Local Legends

There's one just down the road from where I live. It's not hugely famous, but all the people I've spoken to from this area seem to know about it. Boughton Hall. Seems it used to be a halfway house for troubled youth. There was a fire there about 40 years ago, people like to say one of the kids did it but I think that's just meant to be a little story enhancer. The building's just been sat there for years, no one's attempted to renovate it or even demolish it, it's just been boarded up and the gates locked. So naturally kids try and break in.

A few of us did actually one night. Unfortunately I'm rather susceptible to these kind of things, and my mind plays tricks on me. I swear that house was actually staring at me with hatred, the feeling is a little hard to describe, it was as if the house didn't want me to be there. As we approached, a flicker of shadow danced across the wall and out of sight, much too large to be a rodent or even a fox (and no, it wasn't us). And then I started hearing the flames in my head, at which point I legged it to the perimiter wall and scaled that fucker like my life depended on it. Yeah. I don't do spooky.

As for people of local legend, there's a bloke on our road who looks freakishly similar to Saddam Hussein. Almost every day he comes out of his house wearing a cycle helmet, a checkered shirt with a bodywarmer and jeans, and pushes his bike down the hill to the main road. He then stands on the corner and screams obscenities at each and every driver, sometimes with elaborate hand gestures. Occasionally he cycles to the roundabout and continues his tirade from there.

Jam it back in, in the dark.