Joanna

Joanne

As a kid I used to babysit for a family friend. They lived in an old terraced cottage. The road on which the house sat only had houses on one side. To the back they had a garden that disappeared into a sloping decline which led to what we used to call as kids, a dell.

The house itself was old fashioned even then, they hadn’t painted so the walls still had old white paint and there where exposed beams painted black with a tar like substance.

On the walls there was one of those pictures of a woman that you used to get in th early 80s. Either side there where these brass trinkets. Something to do with horses I think. Just tat really.

At some point they’d had a picture of a boy, creepy think it was. They got rid of it when a rumour went around that anywhere housing such a thing had burnt down.

I would always be dropped off by my parents and at the end of a night the parents of the children would pay me and for a taxi to take me home. It was a good gig. There was always food and they gave me cigarettes as well.

 

 

… First I heard a voice, feint, shaky….’Mark?’ too distant sounding to be real, too thin… I heard a creak on the stairs, unnerved I looked at the door. The handle started to move, slowly. Then the door swung open and there stood william, 6 years old fully clothed.

 

‘William’, I said, ‘Are you ok?’

He looked at me and pointed up the stairs,

‘Joanna’ he said quiently.

 

I got up from the couch and walked over to where he stood.

I looked up the stairs and saw nothing and then came Joanna, she walked to the the top of the stairs, looked down at me and held 1 finger to her lips.

 

‘Shh’ she was telling me and then she was gone, disappeared by a shadow.

 

I tried to run up the stairs but my legs betrayed me. My knees buckled. I turned to William and said, ‘I’ll be back in a minute William. You stay there’

I then started to make my way up the stairs.

I then felt the cold, I saw my breath in the air before me. A chill ran down my spine. This isn’t real, I thought.

 

It felt like a lifetime walking up those stairs, I finally got to the top and opened Joanna’s bedroom door and there she was, in bed soundly asleep. |Relieved I breathed out and turned around. I waved at William at the bottom of the stairs to say all is fine when I heard a voice, ‘Mark?’, I turned to the source and saw William in his pyjamas, rubbing his eyes stood in his bedrrom doorway.

 

Panicked I turned my head to the bottom of the stairs.

No William, just a silouette of a man fading to shadow.