True Stories: Trapped in the Barn (Part One)
If you want to learn about True Stories, it’s tag and what it represents, then please see my previous post.
What you are about to read is a True Story. Some names have been changed to protect me from these individuals or their family members.
...July 1979...
Less than a year ago this had been my home. The village of Newchurch-in-Rossendale is where I had lived since I was two. It was all I knew and my few friends lived here.
During November the previous year, my parents had moved away taking me with them, far enough to make it a long cycle journey back to see my old friends. It sucked but I tried to return as often as permitted.
The Dungpile's ran the village farm. Jack Dungpile was an ageing fat red-faced man with bulbous eyes that looked like they were going to come out of their sockets, but it is his son Mark who is the focus of this story.
Mark Dungpile was a mini-me of his father. Big and stocky, he was a renowned fast runner despite his wobbling belly that flopped up and down like a quivering jelly. He was also a year older than me and a bully.
For most of my tortured young life, I had avoided the bigger Dungpile kid, not going near the farm as he was liable to at best taunt or jeer, and at worst use his renown sprinting skills to catch me for his own nefarious reasons.
That particular day, he was with some other kids who I had grown up with. They were hardly what I would call friends, more ’the kids who you hang out with when there’s nobody else around’.
Yet I found myself close to that farm that I had avoided for most of my younger life. Some things simply cannot be explained.
How or why I was enticed into the farm grounds, past the house, and into a barn, I cannot tell you. Perhaps Mark had noticed I was gone and was making some effort to be friendly.
Me being rather naive welcomed the change of attitude and went with the flow. We were both a little older and I figured he had grown up a little.
No sooner than I was in the barn, the door was locked behind me and I heard the chilling words, ‘We have you now’, followed by an evil laugh.
I looked at the other kids for support and couldn’t understand why they were there. Later it dawned on me that some of them had slight or even valid vendettas against me.
They all lived on ‘Staghills’, a rather rough council estate that I had been forced to use as my playground due to me living right next to it.
Wayne Benlin and his older brother Simon Dawson came from one of the roughest families. They had around 8 kids and both had different fathers, hence the different surnames.
They were a couple of years younger than me and slighter in stature.
Simon’s Vendetta
Years before I was climbing up a huge tree with Simon who slipped, fell 30 feet and was knocked unconscious. I hurried down the tree to find him lying there unmoving.
In shock, I left him there and ran to his parents' house which was a good 15-minute trip, informed his mother who freaked out and followed me back to the tree.
In less than 5 minutes a sobbing tear streaked Simon came stumbling up Top Barn Lane wailing, ‘I’ve split my head open, and he pushed me out of the tree’, pointing at me.
Credit to his mother, she just took him home, didn’t give me a second look or even a casual thanks. Was this kid a serial pathological liar?
That was to be my last interaction with Simon and he was now firmly off my, ‘auxiliary friend list’.
I knew of Wayne who was another year younger than Simon, but that was about it. He was too small for me to hang around with. One couldn’t be seen cavorting with the little kids.
The bigger lad in the barn was David Egghart and was one year younger than me but had filled out somewhat since I had last seen him.
He now resembled a human bulldog complete with pug nose but lacked the drooling gait.
Scowling at me, I could see he was on some kind of grudge mission. I had mostly forgotten about our past encounter several years prior.
David's Vendetta
As kids, we had bonfire's and created makeshift ‘gangs' to collect wood usually in October, the month before the big event on November 5th.
These were the days before all the organised events of today where fewer people are burnt and disfigured by fireworks.
Then there were no barriers and the enormous fires were held in fields usually without the permission of the owners, and every year there were countless accidents.
If you survived it all unscathed like me you will remember the lack of order and formality with fondness.
The gangs of mostly teenage and pre-teenage lads would ‘raid’ each other’s piles of wood in an attempt to make their bonfires bigger and better than their peers.
It was never knives or guns (which did not exist then), just some light fisticuffs at its most extreme.
One such incident that happened several years before was our raid on the ‘Brow Edge' bonfire. Brow Edge was a particularly rough part of Staghills and was looked down upon on the local inhabitants.
Walking east on Newchurch Road, we planned to head down Priory Close, sneak on to Brow Edge and steal all their wood, adding it all to our pile.
We never got past Newchurch Road as their gang was already heading toward us.
One look at our superior numbers had them legging back to their base but I managed to grab David and kick him around a little before he sloped off crying.
It wasn’t a cool thing to do, and I regret all these things now as an adult, but that’s what happens in a deprived shit-hole with little else to do when you have no guidance.
'These lads want to have a word with you', said Dungpile in a nasty tone.
I backed into a corner literally shaking with fear and watched the bully advance flanked by his mixed army of accomplices.
This one, I wasn’t going to be able to get out of easily.
To be continued...
All images are my own.
![](https://steemitimages.com/DQmSSjgs1swFwv64uXRVpB9DAtzSnDv2Eeqr3CnPAup4WVV/Banner.png)
If you found this article so invigorating that you are now a positively googly-eyed, drooling lunatic with dripping saliva or even if you liked it just a bit, then please upvote, comment, resteem, engage me or all of these things.
stories of our youth and some of the messed up things that we did to one another back in the day. I like that you didn't tell the entire story in one go. In my opinion this is the perfect length for a story.
Not to hijack your story but i think that when you return to see old "auxiliary friends" that perhaps you didn't get along with perfectly... years later, that most sane people would be able to let bygones be bygones... so i'm curious, how old were you at the start of this story? Still a teen or properly an adult at that point?
Thanks, this I was not sure about.
When we grow up things do change. When I saw David I just wanted to ask him about his sister (who I had a bad relationship with as a kid). I was curious as to what happened to her. This was way before the internet and we lose track of folks.
I was 16 and just out of school. Still a kid though I had just started working.
Good story and cliff-hanger ... dun de dun dun .... 😊
Thanks for reading. If I could only incorporate the topic of STEEM into my story i would get a lot more comments!
I know - it's aggravating, isn't it? You day as a true story writer will come!
What a greta story and looking forward to part 2
I already have it written. Was this too long? The final part is a little longer.., 2 or 3 parts?
not to long for me at all but then again I read pretty fast so I may not be the best one to ask
Hi, @slobberchops!
You just got a 10.27% upvote from SteemPlus!
To get higher upvotes, earn more SteemPlus Points (SPP). On your Steemit wallet, check your SPP balance and click on "How to earn SPP?" to find out all the ways to earn.
If you're not using SteemPlus yet, please check our last posts in here to see the many ways in which SteemPlus can improve your Steem experience on Steemit and Busy.
Hi @slobberchops!
Your post was upvoted by @steem-ua, new Steem dApp, using UserAuthority for algorithmic post curation!
Your UA account score is currently 4.588 which ranks you at #1934 across all Steem accounts.
Your rank has not changed in the last three days.
In our last Algorithmic Curation Round, consisting of 113 contributions, your post is ranked at #9.
Evaluation of your UA score:
Feel free to join our @steem-ua Discord server
Wow, that is pretty exciting. I just got in trouble for trespassing and cutting down trees on property that wasn't ours. We were just trying to build a fort :) I look forward to reading how this turns out for you.
These bloody vendetta's eh? We even have them as kids!
It's a bit like Lord of the Flies!
I like the True Stories idea, and if I can think of a good one I'll use the tag. When I was in my early teens, I used to read the Jackie magazine, and my favourite section was the Reader's True Experience. Years later, I was lucky enough to get a job writing for Jackie, and I found out that the Reader's True Experience wasn't always true or written by a reader... good genre though!
I bet you can do some great ones. Sadly nobody else has done one yet. They are hard work, and long.., the full edit of this is > 2000 words. That's why it's a 2 parter.
I remember Jackie, didn't read it of course.., that was for girls!
A cliffhanger alright.