boy again, he had real form and I could now feel his hand gripping mine. At that moment, I felt the earth trembling and the cacophony of an approaching bull. I looked at Jacob in sheer panic, not wanting to go through the same horror as before but he smiled back at me reassuringly.

As we stood there, a young boy emerged from the woods to the left of us and ran straight into the barn. He clambered up onto the first floor and stood looking from the upstairs window as the wild bull followed but it had lost the scent and stopped, looking around angrily and breathing hard. It was obvious to me that bull could not see us but could maybe sense something because it carried on doing full circles in front of the barn, snorting mucus through both nostrils. It was at that moment that the shotgun fired and the bull was quieted for good. Farmer Stevens emerged from around the rear of the barn with his smoking gun and I looked up at the first-floor window. Two boys were stood there, waving down at the farmer, who waved back. One looked remarkably like me and the other was definitely Jacob, both boys were smiling uncontrollably.

I looked to my left and the ghost Jacob was still stood next to me but he now looked a lot happier. I could also see that there was no longer a gore hole in his chest and that his eyes looked so much happier. The next thing that happened was the most bizarre; Ghost Jacob let my hand go and started to turn green, becoming less and less of a human shape but continuing to become nothing more than a green light. Once he was nothing more than a simple green orb, he just disappeared with one final pulse. The two boys in the barn had come down and were now hugging the farmer over the body of the dead bull. I took a few steps backwards and then fell into wet hay, remembering that it had been raining hard yesterday and the old barn had a gaping hole in the roof.