17. THE WITCH'S COTTAGE

The boys still have fear of the cold war on their minds

“I know a place, a very special and useful place,” murmured Innocent quietly, “and I want to show you.”

It was the first week of the Whitsun half term holiday, it was a dry and very fine day, and the two boys were enjoying their break from school.

“What is it?” asked Wallace curiously.

“Wait until you see. You know Swanspottle Woods?”

Wallace nodded. “I know of them, but I’ve never been there,” he admitted. “I’ve heard they’re scary, dark and mysterious, that sort of thing.”

“Not many people like to go there,” admitted Innocent, “and I think I’ve found out why. There’s a place there, a place I want to show you...”

“What sort of place?” asked Wallace, not liking vague suggestions when his friend could have explained more exactly what he meant by place.

“You’ll see. Get your bike and we’ll take a ride there. It’ll be fun.”

Wallace’s idea of fun didn’t include rides to mysterious old woods where there might be all sorts of unpleasant things lurking in dark corners, but Innocent seemed so keen to take him and he reluctantly agreed. After all, at his age nobody wants to seem to be afraid of anything, least of all trees!

It wasn’t far to Swanspottle Woods and before long they had skirted a couple of sprawling fields on a barely used farm road, unsurfaced and uneven, and arrived at the dingy narrowing of an already disused track where it petered out to very little indeed, and found themselves underneath a canopy of leaves. May blossom was still in evidence on the hedgerows, and horse chestnut blossom was slowly falling to the ground as summer set in.

“This way,” said Innocent confidently, and he veered off down a track that can’t have been used for years. Maybe, thought Wallace, it had only ever been an animal track, created, maybe, by scurrying rodents or fearful rabbits under the cover of an evil blood moon. But he followed his friend anyway.

After only a few minutes and with the light of an early summer sun already almost blotted out completely by intertwining branches complete with their display of greenery, they emerged in a clearing.

What he saw made Wallace gasp.

It was a cottage, or rather, it had been a cottage. Now it was little more than a ruin, gaunt ribs of half-timbers released from their moorings, twisted and lying at crazy angles at one corner, and a chimney on top of an almost vanished roof sticking up into the dim green light like a finger threatening hell fire if they took a step closer.

“What is it?” whispered Wallace.

“It was someone’s home once,” replied Innocent, equally quietly, “I’ve been checking it out. Before the last war an old woman lived here, and she had a bit of a reputation, some people saying she was a witch, though we know that there’s no such thing...”

“Are you sure?” asked Wallace, who wasn’t sure about anything himself now that he was under the shelter of the dingy forest.

“Of course there’s not, silly,” laughed Innocent, and his laughter acted as a kind of antidote to the depressing woodland and its antique atmosphere, “it’s all superstition. I’d have thought you’d know that! They used to call old ladies witches if they had warts and knew how to cure measles with herbs they found in ditches! But really all they were was old ladies with a bit of what we call country wisdom these days.”

“I know,” murmured Wallace, “it’s just that it looks … so spooky!”

“You’ve not seen anything yet,” grinned Innocent. “Come on. I’ll show you my special place!”

And showing no signs of nervousness or fear he led Wallace towards the front door of the tumble-down cottage. And that door, once painted a dark green, was now an indescribable shade of forest, with browns and greys almost swamping the mottled and peeling green.

Wallace followed Innocent. The door was neither open nor shut but twisted at a crazy angle so that they could squeeze past it. Inside, there were still the remnants of rotted furniture, filling the air with a damp and musty aroma. A rodent of some sort scurried across the floor, and made Wallace jump.

“Horrible,” was all he could say.

“This way,” grinned Innocent, and fearlessly he led the way to a door that seemed to be just about intact set into one inside wall.

“Through here,” he said, almost breezily.

“Where to?” asked Wallace, who still thought they should be anywhere but in that derelict cottage. “This place might fall in on us at any time, and we’ll be trapped,” he added in an attempt to explain his nervousness.

“And it might not,” philosophised Innocent. “Come on.”

He pushed that interior door and it swung open easily.

“I’ve oiled it,” he grinned.

On the other side of the door was a flight of stone steps. “Down here,” said Innocent, “it’s okay and perfectly safe. Come on, and I’ll tell you what we’ve got here.”

The two boys descended the steps until they reached a black and totally unilluminated space at the bottom. Wallace could see nothing at all, not even his hand when he held it in front of his face.

“Good thing I brought this then,” said Innocent, and he produced a battery powered torch. Its steady beam cut through the dingy dark of an underground cellar. There was little down there, but Wallace was intrigued to notice what had to be a folded camp bed against one wall and a pile of coal in the corner.

“It must have been a coal cellar!” he said.

“It was. But why the bed?” asked Innocent, “I’ve been puzzling over that ever since I found the place.”

“Maybe the roof leaked in the cottage and the old lady, the one you told me about, the witch, moved down here to keep dry in winter?” suggested Wallace. “It’s not much of a place though, is it, and she’d have needed quite a good supply of batteries if her only light was a torch like yours.”

“It won’t have been at all pleasant,” nodded Innocent, “but you do see what we’ve got here, don’t you?”

“Of course. A dirty old cellar with rats in it,” said Wallace, staring at the corners where his friend directed the beam of his torch.

“It’s more than that,” grinned Innocent in the darkness. “Can’t you see? Use your imagination and forget the rats for a moment...”

“No.” Wallace shook his head, “that’s all I can see, and rats aren’t that easily forgotten!”

“Then I’d best tell you,” murmured Innocent Umbago, “remember what Mr Tewbury’s been telling us? About the way there might be a war? And that there might be nuclear weapons, hydrogen bombs and the like, flying everywhere, blasting the world to craters and Kingdom Come? And don’t forget what he said, that is, if any bombs are coming our way we’ll be given a four minute warning before they get here?”

“It still scares me,” confessed Wallace.

“It scares me too, but forget that. Because what we’ve got here, a four minute ride from home if we pedal dead quick, is our own personal nuclear bunker. Shut that door up above and the only thing that’ll hurt us is a direct hit, and horrible as it is I reckon it’s unlikely. We’ll be safe down here while the world above us burns, Wallace old friend, just you and me and… well, you can bring Penny with you if I can bring Sarah!”

© Peter Rogerson 13.06.19