An encounter with the Devil

OK enough suspense. What happened between Scarborough and getting my 'A' level results?

Travelling back from Scarborough was fine, but we'd forgotten one thing. Petrol. Suddenly one of us noticed that the petrol gauge was desperately hovering around the 'empty' point. 'We'll have to stop for petrol' one said to the other. But there was nowhere to stop, as we rushed past a sign to Malton. Maybe there's somewhere open on the way, but come to think of it, all of them had been closed so far.

'We'd better stop at the next lay by and get some in the morning' I said to Spud, or he said to me. So we stopped. Spud got in the back and I stayed in the drivers seat, and we settled down for a broken nights sleep. I thought we were both in the front, but Spud thinks he was in the back. Anyway I don't think it matters too much, but visually it works better if we were both in the front. So you decide.

There are no street lights. The stars are extra bright, the extra bright they are when the rest of the countryside is the colour of pitch. We're in a lay by in North Yorkshire and of course all the weird horror films you'd ever seen suddenly come to mind, especially when you are two rather overtired and excitable young men. Eventually, after seeing off ghouls and ghosts and werewolves we settle down.

You know what it's like, you're just dropping off to sleep and something wakes you with a start. You're already a bit on edge. It doesn't matter what it is but you're just not with it for a couple of seconds, and for a brief moment you think something terrible is happening. So we'd just dropped off into a deep weary sleep, a dreaming sleep, a sleep when weird things happen. Suddenly there's a loud bang on the window.

There staring through the window is someone dressed in a blue pointy hat and shining a torch at us, so that his face is distorted in the light. It is, of course, a policeman, but for a moment it could have been the Devil himself. I've learnt since then that the Devil takes a female form, but then I still thought he was male. Both of us are completely startled AND paralysed. 'We're not bad boys'. 'We're really sorry, but we haven't done anything wrong' thoughts rushing through my head, you know, when you see a policeman you feel you must have done something wrong. Then we realised that we actually hadn't done anything wrong, and all he wanted was for us to wind the window down.

But we had done something wrong.