Incidences 1 & 2
Four years ago, I lived in London with my wife Mary and our two children. I’m originally from just outside Liverpool, but had moved south as a teenager 15 years earlier. Mary wasn’t a southerner either, but we were settled, all our friends were nearby, the kids were in a good school and we were all happy. Then, we decided to move ‘up north.’ The reason – another baby on the way, meaning less income and no chance of buying a bigger house without taking a mortgage even more crippling than the one we already had. I was doing two jobs, Mary was doing one, we had a smart three bedroom place which was okay for four people, too poky for five. If we moved, I could go back to working a normal week, Mary could stop working altogether, we could get a bigger house and have a much smaller mortgage. Plus the kids would get to see their grandparents more than twice a year. It was a no-brainer, even though leaving behind good friends and fond memories would be wrenching.
A job came up, I applied, and was offered an interview in Preston, Lancashire. All good, except the interview was scheduled for the exact same day that the baby was due. I told Mary she’d have to keep her legs crossed for a day. To avoid having to make repeated trips, I scanned the web and made appointments to view a number of houses in Preston all on the same day. I also noted the addresses of local schools so that I could check them out too. A busy day was planned. In the event, my son was born the day before my trip to Preston. Yes, I could have cancelled my interview and waited for another vacancy, but in my line of work that could be a very long wait. The baby was poorly, he had to stay in hospital for a couple of weeks as it turned out, but we talked about it and decided that I should go – Mary’s caveat being that I keep my phone switched on and got back to London asap.
Some friends looked after our little girls, I set off early and arrived in Preston for 7.30 am. A quick swim and shower at the nearest leisure centre, clean suit and polished shoes, light breakfast, and a good interview… by 10 o’clock I was finished. Time to look at houses. They were all awful. They just all seemed too new and shiny. It’s a great town Preston (actually it’s Britain’s newest city). Some very old parts, rural edges, a few dodgy estates but a great town centre for shops, pubs, restaurants and transport. I didn’t know any of this at the time, I’d never even passed through before, but the charms were all there to be seen. Bt, as with all expanding districts, there are lots and lots of new, thrown up, blow-down nuclear-family estates, and I was just unlucky that day that none of the older, more substantial Victorian houses were available to view. Apart from, you’ve guessed it, the last one. In fact I hadn’t made arrangements to view it at all, I just happened to drive by and saw the state agent’s board. I pulled over, had a quick look from the outside, then rang the agent and asked her to arrange an immediate viewing, explaining that I had to hit the road in an hour or so. She called back and said she couldn’t help me because no-one was answering her call. Strange, I said, as I’m sitting outside and can see people through the window. The agent shrugged down the phone, explaining that viewings were by appointment only, but I decided to take make chances and I knocked in hope. Hesitantly, the lady agreed to let me in and look round this run-down and extraordinarily dirty five-bedroomed detached pile.
It was full of original nineteenth century features, but they’d all been mucked about with: gorgeous slate and marble fireplaces painted yellow; huge ornate ceiling roses with pink smiles painted onto the faces of the cherubs; fourteen inch skirting boards, painted every colour of the rainbow. The massive garden was totally overgrown, the windows were rotting, the plumbing didn’t work. The smell was ghastly. It was wonderful. There was just so much space. Huge, high-ceilinged rooms, three unconverted loft sections, sculleries and coal sheds, and labyrinthine cellars full of unlit nooks and hidden corners. Even now, not that I go there unless I really have to, the cellars seem to leave a footprint larger than the house itself. I took a card-load of photographs, told the lady I’d put an offer in as soon as I got home, and away I went. I knew I’d found not only a home, but also because of the way the place was so under-presented, I’d also found a bargain. The seller told me, and all credit to her for honesty, that the place had been on the market for nearly a year without any offers being made. The last viewing was five months ago. They (her and her husband and four kids) were desperate to sell. The place was already, in my opinion, ludicrously cheap. Notwithstanding the work that was needed, most of which I could do myself, I sensed a steal. I raced back down the motorway in a state of euphoria. I’d got the job I wanted, I’d found a great little school with sheep in the playing fields, and I’d found us the house of our dreams. Having seen photographs of the grotty interior, Mary had some reservations, but my enthusiasm swept her along and, frankly, she was in no state to put up a fight. She came out of hospital that evening, and our son was a bit better.
To cut a long story short, after some haggling and a few hiccups (fighting off gazzumpers and dealing with surveyors-with-attitude), we moved in ten weeks later. Seeing the place again, in warmer weather and with more time to roam, I realised the size of the task. Simply cleaning the place, without renewing anything, would take us a week. We also had to unpack, although the sheer size of the house meant that all our stuff could sit in one room while still leaving space for a game of five-a-side. Making the place as comfortable as the house we’d left behind would take months and years. We kept the baby with us, packed the girls off to my mum and dad’s for a week, then got to work. And jeez did we work. The previous owners had had a hum-dinger of a party before leaving – they were emigrating somewhere or other and were obviously thrilled to be getting away. Booze had been spilled on every carpet, and fags had been stubbed out in puddles of vomit. Kebabs and chips and crisps and nuts were everywhere, nothing had been put in the bin. The carpets were all horrible anyway, so we pulled the lot up and threw them outside. Same for the curtains. Mary took the upstairs, I stayed down, and armed with mops and bleach, cloths, sponges, scrubbing brushes and caustic soda, we cleaned things that had never been cleaned. The york-stone flags in the kitchen were sticky with thick black grease, and took more than a dozen mop-bucket’s full of hot caustic water. We went through probably a hundred old rags removing grime from the plaster cornices and skirting boards. Some of the light switches wouldn’t work because they were so gummed up with dirt, and of the fifty-odd light bulbs in the place, forty-odd of them needed to be replaced. I removed all the interior doors, every one of which had a paint mass greater than its wood mass, and set them aside for stripping. I dismantled the rancid and rotten kitchen units so that I could sweep away the food waste, mouse carcasses and mould. Every few hours I’d go looking for Mary and we’d stop for coffee and cake. Coming down the creaky stairs she’d have bin bag after bin bag of old tissues and underwear found behind radiators and beneath carpets. Before we knew it, it had gone 2 am with still loads to be done. I hadn’t even rebuilt our bed. Then something strange happened. I don’t like silence in a room, so I always have a radio blaring if I’m on my own. I’d been cleaning the kitchen pantry, which, judging by the dirtiness of the grease in there, had been used to store engine parts, when I realised that my radio was silent. I hadn’t noticed it switch off, but I hadn’t heard any transmission for maybe ten minutes or more. I climbed off my stepladders and realised that I couldn’t hear Mary either. No running of water, scrubbing of floorboards, no footsteps or creaking or anything. With hindsight, this is maybe not so strange. I was downstairs at the back of the house, she was upstairs and last seen in the front bedroom. In all our other houses, you couldn’t find silent places no matter how hard you searched, but in a house this big it’s possible. But I didn’t know this at that time, and the quietness actually frightened me. Well, actually, it terrified me. A genuine and awful shiver than ran right through me, and I was glued to the spot. Something was horribly wrong. Now, like I’ve already told you, I’m a rational man and I’m not easily intimidated. So the obvious thing for a normal person to do when he wants to know where someone is, would be to call out their name. Mary? You alright? Obvious isn’t it. Except, just for those couple of seconds I was actually struck dumb – I honestly couldn’t have said boo to a goose. I new I had to do something, but some voice in my head was telling me that under no circumstances whatever should I make a single sound – I had to be silent. So I was, and it was in this state of monastic quiet that I tip-toed my way out of the kitchen, along the hall, and to the bottom of the staircase. I never made a sound, watching my feet and feathering my steps so that even the old exposed floorboards didn’t object to my bulk. At the foot of the stairs, I even raised my head slowly, taking care not twang any neck-chords and I looked upwards. There was something there. At the top of the stairs, something white and ghost like was staring right down at me. On top of the state of fear I was already in, something at that point had to give, I needed a release. No, I didn’t wet myself, (I think I came close though), I swore at it, whatever it was. Loudly. EFFING HELL! That’s what I said. My heart was beating so fast it became monotone, and I was wet and clammy, cold and shivery. My eyes were fastened to this thing staring down at me – I was rigid with fear but ready to fight if it attacked. Before I got my last word out, on the L of Hell to borrow a phrase, the ghost also started to say something. And it too spoke in shouted, panicked tones: WHAT? it said. In a woman’s voice. Not in any old woman’s voice, but in my wife’s voice. The ghost sounded like Mary. It sounded like her, and it looked like her, and that’s because it was her.
Okay, this is how it went. In the same time frame that I realised my radio was off, got off my steps, listened for Mary and heard nothing, then crept to the staircase, she was going through the same thing upstairs, creeping out of one of the bedrooms, along the landing, and to the top of the staircase. She too was cold and clammy and suddenly, irrationally, terrified. As she looked down, all she saw was me staring up, in fighting posture, shouting profanities. It was so weird. When she came down, we went back into the kitchen to put the kettle on, and we both started to nervously laugh about what had just happened. This house is haunted, I said, and Mary, who’s far more spiritual than I am, agreed. We checked that the baby was fine and we both started to calm down. We were tired out, a bit frazzled, a long day, new house, lots of reasoning and explanation. Then something ran down the stairs and into the cellar. I say something; I mean someone. Human footsteps, with heavy shoes, in a hurry. Down the stairs, rattling the loose banisters all the way, and through the only internal door left on its hinges, slamming it on the way down. (I’d left the cellar door on for two reasons; there was a hell of a draught coming up from beneath the house, and I didn’t want anyone stumbling down the cellar steps while we were familiarising ourselves with the layout.) Its incredible thinking about it now, because neither of us was scared by these steps. Yes, I swore a bit more, and my singular heartbeat took off again, but it was more of an adrenalin rush than the straightforward terror I’d been through a couple of minutes earlier. Like someone was playing games, winding us up. Together, we checked the house – bottom to top, but we both knew we wouldn’t find anyone. I mentioned calling the police, but only in a half-hearted manner. I knew the police wouldn’t be able to help. All the doors and windows were locked. We weren’t being burgled. We weren’t even in danger. The radio turned itself back on without so much as an apology. Stranger things were to come. We’d moved into a haunted house.
