The Boy Who Lived With Ghosts: A Memoir (24 page)

It’s good that
X
is at the end of the alphabet because there is only
xylophonic
cat and
x-rayed
cat. Margueretta said
xenomorphic
cat, but she didn’t know what it meant so Mum wouldn’t let it count. We were allowed to pass on
Z
.

66

M
argueretta is going to kill herself, which is a big relief to me. This morning she was in the kitchen by the table and she was holding a knife to her throat and she said if Mum came one step closer she would cut her throat right there in the bloody kitchen. I looked at the knife and it was Nana’s breadknife. The only way you could cut your throat with that knife is by sawing it across your neck because it has a serrated blade. That’s the best type of blade for cutting bread. We don’t have any other sharp knives in our house so if you want to kill yourself by cutting your throat then the breadknife is really the only alternative.

At first, I thought that Margueretta wanted to kill herself because the telly has been broken since Christmas and it is now February. But she wants to kill herself because a voice inside her head is telling her to do it. She also says that something comes into her room when she is asleep in the night and tells her that if she does not kill herself then it will go ahead and kill her itself. It can even come into her dreams like it is real, which doesn’t make much sense to me. And there is more than one voice in her head but they aren’t people: they are
things
and they are in this house with us but not all the time. But she didn’t say anything about a girl screaming in the attic.

Mum told her to put the knife down, like any mum would. And I could smell something familiar in the kitchen, like a smell from a long time ago. I looked around the room but I couldn’t see what was making that smell.

Then Mum jumped at Margueretta and grabbed the arm that was holding the knife and pulled it away from her throat. And I was very disappointed
that there was only a red mark on Margueretta’s neck and not even a speck of blood. I thought it was all over but Margueretta wouldn’t let go of the knife and they both ended up on the kitchen floor and Mum got on top of her and held her arms down.

Akanni was standing beside me and he started hopping from one foot to another and then he peed himself, which is unusual for him because he is almost three now and he usually only wets himself in bed at night. So I held his hand and said it doesn’t matter but he cried anyway and then he screamed. But you couldn’t hear him because Margueretta was screaming much louder. And that made Akanni look like he was just opening his mouth really wide and trying to scream but nothing was coming out. But he was screaming.

And Emily was holding her dress and screwing the material up into a ball and twisting it and she was crying and saying something but I couldn’t hear her because of all the screaming.

I thought about helping my mum the way I would if a stranger was attacking her and trying to hurt her. But I was watching that breadknife and wondering if Margueretta would get her arm out of that grip and stick the knife into Mum’s throat. And the more I watched as they wrestled on the black floor the more I wondered if someone would die today. Right now.

And then Mum slammed Margueretta’s hand on the floor and the breadknife flew under the table and landed by the cat’s bowl scattering dried-up turds as it went. I looked at the bowl, all shiny from being licked clean everyday with tiny specks of crusted Kit-e-Kat sitting round the rim. And the small water bowl beside it was empty as always and I wondered how the cat survived without any water.

Mum had to slap Margueretta around the face three times to stop her screaming. I liked that. Mum said they were going to the doctor’s because it’s not normal to try to kill yourself with a breadknife in the kitchen just because someone or something in your head told you to do it.

“We’ll see what the doctor has to say about this, young lady!” Mum shouted as they left.

Margueretta must have known it was the breadknife. She’s sliced bread with that knife. She must have known that she would have to slide it back and forth across her neck to cut her throat. And I’m sure that once you’ve slid that knife once across your neck the shock would make you stop and you’d probably drop the knife. And you wouldn’t die from just one cut. But I heard once that there’s a vein in your neck and if you cut it you will bleed to death in twenty seconds. Or it may have been twenty minutes.

“What’s happening, John?” Emily asked.

“I don’t know.”

“I’m frightened.”

“It will be alright.”

“I’m still frightened.”

“I know.”

I looked around the kitchen and there on the table behind the Ready Brek packet and the empty milk bottles was a bottle of sherry and it was half-empty. I picked it up. Harvey’s Bristol Cream. The same smell—the same sweet smell as Nana.

They weren’t gone at the doctor’s very long.

“Everything is going to be alright,” Mum said, coming back through the front door.

“But what did the doctor say?” Emily asked.

“Oh, it’s nothing. Margueretta will be fine. Dr. Wilmot said it’s not serious.”

Mum lit a cigarette, and I could see her hands were shaking. Margueretta just sat silently on the sofa and stared at nothing.

“I don’t want anymore talk about this. It’s done now. Over and done with. Understood? And the rest of that damn sherry is going down the sink, young lady! I will not tolerate alcohol in this house. And I’d like to know where you got that bottle from.”

Margueretta got up, ran from the room and up the stairs, and slammed her door.

“Look, you two. There’s nothing to worry about. Your sister is growing up. She’s fourteen now, and she’s becoming a woman.”

“A woman?”

“She’s started her period. It’s her monthly cycle. That’s all.”

“What’s that?” I asked.

“Women bleed once a month.”

“What?”

“Women bleed every month. It’s part of God’s punishment for the Garden of Eden. It makes us all go mad. Her time will come too.”

Mum nodded at Emily.

“Oh.”

“It’s the blight we were born for. Your sister will be learning all about Dr. White’s. Or Tampax. One or the other.”

And I watched as Mum’s eyes filled with tears and she buried her head in her hands and Emily held her arm. Akanni came over and I picked him up to sit on my lap and he held on tight. As tight as he could.

I have a penknife. It’s got two blades and a foldout tin opener and on the other end there is a spike for getting stones out of a horse’s hoof. I sleep with it under my pillow and if any of those things come into my room I will be ready for them.

I got it for Christmas.

67

F
lorie Atkins has been giving me piano lessons for two years now, but she has finally gone deaf. She was hard of hearing when she started to teach me the scale of C major on Dad’s piano. By the time I got as far as the E minor arpeggio, she needed a hearing aid, which I had to shout into. But now she can’t hear a thing. And we do not have a metronome so she stamps her foot and bangs her hand on the side of the piano to keep time. My piano lessons are very loud.

Mum says I should not worry about Florie being totally deaf because Beethoven was stone deaf when he composed the Choral Symphony. Mind you, he was dead three years later. Florie Atkins smells of onions and perfume and pee and she will be dead soon, just like all the others. I can always tell when people are going to die. They have that smell about them. I will be her last student.

Florie always comes at four o’clock on a Friday, but she didn’t come today. And Emily has gone to the Co-op with Mum and Akanni. I cannot go to the Co-op unless I wear a balaclava pulled down over my face, as I am a fugitive wanted for the theft of a bag of dog biscuits.

So now is the time to do it. God knows I’ve waited long enough. And I had to wait for a time when there was no one in the house because Mum says there is no way I am allowed to go up there because I will fall through the bloody ceiling causing untold damage. But the house is not empty because Margueretta is in her bedroom, listening to her transistor radio. That’s what she always does.

The stepladders are bigger than me and made of metal so getting them up the stairs and into my bedroom is definitely the hardest part. Also we still do not have a torch so a candle is really the only choice if you want to be able to see in the dark.

The metal ladders screeched as I opened them beside my bed under the attic door and I stopped for a moment and listened. But there was no sound of Margueretta coming out of her bedroom to see what I was doing—no sound except the radio playing.

The attic door opened by pushing it up. It’s just a board lying on a frame of wood. I will have to open it first then light the candle just like I planned. I told Danny and he said he wanted to go up there with me and see the dead child but he’s obsessed with seeing my sister naked and it’s far too dangerous to have him upstairs in my house this close to my sister’s bedroom.

My bedroom looks different from the top of the steps. My bed is right there beside the ladder with the blankets crumpled in a heap. And there’s Akanni’s box bed with the thin piss-filled mattress and the bedclothes lying beside it. And I can see out of the window into the garden and it’s starting to get dark. And there’s the German woman’s bedroom window opposite. God knows I’ve stared at that window night after night but I’ve never seen her getting undressed. Not so much as a bra and knickers.

I’m right at the top of the steps now. I pushed the door and it gave way easily. I knew it would because I’ve seen it move on its own. Then the stepladders wobbled ever so slightly and I think it’s because I’m shaking so much. And I looked up.

The blackness goes on forever like it’s too big for the space. I couldn’t know it would be like this, no one could. It’s a terrible darkness and it feels like it’s falling down over me slowly taking away my breath.

Here are the matches, in my pocket like I planned. The candle is flickering with the draft that’s coming down from the black space. I hope it will stay alight. I have to stand the candle inside the attic and climb in. I never planned this part.

And something huge is there reaching above my head beside the hole. It’s a massive metal tank, gray and stained and crusted with rust and white streaks. I know it’s a water tank because I can hear the water dripping inside.

Drip, drip, drip.

I don’t want to look at the other things I can see. Long wooden rafters reaching up to nothing. And a flap of something hanging from far above. I want it to be different. I want an orange glow and red bricks and old toys and a chest full of treasure, not the icy black that’s wrapping around me.

I’m standing up now, stepping on the joists, holding the candle as best I can. My hands are shaking and it’s making the flame of the candle flicker and pop. Everywhere there is the terrible blackness. And the blackness knows that I shouldn’t be there.

My eyes are adjusting slightly to the dark and the candle is casting just enough light to see something and nothing at all. I don’t know now why I came up here. If that thing is here, it will hide in the corner the way it always has.

But there is a very dim light down between the joists. It’s a small vent and if I get at the right angle I can see my bed in the room below. And I’m looking and now I can see another vent and now I realize that’s where the sound of the radio is coming from.

Smile an everlasting smile, a smile can bring you near to me…

And Margueretta is singing along. She wants to be a singer or a dancer. Mum says that’s just a fantasy.

This world has lost its glory…

I’m going to move over to the other vent. Step carefully. One joist at a time. One joist and one more. This isn’t easy, holding the candle. There’s the vent. I just need to move a bit to one side and…my God! This is nothing
like I was expecting. Jesus, be glad that Danny isn’t here with me. I’m looking down through the vent. And my sister is there below in her room. And she is naked.

And I’ve dropped the candle.

She must have heard that. The candle is out, of course, but there’s still the light from the trap door shining in from my bedroom below. Must get back to the door and down the stepladders before she gets dressed and comes after me. One step, two steps, closer, closer to the door.

Great, I’m sliding down from the attic onto the steps below my feet. Thank God I have practiced jumping out of my bedroom window. Down the steps I’m going and I can hear Margueretta screaming. Louder, louder. Need to move faster.

Open the bedroom window. Get ready to jump.

68

I
should not have gone back for my penknife. All I had to do was climb through my open bedroom window and jump and I would have been safe. But when I turned around from my bed, there she was with her arms reaching out and she had her fingers bent round like a bird’s talons and she dug those nails into my neck and screamed into my face and then she slapped me three times and pulled my hair out by the roots and all because I saw her stupid little tits.

And I should not have told Danny.

“So she was completely fucking naked, right?”

“I think so.”

“And you fucking well saw everything?”

“No.”

“What color were her nipples?”

“Pink, I think. I don’t remember.”

“We could make a fucking fortune, charging boys to look through that vent and see your sister naked! We will be rich! Fucking rich!”

This is an even worse idea than drilling a hole in the toilet door. For a start, having a line of boys up our stairs and into my bedroom waiting to climb up our stepladders into the attic would be impossible to hide. Danny said that’s no problem because his brother would pay a fortune to go up there for a look. But as soon as he sees my sister naked he will probably start wanking up there in our attic and then there is a good chance he will fall though the ceiling causing untold damage. Danny had to agree that it was quite likely.