This memoir is based on my experiences over a ten-year period. The events occurred over forty years ago and, as is the case with works of creative non-fiction, many details have had to be imaginatively re-created. This is a story of childhood, as observed, interpreted or imagined by the child, and as recalled by the adult who experienced them. Some names and other identifying details have been changed. Some characters are not based on any one person but are composite characters.
Text copyright © 2013 John Mitchell
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.
ISBN-10: 0615793207
ISBN-13: 9780615793207
eBook ISBN: 978-1-63003-079-7
For Margueretta
and Emily
and all children who
sleep without
a nightlight
Table of Contents
Acknowledgements
The Cellar
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
The Attic
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Chapter 62
Chapter 63
Chapter 64
Chapter 65
Chapter 66
Chapter 67
Chapter 68
Chapter 69
Chapter 70
Chapter 71
Chapter 72
Chapter 73
Chapter 74
Chapter 75
Chapter 76
The Darkness
Chapter 77
Chapter 78
Chapter 79
Chapter 80
Chapter 81
Chapter 82
Chapter 83
Chapter 84
Chapter 85
Chapter 86
Chapter 87
Chapter 88
Chapter 89
Chapter 90
Chapter 91
Chapter 92
Chapter 93
Chapter 94
Chapter 95
Chapter 96
Chapter 97
Chapter 98
Chapter 99
Chapter 100
Chapter 101
Chapter 102
Chapter 103
Chapter 104
Chapter 105
Chapter 106
Chapter 107
Chapter 108
Chapter 109
Chapter 110
Chapter 111
Epilogue
Acknowledgements
My wife, the beautiful Michelle, dug me up after I had been buried alive. She encouraged me and cajoled me to write. She found a way to keep our daughter quiet.
Sophia, you can be noisy again.
My editor, Laura Burns, inspired me. She helped me realize that the best stories are the ones that make people care.
The Cellar
Portsmouth, England
December 1962
1
I live in a haunted family, in a haunted house, on a haunted street. One day I will live in a place where there are no ghosts but right now they’re everywhere. Some people don’t believe in ghosts but that’s alright. Those people have orange nightlights glowing in their bedrooms after dark, reflecting little moons and stars on the ceiling, and cups of hot chocolate to make them sleepy before their blankets are tucked in cozily around them by their mums. I don’t think my mum believes in ghosts. If she did, she would not turn out all the lights when she puts me to bed at night.
I am almost five years old and I was born in our front bedroom with my twin sister Emily. It was on the Twelfth Night. That’s the night when the Three Wise Men visited the baby Jesus with their gifts. It was also my sister Margueretta’s fourth birthday. So we are three gifts for the baby Jesus. If I am a gift, I would like to be a lamb. Animals don’t go to Heaven but I am sure there is a lamb up there. I think there is also a donkey.
Margueretta hates me because I was born on her birthday and now she has to share it with me and Emily, so she locks me in the cellar in the dark. And there’s something scary down there in the corner that goes drip, drip, drip. If I die down there I will go to sit at God’s feet because Dad says God suffers all the little children to come unto him. And Jesus loves dead children the most because they will never grow up to become sinners.
God wears brown sandals and no socks but Jesus doesn’t wear anything on his feet and he washes God’s feet for him because there is a lot of sand in Heaven and it gets between God’s toes. Dad says Heaven is a warm place and you are never hungry in Heaven because you can have as much bread and jam as you want to eat. So you shouldn’t cry if a little boy dies, having been killed by his big sister who locks him in the cellar in the dark.
Nana says we will all go back to God one day so long as we are not sinners. Because if we are sinners, we will go to live with the Devil and we will scream and burn as we catch fire in a lake for all Eternity, which is a very long time. And Nana knows what a long time means because she is very old, which is also why she has hair that comes down to her knees. She ties it in braids on top of her head but I mustn’t see my Nana’s hair when it is down or that will mean I have been in her bedroom and a little boy should never go into his Nana’s bedroom or she will hit him on the back of his head with her hairbrush.
2
I can hear those people inside my bedroom walls, whispering and knocking in the night. Nana says they are waiting for someone to die and when that person dies they will stop their knocking and it will be quiet until someone else is going to die and then they will start knocking again. Nana knows all about dying.
Mum says it is very silly to think that there are people living inside the walls of my bedroom and they are actually deathwatch beetles. I don’t know anything about deathwatch beetles but it’s true that they are waiting for someone to die. And then the house will be very quiet because we will all be dead.
This afternoon, we were in the hospital waiting for Great-Auntie Maisie to die. She’s Nana’s
sister and it took all afternoon for her to go. Boots is already dead. Mum said it was her time but Dad said it was a bus. They found her last week in front of the library where Mum gets her books. Dad brought her home and Emily cried even though Boots was very flat. She didn’t even look like a cat. And Dad buried her under the wall in our backyard next to Judy. Judy started having fits and running around in circles and we all knew that soon enough she would bite me or Emily in the face and that would be the bloody end of it. I think Dad killed her with the coal shovel but we weren’t allowed to watch.
Pop will be dead soon. This is because he thinks he is a train. He looks right at me and shouts, “Choo-choo goes the train! Stand back! Stand back!” I always run under the kitchen table with Emily and the cat. But now it’s just me and Emily because the cat is dead.
Pop also wets himself and his tongue no longer fits in his mouth. And he hides in the corner of the kitchen and screams if you come near him. The only one who knows what he is screaming about is Nana and so far she has only told me that it has something to do with my Auntie Beryl and a pack of playing cards with pictures of naked ladies. Also from spending a lot of time on his own in our garden shed, doing God knows what.
They always make me stand by the hospital bed because there are never enough chairs and if I stand on one leg Mum cuffs me round the ear, even though I’m just trying to rest my other foot. And I have to keep my hands in my pockets at all times or Emily will try to hold my hand and I am not holding hands with a girl. Mum says I should take my hands out of my pockets and show some respect. And Mum will be even more angry if I keep my hands in my pockets and try to stand on one leg at the same time, because then I will fall over.
I also try to hold my breath in hospitals because they smell of boiled meat and disinfectant. And old ladies who are dying smell of perfume and onions and pee. But Great-Auntie Maisie smelled of sick. There’s only so long that you can hold your breath. And her lips were all gray and sagging and covered in brown spots with little bits of slimy spit in the corners, making tiny creamy bubbles that didn’t pop. So there was no way she was getting a kiss from me, even if she was going to sleep for all Eternity.
And because everyone else kissed her goodbye and I wouldn’t kiss her, they made me say the beginning of the Lord’s Prayer out loud. I have almost learned the Lord’s Prayer by heart. It’s God’s prayer but no one has told me what it means.
Our Father, which art in Heaven. Hello be thy name. Thy king done come.
And then we said the rest of the prayer together and held hands because Great-Auntie Maisie was dead, and they put her teeth back in her mouth because Nana says you want to look your best when you’re dead and about to meet your Maker. They were in a jar beside the Bible. Old ladies can take their teeth out just like that. Nana can push her teeth up over her nose and she does it to scare me but I just laugh, even though it is quite frightening. Emily screams the way girls always do.
“Och, it’s the end, right enough,” Nana said. “I’ll be all alone soon. One by one, they’re leaving me. I thought Maisie would be with me long after her time. But her time has come before her end. That’s right enough. Her time has come before her end, and she has left me.”
“She’s in a happy place now,” Mum said.
“Aye. A happy land. I’ll be next. There is a happy land. Far, far away. Where they eat bread and jam three times a day. She’ll dance again, barefoot in the heather. We danced, you know. Maisie could dance! And skipped with the golden-tailed dragonflies just out of her reach.”
Nana touched the air in front of Maisie’s face like there was something there.
“I know,” Mum replied and started to cry.
“Just wee lassies. Wee lassies playing,” Nana said. “We’re all wee bairns, inside. She wore a pink dress. Pink with yellow flowers. Dancing with the dragonflies. Maisie could dance, you know! Aye, she could dance.”
And Nana cried too and Mum cried even more and that made Emily cry but I did not want to cry so I stood on one foot and stared at the floor and it was plastic and shiny with gray swirls and tiny red flecks. But I did not put my hands in my pockets.
Great-Auntie Maisie is in Heaven now. Just as soon as they are sure that she wasn’t a sinner, it will be St. Peter who meets her when she arrives in Heaven. God has quite enough to do keeping locusts away from crops and fighting the evil that’s inside all of us. But there isn’t any evil inside of me because I am just a little boy.
I’d better behave on the bus going home because it is very selfish of me not to kiss my Great-Auntie Maisie right before she died, with Nana holding her hand and whispering to her about when they were girls dancing together in their bare feet and chasing dragonflies in the heather. And now it’s too late and there’s no point in harping on about it but I should be ashamed of myself.
So I will not make my usual fuss even though Margueretta has just flicked the back of my ear.
3
All the houses on our street are falling down. Our house is very dark because it’s in the middle of a long row of houses and there aren’t many windows and the electricity keeps going off. There’s a narrow black passageway that goes all through our house and at the end are some broken stairs that go up to our bedrooms. I must not play on the stairs because the railing is mostly missing and I will fall off and break my bloody neck and die. And I can only blame myself if I get my foot caught in that hole at the top of the stairs because I’ve been told enough times to watch out for it. If my foot gets caught in that hole, I will never get it out and I will be forced to live at the top of the stairs for the rest of my life without my foot.
The best thing about our house is that there is no bathroom so we don’t have to wash until our feet are really black. But when I need to go to the toilet, it is out through the scullery door and halfway down our backyard and there is no light in there and I keep telling my mum that it’s not my fault if I pee all over the floor. And only someone really brave would go there in the middle of the night—or if you had very bad diarrhea. I had diarrhea once but I never made it to the toilet.
Pop’s son hanged himself in the toilet. Nana said he was just going for a wee but he took his shoes off and hanged himself with his tie from the pipes. I don’t know why he took his shoes off but Nana found him dead swinging from his tie. She said his eyes were popping out of his head like my marbles—the big green ones. She mostly stayed away from toilets after that. But she says you have to go eventually.
Mum said I shouldn’t listen to Nana’s tales and not to worry that Pop’s son was also called John, the same as me. And Mum says a rhyme when I am scared to go into the toilet in case his terrible ghost is in there, hanging with his eyes popping out like my green marbles. The rhyme is supposed to make me feel better.
Diddle, diddle, dumpling, my son John,
Went to bed with his trousers on,
One shoe off, and the other shoe on,
Diddle, diddle, dumpling, my son John.
I’m not going to tell my mum again but that rhyme does not make me feel at all better. If she wants me to feel better she should not make me go in the toilet on my own in the dark.
Nana says it will be a blessing when Pop goes to join her first husband on the other side, although she doesn’t know whether Pop deserves to go to Heaven because of something he did with those playing cards and my Auntie Beryl. And then after he dies, some men in black suits will bring Pop back home and they will put his coffin in the front room so we can give him a night-night kiss for all Eternity. I will be hiding under my bed.
Dad keeps his bellows organ and his piano in the front room, so he will also be able to play some sad music for Pop. Nana likes “Abide With Me.” I like “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star.”
Dad also plays funeral music in the middle of the night and it’s a very loud organ and it makes Mum scream but he’s only doing it to annoy the woman next door because she is spying on us. Dad says it’s bloody obvious that she’s spying on us because no one
goes out to hang up washing after dark. She’s just trying to look through our scullery window to see what we are up to.
I used to have a bath in the sink in the scullery but now I’m too big and I have to go to the public baths, which are quite a long walk away. I tried to hide my feet this morning but I had to agree with Nana that they were extremely black and neither of us could remember when I last had a bath. I should also know that cleanliness is next to godliness and even though Emily’s feet are not as black as mine and there are no little parcels of dirt between her toes, we will both be having a bath today because it is cheaper at the public baths to share, even though I complained that I do not want to have a bath with a girl. But Nana said it is also my birthday tomorrow and I need to look my best because I am going to be wearing a kilt.
On top of that, Nana has noticed that I have been scratching my head a lot lately which she says is nothing that a good wash with a bar of carbolic soap won’t cure. But I have stopped picking my nose because Nana said I will get very fat nostrils like an Eskimo and then I will have to go to live in the North Pole.
There’s no point in arguing with Nana because she is stronger than my dad, and she can arm wrestle with grown-up men, even though she is quite short and never eats except for an occasional pickled egg. I saw her hit a man once outside a pub and he never got back up. He didn’t see it coming because you don’t expect a very short grandmother to punch you on the chin so hard you fall over. She distracts them by swinging her left arm around so they think she is going to hit them with her left fist but then she catches them on the chin with her right.
Nana comes from the Highlands, which is a place in Scotland where the soldiers wear kilts and play bagpipes to frighten the English who always run away, screaming like little girls. I am Nana’s Scottish soldier.
“Dunnee ever admit that you’re English, wee Johnny! You should have been born in Dunfermline.”
The English are Sassenachs and are never to be trusted. I must not under any circumstances tell anyone that I was born in England.
4
It’s our birthday today. Emily got some lavender bath salts wrapped in Christmas paper. And Nana gave me a set of six whisky glasses. They have pictures of Scottish soldiers on them. Mum said it makes no sense for a five-year-old boy to have a set of whisky glasses so I will keep them under my bed.
The Boy Who Lived With Ghosts: A Memoir Page 1