shoes, which the farmer arranged liberally against the outer walls of his property. Not all village residents though, were convinced that Meg was anything other than a crotchety old woman. One such was local agricultural worker, Eddie Jackson. When not picking sprouts or carting sugar beet, Eddie loved nothing more than to roar around the fenland roads in his 1970, Dodge Charger. Painted bright orange, and with the Confederate flag emblazoned upon its roof, the car was Eddie’s pride and joy. The country & western fan had spent many hours and much money customising the vehicle; adding a whip aerial, white wall tyres, and a deafening airhorn, which played the first twelve notes of ‘Dixie’ at well over 140 decibels. When bored, Eddie would roar up outside Meg’s thatched cottage, and rev the Charger’s powerful engine, whilst repeatedly blasting out ‘Dixie’ on the airhorn. The very panes of Meg’s windows would shake at the force of the cacophony, whilst Eddie howled with laughter and claimed: “That’ll teach the old bat!” This behaviour carried on for several weeks, until, one clear spring afternoon, the Dodge Charger was written off in a freak accident. In a statement later given to Cambridgeshire Police, Eddie explained how he had been driving along a needle-straight road through the fens, windows down, ‘Wichita Lineman’ blaring out on the car radio, when suddenly, and from nowhere, an old woman had appeared only a bonnet length before him on the road. Braking hard and swerving violently, the Dodge
Charger had skidded off the tarmac and down a steep bank into a water filled drain. Rolling three times before coming to a halt, the car’s subframe had been badly twisted, and Eddie, in spite of his seatbelt, was bruised black and blue and lucky to be alive. Having crawled out of the wreckage and back up the bank onto the road, the shaken farm worker could see no sign whatever of the mysterious pedestrian, despite the fact that the road deviated not an inch, for a mile in either direction. A blood sample proved Eddie sober, and tests carried out by a police psychiatrist found him sane, if quite genuinely terrified. Needless to say, no one ever revved a car outside Meg’s cottage again.
Both hunter and hunted vanished into a large beechwood Over the years, a fair number of odd tales concerning Meg circulated the village. None stranger though, than that recounted in the Malt Shovels pub, by a notorious local poacher. Quite adamant that he was speaking the truth, he recounted how one October morning when out in pursuit of game, he had slipped his brindle lurcher at a hare on a long stubble at the back of the village. Especially fond of hare stew, the poacher had willed on his long dog as it closed with ‘Old Puss,’ and watched enthralled as the hare twisted and turned and leapt in the air, in one of nature’s oldest and most enthralling duels. Never could the lurcher quite close with its prey, despite being one of the fleetest dogs in the county, and having covered the entire length of the
field, both hunter and hunted vanished into a large beechwood. Sprinting across the stubble to discover the result of the chase, the poacher entered the wood, where to his consternation, he found Meg Spalding gasping and wheezing for breath like a pair of old forge bellows, whilst slumped against the trunk of an ancient beech tree. The lurcher dog, its sides also heaving, stood before the old woman with an air of confusion. The poacher, visibly shaken, called off his dog and fled. Many in Deeping St. Mary were not surprised by this revelation, for it has long been acknowledged that the hare, and not the black cat, is the true ‘Familiar’ of the rural witch. Numerous villagers believed that Meg travelled both night and day in this animal form, passing quietly through her neighbours’ orchards and gardens; a sharp eye on their business always being kept. A plausible explanation perhaps, for why the old woman knew so much of their affairs. Naturally, such fear and suspicion breeds resentment, and even luck of the magical kind can eventually run out. For as long as anyone could remember, the local estate had maintained a policy of not shooting ground game. Generations of game keepers had explained this policy to guests, since well before the days of The Kaiser’s war. New eras of course, bring new ideas, and an ambitious young keeper, as yet unfamiliar with the area, might be forgiven for wanting to boost the day’s bag with a few rabbits and hares. So it was that on a November An unusually large, dark and aged animal, bolted out from the turnips.
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