The Fen Blow and the Pumpkin Kings, 3

Pete South takes matters into his own hands in order to grow the biggest pumpkin.

The Midnight Gardener

The small, superior sneer on Ted North’s face, delivered just after the Pumpkin Club meeting concluded, had been an invisible goad in Pete South’s flank ever since. It was a look that said, You buy your success, Pete. I grow mine. It was a look that Ted had earned over three consecutive years, three King Pumpkin titles that hung over Pete like a permanent, oppressive cloud of failure.

Pete lay awake that night, tossing his expensive, Egyptian cotton duvet. The idea, cold and sharp, of stealing the seeds refused to let him sleep. He wasn't a criminal. He was a small business owner, an extrovert who simply believed in spending money to get what he wanted. Yet, King Pumpkin was a title money could not buy; it had to be earned through skill, patience, and apparently, superior genetics.

Why should Ted hoard the best strain? Pete rationalized, sitting up in bed, the sheets tangled around his waist. He’s a miser! I’ll just borrow them. It’s for the good of the club, really. Keeps the competition keen. The lie tasted sour. This was simple, pathetic envy wrapped in self-justification. The glory, the annual adoration, the power, it was a crown Pete craved, and he was willing to stoop to this low, mean-spirited act to seize it. He waited two nights. The first night, rain came, turning the allotment paths to thick, sucking mud. The second night, the sky was too clear, too bright with stars, making every shadow a potential witness. On the third night, a Wednesday, a benevolent shield of high cloud rolled in, swallowing the moon and muting the vast, intimidating Fens sky into a deep, velvety canvas that allowed for anonymity. The air was still, cold, and smelled only of damp black soil and distant fertilizer.

The Long Walk
At precisely half-past midnight, Pete slipped out the back door of his well-maintained semi-detached home. He wore dark jeans and a navy, padded jacket, garments chosen not for warmth, but to blend into the darkness. In his pocket, heavy and cold against his thigh, was a large, rusty pry bar he had borrowed from his neglected, expensive shed. He deliberately left his mobile phone behind; he did not want a beacon of light or a record of his movement.
The walk from his house to the allotment site, situated near the old Abbey gardens, was usually ten minutes. Tonight, it felt like an hour's pilgrimage.

Witchfordley was silent. The only sound was the hollow click of his own footsteps on the pavement and the low, persistent murmur of the drainage channels running beneath the fields. As he left the last of the streetlights behind, the landscape truly opened up. Here, in the heart of The Fens, the darkness was an almost tangible force. The black alluvial soil absorbed all ambient light, turning the world into a vast, featureless plain of potential.

He passed the tall, imposing tower of the old Abbey. Even in the darkness, the structure seemed to watch him, its outline a heavy, historical judgment against the colossal sky. The words of Mr. Chapman, about the Pumpkin Man and the vengeful ghost of Brother Richard, echoed in his head, a childish superstition that nevertheless caused a shiver to trace his spine. These allotments were literally the place where Richard had found Alice dead, where he himself had succumbed among the squashes. Pete hurried his pace.

The main entrance to the allotments was secured by a heavy chain link fence. He skirted the perimeter, finding the weak section he remembered, a patch where the yobs, Stephen, Bill, and Charlie, routinely pushed the fence back to sneak in and cause their mischief. He squeezed through the gap, the wire tearing a quiet, warning snag in his jacket.

Sanctuary Violated
The change in atmosphere once he stepped onto the allotment ground was immediate. It was not the wide, impersonal darkness of the open field, but a cramped, intimate darkness, saturated with the smell of decay, compost, and the promise of growth. The hundreds of small plots were delineated by low fencing, canes, and the looming shapes of sheds, each one an eccentric monument to its owner’s dedication.

Ted North’s allotment was predictable: meticulous, weed-free, and squared off with obsessive precision. His shed stood at the back of his plot, a sturdy structure built from heavy, repurposed railway sleepers. Unlike the flimsy, new shed Pete owned, Ted’s was a bunker, designed to keep out mice, rain, and rivals.

Pete paused ten metres away, his heart hammering against his ribs like a frantic bird. He flattened himself against the tall, skeletal form of one of last year’s runner bean frames and waited for five minutes, listening. Nothing. Only the quiet drip of water from a broken tap somewhere down the line.

He crept forward, traversing Ted’s prized black earth. The soil was a perfect, dark powder, ready for the seeds Ted would plant tomorrow. Pete crouched next to the shed door. Ted, the miser, used a padlock thick enough to secure a fortress. It was an antique, heavy brass unit, and Pete knew cutting it would be impossible without alerting the whole village.

He ran his hand along the door-frame, seeking the weak point. Ted’s cheapness, his refusal to spend money where he didn't have to, was his undoing. While the lock was heavy, the wood surrounding the hinge was old and slightly warped. Pete jammed the end of the rusty pry bar into the thin gap between the door and the frame near the bottom hinge. He took a deep, shuddering breath and applied his weight.

Creak. The sound was agonizingly loud in the silent landscape, like a scream in a library. Pete froze, rigid, listening for a shout, a light, the distant bark of a dog. Nothing. The Fens swallowed the noise. He tried again, levering the wood until he felt a satisfying, grinding crack as the screws holding the hinge plate to the doorframe gave way. The door shifted just enough, perhaps three inches, to allow a slender man to squeeze through.

The opening was difficult. Pete had to turn sideways, inhaling the musty scent of ancient wood and stored chemicals. He scraped his padded jacket, and the wood let out a high-pitched, protesting shriek. He stumbled inside, pulling the door closed with agonizing slowness.

The Seed Vault
Inside the shed, the darkness was absolute, thick, and suffocating. It smelled of dried mud, paraffin, and a deep, comforting earthiness that Pete felt he had no right to smell. He fumbled in his jacket pocket, finding a tiny, cheap penlight. He shielded the lens with his palm, allowing only a thin sliver of yellow light to escape. The interior was everything Pete’s shed was not: organized. Tools hung neatly from pegs, outlined by chalk marks. Jars of nuts and bolts were labelled in Ted’s precise, angular hand. Shelves contained rows of terracotta pots and meticulously cleaned seed trays.

Pete scanned the shelves, looking for the prize. He knew exactly where they would be. Ted wouldn't trust them to a random tin. High up, above the workbench, was a small, locked, wooden box, a glorified jewellry box, clearly intended to hold something far more valuable than brass tacks.

Next to the box was a small, half-empty can of paint thinner. Pete smiled grimly. Ted North’s security was all surface; his actual ingenuity was lacking. He soaked a rag, pulled from a pile of old flannel near the door, with the paint thinner. He quickly and clumsily applied the chemical to the cheap, wooden box latch, then jammed the tip of the pry bar into the seam of the lid. One sharp, decisive wrench, and the lock sprang open with a brittle snap, the sound muffled by the darkness and the thick walls.
Inside, nestled in soft cotton wool, were four small, brown paper envelopes. They were hand-written: Mammoth Gold F-1: 2002,’ 2003 Champion Stock,’ ‘2004 Show Seeds,’ and the crucial, current ‘2005 Best’.

Pete’s hand shook as he picked up the envelope labelled ‘2005 Best.’ The anticipation, the fear, and the shame coalesced into a single, physical tremor. He was holding Ted’s future, his pride, and his legacy. He didn’t take the whole envelope. That would be too obvious, too final. He pulled a small, sharp knife from his own keyring and made a tiny, careful slit in the corner of the brown paper envelope, just big enough. He emptied exactly seven plump, perfectly oval seeds into a small, folded receipt he had brought from his pocket. Seven, enough for his primary planting, enough to guarantee a giant, but few enough that Ted might never notice the loss.

He sealed the slit with a piece of grubby Sellotape he found on the workbench, put the envelope back in the box, and forced the fragile lid shut, praying it looked secured.

Retreat
The seeds felt hot in his pocket as he squeezed back through the shed door. He had completed the mean act, but the triumph was overshadowed by a crushing, cold sense of guilt. He had expected the sensation of success, but instead, the old Abbey felt closer, the black soil seemed to suck at his boots with greater malice, and the silence of the Fens was no longer anonymous, but accusing. The memory of Richard, the Pumpkin Man, lying dead amongst his squashes after the death of Alice, pulsed with uncomfortable immediacy. Richard's motivation was love; Pete's was merely an antique wooden crown.

He hurried across the allotments, but as he did so, he thought he saw the figure of a woman, in dark clothing with a tall, pointed hat, disappearing behind a tree on the perimeter of the enclosure. She seemed to be heading toward the cemetery belonging to St. Nicholas’s church. Pete scrambled back through the fence gap and only began to breathe properly when he was back on the main road, the reassuring, if pathetic, yellow glow of Witchfordley’ s few streetlamps visible ahead.

He was King Pumpkin, in spirit, already, but as he unlocked his own front door, he knew the cost of the crown was now heavier than he could ever have imagined. He had brought the dark history of the Fen closer to his own life, and he had done so for a handful of seeds and he had the feeling that he had disturbed something unusual.

Shirley Midnight left the cemetery and wrapped her cloak around herself as tight as she could before locating a large, birch broom from behind an oak tree. She seated herself on it and clicked her fingers. Soon she was soaring above the trees and across the fields, looking for all the world like a piece of the Fen blow.
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