They drove down the High Street without a hitch, and Emily, the eldest, said, ‘What a fine car this is, Mr McPherson.’
‘When it behaves itself,’ replied the Rev. McPherson.
Then they turned out on to the Dawlish Road and drove for two miles until Margaret said, ‘Well, it seems to be behaving itself today.’
The Rev. McPherson stiffened, for he could hear the car making a strange grating noise with its gears.
‘Let’s hope it continues to behave,’ he said.
Then they had to stop to buy some petrol. The car glugged the petrol down as if it were thirstier than a camel that had crossed the Sahara.
‘That should keep the blighter happy for a bit,’ thought the Reverend to himself, as he screwed the petrol cap back on.
But the moment he stepped back into the shop to pay for the petrol, the car spluttered into life and charged out of the
petrol station as fast as its wheels could take it!
The Rev. McPherson ran after it, shouting, ‘Come back! You Aggravating Automobile!’ But it was gone.
The car drove hell-for-leather at 80 mph, before turning sharp left and plunging into the Forgotten Forest.
Emily, who was the eldest, scrambled across into the driving seat, and grabbed the steering wheel, but the car didn’t like that one little bit. It turned the wheel sharply and threw Emily off.
She hurled herself back on to the wheel, but the car stopped so abruptly that Emily shot forwards and her head got caught in the steering wheel. Then the car sped off again, and at the same time twisted the steering wheel so that Emily’s head became jammed against the gearstick. Emily couldn’t breathe, but – as luck would have it – at that moment one of the front wheels hit a tree stump and the car jumped into the air. The steering wheel span free, and Emily was able to pull her head out.
The car ground its gears with rage, and started smashing through the undergrowth – heading straight for the edge of a high cliff.
‘Look out!’ screamed Emily.
‘We’re going to die!’ screamed Margaret.
‘What’s happening?’ called Frank, who had his hands over his eyes and didn’t dare to look through his fingers. But the car had already screeched to a halt, with its front wheels dangling over the edge of the cliff.
‘Let us out!’ screamed Margaret. But the car had locked its doors, and it growled ominously, as it teetered to and fro on the edge of the precipice . . .
‘What’s going on?’ yelled Frank, who still hadn’t dared to look through his fingers.
‘Look out!’ yelled Emily, as the car gave an almighty blast on its horn, revved its engine, and lurched forward. The children found themselves shooting out off the edge of the cliff deep in the Forgotten Forest.
Emily screamed, Margaret screamed, and Frank screamed (although, as he still didn’t dare look through his fingers, he was only screaming because his sisters were screaming).
But the strange thing was that although they fell such a long way, there was no terrible crash when they hit the ground. Perhaps it was an incredible stroke of luck, or perhaps it was by design, but there it was: a stack of old, discarded mattresses right at the bottom of the cliff!
The car bounced up in the air, turned a somersault and landed the right way up.
Emily, Margaret and Frank looked out of the windows. They were in the wildest and most desolate spot in the whole of the Forgotten Forest. And there, in a clearing beneath the cliff, were gathered cars of all sorts and condition: ancient sports cars, with crushed-in bonnets and smashed-up sides, broken-down old vans with rusty wheels, cars without roofs, cars with no tyres, cars without engines and cars which hardly looked like cars at all.
‘Meet the Others!’ said the Rev. McPherson’s car, and it unlocked its doors.
‘Well . . . if it isn’t a little family!’ growled a lorry that had a stoved-in radiator and only one windscreen-wiper.
‘Welcome to the Forgotten Forest!’ snarled an out-of-
date sports car with only one front wheel.
‘I bring you hope!’ exclaimed the Rev. McPherson’s car to the damaged and unroadworthy vehicles around him.
‘Hope?’ sputtered an ancient Morris Minor with a rusty mudguard, no windows and no wheels. ‘What kind of hope is there for the likes of us?’
‘I’ll never feel the road under my wheels again!’ sniffed a battered Ford Transit van.
‘What hope can
you
bring us?’ clamoured the other cars.
‘These three children are your hope!’ replied the Rev. McPherson’s car. ‘Soon you will have wheels and tyres, engines and even fully working lights!’
‘Can these children repair us?’ shouted an old Triumph Herald with a damaged roof and a door missing.
‘They don’t look like mechanics!’ said a black Wolseley sedan, that had once belonged to a doctor and considered itself a cut above most of the other cars.
‘Girls can’t be mechanics!’ snorted a dilapidated Jaguar XJ, with no interior furnishings and no engine.
‘What do you know about girls?’ snapped an Austin Princess, who still had curtains in her back windows. ‘We all know you’re empty under the bonnet!’
‘Hrumph!’ replied the Jaguar XJ.
‘But what have we got to hope for?’ cried an old Standard Vanguard.
‘If you’ll all pipe down, I’ll tell you!’ blared the Rev. McPherson’s car. ‘We will hold these children as hostages, here in the Forgotten Forest, until each of you abandoned cars have been restored and repaired. One car for each hostage!’
There was a stunned silence as the other cars tried to understand all this, for some of them had become a little slow from years of disuse, and none of them, of course, had on-board computers.
Then one or two lifted up their bonnets and gave a whoop of joy, while others started slamming their doors and hooting, until a dented Mini piped up:
‘But there are only three children! There are hundreds of us cars!’ it said.
‘Quite right!’ cried the Rev. McPherson’s car. ‘I shall bring you more hostages every day – until each and every one of you has been restored to a condition that befits the dignity of an automobile.’
The crashed and abandoned cars cheered and tooted again, and the Jaguar XJ cleared its throat and said, ‘I hereby move that the meeting pass a vote of thanks to the Rev. McPherson’s car. Who knows? Perhaps we shall soon taste again the freedom of the road, the thrill of the breeze against our windscreens, and the roar of an engine beneath our hoods!’
And all the abandoned cars cheered yet again and those that still had them banged their doors.
Emily, Margaret and Frank were quickly surrounded by battered vehicles that pushed them into an old Black Maria, with bars in its windows and a back door that locked as it slammed behind them.
They were prisoners.
Emily looked at Margaret and Margaret looked at Frank, but he didn’t look at anybody because he still had his hands over his eyes.
‘Right!’ said Emily. ‘Let’s get out of here!’
But there was no way out. They tried the doors, the windows and the roof, and eventually they slumped, exhausted and miserable, on the floor of the Black Maria, as darkness fell over the Forgotten Forest.
And then it was that the children heard a strange sound: it was like a gong echoing through wood. They rushed to the windows of the Black Maria, and saw an extraordinary sight: the abandoned cars had gathered in the moonlight around an old oak tree that stood in the middle of the clearing. A fork-lift truck was banging a red petrol can that hung from one of the branches of the tree, while the cars began to toot their horns and those without horns rattled their radiators and those without horns or radiators just swayed from side to side in a sort of dance. And soon all the abandoned vehicles were dancing around that old oak tree in the moonlight in that clearing in the Forgotten Forest.
When the dance had finished, the abandoned vehicles gathered round the Rev. McPherson’s car and bombarded it with questions about the world outside. They asked it about the latest styles of radiator caps, and whether green was still a favourite colour. They were surprised to hear how crowded the roads had become, and when they heard about the speeds that some modern cars achieve the older models thought the Rev. McPherson’s car was making fun of them.
‘80 mph!’ exclaimed a venerable two-seater upon whose side you could just make out a faint number 7. ‘That’s what us racing cars used to do!’
And late into the night the cars sat gossiping about the
good days they remembered and the better times to come.
In the meantime, the children grew very hungry and very thirsty and Emily pleaded with the Ford Prefect, who had been put on guard duty, to let them get the picnic out of the Rev. McPherson’s car, but the Ford Prefect said it didn’t dare, because the Rev. McPherson’s car could be very mean- spirited, especially to the commoner models of automobile like Ford Prefects.
So the Atkins children passed an uncomfortable and hungry night in the Black Maria.
***
All this while, the Rev. McPherson had been searching for his car. He phoned the police station and told them it had run away with three children on board.
‘What make of car is it?’ asked the duty sergeant.
‘Well,’ replied Rev. McPherson, ‘it looks a bit like a 1953 Humber Supersnipe, but it could be a Mercedes Benz 230 Fintail, and it has something of the old Ford Fairlane about it, though it has a Studebaker radiator with Daimler wheels and all-terrain tyres.’
‘What’s the registration number?’ asked the duty sergeant, anxious to change the subject.
‘EV 1 L,’ said the Rev. McPherson. ‘I should have realized when I got it what that spelt!’
‘We’ll let you know if somebody spots it,’ said the duty sergeant, and hung up.
Then the Rev. McPherson went to the local newsagent’s shop and put up a card that read:
MISSING: One car
Make: Various
Number plate: EV 1 L
If seen, please telephone Rev. McPherson
Do NOT try to approach this vehicle! It is dangerous!
Then the Rev. McPherson went to the pub and drank several pints of beer, despite the fact that he was a vicar.
***
The next day, the Rev. McPherson’s car was prowling the streets, looking to make another kidnap.
It lurked for some time behind the entrance to the railway station. Then it hung around the Public Library, but nobody went in or out.
It next positioned itself behind the corner shop where the Rev. McPherson had put up the notice. Several people went in and out, but they didn’t look rich enough to be held to ransom.
But just as the car was turning away, a man came out, took one look at the car and yelled, ‘There it is!’
The man was the Rev. McPherson himself.
Well, the car shot across the street so fast it crashed into the wall opposite. The Rev. McPherson grabbed its rear bumper and shouted, ‘I order you to stop! You’re
my
car!’
But the wicked car backed so fast that he was nearly run over by his own vehicle! However, he sprang out of the way and, as he did so, he wrenched a door open, and threw himself on to the back seat. But the car was clever. Oh yes. It
simply opened the opposite door, rolled over to one side, and tossed the Rev. McPherson out into the middle of the road.
The Reverend sat up and watched his car skid round the corner, when a loud horn blast behind him made him jump out of his skin. A double-decker bus was bearing down on him.
He flung himself out of the way, while the bus braked and skidded into a pillar box. The driver leapt out, and embarked on an interesting lecture about the dangers of sitting in the middle of the road.
But the Rev. McPherson didn’t stay to listen. He was off after his wicked car . . . And it was waiting for him round the corner.
‘Aaaaah!’ screamed the Rev. McPherson as the car jumped out on him.
‘Grrrrrrtch!’ roared the car, grating its gears, and began to chase him down the road.
***
All this time the Atkins children were sitting silent in the Black Maria. The only sound was their tummies rumbling. Suddenly, however, a commotion outside brought them to the window, in time to see the Rev. McPherson’s car drive into the clearing. The other vehicles gathered around, rattling their bumpers and banging their doors.
‘It must have got another hostage!’ whispered Emily.
And sure enough the door of the Black Maria was flung open and a dishevelled man, with travel-stained clothes, was pushed in, and the door was slammed shut again.
‘Rev. McPherson!’ exclaimed Emily.
‘You’ve been kidnapped by your own car!’ exclaimed Frank.
‘Children!’ exclaimed the Rev. McPherson, his face lighting up. ‘Thank goodness I’ve found you!’
‘Quiet in there!’ barked the Ford Prefect, who was still on guard duty.
‘That’s four!’ boomed the Rev. McPherson’s car. ‘Only another few hundred to go and we can all get out of here!’
‘Hurrah!’ shouted the other vehicles.
‘Let me out of here, you wicked car!’ yelled the Rev. McPherson.
But the car was off again. Its tank was still half full of petrol and it had more work to do.
***
Back at the police station, a little lady in a black hat came in to report that she had seen a car without a driver pursuing a clergyman down the street.
‘Is that right?’ asked the duty sergeant.
‘Yes,’ said the little old lady. ‘It was a funny sort of car – sort of like a Humber Supersnipe, only it could have been a Mercedes, but with a bit of the Fairlane about it and a Studebaker radiator with Daimler wheels.’
‘You seem to know a lot about cars,’ said the duty sergeant.
‘Yes I do,’ said the little old lady. ‘My husband and I did the Swindon to Brighton Run every year without fail, until one year he died of exposure just outside Twineham Green.’