The Dismemberer of Didcot

Back in April I attended a weekend writing retreat with my writing group, and on the way home my friend Lorna and I got lost on the winding roads leading out of the little village we’d been staying in. On our way we came across an abandoned golf cart on the edge of the woods, and Lorna suggested we each write a short piece about the golf cart and compare later. This is mine… 

"Come on nana, tell uuuuuuuusssss one!" Riley asked as his nan tucked him and his brothers into bed on Halloween night. It might be 2082 but scary stories on Halloween were still a must. 

She thought for a moment, her memory wasn't what it once was. "Did I ever tell you about the abandoned golf cart in the woods?"

The boys eyes widened at hearing a new story. Nana was the best at those.

"No? Okay here goes.

One day when I was about your age I was visiting my nana in the countryside."

"Was it Halloween?" Interrupted Alexander, the youngest of the three boys.

"It was!" She lied. It had actually been in April. "It was a beautifully crisp Halloween morning. Frost on the ground but the sun was high in the sky."

"My nana wasn't very well so I'd gone into the fields to pick her some flowers, and some berries to make jam. It's what we always used to do."

"Like how you always bake with us when we come visit you?" Suggested Ethan, the oldest of the boys.

"Exactly. Anyway, I was merrily making my way along the narrow pavement on my way back to Nana, when I noticed an abandoned golf cart on the edge of the woods."

The boys shared a look of excitement and intrigue.

"What did it look like?" Asked Riley.

"It was rather strange. I remember it looked rather battered, like it had seen better days. And that there was a toy bat pinned to the back, and a fluorescent jacket on the seat. 

I called out 'hello' to see who it belonged to, but no-one replied."

"Then what did you do?" Ethan prompted her to continue.

"I went to investigate!"

They shared a look of shock. 

"But it might have belonged to a serial killer!" Said Riley, already a little scared for his nan.

"It might. But I had to know!

I walked down the slight slope into the woods. The thicker into the trees I got, the darker it became as they started to block out the sun. 

I was looking for any signs of movement. At one point I was concentrating so hard that a squirrel managed to frighten me by rustling some leaves behind me.

I told myself I needed to be a lot braver if I was going to solve this mystery."

The boys were all huddled together, holding their breath. 

"I carried on towards the small stream that I could hear, but when I got there I couldn't see or hear anyone. 

I was really disappointed so I decided to follow the stream until it opened up into the nearby lake. That wasn't far from my nana's house so I could just cut back up through the field and be home by midday."

The boys had started to relax, realising that their Nan wasn't in immediate danger.

"However, as I got closer to the lake I could hear a sound. The best way to describe it would be a kind of plopping of something being dropped into the water. I thought maybe someone was playing pooh sticks so I hurried along the rest of the way."

The boys started to look concerned again.

"As I reached the edge of the trees I stumbled on a fallen branch hidden by the leaves on the ground. 

And there, right in front of my face when I fell, was a finger."

The boys all took in a puff of breath and a chorus of "ugh" followed.

"A finger? On it's own?" Asked Alexander, suitably horrified.

"Yep. Now obviously when I saw it I screamed. But then I saw in the distance there was a man with a sword tipping a bag of bloody body parts into the water!"

The boys shrieked in unison.

"What did you do?" Asked Riley.

"I ran! Through the woods back to the road, I hoped I could outrun him, or at least have some trees to hide behind if he got near. I wasn't even sure if he was following me. All I could hear was the blood rushing in my ears of my heart pounding, and my frantic breath as I ran."

"You must have made it home?" Offered Ethan, in an attempt to make the younger boys less scared.

"I did."

"What did the man look like Nana?" Asked Riley?

"He was wearing waders, do you know what they are?"

Ethan nodded, the other two boys shook their heads.

"They are what fishermen wear to stay dry, they're a bit like dungarees but you wear them to go in the water."

The boys nodded, enthralled.

"And he had long straggly grey hair and a beard."

"So you ran back to the road." Asked Ethan.

"Yep. And I kept running all the way back to Nana's house. When I got there I was covered in mud and I'd dropped all of my flowers and berries. My mother was furious that I'd ruined my nice dress, and worried my nana, but when I told them what I'd seen they were even more cross with me."

"Why?" Asked Alexander.

"Because they thought I'd made it up to excuse my appearance."

"But you didn't!" Shouted Riley, defending the honour of 7 year old me. 

"That's right, I didn't."

"So what happened to the man?" Asked Ethan.

"It turns out he was a local fisherman who used to fish by throwing left overs into the lake. He used off-cuts of meat, fat, carcass, whatever he had, to get the fish to come into the shallows and then he'd spear them."

"With a sword?" Asked Riley. Both confused and impressed. 

"It was a spear. I think my scared brain saw a shiny blade and assumed it was a sword."

"But what about the finger?" Asked Ethan.

"It was never found. So either it was something else, and again my scared brain saw what it wanted to see, or..." I left them hanging. 

"Or?" Asked Riley.

"Or the dismemberer of Didcot is still out there!"

"Ooooooh." Said Ethan to scare the younger boys.

"Off to bed now you three." She said as she tucked them in. She turned off the bedside light and pulled the door to. Lingering outside to listen.

Riley moved his pillow to get comfy and felt something icky on the mattress. When he pulled it out he saw that it was a gummy finger. 

"Naaaan!" He said feigning being unimpressed, but she could tell she'd got him for a second there.