My Horrible Adventure

Once I missed a bus and nearly died. Obviously it was nearly otherwise I wouldnt be telling you this tale now would I?
Well it happened like this.
One day I was walking home from school, it was September and the nights were drawing in, one of those nights where you think the tired Year is wanting to close up shop early for Winter, yeah one of those nights where Autumn is gearing up for full on Winter just to spite you. It was chill and misty, bonfire smoke tangy and sharp.
I missed my bus.
It was my fault- I had been daydreaming as usual, looking at an interesting leaf in the gutter instead of looking out for my bus.
I hated that bus, it was drafty and mouldy, it had old fashioned scratchy seat fabric full of fleas and body fluids. It was a double decker and you ran onto it from the back, and I mean ran, because the driver didnt believe in brakes, I think he thought braking was for sissies, so you ran onto a Platform and hung onto the pole until you could gain enough momentum to propel yourself forward into a smelly seat.
Anyway this day I missed it, so I started the long walk home, and when I say long I mean 15 miles long.
I started the long walk home. I figured at the next red telephone box I could ring my parents and tell them not to be angry, they always seemed to be angry, or ignoring me totally, which I preferred as a matter of fact. As I walked I was conjuring up a fantastic excuse involving kidnap and mayhem.
yes folks this was a time before mobile phones existed, even those the size of domestic bricks in the 80s, it was a time when people smoked upstairs on buses, the top deck would have a strata of Woodbine unfiltered wreathing around at neck height, floating faggy heads, and a time when people stood up for the National Anthem in cinema theaters. well a long time ago anyway.
Luckily I was pretty fit as I swum in the school team, I hated sports, I hated getting rope burn and being covered in mud while shivering on a Hockey pitch wearing nowt but an airtex blouse and plimsoles. . But swimming I liked.
It was getting slowly nearer twilight, the sun was a pale Yellow disc in the milky sky. An owl hooted, it was open countryside and silent. The only sound was the thudding of my thick school shoes and my heavy satchel swinging by my side.

Color me intrigued.

Delightfully angry so far...  

15 miles (converts)... shit. yepp.. that's a long way...

Something makes me suspect that sore feet will be the least of the problems..... 

I started the long walk home. I figured at the next red telephone box I could ring my parents and tell them not to be angry, they always seemed to be angry, or ignoring me totally, which I preferred. As I walked I was conjuring up a fantastic excuse involving kidnap and mayhem.
yes folks this was a time before mobile phones existed, even those the size of domestic bricks in the 80s, it was a time when people smoked upstairs on buses, the top deck would have a strata of Benson & Hedges wreathing around at neck height, floating faggy heads, and a time when people stood up for the National Anthem in cinema theaters. well a long time ago anyway.
Luckily I was pretty fit as I swum in the school team, I hated sports, I hated getting rope burn and being covered in mud while shivering on a Hockey pitch wearing nowt but an airtex blouse and plimsoles. (and a skirt natch). But swimming I liked.
It was getting slowly nearer twilight, the sun was a pale Yellow disc in the milky sky. An owl hooted, it was open countryside and silent. The only sound was the thudding of my thick school shoes and my heavy satchel swinging by my side.

I have to say my first concern was missing my dinner and my favourite childrens television show on the BBC. When I got home from school I was allowed to watch tv until it was time for the adult programmes, it was a time when there was only one television set in houses, and ones elders and betters got to choose what went on. It wasnt so bad, that way I was forced fed on a diet of 70s classic tv that otherwise I would have missed if it had been down to me.
I was musing and dreaming when I heard a car approaching. The nuns at school had taught us well. Men where to be avoided at all costs, nasty hairy brutish creatures that transformed miraculously into human beings only if you married one, or married the Church, ran by men, priests, policemen or husbands, the rest you were supposed to ignore, specially men in cars, you NEVER got into cars.

So when the car stopped and it was a woman, my first reaction was relief.
Bad move.
She was a Witch.
well she didnt have a hooked nose, warts and black and White striped socks, but yeah, this was something I felt rather than saw.
I say she was a witch but to this day I dont really know exactly what she was. I must say the 'witch thing' has followed me round all my life. At my junior school the kids would torment me with the nickname 'Witchy', ok I was as white as chalk, had long red hair down to my bum and was as silent as the grave, no cackling or cauldron twiddling though, so it was perplexing to me to say the least and still it worried me and hurt me. New school, new kids, same name, 'Witchy'. I would ask people why, they never told me, and I still dont know.
She stopped her car and wound down the window, she asked me if I was lost, I said I was fine, she said she would give me a lift as she was going my way, I said now did she know she was going my way? She said she 'just knew'. I said 'no thanks I was fine' and continued walking. By this tme my hackles had well and truly risen to attention and were waving little red flags and blowing on little alarm trumpets in my brain. I looked wildly about, working out means of escape, distance of trees, height of gate to be jumped etc etc. If she got out, I would be ready to run, and luckily running away from bullies had given me lots of practice at that.

Well you've got me hooked and intrigued (if slightly worried) Mrs Figg.
I always found the best way to deal with bullies was to repeatedly smash their face of something (floors were good, walls handy, but all else fails my fist would do) they didn't tend to try it twice. But perhaps that's a male approach to problem solving.

She got out.
She was a large beefy looking woman, Gulag Kommandant material, the sort that has steel blades in her toecaps. She made a grab for my arm so I kicked out wildly, hitting her in the shin. She grunted and let go, I swung my heavy school satchel at her head with all my might, but she just grabbed the leather strap and clung to it. I dropped it and ran. and ran as fast as my skinny legs would go.
I pelted over the gate in the field and ran towards a copse of trees. She couldnt follow in the car and she didnt look too light on her twinkle toes either. Breathless and sweating I charged into the wood and lay flat, panting in a brace of ferns. My ears were strained for any sound, but the only sound was my gasping and gulping. My throat was dry and my eyes popped with fear.
Slowly I calmed and lay there waiting. The wood was eerily quiet, no bird sang, no leaf moved in the undergrowth. It was getting dark and chilly, I tried to Marshall my thoughts and think of a way of getting out of this mess without being killed or worse, shouted at.
I popped my head up out of the ferns and gingerly looked around for signs of the 'Greater Rosa Klebb', she had gone seemingly. I remembered her car, it was one of those French ones that looked like a shark, I would keep a look out for that thing on the road.
I walked back to the lane, looking this way and that, and bemoaning my lost satchel, I would get in deep trouble for that, all my school books and homework were in it. I walked to a point in the road that had a good panoramic view of the land ahead. It was all arable farm land, a few Woods scattered here and there, Church spires piercing the heavens in the small villages. Then from my vantage point I saw her, I saw that car in the distance, it was making for Eordburg Hlaw the megalithic stone circle. I shivered, I had heard it was not the sort of place to hang around at night. Boggarts haunted the place it is said.

I did a very silly thing.
I decided to follow her. I knew a short cut through the fields, to Windybottom Wood and then on to Bogguard Hall, where I was pretty sure she was making for. I didnt want to go near the standing stone circle, so I cut around to the right, following the line of the hill I could see them in the distance highlighted against the sky like the teeth of some long dead dragon. The mist gathered in the hollows and dells it swirled and floated, the sun sank in a last Golden glory then the moon came out and stars twinkled.
It became very cold indeed, I hadnt yet seen a telephone box and I was getting worried. I knew there was one just outside the Hall, I would use that one. Windybottom Wood was well named, the trees whispered to each other as I passed under their boughs. Maybe they wondered what a Young human was doing walking stealthily amongst them.
I carried on shivering now in the chill air, but I needed to get my stuff back, my mind was full of angry Teachers demanding explainations. I wasnt thinking straight.
I got to Bogguard Hall and there before its tall iron gates was a battered old telephone box. Luckily it worked after I had ousted a sleepy hedgehog from its interior.

I think Ill be needing this then...  

I took a minute to steady my nerves then called home. I pushed a coin in the slot as the beeps went, my parents had assumed I was at my best friends house, a normal occurence, they hadnt even bothered to check, my luck was in, I blathered a bit and said yes I was staying over and was that ok? I lied to my parents, maybe for the first time, but I was 15 and thats a good a time as any to start.
I rang off and heaved a sigh of quasi-relief. Now the hard bit, getting my satchel back.
I didnt know whether 'Rosa Klebb' as I named her, was actually staying at the Hall, but the road was a dead end, she couldnt have gone any further. I squeezed through the gates and set off down the gravel drive. It was crunchy gravel, so I thought of skirting round but couldnt because of the gigantic rhodedendrons, they lined the drive in huge wild abundance. In the Sunshine they were bright and lovely, but at night they were ghostly waving arms full of shadows and scurrying rustlings.

I'm enjoying this a lot, Mrs Figg. I don't have time to make any detailed comments but your writing is very evocative and I'm glad you're continuing to write.

thanks Eldo I am glad you like it  

The Bif 'F's seem to apply Mrs Figg: Fanciful, funny and fraught.

{{{It would have been the four big 'F's but unfortunately I can't think of a synonym for "Realistic' starting with 'F'.  }}}

The driveway glowed silver in the moonlight, a faint damp earthy soily aroma filled the air. The rhodedenrons waved their spindly arms, the heavy waxy flowers rustled and nodded, but there was no breeze, just a creeping mist among the roots.
I slowly walked along the path, my senses alert for any movement or sound. I turned a bend and there was the great Hall before me set in a swathe of lawns and ornamental gardens with strange shaped ghostly statues placed here and there. I stood in the shadows and looked at the dark house, it had a closed blind look, all the windows shined silver in the moonlight, but there was no light from within. I got a creeping sense of being watched by a thousand invisible eyes, like the house was watching me. Like the statues were watching me.
There was little cover, it was all wide open space, if I approached I would be seen immediately, so I decided to skirt the lawns under cover of the trees and approach the house from the kitchens behind.

I had to fight off the urge to just turn and run, panic was bubbling, but I knew if I ran I would lose it completely and run and run into heaven knows what. So I bottled it up, and kept my thoughts on my bag, all my homework was in it, and it had been a Christmas present, plus I realized to my horror that my name was written in all my notebooks, and I had just covered them all in my favourite wallpaper. In those days kids did that, maybe it was because wallpaper was waterproof and hard wearing, odd though.
I crept round to the back of the house, and there sitting crouched on the drive was the French shark car. Her car.
So she was in there somewhere, I ran quickly up to the wall and felt my way round the side of the house. The kitchen door, I turned the handle, and it opened. I wondered if there was a guard dog, I didnt like dogs much, they were barky bitey things in my experience, and I was scared to death of some of them, like my Grandmothers Pekinese, nasty yappy little idjits with poo clinging to their furry behinds. I much preferred cats.
I walked in and took a sniff, no doggie smells or doggie food dishes on the floor anyway. good. yes there were no dogs, but there were stranger and more dangerous creatures in that house.

i love your writing figg, it's really good!!

thanks Norclet

writing this story is helping me a lot. its 38c/100f outside and its impossible to go outside and do stuff, basically from mid day to around 5. oclock its unbearably hot. it sux, so I need things to occupy my mind. I used to think siestas were for wimps, but its just common sense, its dangerous out there.

I didnt think about breaking and entering, I mean I hadn't technically broken in, the kitchen door had been unlocked. She shouldnt have taken my stuff, and she had, because no trace of my bag could I find when I had gone back to the road.

I like the way the "creepyness" creeps up on you ! Im sure somethings gonna jump out & Im gonna go "Agghhhh" !  

yeah, i can't wait to see what happens next


siestas sounds good and reasonable figg ^^ i took one today.. well... not on purpose, i just fell asleep.. and forget about the bread i had promised to bake out.. so the bread-dough thing just died... the breads gonna be stone hard lol..