Farmer's End

It was a very dark, and unusually sultry, New England night. To the girl, driving the car, that apprehensive feeling was apparent; the one you get when a heavy thunderstorm is imminent. The
air was full of static and it was affecting the reception of her car radio. She tried changing to another frequency, but the interference
was still there in the background.

Her father, the new local sheriff had received a late evening call from a tearful woman, who had asked for an officer to visit her about someone who was threatening her, as far as he could tell. The line was very bad. The only officer available was his rookie daughter Jennie. But something was clearly wrong. She was sure she'd followed her hastily scrawled directions correctly. About five miles after crossing the old bridge over the river, she had arrived at the crossroads as expected and then turned right.

The road was paved at first, but soon turned to dirt and narrowed, with high tangled bushes on either side. Suddenly her headlights revealed a large rock ahead, almost filling the road. She
stopped the car, turned down the radio, and reached for her telephone.

"Dad, is that you, I've got a problem? I must have taken the wrong turning after the river. The road narrowed gradually awhile back and now there's nowhere to turn around. What's worse, there's an enormous rock almost across the road. I nearly ran into it."
"Did you take the right hand road at the crossroads, and then the left fork, after about half a mile?"
"I didn't see any fork, but there was a sudden bend to the right, about that far. Dad, I've gone wrong somewhere. I think I'll have to reverse, way back to the crossroads. It won't be easy."
"Hold on Jennie, I'm trying to find where you are on the map. Maybe if you can squeeze around the rock it'll lead to the other road, you must have missed it."

"Dad, I can't hear you properly. You're starting to break up."
But he apparently didn't hear her, and she only just made out his next comment.
"That's strange I can't find any dirt roads in that area. Just a sec ? I'm hearing another voice, like a whisper, can you hear it?"
"No I can't. I'm only just hearing you Dad, there's so much static. What's it saying?"
"It sounded like - Let them - Hang - Now - Is mine. There it is again. Did you hear it too Jennie?"
"Did I hear what, Dad?"

There was no answer, and the static seemed even noisier. Then she heard it. A low eerie whisper, apparently coming from the car radio. She turnd it up louder again and listened.
"Let them! Let them hang me. The deed is done now and vengeance is mine at last."

She decided it must be a radio play cutting in from a different station. The static was certainly playing havoc with everything. She called her father again, but there was no answer. Then she heard the whisper again, but this time it did seem to be coming from the telephone, as well as the radio."
"Let them hang me … mine at last."

The whisper faded out and in as the static built up and then reduced. It suddenly felt very warm inside the car. She jabbed the button to wind down the right side window. As it lowered she heard the
whisper once more, but much louder, and clearly from outside the car this time.

She felt a prickly feeling all over her scalp, and her hair made a faint rustling sound. Then as she watched in disbelief, two figures slowly formed beside the rock. A crouching man, bending over an old woman. He bent lower and cupped an ear to her chest. Then he started up, staring directly at the car and its disbelieving driver. He
had a terrible look of triumph on his hairy, evil looking, face. Jennie could see his lips moving.
" …. vengeance is mine … at last!"

Then to Jennie's horror he slowly rose to his full height and began to move aggressively towards her, after stepping over the body of the old woman. He held something heavy looking in one hand, a kind of large hammer, and raised it threateningly as he drew nearer. She yelled with fright and tried to close the car window to shut out the dreadful figure. Suddenly she realised, it was becoming transparent, she could almost see right through it. Then to her relief the awful apparition slowly faded and soon vanished completely.

She sat gazing fearfully out of the car window for a few moments, and watched as the figure of the old woman flickered and then faded away too.
Suddenly there came a shout and four more figures appeared, but this time out from behind the rock. Jennie was soon very glad to realise that they were quite human.

They came over to her, two young men, an older man and a girl. She climbed out of the car as they began to introduce themselves as part of a team of research students, camping out nearby. Then seeing
how shaken she looked, they asked her what was wrong, and had she seen anything unusual. She interrupted them. "Did you see them too, that poor old woman and the horrible man?"

They listened to her account of the eerie whispered sounds she had heard, followed by the appearance of the two ghostly figures. To her surprise, the leader of the students nodded cheerfully. He explained that they were engaged in a field project, investigating a theory regarding apparent psychic phenomena. This area by the large rock, known locally as Farmer's End, had a bad reputation and was reputed to be haunted.

He said it was theoretically possible that what we see as ghostly scenes and images are actually stored in naturally occurring memory chips, created by chance in special kinds of stone. Some of the various solid state components and circuits, we know today, could have been randomly formed in rocks when our planet cooled aeons ago. Then, certain atmospheric conditions can activate them, to record events taking place nearby.
Similar conditions later can reactivate them to reproduce the recorded image, a kind of naturally occurring hologram.

Jennie was relieved, especially when they stated that the dirt road did indeed lead to the small farm she wanted to visit. But they were puzzled about her reason for going there, because it was
derelict and had been for years. The farmer who had originally lived there had murdered his wife one night, after chasing her all the way to the large rock. She had tried to telephone for help, before breaking away from him, but apparently due to a violent electrical storm, interfering with the call, the sheriff had not properly understood it.

The next morning he did check around and eventually discovered the body of the old woman. Meanwhile, the deranged farmer had attempted to make his escape but was soon caught. A lynch mob hanged him a few days later, from the large tree near the other side of the rock, where the research team was currently investigating.

So, as Jennie told her father when she was able to get through to him again, the whispering and the ghosts had come from some ancient silicon circuitry in the large rock where the murder had taken place. Formed aeons ago purely by chance, it was just replaying a recording of what had taken place years before. But as to how it could have made the call to her father, that had led her to the scene of the ancient crime in the first place she, and the research team members, had no explanation.

Note. This story is one of many in the author's third collection of SF and Macabre Tales. See more information on his website …

www.tonythorne.co.uk