Chapter 1 - Back From The Dead

Back From The Dead

A Novel

By Paul McCann

Chapter 1

The Shepherds Ghost  

There was shepherd who lived on a large property in Mossy Valley .

He looked after the lambs and sheep that were his . The shepherd was a quiet man who never bothered anyone . He liked his life on the farm and it came as a shock when he was found hanging  from a tree , His death caused a lot of talk around the village . Since the shepherd had no friends or family some people of the town buried him in the local cemetery ,

On the land where the shepherd lived it was placed into a trust for future development and many years later the land was sold by the local council and the new owner built a slaughter house on the grounds there in Mossy Valley  .

Most of the local men folk ended up working there . It was a hard job and a cruel environment however it provided them with a weekly wage and other benefits  as their families were never short of food . Most every night the screams from the cattle , sheep and lambs could be heard all over the town  .

It was as if the animals knew what was coming .  There were some men who revelled in killing the animals but many just put up with it as a way to earn a living .

The herding of livestock from trucks and train carriages into the abattoir and restraining of the beasts kept many men busy every day . There were many jobs to be done by the men . The heavy laborious task of carrying sides of beef into the trucks for delivery to butchers . The cleaning up of all the blood and guts as well hosing down all of areas frequently during the shifts .

Then the abattoirs themselves had their own sections where butchers worked tirelessly to package the best meats for top hotels and wealthy homes .

There in dark corners butchers knives worked away in the hands of those who knew exactly what areas to cut and how to utilize every scrap they could .

The lambs would be sent to the slaughter house door in a section called the Brae before they were taken away to be killed . The short lives of the lambs ended suddenly . They were here and gone and seen no more .Cattle were helpless standing in the firing line and offered no resistance apart from their moaning and eerie screams of fear as their lives were about to end . 

There in the hands of the butchers knives where drawn as little lambs and cattle were led in through the slaughter house door unaware of what was about to happen to them . Each night after the slaughter the floors were hosed

out and a strange sound echoed through like a cry in the wind all through the places where the lambs and cattle once stood . It was an eerie sound followed by an awful smell that the wind carried from the slaughterhouse to the streets of the neighbourhood . Some said there was badness about that smell and others quietly prayed it would go away , Dad after day more lambs arrived at the gates of slaughter house with nowhere else to go . Their bleating fell on the deaf ears of the butchers who stood in their usual spot with knives at the ready .

Then came the day as many said it would for a retribution for those little lost lambs and the yearlings who screamed and moaned all through the night in the dark rooms of the slaughterhouse .

He arrived on a train  holding a shepherd s crook and sent a chill through to the bones of everyone who saw him .

Making his way to the slaughterhouse gate he proceeded to set free all of the livestock , The butchers tackled him and ended up unconscious , hit by the tip of the shepherds crook . The shepherd placed all of the workers in chains . and waited until they were conscious before taking knives into his own hands and torturing every last one before taking their lives and sending them all to their graves .

The butchers were all slaughtered that night one by one and when the news spread the next day the slaughterhouse was closed down

For years people talked about the slaughter that happened . Many people left the town for fear of the shepherds ghost returning for another slaughter .

Time passed and a new generation of people came to live in the area .

The slaughterhouse was no more . since its doors had been closed and all the machinery sold , there was no more moaning or screaming heard for in its place stood an egg factory with thousands of chickens in cages  laying thousands of eggs every day that were all collected and put into boxes for delivery to the supermarket stores .

There were times when some of the workers in the egg factory said they had heard and seen some unusual activities that made them feel a little scared . Some said they saw a man with a shepherds crook walking through the factory . There was also an awful smell filled the air sometimes .

The egg factory never kept its workers for very long and in the end the owner of the egg factory couldn’t get anyone to work there . People said the place was haunted . Eventually it was closed down .

The local council made a decision to turn the place into a small animal farm where the public could come to view and feed the little animals .

Over the site where animals were once slaughtered a sanctuary was built to protect and nurture small animals

End Chapter 1

Linkto chapter 2 

https://www.abctales.com/story/mcscraic/chapter-2-back-dead

Back From The Dead

A Novel

By Paul McCann