Stooped, shaken, shocked: the minute sea side village of Spring Hall still greatly feels the impact of that tragic night of November the seventeenth, 2009.
Spring Hall, once known to be an insignificant yet idyllic location to set up camp for the summer, now, a graveyard. Locals, without fail, always dodge the question of what happened on that fateful night. Always stating that ‘they weren’t there’. Of course they were. Everybody was. Even thinking about it made some locals cry, so it was completely understandable when they avoided confrontation.
Four boys, or so they were, narrowed down to two, in a mere five seconds.
It has taken three years before anyone had been blamed. The world stopped when none other than Sarah Dickens was accused. How could she do such a thing? To two little boys, so innocent and young, their lives snatched from them. It is safe to say that Dickens felt no remorse for what she did. Even on the electric chair, sponge on her head, not a word peeped from her mouth, and in an instant, she was dead, on her way to the boys she had taken from Earth.
November 17th, 2009, the night was young and the air was gleaming. This was a surprise as it was nearing winter. Nevertheless hundreds of people gathered to enjoy the makeshift carnival that was poorly assembled by the tiny village each year. On the outskirts of the event, four boys were innocently playing what they liked to call ‘Imagination Station’. As corny as it sounded, this was where each boy takes turns at pretending to be a certain person in a certain scenario in a certain place; much like charades. This was an actual game the boys would play as one of them was from out of town so they couldn’t play whilst he was gone. Their favourite spot to play was by the cliff face, overlooking the astonishing views of the glimmering ocean, slapping against the dirt like a butcher with a cleaver..
Excitedly, one of the boys took his turn. Laughing away, two of them didn’t seem to notice the dark figure towering over them. As they fixed their glance upwards they saw Sarah Dickens, staring at them with a warm smile on her face. This was the mother of one of the boys she was standing with. Swiftly, she soon got carried away and began joining the group in their game. By this point they were inches from the towering cliff side, but too engrossed in their imagination to realise. Five seconds. This is all it took for the two boys to tumble 20 metres to their end. Frantically, Sarah and the two remaining boys screamed excessively in disbelief.
Inevitably, the majority of the carnival goers were already at the scene, with ghost-like expressions on their skulls. The next day, Sarah was in her cell. The entire village despised her. She was a killer in their eyes, when in reality she had merely been caught in imagination. There she stayed for two years before she left this world to once again join her son and his friend.
To this day not a soul knows the truth of this night. No one. November 17th, 2009 will forever remain a dreadful day for the village of Spring Hall.
