The Haunting Within

by Michelle Burley

  She walked over to them with two plates of sandwiches stuffed full with bacon and gave a plate to each of them. Then she walked to the kitchen side and brought them two mugs of steaming hot coffee. She plonked them down in front of her children and bent over and gave each one a kiss on the head. Lisa saw Debbie had showered - the dried blood in her hair had gone and as much as the bruises looked stark against her porcelain skin, the cuts seemed less brutal now they had scabbed over.

  “At least my Father was good enough to have stocked up on a few bits of food before he popped his clogs! There’s not much, but we won’t need much, just enough for breakfast, then maybe we can stop off at a café on the way home for some dinner?!” she said as she returned to the table with her own coffee and bacon sandwich.

  As Debbie sat across from them tucking into her breakfast they watched her closely. Apart from the cuts and bruises, she looked her old self again, the beautiful kind smile, the sparkle in her pale blue/grey eyes. They breathed a sigh of relief.

  “How are you feeling this morning mum?” Lisa ventured tentatively.

  “Oh, I’m feeling much better thank you darling. I’m sorry about yesterday, it must have frightened you.”

  “Just a bit!” laughed Aiden. “But never mind as long as you’re okay now.”

  “I am! My Father is pleased with me today you see. He apologised for punishing me yesterday.” she finished with a smile.

  “You don’t believe that it was him who did this to you?” asked Lisa incredulously.

  “What are you talking about? Of course it was him! Aiden saw him hurting me didn’t you son?”

  Lisa glanced at Aiden who was sat next to her with a look of utter sadness on his face. They said no more about it to her. It was obvious she believed it was her father and trying to get her to see sense would probably do more damage than good. They knew then that things weren’t alright, far from it in fact.

  They somehow managed to finish their breakfasts with their mum chattering away like nothing had happened, telling them she had found her keys. They were in her handbag all along she told them with a childish laugh. They were utterly frustrated at hearing this remark. If only she had looked for them properly last night they wouldn’t have had to spend the night in the horrible old house, but they knew there was no point in bringing this up with her so they left it, happy in the knowledge that they could go home after the estate agent had been later that day. She insisted to them that she wanted to do some cleaning to “keep her Father happy”. So they let her get on with it. While she was upstairs cleaning, Aiden and Lisa were downstairs in the kitchen. This was the best room in the house, the one with the nicest atmosphere. This morning it was even nicer. The sun was streaming in through the windows and they could hear the birds chirping merrily outside. It made it all the more difficult to believe what was going on.

  “Do you remember when we came here with mum as kids?” Lisa posed the dreaded question to Aiden.

  They had never spoken about it since, but both knew it was time they had to discuss it.

  “Course I remember, I don’t think I’ll ever forget!”

  They both fell silent as in their minds the years slipped away and they were small innocent children again, visiting their Grandfather for the first time.

  38

  When they first entered the house, after being ushered in by a pretty, petite, dark-haired lady in a pristine old fashioned black dress with a crisp white pinafore over the top and a white cap which was completely out-dated for the time they realised now, their grandfather was nowhere in sight, much to their mum’s obvious relief. The children were amazed by the house and all its splendour. They had never seen such a big house or décor this rich and ornate. Their home was lovely and very cosy, but a world away from a place such as this. They just wanted to run and explore everywhere all at once and began to get increasingly excited. For them it was like being inside a fairy-tale, they had never seen a place like this. Lisa thought it was like being in her very own version of Beauty and the Beast. She could just imagine herself as Belle, waltzing down the regal-looking staircase in her most beautiful ball gown, while her prince awaited her at the bottom. She stood, craning her neck and looking up at the high ceiling which was ordained with a huge crystal chandelier that reflected tiny prisms containing all the colours of the rainbow as the sun streamed in through the high windows and bounced off it. She would sit down and draw this wondrous sight when she got home so she could always remember it. Little did she realise that she would not need a drawing to remember it for it would be etched like some sort of mental acid in her mind for the rest of her life. Nor did she realise that she would not want to remember it as she thought she would.

  Debbie was waiting for her father to come to greet them, his only grandchildren. She hoped with all of her heart that he would adore them and spoil them. She had dreamed of this day for so long. In her dreams her father would come and welcome them with open arms and sweep Lisa and Aiden up into a cuddle and all would be forgotten. She knew that it would not be like that though. It couldn’t. Too much had happened for it to be put behind them but she was willing to try. Debbie loved her father so much, wanted to be accepted into his heart. She would do anything to keep him happy. She thought that if she obeyed him he would love her like a father should love his only daughter; his only child. Was that too much to ask of a father? Reality though was very different. Debbie didn’t expect him to have changed just because he was meeting his grandchildren for the first time. She understood that he was ill, maybe that’s why she had kept in touch with him, although it was more so for her mother’s sake. Now with her mother gone, she should have left him to it, left him to his own sorrow and regret of how badly he had treated her beloved mother, yet here she was again and she knew with pure sadness and regret that she would come running every time he needed her. She hated herself for bringing her children with her. They wouldn’t be able to cope with this; with him. She had known nothing else, being brought up in this place she knew what to expect and how to handle things, but they; her beautiful babies, had never been subjected to anything but love during their young lives. They wouldn’t know what to do or what to say. She was totally disgusted with herself for bringing them into his hellish world.

  She glanced to her side and saw that the children were not there. She specifically told them to behave and here they were wondering off, disobeying her. Did they not understand how important, how crucial it was to please her father? Of course they didn’t, she had never told them what he was like, she had wanted to protect them from his evil. What a laugh that was! Debbie gave an inward nervous and disgusted giggle to herself even though she didn’t find it remotely funny. She had tried so hard for so many years to protect them from him, successfully as well, and now here they were, about to be dragged into her nightmare by her of all people, the one person in the whole world who should protect them from harm, from danger. She had always protected them, kept them safe, and stood up for them. They depended on her to keep them safe and secure, they trusted her implicitly and here she was, letting them both down in the worst possible way. She shook her head at the irony of the whole sad, sorry situation. She so badly wanted to leave, to escape from this awful place, but she knew she was just as likely to take the children and leave as her father was to have changed his cruel ways. It was fear more than anything that kept her in the house she had lived in when she was a child. Her childhood had been destroyed by bad memories and she felt that she had lost her innocence. She had never been permitted to be a child, to play and get dirty, to run and shout and scream, she was never even allowed to speak like a child. Since she could remember her father had drummed it into her that she must always speak properly. He wouldn’t stand for anything less! If she so much as slouched in her chair she would be punished which usually meant being locked in the cupboard under the stairs for hours and hours on end, only to be let out to endure a caning at his huge, vicious hands. The being locked away had started when she was
just four years old, still a baby! When, after about three years of that being the main punishment - apart from the beatings - her father had decided that she had become “immune” to the cupboard. He thought that it didn’t bother her any longer but he was so wrong! She was scared witless of the cupboard! Not just the cupboard but the whole house. She would often see things, things that she knew she shouldn’t be seeing. Although the cupboard was pitch black and she could see absolutely nothing, she still heard the voices coming from inside the small space with her, seeping out of the darkness to find her. No, she had never become accustomed to the closet. She just somehow managed to control her terror enough to stop the screams and the pleading because she knew they got her nowhere. In fact it sometimes made him worse and he would punish her harder and longer with the cane afterwards for making so much noise.

  Because he thought she had grown accustomed to the cupboard, her punishments moved to the other part of the house where her father had run his psychiatric hospital from. He would tell her that if she was a naughty girl, the ghosts of the patients would get her. She didn’t need to be told that though, she saw them all the time. While she was locked in the different parts of the old hospital - depending on whichever place her father thought necessary that particular day, be it the patients claustrophobic cold, damp rooms or the isolation room with the padded walls, or even sometimes the treatment room where he would strap her to a chair and leave her there whimpering to herself - she would see them and hear them. There was no place in the house that she didn’t see them when she was alone. Her mother told her not to worry about them, that they couldn’t hurt her, but she was so frightened of them. They were all so strange. Not at all like any person she’d ever seen before. They plodded around slowly, aimlessly, without purpose like they didn’t know where they were going. They often spoke to themselves as well, mumbling as they ambled by her on their way to nowhere with a line of spittle drooling its way from in between their slightly parted lips to the floor that their soft-soled shoes made no sound on. She never dared tell her father about the strange people though. He would use it as another reason to punish her. In a way, she thought he already knew about them and that was why he kept locking her in with them. They never spoke to her, never even seemed to notice her. It was as though they were in a world of their own, completely oblivious to their surroundings. It was in her dreams that one of them noticed her and she hated him. He was scary and he knew she didn’t like him. That’s why he always crept up on her in her state of slumber when the dream already had hold of her and there was no way of escaping from him. She had never been alone in this house. Even in her dreams…

  39

  A long time ago Debbie made the conscious decision to move out as soon as she turned sixteen. For her, the day of her sixteenth birthday couldn’t come soon enough. Although it didn’t happen on that day she knew it was just a matter of time. Not long and she would be out of the hell hole she had been unfortunate enough to call home for all of her young life. She had been saving up for what felt like forever. While her friends spent their money on makeup and going out, Debbie had saved every penny she had, her only thing to look forward to was being able to finally get away from her father. She did, but she had very little money and nowhere to go. Her father flatly refused to help her so she had no choice but to go it alone. She ended up in a hostel for a while. It wasn’t a very nice place, but it gave her chance to be alone and at peace with herself. She would see a lot of people come and go, but mostly kept to herself. There were a lot of children in the hostel and she would speak to these timid little souls whenever she saw them, but apart from that she had no-one. She found herself a job cleaning in a café. The pay wasn’t very good, but at least she had an income to live on. Also, she was permitted to take home any leftover food that would otherwise rot. She would get in from work every day and cook herself a measly dinner from the café’s leftover’s that usually consisted of either pasta or potatoes, mainly, then she would set about tidying up her small home. It was a bit of a grubby place, nothing much to look at and she didn’t own a lot, but what she did have she took great care of. Even though it was an extremely cramped one-room-for-everything place, she loved it. She didn’t even mind sharing the communal shower and toilet with everyone else who dwelt in the run-down building. She kept in touch with her parents by writing to them every so often. She constantly felt guilty about leaving her poor mother alone with him, but she had to get out. After a few months of cleaning at the café, the owner, once he’d noticed how good a worker she was, offered her a job as a waitress. The money was better and the work was easier, not easy but easier. It was nice to leave work without having red-raw skin on her hands from all the harsh chemicals she had to use, day in, day out, but she would often help Annie, the new cleaner who had been hired to do Debbie’s old job. Annie was a very shy, awkward girl who only spoke when spoken to, but she and Debbie got on just fine. Kindred spirits Debbie liked to think of them. Annie looked up to Debbie and often asked her advice on how to get rid of grease stains or whatever else was bothering her. Because she was so timid she would often get upset over little things like the state of the toilets come Monday morning and end up crying on Debbie’s shoulder, worrying that she would lose her job. Debbie always managed to calm her down and they became firm friends. She even asked Annie to be Godmother to Lisa and Aiden and she tearfully accepted. The children had always loved Aunty Annie and her home-made cookies. Annie was the closest friend Debbie had ever had.

  It was while she was working as a waitress that she met her children’s father, John. Oh, he was so handsome with his dark brown hair and his rich chocolate brown eyes. All the other waitresses swooned after him; only, he didn’t seem to notice any of the other waitresses, only Debbie. He was a regular customer and would come in for a fry-up in his lunch hour. He was unshaven in a rough and appealing way. His hands were big and strong and his nails were always dirty from his work at a construction yard around the corner. His hair was unkempt but it suited him. He could not have been more achingly good-looking if he tried. Jess, who had become one of Debbie’s friends at work pulled her to one side one day to tell her that “that little dish over there” had asked specifically for Debbie to take his order. She had been so embarrassed by this that she didn’t want to go, but Jess eventually talked her into it. She self-consciously walked over to his table where he sat alone reading a newspaper, with her head down and her cheeks burning. She hoped that if she kept her head down as much as possible that her shoulder-length hair would hide her blushing red cheeks. She could feel the strength of his stare penetrating her being. It was like he was reaching inside her and touching her soul, her very core. She sensed the electricity between them and it made her all the more shy and insecure. Building up all the courage she possessed she asked him if she could take his order in a shaky, almost whisper of a voice. His voice was deep and raspy and made her feel weak at the knees. The attraction was so strong she could barely stand it. When she had taken his order of a full English with a coffee - black, no sugar - she asked him if he wanted anything else. To this day she remembered his chat-up line. He had replied with a self-confident and alluring smile “A date with you would be nice.” And he had given her a little wink. She remembered now how she felt when he said this and her heart began beating harder in her chest. She hadn’t known what to say as she stood at his table with her legs about to give way under her so he repeated his reply and added “I would love for you to come out with me.” She saw the open honesty in his face and something made her say yes to him. Up until this day she had never heard a more corny chat-up line, but, corny or not, it worked.

  When she told her parents she was dating her mother’s solitary smile told Debbie she was pleased for her, but her father called her “a little tart” but she was in love and for the first time in her life she didn’t care what he thought of her. She had someone else to love her now. After they had been dating for almost a year they moved in together. Her father was n
ot happy about that. Living together out of wedlock was an embarrassment to him. John was earning a decent wage as an architectural engineer and Debbie took on a second job as a nursery assistant so they could afford their little comfy home. They had waited until they had moved into their home to make love for the first time. Oh she was so nervous! She had never been intimate with anyone before, never had a boyfriend in all her life. She didn’t know what to do, nor what to expect, but John had been so gentle with her, caressing her, making her feel loved and wanted and when they finally made love, she felt like this was how it was meant to be, that she and John had been made for each other, a perfect fit. Her feelings overwhelmed her as she allowed him to become part of herself, as she became part of him. As she shed the years of awkwardness and uncertainty; she felt something she had never experienced before. She felt free! John had released her from her nightmare, he was her prince and as she soared to the dizzying heights of ecstasy with him she had never felt so at peace within herself. Debbie remembered how, the first time since she and John had made love that she visited her parents, she was fearful that her father would notice the change in her. Not a physical change, but slightly mental and definitely emotional, and that he would know why she had changed, that he would call her all those horrible names again. So she quenched her new found thirst for life and continued on her journey. As it turned out, if he did notice a change in her he declined to mention it, much to her relief.

  They had married three years after they moved in together and although Debbie’s parents did not attend she completely forgave her mother. After all she knew he would have been the one who refused to show up. In their third year of marriage Debbie had fallen pregnant. She made the decision to give the child, her child everything she possibly could and let them do everything she was never allowed to. When Lisa was born it was the happiest day of her life. It made it all the more difficult to understand how her father could be like he was to her though. Holding Lisa who was just a minute or two old she couldn’t ever imagine harming her, or letting any harm come to her.