Angela Doesn't Live Here

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Angela doesn't live here

  I was six years old when my dad was killed. He was a policeman in Liverpool and one summer afternoon some crazy bastard shot him. Shot him through the head and splattered his brains on the window of a Chinese restaurant.

  I was in school when it happened. So was my mam, she was a teacher. I remember the police coming to the school and taking my mam and me home and my mam's aunt Carol being there. She was up from Wales and staying with the family. I didn't find out till a lot later that she was being treated for cancer. Looking back at it, it all seems a bit like the beginning of the end. Wasn't really but things were changing in my life and my dad's death changed absolutely everything.

  My mam stood being alone for two years and then she just couldn't take the city any more. I once heard her telling her friend that she couldn't walk down a street without she thought of my dad. It wasn't that she wanted to stop thinking of him, that she wanted to forget him, she just couldn't take being without him in the place where they'd both grown up.

  So, when I was eight years old, we went to live with aunt Carol in Wales. She was better by then and she was better for quite a while so it wasn't any problem for her and she wanted us there.

  She was a vet and she loved animals probably more than she loved people but people loved her.

  She lived in a sixteenth century farm house. All stone and beautiful. She kept dogs and cats and ponies even geese.

  I loved it from the second I set foot on the property. I'd had a few paddies before we left Liverpool. Didn't want to leave my friends, didn't want to go to strange school and I certainly didn't want to learn Welsh. But all that changed when I walked on to that farm yard and saw the horses with their heads looking over the stable doors and I saw pups and kittens. It was just brilliant.

  The house was an enormous, rambling old place in a constant state of being refurbished. Carol was doing most of it herself.

The big stuff, rebuilding was done by a builder but most of the rest was down to Carol. She'd taken a year off after her operation but she'd managed to finish off most the upstairs.

  My bedroom was at the back of the house and it was huge. Far too big for an eight year old. Eighteen I might have had enough to fill it but I rattle around in there like a dry pea in a pod.

  It was a nice room but right from the start I didn't feel right in there. There was a kind of cold about it. Cold spots.

  My mum got a job teaching and she was learning Welsh too and Carol was always busy so I was rather left to my own devices.

  I don't say I was neglected, no way. I was doted on but there was just too much to be done.

  I used to get up early and feed the ponies and the dogs and then I'd get ready for school.

  I didn't really mind school and I even found the language a lot easier than I thought it would be.

  I used to walk about half a mile down our lane to the main road where the school bus would pick me up. Most times, if she hadn't been up all night with some emergency or other, Carol would walk with me. Mum had to be at school earlier than me and in a different place so she didn't often walk me down. Sometimes I would walk on my own.

  It was a nice walk, you saw all sorts wild life and flowers and it was the end of the summer so it was no hardship.

  It was on one of these solo expeditions that I first saw the girl. I'd not long left the house and I was on a straight bit of the  lane and she was just standing there by a gate.

  She was taller than me, probably about twelve or thirteen years old, thin and wirery with dirty brown hair tied back in a pony tail.

  The weather was still warm and she wore just a drab green T shirt and jeans of some kind.

  She wasn't doing anything, just standing there looking up the lane.

  Her face wasn't pretty, not that you could really tell through the dirt, and when I got closer to her, I could see her eyes. They were blue and cold, like she'd never loved or trusted anyone and they were red rimmed as though she had been crying a lot.

  I was going to ask if she was all right but, seeing me, that I had seen her, she climbed over the gate and legged it across the field.

  I didn't stop look to see where she went. She was just a girl, not very unusual, not pretty, certainly not clean. Just a girl.

  I did tell one of the boys at school. I'd made this immediate friend, Dylan his name was. He was from Liverpool too, a year  older than me and still not fitting in well.

  He said she must be a Gypo or a Tink and that I was right not to talk to her, reckoned she would put a curse on me quick as shite if she'd a mind to. They did that, according to Dylan.

  I didn't tell my mum or Carol about her. By the time I got back from school and had my tea and played around with the animals, she seemed to have faded from my mind but when I went to bed I dreamed about her and it wasn't a good dream.

  I knew I was in my own room and I knew I was asleep. It didn't seem five minutes since I'd got into bed. I was just lying there and then the door opened.

  I thought I woke up and turned to look, expecting to see my mam or Carol but there was this noise, like someone was dragging something into the room.

  Moonlight was shining through the window, which was odd because I'd closed the curtains, and I could hear the night sounds very clearly like the window was open.

  Then I saw her, the girl dragging what looked like a body into my room. I couldn't believe it. There were no sounds from the dogs and they always barked at strangers if they came to the house. Sometimes they even barked at me.

  She pulled the body across the floor towards the window and just sort of sat it there. It didn't seem dead, didn't slump over or anything just sat there and then started to moan in a very disturbing way.

  I tried to speak, to shout at the girl. "This is my room. You shouldn't be here." But the words wouldn't couldn't out of my

mouth. "I'll call my mam...." And then just "Mam ... Mam ...Mam!"

  I woke up in my mam's arms and her soothing me and telling me it was just a bad dream. I begged her to close the window and draw the curtains but she said the window was closed and the curtains were closed too.

  I saw the girl and had the dreams about a dozen times before I actually told my mam and Carol what the dreams were about.

  To my surprise Carol thought Dylan might be right, not about the cursing but about the girl being a Gipsy or a traveler of some sort. She said that she would have a look around to see if there were any traveling families around. Sometimes they camped on land just towards the bottom of the lane. She personally didn't mind them though she did say that sometimes they took better care of their animals than they did of their kids but the animals, especially the horse, made them money.

  Carol started driving me down the lane and sometimes my mum would as well and fair play, I wasn't bothered that much about  the girl. If I didn't see her on the lane I didn't have the dreams.

  Then one Saturday I was going down to the road on my own; I was going to meet Dylan in the village to go and watch his

dad play rugby, and there was the girl. Just standing there in the middle of the lane. She looked so tired and angry and didn't  move out of the way as I came up to her.

  I was right up close to and she reached out. I stopped dead.

  "I don't care who or what you are," she said. "I'm not feared of thee. You'll help me. Ya have to. One way or t'other ya'll help me Dybbuch."

  I stood there for a moment, staring into those cold blue eyes and then I turned on my heel and ran back home.

  My mam was sitting in the kitchen. I ran to her the new puppy barking at my heels.

  Eventually, I told her about the girl and what she had said and how frightened I felt.

  My mam got the car out and we drove down the lane to where I had met the girl but there was no sign of her.

  The dream was much worse that night. It started in the same way with the opening door and the girl coming in with the other  person but this time, instead of going to the cupboard and taking out all my things, she came to me in my bed. I tried to move  away as she bent over me but I couldn't move, I couldn't call out and then she bent down and kissed me, hard on the mouth. I  squirmed and tried to get away from her and then I felt her tears on my face.

  When my mam finally woke me, I was hysterical.

  After that things just got so much worse. I developed a rash. That meant the doctors and when they couldn't find out immediately what it was it was down to allergy tests.

  Carol thought it might be a flea allergy so all the animals were banned from the house even though they were treated for fleas on a regular basis and I was not allowed anything to do with the horses. I couldn't even fetch them a bucket of water

  Mam changed my soap, my shampoo even the water I and my clothes were washed in.

  I was kept home from school, in case it was something that other people could catch from me or I from them. It was horrible.

  My childhood, even with the loss of my father, should have been idyllic. Miles of beautiful country side to wander in, a family  that doted on me, a brilliant education and there I was covered in erupting spots, constant headaches and sweats even on cold days, beset with nightmares so that I was terrified to sleep and having a thoroughly miserable time.

  The doctors were useless. Some thought it was psychological, some were on the environmental side, the best of them were  honest and said they didn't know what the hell it was.

  I lost weight, my hair went thin, I longed for the company of my friends. I got to talk to Dylan over the phone, Carol even bought my own television but I was so sad and miserable. I didn't want to live. Not like that.

  One cold, very cold winter night, I climbed out of my bedroom window, down onto the roof of the out building at the back  and went away into the fields. I wanted to just die and be rid of it all.

  I lay down in the snow, feeling hot despite the bitter cold, closed my eyes and drifted.

  'What are you doing? Are ya mad. Get up and get back in the 'ouse afore ya freeze ta death. Yer nay good ta me dead.'

  Her voice was distinct and clear as a bell and I knew I wasn't asleep.

  I remember saying. 'Who are you? Why are you doing this to me?'

  'I'm Angela, that's what I'm called and I'm doin' this ta save meself and them as I care for. You'd do't' same. Ya'd risk everythin' fer yer mam.'

  'But how can I help you? I'm only eight. I can't do anything for anybody.'

  She knelt down in the snow and I could feel her hands on mine, rubbing them.

  'I don't understand it mesel'. I just know that it's ta be done like this. You get sick, you get better and some'ow that makes us  better. Don't ask us ta explain. I just know that this is 'ow it's meant ta be. Forgive me, ghost, I mean ya no harm but it 'as to  be. Now get yasel' back ta ya bed.'

  I managed to pull myself to a standing position and trudged back across the field. She was close to me and singing softly.

  'Ring a ring a roses,

  a pocket full of poses,

  Attishoo!

  Attishoo!

  We all fall down.'

  Her voice was low and clear and it terrified me.

  I didn't have the strength to get back into the house the way I'd got out so I clambered over the back fence and stumbled and fell across the front yard, waking the dogs in their deep straw beds in their warm kennels.

  Somehow I made it to the front door through the thick falling snow just as Carol came out to see why the dogs were barking.

  I remember very little of what happened after that and nothing at all about my journey to the hospital.

  My mam told me later that I was singing 'Ring a ring a roses' and mumbling about Angela and how she kissed me.

  I was on intravenous antibiotics for awhile and only semiconscious for the first few days of my stay in hospital.

  It was only later that I heard about the big man hunt for the girl and her family. They never found her of course. Angela doesn't  live here, not yet. Maybe she never will. Maybe she was just a part of my imagination.

  Carol's cancer came back and she died. My mam and I had helped nurse her, made her as comfortable as possible for as long as possible. When I was older I thought it might have been the stress of my illness but who knows.

  We couldn't live in the house. Every time we tried. I would get ill and have the Angela dreams again and even though Carol had  left the house to mam, it just wasn't the same after she died.

  Mam couldn't bare to sell it and anyway it had a bit of a plague reputation by then so we left it. The land we tacked out to our  nearest neighbour on condition that he would keep an eye on things.

  At first, we were going to go back to Liverpool but mam had her own ghosts there so we moved to Cardiff.

  Away from the  house, the Angela dreams stopped and I got really well.

  I flew through school, on to university and then, like many a sickly child, into mediciene. Best thing I ever did.

  I never married, don't know why, too busy, too caught up in becoming the youngest this and the best paid that.

  My mam became a headmistress and remarried. They didn't have any children though my step dad was widowed and had a daughter called Chloe about four years older than me.

  They retired to the South of France and I would sometimes go and visit them.

  I haven't been back to the Welsh house, until now. My eightieth birthday present to myself.

  The house is quite derelict. There's never been deliberate damage, it's just dying naturally.

  From the outside, apart from the ivy covering the doors and windows, it looks more or less the same. The end wall is a bitunstable so they tell me but that's not a problem. I doubt I'll be here that long.

  The door opens, which surprises me. I'd imagined having to break a window to get in.

  There's a stench in the place, age, decay things that have gone in there to die and there's a rowan growing in through the kitchen window. Good luck trees Rowans.

  The stairs don't look that bad but even if they weren't there at all I'd have to find a way up.

  I carry a large black bag up the creaking stairs being careful not to touch the banister in case it breaks and I go tumbling down.

  There's a broken board just outside my bedroom door and I have to step across carefully so that I don't wind up poking through the kitchen ceiling.

  Everything creaks and smells and because the window's out birds have nested in there. There's a lot of scurrying sounds that I  don't like but I suppose if you leave a place to nature you shouldn't be surprised if she lets it out to a few of her less savoury children.

  I make my way across the creaking floor to the cupboard by the chimney breast. Despite it's location, this was always the coldest part of the room.

  The door hangs off as I open it and I'm a bit shocked to see two or three ornaments of my childhood still there. Things I forgot or didn't want.

  I move them carefully and take out the boards at the back of the cupboard. It's freezing cold there. Like opening the door of a fridge.

  From my black bag I the vials of my blood and place them carefully next to the cold stone wall. I was going to take the blood here but too many images of young men shooting up in derelict buildings in Liverpool and the thought of one of them destroying my father stopped that idea so that I took the blood at the clinic.

  As I replace the boards I remember Angela and her panic at not finding what she thought should be there. The defeat in her eyes when she realised that she hadn't got through to her terrified little ghost boy.

  Well, now you have, lovely girl and it may have taken nearly a life time but I'm finally helping you the only way I know how.

  And for your sake, I hope to God it works.

  I replace the ornaments, close the cupboard door and leave the room and the house of my strange childhood.

  And even though Angela may not come for years and years, I've done all I can.