Sunday 5 August 2018

Episode Four - Stranger Then Fiction


At my last scout camp strange things happened: I cooked sausages forty feet up in a tree, our Scout Master showed us his willy, we were passed through by a ghost from the battle of Waterloo, and the Assistant Patrol Leader was accidentally decapitated. Facts are often stranger than fiction.


Our Scout Master was a gregarious man, who encouraged those of us who needed it and pushed those who were idle and sloppy. Perhaps that was why, on the first day of our last scout camp, I ended up a tree with a frying pan, a tub of lard, and a butane gas cooker, swaying nervously in the wind and cooking sausages.


However, it was when our Patrol, of half a dozen middle aged teenagers, stood to attention in the fading light, that we were told one thing by our Scout Master and shown another. Both were of interest. Our camp, he had said, had once been the staging post for troops preparing to cross overseas to fight at the battle of Waterloo. How exciting, I thought, but was confused by the constant childish giggling of our Assistant Patrol Leader. What the rest of us had failed to the see, in the dappled shadows, was the Scout Masters floppy flesh, unzipped and on display.


In our green tent, we laughed, extrapolated and feasted on our teenage hormones. Then everyone lay down without thinking, as if we had been told to go to sleep. We hid inside our sleeping bags to warm our faces, and felt the ground penetrate.


Then I wondered if I was asleep or awake?  There was an aura, a soundless state. In the darkness, the green canvas flapped. Odd, because the night had been so still and windless.


But this was how it all started: a vacuum sucked out the air and fear rushed in. I had to stand up, because I was expecting someone, something. I could hear running from the top of the hill, at an inhuman pace, sounding like flesh flapping inside old fashioned boots. Then we all heard it coming. Keep quiet, keep quiet, we all said, as the boots pounded and rushed in!


The ghost of Waterloo Hill, I said, as the torches went on. We swore, rationalised and speculated. Whatever the truth, nobody denied they had not heard and felt the same thing. 


In the morning, we were handed old cutting tools by our unapologetic Scout Master and headed out to a thick field of dew drenched ferns, to make the roof for a bivouac. Our scythes of long curved blade, stripped easily, but also bleed juices down our hands. This was how the flying blade cut off the Assistant Patrol Leaders head, as our Scout Master swung and slipped the cutter just above the neck.
He was found guilty of manslaughter and various health and safety regulations. We were treated for trauma. And we agreed amongst ourselves that we must have been possessed by the ghost of Waterloo, or why else would the Scout Master chop off his head?

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