The Cottage Part 1

The Cottage

October 1987

I’m 7 years old and we had just moved to Lower Newport Road. It’s our first house that we actually own, prior to that we had lived all over the country as my old man was a lifer in the Army and we lived in all manner of army quarters. Lower Newport Road however was the place I will always call home.

It was a quiet road and located quite closely to my school. Strangely enough though at the end of Lower Newport Road there was a closed down Milk Dairy which had recently been purchased by a housing company and more houses were going too built there. Next to the dairy though, there was a very old cottage. It was called Malt house Cottage and no one had lived in it for years.

The first time I saw Malt house cottage I thought it was incredibly freaky, but the first time I went actually close to it, I nearly shit my pants. There were loads of bushes and over grown trees, a disused car or two and a massive padlock on the front door. The reason however that I nearly shit my pants was because when I went to get a closer a look at the cottage, I had opened the large rusted gate and was walking to the cottage when I heard a loud slam from the back of the house. I quickly turned around ready to pelt it down to my house, when I ran in to him.

He was built like a brick shit house and looked like Magnum P.I crossed with Geoff Capes, oh and he never spoke. His face was emotionless and unmoving and at the moment I ran into him, he didn’t even flinch. At first I thought he lived in the cottage and that he was going to beat the living shit out of me for going in the garden, but as it turns out I was wrong. He picked me up by my parker jacket hood and dragged me from the garden; he closed the gate behind him and then pointed in the direction of my home. Not once did he speak to me, he only made brief eye contact with me and in that moment I knew I never ever in my short life wanted to cross that man, as I was fairly sure any confrontation with him would end me being wiped off the planet.

I ran straight back to my house and when I got there I turned around to see the Magnum P.I’s bigger meaner brother standing in the same spot where ran away from. He was just staring at the cottage motionless. He was looking up at one of the windows at top of the cottage and for the briefest of moments I thought I could see movement behind the window but I can be sure as I was so far away.

I knew then, that no matter what my fate was tied to Magnum P.I’s and that cottage. I just didn’t realise how bad thing were going to get from that point onwards.

To be continued