A Scary Childhood Experience

A real-life horror story

One afternoon, I came home from school to find a new boarder in our house: an elderly bald, thin man who’d lost his legs to what my mother called sugar diabetes.

It was the late 1960s and his name was Roy. Looking back, I think the chaos in our house had horrified him.

He’d been a schoolteacher and spoke a lot about proper discipline. He presented my mother with the strap he’d used on misbehaving children.

I imagined all the screams trapped inside the leather strap.

Mother handed the strap to Dorothy, a woman in her early twenties who lived with us. She did whatever my mother told her to do.

My mother only allowed Dorothy to use the strap on the boarder children in our home, not on my younger sister or me.

Troy got strapped the most. He said it didn’t hurt, though I didn’t believe him, even though he didn’t cry when Dorothy swung back and hit him as hard as she could. Her face turning red like my shiny new wagon. The veins in her neck standing out like a balloon about to pop.

I suggested we hide the strap. Troy and the other kids agreed.

Hiding the strap became a game of Hide-and-Seek. I sat back, snickering while Dorothy searched the house, looking for the strap.

It gave me pleasure when the adults weren’t as smart as they thought they were, when none of them could find the strap.

Eventually, Dorothy figured out we were responsible and told our father.

Our father made a strap from an old leather belt.

The next day we hid it while he was at work. But fast as we made them disappear, he made more, like a magician pulling rabbits from a hat.

We gave up and moved on to teasing Roy.

He crawled and wouldn’t use his wheelchair. Mother and Dorothy complained about Roy’s stained, torn pants. They kept telling him, “Only babies crawl. You must stop. You’re ruining your clothes. Dragging dirt over our clean floors.” But he wouldn’t stop.

I wanted to suggest Dorothy use the strap on him for not doing as they wanted. But instead, we kids made fun of Roy, imitating him crawling on the floor.

We called him an ugly old nose picker, because he twisted his finger up his nose, and rolled his nose pickings into tiny balls, holding them in the palm of his hand, like he held some amazing treasure.

When my mother turned her back, he fired those tiny cannonballs in our direction. We raced away, pushing and shoving, knocking each other over, while our mother yelled, “What the hell’s wrong with you kids?”

We couldn’t tell her because Roy would only blame one of us, most likely Troy. The ugly old nose picker would get got off Scot-free. I wished Roy would tumble from his chair and hit the floor and die. I wanted the crooked grin wiped from his face.

At night, I dreaded sleeping alone. In my dreams, a tall man with two legs, looking like Roy, chased me. I’d wake and scream until my mother rushed to my room to take me downstairs to sleep in bed between my father and her.

My father complained there was no room in the bed. My mother took me back to my room. She tucked me under the covers and had me pray…

Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep. If I should die before I wake, I pray my soul the Lord to take.

This prayer made me even more afraid.

Other nights Kathleen woke, screaming, that a bad man was coming to take her away. Her screams would wake me and I’d scream along with her, convinced that if someone was going to take her, they’d take me, too.

To end the problem with my sister and me and our bad dreams, Mother and Dorothy pushed two double beds together to create one giant bed. I slept on the inside next to my sister, where I felt safe. Dorothy and Margaret got the outsides.

Weeks later, I awoke to a bang on the bedroom door. Like someone kicked it open. I squeezed my eyes tight shut, afraid a bad man was in our room.

Outside the window, I heard chains rattling.

Inside the room, there was a ticking sound. At first, I thought it was a clock. Then I realized we didn’t have a clock in our room.

I listened to the quiet breathing of Dorothy, Kathleen, and Margaret. I could tell they were all asleep.

I was alone to face whatever was in our room.

I opened my eyes and stared into the darkness. I needed to know what was there.

Beside the bed, next to Margaret, was a figure kneeling, with a yellow glowing skull, dressed in a dark suit. I held my breath, fearing what he would do. I believed Margaret was in danger, and I needed to save her. I needed to save myself… so I screamed.

Dorothy leaped from the bed, turned on the light, and it all disappeared.

Mother’s footsteps thundered up the stairs. She grabbed me and said, “Be quiet. You know your father can’t stand your screaming. You know it’ll upset him.”

She took me back to bed with her and I laid stiff and rigid between my parents the rest of the night, not daring to open my eyes.

In the morning, my mother and Dorothy wanted details of what had happened. I wanted to forget about it. They insisted I’d seen some kind of message from the spirit world, possibly a forerunner.

Their words made me more afraid, even though I didn’t understand what all their words meant.

Mother concluded the ticking sounds meant time was running out for someone. “Someone’s gonna die.”

I put my hands over my ears and ran away.

I feared I was the one who was going to die.

How much time did I have? I didn’t want to waste a minute sleeping.

Mother and Dorothy insisted it was meant for someone else. Yet I wasn’t sure I could believe them. The question I kept asking was, “Why me?”

“I think it’s got to do with when you fell and hit your head,” my mother said. “You’ve never been the same since.”

“Clumsy,” Roy chuckled from the corner of the room, like a big old spider sitting in its web. “She probably tripped over her feet.”

I kept my mouth shut, gritted my teeth, wanting to scream that he was jealous that I had two feet, and he didn’t.

After a few days had passed and nothing more happened, I breathed easier.

Then Roy got sick and couldn’t get out of bed. They took him to the hospital.

Days later, my mother announced, “Roy’s dead.”

She and Dorothy went into his room and packed up all his belongings. I listened as she told Dorothy, “It makes sense now. He crawled everywhere; it was him that appeared by her bed. It was Roy!”

This scared me even more. I thought of all the times I’d wished him dead. I worried that I’d done something wrong, that I’d caused this all to happen, that I was the reason he had died.

Then Mother announced, “We’re going to the funeral! My God, what would people think if we didn’t?”

I’d only ever seen dead people on television. I’d never been to a funeral home before. I'd had no idea there was a special house for the dead.

Flowers filled the quiet room. An organ played in the distance. People huddled together, whispering and dabbing their eyes with tissues. It surprised me how many people knew the old nose picker.

I just wanted to go home. Wanted to forget all about him. Wanted to hope that the next boarder would be nothing like him.

One-by-one Mother led us to the casket to view his body. I didn’t want to see him. I kept my eyes closed as I walked beside her.

Mother nudged me forward. “Move along. Open your eyes. What will people think? You, acting so crazy.”

After doing as my mother wanted, I hoped the worst was over. It wasn’t. I could not believe what she said next.

“Touch him. Put your hand on his forehead.”

I stood in front of the casket, staring up at her, and asked, “What?”

“It’ll protect you,” she said, like this was something I should already know.

I hoped she was joking, but the look on her face and the fact she never joked told me she wasn’t. She lifted me up. I clung to her, so afraid I might fall in on him. I closed my eyes and allowed her to guide my hand.

My fingers rested on his cold, hard flesh.

“Now you’re safe,” she said, pressing my hand on his forehead. “He can’t come back and haunt you.”

I hoped all she said was true.

This experience left me with more questions than answers. I remained afraid of the dark for many years. Lived with the fear of something appearing before me, and could only sleep with someone in my bed and a light on.

BARBARA CARTER is a self-taught visual artist and writer with a focus on healing from childhood trauma, alcohol addiction, and living her best authentic life. https://www.barbaracarterartist.com

This story is part of a childhood memoir, Floating in Saltwater, where she examines her childhood experiences. Deciding what to carry forward, and what to leave behind.