 ‘I don’t know what’s going on out there,’ said Mum, ‘but I heard a group of kids in the road crying out for their mummy.’ Whoah, wait. What do you mean, ‘You heard a group of kids crying out for their mummy in the road out there’? Mum. We live in the middle of nowhere. The only other kids in this road are the Hoverds three doors up. This is a dark Sunday night. They’ll be in bed by now as it’s Sunday and we have school tomorrow. they aren’t likely to be out in the road crying for their mummy, are they? This didn’t seem to bother my mother but it bothered me, immensely. After all, this was One Farm Road, creepiest place in England, I am 8 years old and we’re living here!! I’ve always had an active imagination, especially as a child. The difference between then and now being that, as an adult, I can (largely) tell the difference between the real and the unreal. My dad was a heating engineer and mum used to be a secretary. One day in 1969 they packed the mini and eloped from their respective marriages and had me in 1970. My mum had always been itinerant as an evacuee during the war and one of 7 kids from Greater London who later, as an adult, moved to Devon. My dad had grown up in a small Devonshire village so eloping from his first marriage to be with my mum caused a huge scandal in sleepy Devon making him spiritually homeless. Maybe this was the reason we moved around a lot when I was a kid. Perhaps they couldn’t settle, were looking for another home. When I was eight they decided to move again. My dad took a job as a builder at a boy’s boarding school. They announced that we’d be moving from the static caravan site we lived on to this place with a lovely house that came with the job. The house was in a place called Farm Road in the grounds of an old boarding school called Kingham Hill. I remember the first time we went to Kingham Hill. We seemed to drive for miles through empty, winter countryside until we arrived at this estate of grey-bricked buildings. An ominous chapel hemmed in by school buildings and misty playing fields. The bursar met us in reception and showed us the house and we followed him in his grey Ford Anglia in my dad’s mini along a road that cut through dark creepy woods down to a hamlet of seven houses. The houses sat in a miserable row edging onto long, lonely fields. This was Farm Road. Our house was number One Farm Road. The house was old, constructed of the same grey brick as the school buildings and chapel back up the hill. The green gate squeaked open and the door, pained in the same green, opened onto a cold hallway floored with ancient dark blood red tiles. There were three bedrooms which overlooked misty fields and the valley opposite, a view that did nothing to ease the sense of isolation. There was a bathroom. Old, white cracked tiles and large enamel bath, dead spiders in the bottom. The bursar opened the airing cupboard to show my mum how much storage space there was and I clapped eyes on two dead birds who had found their way into the cupboard somehow. One was a starling. In my fear-altered memory the other was a black bird. The bursar laughed. Oh dear, how embarrassing when showing a prospective householder/employee around. The night before we moved, I head a dream. The same house. The same bathroom. I am on my own this time. I open the cupboard I see a dead boy instead of two dead birds. He’s older than me, wearing a stripy t shirt and jeans but he lay there. Very dead. Then his leg moves. Just a twitch but enough to make me realise he is dead but isant and this was a no longer a dream but a NIGHTMARE. One Farm Road was an unpleasant place to live. The only other kids were the Hoverds, a brother and sister older than me. They were insular and downright hostile. It was a middle of winter and they never played outside. I went to the village school where the tyrannical religious teacher made my life a misery with maths tests, extra homework. I didn’t make friends easily and there was a bully as well. Surprise, surprise. These were the real problems. The unreal problems were more frightening because they manifested at home. The house was haunted. It had to be. The place was so old. Pipes made noises and there were creeks and groans my 8-year-old mind couldn’t explain. Going to bed was a problem but the worst, very worst this was the boiler cupboard. At the end of my room was a door where the boiler sat covered it tis yellow coat of honeycomb-like substance. This door never closed properly and stayed open an inch. The thing, the ghost, creature, dead boy, was in there. Looking out. Not long after we moved in was when my mum heard the kids outside. This was all part of it. The supernatural event was building up and waiting for the right moment to reveal its self to me, most likely when I was alone. We’d all heard the stories. People seeing ghosts at the end of the bed or something horrible in the corner of the room. I vocalised my fears to my parents (they never saw the open boiler cupboard door as a legitimate reason for me not to got to bed) and even to some teachers. The only one who believed me as another child, a boy called Morris who reliably informed me that ghosts only came out at midnight and only then for a minute. So, they did exist then. My parents got me a radio but night time was still a problem and I’d lay in bed terrified of the house and the open door. Eventually Mum let me move rooms to the smaller room. Looking back there must have been other reasons for this irrational fear. Not being a parent myself I’ve not really had much chance to study this phenomenon from the other side as it were. Creepy stories were everywhere, it seemed, when I was a kid back in 1978. Imagination was fuelled by shows such as Raven, Armchair Theatre (remember the shadow sitting in the chair in the opening titles?) Children of the Stones (although shown as a children’s TV programme received a 12 certificate on DVD release) and, of course, Doctor Who. I’m no way blaming TV for all this. Kids were afraid of the dark way before TV. Perhaps the only reason for this was an innate realisation that the world is scary, full stop. More likely, I’d not yet learned the difference between the real and the unreal. I’m pretty sure the supernatural paranoia ended one Friday afternoon. My parents would not be at home when I came back from school, some work function kept them out, so I would have to enter the house…alone. Spring had arrived and the afternoons no longer dark but I still didn’t want to be in the house alone. I intended to sit in under a tree outside and wait for them to come back rather than go into the house. I walked through the squeaky gate. It was cold, the small blackthorn tree looked uninviting so I thought sod it, and went inside, made a sandwich and watched TV. It was that simple. Time passed. Adolescence followed and I made friends with the kids from the farm up the road who had recently moved in and by the time I got to the age of 11 and 12 we were listening to heavy metal, dragging stuff out of skips and smashing it up and riding about on our bikes. Childhood back then looked like a cross between The Wasp Factory and Stranger Things. After puberty the nightmare of adolescence began. We moved out of that house and down to the village (my parents couldn’t keep still) I went back to the house ten years after I’d moved in, when I was 18. I was working as a painter and decorator then. The firm I worked for did a lot of work for the school and we decorated One Farm Road. I went up to the big bedroom alone with a pot of undercoat do the skirting board and there it was. The boiler room door, still open and inch. No. Not this time. I’m older now and you don’t scare me. The last time I went back to Farm Road was in 2004. Some teacher Friends of Mine were having a Christmas do at their house. I took a look at One Farm Road. Lights were glowing inside and it actually looked quite homely. Farm Road itself remained isolated and dark but I’d been living in an urban environment for years by then so found it to be quite a change. One thing I did remember which was strange. I never did get an explanation as to why my mother had heard those kids crying for their mummy that winter Sunday night. ABOUT PAUL MELHUISH Paul Melhuish is a writer and had short stories published in Various magazines. He novel High Cross was published last October by Horrific Tales Publishing. He is a member of Northampton Science Fiction Writers Group. Visit Paul's website here high cross High cross has laid empty since World War Two. Deserted, abandoned. Until now. Property developer Mark Grange had renovated the old village into a community fit for the twenty first century. As the first residents move in, an evil which has lain dormant stirs. Lady Grey has woken. As human as sin but as eternal as the devil, Lady Grey enslaves the hearts and minds of these new villagers using their sins, secrets, fears and desires. And these new residents harbor some very dark secrets indeed. Unless Mark can stop her, Britain’s Newest Village will become a hell on Earth.   Comments are closed.
|
Archives
April 2023
|
RSS Feed
|
|