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THE TRAMP

I was young, around five. My mind full of imagination, reality not yet important. I dreamt a lot, still do - but dreams sometimes become nightmares and nightmares sometimes become reality.

At five years my concept of reality only existed in my games. I'd play with my father, he'd build me train-sets and spaceships out of cardboard; we'd play football and fight. I would always win, a triumph any five year old would savour. At school I believed my dad was the toughest, just like my friends thought theirs were too. All our games - mine and father's - were innocent. Sometimes he'd shout and argue with mother, but I was never scared. He never once raised a hand to me or mother. Father had not one ounce of violence in him. Not then anyway.

There had been no indication of what was about to happen, none at all but then there wouldn't have been. The dreams hadn't started yet. We moved from our small flat - myself, mother and father in 1975. I don't really remember much about it but I do remember that our new house was huge compared to the flat - three bedrooms, and stairs too. Father was a policeman and apparently we'd moved in a year after the previous tenant had left. He was a sergeant and he had moved to heaven said father when we moved in. I thought heaven was by the beach so I was pleased for him. This was our house now.

He stood at the end of my bed, saying nothing. He stood still. I remember that cold stare. He was tall, scruffy with white straggly hair and wore a raggedy old ten-gallon hat. He was just like the tramp mother and I would see regularly outside on the bench by the green. He didn't scare me, never made me feel uneasy.

 I always used to wake naturally when he came. He made no noise, it was as if he called to me in my dreams. Every morning I'd awake, fully expecting to smell him, to see his dirty footprints on my bedroom carpet. But there had never been any evidence of his visits. Every night I'd see him and every night he'd just stand there saying nothing. I'd tried to talk to him all the time. I asked him his name, if he was English. In the darkness I could never see his face but it wasn't until one night that I got up close to him that I saw his face was just dark, empty. That was the night I became scared of him.

 The darkman, that's what I called him. Each time I saw him thereafter I'd stay in bed and upon a slight glimpse of his unmoving form I'd slide down beneath my duvet where I'd feel safe although it was a ironic because all I did was slide closer to him, albeit under the protection of my bullet-proof cover - or so it seemed. He could have just grabbed me and pulled me out from underneath. That though scares me even now. But he never did grab hold of my ankles and drag me from my clandestine sepulchre beneath my covers,

I began to tell my parents of my supposed dream, how the darkman would visit me every night and how he had no face. They'd humour me, although father always seemed concerned, but every time he'd just ruffle my hair and laugh - an attempt to release me of my fears. Mother gave me hot chocolate before I went to bed, told me it would help me sleep better. But he still came.

 Eventually, one I had got used to him again, I approached him, angrily - telling him that father would see him and call the police. That night, when I made my move, something strange happened. He remained still, remained silent but somehow I knew what he wanted. A whiskey!

I led him downstairs, he followed, making no noise. He moved like the tramp in the park too. Once in the kitchen I filled a glass with a shot from the bottle that seemed to manifest itself in front of my eyes. I'd never seen the bottle before and thought it strange that there was one suddenly there. He knocked the whiskey back, his reaction un-flinching. Once, I'd seen father wince at the potency of whiskey, I remember how his lips seemed to stick to his teeth when he sucked in a cold stream of air after a sip. I laughed and nearly choked when he let me smell it. Ironically, whiskey and I now share a close relationship, and my lips - as the darkman's - fail to glue themselves to my teeth.

 The darkman put the glass down, the tumbler making a solid thump on the worktop. He nodded to me and that was my first major breakthrough. He had acknowledged me for the first time.

The bin liner appeared as quickly as he had downed the whiskey. Again I somehow knew what he wanted. I placed the bag down on the floor and almost as soon as I did so he stepped forward and firmly placed his big, black boot - strangely shiny; highly polished - upon it. He rocked from heel to toe several times, an imprint of dust left its mark on the crinkled plastic. He had left his mark. This carried on night after night for some time and every morning when I awoke there was no evidence of his visits. No whiskey, no glass and no bin liner.

Not once did he speak, the darkman remained true to his name. Still I never saw his face and often I'd look, studying him closely, hoping to catch a glimpse. Then one night I saw him. A strange shard of light momentarily lighting his features, the light coming as if he'd finally allowed me to see him, conjuring the illumination from thin, dark air. His profile stuck in my mind, permeated me until I shivered all over - features so repulsive, so unutterably dead, that all I had witnessed was living hell personified. Decay oozed from every crevice of his sunken, fleshless skull; eye sockets like black holes, never ending as he pulled me to him, mesmerizing me like Medusa without the snakes. I could tell he was looking straight at me, eye to invisible eye. In that split moment I saw him, and then he was dark again. When I stopped shaking and the hair settled on my neck I screamed, and I screamed uncontrollably - close to insanity.

My mother shook me until I awoke. My sleep had been deep, my dream all encompassing not allowing me to wake. She heard my screams and they lasted too long. She was in tears when she finally woke me, shivering uncontrollably as she sobbed. It took a gentle slapping of my cheeks to bring me round, calm me down, and it was the first time father had ever struck me in any way or form. It would be the last time too. The darkman stood there, at the end of my bed, to the right of my parents. I was fully awake now and what I witnessed next I'll never forget. Mother and father turned as his voice bellowed for the first time, his face now resplendent in its full disgusting glory. Mother screamed when he wailed. "leave the boy be!" That was all he said.

 Mother turned and held me tighter than she'd ever held me before. Father stood and slowly, reluctantly approached the intruder, his anger contained but slowly rising. "Get out," he held the fear in his voice and then he found a new strength before the beast, "you don't belong here, we do now." It was as if he knew who the darkman was, as if they had met before. I saw father stare at the ten-gallon hat, as if recognition had solved the identity of the intruder. Mother, silent now, hugged me tighter. She too realised that her husband acted strangely, I could see the bewildered look on her face. Then, as I observed father strike the darkman, as if my tormentor had drawn father to him, I screamed. Both men went down, the darkman's ten-gallon hat flying the length of the landing at the top of the stairs. His white hair ending at the scalp, that too rotting with decay as if it was about to split apart; his horror now fully visible in our dimly lit hallway. Mother joined my screams, calling to my father, her husbanto let go and get away. The fight would not last long, the darkman already getting the better of father. A brief respite in the struggle allowed mother, now pent-up with rage, to release her grip on me and fly toward the darkman. She knocked him from father but her attempt was futile. In seconds the darkman had one skeletal hand around her throat, pinning her to the ground, squeezing her life from her body. He had father's shoulder length hair firmly clasped in his other hand, pulling at it, rendering father useless in the struggle. My tormentor cackled loudly, his insanity reaching fever-pitch. Then the floor turned misty, a supernatural fog swirling around the three of them. The top end of the staircase and the landing floor disappearing into the murky soup of the darkman's hell. The last I saw of my parents and the darkman was the madman's decaying grin as all three sunk into those murky depths. Then all was silent. I was alone, and I was awake.

Even now I expect him to visit me in my dreams. He was of another dimension, a living hell. He could do anything. My memory of the following days are very hazy but I remember the police found me wondering the streets. A small five year old, dirty, hungry and clutching a ten-gallon hat. They never found my parents and now twenty years later they have given up the search. I have never returned to the house and I've never looked for my parents. The darkman took them, I know him, I know how he thinks. I am as old as dad was now, when the darkman took them, into the night - into that one way abyss. I've never married, I'm not that selfish. He will be back to get me one day, I can sense it. But he will take me alone and I will go alone. One day I'll be re-united with my parents. Then again - maybe I will not.