Bagham Common
To the majority of its new inhabitants, the village of Bagham was a place you simply slept in rather than a place you could call home. The once sleepy Surrey village was now awash with young businesspeople seeking their fame and fortune. The invasion of Bagham by this new breed of commuter – or “Plastic Baggy” as the locals liked to call them – seemed to happen overnight. Allured by the promise of cheap housing, fast trains to the capital and semi-country living, the village’s population, with the help of Ashcroft Homes Ltd, went from some two thousand residents to just under six thousand in less than half a decade.
Dismayed that their once quiet village was now just another suburb of London, the Bagham locals made it very clear that they weren’t fond of the new neighbours.
First, the train prices went up. “That’ll be ’cause all of them newbies, use it too much,” said Mr Birkhead, a Bagham resident for fifty-four years.
“I can remember the days you could go up to London and back and still have enough change for supper from a fiver.”
Then the local bakery turned into a vegan coffee shop. “That London lot, with their lappachinos and moches. I survived without almond milk and it has done me no harm,” Viv Smy discussed with the Women’s Institute at their monthly sewing and sandwiches meeting.
Furthermore, the streetlights now turned off at 11 pm, and the two bus routes that served Bagham merged into one. These problems, however, were tiny in comparison to the introduction of the new superstore – Westbury’s, a store where you could get anything from lemons to lawn furniture. The megastore opened directly opposite the train station where the old furniture showroom used to be.
The Bagham locals were a traditional bunch and they felt strongly that the modernisation of their village had to stop. In the weeks leading up to the opening, there was great chatter among the long-time residents about boycotting the store and ridding it from their village. They even started an activist group, BRAW (Bagham Residents Against Westbury’s). Placards were produced, the picket line was drawn and the protesters were ready to fight. At first, BRAW appeared to be winning the war: whenever anyone tried to enter Westbury’s, a twenty-strong troop would holler and criticise the would-be customers. This abuse resulted in many consumers avoiding Westbury’s, not wanting the aggravation when doing a simple grocery shop. However, the store was open for sixteen hours a day, and after a few weeks of protest BRAW’s numbers quickly dwindled, the convenience of the store proving too much of a pull, and soon enough, Westbury’s showed Bagham it was here to stay.
To add insult to the residents’ injury, the popularity of the superstore left Bagham’s once-thriving high street a retail wasteland. The independent shops that frequented Bagham for years all closed, leaving only charity shops, places to bet on the horses and dozens of empty, boarded-up shells. The pent-up hostility of the villagers seemed to filter outwards and gave the village an air of sadness. No one would speak to each other when they were out and about, virtually all social events and sports teams disbanded, and levels of graffiti and antisocial behaviour in the village were at epidemic levels.
With all this hostility, you would think that Bagham was a pretty miserable place to live; however, through all of the negativity, the jewel in her crown still shone. Bagham was a village semi-enclosed by acres of wild heathland, a formidable wilderness of muddy walkways and grassy pastures, a place where nature in all of its stark, rugged beauty thrived. Pastel grasses mixed with pockets of green vegetation and pools of murky water remained well into the heat of summer. Beautiful white elms sparingly dotted the grounds, and heather and wildflowers flourished. Hundreds of animals called it home and lived in a harmony that their human neighbours could only dream of. The wind would whistle through the vegetation, causing the land to sing its song and scent its air.
It felt as though it was the last place on earth humans hadn’t touched. That was if you didn’t count the human-made scar that cut through the northern edge of this land. Forty years previously, a train track was laid connecting Bagham to the bigger town of Damberley to the north. It was one of those projects that no one wanted, everyone opposed, but it happened anyway. So twice an hour, the quiet of the common was shattered by a train hurtling through the green.
Bagham’s train station was your typical suburban railway station. It consisted of an old ticket office, an out of order vending machine and a load of illegible graffiti. The station was positioned at the centre of the village and looked out onto Westbury’s supermarket. The two buildings had to share a car park, making it virtually impossible to ever get a parking space (another problem to add to the locals’ list of annoyances).
One late January evening Simon Bostwick sat on platform one’s bench waiting for the 22.20 train to London Waterloo. The air was crisp and the first signs of a light frost were forming on the station’s crumbling roof. Perched with his rear end on the metal backrest and “noise” (as his mum liked to call it) blearing out of his earphones, the teenager had a look of pure joy on his face. After working three late shifts in a row, he finally had a day off from his job at Westbury’s. The fact that his shifts only lasted four hours, and the previous day he was sent home early, didn’t matter to Simon. He had worked hard and had earnt his freedom; even the thought of getting the train home couldn’t bring him down. Most weeks, Simon would make his mum pick him up from the store, but this week was Hazelwood Opera and Theatre Society’s (HOTS) production of Oliver! She was playing Beggar Woman Number 2, and there was “no way she could leave the house that late on a show day.”
Simon worked on the bakery counter at Westbury’s. He had always been on the larger side and his new profession really didn’t help his waistband. He was such a fan of the store’s sausage rolls that he’d regularly slightly burn the pastry, making the savoury treat unsellable. Instead of the snacks going into the bin, they ended up in Simon’s stomach.
The electric train information board began to flash and an automated voice announced that the London Waterloo train was delayed by six minutes.
“You are kidding me, this bloody train line,” Simon bellowed.
He immediately jumped onto his phone to text his mum about the delay. He knew she wouldn’t do anything about it but wanted to make her feel bad that her selfishness in being in that show had left him cold and miserable at the station.
Sulking, he reached into his bag and grabbed the last two sausage rolls from today’s burnt batch. Without taking a breath, he moved the first roll towards his mouth, ready to bite into the meat and pastry. He bit down hard, but no food ended up in his mouth.
Perplexed, he glanced down and found that the top part of the sausage roll was curving, leaning away from him. Thinking it must have gotten damaged in his bag and his stomach growling for some more sustenance, Simon went back in for another bite, this time making sure his eyes didn’t move from his meal. To his astonishment, when he forced the roll towards his mouth, it moved and arched away from him again. The shock of his favourite snack appearing to have a life of its own caused Simon to release his grip of the pastry, and it fell to the floor. His eyes shot back to the sausage roll; although it was dirty now, it was still as a sausage roll should be. He convinced himself to put the whole situation down to tiredness and went back in his bag for the second (he had no intention of eating food that had touched the dirty station floor).
He looked back up at the train information board; there were now only two minutes until the train arrived.
“Plenty of time for me to finish this,” he thought.
Simon didn’t take his focus off the second sausage roll; he again brought the pastry close to his mouth, ready to eat. This time the sausage roll acted just like a sausage roll should: it stayed perfectly still. The only trouble now was that it slowly started disappearing. From the crust moving towards the centre, crumb-by-crumb it was breaking away and vanishing. In complete shock, Simon threw his weight backwards and fell off the seat rest onto the station floor.
He landed with a colossal thud, the back of his head slamming into the cold concrete, and his earbuds fell from his ears. His head was throbbing with pain, and he lay paralysed, too scared and confused even to move. He didn’t imagine it; something bizarre was happening to him, and fear flooded his body. His breathing became shallow and fast, the late January air making the tiny exhalations from his mouth visible.
Ominously, he was certain he could hear voices behind him; the sound was faint, but he could tell the voices weren’t speaking in English. His vision, although slightly blurred from the fall, remained focused forward, and all his eyes could make out was the flaking blue metal of the platform bench. After a few more seconds a strange shadow appeared on the top left corner of the seat, pulsing in mid-air. Although Simon didn’t recognise its shape, it was clear that the silhouette was slowly expanding, and a seven-pointed star became visible. Within seconds this lone shadow was joined by at least three more and it wasn’t long before the bench was more shadow than light.
Every fibre in Simon’s body was now screaming that whatever was creating the shadows was directly behind him. He held his breath, sweat beaded on his forehead and his muscles stiffened as if preparing for an attack.
But no blow or strike came to him. A different feeling engulfed his body – joy. A cold shiver of happiness ran from the top of his head to his feet. His senses seemed to ignite with this clarity, and for a few blissful seconds, they became super heightened. He could feel the coarseness of the concrete beneath him; he could taste the crisp autumn night and smell the traffic fumes from the village. His hearing became instantly enhanced too, the din of the station dissolving, and he focused on one particular noise, the sound of something like flies buzzing towards him. Then, like a pin piercing a balloon, his elation popped and returned to dread as the beating wings appeared to stop just above his head, and a strange object began moving into his peripheral vision.
The oblong was floating through the air, moving slowly across his forehead and eyes, coming to a stop just above his nose. The object must have been ten centimetres above his face, but he couldn’t work out what it was. An odour then invaded his nostrils, a familiar scent that he smelt daily. It was the smell of meat and pastry; it was the smell of a Westbury’s sausage roll. The realisation then hit: a sausage roll was levitating horizontally above his head.
If he weren’t so scared, he would be laughing uncontrollably at this situation. Someone else was laughing, though: several tiny giggles broke the silence as the pastry began to twist in the air. Simon’s lips began to tingle with slight sensations of pressure pushing down against his mouth. Something or someone was trying to open his lips! He was fighting to keep his mouth closed, but his top and bottom lips were being forced outwards by some invisible power. He put all of his energy into keeping his lips closed, but it was in vain, and his mouth eventually gave way and flew open.
Now one end of the sausage roll was by his open mouth, and he knew there was only one place it was going. His stomach turned as he realised where this sausage roll had come from: it was the one that he had thrown on the ground moments earlier. The thought of this contaminated food going into his mouth was truly horrifying, but there was nothing he could do to stop it.
The pastry touched his lips. His stomach roiled; he was going to retch—
Then, spontaneously, a sound broke the silence. A high-pitched alarm blasted into his ears, and the sausage roll immediately succumbed to gravity and fell onto the petrified teenager’s face. His mouth quickly closed, and he started spitting, trying to get any germs away from him. That sound was the warning bells for car drivers on the road adjacent to the station that the gates at the level crossing were about to close. It took Simon’s world back to normal, and he felt like he was again alone on the station platform. He took a breath and tentatively got back to his feet.
He immediately turned around to see what was behind him and, to his amazement, no one was there. His eyes darted around the station to see if anything was out of the ordinary, but nothing stood out. The train was finally fast approaching, and he wanted nothing more than to get into the relative safety of the carriage. He quickly bent down and picked up the earbuds from the platform. To his astonishment, resting on the left earbud was a tiny fingerless glove. He leant in closer for a better look. The glove couldn’t have been more than half a centimetre wide. It was deep brown and appeared to be made from a tightly woven, rope-like material. He moved his hand forward to pick it up, but as soon as his fingers were close, it vanished, and Simon stumbled and crashed into the back of the platform bench.
He quickly got to his feet. The train had arrived at the platform. One thing was certain; Simon didn’t want to spend any more time alone at this station and with great urgency grabbed his bag, left the earbuds where they were and darted for the train. He leapt through the doors and fumbled his way to the six-seater in the middle of the carriage, sitting down with a thud and keeping his eyes fixed on the doors until they closed automatically.
Simon had always been the butt of the joke; his size meant a day rarely went by when he wasn’t teased one way or another. Over time he developed a thick skin to the insults and made a conscious decision to give as good as he got. He wasn’t scared of anyone and definitely wouldn’t hold his tongue when he felt he was being challenged. Because of this, his teachers labelled him a nuisance and would regularly tell him he had an “attitude problem”. This reputation should have upset Simon, but truthfully, he enjoyed the notoriety.
Sitting on the train, however, for the first time in years, Simon felt afraid. Something had been on the platform with him, something he didn’t understand. It had been a long time since he had felt he wasn’t in control and he didn’t like it. He had so many questions but knew it was doubtful he would get any answers. How could he talk to anyone about this? It had taken years to build up his reputation and as soon as he started talking about sausage rolls with a life of their own and tiny flies attacking him, he would be a laughingstock. Thankfully, within seconds of sitting down, the doors shut, the carriage gave a brief shudder and the train pulled out of the station.
The buildings of Bagham quickly gave way to the vast expanse of the heath. When travelling by train, Simon would usually be slouching low into his seat and have his feet on the cushion opposite. But after his experience on the train platform, he was tense. He was sat bolt upright and hugged his bag like a safety blanket. The moon was high in the night sky and bathed the rugged land with its light. Not many things excited Simon nowadays, but seeing the heath always gave his heart a lift. He had spent most of his childhood running through the greenery with his grandma; what she didn’t know about the common wasn’t worth knowing. She would regularly tell him about the plants and animals that called the heath their home, but it was the stories of its magick that he loved and he never forgot.
A violent jolt brought Simon back to reality; the train began to slow and came to a stop in the middle of the common. Through the window, he saw what looked like a green firework soar upwards around twenty metres into the air. After everything he had encountered tonight this almost felt normal.
“Seriously,” shouted Simon as he pushed out a large exhalation and gave considerable thought to messaging his mum again; all he wanted to do was get home. “Can anything else go wrong tonight?”
Gazing out of the window, aside from the firework, he noticed that the heath was so still and quiet, nothing seemed to be moving. The train had stopped at a point where Simon sat adjacent to a small corpse of trees. The trees were whitish and had long since lost their foliage.
They were surrounding a bush of vibrant green leaves and tiny white flowers; Simon knew it was a hawthorn bush, remembering that his nan called this plant the Brownies’ Meeting Hall. Minutes passed and still they didn’t continue their journey. With his anxiety rising, he was about to get up and grill the guard when suddenly his eyes focused on the hawthorn bush: it shook, and a figure stepped out of it.
A girl – an ethereal girl – the most beautiful thing Simon had ever seen. Her long, blonde hair fell around her shoulders, framing her perfectly symmetrical face. Her features were delicate, and her frame was slight but muscular. She seemed to be some sort of warrior; Simon noticed primitive weapons on her belt and slung across her shoulders. Her skin had something very different about it, though. Her whole body was covered with strange markings and symbols, lines forming all kinds of shapes. Yet unlike most tattoos that Simon had seen before, these markings were lighter in colour than the woman’s skin tone. Lastly, and most bizarre of all, was the pair of enormous, translucent butterfly wings on her back. They were outstretched to their fullest and consisted of a large upper span with another lower about half the size. They were brilliantly translucent, with a delicate, paper-thin quality and their silk-like texture sparkled in the moonlight.
Simon’s eyes connected with the stranger. The girl beamed, and Simon instantly forgot about everything that had happened to him that night and fell into a state of complete euphoria. All that mattered was this girl; he was transfixed. He could smell her, hear her breath, and all he wanted was to be close to her. It was as though her image would be etched into his brain forever.
For an eternity, his vision was filled with this beauty, until his eyelids finally just had to blink – but Simon begged his eyes not to close, not just yet, he didn’t want to lose sight of this girl for a millisecond. But he couldn’t resist any longer, and the world went black. When light flooded back into his vision, the scene was how he remembered it, only the girl had disappeared. He scanned the vicinity, trying to find her, but to no avail. She was gone.
The train then suddenly jerked into motion, sending Simon flying forwards into the seat opposite him, unaware that he had just started a course of events that would change his life forever.
