CHAPTER 2 - THE COFFIN
Last Halloween, Grandad told me a true story from when he was a young man digging up the roads. He hit something hard with his spade, and soon realised that he had unearthed a coffin.
Even though it was a really old coffin, it was still completely sealed, and he had to get a huge crowbar to open it. When he opened the lid, there was a very old skeleton inside. He decided to close the lid quickly out of respect for the dead, but as he did, he noticed there were marks on the inside of the lid.
Grandad ran his fingertips along the marks. He could feel ridges in the wood, deep ridges. Grandad jumped back in fright as he realised the marks were scratch marks. He could tell by the feel of the ridges, that these marks could only have been made with nails. Not coffin nails – fingernails!
Now, fingernail scratches on the inside of a coffin lid could only mean one thing. Whoever had been buried inside that coffin had been trying to get out. Someone had been buried alive! And someone must have been trying to scratch and claw at the coffin lid in an effort to escape.
Grandad said that the coffin really smelled bad too, not of bodies, because old bones that have been decomposing for a long time don’t smell. No, Grandad said the coffin smelled of desperation!
Grandad also said that not only did the hair on the back of his neck stand up, but the hair on his head did too. He said he used to have lovely curly hair, just like mine, but now, it’s as straight as straight can be!
Grandad is never short of a good story to tell, and they’re all true as well. I think that’s the reason we get along so well. He likes a good ghost story, and he would never try to ban me from reading my favourite books.
That’s why, when I couldn’t listen to my mother going on about banning books for one more second, I ran the whole three miles to Grandad’s house and didn’t stop, not once. I couldn’t wait to get there, and not just because it was Halloween, but because it was dark, and because there are no lights on the lanes around Ballyyahoo.
By the time I got to Grandad’s house, I was so wrecked and tired I could hardly speak. Grandad took one look at me, sat me down at the table and poured me a huge glass of chocolate milk, the kind that whenever I ask my mother to buy, she always says, “No way, do you want all your teeth to rot in your head?”
Grandad never says things like that. Never! He’s the coolest Grandad you could ever have. He doesn’t make me eat anything green or orange, and he makes deadly sandwiches like crisps and toffee, or marshmallow and chocolate!
He’s always saying cool things like, “You can have as many chocolate biscuits as you want, if you drink up all that chocolate milk, and don’t leave any chocolate blobs at the bottom of the glass.”
He lets me lick plates as well. He says it saves on washing up liquid. You see, poor Grandad’s only got a little pension, and he says he’d rather spend it on big fat juicy rag-worm, or feathers for his fishing rod, than waste it on old plastic bottles full of cleaning stuff that ends up in the sea and poisons the fish.
Anyway, after I’d finished my chocolate milk, I told Grandad how cruel my mother had been, taking away my torch and banning my books. Grandad went quiet, apart from that scratchy noise he makes when he rubs his chin. Then he coughed and looked at me like he was trying to see inside my mind.
“Sean, young lad, how old are you?” he asked. But before I could answer he said, “Old enough,” and then opened a drawer in his cupboard and took out a battered photograph.
“Have you ever heard tell of your Uncle Sean?”
“No, I didn’t even know I had an Uncle Sean.”
“I thought not,” he said.
“All families have secrets, but secrets have to be told sometime, and I think that this is the time for ours.”
Wow! I love secrets, and I especially love it when someone tells me a good one, and if Grandad’s telling you a secret, you know it’s going to be a good one. A very good one!
“This,” he said, pointing to the photograph, “was your poor Uncle Sean.”
That was the first I had ever heard about an Uncle Sean. Grandad rubbed the dust off the frame with his elbow, and told me to look closely.
When I did, I nearly fell off my chair. Uncle Sean looked exactly like me; even his hair was curly, just like mine!
“Take a good look at that photograph now, young lad. See how he looks like you? See that curly hair?”
“Yes, Grandad,” I said.
“Some might say, you take after him, but only in looks, please God. Only in looks.”
“Why, Grandad? Why shouldn’t I take after him?”
Grandad just looked down at what looked like an old baked bean stain on the knee of his trousers.
“Was he bad? Was he a criminal? Was he in prison?”
“Oh now, nothing like that, but I’d be afraid to tell you too much, in case I frightened you.”
“In case what? Tell me, Grandad! I’m not afraid of anything, tell me, please.”
But he didn’t speak, just stroked his chin, picked a bit of fluff off his jumper and blew it into the air. He was so quiet that if he’d been in a ghost story, it would have said that there was an eerie silence.
Suddenly, he stood up, went to the window and pulled the curtains tightly shut. Then he lit an old yellow candle and blew on it, so it threw flickering shadows around the darkened room. Just like in a scary story.
“What are you doing, Grandad?”
“Whist up, lad, and listen very carefully. This just might save your life, or your soul! What I’m going to tell you now is true, and now that you’re a big lad, a big lad brave enough to run away from home, in the dark, on Halloween night, then it’s time to tell you the truth, before you end up going the same way your Uncle Sean did, and I tell you what, lad, it wasn’t a pretty way to go, oh no, indeed it wasn’t.”
“Oh wow! Tell me. Tell me, please!”
“Shush now, Sean, and listen. Listen carefully. Listen carefully as though your very life depended on it!”
So I went very quiet.
“You know that old field behind the bog of Ballyyahoo?” he asked.
“The one nobody goes into because it’s all overgrown with briars and stinging nettles?” I asked.
Then he blew on the candle so hard that it made the shadows dance across his face, spreading darkness across his cheeks and forehead, so that he hardly looked like Grandad at all.
“Yes, that’s the very one. But, that’s not the only reason we don’t go near that field.”
“What? Why, Grandad? What are the other reasons?”
“Be quiet and listen and make sure you are listening properly with two ears and an open mind.”
“Yes, Grandad.”
“Then I’ll begin. Years ago, when I was your age, I had an older brother.”
“What? I never knew you had a brother, Grandad!”
“Shhh, and listen. Now, Sean was his name, and ghosts were his game. He was just like you, loved the old ghost stories. He loved them so much, that every chance he got, he would run away into the hills looking for ghosts. Until one Halloween, he got bored and he ran too far …”
“What happened, Grandad?” I asked.
“Quiet, Sean!” Grandad bellowed. I’d never heard him bellow before, and I immediately went quiet again, very quiet.
Grandad continued speaking. His eyes almost shut, as if the memory of what he was saying hurt him so badly that he couldn’t bear to keep them open. Then he spoke.
“Sean ran so far that he came to a place he’d never been before. A place called the Seven Hills, a place nobody went to, nobody!”
“Is that what’s under the briers in the field behind the bog?” I asked.
Grandad bellowed again, “Be quiet!” and then gave his chin a really good scratch before continuing to speak, in a softer, lower voice.
“As soon as Sean got there, a mist came down that was as thick as a bowl of potato soup. Darkness wrapped itself around him like a big, black, smothering blanket.�
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Grandad turned his head slowly, and looked behind him at the wall as though to check if there was something there. After a few moments, he turned back and looked at me again.
I was dying to know what a smothering blanket was, but I didn’t want him to start bellowing again, so I kept my mouth firmly shut.
“As poor Sean turned this way and that, trying to find his way out, the Seven Hills kept moving, swapping places and blocking his view. It was as if the Seven Hills were leading the way, bringing him where they wanted him to go, a place that struck terror into the hearts of everyone who heard tell of it – a place called the Dancer’s Well.”
The Real Halloween Page 2