Humour, horror, who knows but this just sort of fell into existence via my imagination, down my arms and on to the key board. Laugh or be afraid, the choice is yours. Either way I hope you enjoy
BATS IN THE BELFRY
BY
DONALD HARRY ROBERTS
1
This kind of story has been told so many times before one would wonder how any story teller could have the gall to tell another. I half agree, but the other half believes that the people should know the truth about what went on in those cold winter months of 1964, in the tiny hamlet of Adamsville, now over-shadowed by the sprawling cityscape of the Peel Region.
We were kids, a little adventurous and a little foolish and certainly naïve in the realm of alternate realities. But not for us the world we lived in might well have been irreversibly altered and things that belong as stories in a horror film might have emerged to absorb us all.
2
There was no Peel Region then. It was Peel County, Brampton was Brampton, Huttonville was Huttonville was Huttonville and there still stood a tiny little place with a big church and a towering steep within which was housed a trio of bells, silenced for reasons unknown…at least until ‘WE’ came along.
Ah but who is ‘WE’, a question that needs some explaining now 54 years later. I have to wonder if anyone remembers our little quartet of rabble-rousing hooligans. We called ourselves the Downtowners, Tommy, Stan, Willy and myself, Eddy. We terrorized the Friday night skate at the arena, plundered the hopes and aspirations of Gage Park lovers, teased the cops whenever we thought we could get away with it and, one night in the dead of winter on the night of a full moon in that little hamlet Adamsville we saved the day, or rather, night.
3
It was Saturday morning. The Big Plan. Go ice fishing on the Credit River, under the bridge at Mississauga Rd.? It was one of those winter days that was clear and bright with no wind and almost warm. It was a time when the Credit River was a river of note.
To this day I will never quite understand why no one, and I mean no one ever came looking for us. But the fact remains, no one ever did, at least not until someone phoned the cops and said there was a group suspicious kids hanging around the old Adamsville church. But by then it was all over and we were trying to figure out if what happened really did happen or we all just shared a horrendous nightmare in waking time.
4
We hiked there following Queen St .in about an hour and a bit at a most determined and none of us willing to admit it might have been a pleasant winter’s day but it was still frikken cold but not one of us even suggested turning back, which I suppose for the sake of everyone was good.
By 10:30 am we were cutting holes in the ice. I have no idea what kind of fish we expected to catch or what we would have done if we had caught any, which we didn’t, but we did catch something.
At first we teased Willy for actually catching a boot, but a few seconds later we weren’t laughing any more. The boot was attached to a foot and as we pulled it out further we saw a leg, then the torso and then the bloated face. But even Bloated we know who it was. A guy everyone called the Credit River Hobo, who usually went off when the autumn came but lived in a hut along the river bank all summer.
5
But what was really frightening is, his body had been ravaged and most of his throat was gone. We suddenly got reminded that there were wolves prowling about that area and we got scared, but not scared enough to run. There were also Bat bites in the part of the throat that was still intact.
Now you have to know kids. They don’t stay scared long. In very short order they get curious and their imagination gets the better of them, and in this case it was a good thing.
Tommy said. I saw bats over at the old church and the news papers have been writing that there have been wolves hanging around the ruins of Adamsville. A collective WOW had us heading for the ruins of old forgotten Adamsville, which now in 2018 is a suburban community of Peel region. I doubt anyone even realizes that once there stood a village there.
6
It was getting near sunset when we got to the old church. We were totally amazed to see bats, big black ones circling about and not so surprised to find wolf prints and we will swear to this day were heard them howling.
When you are a kid you don’t think about getting hurt let alone killed so like the big brave explorers we were we entered the shadowy confines of the church even though bats whizzed about our heads and darted at us out of the dark corners.
My guess is we were all scared sh’’’’’’less but too dumb to admit it. So on we plunged.
7
Four attacked Willy and the rest of us rushed I to rescue him. Even then he got bit twice and was pretty scratched up. We killed them with sticks, using the sticks like bats against bats. Almost immediately Willy began to shake and we thought he’d got rabies but it wasn’t that at all. We looked where he was staring and there in the dark were three pairs of huge red eyes glaring at us.
Then they eyes moved toward us and we realized they were attached to bodies, adult sized bodies and they were hissing and whining. It was not til then I noticed the sun had gone completely down.
8
Tommy said it. “Vampires.” Though there was an edge of doubt in his voice because of course there are no such things as vampires….are there?
Then worse things got worser. From behind came deep rumbling growls. We turned to look and found ourselves face to face with three werewolves. And now there was nowhere to run. All we could do is fight and hope that legend worked with legend.
With incredible speed and force and cyncranicity Tommy, Willy and myself plunged our sticks into the hearts of the vampires while Stan warded off the werewolves with a silver lighter. Then we all turned on the werewolves, screaming like banshees. I beat them with my belt buckle which my uncle gave me and promised it was made of pure silver.
9
I don’t know what happened to them. I am not sure I actually killed the beasts, but they seemed to vanish into the shadows as the sun came up. Yes the battle ensued all night.
When the sun hit the corpses of the vampires they all turned to dust. So with the werewolves vanishing and the vampires turning to dust there was absolutely no proof our adventure ever happened. The only thing we had to show for our adventure was the corpse of the old Credit River Hobo who the coroner determined that he fell in the river and drowned sometime in the autumn and got nibbled on by the fish. I never went fishing in the Credit again.
10
After we called the cops from the corner store in Huttonville and each gave our statements we hiked back home. No one even seemed to miss us, though we were gone over night. I guess they all thought we were all staying at each other’s house that night and never got worried, but like I said earlier we never were sure why no one came looking for us.
Sao there is my story and I am sure Tommy, Willy and Stan would back me up on this if I had kept contact with them after that night. Yah after that we kinda went our separate ways and I haven’t seen them in fifty years.
I think your brain has lost its memory and you're mixing up all those old vampire and werewolf movies with your dreams of childhood adventure. The story was lame. Perhaps you should write some real adventures you had. They'd be more interesting.
I had a similar adventure where we went to a pond to ice skate outside of town on our bicycles. After only a few minutes of skating we got too cold and decided to return home. A front came through and the temperature dropped below zero with a strong wind in our faces as we battled against the wind and froze our fingers on our handlebars. Desperate, we stopped at a farmhouse and knocked on the door. They welcomed us in to watch afternoon cartoons with a big bowl of popcorn and called our friend's father to came out with a trailer and hauled us and our bicycles back home.
Additionally, if you wish to publish it, you will need to have the punctuation and some of the wording corrected.
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BATS IN THE BELFRY
