BELSNICKEL …. a ghost story for the long dark nights of winter to come.

This story has been published in Canada and is copyright protected and is here for members to read only.

BELSNICKEL

‘All of us locals used to play at Mare Farm when we were young. Even us girls, they used to call us ‘tomboys’ but all we wanted to do was have fun and hang out with the boys. Boys are always attracted to danger, it gives them a chance to show off and establish a pecking order amongst themselves. Having a few girls around made the lads even more competitive but it also meant we could stop things going too far. We all loved Mare Farm. By today’s standards no self-respecting parent would let their children anywhere near it. It was a dangerous and exciting place back in our glory days. I am looking down at an old school exercise book. On the front cover written in fountain-pen ink it says;’

Amber Jansen – Class 5A – Summer holidays English project – The history of Mare Farm.

‘That was ten years ago. Now I am the unmarried librarian of a small country town and the joy of school holidays seems a lifetime away. The police have just called in to the library as a young man has gone missing and I have a bit of a reputation for knowing all the local danger spots. They seemed quite impressed with my exercise book. I put a lot of work into it back then and found out a lot of things that no-one else knew. The original farm was called ‘De Dromende Plaats’ and was built and run by Dutch immigrants in the twelfth century when many of their countrymen were escaping from their flooded homeland. The farm and its family did really well for many generations until December 1880 when the first Boer War started. The five English farms that surrounded the Dutch farm got together and shut off all access to the little community that could only be reached by crossing their land. A toll gate was set up on the dirt lane that led across the English farmers land and every time the Dutch farmer or any of his labourers used it the price went up. Sentries bearing rifles were posted all around De Dromende Plaats land and the besieged Boers were forced into poverty. When the war ended after just four months the five English farmers and the local clergyman tore down the toll gate and entered De Dromende Plaats with baskets of food and a churn of milk. The partly decomposed bodies were all found in the barn. The farmer’s family and three labourers had all been reduced to eating rats to survive. Since 1851 the local farmers had legally been using arsenic to control the rodent population of their own farms. As they surrounded this smaller farm completely and the fine big barn was full of unsold grain their infected rats had finished the victimisation that they had begun. The five farmers consoled each other to ease their guilt; ‘How could we have known? they had cried. As two of their number were magistrates and the Judicature Act of 1873 had given them more leeway they purchased De Dromende Plaats and re-named it Mare Farm due to a translating error. The money from the purchase was placed in a trust fund that made donations to charities that helped Dutch immigrants. Eighteen years later this was revoked when the second Boer War started. The farm’s land was divided amongst its five neighbours. The central farmyard was declared to be common land. The senior magistrate used the large Dutch barn for his own hay and the other magistrate used the farmhouse and outbuildings for general storage.’

From above, the Mare farmyard now resembles the shape of a pentagon. Five different fields border the farm yard with dense hedgerow. One overgrown gate leads out to the ancient disused cart track that was once used to get to town.

*****

Hendrik Van Zweden and his wife Rachel were distraught with worry. Each time they had tried to leave the farm they had been shot at. If they could only get to town Willem the baker would help them. He was from the old country and the Zweden family had helped him when he first arrived. Willem was usually taken as Swedish by those who didn’t know him so he would likely as not be safe from the backlash persecution caused by the latest war. It was chilling to think that help lay just a few miles away yet Willem knew nothing of their plight. Jan and Helen were playing with corn dolls by the fire and baby Pieter was fast asleep in his wooden cot. Hendrik thanked God that baby Pieter was still suckling. The children were excited because Krampus and Belsnickel came at this time of year. Krampus was a filthy goat headed man who wore black rags and dragged chains behind him. He would throw the chains at children who had been naughty. He was followed by Belsnickel, a friend of Saint Nicholas. Belsnickel was covered in fur and if the children had been good he would leave their socks filled with candy. If they had been naughty the socks would contain only sticks and coal. Every year Hendrik would dress up on a December night as Krampus who would walk around the outside of the house calling the children’s names in a gruff voice and rattling his chains. The children would squeal with delight and peek out of the windows. The following night dressed as the much kinder Belsnickel he would again circle the house now asking if the children had been good. The following morning the children would awake to socks full of candy. Hendrik had earlier made his rounds as the kindly Belsnickel and now he and Rachel were waiting for the children to fall asleep. Rachel had been hoarding little bits of candy from each of their monthly trips to market ever since last January. She offered some to her starving husband who shook his head vehemently.

‘No Rachel’ he cried in alarm ‘ keep it for the little ones, the weeks ahead will be hard on them. Let them have this much at least.’

Rachel smiled the small warm smile of a woman who knew she had a good husband and tucked the candy back in her apron. Hendrik laid a calloused hand on his wife’s tired shoulder and whispered;

‘No need to worry Rachel, this vendetta will soon pass. The war cannot last for long and we have survived worst hardships. I have set many traps in the barn and with some of our onions a few weeks of rat stew will see us through.’

Rachel held back the tears and took her husband’s hand in her own. She smiled as though Hendrik had just single handily ended the war and produced a fat goose and a cart full of food and milk.

*****

The police continued to scour the countryside for the missing young man. James Merriweather had recently inherited ‘Ten Acre Farm’ and had been reported missing by his wife. The top brass were leaning on this case as it was the fifth missing person in as many years. Even the most unimaginative detective on the force could not ignore the fact that over the past five years a series of neighbouring families had all lost the male owner of a ring of farms. The main problem for the police was a lack of motive. Every feasible possibility had been explored but unlike Sherlock Holmes they had nothing remaining however improbable that must be the truth. Five years ago the first land owner to vanish without trace had walked into town for a few beers at a Christmas party in the local pub that he had arranged for his farm workers. Algernon Huntington- Smythe had made a short speech just before closing time then disappeared into the night refusing to wait for a taxi. He was never seen again.

Algy raised his hands to stop the applause then thanked his workers and gave the landlord a hundred pounds to cover the last round. As the rush to the bar began Algy slipped out to the gents toilets then used the fire escape door to make a discrete exit into the crisp night air. He decided to cut across country to save time. As he came alongside Mare Farm he heard a female voice calling for help. The moon was full as Algy climbed over the ivy clad gate. Something heavy knocked him to the ground and when he regained consciousness he looked up to see a circle of stars. He lay in shallow icy cold water at the bottom of a disused well. A pretty young face appeared above him and started dropping live rats down the well. Algy’s screams were muted by the lowering of a large barrel top that came to rest on iron pegs set in regular intervals around the wall of the well mere feet above him. Algy tried to raise himself but his broken legs would not support him and the blood was starting to excite the rats. The tell-tale thuds of rubble dropping onto the false well bottom dispelled all hope.

*****

The following year Percival Crompton’s farm manager was on Christmas holiday so he set off early one morning to check his boundary fences. He was never seen again.

Percy loved his quad bike. It was perfect for getting round the fields in next to no time. His favourite stretch was a flat dirt path that ran through a copse of trees down by the Dutch farm. As he passed through the trees at nearly top speed a stout rope that had been stretched across the path at chest height un-saddled him and broke most of his ribs. He awoke in terrible agony. It was pitch black but by feeling around he could tell he was in a small circular stone chamber with a wooden ceiling that would not budge. The floor was a frozen circle of ice that had various bones protruding from it. As he started to scream a diesel engine started in a nearby field. A previously prepared ditch had been enlarged and now contained a shiny new quad bike. The little digger soon tamped down the frozen earth. Two drums of liquid fertilizer were poured over the site to destroy any diesel fumes from the bike. As a final precaution a large compost heap was transported from further up the field by tractor and dumped on top of the site. The soon to be widow Crompton was not the type to stay at the farm on her own and the farm manager would be too busy looking for a new job to play ‘Who moved the compost heap?

*****

Tristram Blake always closed his farm down for two weeks at Christmas and booked a top hotel for himself and his wife just twenty miles away in the nearest city. On New Year’s morning after an all-night party his mobile rang. A concerned neighbour from home informed him that his farm had been burgled and the police were all over the place trying to contact him. The considerate young woman had not told the police where he was. Only that he was away. She did not want to alarm his lovely wife so thought it best to break the news to him in person. If he wanted she could pick him up and fill him in with all the details on the way back. It was the least she could do after all the help that his good lady wife had given her with fund raising over the years. Both Tristram and his wife were on the board of several tax deductible charities so he did not think it strange that a fellow fund raiser would have his mobile number. An hour later a bewildered Tristram wondered why they had stopped at the Dutch farm turn off. He was staring up the dirt track next to his own property looking for police officers when the syringe containing a small dose of horse tranquiliser was plunged into his thigh. Tristram’s neck was broken when he was dropped into the well and he never regained consciousness. Tristram’s wife Isobel awoke with a hangover to find a hastily scrawled note on the bedside table;

Will be back for lunch… Nothing to worry about… Happy New Year … Tris Kiss XOXOX

*****

Arthur Bradshaw didn’t hold with Christmas and the following year he gave a lavish masked ball as he always did on December the seventeenth. No mention of Christmas was ever allowed on these occasions. All his friends and neighbours were invited to this celebration of the winter solstice and everyone knew the rules. These binge-fests usually ended up resembling the festival of Saturnalia that was held back in Roman times. Arthur called it his ‘Feast of Juul’ Juul being from the Norse word ‘Jól’ from which we now have ‘Yule’. In ancient Rome this orgy of excess would continue for seven days but for all the years that Arthur had been holding the ‘Bradshaw’ version no one had ever lasted for more than three days. No one was allowed to go home for a rest and then return. Party goers could fall asleep in the barn but only for a short nap. Arthur drank little or no alcohol preferring his enjoyment below the waistline with whomever was in the mood. Gender didn’t bother Arthur so long as he was the centre of attention. On the evening of the second day Arthur took a stroll around the barn and checked the portable toilets he had hired for the occasion. In the dim twilight he caught sight of a stunning young woman sitting on the tail-gate of a Land Rover that was in the field being used as a car park. She was dressed in a close fitting black leather jump suit and was wearing a very realistic goats-head mask. Totally mesmerised Arthur waved and walked over to introduce himself. He needn’t have bothered: Amber Jansen knew exactly who Arthur Bradshaw was. As far as Amber was concerned he was the last male descendant of the Bradshaws that once caused the tragic death of the Van Zweden family.

Arthur had never been shot with a taser before and would certainly not recommend it as a way of being greeted. The she-goat woman was incredibly strong and soon had him hog-tied and in the back of the Land Rover. The optimistic part of his brain began to wonder if this was some sort of sadomasochistic prank arranged by his party goers. Five minutes later the tail-gate was dropped and Arthur saw that they had parked rear on to the old well at the Dutch farm. All vestiges of optimism evaporated when Arthur’s body dropped onto the shards of bones protruding from the ice. Three skulls smiled at him as the rats began to rain down. They were followed by the leather jump suit and the goats-head mask. As the barrel lid was lowered Arthur could just hear the strains of ‘Wishing Well‘ by ‘Free’ thumping out from his digital disco system in the distance.

*****

Years ago when Amber had shown her mother the English project ‘The history of Mare Farm’ her mother had surprised her by saying;

‘One of your ancestors was fond of writing. That must be where you get it from.’

Her mother then fetched a battered sea-chest from under the stairs and opened it to reveal all the books that had been there when their home used to be a bakery. Most of the books were recipes but one volume was a diary written and signed by a ‘Willem Jansen’. Amber’s mother had never read the diary but Amber was fascinated and took the diary up to her room to read. An hour later as she sat on the bed with tears in her eyes she decided to go back to the Old Dutch farm that very night. Just to pay her respects and perhaps say a prayer for the family that once lived in the little house she and her friends had played in as children. Amber had read in heart breaking detail about the fate of Hendrik Van Zweden and his family. How the poisoned rats had finished them off and the callous dividing of his property amongst their tormentors. Amber’s great great great grandfather ‘Willem Jansen’ had made it his life’s duty to record and document the names and details of the five land-owning farmers that had murdered his friends. Amber borrowed her father’s Maglite torch and set off after supper. . It was mid-December and a light dusting of snow began to fall as the street lamps stuttered into life. One hour later she sat in the front room of the deserted farmhouse and used sticks of broken furniture to start a small fire in the grate. As she sat warming by the fire she heard a rattling noise in the yard and a harsh grating voice calling with anger;

‘Where are my children and where is my wife. Where are my Jan, my Helen and Pieter. Where is my Rachel, dear Rachel my life?

Amber opened the door and called;

‘Who is there, who is asking these things?

A shadowy figure obscured by the falling snow answered;

‘Why it is Krampus of course, come this many a year to see them again’

Amber watched as the shadowy figure moved away into the night. The next day at the library where she had just started work she looked up the legend of Krampus and Belsnickel. A plan started to form in Amber’s mind, a plan to avenge these friends of her ancestor; Willem.

Tracing the parish records was an easy job for Amber and she soon had her list of five names. These were the only five male descendants of the original five farmers that had brought about vengeance from the grave. All of them lived where their ancestors had nearly two hundred years ago. Amber made her plans carefully over the coming years always keeping an eye on her quarry. She started working out at the gym and learned to drive and helped out on local farms at harvest time to get to know the machinery. People were used to seeing her in the fields and up and down the hedgerows.

*****

‘Now I am looking down at my old school exercise book again and next to it is Willems diary. In a carrier bag at my feet are all my notes from over the years. Earlier today I lowered the barrel lid for the fifth and last time. The young man the police were enquiring about earlier at the library was James Merriweather. It was easy to lure James to the Old Dutch farm on the pretext of a date. He even sat next to me on the wall of the well before I bent down and grabbed his ankles. With a quick lift my work was done. I threw a load more rubble down than in previous years then back filled the well to almost the brim. Tomorrow I shall top it off by planting a holly bush to finish the job. The diary, exercise book and bag of notes are burning nicely as I place some split logs in the grate in the front room of the farmhouse and open my flask of tea. As darkness falls and the logs spit and crackle a cheery voice can be heard in the yard outside. It is Belsnickel of course singing a song of reunion;’

‘Here are my children and here is my wife. Here is my Jan, my Helen and Pieter. Here is my Rachel, dear Rachel my life …’

‘I shall have to look into how to set about buying this place’ I thought dreamily.

AND A HAPPY NEW YEAR