There's No Place like home

Chapter 1. Chasing a Myth

It was happening twenty miles west of London in the county of Berkshire, England. On a scorching summer's day in the middle of June, the chase was definitely on...

Along the old winding, Saint Mary's Road, deep in the heart of the highly populated village of Langley, sped eagerly two forest-green grammar school uniforms—and, of course, their thirteen-year-old contents, Sarah and Terry.

'He's gone into the Saint Mary's graveyard,' said Sarah excitedly, peeping over a low red-bricked wall that hemmed in the ancient Saint Mary's church and its surrounding grounds and graveyard. 'See him?'

'Yeah...you don't think he's spotted us, do you?' said her friend Terry, his head appearing beside hers. The two of them looked like a couple of excited talking fairground coconuts waiting to be hit off their pegs.

'No, I don't think so,' answered Sarah.

'Blimey, he moves like grease lightning!' said Terry. 'I mean to say, how can a ten-year-old move like that? No wonder he can disappear without trace just as the myth says.'

'Come on, before he disappears again,' said Sarah, nudging Terry urgently.

Off the pair of them scurried with great haste tempered only with the need to keep their chase a secret from their quarry. The green blazers of their school uniform would serve as useful cover in the thickly wooded greenery of the graveyard they were making a beeline for. Sarah's uniform was tidily worn with all her buttons done up and her school tie neatly tucked into her blazer. Her ponytail kept her flaxen hair in place as she raced smoothly to the graveyard. Terry's uniform, on the other hand, was always dishevelled with his blazer unbuttoned, the top button of his white cotton shirt unbuttoned, and his green and gold striped school tie poorly tied and very loose; and his dark hair seemed out of control as if each strand of hair had a mind of its own. He charged alongside Sarah in a slightly uncoordinated manner almost as if he was slightly intoxicated. They made for quite a contrast in styles. Sarah, neat, smooth and stylish in both her clothing and athleticism. Terry, untidy, rough and unstylish in his athleticism.

Minutes later, they found themselves crouching behind some thick fortuitous privet bushes somewhere in the heart of the woody graveyard. Through the tight leafy branches, they could see the small boy looking around suspiciously.

'He's stopped, for sure,' whispered Sarah getting her breath back. 'This might be where he disappears.'

'But there's nowhere to disappear to,' Terry whispered back between two deep gasping breaths. 'There's just an old grave he's dithering about by.'

'I thought we'd lost him...can't believe his speed. Suppose it's because he's not really a ten-year-old, even if he appears as one. Perhaps he's an alien, or something.'

'Well, he might not be the boy from the myth,' whispered Terry, breathing easily now, 'but the caretaker's face, when he spotted him in the high street.'

'Yes,' agreed Sarah, 'and the boy's face, when he spotted that the caretaker had spotted him.'

'Yeah but...I mean to say...I still don't believe there's any truth to the myth. They say the last time he appeared he lived with the caretaker, in the school house. And that was over twenty years ago. The caretaker was always telling us the myth, and how the little boy lived with him. And we always laughed in his face. Laughed our silly heads off, didn't we.'

'And that's why the boy had such a spooked expression,' whispered Sarah. 'And that's why we've followed him. But what's he up to, standing here in the middle of a graveyard?'

'Hmmm... Well his uniform certainly looks old fashioned. I mean to say, who wears short trousers and a silly maroon school cap these days?'

The boy stood still looking around suspiciously and seemed to be trying to make a decision of some kind. His maroon cap, light-grey blazer hemmed by a bright yellow ribbon bordering, short light-grey trousers, spotless white cotton shirt and his maroon and yellow striped tie were all in immaculate order. He looked much smarter than Sarah did, which is quite an achievement.

'Terry!' breathed Sarah urgently, squeezing Terry's shoulder so hard it was all he could do, to implode a yelp. 'The grave! THE GRAVE! Where the boy's standing.'

'What about it?'

'Don't you see?'

'No. What? It's just a grave.'

'It's true, the myth's true!'

'Huh?'

'LOOK AT THE NAME ON THE HEADSTONE!' demanded Sarah in the loudest undertone she could muster.

Terry focussed his eyes on the grave's chunky block of a headstone, which rested at the end of the rectangular stone prostrate gravestone. And on that headstone, he read the lettering that was chiselled out over 300 years ago:

Daniel Dalton 1701-1710.

Did die peacefully in sleep.

Age of 9 years. RIP.

'Blimey,' muttered Terry, wide-eyed, '"Daniel Dalton"—well that's the name of the boy in the myth, anyhow.'

'Shh, look, he's doing something!' warned Sarah, almost forgetting to whisper.

The small boy approached the headstone of the grave, which had a small stone angel standing upon it with its head bowed and its hands in prayer. Standing on the grave's gravestone, the boy grasped the angel by its waist with both hands and twisted it around clockwise three times. Then he jumped off the gravestone and looked down at it.

A loud muffled metallic click jumped out from somewhere beneath the gravestone causing Sarah and Terry to jerk backwards in surprise.

The boy leaned over the gravestone and levered the angel down until it lay horizontal on the headstone sideways on to the gravestone. He jumped back and waited. Suddenly, a loud crack of breaking stone disturbed the graveyard causing a mass of fluttering wings to burst forth as the graveyard's bird population took flight.

Sarah and Terry looked curiously on...

The gravestone slowly flipped down, headfirst, into the ground as if it were on a giant hinge. A loud rumbling noise followed and shook the ground around the grave.

Sarah and Terry could hardly contain their amazement and excitement at what they were witnessing. Risking discovery, they pushed their heads through the leafy privet branches to get a better look. They glimpsed the beginning of a stone stairway slowly sliding into place beneath the open gravestone, starting from the opposite side to where the stone had swung down. The boy hopped onto the stairway and quickly disappeared somewhere into the bowels of the graveyard.

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I hope you enjoyed this Chapter. I welcome any votes, comments or constructive criticisms (style, spelling, grammar and punctuation errors).

T. J. P. CAMPBELL.