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Chapter two

The Pilot

Regan jumped up and ran. But she didn’t run towards Darryl’s van, she ran towards the other side of the airfield. There was only one thought in her mind - the pilot. There was a pilot in that plane. And the plane was on fire - it was burning. They had to get the pilot out!

Soon, Regan was near enough to see the plane clearly. The Spitfire had crashed about two hundred metres outside the airfield. It had crashed onto a small house.

Regan screamed when she saw this, but she ran on. Then she saw a black shape on the grass, about twenty metres in front of her. The shape moved and stood up. It was a man. He was wearing a leather jacket and a leather helmet. It was the pilot!

Regan screamed again. The pilot looked at her, then he ran towards the house. He tried to get into the house, but the flames from the burning plane were too hot.

‘Help me,’ the man shouted. ‘The children are in there!’

Regan saw a flash and heard a terrible roar. Flames jumped high into the sky. The pilot was lifted into the air for a moment. Then he crashed onto the ground. The house was on fire now, but the plane had gone.

Regan ran to the pilot. The airman’s clothes were burnt and torn. Regan saw his face. It was terribly cut and burnt. But his eyes were open. The pilot was still alive.

‘We must get Darryl and the van here now,’ Regan shouted to her friends, who were running towards her. ‘We must take this man to a hospital.’

The four friends ran back across the airfield. The storm was almost finished. The sky was getting lighter. Now, they could see their friend Darryl Pepper, sitting in his old van by the airfield gates.

‘What’s wrong,’ Darryl asked.

‘Didn’t you hear anything,’ Regan asked. ‘A plane crashed onto a house on the other side of the airfield. The pilot is badly injured. We must take him to a hospital.’

The kids jumped into the van and Darryl drove it through a broken place in the fence. Soon they were on the other side of the airfield.

‘Which way shall I go now, Regan,’ Darryl shouted. ‘I can’t see a house anywhere. Where is it?’

Regan opened her mouth but she couldn’t speak. There was no house, no plane, no pilot - there was nothing.

Darryl stopped the van. Suddenly, the sun was shining. A bird began to sing. The four kids and their friend got out of the van.

‘What exactly did you see,’ Darryl asked.

‘It began with the storm,’ Jack said.

‘What storm,’ said Darryl. ‘There wasn’t a storm.’

‘What about the thunder? What about the lightning? What about the rain,’ Jack replied.

‘There was a little rain,’ Darryl said. ‘But there was no thunder or lightning.’

‘And what about the plane crash,’ Regan said. ‘We all saw it and heard it. Were we all dreaming? Did we all have the same dream?’

‘The plane was a Spitfire,’ Tom said. He knew a lot about old planes.

‘And it crashed near here, onto a house just outside the fence,’ Regan went on. ‘The pilot had got out of the plane but he ran back towards the house. He spoke to me. He said something about some children. He spoke with an American accent.’

While Regan and Tom had been talking to Darryl, Jack had walked through a broken place in the fence. Suddenly he shouted to the others.

‘Come over here,’ he said. ‘Look at this. There was a house here once, a long time ago. You can see the shape of its walls on the ground. It’s a ruin now and it’s covered with grass and weeds. But there’s terrible sadness here. Something terrible did happen here once.’

Regan turned away. ‘I don’t want to stay here anymore,’ she said.

Silently, they all got into the van. Darryl drove very carefully back into Lychford.

‘Did we all have the same dream,’ Jack asked.

‘No, it wasn’t a dream,’ Regan said. ‘We didn’t all see the same things.’ In her mind, the American girl could still see the cuts and burns on the airman’s face.