The Story That Must be Told

I’ve never told anyone this story before and I’m now well in my fifties, so I thought it was about time.

It has always been there for as long as I can remember. My earliest recollection is from about five years of age. It may have started earlier but I can’t remember that far back.

We lived in a small rented terraced house, two rooms and a kitchen downstairs, and two bedrooms upstairs. There was no bathroom or inside toilet. The toilet was outside in the garden next to the shed. Mum and dad had one bedroom and me and my sister shared the other. The stairs where in the middle of the house, they were narrow and very steep. There was no landing at the top of the stairs, you simply turned right for mum and dad’s room or left for ours.

Our bedroom was tiny. Just enough room for two small single beds both pushed up against opposite walls with just enough room between them for someone to squeeze through. My bed was under the draughty window that looked out onto the street. There was no room for any other furniture, no wardrobe or chest of drawers for our clothes, we simply piled them up at the end of the beds or on the floor. There was always the smell of damp.

All this being said, as a family we were happy. Dad worked at a local factory and provided for us best he could. Dad wouldn’t allow mum to work saying that her job was to look after us.

I was a terrible sleeper. We both had to be in bed at seven o’clock. My sister would soon be fast asleep but I was always still awake when mum and dad went to bed around ten. This would get worse as the years went by.

So, that’s the background, on with the story.

Eventually I would get to sleep. Not long into my slumber something would happen, an incident of some kind that would leave me on my own. In darkness. I would then hear a noise, a thumping, pounding, rhythmic sound, like a heartbeat. It would start off distant then get louder as it came closer. I would wake from my sleep, eyes still closed, too afraid to open them because the noise was still there, in my room. Even with my eyes closed I was aware of a “presence” in the room. First, standing at the doorway, then slowly coming closer to my bed, all the time the “heart beat” would be getting louder. It would kneel beside me, so close that as well as the beating noise, I could hear and feel it’s breath on my face. It then did something bizarre. It lifted my head from my pillow, turned the pillow over then put my head back on it. I pretended to be asleep all this time, too scared to open them, in fact it was impossible to open them. The “presence” would then stand up and walk out of the room and down the stairs. The heart beat sound would gradually fade until it had gone. Then I would open my eyes and go running into mum and dads room and get in bed with them.

I remember my mum asking me when I was only about five years of age, why I kept coming into their room every night. I told my mum “the devil is after me.”

This happened two or three nights a week for a number of years. I stopped going into mum and dads room because they kept telling me I was getting too old to be creeping into their bed. Instead I would just lay there too afraid to go back to sleep in case it came back. So every night I would be afraid to go to sleep, often staying awake till the early hours of the morning. Then I would drift off and the whole thing would start, the darkness, the heart beat sound gradually getting closer, the presence in the room, the pillow being turned over and then the sound gradually going away. I would open my eyes and then lay there until it was time to get up for school. Some nights I would only get one or two hours sleep.

When I was around eight or nine, I suffered from nose bleeds. The blood would pump out furiously and the only way to stop it was to stuff some tissue up my nostril to try to stop the flow. It could happen at any time. I was often sent home from school because the teacher was concerned about the loss of blood. One night I went to bed at my usual time along with my sister. She was soon asleep and I was just lying there staring at the ceiling. I heard mum and dad come up to bed around eleven and I always made a point of shouting out goodnight so they knew I was still awake. At one o’clock I was still trying to avoid sleep when I felt a dribble from my nose, I wiped it with the back of my hand and realised it was blood. Within seconds my face was a mess and so was the pillow case. I ran into mum and dads room and woke mum. She did what she always did and cleaned me up and stuffed the tissue up my nose. It took about twenty minutes to stop it and then she tucked me up in bed. It was only then that she saw the state of the pillow case. I remember her tutting and saying that she didn’t have a clean one to put on, so she just turned it over onto the clean side. She left and I soon went to sleep.

In my dream I was with a group of school friends and we were in a sweet shop. Suddenly everything went black and I was on my own. I remember it being very cold. Then the noise started, distant at first, definitely a pulse or heart beat gradually getter louder and closer. I woke up but my eyes were still shut. I was aware of “it” being in the room with me, getting closer all the time as the sound grew louder. It knelt down beside me as it had done many times before, lifted my head and turned the pillow over. It placed my head back on the pillow but didn’t leave straightaway. It just stayed there staring at me. Although my eyes were shut I could feel its eyes on my. In my mind they were red eyes, they seemed to want me to open my eyes but I couldn’t. After a few minutes it left. I kept my eyes shut until I was sure it had gone. When I opened my eyes my head was laying on the blood stained side of the pillow case.

At nine years of age it confirmed my worst fears, this was not a dream, this was real.