The smell of the mud along the banks of the Vulcan Brook should have been warning enough: not to play there. Our mothers threatened the severest of beatings if we should be caught wandering near to it – let alone playing amongst its dense, vivid green magical grassland. But the best of fun stems from disobeying orders and stepping over that tempting, forbidden line, so we ignored our parents’ warnings and invented a game, where the rules were simple and everyone got to win: well most times.
We called our game hide and find, a sort of paper chase that we developed on that heath by that meandering brook. We used sticks and rocks, or feathers and pebbles instead of paper and pencil to mark our clues. Three would hide and two had to find: after closing their eyes and counting out loud, to fifty. The last one found was declared joint winner with his or her finder. Simple enough for eight year olds until we invented more exciting games to play.
During the previous school holiday, I found an iron grid hidden amongst the tangled roots and marked its spot with a circle of stones. When our game was over I told the others about my find and we searched for my markers, but try as we might, neither stones nor grid could be found.
Last Monday it was Luke and Sophie’s turn to count whilst Matt, Pete and I ran to hide. Sophie had the sort of voice which carried far, and as we all ran off in different directions I bent to gather markers from between the roots of the grass: and saw the grid. I turned back towards the others wanting to say, ‘I’ve found it.’ But Pete and Matt had gone already and only Sophie’s clear voice filled the air. ‘Fifteen, sixteen…’ she trilled, telling me I was wasting precious time and must find somewhere to hide. I placed my white pebbles in the shape of an arrowhead and ran in the direction it gave, my head now full of the urgency of playing the game: and not with finding the grid.
Before me, the grasses opened a pathway and closed with a rustle behind, ‘twenty-three, twenty-four.’ As Sophie’s voice faded my mind kept count and soon the mound of boulders came into view: a favourite spot of mine. Forty-two, forty-three, I scrambled over them until I reached the middle where I could sit concealed amongst the lovely rocks and keep watch across the undulating spearheads of the gently swaying grass.
I looked for signs of Pete then scanned the vista for Matt but like me, they had run to ground. Then sunlight caught the yellow gold of Luke’s hair, the counting ceased and the search had begun. I watched the green swallow Luke as he headed towards the railway bridge, another place forbidden by our parents and focused my attention on Sophie who was hidden from view but I knew must be somewhere, and looked for a ripple in the grass and listened for a cry of recognition, the moment my marker was spotted.
To my right and down the bank the brook gurgled and rumbled over the stepping-stones we’d laboured to build three weekends before. The water didn’t babble like the ones read out from the poetry books by our teacher, instead it mumbled and grumbled incoherently at times cursing out loud. Some of the slabs we’d placed across it were uneven and wobbled under the force of the current: making the sound of a growl which chilled me so I stood up to peer over the mound of rocks and to the waters below: thus breaking my cover. It was then that I saw him – lying on his side, leering at me. Don’t go playing near the Vulcan brook, my mother’s words rang inside my skull, bad men hang around that place and gypsies lie in wait to snatch little children and take them to foreign lands: to be sold into slavery.
I stared into his eyes, not daring to look where he wanted but knowing already what I’d see: if I did. Keeping my eyes steady, I slid from the rock and sidestepped down feeling my way through the thinly worn soles of my brown leather sandals until I landed on the tufts of grass and its tangled knotted roots. Taking my eyes off him briefly, I looked towards the place where our game had started, then back towards the man, but he’d gone.
Terror hit me: the grasses, which enabled us to hide and play our silly game, now masked the whereabouts of this leering man. I ran like the wind and called out for Pete, my hero who was older than us all. But he was hiding elsewhere in the opposite direction, towards the red brick flats or further afield where the railway ran under the road: and would not be able to hear me. I ran on, thinking I could feel the man’s breath hot on my back, sense his hands stretching out for me, never daring to look back, for fear I’d lose precious seconds giving him the chance to pounce.
‘Pete,’ I yelled throwing my voice above the sea of grass waving over my head, ‘Luke,’ I cried, opting for the next biggest in our gang. Then my heel failed to grip when the buckle from my left shoe broke away and I tripped over my sandal to fall flat on my face. Now I could hear him clearly, even though my heart pulsed and thumped in my ears, I knew the gap was closing. I scrambled to my feet; one covered in cotton sock the other in crepe-soled leather and ran for my life. Blinded by the sweat stinging my eyes and pained by the fire burning my lungs I forced my body onwards until something, someone gripped my ankles and I went down: his vile dirty body landing on top of me.
My eight year old imagination ran riot, and I knew I would rather a gypsy had me, than the fate I feared lay ahead. With the air driven from my lungs and my heart thumping wildly I felt him move his weight from me and slide a hand under the flat of my belly. My next move wasn’t planned and no one gave me instruction on what to do. Whether we are born with these instincts of survival I don’t know: but the moment my assailant raised his body and was preoccupied with his groping I grabbed the hard lump pressed in my back and twisted it in the most vicious way the limited space would allow. His yell deafened me and the wave of bad breath was sickening but I held on twisting until my arm felt it would break. He pulled his hand from under me and grabbed my hair pushing my face into the ground. I released my twisted grip and tried desperately to wriggle free, but couldn’t, my nose and mouth squashed by the force of his hands into the undergrowth.
It was his cry and not mine that alerted Sophie; who raised the alarm, certain I was somewhere near. At first she said she didn’t see me struggling under the man dressed in a soiled raincoat and screaming in agony, but when he grabbed hold of my hair she recognised my ginger locks and looked around for a weapon. The large stone was the nearest to hand, she told us later, and used it with all her might, nearly killing me in the process when his dead weight fell onto me: crushing me further into the ground. But it worked and I got free of him with no more harm done to me than a few scratches and a dirty face. As far as my attacker was concerned, he remained unconscious until the boys arrived and we discussed what to do with him.
Telling the police was out of the question, no one must know we played by the brook. Pete gave my attacker a nudge with his foot. ‘My dad said there should be a special prison for men like him and they should never be free.’
A chorus of agreement rang around our group until a groan rumbled from beneath the matted hair of the man at our feet. We stared down on him and watched his filthy fingers probe the lump on the side of his head. We stared at his other hand, or where he should have had one. It was a stump of gnarled flesh with a thumb jutting out like a rude appendage. He rolled over and groaned again. Whether we all realised at once that he might stand up at any moment and tower over us, I don’t know, but I started to move backwards, my stockinged foot leading my way. The grasses did as they always did and closed ready to conceal me from the others. This time I didn’t want to hide from my friends, just from him as he gained consciousness by the second. I caught a glimpse of Sophie bend down to retrieve her stone and then Pete reach out and grab it from her.
My heel landed on something sharp. The grid: I’d found it again. And again it wasn’t the right time to tell my friends. At my feet was the arrowhead of white stones. It pointed to Pete who was holding Sophie’s rock above the skull of the prone man.
‘I’ve found that drain,’ I whispered, my voice lost in the dryness of my throat and the thud of the strike.
Matt and Luke looked towards me, ‘What drain?’ asked Luke.
‘The grid we’ve been searching for since Whitsun.’ I told him finding more strength in my voice.
‘Is it big enough to put him in?’ Pete asked.
I shrugged my shoulders, ‘It’s covered mainly with roots and soil.’
Handing the rock back to Sophie, Pete stepped over the body and came towards me, ‘Where is it?’ he asked taking my arm, ‘show us.’
It didn’t take the three boys long to clear away the knotted roots and lift the lid. When Matt tossed a pebble into the pitch-black rectangle of the hole, he counted six seconds before it hit the bottom: sending echoes of its landing from deep within.
‘It’s more than a drain.’ Matt said lying flat on the ground and lowering his head down as far as he dared. The clamour his voice made against the walls of the underground cavern was scary and sounded nothing at all like Matt’s. I tugged at his sleeve wanting him to come away and close the lid.
Sophie called us back. The man was stirring again.
‘See what I meant when I said these people need to be locked up?’ Pete snarled, ‘he’s been knocked out twice and still he bounces back.’
‘What should we do?’
‘Put him in your drain. Let’s see him try to escape from that.’
‘But he might die.’
‘So what,’ he raised his hands in the air, ‘no loss as far as I can see.’
We all murmured our agreement and before he could rally, Pete and Matt pulled him towards the open mouth of the drain and dropped him in: head first. We stood and waited for the sound that told us he’d hit the bottom. It came with a cry of pain. ‘See what I mean?’ repeated Pete, ‘evil can’t die.’
Pete was right. He and Matt pulled the grid over the hole and slid it into place whilst we gathered the largest rocks we could find and piled them on top, like a cairn in cowboy films.
On the following day we visited the mound of rocks just to make sure he’d not escaped. He hadn’t.
Nor had he on Wednesday, Thursday or Friday.
We didn’t play our hiding game any more. In fact we didn’t play many games at all after that. A few weeks later an article appeared in the evening newspaper stating people, workers taking a short cut to and from the foundry reported seeing a ghost.
My mother laughed, saying it was the best bit of rubbish she’d read in years, folded the paper neatly and placed it ready for dad to read, when he returned from work.
When she left the sitting room to see to the evening meal I took the paper, quietly opened it onto the page of the article and read more. The eyewitnesses claim the phantom always appeared at the same spot: by the Vulcan brook’s bank and close to the stepping-stones. They all said he wasn’t solid and that the water flowing behind him could be seen moving through his body. Local police say reports of a man exposing himself to children bear similarities to this so-called ghost, a fingerless hand, dirty raincoat and location of its appearances: the brook’s stepping stones, thought until recently not to have existed.
The rest of the article was above my head, emergency council meetings to discuss the area and what must be done to clean it up. Then, my eyes found a passage relating to the instalment of large underground chambers meant to store water, in case of war. Construction of these underground tanks was halted after fears of pollution were raised, and as far as the council was concerned, they’d been filled in.
I refolded the paper and was sat by the fire when our mother returned from the kitchen.
‘Mam?’
‘Mmm.’
‘Are there such things as ghosts?’
‘No,’ she laughed, ‘but if stories like that can keep children away from that brook, I’d welcome a ghost any time.’
(c) 2024 Pat Barnett.
