Wills lived in Kent with his family ~ mum, dad, and siblings... pretty close to the dockyard. Wills� father had worked the docks for as long as Wills could recall, and it seemed only natural that Wills should follow in his father�s footsteps and work there too. That�s how a teenage-Wills found himself sat with his father one morning at 3.30am, driving down to work a weekend at the docks...
The morning was still quite dark, and the weak sun hadn't begun to filter through the day yet. It was raining a storm, and both Wills and his dad knew that today would be a rotten day to work in ~ but there was good money to be earned. The car journey would take about half an hour considering the weather that morning... it was awful. Suddenly, Wills� father pulled the car in ~ and asked Wills if he had seen the small boy stood by the road. Wills opened the door, looked back ~ and sure enough, not twenty feet away was a small boy, wet and crying by the roadside. He hadn't even a coat on, and Wills felt quite sorry for the lad as he asked him why he was crying, standing by the road at that hour of the morning. The lad�s story was quite simple ~ he had woken up and had gone downstairs to say goodbye to his dad before he went to work. His dad had already left, so the little boy thought he would try to follow him... only it had started raining and he had gotten lost. He couldn't find his way home, but knew that if he could just get to the docks, then his dad would be there and everything would be okay.
There weren't any houses very nearby, and the boy couldn't be left here alone. The child said that he didn't know his own address ~ but he would go with Wills and his dad to the docks if they would take him there. Of course Wills and his dad would do so... no question about that at all. The little boy climbed into the back seat of the car, and Wills took off his jacket to cover the lad who had lain down, shivering with cold and wet.
Wills got back into the car, and off they started on the journey to the docks again. Sniffles were occasionally heard by the little boy huddled under the coat in the back seat... Wills asked him his name, and is pretty sure that the young child sniffed, and said "Peter". Ten minutes later, and they were nearly at the docks. Wills swivelled round in his seat to let 'Peter' know that they would look for his dad very soon... but there was no-one in the back of the car. Wills� jacket was on the seat... but the boy wasn't. Wills strained to look on the floor ~ and asked his dad to stop the car. Both of them searched the car, looked up and down the road... but Peter had simply vanished.
The car had child-locks on the back doors... there was, according to Wills, no way the boy could have gotten out of the car. There is one strange twist to this story...
Wills had gotten the outside of his jacket slightly wet when he first got out of the car when meeting Peter. When he covered the lad with his jacket, Wills made sure that the inside was dry, and covered Peter with the inside touching him. After the boy disappeared, the inside of the jacket was indeed, very wet. The seat, however, was bone dry. There was an outline of a curled-up, small body in a dry patch, and outside of this dry imprint, the seat was slightly dampened ~ probably from the jacket, Wills supposes... But neither he nor his father has any idea why the seat was dry, when the inside of the jacket was soaking wet.
Wills left Kent that week... he's never been back at all.
Neither Wills nor his dad have ever discovered anything that connects the little boy with the docks, nor discovered any information about the boy himself ~ though they both admit to not researching too much ~ both have decided that it is an experience they would rather forget. |
