The Boy Who Lived With Ghosts: A Memoir

by John Mitchell

  Margueretta’s in her bedroom and I hope she stays there. We haven’t seen much of her after she tried to jump off the porch. Well, she didn’t actually try to jump but she wouldn’t go back into her room because something was in there waiting to kill her. It will kill her one day, I hope. Doctor Wilmot said she should take up a hobby. It will help her to relax. So Mum bought her some oil paints and brushes and some canvases. We have more money, now that Mum has a job.

  Margueretta says she is painting two pictures. One is a picture of good. And the other is a picture of evil. She wants to paint good and evil because it’s all she knows. Mum says it’s all nonsense and she should paint some flowers or a tree like anyone else would. But Margueretta says she’s seen things that other people haven’t seen and she knows things that we don’t know and it all comes down to good and evil.

  And even though everyone tells her that it’s all in her mind, she says that’s just the way some people see things and that terrible thing, that thing that talks to her, can even come into her mind and control her thoughts if it wants to. So saying it’s all in her mind doesn’t make it better because sometimes the thing is in her mind. And sometimes it’s in her room.

  I’m sure it’s the thing from the cellar. Margueretta was the first one to tell me about it. Now it’s here, like she said. It followed us here. It lives in the attic or the toilet and it goes into her room in the night. It will kill her first. But that won’t be the end of it.

  He hasn’t been here yet but the reverend has agreed to come round to our house. He will say prayers but he won’t do an exorcism, even though Mum didn’t ask for one, because he says that’s not something that he could do without permission even if we wanted one. And if Margueretta is possessed by an evil spirit then we should join hands and say prayers together and that should help but only if she joins in with us. But Margueretta still doesn’t believe in God. She says God was invented to make us feel better and Jesus was just a man in sandals with long hair. I told her she’s wrong but she says I’m just a stupid little boy who only believes what I’m told. And she said when we die we just rot in the grave and maggots will eat our eyes and swarms of flies will be all that’s left and nothing more. I think that’s why Mum wants to be cremated.

  But if we all die and that’s the end of it then I don’t know where ghosts come from or that thing that comes into her room and can even get inside her mind or why the toilet handle swings on its own when there’s no one around or who is screaming in the attic. Or the thing in the corner of the cellar in our old house, black and cold, and the drip, drip, drip. And the creatures that knocked inside the walls. Nana said they would stop once someone died. But they kept knocking even after Pop was dead. Nana said that means someone else is going to die.

  Mum forgot to make us our tea tonight before she left. She always forgets things. She put the kettle in the oven last week and nearly went bonkers trying to find it to make some tea for her and Joan. Then she went to work in her slippers and didn’t notice until she was on the Number 45 bus, the green one. And she talks to herself all the time. No one knows what she is saying.

  So tonight after Joan left, we told Mum we were hungry and she told Margueretta to come down from her room and make some chips. But Margueretta waited until Mum was gone to evening classes and told me I was a pathetic little boy who could go hungry and when I complained she slapped me round the face and went back to her room. All I said was I’m hungry. God knows I want to get bigger. Just big enough so my arms can reach her and I can slap her back across her fucking face. Or punch her in the mouth. God knows.

  Anyway, my arms are long enough to get the chip pan down from the cabinet. It’s full of hardened fat and bits of old chips and things that probably shouldn’t be in the pan but it doesn’t matter. Mum heats up the fat until it boils and makes the chips and then she leaves the pan to cool and the fat goes hard. I’ve watched her do it so I know what to do, even though I’ve never made chips before.

  I’ve cut the potatoes up into chips with the bread knife and you have to be really careful not to cut a finger off because the potatoes are wet and the breadknife slips everywhere and you have to saw it to cut through the potatoes. I put the pan on the gas stove first, of course, so that the fat would be really hot by the time I cut the chips. It’s really hot now and the little bits of old chips are popping and jumping about in the boiling fat.

  Emily thinks we should wait until Mum comes home but sometimes Mum goes out afterwards with her friends from evening classes and doesn’t come home until we are in bed and we’re not allowed to stay up after nine o’clock. So Emily spread some margarine on the bread so that we can have some chip butties.

  I’ve put the cut chips into a cereal bowl so I can pour them into the hot fat. We will use the fish slice to get them out once they are nice and golden. You have to wait for them to cool down but we will put them on the bread first and they will make the margarine melt with the fat and that’s the best part. And it will be delicious. I’m so hungry.

  The gas flame is blue and yellow and it’s the only thing lighting up the kitchen now that the shilling has run out in the meter and the electricity has gone off. It’s very dark in here. Emily says it’s a good thing we don’t have an electric stove or we wouldn’t be able to finish cooking our chips for tea. But we’ve lit a candle from the gas flame and stood it on the side by the stove to help us see.

  And now I’m pouring the chips into the fat and my face is just about at the right height to see into the pan and the boiling fat glistening and popping by the light of the candle.

  76

  It stabs like someone is sticking a knife into my face. It was the water that drained from the chips into the bottom of the cereal bowl that made the fat explode over my face the way it did. You’re not supposed to pour water into boiling fat. Dr. Wilmot says I’m lucky I didn’t lose my eye but he thinks it will be some time before we will know if my face will be scarred for life. We never ate the chips.

  Mum shouted at Margueretta when she came home but it didn’t do any good. She told Mum to look after her own bloody little brats and she shouldn’t be out every night doing the Gay Gordons and learning about the history of fucking Portsmouth.

  Danny thinks our house is possessed.

  “How can I be expected to look at your fucking face? It’s fucking horrible. My dad always says he’s not just a pretty face but he’s fucking ugly if you ask me. Did it hurt?”

  “Of course, it fucking hurt! Anyway, the doctor said he hopes the scars will go away.”

  “If they don’t, they’ll call you ‘Scarface’ all your fucking life. Fucking Scarface!”

  “Thanks.”

  “Sorry.”

  “It’s alright. I hate my sister. It’s her fault.”

  “Let’s fucking kill her!”

  “She’s going to kill herself. Sooner or later. Or that thing will kill her that comes into her room.”

  “That’s a fucking poltergeist! My dad’s got a fucking book about poltergeists. I fucking told you all about that! It threw boiling fat in your fucking face. Have you fucking seen it? The poltergeist?”

  “No. But I’ve heard it. It screams up in the attic.”

  “Let’s fucking go up there!”

  “I’ve told you. I’ve been up there. There’s nothing. Just a water tank.”

  “And a fucking vent where we can spy on your naked sister!”

  “It’s still got cardboard over it.”

  “Fuck it. Anyway, I wouldn’t want to be you. No fucking way. You need to get the fuck out of that house. Soon. I’m tellin’ you. It’s fucking haunted. Haunted by an evil poltergeist.”

  “I know.”

  The Darkness

  The Haunted House, England

  March 1969

  77

  She was crying in the front room when we came home this afternoon. We knew that wasn’t right because she should be at work and we should be coming home to an empty house after school. And she
wouldn’t stop crying even when Emily asked Mum what was wrong. She just said it was our sister.

  I have a nightmare some nights. It’s always the same. A giant black cloak smothers my face and slowly suffocates me. I can’t scream of course. People who scream have mouths but I just have skin beneath my nose where my mouth should be and then it pulls apart and bursts open and out comes the scream like a massive swarm of black flies. But it doesn’t make a sound.

  Sometimes I get that feeling during the day. It comes into my head for a tiny moment like a glimpse of someone who’s behind my back and I know what it is and I wait for the feeling of the big black cloak. I got that feeling today when Mum was crying in the front room and she kept saying it was our sister who was upstairs where the music was coming from.

  I hate that song—Mary Hopkin singing, “Those Were the Days.” She was on Opportunity Knocks. Mum doesn’t like Hughie Green because he has a fake smile and a fake accent. Margueretta thinks she’s Mary Hopkin. She sings that bloody song all the time like she’s famous.

  But it isn’t her singing the song—it’s the radio.

  It was Emily who said we should go up the stairs and I followed her even though I thought Mum should tell us why she was crying and what was going on. And it was Emily who pushed Margueretta’s bedroom door open because it was only ajar and we could hear that song from inside. But Margueretta wasn’t in the room. I looked around and there was a picture of a man propped up on the dressing table. It was an oil painting.

  So we turned around and walked back towards the stairs and that’s when I noticed that the toilet door was closed. That’s where she was. We could hear the toilet chain being pulled and it had to be her inside.

  The toilet door handle started to turn.

  We stepped back even though the door opens inward and there was no reason to step back. But we stepped back. And the toilet door opened slowly inwards and her hand came around the frame. And then her shoulder.

  Mum should have warned us.

  Emily gasped and stepped back again and that made me step back even further and my foot hovered over that space at the top of the stairs, looking for solid ground, but I grabbed the banister and stopped myself from toppling down. And I could feel the air being sucked from all around us as the door swung back to show us her face and I forgot about my face and the boiling fat and the stabbing pains that wouldn’t stop.

  Emily’s gasp became a scream.

  We could hear the water flushing in the toilet and see the green rubber handle swinging and twitching on the end of the long rusty chain. Swinging and twitching. And I could smell the vomit, sweet like before.

  Red and brown lacerations ran down her face and neck, torn in finger-width lines, one eye slightly closed and black. Congealed blood sat in broken dried-up streams. What was left of the skin on her face was yellow and blue and wrinkled like the crêpe paper we use at school. Her hair was matted and glued into the crusty blood. And a slimy trail of vomit curled down from the edge of her lips to her neck.

  “What are you looking at?” Margueretta shouted.

  And the curl of vomit dripped from her chin.

  Drip, drip, drip.

  78

  A policeman came round to our house last night. There’s nothing unusual about that. There are two of us in this house with scarred faces. My scabs are starting to peel off in long strands and it’s leaving thick brown stains on my skin and Danny was right because people are calling me Scarface. I think Emily will be next, which is a shame because she is very pretty.

  The policeman said there would be no charges. Not now. It was a fight, he said. A terrible fight.

  Everyone hopes that our scars will heal: the scars on my face from the boiling fat that Danny says was thrown into my face by a poltergeist; and the scars on Margueretta’s face from the thing that tried to kill her. Yes, everyone hopes the scars will heal.

  I think it was that thing that comes into her room. That’s why there are no charges. You can’t arrest a poltergeist.

  Mum is smoking a lot more Kensitas now and her hands shake all the time. She always says it’s the black floors and she told us she has to get out of this house to save her sanity. I hate this house too. But there’s nowhere to go. There’s never anywhere to go.

  Margueretta told us that she has a surprise. Something we all should see. I’d like to surprise her. I would creep up behind her and swing from her hair as I pull her down to the ground and beat her face until she begs me to stop but I won’t stop and then I’ll twist her ears and spit in her mouth. A great big glob of slimy spit. And would I laugh—I would laugh so much she would think I was laughing at one of Auntie Dot’s really good farts. But I’d be laughing at her, the fucking bitch, retching on the floor from where I punched her full force in the stomach.

  I think the best surprise would be if she packed a bag and bloody-well moved out. She is fifteen now and she says she’s a woman so she should just fuck off and never come back. Or she could buy a real knife and cut her own head off. That would also be a very nice surprise. Then maggots can eat her eyes out because she doesn’t believe in God.

  And now she thinks she’s an artist and we need to see her paintings. They’re the paintings of good and evil that she’s been working on in her room all this time. But she doesn’t want to show us the picture of good because she says that is private between her and her lover, whoever he is. And no, her lover is not Cliff Richard because he is not someone a woman like her could love. So she just wants us to see the picture of evil.

  That’s why we are all in the kitchen waiting. And Margueretta is there with the picture behind her back ready to surprise us because God knows it’s all about what Margueretta wants.

  “Before I show you this, have you thought about something?” Margueretta begins.

  “What?” Mum replies, dragging on her Kensitas.

  “With all of your children being born on the same day?”

  “So what?”

  “All born on the sixth of January. Three children born on the same day. The sixth. It’s a sign.”

  “A sign of what?”

  “The Devil. We’re the Devil’s children.”

  “I won’t have you saying that in this house. The sixth is the Epiphany. It’s the Twelfth Night. That’s when the Wise Men came to…”

  “I don’t know why you believe in all that childish nonsense. And if they were so wise, why did they arrive twelve days late?”

  “You’ll be sorry you said that, one day! One day—when you need God.”

  “Never mind. He’ll need me first. 666. Devil’s children. You gave birth to the Devil’s children. Weren’t you born on the sixth too? The sixth of June. Two more sixes. That proves it.”

  “What does that prove, exactly?”

  “There was Mary and Jesus. She was a commoner. A human. God impregnated her. The immaculate conception. ‘Without any stain.’ The virgin birth. Ha, bloody ha!”

  “You blasphemous little minx!”

  “So there was Mary and Jesus. And there was you and the Devil. Making Satan’s spawn.”

  “You’re not too big to get the back of my hand across your face…”

  “Oh, don’t be so Neanderthal. Anyway, I’ve painted a picture of the thing that wants to kill me. It’s a manifestation of evil. And all of you need to see it.”

  “I’ve no interest in your picture of evil.”

  “Well, you are evil!”

  “What? What? Honor thy father and mother! I’m your bloody mother for the love of God! Apologize for saying I am evil!”

  “But you are evil. I can’t change that. I would be lying.”

  “You will go to hell for that.”

  “Oh, no. I’m not going to hell. I’m already in hell. You fucking created it! Now look at this bloody picture!”

  Mum was the first to scream. She dropped her teacup on the kitchen floor and it rolled around in the turds. Then Emily ran from the room.

  It’s better not to describe that
picture. Better not to have painted it in the first place. Better one day to burn it before it comes to life and kills us in our beds while we dream of giant black cloaks over our heads, smothering us, and screams like swarms of flies flying out of our silent mouths and blood bursting from our maggot-filled eyes.

  That’s why the other people left. The gypsies. They left in the night without a word; they left behind a cat that starved to death in the scullery—and a girl who screams in the attic.

  But something much, much worse followed us from the old cellar. And now we have a picture of it.

  79

  What do you expect to happen if you lock your teacher in a cupboard all afternoon? That’s a long time for a spinster to be locked up who’s claustrophobic and needs to pee. So Margueretta has been expelled. Now she can be a real woman with a job and everything.

  But something incredible happened. Something incredible happened last night.

  Mum was out doing the foxtrot when Margueretta came into the front room with her transistor radio and switched the telly off when Emily and me were trying to watch Steptoe and Son. She knows that’s still our favorite program on the telly. And she sat there listening to “Windmills of Your Mind” on her radio and singing along with that stupid smirk on her face.

  Like a circle in a spiral…like a wheel within a wheel…

  I told her to stop and she came over and swung her arm out wide, and there was that bony hand swinging in a huge arc—about to slap my face. I could feel the sting before it struck, and then there it was, sharp and intense and as normal as ever. Normal, because that is how it is every day. Every fucking day. Always the same stinging slap and the hideous laugh.

  And she went for another strike, nothing unusual there. But I caught hold of her wrist.

  I could see that look, ready to beat me again, ready as she always has been to beat the little boy every godforsaken day of his pathetic life until he ran and hid under the blankets in his room—or anywhere to get away from her. Ready to lock him in the cellar where he counted to one thousand and said the Lord’s Prayer in the utter blackness with the drip, drip, drip. “Our Father, which art in Heaven, hello be thy name,” eyes shut tight. Ready to twist his hair out by the roots and spit in his face and make him eat cat food when all he said was, “I think we are having risotto for tea.”