The Boy Who Lived With Ghosts: A Memoir
Read The Boy Who Lived With Ghosts: A Memoir Online
Authors: John Mitchell
Tags: #Parenting & Relationships, #Family Relationships, #Child Abuse, #Dysfunctional Relationships
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
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.
Portsmouth, England
December 1962
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.
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.