The Red Lion, Severn Road near the river in the city of Gloucester, October 1943. For most people the dark years of Hitler’s war continue, however for two, possibly friends or associates currently on leave from the forces and enjoying the fresh taste of a local bitter, the pub offers a brief moment of peace and normality.
In the public bar of the ‘Lion’, a radio blasts out some tune by an American swing band and an accompanying female vocalist singing something about a ‘boogie-woogie bugle boy’.
To one end of the wood clad bar, near a much used darts board, a group of four ‘locals’, dressed for the season in tweeds and caps, are in deep conversation. Their voices rise and fall in the burr of the local accent,
“They say that you can hear noises like thousands of rats slithering inside the hill”
“Probably water flowing somewhere beneath”
“No can’t be since the hill has no history as a water source”
“They do say something bad happened up there some twenty years back”
“Who told you all this?”
“Comes from the local Home Guard, seems they were set guard over the road up to the hill to keep people away”
“And?”
“Young Harry Williams from Anchester was one of them. I heard it from his Ma”
“Probably some kind of soil disturbance caused by the bomb”
“Probably, still that’s what young Williams said, and his Ma says he worried about having to go back there”
“No one likes to go to that hill. I’ve heard its haunted or something”
“Ha, you and your ghosts”
At the mention of “Anchester” something moves in the memory of Oliver. It is a name he remembers hearing whispered amongst members of his family…