The Crow Folk Read online

  Faye didn’t, but persisted, ‘Did she? Did she know my mum?’

  ‘Not especially,’ he said. ‘I heard they had some sort of falling out. But don’t go asking me for any more details, cos there aren’t any. Why don’t you ask your father?’

  ‘I did. He kept changing the subject.’

  ‘The thing about this village, Faye,’ he said, ‘is it’s all peculiar, odd, strange and witchy. Did you know the River Wode turned red in the summer of 1911? There’s a path near the convent where if you were to leave a cart unattended it would roll uphill, and they reckon if you hold a magnetic compass in the middle of the standing stones in the wood it would go all doolally. Peculiar, odd, strange and witchy is standard operating procedure for this place, Faye. Just this week on Larry Dell’s farm, he said someone pinched all his scarecrows.’ Mr Paine took another sip of tea.

  ‘Larry Dell… Is he the one with the brassica farm? He’s got that dent in his head.’

  ‘That’s him. I saw him in the Heart and Hand last Friday—’

  ‘What was you doing in the Heart and Hand?’ Faye didn’t like it when villagers went to pubs other than her dad’s.

  ‘Darts night. Now, where was I?’

  ‘Someone else’s pub, apparently.’

  ‘Where was I in my story?’

  ‘Someone pinched Larry Dell’s scarecrows.’

  ‘That’s it. And here’s the peculiar, odd, strange and witchy bit. He said whoever pinched the scarecrows left the crosses. It’s like the scarecrows just hopped off their poles and walked away. And then yesterday I heard about Doris’s boy, Herbert.’

  ‘He’s at sea, isn’t he?’

  ‘Just got back on shore leave the other day. He was on the train home from Portsmouth, and as he’s coming into Therfield Station, you’ll never guess what he saw.’

  Faye shrugged. ‘Larry Dell’s scarecrows?’

  Mr Paine smiled, opened his mouth to speak, then angled his head, listening.

  ‘What’s up?’ Faye asked.

  Mr Paine raised a silencing finger. His voice dropped to a whisper. ‘Someone’s out there.’

  Faye mouthed, ‘Out where?’ and Mr Paine pointed to where Gibbet Lane veered off to a bridle path into the wood. From the darkness came a rhythmic t-tap of heel-toe, heel-toe. Boots on cobbles, and they were coming this way.

  Only today, a leaflet had arrived in the second post called When the Invaders Come, and Bertie had been filling Faye’s head with stories of German paratroopers dropping from the sky for sneak attacks with machine guns and grenades. Faye’s heart began to thump in her ears and she wished she had Morris Marshall’s shotgun or Harry Newton’s old blunderbuss. Even a broomstick would be something.

  ‘Who goes there?’ Mr Paine bellowed. No answer. Faye saw him clench his fists as he called again. ‘Who goes there?’

  The footsteps drew closer and closer.

  6 BRIEF ENCOUNTER

  Philomena Teach marched through the midnight gloom of the wood. Most people would fear the oppressive darkness, but there was nothing for Mrs Teach to be afraid of here. The wood was an old friend. There were paths that only she knew of, and she followed one now to the village.

  Mrs Teach’s encounter with Charlotte had made her blood boil. Accusing her of breaking the rules like she was some naughty schoolgirl. How dare she, indeed. Mrs Teach had considered telling Charlotte the truth, but the snooty cow had made it clear she wouldn’t be requiring Mrs Teach’s help, so she could go and take a running jump.

  That said, if Charlotte was right about an incursion from below… it didn’t bear thinking about. No one in their right mind was daft enough to open the door to anyone – anything – from down there. Mrs Teach’s own little mishap had been a complete accident and she had taken immediate steps to rectify her error.

  The path led to the edge of the wood where the trees were further apart, cliffs dropped away to the sea and the sky and the water came together as a silent curtain of darkness. Waves hissed across the shingle beaches far below. The chalk path was bumpy here and she had to watch her step as she wound her way to Gibbet Lane. Chalk became a bridle path and then cobbles. Her heels clacked on the stone.

  This incursion wasn’t her fault. Nothing to do with her. Yes, she had done wrong before, but that had come from a place of mourning and love. There was no malice in her actions. She knew she had broken the rules, but those rules were unjust and she had still been grieving and all she wanted was to—

  ‘Who goes there?’ a voice bellowed from the darkness.

  ‘Bloody Nora.’ Mrs Teach clutched her chest. She snapped out of her angry daze to find she had left the wood and was at the bottom of Gibbet Lane. Two shadows in ARP helmets huddled together in the dark. One was much bigger than the other. The familiar bulk of a friendly purveyor of cigarettes and sweeties. ‘Freddie? Freddie Paine, is that you? You nearly gave me a heart attack, you great lummox.’

  ‘Oh, sorry, Mrs Teach,’ Mr Paine said, tipping back his helmet. ‘Can’t be too careful these days. Hope I didn’t give you a fright.’

  ‘A fright, Freddie? A fright? I think you took ten bloody years off me. I’ll say goodnight to you both.’ She started to head home when another voice chirped up.

  ‘Might I ask what you was doing out and about so late at night, Mrs Teach?’

  It took her a moment to recognise the voice. ‘Faye? Faye Bright?’ Mrs Teach bit her lip to stop herself from blurting, I was just talking about you. Instead, she took a step closer to the young girl, her face blue in the pallid moonlight. ‘Oh, look at you, doing your bit. How wonderful. You’re an inspiration to young women everywhere. Well, it’s getting chilly, so I’m off to make some cocoa and—’

  ‘Begging your pardon, Mrs Teach,’ Faye persisted, ‘but you haven’t answered my question.’

  Just like her mother, Mrs Teach thought. Kathryn Wynter never knew when to keep her mouth shut. Always asking impertinent questions. Constantly prodding and poking her nose in where it wasn’t wanted. One of the many reasons Mrs Teach quite liked the woman.

  ‘Only, we have to report any suspicious behaviour,’ Faye said. ‘And someone wandering about in the woods in the middle of the night might be construed as somewhat suspect, if you get my drift, no offence.’

  ‘None taken, young lady. Now, if you don’t mind, it’s a bit nippy and—’

  Mr Paine blocked her path. ‘Kindly answer the question, Mrs Teach,’ he said.

  In her youth, Mrs Teach had taken many lead roles in the Woodville Amateur Dramatics Society and received good notices in the parish gazette, but it had been nearly three decades since she last trod the boards, so she was pleasantly surprised at how easily she was able to summon her thespian powers of old. Mrs Teach burst into a flood of tears that would have won her a standing ovation in the West End. ‘Everywhere I look I see him,’ she said between sobs. ‘I just had to get out of the house, even for a short while. Too many memories.’

  ‘Oh, oh, I’m so sorry, Mrs Teach.’ Faye hurried over and took her hand. ‘What’s it been? Three months?’

  ‘Three months, three weeks, two days, my love,’ Mrs Teach said with a sniff. ‘But we must soldier on, mustn’t we? Bigger worries in the world than me and my Ernie.’

  Up close, Mrs Teach took a moment to look the girl over. There was a sharp mind behind those big specs. Charlotte was wrong to dismiss the girl. Mrs Teach wanted to ask her all sorts of questions, but Mr Paine was taking her by the elbow and steering her in the direction of home.

  ‘Come along, Mrs Teach,’ he said in his low, slow voice. ‘We’ll see you to your door.’

  ‘Oh, you’re too kind,’ she replied. ‘What would we do without brave folk like you watching over us?’ Mrs Teach allowed herself to be guided home like an invalid, but once inside she clapped her hands together and with a new determination marched to the kitchen to make her cocoa. She flicked the light switch on and immediately a voice cried from the street, ‘Put that light out!’

  7
THE CROW FOLK RALLY

  Clouds boiled from inside, pulses of lightning throwing long shadows that swooped across the forest floor.

  Craddock slipped between the trees at the edge of the wood, a silent silhouette as he checked his snares. A hare for the pot. Or maybe for one of the mugs in the village? Since rationing started he had been raking it in with a bit of black market game. When the butcher was only permitted to give you a few ounces of meat every week, and when you were sick of corned-beef fritters, a rabbit or hare could be a very welcome change and there were plenty in the village who were willing to pay over the odds for it.

  He stuffed the hare in his sack and slung it over his shoulder, still simmering at the way he had been spoken to in the pub earlier. Pompous old farts like that bell-ringer Hodgson, or a mouthy little bint like that Faye, or witches like that Charlotte. Sod ’em. They could get their own game. This one was for him.

  Craddock passed a badger drinking from the pond. Another lightning flash revealed the cluster of barns at Newton’s farm. Lamplight flickered within and Craddock wondered what the bloody hell Harry Newton was playing at this late at night. More than one barn had burned down around here thanks to a forgotten oil lamp, so Craddock took it upon himself to investigate. He moved quietly, peeling away from the cover of the wood and scurrying down the footpath, dashing over bloody feathers on the ground where a fox had pounced on a pigeon.

  This was a friend’s barn, but a hunter’s instinct told him to be cautious. Craddock froze when he heard a rousing cheer from inside, followed by a smattering of applause. He ducked down to sidle up to the barn and the voices became more distinct.

  ‘For too long have we suffered under their yoke. No longer will we endure their mockery.’ It was a man’s voice, and he was more than a bit full of himself, giving it all like a soapbox preacher. ‘For now, we have our freedom.’ Another cheer.

  Communists? Craddock wondered. Bolsheviks? Nazis? He recalled last winter when a chap went from door to door handing out pamphlets urging villagers to join some fascist organisation. Constable Muldoon had chased the loon from the village on his bicycle while waving his truncheon. Woodville didn’t have any truck with such nonsense, so how had someone filled a barn with village revolutionaries? He peered through a crack in the barn’s timber frame.

  He could only see the legs of the talker, who was standing on a podium of hay bales with his back to Craddock. Flanked by flickering oil lamps, the speaker addressed the crowd of twenty or so that filled the barn, but he couldn’t make out any faces beyond the glare of the lamps.

  ‘But for how long?’ the speaker asked. ‘They will want to take it from us, brothers and sisters, yes they will. How long can we remain free?’

  Craddock backed away and hurried around to the front of the barn to get a better look.

  ‘We must leave this place,’ a woman’s voice cried from inside, ‘and find a new home to call our own.’

  ‘No. This is our land,’ said another.

  ‘Yes, brothers and sisters,’ said the speaker. ‘We have watched over this land and it is ours by right. We must take it and keep it.’

  Craddock decided that was quite enough and barged in, swinging the barn door open. ‘What the bloody hell is—’

  Craddock lost his voice as every head turned towards him.

  Some were featureless bundles of straw under floppy hats, others had crude cloth blackbird faces with yellow beaks, most were sackcloth with buttons and stitches for eyes and mouths. Each one was the stuff of nightmares.

  Scarecrows.

  Living, walking, talking scarecrows.

  Craddock was a simple man at heart. A hunter who knew the cycle of life and death, and he was well acquainted with the laws of Mother Nature and how harsh and unforgiving she could be. But he wasn’t equipped with anywhere near enough of an imagination to make sense of what he was seeing. So he ignored the fact that he was talking to a barn full of scarecrows and went about his business of telling them to bugger off private property. ‘This… this is Harry Newton’s barn. What are you—’

  ‘I know this man.’ One of the scarecrows stepped out of the crowd, pointing an accusing finger at Craddock. She had a sack for a head and a red gingham frock. She pulled her shawl tighter around her as she stared with her button eyes at the speaker on the hay bales.

  The speaker’s head looked just like a pumpkin, but that couldn’t possibly be the case because people don’t have heads shaped like pumpkins, but this one really, really looked like a pumpkin.

  ‘Speak up, sister Suky,’ Pumpkinhead said.

  ‘I have seen him at night, I have,’ Suky said, her cross-stitch mouth moving in time with her words. ‘A poacher. He traps hares and rabbits and more. Craddock, his name is. Wilfred Craddock.’

  ‘Wilf?’ Craddock hadn’t thought he could be any more baffled, but now this lass was mistaking him for his grandfather. A poacher like him, to be sure, but long dead and buried.

  ‘He cannot be trusted. He must not leave, he will betray us, I’m telling you,’ Suky said, gripping Craddock’s arm.

  He shook her off, but she grabbed him again and Craddock would be buggered before he let any woman touch him like that, so he backhanded her across the face.

  Her head spun around so far it was facing the wrong way. Had he broken her neck? Craddock’s blood began to rush as he readied to fight his way out.

  There came a creaking noise. At first, Craddock thought it was the barn door, but this sounded more like wood being twisted to the point of breaking, and he watched with cold dread as Suky the scarecrow’s head slowly turned back to face him.

  Craddock might not have had much of an imagination, but he was playing catch-up and not liking what he saw. ‘I… I don’t know you,’ he said, backing away, ‘and this ain’t none of my business.’

  The scarecrows had formed a circle around him and were closing in.

  ‘I won’t be telling no one,’ he said, angry at himself for letting his voice tremble. ‘You can trust me. I won’t say a word. You ask people around here about me. I’m known in the village.’

  The circle of scarecrows tightened around him. A few reached out, stroking his long coat.

  ‘Are you indeed?’ said the man with the pumpkin for a head. ‘Known for poaching? Stealing? Do you consort with thieves? Do you dabble in the dark arts? Do you keep company with witches?’

  ‘Witches?’ Craddock slapped the stroking hands away. ‘I won’t have nothing to do with no witches.’

  ‘But you know of them?’ Pumpkinhead’s triangle eyes narrowed somehow. ‘Tell me. Tell me their names. Tell me where I might find them and you shall be free to go about your business.’

  ‘Oh, will I now?’ Craddock bristled. ‘Most people you meet round here couldn’t be trusted to tie their own bootlaces, and I have no truck with anyone who calls themselves a witch or any such nonsense, but I won’t be betraying any of them to you, sir. If you think I’m going to be told when I can or cannot go about my business by some berk with a pumpkin on his head, then you’ve got another think coming.’ Craddock dropped his sack with the dead hare and clenched his fists. ‘Now, if you’re done, you can all sod off before I—’ He glimpsed a tiny nod from Pumpkinhead just before the scarecrows threw themselves on top of him. Craddock stumbled to his knees as their gloved hands gripped his arms with a strength that took him by surprise. One grabbed his collar and forced his head down. With a roar from the depths of his gut, Craddock thrust his arms up, knocked them back and broke free. Two more tried to block his path, but Craddock punched one and shoved the other out of the way, then hurried to the barn door and out into the storm.

  He had taken about three steps when he heard cries behind him and scarecrows poured out of the barn, rushing after him. The hunt was on.

  * * *

  Craddock dashed into the thick of the wood, flitting between the trees. The rain had stopped, though lightning still flashed and thunder shook the air. He dared to glance back at his pursuers.
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br />   The scarecrows moved fast, their arms and legs whirling madly, boneless and inhuman as they closed in.

  Craddock tripped and tumbled into a ditch. For a moment, he saw white as the back of his head hit a rock. He could only flounder, grasping for any kind of handhold to haul himself out of the ditch when a jolly scarecrow with a beaming smile leapt on Craddock, beating him about the head with a flurry of punches.

  Craddock kicked him away and got to his feet, but two more scarecrows joined the fray, raining clumsy blows on him, wild and savage with flailing arms.

  Craddock knew how to fight in a bar, in the streets, and according to the Queensberry Rules, but he had never known anything like the relentless insanity of the scarecrows. They were fearless and brutal and knocked him to the ground again. The jolly scarecrow’s sackcloth face filled Craddock’s vision, giggling like a loon.

  Craddock had landed awkwardly and something poked into his buttocks. He knew what it was and how it would save him, and he tried to ignore the incessant punches as he reached for the box in his back pocket.

  The jolly scarecrow’s head twitched at the scratch of a match on phosphorous, but it was too late to move as flames licked across his face. The jolly scarecrow howled, trying to pat the fire out. The others wanted to help, but they scurried back, afraid of the flame.

  Craddock limped away into the darkness. Behind him, the jolly scarecrow ran blindly, a glowing ball dashing between the trees, wailing like a banshee.

  8 GOLIATH SPOOKED BY LOW-FLYING SPITFIRES

  Faye couldn’t be sure what time she had finally made it home last night, but it was well after midnight as Dad was already in bed. It took her even longer to get to sleep, her mind buzzing with all the strange revelations of the previous day. When she got up for breakfast, her father was already gone. He’d left her a note on the kitchen table:

  Goliath spooked by low-flying Spitfires. Gone to fetch him out of a ditch.