Terry, The Greyhound and The Graveyard. Chapter Two.

Now then fright fans where was I? Oh yes!

So there they are, Terry and Shadey I mean and the later stops dead in her four tracks, turns to look directly at the cemetary railings with uttter intensity, ears sticking up in the way that all dog lovers( including, at that time, Terry) all know and love. I guess that he stood still in his tracks too. I suppose his head started to turn to follow the unusual gaze of the dog but I can't confirm that HIS ears stood on end unlike I can almost gaurantee that the hair on the back of his neck did just that as the sight that confronted him next was something that his wildest imagination could not have prepared him for and something that his imagination would neither let him ever forget. There, staring back through the dead of cold, winter, Thornaby night. On the side of Acklam Road, across from the cemetary gate and just up from 'The Little Boy Park' was a little face. A little face and a little tiny body of a thing that could not be described by Terry in words in all the many years to come. Not in any detail that could be fully understood anyway. Looking back was to his mind's eye, a little ghost. Yep, a short, white, childlike entity that held the railings and just peered on out at him with black eyes. Although I didn't know this when I heard it for the first time I guess it might have looked a little bit like that freakish kid from The Grudge. All tiny and white and creepy and naked. The dog ran over to the cemetary and Terry ran home. He could never remember what happened to the figure. When he ran through the kitchen door my nanna May greeted him with those words that sound so generic and cutsie here.

"You look like you've seen a ghost" I guess he looked at here and said something like "I have"

The dog was pretty smart and If memory serves found it's OWN way home a little while later. To this day no- one knows if she caught the thing or not. Greyhounds are trained to chase you see. Trained to chase food around a track. Whatever it was that night, be it real or imaginary, was indeed real enough to be chased, on a completely primary level, by an animal and at the same time was terrifying anough to send Uncle Terry home in a hurry. In the years that past I often found myself walking past the cemetary railings after dark and I can honestly say (because the human psyche is such a fascinating thing) I never once got passed (even though I was usualy going very quickly) without sparing a thought for Terry's little friend and getting more than my own fair share of goosebumps in the process. I tell you this story as I have heard it more than once from Terry although nor I, or anyone else I ever met, ever saw anything like it themselves either before or after that night.