What Billy Did

He Waited a Lifetime For This

Eventually we made it.

Billy put his rucksack down and I did the same, opened my bag, pullled out four cans of lemonade.

My lifelong friend had brought a torch, compass, spare batteries, a smile.

I looked around at the place we’d heard so many stories about. We were trespassing of course. Had spent weeks working out the best line of entry, away from the security guards, the crags, rivers and barbed wire.

“I waited a lifetime for this,” Billy said.

I nodded. We were fourteen at the time and all our long lives had been forbidden to go anywhere near the site.

Our parents and teachers had told us was it was dangerous. Not a place to be spoken about.

There were rumors that it was in fact an open prison. Or a top-secret government site.

One guy had told me it was the one remaining place on Earth that still had dinosaurs.

Maybe all the above was true, maybe not. But the tale that a cave system ran from the site right into town definitely had legs.

We were sat in a clearing full of boulders, pine trees, badger setts, and one very distinct opening to a cave.

This, more than anything, was what Billy had wanted to see. I was more into the dinosaur idea, and had been disappointed so far.

“I’ve heard,” he once told me, “that it was once a trading route between the town and countryside. A smuggler’s path.

They reckon there were illegal stations along the route where people served refreshments by candlelight. And I’ve heard some criminal families actually lived in smaller caves off the main path — babies have been born in there.”

It interested me, but I never quite saw Billy’s fascination. But he was obsessed, intent on knowing why the route was no longer in use.

And where in the town it came out.

And why the area had been cordoned off from the public.

He left me on my boulder and went over to check out the mouth of the cave. Shining his torch inside, he looked back and smiled again.

Related posts:

President Donald J. Trump is telling his Twitter followers “people from California, & all over the land, are demanding that Sanctuary Cities be GONE.” This tweet from the American president comes…

La Casa Blanca considera eliminar la exención de sanciones al diésel, según informó Reuters citando fuentes de la Administración Trump. Este es el único combustible que Estados Unidos permite…

di tengah pohon yang rindang ia betah bertandang, menciptakan kehilangan-kehilangan yang bahkan mati rasa terlihat indah, jelas tak bermakna sayang ini bukan hal betapa membungkam ribuan derai air…