Creative Writing Course

[Draken]

Bleaklow

The wind tugged at the fog and blew about the thin layer of powdery snow. Frank struggled up out of the narrow stream bed, his flying boots shlucking reluctantly out of the boggy ground that lay beneath the snow. He crested the next outcrop in the vain hope of spotting something other than snowy moorland and solid greyness. But there was nothing to see other than yet another muddy stream cutting through the peat, yet more dead brown heather gathering snow. Beyond, indistinct in the swirling grey, was yet another jagged mass of rock, poking through the hillside’s soft brown skin like broken bones.

He turned to Mitch, who was still standing on the other side of the stream he had just forded. The kid was looking up at him dejectedly. Frank knew Mitch was blaming himself for getting them in this fix: after all, he was the navigator. But Frank wasn’t one for dwelling on such things: he figured they needed to pull together to get through this. Besides, plotting a course through bad weather was never easy. Add to that they were trying to cross an island they knew next to nothing about – well it was an accident waiting to happen.

No, if Frank blamed anyone it was the jerk who wanted the ship ferried across the country by nightfall, and be damned if it was Christmas Day. He looked back the way they had come: a misshapen tail fin could still just be seen above the skyline, black against the grey. Well the jerk sure wasn’t going to get what he wanted.

“C’mon kid,” called Frank. “We need to find some shelter or surviving the crash will be the least of our worries.”

Mitch nodded and clambered down into the deep trench cut by the stream, splashing across it before climbing out over the other bank with difficulty. “Jeez, Frank, I’ve no idea which way to head. You sure we shouldn’t just stay with the plane?”

Frank shook his head firmly. “Those rocks ripped her open like tinfoil,” he reminded. “She’s no good as shelter. And there’s gas pouring everywhere, one spark from a battery and boom.”

Frank hadn’t been much of a one for schooling, but all the same he was smart and blessed with a good memory. He pictured in his mind the map they had pencilled their flight path onto that morning. “We should have been south of this high ground,” he mused out loud. “So we strayed north, but we don’t know how far. I bet we’re in Derby Shire, or maybe even York Shire. Either way, these hills run north to south. So I say we head east or west.”

“The wind was supposed to be from the north east,” offered Mitch. He said this without conviction. He had plotted his course based on the forecast wind: either the direction had changed or it wasn’t as strong as he’d expected. Either that or he had got his calculations completely wrong. That couldn’t have happened…could it?

Frank turned to face the chilly gusts. A few icy little snowflakes stung his eyes. “Ok so let’s say I’m looking north east….” He pointed to the hidden horizon, a way right of where he was looking. “That makes east thataway. Yeah?”

Mitch shrugged and nodded. “Guess so. You’re reckoning we should head that way then?”

Frank shrugged. “Yeah why not. These streams are more or less flowing that way. If all we find is an empty valley, at least we’ll be outta this wind.”

Mitch nodded again. He was a city boy, born and bred: he wasn’t a one for blazing a trail. Frank was older than he was, and a higher rank too. Not only that, he was from a little town way out in the sticks in Virginia. The long flight over the Atlantic had been whiled away by swapping tales of their youth, and Frank’s had been about his days in the mountains, hunting with his pa or just plain skipping school. Frank was a country boy all right, he’d know what to do. Mitch was happy to let him make the decisions.

As he struck off in the direction he had indicated, Frank did not share Mitch’s confidence. He felt light headed and cold. The going was harder than he expected too: with each step his boots disappeared into the sodden peat up to the ankle, and the effort needed to pull them out and move on was sapping him. With the horizon lost in a blur of cloud and fog, he had no points of reference. He couldn’t even tell if they were moving uphill or down: the ground undulated from stream to outcrop and back down to stream.

He climbed over another peat bank and looked up for the rocks he was aiming for. They looked further to the left than he expected. Or was it those rocks over there? They looked so damn similar, he couldn’t be sure…. Despite the cold, a bead of anxious sweat trickled down from his temple. They were gonna survive a plane crash but die on this darned hill, all because he couldn’t find a way off of it! “Goddamn it!” he shouted in sudden frustration, startling Mitch.

Frank guessed which rocks he should be making for and took a pace towards them, but Mitch stopped him. He pulled on the older man’s sleeve, motioning him to shush. “Did you hear that?”

Frank cocked his head. All he could hear was the thin wind gusting around him and whistling in his ears. He was about to shake his head when he caught the faintest sound. It was a sort of high-pitched cry, hollow and eerie. His blood turned to ice.

Both men stood transfixed. The keening came again, a little louder but no less unearthly.

“Frank! Frank!” Mitch was tugging at the older man’s cuff like an insistent kid. “Whaddya think that is, huh?” His eyes were wide and frightened.

“I – I dunno Mitch. Quit pulling at me!”

The young navigator bit his lip. “I mean…you don’t think… you know England is really old right? Maybe it’s a ghost or something? What you think, Frank?”

Frank was thinking he should tell the kid to stop being stupid, but in truth his mind was running down the same road. His pa had told him stories about the ghosts of frontiersmen up in the mountains, and of Indian spirits that prowled the rivers and forests. Mitch was right, England WAS old. And perhaps he was right about what it was out there too…. Frank cleared his throat but said nothing to the kid.

The noise came again. A wordless wailing that trailed off into nothing.

“You – you hear stories about ghosts helping people in a fix, yeah?” babbled Mitch. “You know, there’s no rule says a ghost has to scare you, huh? Could be, you know, the ghost of a friendly shepherd or something?”

A movement ahead of them caught Frank’s attention. An indistinct form in the mist. Something heading towards them. The sound came again, clearer now and definitely being made by the figure : “Helllooo...”

Next instant the shape resolved itself into a person. Frank sighed with relief and smiled around at Mitch before waving his arms above his head. “Yeah, hello! Over here!”

The figure approached. As it emerged from the fog Frank thought at first he must be a military guy too: he wore a bulky green heavy-duty jacket with matching pants. But then it became clear that the ‘he’ was in fact a broad, and one that was too old to be enlisted. Maybe some kinda Limey female reservist?

It didn’t matter. “Boy are we glad to see you!” he greeted.

[Draken]

She stared at him with slightly glazed eyes, like she wasn’t really focussing on him. Though she was standing not more than two yards away, the fog seemed to thicken and swirl about her, making her indistinct.

“I thought I’d heard someone…!” she said uncertainly. “The weather caught you out, too?” She spoke in a funny way that sounded sort of old-fashioned: nothing like how Limeys spoke in the movies.

Frank nodded. “You could say that. We don’t even know where we are.”

“Bleaklow,” she replied.

“Wow, that’s one appropriate name,” said Mitch.

Frank snorted. “Well sure is bleak. But not low enough for my liking. Listen, ma’am, are you as lost as we are? Or do you know a way down off here? Me and the kid really need to get warm and call the base.”

The woman did not answer immediately. Her face was wreathed in mist that was added to by her frozen breath, making it hard to read her expression. There was a distant, other-worldly air to her that made Frank feel ill-at-ease.

“Yes I’m lost,” she said at last. “I know this hill but I’m off my usual path. The fog makes it dangerous: there are cliffs all around. We need to head south and pick up the road.”

Frank looked at Mitch and shrugged. “South, not east hey? Looks like I guessed wrong.”

“But we need to find the monument,” continued the woman. “It’s easy once we find that: due south from there. Have you seen it?”

Both Frank and Mitch shook their heads.

“What about Greygrough Rocks?” she tried. “A set of rounded boulders, three of them together. Two big ones with a smaller one between.”

“Hey!” exclaimed Mitch. “Hey yeah! I saw a bunch of rocks like that! Back that way, near where we started from!”

Frank grinned. “Ok folks, all we have to do now is follow our….” His words faded as he turned to face the way they had just come.

‘Wouldya look at that?’ he said in disbelief. In the brief time they had been standing there, the snow had already managed to obliterate their tracks.

“Well at least we know the rough direction,” said the woman. “It will be all right I’m sure.”

Frank, Mitch and the Brit lady set off back towards, they hoped, the rocks Mitch had spotted. Frank was relieved to be with someone else: she might be a bit kooky and almost as lost as they were, but at least she knew these hills and had a plan to get off them. However as he trudged through the morass of the peat bogs he could not entirely quell the disquiet stirring inside him. There was something wrong about her. The mist moved around her in an odd, clinging way, keeping her blurred and out of focus. And there had been a strange look in her eyes that bothered him.

With Frank advising the woman as best he could on the route, the group picked its way from outcrop to outcrop. Frank was starting to think he didn’t recognise anything around him and wondering if he’d only managed to make things worse for all three of them when the woman suddenly stopped. She pointed to a set of shapes looming indistinctly ahead. “Greygrough Rocks,” she announced.

Then she looked round, scanning for something. “And there’s the monument.” She pointed away to the right.

About twenty yards from the rocks a column of concrete rose from the peat. It was three or four feet high and topped by a slanting slab, edged along one side with snow. Mitch looked from rocks to monument. “How come we didn’t see that before?” he pondered out loud.

Frank strode over towards the monument. As he neared it, the boulders a few yards beyond came into view… and showed themselves to not be boulders at all. They were weathered metal ribs, sparsely covered by a few square yards of crumpled aluminium skin.

“So some other poor saps crashed here?” he asked.

The woman looked down at the aging wreckage and nodded. “Yes. These hills are littered with crash sites I’m afraid,” she said. “They make me sad.” There was a haunted, melancholy look in her eyes.

“So what brings you out here on a Christmas Day?” asked Mitch, trying to lighten things. “Especially in this weather?”

She smiled sadly. “We would always make this our Christmas Day walk – me and my husband. He’s gone now but I like to keep the tradition alive. I suppose I’m just a lost soul that wanders Bleaklow every Christmas Day – year in year out, no matter what the weather.” She sighed and seemed about to say something else, but instead she looked down at the compass she had hung around her neck on a piece of red cord. She held it up and let the needle settle.

“South is that way,” she announced, nodding off to the left somewhere. “We’ll be on the road in fifteen minutes.”

She set off, but something made both airmen linger a moment, unwilling to follow her just yet. “This has been one bitch of a day,” said Frank, looking down at the twisted remnants of the old wreck. “But I guess we’re lucky all the same. I still have no idea how we got out of our plane alive.”

Mitch didn’t reply. Frank looked up at him. He was staring down at the slab that topped the monument. Frank moved over to him and followed his gaze. Mitch raised a trembling finger and pointed to the two names carved on the memorial plaque beneath the crest of the United States Army Air Force.

“We didn’t get out alive, Frank,” he whispered.

*

She turned and looked back, shaken by the experience. As she had expected, there was nobody there. She could still make out the World War Two wreckage and the monument, standing cold and lonely in their patch of snow-crusted moor. Footprints led up to them and then over to where she now stood: just one set of footprints, made by her feet alone. She fancied she maybe caught a last glimpse of the two wartime aviators dissolving into the darkening greyness, but the fog suddenly swirled denser and she could not be sure.

A shiver ran through her and she turned to walk back to safety.

[inked]

Excellent! Very, pardon the pun, atmospheric!

[Earniel]

Wow, indeed very atmospheric... You can almost feel the snowflakes in your face and the peat sucking at your boots. I didn't see the twist coming until the very old wreckage was mentioned. Very nice, very nice indeed.

[Draken]

Thanks folks, glad you liked my parting shot!

I've always wanted to write SOMETHING about the wrecks in the Peak District (which is in my home county). The larger wreckage is still there to this day. And with the ground being so boggy, quite often the bodies were buried deep underground by the impact of the crash and not recovered. Which is a good basis for a ghost story!

The Americans had some sort of depot at Burtonwood in Cheshire from where they would ferry aircraft to the frontline stations in the East - which could take them over the Peak. But there are also Canadian, German and of course British wrecks there - the hills were very democratic in who they claimed.