About a year ago, I went on an expedition with my school. There were about 20 of us at the campsite, and we were split into groups of five or so people. We had to meet a requirement of walking for 6 hours a day. Our group consisted of two asthmatics and me, who has a chronic fainting disorder. Needless to say, the six-hour walk took us far longer than expected, and because it was October, the sun had already set by the time we were approaching our camp. In a thick section of forest about two miles from our campsite, I was waiting for my friends to hop over the stile when I noticed something poking through the underbrush.
I walked over to it and brushed away some of the leaves and mud and realised what it was - a typewriter. It was old and rusted, and was now home to a small population of snails. At the time, I had an obsession with typewriters, and I had always wanted one, so I decided I would take it home and see if I couldn’t clean it up a little.
It was compacted with what was likely years of dirt, and weighed about 8 kilograms, but I was determined that I would lug it all the way back to camp. When we got back, I displayed it outside our group’s tent with pride. I tried some of the buttons but the mud, rust and moss rendered them useless. Whenever I tried to push one down, it either wouldn’t budge, or the metal was too brittle and it snapped immediately. The type bars were all bent and red with rust, and I was beginning to lose hope that it was fixable. Disappointed, I decided to leave it outside of our tent for the night, and throw it away the next morning.
We all went to sleep and I had pretty much forgotten about the typewriter. I woke up in the middle of the night. I didn’t have a watch and I wasn’t allowed my phone so I have no idea what time it was, but the whole campsite had fallen silent and it was pitch black. Rain was slashing down on the roof of the tent. Initially, I thought the sound of the rain was what had woken me up, so I laid back down and tried my best to drown it out.
But there was another sound coming through the pattering of the rain.
The distinctive clicking of typewriter keys. Thinking one of my friends was outside of the tent messing with me, I shone my head torch through the wall of the tent. There was no shadow. No one was out there. Even if someone was outside the tent, those sounds would be impossible. The keys were far too stiff to move, let alone make any kind of noise. The typing went on for the next few minutes as I sat there, frozen with my hand on the zip of the tent door. I wanted to see what was out there, if anything, but I was paralysed.
And then, the most chilling sound of all. The margin bell dinged, loudly and clearly. There is no possible way this could have happened. This was followed by dead silence underneath the white noise of the rain. I recoiled into my sleeping bag in the fetal position, desperately trying to persuade myself it was just my imagination. It seems like a barely got a few seconds of sleep before the sun rose and we were all ushered out of our tents to begin the next day of the expedition.
I groggily stepped out of the tent, and looked over to the type writer. 4 of the type bars were raised. They were definitely not the night before. I scraped away the dirt that was caked on them.
The four letters were ‘E’, ‘H’, ‘L’ and ‘P’.