by Brian Ripley
As soon as we did see the first glimmer of dawn and it got light enough to see the road, we started walking. We made some good progress because we could at last get up to our normal walking speed. There had been a sort of brave glamour in having got through the night in this way, something that neither of us had done before and the experience did bind our friendship even more firmly because it had been so unusual.
Reaching the next village at five thirty in the morning was of no help or assistance to us in any way. There not being a soul in sight and the two grocery shops that were probably the proud boast of that village, were quite rightly closed at that time of the morning. Still like half drowned rats, we trudged on and eventually came to the outskirts of Tonbridge Wells. By that time our feet were on fire from blisters which caused us to walk much, much slower but at least we could now see where we were walking.
We hitched a ride from a milkman but his little electric vehicle spent more time stationary than moving. Even so, it did give us the chance to drink three pints of his best milk which we never paid for. Hell, we had earned it. Finding the bus station in Tonbridge Wells was like finding a London bus on the backside of the moon. Although these blighters had probably lived all their lives in Tonbridge Wells, the locals that we met that morning, did not know too much about the area that they lived in.
It is quite possible that some sections of their brains were just not working properly. I could well imagine that Tonbridge Wells could do that to a person, especially over a long period of time.
There are continual breakthroughs in medical science and some remedial treatment might be attempted in the future. Photos of the bus station from different angles may help to restore those damaged parts of their brain.
We did speak to a lady walking her dog and she pointed out the way to the bus station. As with any medical condition, some people develop an immunity or perhaps she had not lived in Tonbridge Wells long enough to be contaminated.
When we eventually arrived at the bus station we were very pleased to see a small café open where we had a proper fried breakfast and two cups of much needed tea. Although we were running low on money at this stage, we had sufficient money for our return bus fares and we caught a workman’s bus at a reduced fare to get us back to Maidstone bus station.
The rain had stopped by the time we reached Maidstone and we filled in the time waiting for the Medway bus to arrive by swilling a further two cups of hot tea from another small café. It was only at that time that we began to talk about Dracula again. Now laughing about the whole thing, we decided that we had been given a good leg pull and vowed to assassinate the author of John’s paperback book.
In view of my much blistered feet, I much preferred to use a machine gun and shoot from the feet to the head, very, very slowly. This, I felt sure, would be a severe lesson to other author’s who lured innocent readers on wild goose chases, or in this case, rotting corpse chases.
However, John thought that hanging the bastard would be more appropriate. The Medway Towns finally came into view and once back in our beds on the house-boat, we both slept soundly for the rest of that day.
Sorefootnote:
We had both missed a day’s work on the motorway and it had seemed like a life-time ago when John had first asked me to go with him to Speldhurst village church. Yet we had done it and we had both lived to tell the tale. Considerably footsore, thoroughly exhausted, cold and wet through to the skin, we began to think that many of our friends would not have had the necessary stamina, guts or endurance to have done the same. We promised ourselves to each get thoroughly drunk over it all that very night.
Chapter Four
34 Years Later
John and myself went our separate ways after leaving the motorway job and I never saw him again but still count him as one of my great friends from the past. Not long afterwards I met a girl and was happily married for seventeen years and we had a beautiful daughter and life was very good for all of us.
Things do not stay the same for ever and despite several years of happy married bliss, we did separate and are much closer nowadays than we ever were when we were married, strange that. Being single again I began to spend time on new hobbies, carpentry and do-it-yourself projects mostly.
Household electrical wiring and constructing electronic gadgets became other interests of mine. It was hard to say which was my favourite hobby out of them all really. I also bought a tent to go camping with, the idea having come from one of my neighbour’s. He was a mine of information on the subject of tents and UK camp sites.
He introduced me to a little booklet that was printed once a year and gave full details of all the registered camp sites throughout the British Isles. In 1995 myself and four friends had five separate camping holidays in the UK and then one abroad. The first one of which was on the outskirts of Amsterdam.
Arriving by an economy coach, we got our first sight of Amsterdam at about four o’clock in the morning. We passed the time in various establishments drinking the local very strong coffee until the Tourist Information Office opened at eight AM. They were kind enough to direct us to a campsite which was called ‘Veedlewood’ or that is what it sounded like.
But whenever we asked for directions to ‘Veedlewood’ campsite, the locals usually doubled up laughing. There must have been a joke there somewhere but it was obviously far above our own foreign heads. On the many occasions that we did got lost and lose our way back to our camp site, we ask the locals where Veedlewood was.
We would patiently wait for the howling laughter to die down a bit and follow the pointed Dutch arms and fingers of the locals and maybe, maybe, come into sight of our campsite.
It may have been part of the joke, but we were very often sent off in the wrong direction purposely and had to retrace our steps to get back to the campsite on numerous occasions. Mind you, when the locals realized that we were from the UK, they were all smiles and they were very friendly to us.
Strangely though, this mostly only applied during daylight hours. Apart from the ‘Veedlewood’ episodes (which still remains one of life’s mysteries for us all), we had a very good experience of Amsterdam and thoroughly enjoyed our time there.
The next time we went to Amsterdam later that year we scrubbed around the ‘Veedlewood’ issue by leaving our tents behind and getting a cheap budget hotel. Just across the street from Amsterdam’s Centraal Station the budget hotel was okay . Once again myself and my four friends had a very good time and we availed ourselves of the many pleasures that were offered to us in Amsterdam.
By the autumn of 1996, I considered myself something of a ‘camper’. But only after having spent numerous pleasant days and evenings on many registered UK campsites in many counties of England.
Most of these campsites were near rivers and we usually combined the hiring of small pleasure craft, punts or canoes with long fishing sessions although none of us were experts at either. Looking through my well used and rather dog-eared little camping booklet, it was Harold’s turn to choose a suitable campsite for our next mini holiday.
Whilst Philip and myself concentrated on logistics which is just a fancy word for getting things ready, Harold had made all the necessary booking arrangements to the campsite by telephone. Our campsite destination was not really known to the rest of us until about four hours before we set off.
It just happened that way, we were off to have some fun, we knew that the campsite was not next to a river but that did not matter too much. We were out on the loose and we were determined to enjoy ourselves in the Kentish countryside for a few days. After a leisurely drive, we arrived at the camp site around three o’clock in the afternoon and was informed by two other campers that the farmer who owned the camp site lived about two miles down the road.
Passing a small shop on the way, we stocked up with milk, eggs, cheese and a few tins of this and that to supplement our existing food supplies. The farmer was very pleasant and came back on his tractor to show us exactly whereabouts in his
field that we could pitch our tent and park our car.
Making some apologies for not being able to provide a proper toilet, he asked that we used the corner of the next field for those purposes. The area the farmer indicated was located about one hundreds yards away from the camp site. Telling us that firewood was freely available in the woods next door to his field, he requested that we make our camp fire at some distance from ours and other people’s tents.
The farmer seemed rightfully worried in case any sparks from the fire caught anything alight. Just to give you a few more particulars about the layout of the camp site field itself. We were asked to pitch our tent at the top end of a sloping corn field that had a road on one side and a wooded area on the other side.
The bottom of the sloping field was some distance away from us so only the top of the field, the adjoining field that we pissed in and the wooded area was of any real interest to us. All fairly straightforward, we paid for three nights initially with the promise that if we still liked staying at his camp site, we would continue to pay on a daily basis thereafter.
The farmer seemed happy with that and after a few more little tips and advice on the features of our surroundings, he drove off back to his farm that little bit richer than when he had left it. The first of three very urgent tasks that needed doing was to go into the woods and cut some firewood to make a fire. The second task, which seemed even more urgent, was to cook a massive fry-up.
Just as importantly, the third task was to get some water boiling so that we could make ourselves a decent brew of tea. I did have the wits to remember to bring the saw and a very sharp chopper with us to cut our needed firewood.
On a previous camp site the year before, I had to purchase these items to cut firewood and always took them to other camp sites. This way, we could be independent and cut firewood for ourselves if camp fires were allowed. Nigel was delegated to go into the woods to get a large enough bundle of firewood that would be sufficient to keep the fire going until about eleven or so that evening.
David was assigned by Philip to help Nigel carry the firewood back to our camp site, which was a distance of about seventy or so yards. However, Nigel and David returned after only fifteen minutes, both somewhat wide-eyed and very silent. They both seemed quite reluctant to talk about why they had only managed to bring a small amount of firewood back with them.
Philip gave both of them a small lecture about pulling together as a team and Philip and myself went into the woods to chop down a couple of small trees to haul back to the camp site. Selecting two suitable trees, it would then be an easy matter to chop off bits of these trees for use as and when required for the campfire.
The only problem being, that we could not find the saw or the chopper to cut the two trees with. I had to go back and ask Nigel where he had put them. Nigel acted very strangely and did his best to avoid returning to the woods with me to show me where he had put these tools. After some insistence, Nigel utterly refused to go back into the woods with me.
I thought his behaviour was a little strange at the time but the truth of the matter came out the next day when he was once again asked to go and cut some more firewood. Not particularly bright or clever in any way, Nigel, under considerable pressure from the rest of us about doing his fair share, suddenly blurted out that he felt that he was being watched whilst he was in the woods.
David then joined in and said that he also felt a bit uncomfortable during the time that he was in the woods. Apparently, at the limits of their endurance, which probably was not very much anyhow, Nigel had thrown the saw and the chopper at some shadow that he thought he had seen move. They had both ran like idiots just carrying whatever firewood they could manage to hold in their arms whilst they ran.
Once we had retrieved the saw and chopper, Philip and myself made short work of two of the smaller trees and dragged them back to the camp site. There was quite a lot of piss-taking towards Nigel and David over all of this.but they both remained very sullen and very quiet about it all. They both seemed very relieved when the subject got changed.
I did manage to see David alone when he went to the car to get something later. David, being far more sensible than Nigel, assured me that he had felt very uncomfortable during the whole time that he had been in the woods. It was only when Nigel had expressed similar concerns to David that they had both lost their nerves and had ran back to the camp site in what amounted to abject terror.
That was the only indication that something was wrong or not quite right about that camp site. The other, more clearer indication came after my own experiences which I relate in the next chapter. I think it is important to get the chronology of these events in their correct order and that is why I am stating that this ‘firewood’ episode was the first indication that something was amiss if it could be described like that.
Chapter Five
Finding Dracula
The first chapter of this e-book is called ‘Looking For Dracula’ and this chapter ‘Finding Dracula’ seems a very apt title because that is exactly what happened. All perfectly true, it must be born in mind that fear can be transmitted quite easily to others. The human brain can register and resolve such transmissions in many diverse ways. It was now established that two members of our little party had felt uncomfortable enough to actually run out of the nearby woods through plain fear.
I must acknowledge that having an awareness of this incidence may well have induced my own brain to manufacture some sort of fearful experience peculiar to that particular place as well. Oh yes, it was a fearful experience alright, it was a very disturbing experience too. However, with all that in mind, you will subsequently see that there was much more to this whole episode than first thought. There was some measure of actual tangibility attached to it all, which to my mind, was well past the point of coincidence, probability or left hand threads for that matter.
That tangibility became evident and quite clear very shortly after my own horrible experience on the third night of our stay at that camp site. Having eaten a very tasty meal earlier we all settled around our camp fire and cracked joke’s, spoke about our work, our lives and so on. All in much the same way as we had done on the previous two evenings.
It was all fairly straightforward and a quite easy-going type of conversation. There was no content in any of it that could later be viewed or thought of as a ‘trigger’ that might set anybody’s brain off in a morbid or moribund direction. My own contribution to this extended conversation that lasted for about three hours was fairly sparse and I was quite content to listen to the others instead.
We had already seen to our sleeping bags whilst it was still daylight. When the time came to ‘turn in’, we only needed to make sure that the fire was properly doused, have a piss and get into our sleeping bags and go to sleep. That is exactly what we all did and after the usual round of ‘good nights’ from everyone to everyone, I was soon asleep. Often dreaming in technicolour, that night was no different and I very vividly dreamed that I was just coming back from taking a piss in the corner of the next field.
The dream was so vivid that even the uneven ground in the next field caused me to nearly stumble at one point in this dream. Wearing only shorts and my shoes, the slight breeze of the wind chilled my shoulders and chest a little and I clearly remember having to move a little to one side to avoid splashing my legs with piss, this dream was that vivid.
Just as I was returning and trying to get through the wire fence that separated our field from the next field, I happened to look down to the right-hand side of our field and saw a very strange sight indeed. Still quite unaware that I was actually dreaming, I still believed that what followed was actually occurring.
I saw about eight or nine ‘soldiers’ walking up the side of the field, all in single file, coming in my direction. These ‘soldiers’ were wearing some kind of uniform which looked very similar to the grey uniforms that the American ‘confederate army’ wore in their civil war. I did not notice any of these ‘soldiers
’ wearing hats but I did notice that all the uniforms were very dusty and it seemed to me that these uniforms were covered in something that looked like cobwebs.
Returning my gaze to the leader of this line of ‘soldiers’, our eyes met and I remember blinking several times and trying to clear my eyes. I just could not believe what I was seeing and I certainly could not believe who I was looking at.
It was a case of recognition, but how could I possibly know what this person looked like, after all, he was not even suppose to exist. I was looking at Dracula and Dracula was looking directly at me.
Getting his ‘wings’ out, he was getting ready to ‘fly’ towards me, a distance of forty or so yards between us. Still quite sure that this was actually happening, I started to run back to the tent and once again nearly stumbled in my haste on the uneven ground. For me, this was happening and I ran as fast as I could, such was the intensity and vividness of it all.
I don’t think there is any shame in admitting that I was absolutely terrified and even more so when Dracula appeared right in front of me. I was about five or so yards from the entrance to the tent when Dracula landed in front of me. It was not a case of my blood running cold or having shivers up my back, I was beside myself with fear, and dream or no dream how I did not shit myself there and then I do not know to this day.
I was terrified with fear as I looked up into Dracula’s yellowy smiling face not more than six feet in front of me. A more closer look at his ‘grey uniform’ showed that it was in fact ‘dusty and cobweb-like’, quite worn at some edges.
My eyes were compelled to return to his piecing gaze again and I was not able to further study his clothing. As Dracula landed in front of me, he turned toward me and folded his wings very quickly. Dracula had a ‘wing-span’ of what looked to be about ten feet, but when ‘folded’, his wings were hardly noticeable at all.