He was at the very back of the field behind their property.
He liked playing there sometimes, especially during school holidays when the family wasn’t going away; it was very quiet there. Although the field was owned by his parents, along with the house and a separate garage, it wasn’t used. The grass had been left to grow tall and wild. This suited him because he liked walking through it, as though he was fighting his way through a jungle. Along the back fence there were small patches of open ground. It was in one of these that he found the tiny cross. He’d not noticed it before and wondered whether it was put there recently. Looking closer he could see that it was a little wooden cross made out of pop sticks. He wondered, was it a grave or a cross marking buried treasure? Either way, it was intriguing. He pulled it out and began digging with his fingers.
He hadn’t dug very far when he hit something solid. Cleaning it off it seemed to be round and made of metal. When he tried lifting it up, he found that it was attached to something. He found a stick and began loosening the soil around it. Finally, when he pulled it out, he could see it was a jar.
He sat looking at it. Someone had buried a jar; how unusual, he thought. He started to brush the soil off and saw that it had something inside. It looked like a tiny piece of paper. It took all his strength to loosen the lid. He tipped the thing out onto his hand. It was a postage stamp. It had been used, and it was franked with black ink markings. It looked foreign. He put it in his pocket, screwed the lid back on, pushed dirt back into the hole and made his way back to the house.
He had decided to say nothing about it when he got in. It could be his special secret, for a while at least. He lay in bed that night looking at the stamp. The faded images on it gave no clue as to what country it came from. He couldn’t understand why anybody would bury it like that. Maybe it was precious? It could be a rare stamp worth a lot of money. If that was the case, someone could return and find it gone; find that it had been stolen! With those thoughts beginning to trouble him, he decided that tomorrow he’d put it back. He would bury it and leave it as he found it. What did he do with the cross? He couldn’t remember. He would look for it in the morning.
He found it as soon as he got there, just where he must have dropped it. He dug the jar up and was brushing it off when he heard it rattle. Opening it up, he found a button. It was made of plastic with the colours and shape of a daisy. This, he thought, was an exciting find. This meant that somehow he was being given things! Soon after, he put the button in his pocket with the stamp. He put the jar back in the ground and went in.
The following day he returned to the spot and uncovered the jar. He was confident that he’d find something. He was right! This time it was a very small red plastic teaspoon. It looked as though it had been part of a children’s tea set. It was only small, but it could actually be quite useful, he thought. When he’d returned the jar and tidied the ground up he sat thinking about it. This had been the third day. The third day of finding things. School holidays would be over soon. Will he keep finding things? He counted the days on his fingers. There were just five days to go before school goes back.
Every morning he trekked his way through the field to the spot near the back fence. Every day he found something new. The next item was a shiny blue marble. He could definitely use that. This was followed by a small wooden spinning top, that spun for a long time before falling over. Then it was a toy car with wheels that all turned freely and worked fine. The next was a pearl with a hole through it. It must have come from a necklace. It could be valuable, he thought.
On the final day he went to the clearing, knowing that school began again the next day. He wondered whether whoever was putting new things there for him to find, knew that? He would probably never know. Once again, he dug the jar up and screwed off the lid. He tipped the contents out into his hand and dropped it immediately! It was a cockroach with a pin stuck through it!
There can be no doubt about it.
Some gremlins are really sick!