Evening’s Entertainment) If you go to the end of the road, past Collin’s house, on the left you will see a field with some old f
1093 Words
chapter 4 the flies
If you go to the end of the road, past Collin’s house, on the left
you will see a field with some old fruit trees in it. A little house
used to be there where a man called Davis lived. He was a very
quiet man who seemed to have enough money to live on. He
didn’t work on the farms, but he always went to town on market
days. One day, a young man came back from market with him.
The young man was pale and thin, and he didn’t speak very
much. He lived with Mr Davis and nobody knew if he helped with
the housework, or if Mr Davis was his teacher. But people talked
and wondered why they were always walking together, early and
late, up in the hills and down in the woods. They suspected that the
two men were playing with magic and were plotting something
terrible. Once a month, when the moon was full, they went up to a
place on the hill where there are piles of old stones and rocks and
they stayed up there all night. Someone once asked Mr Davis why
he went to such a dark, lonely place in the middle of the night. Mr
Davis smiled and replied, ‘I love old places. They remind me of the
past. And the air is beautiful on a summer’s night. You can see all
the countryside for miles around in the moonlight.’
But Mr Davis’s young friend interrupted rudely: ‘We don’t
want other people near us. We just want to talk to each other.’
Mr Davis seemed annoyed at his young friend’s rudeness and he
politely explained, ‘People say that there are bodies under those old
stones, the bodies of dead soldiers. I know farmers sometimes find
old bones and pots when they are working in the fields around
here. I’d like to know more about how those people lived and who
their gods were. I think they probably practised magic.’
Then, one morning In September, something terrible happened. A farm worker had to go up to the top of the hill, to
the woods, very early, when it was still dark. In the distance he
saw a shape that looked like a man in the early morning fog. As
he came nearer, he saw that it was a man. It was Mr Davis’s friend,
dead, hanging from a tree. Near his feet was a knife, covered in
blood. The poor farm worker was terrified and ran back down
the hill to the village. He woke up some of the villagers to tell
them about the terrible sight and some men went back up the
hill with a horse to bring down the body. They also immediately
sent a young boy to Mr Davis’s house, to see if he was at home,
because, of course, they suspected that he was the murderer.
When they cut down the young man’s body from the tree, they
were surprised to see the clothes he was wearing were all black,
like the clothes that vicars used to wear many centuries ago.
When the men’s horse came near the tree and the dead young
man, it screamed and tried to run away, but the men were able to
hold it and they finally got back to the village with the body
across the terrified horse’s back. In the village they found the
young boy standing in the main street, with several women
standing around him. He was as white as paper and would not say
a word. When the men tried to move on towards Mr Davis’s
house, the horse again became very frightened. It stopped in the
road and would not move. Then suddenly it turned and tried to
run, and the body of the dead young man fell off its back on
to the road. The horse could smell blood. They carried the young
man’s body to Mr Davis’s house and when they opened the door,
they saw what the poor young boy had seen.
There, on the long kitchen table, was the body of Mr Davis.
Tied round his eyes was a black handkerchief and his hands were
tied behind his back. His chest was cut open from top to bottom
and his heart was gone. It was an awful sight. The men ran outside
for some fresh air - the smell of death in that room was so terrible.
Later, they put the young man’s body next to Mr Davis’s and theylooked carefully round the house. Why were these two men dead?
How did they die? In one of the cupboards they found a small
green bottle of strong medicine often used to put people to sleep.
‘I think that young man gave Mr Davis some of this stuff to
put him to sleep,’ one man suggested, looking at the bottle, ‘and
then killed him. Goodness knows why. Perhaps he needed Davis’s
heart for his magic. Then later, perhaps, he was sorry about
murdering his friend and went up the hill and killed himself
Well, the villagers decided that the two dead men could not
lie in the graveyard near the church. ‘They never came to church
and they didn’t believe in God,’ they said. ‘They believed in
unnatural things, in magic.’
So twelve men covered the two bodies in black and took them
to a place outside the village. There they dug a big hole, threw
the bodies into it and covered them with stones. People say that horses don’t like going near that place even today, and there is a
strange kind of light there.
One day, some time later, some people walking along the road
found a pool of blood across it. In the blood there were fat black
flies, feeding. One man went to get some water and they washed
the blood away, but the flies flew up into the air like a dark cloud,
and flew towards Mr Davis’s house. The villagers decided that no
one should live in that house any more, so they set fire to it. The
house burnt down completely, but for a long time people said
that they often saw Mr Davis and the young man, standing at
night when the moon was full, in the road near the burnt house
on the hill.
Only the flies live there now. Perhaps it is only the flies who
know why those two men played with magic and why they died
the way they did.
- Writer
