Ghost Boy by Iain Lawrence

wheels.
    It seemed he wouldn’t stop. It seemed he would go right by on that enormous, bloodred tractor. But the Gypsy Magda spread her arms, and the wind thrashed at her scarves and blanket. Like a scarecrow, she stood in his way.
    The farmer stopped. He shouted down, “You madwoman! You witch! Get thee behind me.”
    She stayed where she was. Then Samuel came forward into his headlights, with Tina behind him, and Harold the Ghost.
    â€œGood God almighty,” said the farmer. “Have you come to take her? Are you devils?”
    â€œGosh, no,” said Tina.
    â€œYou are not of this world, whatever you are.” He fumbled with the gearshift, jamming it forward and back. “Out of my way, I tell you!”
    He stood on the tractor, black and gaunt against the clouds. The child’s head rolled back as he raised an arm and shouted, “In the name of God I command you to go!”
    Lightning seared across the sky. It made, for an instant, a world of white and black. The farmer in his oilskins, the Gypsy below him, seemed to smoke in that flash of hot light as the rain pelted off them in spray. Thunder boomed and echoed, and another flash of lightning cracked through the clouds. The light was blinding, the noise deafening. Harold could see or hear nothing for nearly a minute.
    Then the farmer blinked down from his seat. “You are still here,” he said.
    Samuel stood against the small front wheels. As big as he was, he was dwarfed by the tractor. “We’re circus people,” he said. “That’s all we are. We’re stuck and we need some help.”
    â€œCircus people?” said the farmer. “Freaks, you mean? Is that all you are?”
    â€œYes. Yes, we’re freaks,” said Samuel, and Harold could see how hard it was for him to use that word. “We just need a push on the truck.”
    â€œI can’t help you. I’m sorry, and God forgive me, but I can’t stay to help you.”
    â€œThe child!” said the Gypsy Magda. “You’re frightened for the child.”
    The farmer lowered his head. Rain poured from the Stetson, down on his oilskins, on the face of the child, bare in the blankets.
    â€œGive her to me.” The Gypsy Magda reached up along the tractor’s fender. Her bracelets scratched on the metal. “I can help her if you give her to me.”
    â€œMy firstborn.” He held the child closely, turning away as the Gypsy Magda groped across the fender. Her hand clutched at his boot, at the sodden cuffs of his pants.
    Then her eyes closed. “She lies below a quilt you call the Drunkard’s Path, under a picture her grandmother made. A cat, it sleeps by her feet. She dreams of giants and she cries out. The house, she says, it is spinning.”
    The farmer gawked at her. “How do you know this?”
    â€œShe knows everything,” said Harold. He stepped up to the front of the tractor. “You have to trust her. You have to.”
    â€œYou won’t find your doctor,” said the Gypsy Magda. “His gate is closed, his windows black. He rides across the prairie in a buggy, a bag at his side and hot bricks at his feet. A dog—a white dog—runs behind him.” She reached farther up his leg, clawing at his oilskins. A flash of lightning showed her there, the fallen scarves around her shoulders, the numbers on her arm.
    â€œThe devil’s mark,” the farmer said. He shook her off and jammed the tractor into gear.
    â€œIt will be the death of her!” screamed the Gypsy Magda. “You will take her home, and the doctor—when he comes—will come too late.”
    The tractor leapt forward, and Samuel fell away on the left side, the Gypsy Magda on the right. Only Harold stood in its path. The radiator grille, like rows of metal teeth, clanked toward him. “Stop!” he shouted, his hands held out. “You have to trust her.”
    The metal touched his