This Farm Has a Ghost by Eliza Fairley

A lost pig’s squeals cut through the frothy marsh wrapped in fog. She’ll push her wearying legs through, desperate and stinging. Her ankles cramping from the thick, harrowing temperature of the early morning hour while she can still feel the heat on her back. The trails of sweat freeze and tighten as her muscles quake underneath. She heaves, altering direction like a barge ship in crumbling icy waters. The light is so cruel at this time, sticking to the gaseous fog, illuminating the blurriness. She’s almost completely in the grey now, away from the horror of oranges and reds. Her iceberg lies in front, a huffing pig stuck on its side in the bog, explosions of ashy white cries ascending into the atmosphere. 

She knew she couldn’t carry the animal back, she’d known so when she’d ran after it. She’d known her efforts would only lead to watching it sink, struggling and wailing like a human baby, uncomprehending and terrified. It’s exhausted, body betraying the urgent panic trapped under its eyes. She falls back, sits in the marsh and blankets herself in the cold reality. Only when death stops slashing her ears open and stabbing her brain does she remember the last time she was here. Only when her eyes allow the clouded air to turn them white does she see the marsh covered in the dead, stiff and rotting. A hundred corpses, a hundred dying shrieks absorbed by the fog of a winter morning. Her blank eyes cry and her stomach wretches. She tries to run, crunching pig skulls slicing her feet.

Smoke, dark and grey piercing through fog. The thatch smells fierce as it burns. She stumbles as she lifts her body out of the marsh, clothes thick and pungent. All she can see through her clouded eyes are merging hot hues bleeding, spilling together. As she walks she can feel the scorching on her skin, her arms reaching out like a child, blinking, begging to see home. With each step, each blistering whimper from the hardening ground pushing its way into the open flesh under her feet, the image begins to unveil. A farmhouse ablaze, wooden beams collapsing into a crumbling image of memories slowly being lost. Deep crackling followed by thuds only making her fall to her knees and start to weep. She cries out for her mother, for her father, for her brothers, only to have her desperation erased by the roar. 

The debris of her home litters her hollowing, hunched over body. Her eyes fixed on the hands in her lap, burnt and decaying. It takes her hours to recognise them as her own. Her mind is a pendulum swinging back and forth. She remembers how her skin felt as it melted. She forgets how her mother howled. She remembers how they held each other. She forgets how her father dropped the match.

A lost pig’s squeals cut through the frothy marsh wrapped in fog. She’ll push her wearying legs through, desperate and stinging.

Eliza Fairley is originally from London and resides in Northumberland. She has been writing short stories for years, but has only just started submitting them for public view. Eliza is interested in a variety of themes, but finds most of her inspiration from those around her.

@elizahamiltonf

@Eliza_Fairley

Photo – Fog by Lara Eakins at flickr

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