Just Kids Playing

Meeting up with my friends David, Charlie and Scott made every school day worth the effort. The hours of prolonged, but necessary force-fed education gave a growing boy the appetite to expand his mind when the bell rang and we all left school for the day. The group of kids that I hung around with were all local to the area, in fact we all lived within two hundred yards of each other in the village of Godolphin Cross. Set in a valley between two overlooking hills and surrounded by extensive farmland as well as the gloriously spooky Godolphin Woods, the village was a fairly busy place, there was the Primary School that served the outlying areas of the nearest town, Helston, as well as a Post Office, two small stores, a Car Repair Garage and the Pub.

It was a Thursday afternoon when the four of us were tentatively exploring the woods around the exact places that we had been told by our parents not to be, when we came across the ramshackle old barn that was hidden from view by dense copse just as the woods really got started. It had been Scott's idea to come down here because out of all of us, he could be considered the group leader. The rest of us tended to gravitate around what ever it was that he felt like doing because when it came down to it, it was either that or stay at home and get in the way. These were good times to be ten years old, us children had the freedom of the village within reason. Obviously there were places that we were told not to go to and to stay off private property unless invited but kids will be kids and all that.

The barn had been a deep red colour at some stage but the paint had dried out in the sun and aged into a morose kind of rusty pink. The structure itself was intact enough from what we could see but it had certainly been abandoned quite some time ago. Scott fought his way through the final few gorse bushes and small trees that stood in his way and stood in front of the barn with that goonish smile on his face.

"Hey Guys!" he crooned, "We got a new base camp!"

I looked around nervously. I thought that I knew the surrounding area fairly well for my age but had certainly not been here anytime before. I was the member of the group that liked to kick a ball about, maybe go for a bike ride, so exploring and base camps were not that high on my agenda.

"Looks pretty spooky." I said.

Scott looked at me, I could tell by his face that he was excited and probably wanted to tease me about my nerves but my return stare quietened him. He looked around at the relic of a barn again and sighed.

"It does, doesn't it?" he replied. "Maybe we should all go home and learn knitting."

With that he was gone, head first into the barn and out of our sight. The three of us stood stock still for a few moments, waiting for each other to make the first move. Before we could there was a loud creaking sound and a crash from within the barn. It was fair to say that at least two of us would require a change of underwear before the dusk but then one of the old shuttered windows on the first floor swung open and there was Scott, beaming from ear to ear looking down on us. He had strands of hay in his hair and stuck to his pullover.

"It looks full of hay!" he announced triumphantly. "Come on!"

He disappeared inside again and that somehow broke the stranglehold of fear in the rest of us. We all ran forward and into the barn as one tight little unit.

Inside was quite dark and very smelly. The age old smell of long gone farm animals and their leavings along with a damp scent of rotting hay. I looked up and saw instantly what had caused the crash that we heard earlier, Scott had gotten himself up to the first floor by a rickety old ladder that had snapped under his weight and the top half was dangling from two nails that had held it in place. The bottom half lay on the concrete floor in about four pieces. As I scanned the upstairs, I noticed two large holes in the roof that had allowed foliage to thrust it's way through and deduced that this had happened a long while ago. The top floor was a bit like a veranda, with no solid walls up there and very open plan. Scott appeared again up there and I smiled up at him because he was obviously having the time of his life. The other two had moved together further into the barn, doing a little exploring of their own. I went and caught up with them, noticing as I did that the barn was very long and quite thin. As we went further in, Scott leapt down from the first floor and landed on a collection of hay bales. The hay cushioned his jump easily and it became obvious that he would've been happy doing that until it was time to head home. Then come back and do the same tomorrow.

We all agreed to explore a little further inside but that we would also leave some for the next time, that way we had something to do tomorrow and the day after rather than doing it all at once. As we moved forward down the central alley we noticed that the hay was stacked neatly on either side and I found this odd. To me it meant that somebody had been here fairly recently and kept things this way, but for a moment we couldn't see another way in or out of the barn other than the way that we had got here. It certainly didn't look like anything live was kept here anymore, there were no fresh or even part fresh leavings on the floor for a start and that gave me the feeling that we were not alone. Paranoid? Maybe, but as I said earlier, I was not the one to go to for using my imagination or to be adventurous.

We all came to the far end gable wall of the barn with a collective thump. The light was very poor now, I could only see Scott in silhouette because he was busily exploring everywhere and not just staying to the central aisle. The end wall was solid brick housing one dirty window. I climbed over hay to get to it and have a look out, mostly to try and judge exactly where we were because I had just followed the group to get to the barn and had not been paying that much attention. I knew that we were headed into the woods but we must've left the road that runs through the middle at some point and I couldn't recall where. The view that I got confused me at first because I was expecting to see nothing but trees and dense woodland. What I saw was a large open field with fresh cut hay bales dotted around and as I squinted hard, could see the council terrace in the distance where both Scott and I lived, albeit three houses apart. I summoned the others to the window and they all took their turn to look through. David took his turn last and mused for a moment when he had finished.

"Looks like we are way out from where we came in." he said, looking at us.

"What do you mean?" we replied together.

"I think I know this field." he said getting up and having another look and then sitting back down again. "It's the field that me and my mate Jack used to play in before I moved here."

For the first time that afternoon, but not the first time in my life, I felt a pang of fear in my belly. Something was not right here because I knew, as well as the others that David had moved to Godolphin from somewhere in Somerset just a few years ago and that none of us knew anyone called Jack. Scott looked through the window again and when he spoke I fully expected him to have seen the same field that I had with our houses in the closer distance. What he said next confused the hell out of the situation.

"Its Sithney Common." he announced with certainty. "This is the place where my Dad took me to the fair one day last summer. I know because I haven't seen him since and I-I..." he suddenly welled up and clambered away, wiping his eyes as he went.

The next few moments were quite bizarre in that they seemed to last for hours. Periodically each of us would go to the window and have another look through before returning to the single hay bale that we sat on together. Charlie claimed to see the start of the track that would lead onto Tregonning Hill and the World War One monument at its apex. He said that he would often go there with his Grandad and have a small picnic but had stopped going a few years ago when his Grandad had found it more and more difficult to make the ascent. I could still see the open field with my house there but now I could also see that the afternoon daylight was beginning to wain.

"We'd better think about getting back," I said. "I don't know what the time is but it will be getting dark before long and I don't want to be here then."

Charlie had one of those new fangled digital watches that lights the screen up when you press the little button and he did so. He jumped up quickly as though spooked.

"Christ Alive!" he cried, "It's 5:40!"

We all looked at each other and there was an instant connect between us. We were all supposed to report home for our dinners by 6pm! We made our way back the way we had come through the barn and before long stood in front of the broken and aged building again. Now Scott knew exactly where he was again and he led us in single file back to the road. From there my geographical brain re-engaged and I knew also that we were just ten minutes from home. We trudged back along the roadside, still in single file and stared at shoes as we walked, nobody saying anything. Soon after we got back into the village, Charlie and David went their separate ways to their own homes saying 'See you tomorrow!' as they went. Scott and I walked up the road together in silence at first but when I reached my garden gate he grabbed my arm.

"I'm going back there tomorrow!" he announced. I could still see the redness in his eyes from where he had welled up and I could tell just by his voice that he was confused and scared.

"What is it about that place?" I asked.

"How could I see Sithney Common Field from that barn window?" he replied. "We drove in Dad's car for half an hour before we got there!"

Suddenly the reality hit me and that Scott was right. We had walked into Godolphin Woods, it would make perfect sense to see Godolphin Woods through that barn window. With that in mind, I bid Scott goodbye and made my way inside my place. As I walked up the garden path, I saw Scott walking to his own house just a few yards further up with his head down. I think it was there and then that I decided to go back to the barn with him tomorrow (and the next day and the day after) if it meant finding out just what was going on with that old barn and it's very freaky window. I didn't sleep all that well that night.