Black Harvest

Black Harvest
Ann Pilling

The rugged west coast of Ireland seems like the perfect place for a holiday. Then everything starts to go wrong. Colin is aware of an awful smell coming off the land, a smell of death and decay…Colin and Prill were looking forward to a holiday of fun and adventure in Ireland. It would have been perfect if only they hadn’t had to drag along their “odd” cousin Oliver. But Oliver, it turns out, isn’t their biggest problem.Almost from the moment they arrive, Colin feels sick from an awful smell, so powerful and horrible that it seems to be rising from the land of the dead. At the same time, Prill is visited by a strange creature creeping into her dreams. Who is she, and what does she want?Only Oliver seems untouched by the danger. As the hot summer days continue, their terror mounts and their baby sister becomes critically ill. Oliver links the present horror with the terrible famine in Ireland of the 1840s – and the strange occupant of the nearby caravan, whose land was lost then through eviction – and he must bring about the reconciliation to save himself and his cousins.

Black Harvest

by

Ann Pilling

illustrated by

David Wyatt

For E. I. C.

1916–1963

Contents

Cover (#u189a5e87-7fe9-567c-9618-f64f21329ade)

Title Page (#ue00f9ec3-ff48-5924-84ac-b16dab23a149)

Dedication (#u11dcfc0b-e771-54a0-a6a0-2b26b989a3c1)

Chapter One (#ub6d2c60d-0ae8-532d-aa1c-a786eb369af6)

Chapter Two (#ua8eafd49-e8dd-5e4f-b13e-c8d9e52aa0ae)

Chapter Three (#u5f34f1c7-dbe5-52f8-8469-5d9de8778333)

Chapter Four (#u14881f22-ca0f-5763-a5ff-f41ae0af508d)

Chapter Five (#u6bd0ad9e-d512-5532-bc69-c997be495270)

Chapter Six (#u1e8651ce-2a74-581e-97e1-ebaa48f9dbbe)

Chapter Seven (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Eight (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Nine (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Ten (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Eleven (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Twelve (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Thirteen (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Fourteen (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Fifteen (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Sixteen (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Seventeen (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Eighteen (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Nineteen (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Twenty (#litres_trial_promo)

Postscript (#litres_trial_promo)

About the Author (#litres_trial_promo)

Also by the Author (#litres_trial_promo)

Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)

About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter One (#ulink_bc90526a-3eb6-5318-a8b6-79366e56d059)

“CAN YOU STOP the car? I’m going to be sick,” moaned Oliver.

“Not again,” Prill muttered, under her breath. It was the third time since Dublin.

Mr Blakeman pulled off the road, slammed the brakes on, and jumped out, grabbing Oliver and steering him towards a clump of grass. The sudden jolt had woken the baby and she was wriggling in her mother’s arms, making the dry-throated complaining noise that was usually followed by a great bawl. By now she must be both hungry and wet. Before too long they’d have to stop yet again and get the nappies out. They were never going to reach Dr Moynihan’s bungalow at this rate.

From the front seat Colin sneaked a quick look at his cousin. This car business was getting ridiculous. Nobody could help being sick, but by now Oliver couldn’t have anything left to be sick with. It was all in his mind.

“Please would you move up?” the small boy said to Prill. There was plenty of room but she still slid over towards her mother, leaving a strip of seat between them. Oliver’s large pale eyes inspected it carefully, then he bent down and lifted a pile of books back on to his bony knees, hugging them to his chest as if to ward off blows.

Colin and Prill had looked at the books last night, in the Dublin hotel. Most of them were about bugs and beetles, and there was one about Ireland too. Mr Blakeman was impressed.

“Your cousin’s obviously been doing his homework,” he said. “Look at all these… insects… mosses… The Land and People of Ireland… This is what you two should have been doing. When you’re going to spend a month in a place like Ballimagliesh, it’s as well to know something about it.”

Prill was cross. Dad didn’t often sound like a schoolteacher, even though he was one. Anyway, she’d been too busy practising for her Gold Award down at the swimming pool to do much reading, and Colin had only just come back from the school camp.

Oliver’s books smelt peculiar. They weren’t new, with shiny coloured jackets, but musty and faded, and they all had Uncle Stanley’s name in the front. That smell had taken Colin right back into his early childhood, to a place in London, a tall, thin house, in a terrace near the River Thames. He could remember a gloomy front door with the paint peeling, and dark corridors inside, where old men and women came and went silently, like ghosts. He could remember the smell of cabbage and brisk Aunt Phyllis, who looked after elderly people, pouring tea with one arm and jiggling a squalling child with the other – Oliver, the ugliest baby he’d ever seen.

Three-year-old Prill had spent her time scowling at her aunt because she insisted on calling her Priscilla, Uncle Stanley had ticked Colin off for sliding on the hall lino, and from their flat at the top of the house that ugly baby had never stopped yelling. Now it was nearly ten years old and coming with them on holiday to Ballimagliesh.

It was the first time Oliver had been away from home without his parents. He’d had glandular fever and missed two months of school. He was extremely thin. He moved slowly and his eyes watered. “Don’t forget to wear a vest,” his mother had reminded him, shutting the car door. The Blakemans didn’t have a vest between them, and who wore one in August anyway? Oliver had carefully arranged his beetle books on his knees and stared at them with cold suspicion. In their bones Colin and Prill knew that it wasn’t going to work, bringing him on holiday.