The Puffin Book of Ghosts and Ghouls by Gene Kemp

Author:Gene Kemp [Kemp, Gene]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Random House UK
Published: 2018-07-30T16:00:00+00:00

The Shadow-Cage

PHILIPPA PEARCE

The little green stoppered bottle had been waiting in the earth a long time for someone to find it. Ned Challis found it. High on his tractor as he ploughed the field, he’d been keeping a look-out, as usual, for whatever might turn up. Several times there had been worked flints; once, one of an enormous size.

Now sunlight glimmering on glass caught his eye. He stopped the tractor, climbed down, picked the bottle from the earth. He could tell at once that it wasn’t all that old. Not as old as the flints that he’d taken to the museum in Castleford. Not as old as a coin he had once found, with the head of a Roman emperor on it. Not very old; but old.

Perhaps just useless old …

He held the bottle in the palm of his hand and thought of throwing it away. The lip of it was chipped badly, and the stopper of cork or wood had sunk into the neck. With his fingernail he tried to move it. The stopper had hardened into stone, and stuck there. Probably no one would ever get it out now without breaking the bottle. But then, why should anyone want to unstopper the bottle? It was empty, or as good as empty. The bottom of the inside of the bottle was dirtied with something blackish and scaly that also clung a little to the sides.

He wanted to throw the bottle away, but he didn’t. He held it in one hand while the fingers of the other cleaned the remaining earth from the outside. When he had cleaned it, he didn’t fancy the bottle any more than before; but he dropped it into his pocket. Then he climbed the tractor and started off again.

At that time the sun was high in the sky, and the tractor was working on Whistlers’ Hill, which is part of Belper’s Farm, fifty yards below Burnt House. As the tractor moved on again, the gulls followed again, rising and falling in their flights, wheeling over the disturbed earth, looking for live things, for food; for good things.

That evening, at tea, Ned Challis brought the bottle out and set it on the table by the loaf of bread. His wife looked at it suspiciously: ‘Another of your dirty old things for that museum?’

Ned said: ‘It’s not museum stuff. Lisa can have it to take to school. I don’t want it.’

Mrs Challis pursed her lips, moved the loaf further away from the bottle, and went to refill the teapot.

Lisa took the bottle in her hand. ‘Where’d you get it, Dad?’

‘Whistlers’ Hill. Just below Burnt House.’ He frowned suddenly as he spoke, as if he had remembered something.

‘What’s it got inside?’

‘Nothing. And if you try getting the stopper out, that’ll break.’

So Lisa didn’t try. Next morning she took it to school; but she didn’t show it to anyone. Only her cousin Kevin saw it, and that was before school and by accident. He always called for Lisa on

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