To start with, I just want to say, I wasn’t a bad kid. I did some pretty shitty stuff, but I wasn’t intentionally bad. Guess in the end, intentions don’t matter much, though.
The town I grew up in was small.
We had a main street with shops like the post office, bakery and butchers, and apart from a small block of concrete with a few pipes bolted down – the local ‘skatepark’ – and I use that term very loosely, that was about it.
We were a mining town, so most of the men went to the quarry during the week, while the women stayed in town, teaching and nursing, running the bakery and stores alike.
Our lives were set in stone, or at least they were meant to be.
We would, like the generations before us, grow up and begin the same work our parents and grandparents did, having our own children and the cycle repeating.
And maybe it would have, had things been different.
According to my parents, or my mother at least, I was a wild child.
Ever since I was little, I seemed to want to explore more, I was more headstrong, more questioning, than the other little girls she taught at nursery.
She said it jokingly, half-heartedly, but I saw something else in her expression, something that looked and felt like fear.
My father never said much, just stared over his glasses, his bushy eyebrows perched between a frown and a grimace whenever I spoke.
I learned to avoid him when he was home, only really seeing him at supper time, and while we ate there was little time for words.
Every night mum would do something to help others, she would sew and mend clothing for the children at her school, the poor families having little chance of buying new and the second hand clothing was always ripped and dirty.
Dad smoked his pipe, sat on his recliner in the lounge, drowning out his family in the humm of the radio, where a mans voice played out, telling stories and fables.
I snuck out, feeling the cool night air against my skin, the goosebumps of danger with doing the wrong thing.
I tried to convince my friends to join me, but no one else would. I loved my friends, I did, but they were similar to my parents in the way they didn’t want to do anything much, they stayed in reading novels, or helping their mumma’s bake, sorting tools for their dads who did home improvement projects.
Most families were the same in this town. I’d always had a suspicion, but once I began sneaking out of my house, I started sneaking into others.
It was an accident the very first time, honest. I saw a house, the curtains still open but there were no lights on inside.
I stood outside and stared in, I could sort of make out the lounge suite, and see there were framed photos on the walls.
For some reason, I just walked towards it, intrigued to be looking in at someone else’s life I guess, I don’t know.
I tried the front door, which was unlocked. I wasn’t surprised, no one,including my family, bothered with locking the doors. We were a small and safe town. Our crime rate was basically non existent.
The door swung open and I closed it gently behind me, my heart pounding as I stood quietly at the threshold, just waiting to hear footsteps or voices at any moment.
But nothing happened.
I regained composure and stared to snoop around. I wasn’t going to steal anything, I had no need. I just simply looked around, wondering about the family, about their lives.
After a while of exploring the house, I left, making sure nothing was out of place. I closed the door softly behind me, and walked home.
They would never know anyone had been inside their house.
I had found a new hobby.
I was a weird kid, sure.
But I never meant to harm anybody.
I did it more and more, any empty place I could find. I had some close calls, with cars pulling into the driveway while I was still upstairs in a bedroom, the front door opening before I’d had time to close the back door i’d escaped through.
I was never caught though.
I wish I had been. I wish to god, someone had caught me. It’s been a reoccuring fantasy for years, the dream I dream over and over, the one I wake up in a cold sweat from, tears burning my eyes, bile burning my stomach.
But no-one caught me in their house, no one stopped me.
So I went to the house on Lefroy street, and what happened there changed my life forever.
That night,it was cold. I was about to give up. I’d been out for an hour at least, and not come across one empty house. I felt tired, anxious. There was no reason for it, not one I could pin point. I made the choice to head home, get out of the damp, and so I began walking. I was near my street, when I saw a familiar car speed off down the road.
Mr Chestermore.
He was a teacher at my school, and apparently, so the gossiping girls at school claimed, he had some terrible accident years before which meant he wasn’t fit for work in the mines, so that’s why he was one of the rare males who held a job in the city.
He taught science and he was pretty nice, always taking the time to listen to us and explain things in a kind way.
He walked with a hobble and a special cane, which made the gossips rumours seem to be more than maybe just Chinese whispers, but no one really knew for sure.
The rumours ranged from the accident being shooting himself in the leg while hunting to being stabbed by a group of ninjas. I know, I know.. looking back that just sounds ridiculous but you gotta remember, we were just Kids back then.
I had the idea then to go to his house, to see what he lived like, to see if I could find any information about the accident maybe, find the truth about what happened and I’d been so popular, everyone would want to be my friend.
My 14 year old brain thought it would be cool to be the one to break the mystery of our teacher, but looking back as an adult I can’t help but feel such sadness at the invasion of privacy I had bestowed on a kind, gentle teacher.
His door was unlocked, of course it was.
I slid inside, silent and smooth, carefully closing the door behind me and set to work straight away.
The house was non descript, the same style furniture I’d seen in all the other homes, including my own.
A cat litter tray sat in the corner of the lounge, but there was no sign of the cat. I wondered if it may be hiding from me, perhaps curled up under the couch, and the more I thought it, the more I felt the sense as though I was really being watched.
I’d never felt uneasy in a house before, not even when I was close to getting caught. It was, in a strange way, an excitement, a thrill, at nearly getting caught and the feeling I felt that night.. it was different.
It was my senses, urging me to get the hell out of there. But my 14 year old self didn’t listen, and instead I forged on, finding myself in a cupboard under the stair case when I heard a voice above me.
I held in a shocked gasp, racking my brain thinking if I had been quiet enough, waiting for the partially closed door behind me to be pulled open, and me exposed.
But it didn’t happen.
The voice was muffled at first.and bizarrely it sounded as if whoever it was was humming showtunes.
The voice rose, getting louder, and I tried hard to make out what they were saying.
I wish I hadn’t.
The man was talking to a softly sobbing child, telling them they must stop crying at once, everything was okay. He began to hum the showtunes again, this time louder and more aggressively.
It didn’t seem to help, as the child began to wail louder, sobs turning into terrified screams that, after a loud bang, suddenly ceased.
It sounded as if something..someone, had been thrown against the wall. I heard a soft thud a few moments after the bang, as if whatever it was had slid down the wall and onto the hardwood floor below.
The silence didn’t stay for long.
The man began muttering something to himself that I couldn’t quite make out, something that sounded like ‘made me’ and ‘shushh’.
He repeated it over and over, until his showtunes humming began again,.and until that too was drowned out by the sound of water running.
It seemed to run for a long time, the pipes in the walls next to me groaning, sounding like ghosts moaning. I felt scared. More than scared.
I thought about making my escape but I couldn’t hear where the man was.and that didn’t feel safe to try and leave when he could literally be waiting outside the door.
The door was open a crack, and with a racing heart, I leant down to try and take a peek, and that’s when I saw the flash of pink fabric, the pink princess dressing gown of someone small and who should have been safe in bed.
I wanted to reach out, to grab her, stop her from investigating the strange noises that must have woken her up from a peaceful slumber.
But I stood, fearful and motionless. I didn’t try and grab her. I didn’t stop her.
When I heard her blood curdling scream just seconds later, I tasted salt on my lips and realised I was crying.
“Jannie? Why are you on the floor? Why is your head red? Wake up, Jannie. Are you just tricking me like on Halloween? I’m going to get mum if you don’t get up!”
The footsteps above me were slow, deliberate and soon I heard the girl in the pink princess dressing gown choking and spluttering and saying no, no, no.
Again, it was silent.
Again, I heard the thump of something..someone, being dropped or falling on the hardwood floor above me.
The man began muttering again, and then I heard the footsteps taper off, the sound of my own thumping heart the only thing I could hear.
I took my chance.
I didn’t try to peek out of the door, I just pushed it open.
It didn’t squeak, but the anticipation of it doing so did as much damage to my stress levels as if it had of.
Silence. The hallway was empty. The front door was in view. A few steps. A few big steps and I was out the front door, I was gone.
But then I heard the groan.
It wasn’t coming from upstairs, but next to me. I stifled a scream, my body screaming not to look down, do not look down, but I did, I looked.
A woman lay just ahead, blood pooling around her, streaks of blood on the floor in thick lines where she had dragged herself toward the front door from wherever she had been hurt.
Her face was half gone, the bone and teeth exposed on her lower jaw. One eye was swollen closed, her nose dried with black blood.
Her legs were missing from below the knees.
I opened my mouth to speak, to ask if she was okay
Or to scream, I have no fucking idea, I think I was in shock. For A kid who wasn’t even allowed to play video games, I hadn’t been exposed to a lot.. that’s what I’ve told myself all these years anyway. Tried to justify it to myself, for not helping, for being scared.
Anyway, when i opened my mouth, nothing came out. I shook my head at her, my mouth wide open yet wordless. I wanted to tell her I was going to get help, but I couldn’t form the words.
She blinked at me for a moment, the realisation sinking in. She was as good as dead, and that’s literally what happened. I saw the light go out of her eyes before it really went out. She lay and stared, not seeing.
I haven’t told people this full story
Only bits and pieces. But everyone says the same
It wasn’t my fault. I was just a kid.
But they don’t know the truth, I can’t bring myself to tell anyone. The words get caught in my throat. So I have to write it down, get it out.
I had just about reached the front door, when I heard the sound that sent shivers down my spine, a cold rock to the bottom of my stomach.
I heard a baby wail. But I pretended I didn’t. I pretended that it was just in my head, lying to myself to save myself.. what a joke. I should have done something.
I was at the end of the street when I saw the car of my science teacher drive back down the road, toward the house I had just escaped.
I wanted to warn him.. but of course, I didn’t. I ran home and didn’t look back.
It was all over the paper in the days and weeks after. The first murder suicide in our town.
I heard my parents talking about it when they thought I was in bed, how Mr chestermore went crazy and killed his entire family before barbarically killing himself.
But it wasn’t a murder suicide. There was a lunatic on the loose, who had killed a whole family and framed an innocent man.
I tried my best to forget about it, to move on, not blame myself. I became a good kid, and I didn’t go into anyone’s empty homes anymore.
I tried my best to make amends for what I hadn’t done.. that’s why I’m a social worker these days.
I moved on from that night when I was 14, or so I thought, until recently when I had a new client.
James. He was 12. His parents had been going through a messy divorce and James had taken it upon himself to find a new hobby. He had started breaking into homes, and stealing. Recently, he had broken into a home and killed the couple who lived there.
It wasn’t my first sort of case like this. But it was the first time that one of the kids said something that trily terrified me.
James told me it wasn’t him, there was another man there, one who muttered to himself and hummed along to showtunes.
I haven’t slept right since talking with James.
I swear if I listen hard enough as I lay awake in bed at night,I can make out that humm of showtunes coming from somewhere in my house.
I’ve checked a dozen times.
No one is ever there.
But the sound remains, I don’t know if I’m going crazy or not. Maybe getting my truths out about what happened that night might help me.
I’ve tried to contact the police but they tell me the case is closed, long closed. That I need to let things go..
I wish it was as simple as that.
If there’s any updates I’ll be sure to let you know.