 Looking out over the fields on a summer's morning, it was easy to believe I'd found the perfect place. The land had grown wild, tall grasses intermingled with weeds until the horizon dipped. The old farmhouse was run down, but could be renovated with relative ease. I saw it as a center for well-being retreats, possibly marriages, though I was still trying to stay away from high maintenance events. The staple would make very marketable holiday accommodation, though this would require more work than the farmhouse to realize. I'd stretched myself financially by buying the farmhouse in its surrounding land and outbuildings, but I was confident I could make it all a superb earner. There was only one thing spoiling this as far as I was concerned. The barn. It was on higher ground behind the farmhouse, and even without the building surveyors report, it was clear to the naked eye that the wood in the barn was rotten. It was a basic structure and had no use or possibilities that I could see. The only option was to tear it down and dispose of the timbers thoroughly. I decided working out how to do this was going to be my second job of the day. The first was to brew myself a pot of coffee. This was going to be my first day actually living on site. I'd visited repeatedly up to now, driving to and from my apartment. That was close to a five hour round journey and in no way practical, so I had added the cost of a second hand camper van to my overloaded credit card. It was parked up around the back of the farmhouse and had enough creature comforts on board to make life bearable. Coffee in hand. I walked up to the barn. Even on such a beautiful day, it was gloomy inside and I felt an immediate chill, though this was probably as much to do with my imagination as anything else. I stood there wondering what the farmer had felt. Was he scared or was he relieved that the pressure would be over soon? Did he hesitate or was it quick? I'd learned what happened through a simple online news search on the area as part of my research before making my investment. The previous owner and occupant of the property and land had been found dead in the barn lying on the straw and dirt covered ground. And what the headline had described as a tragic incident. The article, written after an inquest, had reported that the farmer had died of massive blood loss and resultant organ failure. And though the verdict was open, suicide was suspected. I believed I knew what had driven him to it. A report that I acquired when I bought the place detailed that the soil had become toxic. The writer of the report had concluded that the land could no longer be used to grow food for human consumption or be grazed by animals. It must have been a living hell until he decided to call time. Hoping that he'd found peace, I got my tablet out and took an extensive series of photographs as part of my planning to make the barn history. Pleased with my progress, I was about to knock off for lunch when I noticed something that made my heart sink. A small hole high in the eaves of the barn, which I zoomed in on and photographed. The internet and mobile signal was non-existent at the farm, so I trudged down to my camper van and drove for twenty minutes until I had two bars. I went online and a search confirmed my fears. The hole appeared to be the entrance to a bat roost. Another five minutes on the web and the next piece of this infuriating jigsaw was in place. As I thought, bats were a protected species and it would be illegal for me to destroy their habitat. I spent the rest of the afternoon working through possible solutions and was feeling totally deflated when I gave up and set off on the short drive back. There was no way that did not involve delay and cost. Once I was parked up, I poured myself a stiff drink. It was too early, really, but I needed it. To compound my mood, the clear blue skies of earlier were clouding over and within the hour a growing wind was rattling the camper van and soon rain was streaking its windows. I looked at the barn, cursing it in my empty glass, and watched as rivulets formed and the rainwater ran down towards the farmhouse and out over the land. I had the bottle in my hand about to pour another drink when the lightning came. A flash in the dusk sky. I counted off the seconds as I had learned to do when I was a child and I got to ten before the thunder growled, which made the lightning around ten miles away by my reckoning. A second bolt illuminated the sky and this time my count did not make it to two. It was getting closer. I poured that next drink. Thankfully, the storm eased soon after and I opened the door of the camper van. The air felt wonderful as I stepped out and I guess it was a mix of the booze and the fresh air that fueled my sense of wonder as they emerged. Their presence had ruined my day, could prove to be a major problem, but I didn't think about that as I watched the bats fly from their roost in the barn. They were darting dark shapes against a night sky that free of the city's glare, shown with a multitude of stars. I was breathless and did not move for a long time after I had lost sight of them. Invigorated, I decided to take one last look at the barn then call it a night. Surely I could find a practical way to remove the barn and keep these magnificent creatures safe and myself on the right side of the lawn. After fetching a torch from the van, I trudged up to the now muddy slope and into the barn. I'd kept the beam pointed down to help make sure I didn't stumble and now that I was in the barn, I placed it across the ground. There would be guano among the dirt and straw, I figured. The light, however, showed a small dirty white shape sticking up. Curious, I bent over to pick it up. It looked like a fragment of bone, a farm animal as I assumed. I noticed more. They were all fragments as I was digging out one which felt stuck. I saw it was actually the tip of a much larger bone. I knelt and began to clear away the surface layer. I uncovered dozens of bones, crushed skulls in sections of ribcage, vertebrae, all human, everyone. I felt sick, panicky. All of a sudden, I needed to get out of there. I turned and ran back to the camper van and sat in the driver's seat, gasping for breath. What the hell, I thought over and over. Why were there human remains in the barn? I wondered as well if they were the cause of the toxicity, a poison from them carried in the rain down across the land. I sat there, my mind racing, and it was then they came. The bats swept across the sky, directly in front of the windscreen, blurred in the darkness, but I could tell it was them. I thought they were gone, passed by, then they swept back into view before beginning to slip out of sight over the roof of the van and down out of the ground. I could hear them scurrying around my head, and then I heard a scratching sound and saw to my horror long claw-like fingernails scraping along the side window. I flinched and began to shake as adrenaline began to surge through my body. I knew in my guts what they were, these things which now rose out of the darkness and stood everywhere I could see. I'd always thought such creatures only existed in the realm of the fantastical, and yet here they were. These were no sophisticated, sleekly dressed beings, no erotic visions. They were feral creatures. Their faces were scarred, their eyes small and piercing. Their mouths opened, revealing sharp hideous teeth, incisors curving down gruesomely. They began to speak. My pulse was racing. My skin burning. I couldn't move, only stare in terror as they pressed in closer and closer, all the while in treating me. Invite us in. They whispered, and once more dragged their fingernails down the window. Then they began to scream in anger and frustration at me, kept away by a quarter of an inch of glass and a thin metal shell and an ancient rule of nature that they could not break. This continued relentlessly until first light began to ease the darkness away. And as it did so, the creatures backed off until I could no longer see them, only the flitting forms of bats in the distance descending on the eaves of the barn disappearing inside. I sat and tried to breathe slow and regular as the sun shone down on a new day. I'm not a brave man, I never have been. But I hope that when my time comes to die, I will know in my heart that I always tried to do the right thing, not just for myself, but for the victims, the farmer and those nameless souls whose remains I discovered. I carried up all the petrol I had to the barn and doused the wood as best I could. Then I set fire to it. The flames were slow to take hold at first. And as I watched from alongside the van, at first I feared that I'd failed. And then the fire crackled and spat and began to rise. Soon, the entire structure was engulfed. I knew they couldn't flee because the darkness in the eaves was their sanctuary. But as their sanctuary was stripped away, what would desperation drive them to? My answer came close to noon. Wings flickered dark against the fire, where the eaves were little more than strands of burning wood. They had no choice but to leave, to escape the fire and into the deadly gaze of the sun. They were small, the bat-side first seen, but in a moment they shifted. Their wings became limbs and I could hear screaming as the sunlight touched them and they burst into flames. I sheltered my eyes. If they fell to ground, I didn't see. They were lost among the burning ash that drifted all around me, destroyed. I could only hope and pray. As for me, I'm selling the farm and moving on. My dream is lost in bones and pain, in whispers and flames, in dark twisting creatures scratching at a window. This place is forever tainted by these memories.