What follows is a short story from the Touch Grass collection by Antelope Hill Publishing, a work which I am very grateful to be a part of.
To pick up your copy, and many other exceptional works of fiction and nonfiction, head over to their website or find them on Amazon.
Oh, to be a boy again on those blazing summer afternoons. Even now the memories fill me with overwhelming bliss. I can hardly fathom how I handled then. The Summer holidays were best, adventuring beneath that sweltering sun which was prompt to rise and reluctant to set so that the days felt endless.
I recall those times mostly as one grand mirage of fishing, tree climbing and roaring fires in the evening when sun set the sky ablaze with orange light. Yet, among those times, there are days which were so wonderful that they stand out from the rest, adventures so adventurous that I recall every detail, from the breakfast I had that morning, to the last thought which crossed my mind before bed.
I have many such memories, for I was quite a curious boy. At any moment I can draw upon them and re-experience those magical days of my youth, feeling grateful for having lived. Sometimes I am taken back by surprise, the smell of freshly cut grass or the sting of a nettle stabbing me with nostalgic ecstasy.
One day stands out above the others, and it is the one which I would like to tell you about now. I was ten years old and it was a cloudless Sunday at the dawn of those Summer holidays which all children pine for and relish. I know it was a Sunday because after bacon and eggs for breakfast our parents had taken my elder brother Edward and I off to church.
Ours was an ancient stone village on the banks of a stream in the heart of North Yorkshire’s moors and surrounded on all sides by country. Everyone there knew one another. There was one shop, one pub, and one tea room. We had a community hall, primary school, and even a petrol station. Every one of these places had stood for centuries save the filling station (though that had not been updated in decades). It was, and I am pleased to say still is, one of the most pleasingly English places one is likely to find (though I shall keep the name to myself so that it remains such).
Church was a joy. Our sermons were led by our Priest, Mr Guite, who was a warm man somewhere between Father Christmas and a hobbit in his appearance and manner. His greatest pleasure were Christendom and the works of Tolkien, Lewis and Barfield. He delighted in pipe tobacco and ale, and had the most wonderful library I ever saw. After the sermon one could always count on the old dears to swoon over us children, stuffing our pockets with sweets while our parents chatted, before we spilled back out into the village.
Ten was a fine age. At ten I still possess that sense of wonder which children are blessed with, but had grown sufficiently mature to be afforded a good bit of independence by my father which seasoned the experience. This was fortunate because by that time my brother would not entertain my company. He’d been leading an outlaw lifestyle that Summer since acquiring his dirt bike. He and his friends would meet at the petrol station, fill up, and ride off into the country, returning only when their tanks were dry, and just in time for the Sunday roast. I longed to join them but my parents felt ten too young an age for me to be let loose with an engine, and so I had to do with a bicycle equipped with a playing card (the ace of hearts if I recall), taped between the spokes so that it at least mimicked the sound of a motorcycle.
There was only one problem with Sundays. Many of my friends would visit with their grandparents, leaving me alone as my own came to us for their roast. There was one friend who stayed however. Ryan Cornwell was a plump and peculiar lad, the victim of mockery from the other boys because he was slow and cowardly where boyish pursuits were concerned. I found him amiable enough myself, handy on Sundays because Ryan’s grandparents lived in Brighton where his parents were from. I didn’t know where that was but I knew it was far and that it was a strange place because Mrs Cornwell had pink hair and didn’t believe in God.
When we made it home that day my brother and I raced up the stairs to change from our Sunday best into tatty jeans and scuffed trainers. Edward was the swifter of us and had grabbed his motorcycle helmet and made off down the stairs before I had pulled on my shoes. Through the floor I heard his muffled exchange with my mother, then the door closing and his engine starting.
Strapping my pouch of ammunition to my belt I retrieved my knapsack. It contained my catapult and other essentials like a book of matches and a length of twine, and with these I ran down the stairs.
“Charlie!” my mother yelled, appearing from the kitchen with my water bottle “Stay hydrated. It’s hot out. Have you got your watch on?” she asked. I did. “Good. Now, your father and I are heading into town so dinner will be late. I want you back here and washed for four o’clock. Do you understand?”
“Absolutely,” I said, itching to escape.
“Good. We’re having beef,” she said, and with that she kissed me on the head.
I freewheeled my bicycle and followed the river, hanging back on the bars as though I were riding some big American bike along an open freeway like they did in the movies. A black bird kept pace, and then flitted off like a dog fighting spitfire. The sun beat down as the breeze stroked my arms and the horizon ahead was a haze of pollen and insects. I could not have been happier.
The ace growled in my spokes and when I hit the gravel I pulled my back brake and skidded across the drive. The car was gone and all of the curtains were closed. I knocked at the door, worried that perhaps no one was home until, through the frosted glass, I spied a rotund figure which could only have been Cornwell.
The door opened and Ryan peered at me like toad disturbed beneath a damp log log. He was still in his pyjamas and his hair was uncombed. He looked pale, and vaguely displeased to see me.
“Oh, hello Charlie,” he said flatly.
“Have you just woken up?”
“No,” he scoffed, “Whatever gave you that idea?”
“Well, you aren’t dressed.”
“No need. My parents are away for the day. What do you want, Charlie?”
“What do you think I want on a day like this, Ryan? I want to know if you’re playing out! I have a new trick with a playing card which makes your bike sound like a motorcycle. Look, I brought you one!” I said, producing the Jack of diamonds from my back pocket.
Ryan twisted his soft face as thought I were holding a cold dog turd.
“I’m staying in, Charlie,” he said sourly.
“Staying in!”
“Yes. I have a new game for my Playstation. Kingdom Hearts Two, Charlie! It isn’t even out in this country yet. My stepdad brought it back from his business meeting in China,” he smiled smugly.
“A game?”
“Yes, Charlie. There’s nothing to do outside, anyway.”
“But...” I raised the card for him to see.
“I said ‘NO’, Charlie,” and with that Ryan closed the door.
***
We children lived in our own sacred world, one known only to us and with locations like ‘the pit’, ‘the big hill’, and ‘the watchtower’. My favourite of these was the train yard because so few knew of it, and those who did didn’t care for the long journey to reach the place. It was a clearing in the wild, a graveyard for 20th century locomotives forgotten by the minds of adults. It was here where I went on this day, brooding and confused in my rejection.
Aboard the roof of a train car I sat with my legs dangling over the edge and with the song of birds and grasshoppers all about me. Solitude was no problem. I had a good imagination and relished an afternoon alone. What had turned my mood was Ryan’s manner. It was one thing for an adult to act strangely, but for a boy of ten to choose a computer over a day of such sublime promise, well, I’d never known it.
Taking the Jack of diamonds I struck a match and set the card alight, holding on until the flame grew too big. Letting go I watched happily as the card fell, the smug face warping as it burned to ash. It was a petty ritual, but cathartic, and at it’s end I decided I’d forget Ryan and enjoy the rest of the day. It was his loss, after all.
In one train car I had a hideout where I kept the contraband which my mother would not approve of. There was a firework which I had brought from Edward, comic books of a gory nature, and the third page of a Sun tabloid which I’d salvaged from a bin in the village. I was on my way to this illicit collection when, from the other side of a carriage, I heard someone whistling the theme tune to Indiana Jones.
I stopped and listened, wondering if I’d been followed? Perhaps it was Ryan having seen sense and come to find me. Dropping down to my belly I peered beneath the carriage. Beyond the rusted wheels a pair of small dusty boots walking by, and with hairless legs poking from them too small to have been an adults, but too slender to have been Ryan’s.
Lifting myself I tracked the intruder with careful footing. They were headed for my den. With my tongue sticking out to aid stealth I retrieved my catapult and picked a rose hip from a nearby bush. At the carriage end I waited, listening as the stranger slid open my den’s door. When I was sure they had entered I followed, setting the bud in the sling and pulling a full draw on the weapon.
The interior of my hideout was not revealed to me until I had stepped out of the daylight and into the shade beyond the door.
“Stay where you are!” I yelled. The unwelcome party was alone, smaller than I, and with their back to me. Jumping with shock, they dropping one of my very own comic books on the floor. But it was the scream which took me off guard, that girlish shriek of terror. Slowly they turned to face me and I saw that what I had thought to be a pair of shorts, was in fact a corduroy dress, and that the face beneath the cropped red hair (which I had taken for that of a small boy’s), was in fact slender and feminine.
“You’re a girl!” I yelled, lowering the slingshot.
“I’m sorry!” she squealed, waving her hands before her face.
“What are you doing in my den!”
“I didn’t know it was yours! I haven’t taken anything, honest. I was just looking at your comic books!”
She continued to wave her hands with her eyes closed while she pleaded as though I were still aiming the catapult at her. It was such a fearful response that I wondered if I had not overreacted somewhat.
“Right, enough of that.” I said, softening my tone. The girl steadied her hands and opened one eye. “Look, it isn’t a stone. It’s just a rose hip,” I assured her, and tossed the thing over my shoulder.
The girl relaxed a little, and more again when I holstered the weapon. For a moment we stared at one another, and then she said, “I’m Mary Dobson,” and held out a hand.
“I’m Charlie Birchwood,” I obliged reluctantly, and bypassing her retrieved my comic from the floor.
“Sorry about that. I didn’t take anything, truthfully. I only found this place yesterday. It’s wonderful.”
“It’s mine, and you’d better not have set my fire work off,” I growled, spotting suddenly the indecent third page laying upon the table.
Tossing the comic I grabbed the page and stuffed it into my pocket.
“What’s that?” she smirked knowingly.
“None of your business!” I barked, “Don’t you know not to go snooping around people’s things! Don’t they teach you that where you come from!”
“Oakwell.”
“What?”
“I come from Oakwell. It’s a little village just over...”
“I know where it is!” I said. I had grown flustered and awash with cold sweat at the embarrassment of it all and Mary seemed to sense it and take pity on me.
“Look, I really am sorry. It’s just, I’m new to the area. I’ve not got many friends here and so I’ve been exploring. I shouldn’t have gone through your things.” I nodded in agreement. “Here, have a bon bon,” she said, pulling out a paper bag from her satchel and offering it to me, “As an apology,” she smiled, and over her shoulder I spied my firework where I had left it, and so I accepted.
Friendships start over less when you’re ten. I once called a boy my best friend for a year because we shared a birthday despite neither one of us liking the other very much. Mary didn’t share my birthday, but she was ten, and she didn’t visit her grandparents on a Sunday, or concern herself with silly video games, and so a friendship seemed quite natural.
I showed her my pen knife and Judge Dredd comic books. She shared her bon bons with me and then, aboard a train car’s roof in the sun, I showed her my catapult which I’d made with my father the previous Summer.
“Are you a good shot?” she asked.
I laughed and reached into my leather pouch for a pebble, “See that sign?”
Mary nodded.
Giving the band a good pull I sent the stone flying. The target burst into shards of rusted metal which flew all about, pitter pattering like rain as they fell.
Mary gasped. I’d not noticed how pretty she was before, not until we were outside and the sun had set her auburn hair ablaze and flushed her cheeks a little pink which were pale and freckled like a wren’s egg with Mary every bit as delicate as that little bird was. Her bright green eyes fixed upon the destroyed target, and her soft pink lips upturned ever so with excitement at my accuracy.
“That was good,” she smiled.
“Thank you,” I smirked. She was beautiful and she enjoyed Judge Dredd (which I admired a great deal in a lady), and so I found myself happy to have impressed her
Reaching into the pouch I felt about for the cold, smooth sphere and presented the shining ball to Mary.
“What is it?”
“It’s my good shot. It took me an hour to salvage this from an old pin ball machine at the dump.”
“You mean old McLoughlin’s scrap yard?”
I nodded, “I’m saving it. With this I can hit anything at one hundred feet.”
“Weren’t you scared of Taber?”
Taber was Old Man McLoughlin’s bull mastiff who’s temperament was every bit as genial as one might expect from a junkyard dog. Actually, I had it on good authority that Taber was at the vet’s having his glands squeezed during the heist (my father was the vet), but Mary needn’t know that minor detail and so I simply shrugged coolly and Mary whistled approvingly, looking off to the shattered sign again and furrowing her brow.
“You must be very brave,” she said.
“Well,” I shrugged again.
Mary placed her hand on my own and drew a deep breath. “Do you know the big pine woods, just beyond St Michael’s?” she asked nervously, and with good reason. St Michael’s ruin was an hour out of Oakwood. The Church was said to be cursed after a mad vicar had made a deal with the Devil, unleashing all manner of horrors upon that once holy ground. The woods beyond were dense, damp, and most uninviting. A gang of children had gone missing in them years before and so our parents had warned us from the place, telling tales of evil deeds done by ghosts and ghouls within.
Mary wasn’t to know this, and had ventured into that cursed place one week before we’d met, and alone, no less, and while she had made it out alive she had not done so without a scare. In the woods she had come across the a decaying cottage which she had taken for abandoned. Entering, however, she had found the place distressed, but not without signs of habitation; a pot of rotten stew on the table suggesting a resident within the last week. Mary did not go beyond the kitchen before losing her nerve, but as she had turned to leave she had spied the most terrible figure standing in the doorway of the cellar which had jolted her with such fright that she had fled, running until she was out of the woods and her legs had failed her. Mary did not go into detail. All she said was that the being was a woman most grotesque.
To hear it was nerve splicing, as was the request which followed. While in the cottage Mary had held her necklace for courage, and upon seeing the petrifying sight had snapped the chain in her fright and dropped it.
“My grandmother gave me that necklace,” she explained, “I’d have retrieved it before I ran but it fell between the floorboards. I suspect it fell into the cellar where the woman came out of. I know it’s a terribly big ask, and I’ll understand if you refuse, but I simply must retrieve my grandmother’s cross, and you’re such a terribly good shot.”
Now, for a boy of ten I would have said I was adequately brave, yet had I believed this story about the house in the woods, I likely would have declined. Then again, the history books and folk tales of England are filled with stories of men doing very silly things for very pretty girls, so who knows? As it happened I was sceptical. Looking at it rationally I suspected that Mary had been spooked by a shadow or a curtain caught in a breeze (as girls often were), and so I agreed to help.
***
The forest beyond St Michael’s was like no wood which I had ever seen before, and too dense for travel by bicycle. Most of the trees were evergreens, standing tall as buildings and so close together that they blocked out the sun completely. From the branches long beards of moss hung like decaying flesh and there was a mist about the place, and a chill in the still air so that when you were in it you forgot that it was Summer at all.
The floor was mossy and damp where it was not blanketed with pine needles, and all about fungi of a gelatinous and poisonous nature sprouted. Every so often, as we walked through the pathless wood, we came across the leafless corpse of an oak, a remnant of the ancient native forest which had once stood there before it’s felling during the great war for some purpose or other.
We walked with silent steps, and because no birds sang and the trees had no leave (and there was no breeze to quiver them if they had), there was a deep and unsettling quiet. Any courage which I might have possessed had waned, and all rationality had left me at the treeline. I was not altogether sure that I believed in witches, but if they did exist then this struck me as a likely place for their residence.
My sweaty palm gripped tight upon my catapult and good shot as I was tormented by the beating of my own heart, when suddenly Mary spoke.
“Look,” she whispered, her breath adding to the fog. On a mossy rock sat a wonderful doll’s house. In the elements it had fallen into disrepair, the wood rotting and wallpaper peeling with the damp. Inside, a family of five figures, each of them decapitated with a pair of seamstress scissors which rested by the house.
“I don’t like this,” I whispered, giving wholly to the presence of evil now.
“Do you want to go back?” Mary asked softly. I could see in her eyes her own determination to continue, and her hope that I would not leave her. I shook my head. Mary took my free hand in her own (though I was not sure if this was for my comfort or her own), and we continued.
The sight of the cottage worsened my unease. It was a stout building with walls once white which had succumbed to the growth of green mosses and lichens. The thatched roof was disheveled but appeared intact, as were the windows, though these were so dirty as to block any view of the interior. The rotten wooden door was open, and bracken and other foliage had claimed any plot of garden which might have been. The place looked medieval, as though it had existed long before the new forest had been planted, back when it was an ancient wood of oak, and ash, and thorn.
Mary gestured toward my catapult and I set the ball bearing in the sling and readied to draw. By the door a black cat watched us with yellow eyes. It had no collar but was groomed and adequately fed, and as we approached it made no attempt to flee but rather growled in that low, rumbling, way which cats do.
“I didn’t see her last time,” Mary whispered from behind me.
“It’ll just be a stray,” I answered, not all together sure that I was right.
We crossed the threshold, the damp floorboards squeltching beneath our weight. The light was little, but sufficient to see about the kitchen. The place looked to have been abandoned as a functioning home, without a possession taken. There were rotten books of leather binding on the shelves, and crockery and furniture all about the place. Everything was filthy and moulded, and the air was stagnant and most unpleasant to breath.
There were two doors out of the room, both of which led into blackness. One looked to lead to a living room, the other down into a windowless hole of a cellar.
“That’s where I saw her,” Mary whispered, her words shivering as she spoke them, “and this is where I dropped my necklace,” she said crouching down and running her hand over a gap. “Maybe we should have brought a torch,” she said with regret.
Exploration breeds ingenuity. From a shelf I retrieved a rolling pin, from my rucksack a length of twine, and from my backpack two old socks which had plugged a hole. In a moment I had put these together to make a torch, igniting it with a match and handing it to Mary.
“Here. It won’t burn for long. We’d best move fast.”
Mary nodded, the flame flickering softly in the gloom as we made for the cellar door.
“Wait,” Mary said, grabbing my arm, “The stew! Someone’s been at it!”
The pot rested on a table with a ladle and bowl. With my breath held I peered inside. The festering mould coated broth had indeed been disturbed, a ladle sized gouge missing from it which had held it’s shape after the disruption. I drew back and looked to Mary with a grimaced face. Whatever could have eaten such a thing must have been unfathomably grotesque.
“Let’s get this done,” I said. Mary nodded, and together we stepped into the dark.
The stairs were wood, rotten and unsound, some so greatly that we dared not trust them completely with our weight. The cellar was one large space of rubble. All upon the damp walls were mad rambles, barely legible. Among the overlapped words I picked out ‘devil’ and ‘flesh eater’ before declining to read further. Already the torch was dying and so swiftly we moved towards the spot where the necklace should have fallen, but found nothing there.
Above us was the gap in the boards, we were sure, yet Mary scanned the floor with the torch to no avail.
“It isn’t here!”
“It has to be somewhere, Mary. Perhaps we’re in the wrong spot.”
“No, it was here. I’m sure!” she said still searching.
“Let’s look about while we have light, just in case,” I said, and the two of us moved through the room, waving the dwindling flame over the debris strewn ground until we were at the far side of the cellar with an ocean of darkness between us and the door.
Just as I was sure Mary’s anguish could grow no greater, she suddenly yelled out, “Charlie, look!” and as she held the torch up my eyes spied the glint of the golden likeness of Christ upon the cross which hung from a nail up on the wall.
“However did it get there?”
“I don’t know,” Mary said, setting the torch against the wall. “Bunk me up.”
Dropping the good shot into my pouch and holstering the slingshot I hunched down with my hands clasped together, receiving Mary’s foot and heaving her up. When she had retrieved the necklace from the nail I lowered her, and so overwhelming was her joy that she squealed with delight and threw her arms around me.
“Oh, thank you, Charlie!” she yelled. Before I could offer a reply a noise from the door startled us. It sounded like the cat, and as the tiny paws tip tapped across the floor Mary lifted the torch out in front of us, but the flame was not more than a candle now and did little to light the dark.
The noise grew closer. I took my catapult from my pocket but before I could rest my hand upon a shot the most terrifying thing came wailing from the darkness, knocking me to the ground and spilling my ammunition all about the place. It was no cat, but a woman; blubberous, naked and reeking of death and excrement. Winded and stunned I heard Mary scream in horror as the ungodly hag set upon her, causing her to drop the torch (which thankfully remained lit), revealing the black space in the cellar wall which the hag was dragging Mary into.
Dazed, but still holding my catapult, I felt for something, anything to propel towards the witch. It was then that my hand fell upon the unmistakable smoothness of the good shot. Placing it in the sling I drew back as far as I was able and sent the steel ball hurtling into the crooked teeth of that monstrous bitch, bursting them into smithereens which fell like rain. The hag screamed in agony and released Mary who scrambled into the dark as the burning eyes of Satan’s wench fell upon me, smoldering with hateful rage, the groom bubbling from her smashed mouth.
Then she was on me, the stink choking my lungs as she howled blood upon me, too heavy to escape from and with no other shot in reach. Panicked I took the butt of the catapult and jammed it into the hags eye. As she recoiled in pain Mary came up behind, and with unimaginable force smashed the rolling pin into the back of the hag’s skull so that she fell from atop of me.
Mary pulled me up and we ran through the dark towards the door, scrambling up the stairs, heaving one another, and with several boards giving way beneath us. The Witch followed, though neither of us looked back as the sound of crashing filled our ears, followed by the infuriated shrieking of the hag and then the wailing of a cat.
Through the kitchen we ran, into the woods, and fleeing without stopping all the way to the ruin of St Michael’s. Only once we were on my bike, with my legs pedalling as fast as they could, and with Mary on my stunt pegs and her hands gripping her grandmother’s necklace, did we begin to laugh manically over our escape.
I dropped Mary home that afternoon, and before she ran inside she kissed my cheek, agreeing that we’d meet again. I was late for dinner, able only to provide the excuse that I had made a new friend. Mother took a disliking to this friend there and then, suggesting that I keep better company, and while it was not my practice to disobey my parents, on this occasion I did, though for this crime my mother has since forgiven me as Mary and I are married now and with three children.
Occasionally we discuss that day. It seems unbelievable even to us, though we both recall it just as I have told it to you. It was just one of the adventures which we’ve shared, and while I encourage our children to explore as we did in youth, I steer them clear of St Michael’s ruin and the woods beyond.
And of Ryan Cornwell. We grew apart as he retreated into the realms of the unreal. I saw him not long ago and we chatted a little. He works in I.T. now, and never married. He’s grown paler and with a bad complexion. He seems nervous, his eyes flitting about like flies dodging the swat like he’s witnessed some unconscionable evil (which of course he has). His has been a life unlived, wasted peering into the digital abyss. It has sent him mad, as it must all men. His is a tortured soul, and he exists now only as a warning to others.
The End.