It was 6:15 on a dark winter morning, I had just finished the night shift at the old-people’s home and waited for my bus. At first I wasn’t sure if he was a man or a ghost. Through the bus stop window he was just a grey blur in the middle of the road. I had to lean out into the heavy rain to see him more clearly. He must have been in his eighties, wearing a woollen cardigan over striped blue pyjamas and slippers. The rain left him completely sodden, and slicked down the grey hair around his bald crown. His face was grey and sullen, he stared downward, distracted and oblivious to his situation.
I called out to him, “Are you ok?”
After a delay he looked up at me. His eyes squinted in confusion as if I had just woken him from a deep sleep. He paused to think, then looked down at the ground again, returning to his stupor. I have seen that look before in years of working with the elderly. I popped my umbrella up and jogged out towards him.
He was taller than I expected, I’m only a short woman so I find it hard to estimate, but he may have been 6 foot 4 even with his back stooped over as it was. He must have been imposing in his prime, but those days seemed long gone. He didn’t even react when I held the umbrella over him to stop the rain.
“Are you ok?” I asked again.
Eventually he replied, “I’m a bit wet.”
“Yes. Do you need some help?” I asked rhetorically. “Where do you need to go?”
He glanced up and down the street, paused thoughtfully looking at the end of the street, then lapsed back into silence. He had been looking towards a large red brick Victorian house set behind an overgrown garden at the very end of the road. Its front door had been left wide open.
“That big house?” I asked, “Did you want me to take you there?”. He nodded.
I took his arm and slowly guided him onto the footpath and up towards the house. His slippers squelched as we walked, but he made a faster pace than I was expecting. People with dementia can have episodes where they forget their pain and become physically capable of more than they should be able to. A lady who was barely able to walk once went missing from our home and was found by police having walked a mile into town. So I kept him at a steady pace to stop him from overdoing it.
“Do you live alone?” I asked.
“Yes.” he replied quickly, “I am not looking for a wife.”
I laughed but he seemed serious. “Any children?”
He looked up and ahead to the house, then back to the ground deep in thought, “No.”
I walked him through the open garden gate, carefully picking a route down the overgrown path, and past the thick wooden front door. The house was dark and cold. Streetlights filtered through the doorway and the stained glass window above it. I closed the door behind me and it slammed with an unexpectedly heavy clunk. The back of the door didn’t just have a normal latch, but a spring-loaded vertical iron bar that dropped down into a recess in the floor. This old, homemade mechanism was supported by three thick, square bolts on the top, bottom and side. At that time it didn’t seem too unusual for an elderly man living alone to have such security measures.
To the right of the hallway was a dusty table, on top sat a stack of unopened letters. The old man had wandered off. I called out to ask if there was anyone he wanted me to call, any relatives or carers, but again there was no reply. Soon I could hear him shuffling around upstairs. The name on the letters was Mr Arthur Trevelion.
I checked my phone and tried to call the police on the non-emergency 101 line. But inside the old house there was no signal. I called out that I would just step out to make a call. When I tried to lift the lever on the heavy iron door mechanism I couldn’t, it was so heavy it barely shifted. Suddenly, without a sound Arthur had appeared behind me and leaned close. He reached over my shoulder and thick fingers grasped the bar, wrenching it upwards with ease and pulling the door ajar to let me out.
I thanked him and leaned out of the door, a couple of bars of reception came up on my phone and I dialled 101 again. I told them the situation and explained I just wanted to see if they knew anyone that could come and check on him. I was transferred through to someone to take the details.
While on hold waiting for the next operator, I could hear Arthur moving things inside the house. It sounded like heavy furniture dragging along floorboards in various rooms, amidst occasional thuds. It sounded like he was searching for something. I heard more furniture being moved downstairs, followed by a disconcerting silence.
“Hello, how can I help?” said the voice from the phone.
I was torn between losing reception and going to check on Arthur, so I blurted out the address, Arthur’s full name, and what had happened. I told the operator I was going to check on him because he’s gone quiet, but may lose reception. They said they would stay on the line while checking their system for more details.
I left the front door ajar and moved down the hallway searching for Arthur. It was dark, lined with faded olive green wallpaper which was peeling off the walls. Stacks of newspapers neatly bundled and tightly bound with twine were piled against the walls, at some points as high as the ceiling. It felt like squeezing into a cave. The hallway opened out to a filthy kitchen where smaller stacks of loose newspapers leaned against the wall. The windows had been pasted over with layers of old newspaper, yellowed with age, that only allowed a faint light through. A layer of grime covered everything, the cooker hob and worktop were black with thick grease. Parts of the chessboard tiled floor had a dusty grey hue, except for trails swept clear by scuffed footprints, and an arcing scrape which swept from the wall to an old heavy wooden shelving unit that sat jutting into the room. Behind where the shelves once stood was a black void in the wall, which emitted a faint, rotten smell.
“Are you still there?” the operator said on the phone, startling me into silence, “The line keeps cutting-” they said, after a moment they came back, “Can you hear me?”
“Yes. Talk quickly, I have no reception.”
“It may be nothing to worry about, but stay on the line with me and head outside.” The operator said.
“Oh.” I said, processing what this could mean. “I’ll say goodbye to Arthur.”
“No.” The operator said with urgency, “Arthur has some history which may be a cause for concern. Just go. Stay on the line.”
I heard the metallic clunk of the front door closing behind me, but saw no sign of Arthur. My nose searched for the smell, struggling to identify it. As my eyes adjusted to the light the black void in the wall had formed into a doorway. Within it, a roughly made staircase led down into the pitch black. I turned and suddenly Arthur was behind me, a towering silhouette.
“I have to go outside.” I said as calmly as I could. I waved the phone in front of him with a disarming smile, “No signal.”
“No. Hannah.” he said quietly. “Don’t go.”
Who was Hannah? “That’s not my name. I just-”
“NO.” Arthur said, in a burst of agitation, “You can not go.” His face was just a shadow but I could sense his anger. I could feel his rasping breath, hot against my face. His eyes began to glisten, gently reflecting the dim light from the covered windows and making them the only part of his face that was visible. For a moment he looked like a wolf approaching its prey from the treeline.
“I won’t go. I just need to step outside the door.”
Then he grabbed me. Two huge hands gripped my shoulders and twisted me around like I was nothing more than a doll. My phone dropped to the floor. “No. I need you…” he trailed off into a thoughtful pause. He became agitated again, frustrated with himself, like he was struggling to find the right words. “Go!” he shouted, and shoved me towards the dark staircase.
I stumbled forwards and down the first couple of steps, only preventing a fall by grabbing the roughly cut plank that acted as a bannister. I felt my way into the darkness, finding the uneven steps creaking and swaying beneath me. When Arthur followed, the staircase shuddered. Torchlight flicked on behind me and guided me into a cellar obscured by swaying shadows. The odour of decay grew as we descended.
Once we had both reached the bottom I saw the cellar was small and narrow, like Arthur had dug it out himself. He walked around me and shone the torch upon a central table. At first I thought it was draped in a sheet with some waxy sheen that shimmered as the torchlight swayed. Then I noticed something poking out from the surface, a white cage perched on a black mass with a pale grey dome behind it. A child’s skeleton embedded in decomposed flesh.
I turned to Arthur. I wanted to scream ‘What the fuck!’ but when I looked at him he was fixated by the corpse. In an instant, I decided to just run. I sprinted up the dark stairs. My legs pumped manically, regardless of any missed step, scraping my shins repeatedly. When I got to the top I dashed through the doorway and lunged sideways through the narrow tunnel of newspapers. I clipped the right hand side with my back. It spun me forwards and a column of paper bundles collapsed onto my back, trapping my legs. I looked back at the cellar door, but there was no sign of Arthur.
I lifted one bundle of newspapers which trapped my foot and kicked the rest free. Where the dust had been shaken loose I saw all the papers were identical old copies of the local ‘Herald’ newspaper. Before me more of the same newspapers had collapsed into my path, bundled as they would have been delivered to the shops. Dominating the front page was the story of a missing eight year old girl, Hannah Marshall. The papers looked old, maybe from the eighties, but I had neither the light nor the time to check. I clambered over them and ran to the front door, my thighs burning with fatigue, to be confronted by the antiquated series of heavy iron bolts and the bar that I had been unable to move earlier.
As I wrestled with the bolts, slowly edging them open in agonising increments, I noticed small scratches in the wood around the ironwork. Tiny marks made in an animalistic desperation to escape. I eventually managed to get the three bolts open, and then worked on the great iron vertical bar. I wrapped both hands around it, wrenching upwards with all my strength. I kept checking over my shoulder, but there was still no sign Arthur had emerged from the cellar. I pulled up until my hands were raw. The bar became slippery, I looked down to see the palms of both hands streaked with blood. I had no grip on the bar, and no strength left to move it.
Then flashing blue lights filtered through the stained glass window overhead. I banged on the door and shouted out for help, but every noise was swallowed by its thick wood. My cries petered out to a sigh. Then a large hand appeared over my shoulder, grasping the iron bar with thick fingers. I turned to face Arthur, ready to fight him off however much I could, then I saw his face, his eyes were red, his cheeks streaked with tear tracks. Arthur lifted the bar with relative ease, and pulled the door open. He moved aside, and let me out.
I looked up at his face in the morning light. He was expressionless. Tear tracks lined his cheeks. But it looked as if he had forgotten why he was crying. He looked with bemusement out at the flashing blue lights of the police car outside. I squeezed past him and ran down the garden path towards the approaching police officer. I tried to explain what had happened, but it must have just sounded like a garbled outburst.
The officer, a large man in his fifties, walked past me and called out towards the house, “Harold, what are you doing back here?”
“I think his name is Arthur.” I tried to interject.
The officer shook off my comment, and kept his attention towards the elderly man, “Mr Marshall! What are you doing here?”
I started to realise, to finally understand this bizarre sequence of events. Maybe, if I wasn’t straight off a night shift at work, I may have recognised it sooner. Maybe not.
Harold Marshall looked blankly at the officer, “I… I don’t recall. Sorry.”
But he did when he took me into that house, when he searched the house and found the hidden door already open from his previous visit, when he had to show me the cellar with desperate urgency before his fleeting lucidity passed once again to blissful forgetfulness. He had to show me that child on the table, he had to show me his daughter, Hannah Marshall, before the memory faded again. He had to get someone to see, someone who could remember, to show everyone what Arthur Trevelion, the real Arthur, had done all those years ago. My heart ached for Harold, but in that moment he had forgotten his pain again. I explained what happened to the officer out of Harold’s earshot. I didn’t want to remind him. To make him relive the nightmare of his daughter who went missing over forty years ago. He must have already lived that moment a thousand times.
Arthur died months ago of natural causes, his house left abandoned during an inheritance dispute. He never faced justice, in fact he was celebrated as a pillar of the community. An officer later told me Arthur was Harold’s boss, he owned the old ironworks. His wealth and social status, and no small element of corruption, likely helped him avoid suspicion during the initial search for Hannah, especially as he had a police record for violence against women, and a reputation amongst his employees as a callous and spiteful man. Arthur further hindered the search by buying up, or stealing, the local newspapers that circulated her photo. Back then there weren’t many other ways to spread the news.
Maybe Harold always suspected him, and that suspicion remained buried deep in his mind even after dementia had taken hold. When he heard Arthur had died it made that memory surface. It may have taken countless attempts, but in defiance of his ageing body and failing mind Harold never gave up. He got into Arthur’s house, eventually he had found the hidden cellar. He had finally found his daughter.
I still wonder how many times that cycle happened only to be forgotten again. Repeating and reliving a nightmare only for his memory to reset his progress and betray the relentless desire to find his little girl. At least now he will never have to face that moment again. When fragments of the past appear, like driftwood in a tumultuous sea, I hope it is only joyful memories that wash ashore. Now he deserved to be able to put that memory to rest.