Ghosts of Thores-Cross Book Tour & Giveaway

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Jennet’s here. No one is safe.

Cursed – Excerpt
Thruscross, North Yorkshire
7 th August 1966 – 11:30 a.m.

‘Right, tea break over, lads, back to work. Rog, Steve, you’re up on Hanging Moor in the
bulldozers. As soon as they’ve gone through, Paul and Simon, you get the chippings down. And take
care – don’t go past the markers, that drop’s lethal.’
The road crew groaned, threw their dregs of tea to the ground and refastened their flasks before
clambering into their machines to dig out the access road to the new dam spanning the Washburn
Valley. The valley would be flooded in a month’s time, creating the new reservoir for the Leeds
Corporation Waterworks to supply half of Leeds with drinking water, and the road should have been
completed last month.
Rog led the way, the large bucket scraping heather and peat, then dumping it into the waiting
tipper truck.
Steve followed, making a deeper cut. Together they gouged an ugly scar over the pristine
Yorkshire moorland.
‘Bugger,’ Steve cried out and jolted in his seat, knocking the control levers. The big digger
wobbled, teetered, then slowly toppled over towards the edge and a sheer wooded drop of a hundred
and fifty feet to the valley bottom below.
‘Steve!’ Rog cried. ‘Lads, help!’
The rest of the crew downed tools and diggers and rushed to the stricken bulldozer. By the time
they reached it, Rog was already clambering on to the cab, desperately trying not to look at the vista
that opened up before him only a few feet away.
‘Steve?’ he called again. No answer. His mate lay unconscious, twisted in his seat. ‘No!’ The
digger slid a foot or two in the wrong direction.
‘Rog, get down; she’s going over!’ Andy, the foreman, shouted.
‘No – Steve’s out cold.’
‘You’re no help to him if your weight pushes it over the edge – get down! We’ll get help, but we
need to secure the digger somehow, keep her steady.’
Rog took a last look at his mate then nodded. He realised he couldn’t get into the cab without
destabilising the digger further and he had no idea how serious Steve’s injuries were. He climbed
down carefully, just as Simon drew up in the tipper truck. Half full of soil and rock, it was the
heaviest vehicle there.
Andy got on the radio to inform his boss at the dam where there was a telephone to call for help,
while Paul ran over with a chain. He secured it round one of the digging arms, and Simon backed up –
slowly – until the chain was taut.
The digger shifted, turning around the pivot point they’d created. The back end now hung off the
edge of the cliff.
‘Keep it there, Simon,’ Andy called. ‘And keep it in reverse – if the edge fails, you’ll need to pull
him backwards.’
‘Can’t he just do that anyway?’ Rog asked.
‘We don’t know how badly he’s hurt. If he’s broken his back or neck, moving him could make it
worse. We don’t want to move him unless we have to – not until the Fire Brigade and ambulance get
here. What happened anyway?’
‘Uh.’ Rog pulled his attention away from the downed machine. ‘I don’t know – he shouted out,
then rolled it.’
‘He shouted before he rolled?’
‘Yes.’
‘Andy, Rog. Come and have a look at this,’ Paul called and beckoned them over to join him where
Steve had made his last cut.
‘What is it?’ Andy came hurrying over.
‘Uh, looks like a skull.’

‘What? Oh Christ, it’s a bloody skeleton! Well, that’s us finished, lads, no more work here for at
least a month while they sort this one out,’ Rog said.
‘Forget that, we’ll just go round it,’ Andy said.
The three men looked over at Steve, then back into the grave. Only the skull and shoulder girdle
were visible. As one, they shuddered as a worm pushed its way out of the compacted earth behind the
jaw bones, for a moment looking as if the skull had stuck an emaciated tongue out at them.

Author: Angie

Mom, blogger, social media influencer, healthcare worker View all posts by Angie