Ghost Realm [S.S. Col.] by Finch Paul

Author:Finch, Paul [Finch, Paul]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fantasy, Fiction, Ghost Stories, Horror, Short Stories
ISBN: 9781553103141
Publisher: Ash-Tree Press
Published: 2013-06-10T22:00:00+00:00

The Crannog

A STORY OF WALES

I CUT LECTURES EARLY that Friday afternoon, scarpering back home before one o’clock. Once there, with my mum and dad still out at work, I made myself a quick lunch of cheese and pickle sandwiches and a mug of coffee, then dashed up to my room to check that my gear was prepared. It was, which was a good thing, because less than a minute later I heard the impatient toot of Uncle Arthur’s car horn.

I grabbed my rucksack and sleeping bag and hastened outside, closing and locking the door behind me. My uncle’s white Volvo Estate was rumbling by the kerb . . . as my uncle was no doubt rumbling inside it, furious that I wasn’t ready and waiting on the pavement, furious that I wasn’t already in the car with him, furious that we weren’t already in Wales, our hide pitched, our eyes glued to our cameras.

‘Afternoon all,’ I said, jumping into the back.

‘Yo,’ my cousin Leonard replied from his usual position, which was half-buried under mountains of camping equipment.

Uncle Arthur merely grunted, ‘Keith.’

Then he got his foot down, and we rocketed out of the cul-de-sac and up the main road towards the motorway junction. This weekend we were headed for Powys in south-central Wales, which was about a hundred miles from our Lancashire home. Ordinarily it wouldn’t have taken us more than two hours to reach it, especially at the speeds Uncle Arthur preferred to travel, but this was a Friday afternoon, and thanks to the baffling, but now traditional, northwards-southwards and southwards-northwards migrations that always seemed to occur in the U.K. at this time of the week, the highways would be chocka. We’d move at a snail’s pace, and my uncle would spend his entire time swearing and cursing folk he was absolutely convinced had less right to be on the roads than he did, and bringing—as my mother so often reflected—his ‘inevitable heart-attack’ that little bit closer.

From my personal point of view, any amount of standing traffic would be worth it so long as we actually reached our goal before nightfall. I was only sixteen at the time, one year older than Leonard. I hadn’t discovered girls to any satisfying degree at this stage of my life, and drinking myself senseless on Fridays and Saturdays didn’t appeal just yet, so the prospect of camping out every weekend with my uncle and cousin wasn’t anathema to me. In fact, it was a joy. This year alone, though it was still the dead of winter—early February to be precise—we’d already spent nights under canvas in such far-flung locations as the Western Isles of Scotland, East Anglia’s fen country, and the windswept moors of North Yorkshire. However, our target this time, Llangorse Lake—and more particularly, the crannog out in the middle of it—would be the best yet. At least, as far as I was concerned. You see, I shared my uncle’s love of remote and bleak locations, and I was genuinely interested in bird-watching, which was my uncle’s sole reason to exist.

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