The Waste Ground

The Waste Gound

James liked to explore a place ear marked for development and then abandoned. He wasn't sure what was meant to go up on this land. But, after digging lots of ditches and creating ten or so yards of concrete road, work had stopped, leaving behind a brilliant adventure play ground. Twisted metal springs and girders poked through the ground Nature had reclaimed much, with long grass, elder berry trees and thorn bushes James and his pals thought this was what the world would look like if civilisation was suddenly wiped out

James and his mates dubbed this place... The Waste Land. Interesting things were dumped, like old television sets who's valves resembled little second world war bombs, these made a nice loud pop sound when thrown hard at brickwork. Old prams were turned into pram cars and old mattresses were dragged to the front of a small square derelict building to create a diving off a roof game.

It was during the summer holidays James and two pals called Manning and Vince had been going round and round, running into the derelict building, climbing up through a hole in the ceiling and then diving off the roof, when Manning spotted a book lying outside on the ground. He picked up the book and opened it, somewhere in the middle and began reading out loud...”A hex on your enemy. Take a yard of string and tie nine knots evenly along its length. As you tie these knots recite the following verse.
With each knot on this string
A curse on your foe is on the wing
And like a wasp it will sting
And misery it will bring
Hide this piece of string near your victim and so long as its not found and the knots remain tied the spell will grow stronger each day”

“We should curse that bastard Bivins” laughed Vince
“Yeah lets do Bivins”
Mr Bivins was one teacher everybody feared. A strict disciplinarian who was always yanking some poor kid by the ear to the front of a class and then humiliating them. One day Bivins caught Vince passing a note under his desk to Hugh Fisher during class, this was a stupid note accusing Hugh of loving Mary Cooper, a rather gangly girl with pig tails and thick national health glasses. Bivins called Vince and Hugh out front
“give me the note boy” he said to Huge
“Read it out So that we that can all benefit from your wisdom” Bivins said to Vince pushing a crumpled piece of paper at him
“Hugh Fisher Loves Mary Cooper”
“Cant hear you boy read it again louder”
“Hugh Fisher loves Mary Cooper
“Louder”
“Hugh Fisher loves Mary Cooper”
“Again boy” Vince looked up
“How dare you raise your eyes to heaven in front of me boy” yelled Blivins,
cuffing Vince round the back of the head. Bivins put Hugh and Vince on everlasting detention and Vince was dreading the end of the holidays and the return to school and Bivins !

The book Manning found was called Satan's Grimoire. James thought this sounded a bit dodgy. But, there was no stopping Vince who quickly found a length of string lying close to where the book had been found and said “Come on guys lets do this” !

Vince led James and Manning back into the little single room of the little building it was pretty dark but a shaft of light coming through the hole in its ceiling meant the boys could just about see
“ come on say the rhyme then” said Vince
As the three lads began Knotting and chanting a dark figure appeared in the doorway wearing a monks costume. Slowly the figure removed the hood that had been hiding his face.
“Hello Sir what you doing here” said James his voice trembling.
“What am I doing here”? Said Bivins his voice coloured with the screams of Hell.
“What do you think you are doing here then”
THE END