"It's just a hill with some bones in it, Mom." I remember the rest of the conversation from my childhood in West Wales as if it were yesterday. My mother started kneading the dough for the Saturday evening's apple pie more forcefully as she replied. "Old Fern Hill is not just a hill, Danny, and they're not just bones. They say that tumulus on the top is five thousand years old, and was a Druid burial ground." "Oh come on, Mom! Those legends about the tumulus and the Druids' curse are old wives' tales. None of us kids believe them anymore," I said, not quite believing that statement myself, but it was a thing for a teenage boy to say to his parents at that time. "Well, all I know is that in your great grandmother's day some boys went camping there overnight and were never seen again." She almost sung those words with her lilting Welsh accent. "Where's the proof? That's just hearsay passed down the generations." "Whatever it is I don't want you playing up there, and anyway it's private property these days, so you'd be trespassing too." And she turned away and went over to the sink to wash the late August apples which my father and younger brother had gathered from our garden. I was thirteen years old and was at a rebellious stage. My voice was breaking, I was growing tall, and the world was my oyster. My parents and the past generations with all their superstitions could be discarded like my junior school's short trousers. Hence, that very afternoon found me with my classmates Rick and Ted - "bad influences" according to my mom - sitting at the base of the grass-covered tumulus on the top of Old Fern Hill. Not old enough to purchase alcohol we had to content ourselves with bottles of Coca Cola from the grocery store. Ted had managed to get us some cigarettes from one of the cigarette machines that could be found outside shops in those far off days of the early 70s. They were a packet of twenty Players No 6, popular with working class teenagers and young men. We looked down over the fields that led back to the terraced-house estate where we lived, like lords surveying their domain. Our cigarettes, "fags" as we called them, made us feel grown up, tough, and important. "Well I'm off to find a place to pee," I said, inhaling the smoke from my fag sharply. After an hour the Coca Cola had gone to my bladder. "Go in the ferns at the bottom of the hill. No one will see you there," said Ted. "That's what I did when I was last here with the boys," he made a point of adding, to show that he had braved Old Fern Hill before. I had a sudden urge to assert my own courage in front of my fellow lords of the land. "I think I'll go behind the tumulus. Nobody will see me from that side of the hill." "No 'body' maybe but watch out for the ghosts," said Rick. He was making a joke of it but I could feel the respect in his eyes as I strode off. Local legends still meant something in those days. The other side of the tumulus was in shadow and looked over a couple of fields which ended at the periphery of the ancient woods. "This landscape must have been similar thousands of years ago," I thought to myself. I imagined the Old Fern Hill in prehistoric times emerging from the forest that would have then surrounded it like a green sea. My imagination conjured up Druids walking up to the top to perform their ceremonies. And the tumulus itself? Who or what lay buried beneath? "I'm just watering the turf, just watering the turf, like the falling rain," I muttered as I did my sacrilegious act. Suddenly I was a frightened boy again and I rushed back to where Ted and Rick were sitting. "Got another fag, Ted?" I asked, trying not to sound like I needed one. Ted proffered the pack and I took my third No 6 of the afternoon. I struck a Swann match and was about to put flame to cigarette when without warning a wind swept across the hill from the wood side and blew out the match. It was a chill wind quite out of character for the warm late August afternoon. For what seemed like a minute we shivered in our t-shirts as if in a trance and then the warmth returned but it was growing dusk. Surely it hadn't been this late in the afternoon? We were all too confused to work things out. Ted's response was instinctive and he spoke for all of us. "What the hell was that? Right. I'm out of here. Let's go." We ran down the hill leaving our Coca Cola bottles and fag ends to litter the hill. We didn't stop until we had traversed the fields and reached the road leading into the estate and we parted with muted goodbyes. Shaken yet safe! But then my world fell apart. First there was the explosion and immediately after it the column of flame shooting into the sky then vanishing.So, here I was again, on Old Fern Hill just below the tumulus at the top, at the same time of the year, late August. Beside me stood Mr. Jones. He had promised that he would classify me as "mentally sound" if I would accompany him back to the hill and see the tumulus without breaking down. I had been unable to face going back to my home estate for the four years following the explosion and this was the test that would determine my future. It was a forty-minute drive in Mr. Jones' Ford Cortina from the orphanage to the road at the base of the hill and a ten-minute walk across the fields and up to the tumulus. "Come on, let's go to the other side, Danny," said Mr. Jones. He seemed proud of himself as a man of reason, a mentor to the young. However, to me he was no role-model but someone I needed to humour to move on to independence. He would have been annoyed to find out that I had bought a small crucifix on a chain prior to the trip. I clasped it in my pocket as we walked to the other side of the tumulus, the side facing the ancient woods where I had done what I had done on that fateful day. I was not a practicing Christian but I thought I needed all the protection I could get. "Deliver me from evil, Deliver me from evil," I silently prayed as we ascended the hill to drown deeper echoing thoughts of "Old Fern Hill, Old Fern Hill, Uffern Hill, Hell Hill, Hell, Hell, Hell!" Mr. Jones I assumed was an atheist and would have no doubt dismissed religion as a branch of superstition. Praying together at the tumulus was out of the question. We stood looking up the grassy side of the tumulus that rose ten feet or so above our heads. "You see, there's nothing to be afraid of. There are no evil ghosts or demons here just bones of a primitive pagan tribe somewhere within." "Yes, sir. You're right," I said but my pale face revealed my fear. Mr. Jones felt he needed to prove his point and, I sensed, his manhood, just as I had done years before. He suddenly strode up the side of the tumulus and stood at the top. He proceeded to conduct a mock exorcism. "In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost I consign thee to eternal darkness all evil spirits herein!" He jogged down the side and patted me on the back, job done. "OK. Time to go home, my boy." We walked to the other side of the tumulus. And then the wind came again. The chilly blast from the woodland side caught the back of our necks and made us shiver on this late summer afternoon. Again, after recovering from our disorientation, the time seemed much later than it should have been and the evening twilight was appearing in the fields below. Mr. Jones was visibly shaken as we walked down the hill. I had told him in the orphanage the details of my experience with Ted and Rick, but I considered it unwise to say anything now. I held my crucifix tight in my pocket, to deliver me from evil, and hoped my respectful attitude to "Hell Hill" would prevent any personal retribution this time round. Mr. Jones recovered himself as he drove along the crowded highway back to the orphanage. He didn't mention the wind and had obviously consigned it to a freak weather event, a harbinger of the evening coolness and the autumn. "Right, Danny. I'll see you tomorrow morning for our final interview. I am satisfied that you are of sound mind so my job is completed." "Thank you, Mr. Jones. I appreciate all your help," I said as I got out of the car and went through the Victorian gates.x x x Almost Lovecraftian this somber tale of natural horror, Put me in mind of some of the Master's Cthulhu mythos. How about younz guys? Respond on our BBS. - GM
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