Well, from the old black and white image it was more like a park with carnival style rides.
My grandmother went there as a child but during the war it got bombed.
They never did fine it afterwards, despite searching the garden remained lost to them.
She kept those childhood photos all her life, longing for its return.
Nowadays kids would try to find it among the miles and miles of wooded ground.
Some of them even managed to though it wasn't much, they said, just rusted frames.
The old benches were just jagged sticks in the dirt and the rides were skeletal shells.
You could still tell what they had once been, even imagine it.
Almost hear the children in your mind, laughing and screaming and screaming.
The year was 1939 and World War Two was in its early days, before blackouts and bombs.
Picture in your mind the lush grass in the wide clearing full of flowers and people and life.
The rides will be closing soon and the children are lining up, elbowing their way to the front.
It's late though the summer sun makes it feel like mid afternoon and everyone wants one more go.
Their cries of joy and loud chatter made it harder to hear the incoming.
When it was seen they ran, some not fast enough.
Small bodies (or rather what was left of them) were removed but tiny voices still ran around.
They echoed throughout the area, calling others to the tune of "London Bridge".
As the years went on the voices would fade in and out, some years silent and others deafening.
The louder years drew people out like flies to a corpse, so many never came back.
I felt helpless and furious when they got to my grandmother after all these years of resisting.
She'd never shown any signs of hearing them, though they called her by name last I saw her.
I think she'd been hearing them all along, reliving that day when the bomb dropped and they died.
She never said if she knew any of the victims of that bomb.
At that point she was one of the oldest people in the town, most of the elders went first.
I wanted to go after her, wanted to bring her back safely to her living family.
It took four hours of wandering before I began to hear their voices - they knew my name.
Said I was late and if I didn't hurry I'd miss my chance to ride the merry-go-round.
They were so hard to find, their voices floating all around me like music.
In the end it was my grandmother's laugh that lead me there.
The first thing you notice is the smell, like fireworks and rotten eggs.
Next are the bodies, some are propped up where the benches would have been and others are in the
midst of all manner of regular activities like talking or eating (all propped up with metal poles).
My grandmother was on the merry-go-round, wires stretching her mouth into a grin.
I noticed speakers lying all around the place, heard someone breathing heavily nearby.
This wasn't some forgotten treasure where the dead were forever playing as children.
This was mass murder in disguise and they were still there.
If only I had left a trail, with no proof and no clue on how to get there again I can't say anything.
All I can hope is that, whoever they are, they don't come for me as they did my grandmother.
I wish those damned children would stop screaming, I can't help you!
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