4_5

At the goat’s paddock, Sarah heard the pump give its usual protesting scream. She rattled the bucket of feed and the goats came running over, their tails wagging furiously as always. She emptied most of the bucket into their trough, but kept a quarter behind for the ram.
Old Moses, their ram was so bad tempered that he was kept in a separate enclosure on the far side of the group of tree’s and all three girls hated him. Ever since she was a girl, Sarah had had to endure the old animal and his constant attacks and temper tantrums and many was the time she had suffered a great livid bruise on his account.
Singing softly she passed through the tree’s to the small enclosure where Moses lived and rattled the bucket. Nothing moved and she frowned and called out, but apart from the wind in the tree’s behind her there was no answer. In the distance she could hear the water pump still screeching.
Confused she stared about the small field and then her eye was caught by a small dark patch lying against the farther fence, almost hidden by the shadow of the trees. Instantly she remembered the dead sheep and looked about in the darkness.
From beyond the trees the shriek of the pump stopped and still hefting the feed bucket, Sarah found herself standing alone in the dark surrounded by the sound of the wind in the trees. Everywhere she looked she saw shadows. She put down the bucket slowly and began to walk nervously back through the tree’s, but as she did, something moved heavily through the under growth and her nerve left her. She turned and ran, her foot catching the bucket and spilling the feed behind her and as she fled, she searched the darkness ahead for an escape route.
Looking back over her shoulder, she saw nothing, but she could feel something approaching. Her heart beat louder and louder in her ears and the pounding of her feet and her ragged breathing combined to heighten her fear. The night was filled with a thousand menacing shadows and she held out her hands as she stumbled through the under growth, the branches whipping across her face.
Finally after several long minutes of running she slowed down and stopped, gasping she stared back across the fields but there was nothing but darkness behind her.
All around the landscape was empty and dark. The long grass flowed in the wind and the clouds moved across the skies.
She knelt down in the long grass to catch her breath and as she did the moon slid out from behind the clouds. In the sudden bath of light she stared back the way she had come and between ragged breaths began to laugh at herself.
Almost as suddenly she felt the same strange feeling as before, a cobweb seemed to float across her face and she brushed at it nervously. She looked around, but still there was nothing, and yet she could feel that something was nearby.
She stood and looked about at the empty landscape, but her senses urged her to flee. She sought desperately for the source of her fear and then she heard a strange sound, It was as if a horse were stamping the ground, and like foot steps the sounds approached her.
She stumbled backwards, trying to get away from the sound, but she tripped in a tangle of grass and fell flat on to her back. She lay there for a moment, her breath pushed from her lungs, listening to the sound approaching, and the air was suddenly filled with cobwebs. She brushed at her eyes in disgust, but there was nothing there, and flailing her arm out into the air before her she hit something, something hard and alive which moved but which she could not see. She opened her mouth and began to scream in abject terror…