War Hill
I go up to The House most days.
If you turn right out of Temperance alley, where I live, you head smack into the centre of Hinderly, which I most definitely do NOT recommend. On the other hand, if you hang a left you head straight up War Hill to the moors. War Hill probably got its name from some bloody, long-ago battle but nowadays it’s very peaceful, at least during the day. The only violence I’ve ever seen happens each spring for a week or so when the newly hatched frogs come out from the marsh ponds and get squashed in the hundreds by the ‘Hinderly Massive’, as those moronic kids call themselves. Those wastes of space use the straight road to drag race.
Mostly though, it’s really peaceful. I like to look down on the green velvet fields that bunch up suddenly when they meet Hinderly, offended by the muddle of tower blocks, council flats and the golden arches where the Hinderlian tribes go to feed. It’s really quiet too, because the wind rushes over the moors, coming from behind me to flush the noise back down into the bowl of the council estate where it belongs.
If you walk a bit further along the top you soon see that all of Hinderly is swallowed by a fold in the land. Up here, on War Hill proper, is where it’s the best. This is where The House is.

The House
It stands alone, grey and square and crumbling like the last tooth lodged in the jaw of an old boxer. It must have been quite grand in its day, in a bleak sort of way. Its short drive has a gate of peeling black wrought iron. The gate has been twisted through the years, but crouched in the curlicue web of vines and rotting metal flowers is the name of the house. Hag End.

Hag End
I ask you. It’s almost too much for someone with such an overactive imagination as mine.
It’s deserted, of course. It’s falling apart; nobody could have lived there for years, not in this part of the country. The wind off the moors alone would drive you out. Or drive you mad, whichever came first.
Just like a haunted house, there are ragged whispers of curtains foaming at the windows, just right for ghosts to peek through. The building itself is still strong, I’ve been in it many times and I’m never afraid to get hurt. Someone at some point in the past had cared enough to fix it up a bit. The holes in the roof are patched with corrugated iron furry with moss. The outbuilding is propped up with spindly spiderlegs of timber and leans drunkenly. Sometimes I imagine that at night it heaves itself upright and waddles off to do…whatever.
Whoever the amateur repairman was, he or she had made all the improvements long ago and were most likely dead now. This idea, surprisingly, doesn’t make me sad although it would usually be the sort of gloomy thing I’d obsess over for days or weeks. It doesn’t seem to matter somehow, here on War Hill, at Hag End, all the dead things. The frogs, the buildings, the person who had once cared enough to try to fix up the house.
There’s a cool tower or turret that rises up from the squareness of the main building. It’s pretty solid, I’ve climbed up it a lot. The only problem is that you can see the bit of road that the Hinderly kids hang out on. Sometimes I climb up and take my clipping out and look at it. It’s from a magazine, and it shows the thing that I want to buy most in the world, the thing that I call My Heart’s Desire. I’m saving up all my money to buy it.

Saving Money
I have a silver bank, shaped like a baby’s block. I got it for my christening, I think. Besides the twenty quid that my godparents put in it when they gave it to me, I’ve been saving money in it every week for six years now. My parents started giving me an allowance when I was seven. Just 25p a week to begin, but hey, it was a start. I think they figured I might want to buy sweets. I don’t think that they know that I’ve never spent a single penny of my allowance, just saved it. Oh, and I also make money writing stories for my brother. He uses them for his English assignments at school. I know my parents don’t know about THAT. If they did you can bet they’d put a stop to it. And then God knows how long it would take me to buy My Heart’s Desire.
I also have a paper route. My mom and dad know all about that, and they approve.
“It’s good for a young fella like you to earn some pocket money,” my dad says, and messes up my hair. I hate it when he does that.
The paper round doesn’t pay very much, and it’s tough getting up in the freezing dawn. But it serves another purpose. I know exactly where all the punks from Hinderly live, and I keep my ear to the ground. I know exactly when they’re planning a night out, drag racing on War Hill.

My Heart’s Desire
When I get My Heart’s Desire, I have what I’ll do next all planned out. I’ll make sure that I have ‘plans’ to sleep over a friend’s house that night, or at least that my parents think that’s where I am. I’ll climb up War Hill, to Hag End right after school, before it gets dark. I’ll have to get ready, after all.
I will have practiced, up on the tops, when there’s nobody nearby and the wind blows the wrong way, carrying the sound back towards the moors. I couldn’t afford the silencer as well, so I’ll have to wait for one of those rare days the wind travels from the valley up. I’ve thought of everything. I’ll climb the tower and wait. I’m good at waiting.
When the Hinderly Massive arrive, I’ll be ready with My Heart’s Desire. The view is perfect, up on War Hill, at Hag End. Perfect. And everything there is already long dead, it won’t mind a few more dead things.