"The simplest of explanations is usually the correct one".
I assumed that due to the current economic climate that the house had probably just been on the market for some time, and that the owner wasn't too aware of the old sentiment that the first bite is with the eye, but as I looked around I could see no "For Sale" sign, nor one "To Let". It genuinely seemed as though this house had been forgotten, abandoned, and left to rot.
The windows at the front of the house were filthy and, as such, almost impossible to see through, but as I wandered around to the back of the building, I could see more clearly inside. I would have imagined that a house such as this one would be empty, but on the contrary, it was entirely occupied , occupied by the trappings of a modern life. I could see a television sitting in the living room corner, a coffee table with magazines strewn across it, various pieces of furniture sitting as if ready to be used, and a couple of coffee cups sitting on the windowsill still full, covered in mould. I would have thought the house was lived in if it was not for a thick layer of dust lying over everything, accompanied by the occasional spider's web.
It seemed as though the most recent occupants had left in a hurry, and never returned.
Clambering through a sea of waist-high grass and bushes, I eventually arrived at that innocuous little window at the back of the house. The very sight of it frightened me, but this was mere memory and not the strange feeling of being watched from within as I had experienced as a child. Peering in, the room looked eerily familiar. I suppose there is little that can be done with a room so small, so oddly narrow, but through the dirt covered glass the room looked almost unchanged from when I had slept in it. A bed, a set of drawers, and what looked like an assortment of toys on the floor.
A profound sense of anger washed over me momentarily, but I shook it quickly from my mind. The room was clearly that of a child's and the thought of that thing harming another innocent filled me with contempt for such a thought, and within me swelled the desire to protect any child from such an abomination.
As I gazed at that wall, of which a bed lay alongside it, the hairs on the back of my neck stood up. For a moment (and it was for only the slightest) I thought I saw the blanket on top of the bed move. More than that, through that window pane I could have sworn I heard a wheezing gasp. Closing my eyes tightly I repeated another scientific mantra:
"Science does not owe its debts to imagination."
Opening my eyes I saw nothing but an empty bedroom. No foul spirits, no unearthly things; just a room, no more, no less. I breathed a sigh of relief as it that all was well with world for the first time in many days. You may think that it was wishful thinking, but I genuinely felt that I had shown myself that there was nothing to be scared of, other than my over-active imagination.
It was starting to get dark and I wanted to be home before the night. Filled with confidence now that my anxieties were behind me, there was one last thing I needed to do. When we had left that house we did so in a hurry. As a child it was disorientating, even frightening to leave everything I knew behind, but there was one thing left which I always wondered about.
At the bottom of the garden stood a sycamore tree which looked to be even older than the house. I was amazed at how unchanged it was. I had grown up, gone on to pastures new, but the old sycamore still stood, wise, warm, almost friendly in its appearance.
I think it's a rites of passage for any child to have a place to hide things. It's often their first experience with independence, something removed from any authority figure. For me, my 'stash' was half way up the old sycamore. I'm sure I must have looked like a fool, but I happily and gleefully climbed the tree with abandon. The configuration of the branches had changed in places, but overall the happy memories of playing amongst the limbs of the old sycamore, of having a little piece of the world to myself away from everyone else, seemed vivid as it was remarkable how much remained unchanged.
Half way up I caught my breath and smiled to myself. In the central trunk of the tree lay a hollow. Whether it had been created by an animal, or perhaps the tug of a gale on a weakened branch long ago, I do not know, but it was where I kept things. If I found something which I was sure would be taken from me for being 'inappropriate', into the hollow it would go. The truth is though, that the majority of the items inside were not very interesting, mostly just toys and rarely exotic pieces of contraband like a slingshot or some smoke bombs. I had no reason to hide the toys, but when I was young it felt adventurous to have a secret.
The hollow was dark and filled halfway with rotting leaves, no doubt deposited there from countless autumns, nevertheless I reached deep inside to see what remained. I couldn't believe it! I had found a toy that I had hidden there before we moved, all those years ago! I could feel the plastic in my hand, it's sharp edges unmistakable, but the leaves and darkness of the hollow obscured its view from me as I struggled to remove it from the thick,wet mixture of rotting leaves and rain water. It seemed to be caught amongst a collection of small twigs.
The reason I was so excited was that I knew when we moved that I had left one of my favourite toys behind; a small plastic First World War British Soldier. It may not sound like much, but I had grown up on my family's stories of my Grandfather's adventures during both wars, and while he had passed away before I was born, I would often act out exaggerated versions of the stories with this small soldier in the role of the hero: My intrepid Grandfather. At the time I thought a hollow the perfect hiding place for a soldier.
My delight, however, quickly turned to horror. I felt sick to my stomach, for as I pulled the soldier out, I realised it was not my toy, but something else entirely. Stuffed into the back of the hollow amongst the sludge, and now in my hand, was the skeletal remains of a small animal. The bones crunched together in my grip as the few small flakes of hair and flesh left on it putrefied between my fingers. I almost lost my balance as the rotten and potent smell of death escaped through my moist grasp, invading my senses.
I climbed back down carefully, dejected. There was nothing else in the hollow, my toy was gone, probably taken by another child during the subsequent years. What remained of the poor animal, I buried under some loose earth in the garden.
I left that place immediately.
Despite my unfortunate encounter in the hollow I still felt empowered'. That I had actually plucked up the courage to revisit that place, to see how ordinary it really was, made me feel in control once more of my faculties. I did not at that time require anything other than a conventional explanation.
I said goodbye to the old neighbourhood, to that bad memory once and for all, and began to make my way home. By the time I had driven onto the motorway, something had begun to filter through from the back of my subconscious. At first I disregarded it, dismissing it as my imagination, but as the sun shone its last and dipped below the horizon, I sensed the growing of a compulsion in me. An idea which seemed to have been born and nurtured for no good reason. No rationale, no sound causal footing, but one which had to be followed, at all cost...
I must get home!
I increased my speed, zipping sporadically between the slower cars on the motorway, looking in the rear view mirror, keeping an eye on what might be following.
I had to get home!
Again, I drove faster constantly looking behind as if racing some unseen pursuer: 70, 80, 100 miles per hour! I tore along the road, I beeped, I yelled, the sweat lashed off of me. What was happening to me!?
Please, just let me go home!
White knuckled, I finally made it off of the motorway and onto the country roads which would lead directly to my town. The roads were narrow and wound around the now bleak and ominous countryside. Darkness seemed to blanket the road in front of me. I turned my full beam on and breathed a sigh of relief to see a bright light again, even if artificial. The manic anxiety which had seemed to grip me on the motorway appeared to have diminished, however, I still glared into the rear view mirror more often than I should have, ju
st to make sure that there was nothing following me.
What a ridiculous thought! To think of something chasing my car! To put myself and others in danger by speeding down a busy motorway... Madness!
Still, madness or not, I had felt compelled to get away as quickly as possible and even though I had managed to collect my nerves, the loneliness of the road I was on fuelled my yearning for my own town, my own street, my own bed!
Nervously, I traversed the web-like winding roads which seared through the countryside, feeling relieved at the first sign of a lamp post, of civilisation, and of the boundaries of my town. I pulled up outside of my house, switching the engine off, and sat for a moment in silence. I had to stop all of this nonsense! Things coming out of walls, watchers smothering me at night, looking into someone's window like a prowler, all of this was lunacy!
Tomorrow, I would start afresh, no more writing about my childhood experiences, no more reliving of dread filled nights. Just getting back to normal, carrying out my work, spending time with my girlfriend, and most of all reaffirming my belief, faith, and confidence in science and rationality.
Then the thing in the back seat leant over, grabbed me by the shoulder and breathed a foul, rancid breath from deep inside its lungs down the back of my neck.
I scrambled for the door, my arms flailing around looking for the lock. Fear possessed me, shook me; a fear I remembered all too well, a fear from all those years ago, lying awake at night in that sickening room. The inside of the car had grown much colder, but that was nothing compared to the icy fingers burrowing into my shoulder.
I honestly thought I was going to die, that this thing would finally get its way after all this time.
The door handle popped in my panicked grip and I fell out of the driver's seat onto the pavement. For the briefest of moments I thought I caught a glimpse of something in the back seat; vague, the form of an old man, yet twisted and distorted grinning from ear to ear. Luckily there was no one around, as had there been I would have appeared a mad fool, for the car was empty. I grabbed the keys from the ignition and booted the door shut with my foot, locking it for the night.
I staggered down the path and into my house. I'm not going to lie to you but I drank myself to sleep last night. You may recall that I said I had evidence, actual physical evidence of something unnatural. You might be wondering what that evidence is. Well, I could say that it was the marks on my shoulder that made me shudder with fear, or I could tell you that my bedroom window lying prised open this morning, by what looked like claw marks, has left me dreading tonight, or any other. But no, none of that scared me as much as what I saw today upon waking.
Sometimes the most frightening of messages are the most simple, for lying on my chest as I awoke this morning, was a toy soldier, the soldier I had hidden in that hollow all those years ago; returned to me as an adult, bitten in half.
Something Wicked this Way Comes
Last night was the most heart-wrenching and frightening of my life, so much so that I can barely bring myself to contemplate it. By now I will have submitted what occurred during my visit to that cursed place I once called home; a visit which heralded the return of my childhood fears. No matter what foul thing befell me then, nothing could have prepared me for last night.
After waking up to the chilling sight of that toy soldier, bitten in half, I found that the window to my bedroom was slightly ajar. On closer inspection it looked entirely as if the window had been prised open from outside. The latches were bent back, out of position as if subjected to an unrestricted, unbound brute force.
From the outside looking in, I could see three indentations where the unwelcome housebreaker had used some kind of tool to leverage the window unnaturally away from its latch. What was peculiar about those markings was that they seemed to cut across the outside of the window frame like an old uneven razor, unlike a crowbar or other implement which would have merely left a dent where it had been used as a wedge, to force the window open.
Nothing had been stolen and I attempted to rationalise the markings on the window as human-made, and not 'claw-like' as they appeared to be. The toy soldier, returned to me so violently, I could not explain. My heart sank at the very thought of it.
I knew it was a message, but it seemed to me to be more of a twisted joke, announcing the arrival of my childhood predator, rather than something to be puzzled over or interpreted.
I spent the morning checking each room of my house and its contents; nothing was missing. I could only hope that whatever that fiend had been in the back seat of my car the previous night, that it had only wished to frighten me one last time, and then be on its way.
Perhaps its reach would be weakened so far from my childhood bedroom.
It is all too easy for any sane person to persuade themselves that a traumatic event is something more benign, but in this instance I could not; that broken toy was not a mere joke, but a promise. A promise that it would return, for what I did not wish to know.
My thoughts naturally tumbled inwards and back to those terrifying nights I had as a child. I was now re-introduced to the apprehension of bedtime, the longing for the day, and the anxiety of night. Like an old and relentless enemy, my fear grew throughout the day, festering inside of me leading to strange and ominous thoughts about the consequences of unwittingly bringing that thing home.
Do not misunderstand me, my fear was not simply for my own safety. As a child I believed that my nightly visitor was transfixed and consumed by wanting me, but I did not feel that my loved ones were in any danger. This, however, had changed. I did worry. This time I did feel nothing but fear for my loved ones, because you see, I do not live alone.
My girlfriend and I moved in together over two years ago. I have caused enough damage now, that I do not wish to speak her name and will simply refer to her as 'Mary'. Mary and I had had a happy existence and in fact, we were very much in love. This coming Christmas morning I was going to propose to her, but that beautiful moment has now been bitterly taken away from me by that rancid abomination.
I knew that Mary would be home that evening. She works in events and promotion and as a result is often away from home for days at a time, travelling around the country coordinating various conferences and exhibitions. I do not complain about this, as she and I both know that I am a solitary character, and that the odd few days of solitude normally do me good, allowing me to dive headlong into my writing, absorbing each and every word, undisturbed.
Despite this, I always miss her, and with the events of the past week, reliving those torturous nights and then allowing them to return, I had missed her far more acutely than I had ever previously done so.
She arrived at around 6pm and I greeted her with a smile, a warm embrace, and a passionate kiss. I tried to hide my perturbed state of mind from her, but Mary knows me better than anyone I have ever met and immediately enquired:
"What's wrong?"
I tripped and fumbled through my words as I explained to her that I had written a story about my childhood and that exploring those dark and twisted memories had left me distraught. Mary has an incredibly caring nature and she immediately lay her suitcase and bags on the floor, sat me down on our couch, and with her soft and gentle way, asked me to talk about the whole ordeal.
But I couldn't!
I couldn't mention this thing, this wretch which had now found its way to our home; an invisible and twisted invader which had been led there by my idiotic curiosity! At the time I felt that she would think me mad, but now how I wish I had told her the truth!
If there is one thing more damaging to a relationship than a lie, it is a half-truth. Not because it is deceitful, but because it is a corruption of the truth; perverted and abused to suit the teller's needs.
I told her my half-truth.
I told her about my story, that of the thing in the narrow room and the watcher at the end of my bed, but that is where the truth ended and a lie began. I deliberately and deceitfully mentioned that it was
of course just my imagination as a child, and neglected to talk of my experiences of returning to the scene of those depraved crimes. Knowing that she would see the damaged window latch and claw marks, I spun my web as I told a grand tale about waking up to a burglar attempting to break into our house, and having to chase them away.
I was quite the hero. I lied to her, and she showed me great sympathy and kindness for my deception.
I was embarrassed by the truth then, and I am ashamed of my lie now. If I had been truthful, then perhaps we could have faced this menace together, but instead that thing took advantage of my dishonesty and put a wedge between us.
The events of last night desecrated the most important thing in the world to me.
Night time arrived in all of its bleakness, and was unwelcome. I lay in the darkness, waiting. Mary was sound asleep next to me, each breath a soothing reminder of companionship, but despite my growing aversion to loneliness, I would have no sleep that night. I knew from experience that when my uninvited guest would show itself, it would do so with subtlety, increasing its grip on me with each visitation as if requiring time to build up its strength; a leech feeding on my fear for succour.
My nerves kept me on edge, which fought back the oncoming onslaught of sleep admirably. In the end though, biology won and as my bedside clock lumbered towards 4am, sleep took me; the relaxing blanket of nightly oblivion, anxiety washed away, my worries a distant memory, sinking deeper into the soft mattress below and finally into a long sought for rest.
Sleep, no matter how deep, is rarely all encompassing. For as I hovered over the cusp of a dream, something began to bother me. Something invasive, yet distant. I slowly opened my eyes and allowed them to adjust to the darkness. Mary lay soundly asleep and I calmed myself by listening to her breathing in the night. Inhale was followed by exhale, again, and again, rhythmically, hypnotically, I began to drift towards sleep once more.
Bedtime Page 3
