The Barn on the Edge

Barry pulled the car up to the old barn and stopped the engine, exchanging a look with his wife Cynthia. They thought they’d been lucky to find the listing; it was a valuable piece of land at an extremely low price, and they’d only happened across the obscure advert by chance in a local paper on holiday. As the estate agent had indicated on the phone, it was very run down. To be fair, it was a couple of hundred years old – and it looked like it hadn’t been maintained for a long time. Full of holes, but somehow still standing when the rest of the farm was long gone.

“Well, the advert was right,” said Cynthia, dryly, looking up at the building. “Definitely in need of maintenance.”

Barry laughed. “Yeah – and a lot of it. Let’s have a quick look before Lisa gets here.”

The two of them walked around, taking stock of the damage – which was considerable. In some places it seemed amazing that the structure was still standing. Plants had grown over most of the walls: they looked too heavy for the walls to support, but evidently managed somehow. Perhaps, Barry reflected, it was the other way round – perhaps it was more plant than wall and the greenery was what kept it up.

“At least it’s big,” said Barry as they walked round. “We could do it up and make it into five or six apartments. Or rip it down and start again.” Cynthia nodded. Usually, she was the first to see the dream they could build, rather than the reality, but, for once, it seemed they agreed.

Another car approached, audible sometime before it was visible in the quiet countryside. Although expected half an hour ago, it was Lisa – the estate agent trying to sell the barn and its land. She got out, smiling at them. She always seemed to be smiling at them – Barry suspected it was simply part of the job, but he had to admit that it was effective. His irritation over her tardiness faded.

“Hi!” Lisa called as she walked over, waving with enthusiasm. “Sorry I’m late, but at least it’s given you a chance to look around. What do you think of the place?”

Barry and Cynthia looked at each other and then back at Lisa. “Well,” Cynthia replied, “it’s in pretty bad shape.”

“Yeah,” Barry continued. “Looks like a stiff breeze, or even a loud sneeze, might blow it down!”

Lisa just laughed. “Well, yes. Which is why it’s such a great bargain. The sellers appreciate that it will need some work.” She pulled out some keys. “Would you like a look inside?”

“Is it safe?” Barry said, only half joking. Lisa didn’t answer, simply walking up to the front doors of the barn and opening them. Barry found her lack of response quite worrying – he’d have much preferred some kind of refutation, even if it hadn’t been completely believable.

The inside didn’t look much better than the outside had. There was some old farm equipment that they might be able to scrap for some profit – scrap metal maybe – but the partition walls seemed just as dilapidated as the outer ones.

A distant church bell could be heard – twelve chimes – as Barry started to ask, “Why are the owners selling up?”

Lisa walked up to him. “They’ve been trying to get rid of it for years. They’ve actually left the country – they live in France now. Whilst they could probably make a bigger profit on the land if they developed it first, they’re not interested in doing it. They’re old, and simply want to make a quick sale – leave those profits for somebody else to make!”

Barry nodded, and then jumped and spun where he was standing at the sound of Cynthia’s scream. She was staring into one of the far corners, but other than some cobwebs, Barry couldn’t see anything that might have caused any alarm. He ran over to her, Lisa following.

“What is it?” he asked, putting his arm around his wife’s shoulders.

“There was something moving,” she replied. Barry looked around again - Cynthia didn’t startle easily, and she didn’t make things up.

“Something like a mouse?” Lisa asked.

“No… it was a person. A woman, in a white dress. She was sort of glowing.”

Barry and Lisa looked at each other for a moment behind Cynthia’s head, Lisa’s expression hard to read. Determined to demonstrate he was taking Cynthia seriously, Barry went into the corner, not expecting to see anything. As he had thought, there really was nowhere somebody could be hiding, and the wall was intact enough that an escape outside seemed unlikely. Though, thinking about it, he was sure that this corner had seemed less whole from the outside.

“There’s nobody here,” he said.

Cynthia was shaking her head, looking confused herself. “I was sure I saw something,” she murmured.

“You aren’t the first,” Lisa replied. “Lots of people have thought they’ve seen things in this old barn. It’s a feature.”

“Excuse me?” Barry said as both he and Cynthia turned to face the estate agent.

Lisa looked at them with what Barry as sure was supposed to be an innocent face. “Is there a problem?”

Cynthia was the one to answer. “You’ve just told us that people keep seeing things in this barn. Is this why sales keep falling through?”

Lisa’s smile stayed fixed in place. “You know about that?”

Cynthia nodded. “Yes – we do our homework. This barn has had six potential buyers in the last four years, and none of them have completed. The owners take some money off the asking price, and then the whole sequence starts again. Are these sightings the reason?”

Lisa shrugged, still smiling, but it didn’t reach her eyes. “I’m not at liberty to discuss previous customers or transactions.” She was edging back towards the exit. “I’ll tell you what. You two have a look round – I’ll leave you the key. We can talk tomorrow, and you can let me know what you decide.”

Barry watched her leave, not quite sure how to respond. This meeting hadn’t gone how he had expected.

They spent the day discussing the potential purchase with each other, and the rumours of the sightings with the locals. Nobody had much information, most of them refused to talk about it. Only a young woman with old eyes offered any information, suggesting they should return at midnight, but she wouldn’t say why. Cynthia tried to ask her about the woman in white, but she simply went back into her shop and shut the door.

Against Barry’s better judgement, but at Cynthia’s insistence, they returned to the barn as the clock was chiming twelve. It looked the same, but before Barry could convince Cynthia how daft this was, she was already out the car and heading to the barn door. As she pushed it open, the inside was unrecognisable, and Barry wondered if they had come to the right place. The building was intact, and decorated with ice sculptures, and flowers hanging from rafters. There were people were talking, singing, and dancing – but Barry couldn’t hear any music. In the very centre was Lisa.

At least, it looked like Lisa, though there was something about her. She was dressed for the party, rather than her business-look of earlier in the day, but she somehow … shone if Barry didn’t look directly at her. She also seemed to fit with the other people, who all shared this sense of unreality. Where they danced, the ground was covered in dew, and their songs shimmered in the air around them.

“Guests!” A dozen voices called out all at once, and their eyes turned in unison to the door. For a moment, Barry considered running and taking Cynthia with him, but as he hesitated, they were both pulled into the barn.

“You came back?” Lisa asked. “You weren’t supposed to come back – we were going to talk tomorrow.”

“Yes, well…” Barry started, still not quite sure how to react to what was happening.

“A young woman in town suggested we come,” Cynthia finished for him.

The other people around the barn all whispered. “Tabatha,” they said, over and over again.

“Yes,” Barry responded. “That was her. Tabatha.”

Lisa nodded. “I see. Yes, she’d want you to understand what you’re getting into.”

“And what,” said Cynthia, “are we getting into? Who are these people? What happened to this place?”

Lisa held up her hands. “It’s a long story, and you’re probably not going to believe most of it anyway. But since you’re here, are you interested in buying?”

“Not yet,” Barry replied, frowning in surprise. “Try us – what’s the ‘story’?”

“OK,” said Lisa. “OK. There are … places in the world, old places, no… look… This world – your world – it’s not the only one. But if a place becomes old enough, and it stays the same long enough, and it has enough history, those events and that stability give it a kind of … weight. It becomes a kind of connection between worlds, a threshold, neither one nor the other. This barn has become one of those places – at times of Transition, the barriers between worlds fade here, and people can pass between. The barn’s owners made a deal with the faerie, the people on the other side – they gained good fortune in exchange for the barn becoming the property of the faerie-folk if, the owners died whilst they still possessed it.”

“Right…” said Cynthia. “OK – let’s say, for the moment, we believe you…”

“Do we?” asked Barry. Whilst it was true that what they’d seen so far couldn’t easily be explained, he wasn’t quite ready to jump on the explanation offered.

“It doesn’t matter,” Cynthia replied. “For the moment, let’s say we do. So, you’re one of these people, right? A faerie?”

Lisa nodded.

“So why are you trying to sell the place – surely you want them to keep it?”

Lisa sighed. “I have a different contract with the owners; the details don’t matter. We of the faerie-folk honour our bargains, but I don’t have to try hard, so better me than someone else.”

“Why do the owners really want to sell?” asked Barry. “Surely, if they made this deal, they’d want to honour it too?”

“Tabatha,” Lisa sighed, rolling her eyes, and the others present whispered her name again in susurration. “She managed to get into the barn during Transition. Here, she was only missing for a few weeks, but she spent years on the faerie side. It… changed her, and the owners felt guilty, felt it was their fault. If they don’t own the barn and it’s still standing when they die, the contract will be terminated, and the threshold will close. That’s what they want.”

“OK…,” said Barry, sceptically. “You all get back to your party, now, and we’ll have a think. Let’s talk tomorrow?”

Lisa smiled, though it didn’t reach her eyes. “Sure.”

They did buy the barn – the price was simply too good not to, but Lisa kept smiling as the sale went through. They resolved to destroy it – to tear it down and rebuild. Given the state the building was in, Barry could see it was the cost-effective option for the land, and Cynthia was determined that there would be no more girls like Tabatha. Barry still wasn’t sure he ‘believed’, but they both agreed it didn’t actually matter, since they wanted the same thing.

Their builders moved in, but problems and accidents plagued the project. It seemed that the barn had its own will to survive, determined to stay where it was. Eventually, they had to give up, nearly bankrupted by the problems and insurance payments, and the barn was once again for sale. No-one was interested.

Out of options, as the clock chimed midnight once again, they returned to the barn to negotiate. Lisa was waiting there to speak to them.