The Great Orme

It was about the time when the former residence of Lewis Carroll had been fenced off, likely ahead of some restoration work, it was practically derelict, and no doubt a liability for somebody should trespassers get in. We did however; get in, the three Mazurek brothers, Rich and myself after a skin full in the local town of Llandudno. It had become a new hobby of ours; this breaking and entering, well, certainly entering of old abandoned buildings of historical significance at any rate. We already had Barnes Castle and the foundations of Dixon’s chimney in our repertoire, God knows why we did this, it was highly dangerous, but then I suppose highly exciting, and I guess it beats continuing the drinking into oblivion somewhere half as interesting, it’s also good physical exercise and a bloody cultural adventure to boot. We’d already set up camp on the Great Orme earlier that day, it was a stage we were going through, camping, adventure and mostly single life, I guess we were all just killing time and slowly beginning to spread our wings. We planned to walk up Snowden the next day. The Carroll residence scared the B ‘Jesus out of us, we scaled a six foot fence just to get into the grounds, then squeezed through a small window to fall through into a front room. It was pitch black in there, and besides a couple of small hand torches between five of us, we had no other means of lighting our way, there wasn’t even a decent moon up. As you can imagine an old house like that was absolutely full of noises, creaks, cracks and bangs, amplified by the silence. The Dutch courage forced us round a large hole in the floorboards of the hallway which disappeared into a deep cavern into the basement, from there we made our way up the stairs, which were lacking a banister, and onto the first floor. I was bringing up the rear with one of the torches; Mazza had the front with the other. We’d drawn the short straws there, but it was often us who instigated such excursions in the first place, and we wouldn’t have done it on our own, so I guess it’s the price you pay. If you’re not constantly looking behind you when you’re at the back, you are of course convinced that there is something about to grab you. And if you’re up front, well, say one or more of those behind you gets scared and the group bolts, you’re more often than not the last man out. Once on the landing, Mazza suggested we sit down in a circle, turn off the torches, and just listen in complete darkness. We obeyed, it was horrifying, the pictures the mind paints on a black canvass, truly frightening, but then when something fell with a bang in one of the nearby bedrooms it was all just too much, it was every man for himself as we scarpered as fast as we could to escape the place without being left behind or at the back. It must have been a sight from outside, five great strapping lads all trying to get through a small opening in a downstairs window, God only knows how one of us didn’t fall through the floor or something as we bound down those rickety old stairs! We escaped in one piece and sat laughing on the grassy bank above the house. Mark rolled a joint and then we smoked it as we headed off-piste up the steep climb onto the Great Orme. After several attacks of vertigo whilst lying back in mountain goat shit at height, looking into the stars, and feeling like you could just fall off earth and into the infinite void that is space, we somehow managed to find the tents. This relaxed us somewhat, so the booze stash was pilfered and we split up and looked for firewood. We soon got a decent heap together, it was the summer, so everything was nice and dry, and with the help of some beer boxes we soon had ourselves a roaring camp fire with plenty of reserve wood. It was then that Mark told us about a White Witch he knew, eccentric engineer by day, Witch by night, he lived on his parents’ farm near Harker. I’d met him once actually, fascinating guy, lived in a barn, made all kinds of contraptions, mostly from scratch, I had no idea he was a practicing White Witch though, curious where a thirst for knowledge can lead a highly practical person, mind you, I was sure he was on the autistic spectrum. Nevertheless, Mark reckoned he actually believed in some of this stuff he practiced, he’d seen it. Now, Mark could be a bit of a wind up merchant, so we went along with it, just to see what the craic was. He disappeared into his tent and came out with a box of candles; he started to place them around the camp fire whilst we smiled on in amusement. We helped light all the candles and stoked up the fire, then, we linked hands and formed a ring. Mark explained that really, as the person addressing the spirits, he should be wearing a white cloak or something, but I just put that down to banter. Mark then introduced himself to the spirits, being very respectful, friendly yet formal in his address. He asked the spirits to give us a sign if anything good would happen on our Snowden expedition the following day, nothing happened. He then asked if something bad was going to happen, almost immediately, the fire and every single candle was completely snuffed out at exactly the same time, it went very quiet and very dark very quickly. The chain of hands broke off and by the time blind panic had subsided and eyes had adjusted, we discovered that Mazza was no longer with us, he’d just disappeared. We split into two’s, each two taking a torch, we were worried, Mazza had no torch and there were a lot of steep drops and cliffs in the vicinity. After about half an hour of shouting and wandering, Snide discovered his big brother sat on a rock on the edge of a cliff talking quite contentedly to his deceased grandmother. We snapped him out of it; I couldn’t tell if it was an act or not, I don’t think he could at the time either. Needless to say it was a long night and we left the Orme at dawn flanked by the local goats. We did get to Snowden, but we turned back after a half arse attempt of Crib Goch, we were afraid of our own shadows that day and so didn’t even bother with the easy route either, we packed up and made our way home very slowly and carefully instead.