I go past the house everyday. It runs parallel to the road so that you can see at first the front, then the back. And the thing is … they don’t match.
The front is painted brilliant white with glossy, bottle green window frames and door. The lawn is stately home neat, with flowers all year round. There is a posh car, which is always parked at a jaunty angle to the house. As though parking squarely is for common folk, ford fiestas and council estates.
Envy of such a home is natural, until you pass by and find yourself looking at the back.
All of the windows have been bricked up with breeze blocks. There is a shed which has piles of discarded building materials around it. Sacks of cement mix, which no doubt went off years ago, piles of surplus blocks and rusty paint tins lie all around.
It has always freaked me out a little. Visions of young girls imprisoned for years like on the news flip through my mind. Or children chained to posts in the pitch black, living on nothing but the moisture they can lick from the dank walls, while oblivious neighbours pass by.
Ooh it makes me shudder.
But then I have a habit of letting my imagination run wild.
On my most fanciful days, I believe this can only be the home of a clan of vampires, safely bricked windows mean no problem with the sun. Then at night they can sneak out like an army of undead gardeners to mow the lawn, tend those rose bushes and, oh, feast on blood. Other days it is a pack of werewolves, living a normal life most of the time, then confining them selves to the specially reinforced back area of the house for that awkward time of the month.
As it turned out the truth was even stranger.
I usually pass by the house on the school bus, but this time I was on foot. As I went by I saw a man coming out of the big, bottle green door carrying what looked like a body wrapped in a sheet. He was taking it around to the car boot; I tried to convince myself that I was imagining things again and half in jest I snuck into the garden to prove myself wrong. As I passed the side of the house to get a closer look at the car I heard a terrible wailing sound coming from inside. The man didn’t turn towards it but carried on with his task. So before I had thought about what I was doing I popped through the door and stood in a very grand hall way.
The noise had dropped to a gentle moaning, which was emanating from the bricked up part at the back of the house. I moved cautiously on. At the end of the hall was a large rustic door which opened on to a spacious country kitchen with a massive, arga filled, fire place. I moved carefully across the flagstones aware that every step was ringing out, towards a door which looked like a pantry. It stood ajar so that I could see yet another door at the back wall which was thick and brought to mind maximum security prisons. But this too was slightly open, hands full it seemed the man had come this way and left everything unsecured.
As I approached and reached out to push it aside, I imagined all the horrors of the world sat behind and hesitated. However I was drawn on by what now sounded like a sobbing child. I took a deep breath and pushed my way in. Nothing could have prepared me for what I saw.
Before me was the most inviting, old fashioned play room I could imagine. Comfortable chairs were filled with teddy bears and dolls stared unblinkingly at me. A brightly painted rocking horse had a huge huggable teddy astride it, while all around the walls were shelves of books and wooden toys, spinning tops and photos of a smiling family.
In the middle of the floor was a little girl on her knees, dress fanned out around her, with her back to me. She had her hands over her face as she sobbed quietly. I reached forward to touch her shoulder, unsure of what to do, I patted it a bit and she seemed to stop crying,
“Are you ok?” I said.
She shook her head, her dark glossy pigtails swishing from side to side.
“Is there anything I can do?” I asked
Again the shake of the head and a little sob.
Suddenly I heard a strangled hiss from behind me.
I turned to see the man from outside with his hand stretched towards me.
“Stop “he whispered” just come out of there, slowly and quietly”. He began waving his hands in such a frantic gesture, that I felt compelled to oblige. As I left the room I looked round to see the girl start to turn towards us. But before I could stop, the man grabbed me by the arm and yanked me out, slamming the door behind us.
He began to pace around the kitchen wringing his hands, he looked quite old and tired with a worn out face.
“Oh God that was close, it could have been two!…Two in one day….Ohh now what am I to do.”
He was obviously talking to himself. Then he stopped and grabbed me by the arms and shook me, like a scolding mother.
“What am I to do with you now?”
I was beginning to wonder what the hell I had been thinking, entering a stranger’s house when no one had a clue where I was. Not to mention a house that seemed to be owned by a psycho who kept little girls in locked rooms and carried bodies around in sheets. When suddenly he started to cry. Big body wrenching sobs that made me feel uncomfortable. I had never seen a man cry before let alone in this helpless and uncontrollable, most childlike way. Eventually he began to speak through the tears and told me a tale which was so strange it had to be true.
Ada wasn’t what she appeared, she might look like an eight or nine year old girl in old fashioned dress, but actually she was his Grandmothers sister and around eighty years old.
They had to keep everything around her constant, hence the blocked up windows which had been replaced by bright summery murals. She became upset if anything changed, and no one wanted Ada to get upset. He called it Temporal Autism, but that was just the family’s word, no one had examined Ada since a few disastrous doctors’ visits when she was young. Other members of the family had been tested for genetic anomalies after medics noticed the effects that Ada was having on them. However all of these tests came back negative, they at least were normal. No one knew if she was.
He surprised me then by asking me a question, “How old do you think I am? “
At my age everyone over thirty looked old, so it was difficult for me to answer.
“About the same age as my Dad I guess…forty something?”
He smiled a sad, tight smile and shook his head “I’m thirty five, I have been lucky, she doesn’t get mad with me much…not like my…” another sob “ not like… the one in the sheet.” He nodded back through the house towards his car.
I had almost forgotten that I had seen him, just moments before, carrying a body.
He pulled himself together again.
“Ada got mad with my wife a lot, now she is dead.”
“What do you mean,” I asked “Got mad with? … How does that kill someone?”
“When Ada gets overwrought she creates a disturbance, a vibration. Some how and God knows how, this makes people age, but she never gets any older.” He stopped and looked at me as though realising for the first time that he was talking to stranger, spilling his family bones out of the closet for anyone to see. “Do you believe me ?” he asked
“Yes, yes for some reason I do.”
He smiled at me, obviously relieved at being able to unburden himself. Briefly he looked a little closer to his real age.
“Can I ask you to keep this a secret?” It was my turn to be relieved, so he wasn’t going to chop me up to keep me quiet.
“What are you going to do with your wife?” I asked
“We have a friend in the funeral business, he knows the truth, his family has helped us over the years, people tend to die young round here.” He suddenly looked very lonely.
“Are you alone now, do you have any children?”
He smiled a grim smile… “No , no children, we decided early on that we couldn’t have coped with loosing them if anything happened….so we decided not to have any at all.”
He put out his hand then, for me to shake “I am Charles” he said, “and what should I call you?”
And so began a strange kind of friendship between us.
A man who when I first met him was old enough to be my dad, confiding in me, a teenage girl. I watched as, over the years he aged far faster than he should have. Wrapped up in my own world of growing up and becoming an adult, sometimes I wouldn’t see him for months. Once I went to visit after I had been away in America for the summer. As we sat in the garden sipping lemonade, I was struck by the comparison of my young bronzed skin against his aged body and realised, with a start, that he was now physical old enough to be my Granddad. And that’s what he became for me really, an extra grandparent. I would ask his advice about the world, life and love and in return I would run errands for him and lend a hand around the house. Eventually he helped me start my own business and gave me money towards a car.
Then one day the inevitable happened.
I got a phone call late at night from Tempus house; a croaky voice asked me to come at once.
When I pulled up at the drive the front door was already open, Charles had dragged himself to the door opened it then collapsed in the hall. His frame was so weakened that I was able to pick him up and carry him to the sofa.
“Thank you for coming” He said
Once he was settled on the couch, he pulled an envelope from his shirt breast pocket, and placed it in my hand.
His voice was strong but he paused for breath between each sentence.
"It is all here... my will...it's all yours...the house...the money and Ada of course." I had never seen a face so full of age, weariness and regret.
"I can't..." I began, but he raised a wasted hand to stop me.
“I am sorry" he said" there is no one else, please, take care of her....and…and yourself...."
He was gone.
I opened the care worn envelope. Inside were his will and a card from the Funeral home with a message written across in Charles’s handwriting.
"Phone them, they will take care of me. I am sorry". For a few moments I cried for my oldest friend and then I picked up the phone.
I can’t pretend I didn’t feel guilty the next day as I handed the keys over on that bright doorstep.
Ada looked like an innocent child, but I had to remember she wasn’t one. She was an anomaly. And I wasn’t going to let her use up all of my life the way she had her families.
Besides the Government had paid me a lot of money to walk away from Tempus House and forget about it, so that’s what I did.
The scientists I spoke to said they had great hope of understanding much more about life and aging from her. Something tells me it will be first hand experience that they get. I have been talking to them about her for years, so they should know what to expect, but I still don’t think they are all convinced.
I really hope they don’t hurt her too much, that maybe they can cure her or learn from her, in order to aid others.
All I know is that I wouldn’t have been able to do anything to help her and now I am set for life.
Look out Vegas – here I come.
It’s great here; everything is so vibrant and alive.
I have made some wonderful new friends, all so young, carefree and exciting.
There was a bit of a kafuffle at the poolside today.I thought I saw a young girl, pigtails flying behind her, being chased by a man in a black suit. But maybe it was a sun lounger dream, no one wears a black suit by the pool surely. I thought she looked a bit familiar, but I didn’t see her face properly , besides all kids look the same to me.
As I gaze into the hotel bathroom mirror this morning, I can see a grey hair.
I shouldn’t be getting those at 24.
Should I?
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