Farmer John Is Home

Nathan Cole has bought worse properties. None of them fought back. The abandoned farmhouse is cheap, isolated and falling apart - exactly the kind of place a skilled builder can restore and sell for a profit. But in the yard, an old stone well has been sealed with heavy boards and iron nails. The villagers will not explain why. They only tell Nathan to leave it shut. He opens it anyway. When the bucket rises, it brings up an old iron key tangled in rotten black cloth. Nathan carries the key into the farmhouse, and the farm begins putting itself back the way it was. New floorboards are replaced by cracked timber. Fresh plaster splits apart. Modern locks become iron latches. The barns rebuild themselves, lost animals return to the fields, and black water appears in rooms with no plumbing. Then Farmer John comes home. He watches Nathan's work with a violent twitch of disgust. He corrects every alteration. He removes Nathan from the records, the photographs and eventually the farm itself. To Farmer John, Nathan is not the owner. He is merely another labourer who has forgotten his place. >Some houses are haunted. Some land remembers exactly who it belongs to.