The Fen Blow and the Pumpkin Kings - 1

Ted North & Pete South are vying with each other to grow the biggest pumpkin.

Chapter 1: The Planting and the Promise

Do you like an eerie story? One with wicked humour, maybe a little sex, and a touch of genuine horror? Well, you’re in for a treat. This is a tale right for Halloween, but before we get to the terror, you need to know a little about where it all takes place.
Are you sitting comfortably? Then I shall begin...

It was April in the year of our Lord, 2005, and the soil beneath Ted North's fingernails was the colour of wet coal, the deep, rich black alluvial earth of The Fens. He was kneeling, carefully tucking a pale green pumpkin seed into a mound, his brow furrowed in concentration. The soil was precious, unforgiving, and the foundation of everything in his life.

He was in the village of Witchfordley, nestling deep within The Fens of England; an area of outstandingly stark beauty defined by its intricate network of waterways and the huge, unending skies that always felt too close.

Ted spat a small piece of straw onto the black dirt. The stakes were already set. The Pumpkin Club’s annual Pumpkin Show was scheduled for October 25th and the grower of the largest specimen would be crowned “King Pumpkin”. It was a title Pete desperately wanted to reclaim, having lost it for a miserable three years running to his good friend and most exasperating rival, Ted North.
Just then, a dry, mocking gust of wind whipped across the field, carrying the faint, earthy smell of distant drain water. Ted stood up stiffly, stretching the muscles in his back.

“That’s the Fen, Ted,” a voice called. Mary North, his wife, stood at the edge of the plot, holding a flask of tea. Mary, like most of the older villagers, believed the local wind carried bad omens and held ancient memories.

Ted scoffed. “It’s just a draft, Mary. Though if it gets up, it’ll blind us. The fields are too dry.”

The wind wasn’t just a draft, though. It was a phenomenon known locally as The Fen Blow, a tricky, mischievous presence that could turn the black soil into a blinding, terrifying whirlwind of dust and terror on a dark night in late October. It was a wind that, as his rival Pete South’s eccentric wife Marjorie often claimed, was responsible for the increasing presence of yobs, the lawless youths who had nothing better to do than vandalize property and disturb the peace. Marjorie had observed it many times and thought it resembled a witch's black cloak as it swept across the fields, especially at dusk.

Ted squinted toward the horizon. Even from this low-lying field, he could see the distant, brooding silhouette of a grand cathedral. This part of the Fens had been shaped by religion and history. In Anglo Saxon and Medieval times, the precious areas of dry land attracted religious communities, who founded great monasteries that still dominated the skyline.

Ted’s mind briefly drifted to Shirley Midnight, the unusual woman who was staying with her sister in Witchfordley. She had brought with her three black cats and, strangely, a broomstick. She had warned him on a previous visit that sometimes the Fen Blow felt different, colder, and was carrying something much older than mere silt.

That ‘older thing’ was tied directly to the church he was looking at, the final resting place of a monk named Richard. Richard had lived and worked there in medieval times and had fallen tragically in love. His life, and his love, ended in vengeance, and he is said to return to Witchfordley on the last day of October in order to avenge his plight.

We will follow the growth of the pumpkins, the escalating rivalry, the eccentric ways of the wives, and the simmering tension among the Pumpkin Club members between April and October.

The Fen Blow is coming, a wind with a black cloak, covering the fields in suspicion and mystery, waiting for the perfect moment. You want to know what happens on Halloween night, don't you; but like all the best orgasms, it needs to build up slowly.

On that night in late October, Witchfordley will be caught up in a maelstrom of terror, which will affect each and every one of the inhabitants of the Pumpkin Club.

Come with me now, come, come, come o