Tales from the Black Meadow Page 7

  She woke with a start to find the moonlight shining through the break in the curtains and her husband sitting up in bed sipping at a fresh bowl of posset.

  There, perched in her favourite rocking chair was the old woman, watching him intently.

  “What do you want?”

  The old woman turned her head slowly to the wife and said, “To help.”

  The farmer’s wife rose from her bed shaking with rage.

  “Be gone from my house hag, be gone and do not return! My husband has me and that is all he needs!”

  The old woman smiled and asked the farmer, who was looking at his wife in alarm, how he felt.

  “I feel fine. In fact I feel better than I have felt in a long time. Your posset has worked wonders, dear wife.”

  The wife looked at her husband in surprise. The old woman spoke.

  “I have given your husband your posset, ma’am. You were asleep and needed your rest so I brewed a posset much like yours and restored him.”

  The wife sunk back onto the bed and forced a smile.

  “Thank you,” she muttered.

  “Not at all,” said the old woman. “I will let you get your rest.”

  The old woman stood up and left the room, leaving the chair creaking slowly back and forth in the darkness.

  The farmer put his bowl on the bedside table and lay down.

  “I’m still cold,” he said to his wife. “Please hold me.”

  But the farmer’s wife was still in a rage and her vision ran scarlet before her eyes. She lay down and turned her back on her husband; silent tears welling in her open eyes, forming and flowing onto the pillow.

  She lay there for a while, waiting for sleep to come, listening to the chattering teeth of her husband and wondering what she should do about this hag from the meadow. The first thing she reasoned, after a while more, was not to turn her back on her husband. He was not at fault; it was his goodness that had brought them to this pass. So she rolled over and went to put her arms around her husband. As her arms began to reach over his frame, she immediately recoiled. Something large was clamped upon him; she could feel rough cloth beneath her hand and sharp pointed bones.

  She jumped from the bed. Her hand flew to her mouth in horror as she surveyed the scene. Her husband lay asleep and peaceful; his shivering ended and his teeth chattered no more. But, atop of his slumbering form, holding him in a tight embrace was the Meadow Hag; her wrinkled face close to his, her arms enveloping him, her legs wrapped around him like a young lover or a hound in the fit of heat. Filled with revulsion and a desperate urge to free her husband from this wrinkled carbuncle, the farmer’s wife ran to the bed and tried to pull this wizened attachment from her husband’s body. But she would not budge.

  “Remove yourself!” she demanded, her eyes blazing in a fury.

  The old woman seemed to respond to this by holding on all the tighter. The farmer’s wife pulled again at the hag’s withered body but she held on even tighter, causing her sleeping husband to emit a comforted moan of warm contentment.

  The farmer’s wife looked about wildly and saw a broom in the corner. She grabbed it quickly, pushing the end of the handle into the space between the Meadow Hag’s wrinkled chest and her own husband. She twisted and turned and pulled and pushed but could not remove the old woman from her husband. In frustration she swiftly extracted the pole, raising it above her head ready to strike. As she brought it down with full force, the Meadow Hag’s arm shot up, grabbing the handle in her withered claw. She raised her wrinkled frame from the farmer, pulling the broom from the wife’s hand. Standing upon the bed, she held the broom in both hands and snapped it like a dry old twig.

  The farmer slept on.

  With shocking suddenness and atrocious ferocity the Meadow Hag rained blow after blow onto the head, neck and shoulders of the farmer’s wife with the jagged ends of the broken broomstick. The farmer’s wife cried out for help but her husband slept on. The Meadow Hag leapt from the bed. She stood over the shuddering frame of the beaten woman. One half of the broom handle dropped to the floor. With her free hand she reached down, thrust her fingers into the wife’s beautiful auburn hair and pulled back her head. Ignoring the pleas and cries of terror she pulled back her arm, thrusting the jagged end of the broomstick into the wife’s mouth, causing her to gag and choke and flail. She pushed harder, forcing the shaft up inside the wife’s head, so her eyes bulged blood and all thoughts stopped forever. Once the convulsions had ceased and the breathing had stopped the Meadow Hag pulled out the handle with a hideous squelch and the wife dropped to the floor.

  By the light of the moon, the Hag began to undress; taking off her hessian shawl, her ragged brown dress, petticoat after petticoat, rolling down coarse woollen stockings, until she stood naked, bent, crooked and dry.

  She walked to the farmer’s wife and with little effort bent down, picked her up and carried her gently over to the bed. The Meadow Hag kissed her bulging eyes and they sank back and shut. She kissed the bruises and cuts from her brutal attack and they faded and closed. Slowly and carefully she removed the wife’s nightdress and stared at the still naked form. The Meadow Hag climbed upon the bed and sat on chest of this beautiful corpse. She leant forward and put her hand in the wife’s mouth. The Meadow Hag began to shake.

  The farmer slept on.

  As she trembled, she thrust her other hand into the corpse’s mouth until her bony fingers found the hole that the broom handle had made. The trembling increased. A great noise of bones cracking and joints grinding rent the air. The Meadow Hag screamed in pain as her hand drew deeper inside the wife’s head and her form grew smaller and slimmer and slighter and shorter still and drew her deeper into the skull of the peaceful corpse. Minutes passed. The screaming and cracking and grinding reached a cacophonic crescendo before diminishing into silence. A pair of tiny wrinkled feet disappeared between the parted lips of the farmer’s wife. Her dead mouth snapped shut. The Meadow Hag could not be seen.

  The farmer slept on.

  After an hour had passed the farmer’s wife rose from the bed and looked down at herself by the light of the moon. She put on her nightdress, lay down and embraced her husband, who gave a comforted moan of warm contentment.

  Everyone commented on how well and how rested the farmer looked when he returned to work the next day. As the weeks passed, some did comment that his wife seemed quieter, but the people of the village held them up as a paragon of marriage, for they seemed so content and healthy and in love. They whispered about children and at last in the next summer the wife’s belly started to bulge and over the next few years the brood grew to an impressive size. Indeed the farmer and his wife lived a long and happy life. The farmer lived to be ninety-seven, which was unheard of in those days. When his grandson asked him what their secret was, the farmer gave a cheerful reply.

  “A loving wife and a warm belly.”

  Everyone commented on how elegant the farmer’s wife looked at her husband’s funeral. She stood silent and still, her grandson by her side. Before he could react, she leaped down into the grave and lay down upon the coffin. Her grandson ran forward and begged her to climb out, but instead she stood and coughed once into her hand. She smiled, telling her grandson to hold out his hand, which he dutifully did. She dropped a small red seed into his open palm.

  “Take this to the well in the lower field,” she said, and lay down upon the coffin.

  The grandson ran over to the gravediggers for help, but, as he did so, the pile of earth at the side began to tremble and shake and the earth flew into the open grave covering the farmer’s wife swiftly. The gravediggers frantically dug away but found nothing but the coffin. Upon opening it, they found the lifeless forms of the farmer and his wife locked in a tight embrace. A doctor was called, but he just shrugged. The magistrate was summoned, but he just shook his head. So they called for the priest, who prayed as they closed up the grave for good.

  The next week the farmer’s grandson took the red seed t
o the well in the field, casting it within, sobbing and shaking his head. He sold the farm several years later to a local man who was keen to take on such a property. The grandson was sick of farming and was happy to leave it behind.

  A good few years passed and the new farmer was doing a roaring trade. His cows were the talk of the district and he ran an excellent dairy. His farm was prosperous and safe. He was happy for people to wander across the meadows and had, for that reason, filled in the dangerous old well. In its place he planted a beautiful pear tree that bore the most delicious fruit.

  It was in the spring, some twenty years later, that this farmer’s son noticed that one of the pears was distinctly large and its skin light brown and rough and coarse to the touch. He called his father over and they peered closely into the branches of the tree.

  “It will fall,” said the farmer. “It will fall.”

  The other pears seemed untouched by this blight. They waited for it to fall, surprised by its size and keen to see just how large it would grow. But fall it did not, though grow it did, every day larger and larger, most of it light brown and coarse like hessian but a few parts pink and wrinkled. Work in the dairy and at the market kept them away from the pear tree for several weeks.

  The farmer’s son, walking his dog through the meadow a month later, heard a faint cry and was astonished to see a wrinkled old lady perched on a branch.

  “How did you get up there?” he cried.

  “Help an old lady down.”

  The young man assured her that he would and immediately went to fetch a ladder. On his return he climbed up, took the old woman’s hands, threw her over his shoulder and brought her safely to the ground.

  She thanked him profusely and told him that in return for his good deed he would have her protection. He smiled, thanked her and walked back to the farm, not noticing that she was following at some distance behind.

  If either of them had turned around and looked at the pear tree more closely, they would have seen three more large hessian pears on the branches; rough hessian pears with a few parts pink and wrinkled.

  The Cry of the Coalman

  The snowflakes are hanging

  In the air

  Nothing’s moving

  Nothing there

  And I want to

  Hold your hand

  Make you see me

  Not just see

  Not just see through me

  But you’re still

  And you’re so cold

  And nothing moves

  Not at all

  I can’t hold you

  Touch you

  Know you’ll see me

  Know you’ll see me

  (Recorded by Roger Mullins at The Old Plough in 1963)

  … in the distance, by the well, he saw a figure with skin dripping black oil …

  The Coalman and the Creature

  A kindly coalman visited Black Meadow every month during autumn, winter and spring. An old grey pony pulled his rickety cart. He went from house to house, pouring coal down the hatches at the front of every home. He exchanged pleasantries with the ladies who poked their heads from the doors as he passed. Sometimes he would be given a cup of tea, a dry biscuit or a slice of cold ham that he would drink, munch and chew on the front step of a house whilst watching the children play “Hop the Scotch” or “Chase the Hoop” or “Alley of the Hard Foot”. He would laugh as they hopped, smile as they chased and wince as they sustained a painful blow whilst running between the two rows of vicious kicking children.

  It was in late February and the children were out playing in the snow. They cast great snowballs and flung them at one another. They pulled each other up and down the street on makeshift sleds made of their mothers’ tea trays or pot lids. The coalman nudged his pony along the street, pausing as two children slid in front of him. He carefully walked the cart around an enthusiastically made but poorly constructed snowman. He brushed the snow off a cellar hatch, opened it up and began to shovel coal inside.It was then that he noticed the silence. It was deep and eerie; there was no sound of wind, not a sound of the children, nothing. He turned from his task and looked down the street. A snowball hung in mid-air just inches from a red-headed girl’s button nose. The girl herself was shutting her eyes preparing for the impact. A boy was leaning precariously forward; both feet off the ground, seemingly frozen mid-fall. The coalman’s pony was completely still, its normally twitching ears utterly lifeless.

  The coalman stepped into the street and stared around him in silent wonder.

  In the distance, by the well he saw a figure with skin dripping black oil, big bright yellow eyes burning, staring at the red-headed girl. The Coalman watched as this creature began to walk through the street. It ignored the falling boy. It ignored the pony and the coalman. Instead it walked straight to the girl about to be hit by the snowball. The Coalman stared, transfixed, as the creature put its hand on the girl’s forehead. The girl shuddered, and while her face drained of colour so the creature’s hide, dripping black oil, shone even brighter. The creature turned and, as the Coalman watched, it slithered back to the well, throwing itself over the side.

  The Coalman ran to the well and looked down. As his eyes searched the darkness of the shaft, the noises of the village street returned. The Coalman instantly whipped around and saw the little girl with red hair on the ground, her face covered in snow.

  The villagers wept for a week. The boy who threw the snowball was taken away by the Sheriff and presented before the Squire who, in his wisdom, declared the girl’s death to be a tragic accident born out of the high jinks of children in the snow. She had tripped and hit her head on the ground.

  The Coalman did not tell of what he saw. He did not think that he would be believed, for he did not believe it himself and he had seen it. He had seen all go still; he had seen the oil-dripping creature touch that girl’s head. He had seen it, but he did not believe it.

  He was on his rounds the following month and walked with some trepidation into the village. The children were inside the school. He noticed that when they came out to play, they sat quietly at the side of the street; they did not jump up, did not play and did not laugh. The Coalman grabbed his shovel and moved a heavy load into the Tavern Cellar. The school bell rang, abruptly ceasing as the street was plunged into silence. The Coalman looked about him. He saw the Priest coming out of the church frozen in a gesture of greeting to the Milkmaid across the way, and as he peered closer he could see that the Milkmaid’s face was stuck in a coy smile. He saw the children frozen in their sad exodus from the street into their classroom. He saw the creature again, standing by the well, black oil dripping from its bloated frame.

  The kindly Coalman gripped the handle of his shovel tightly and ran towards the creature, his voice raised in a battle cry. He brought his shovel down upon the head and shoulders of the creature; it gave a soft cry, an almost human cry of pain. He hit it again and again and again yelling in fury and disgust, ignoring the black tar that sprayed over him with every strike. The creature bent under the blows, whimpering and crying out until, after minutes of relentless beating had passed, it lay still and broken at the Coalman’s feet.

  He picked up the creature and carried it over to the cart through the assorted tableaux of people that populated the street. The creature lay atop the coal and could hardly be seen. The Coalman unhitched the cart from his petrified pony. He pulled the cart and its cargo away from the village.

  The Coalman dug a shallow grave in the centre of Black Meadow and laid the foul creature to rest there. He returned to the village to resume his duties, hoping to find his pony awake, alive and with ears flicking. Alas, when he arrived, everything was as he had left it. The Priest was waving, the Milkmaid was still smiling and the children were still coming in from play; all of them frozen, all of them still, all of them statues of flesh. The Coalman, though worried, resolved that this would pass as it had before and finished delivering his coal, laughing through his worry at how sur
prised the villagers would be at the suddenness of their coal delivery.

  But as the hours passed and his travails were completed he saw that all was still, all was frozen. He ran from door to door, opening each and running inside but found all occupants stiff and still, stuck at their rudimentary tasks. He became desperate, shouting himself hoarse at the village and in the faces of his silent customers. But as loud as he shouted, they did not respond. Their faces were unmoving, frozen in rictus grins, frowns and grimaces.

  He walked to the Milkmaid and put his face next to hers, he tried to stare her down, tried to make her blink. He was sweating from exhaustion. He put his hand to his head and it came away covered in black sticky ooze; Coal-dust and perspiration he thought, coal-dust and perspiration. He looked into the face of the smiling Milkmaid, wishing that she was looking at him and not at the Priest. He moved around in an attempt to get her still eyes to lock with his, but even when he stood in front of the Priest he could tell that she was looking right through him.

  He brought up his blackened hand to touch her face and as he did he noticed with excitement that her face did change. It changed in colour. He felt hope that she would come to life and that smile would be for him. But her face turned from fleshy pink, to pale, to blue, to grey. Her eyes yellowed, but she did not move or change position. She did not smile at him.