such a way as had betrayed my brother earlier. I reminded myself that we were playing a game, but there was a powerful thought I found myself unable to escape from: if my brother discovered me then it would surely mean my death.
“Again, I see the absurdity of the situation reflected in your faces. Every thought and doubt passing through your minds was shared by me at that time and in the years since. How could a simple childhood game fill one with such terror? Could it be that the passage of time has enhanced the perfectly ordinary emotions that I experienced on that day? You may draw your own conclusions in short order, but I will tell you this: I have given these events great consideration of late and my conclusion is that they transpired in exactly the way that I am relating them to you now.
“So, let us return to the game. The footsteps that were not my brother’s had entered the room. I pressed myself further against the wall of that cupboard—I would have forced my way through the very bricks and into the next room had I possessed the strength. Consumed by fear though I was, I was also gripped by the imperative of absolute silence. I resisted any urge to panic. I resisted calling to my brother for reassurance. As I clutched for my sanity, I heard our familiar refrain reaching out to me: ‘Come out, come out, wherever you are …’
“The words might have been the same but it was not my brother’s voice that beckoned me.”
At this revelation there was a stir of chatter in the room which prompted a brief diversion from the tale. I listened to Martin contend with the various theories that his audience then put forth, despatching each of them with ease: ‘No, my grandfather was still asleep’; ‘No, my brother’s voice had not yet broken.’ The manner in which our speakers typically deflected such theories was one of delight—there was a keen satisfaction to be drawn from baffling our tidy group with a well-constructed narrative puzzle. Martin, by contrast, conveyed himself with an air of resignation. I felt he desired nothing more than for one of our theories to be plausible; such an outcome would allow him to dismiss the facts of his story.
But it was not to be so.
“I shall continue,” he eventually declared. “As we left my story, I was cowering in the cupboard. Those footsteps were drawing in. A voice, which I attest to this day did not belong to my brother, was calling to me: ‘Come out, come out, wherever you are.’ There was malice in that voice. My brother may have been as capable of cruelty as any elder child was, but only in the pursuit of amusement. There was true evil in those words; an evil that I knew my brother did not possess. And yet, I kept insisting to myself, it could only be my brother outside.
“‘Come out, come out, wherever you are…’ I heard the voice say again.
‘The cupboard in which I was confined began to feel terrifically small. In my desperation to master our game I realised I had only succeeded in imprisoning myself. There were no avenues of escape. If I moved, I would be heard. If I opened the door, I would surely be seen. I was condemned to wait, my terror serving as my only companion. The fear of what approached me from beyond that door became all-consuming.
“Even to a young child the sense of approaching death is far from unfamiliar. So I tell you, as I hid in that cupboard, I was absolutely convinced that I was about to die. I believed, clearly and absolutely, that my life depended on that door remaining closed and guarding my concealment.
“Almost at the door now, I heard my summons: ‘Come out, come out, wherever you are… ’ Even as I repeat those words to you now, they fill me with a dread that cannot be equalled. The voice that was not my brother’s drew so close I could now hear its breathing over my own. I waited there in the darkness, listening as the footsteps came for me. I prepared myself to flee the moment that the door opened, forcing upon myself a belief that my paralysed muscles could propel me to safety.
“The voice seemed to be right outside the door, but the footsteps still approached. Louder. Closer. My pursuer knew where I was hiding and was coming for me! I envisaged the door opening, a hand reaching in to grasp me, dragging me away to whatever awful fate awaited me.
“I quaked, breathless, awaiting the inevitable. So wrapped in terror that I could no longer move. Even my brain had ceased all function. Any plan of escape had vanished from my mind.
“Then, with a terrible burst of light, and a screaming of old hinges, the door opened. I was blinded and beside myself with fear. I had been discovered by death itself. I caught but a single glimpse of my captor, framed by the light, a fearsome shadow standing before me, then all turned to darkness.”
An uncharitable member of our group quipped: “Scared of your own shadow, I’ll wager, eh?” I observed, not without satisfaction, that the man was alone in his mirth. With no rejoinder he quickly fell to silence. The rest of our audience remained quite enthralled by his story. Martin gave no consideration to the interruption and continued directly with his tale.
“Now, the canny among you may note that, clearly, I did not perish on that day. Indeed, I was perfectly safe. I awoke to find both my brother and my mother staring down at me. Behind them stood my grandfather with a look of terrible concern on his face. It transpired that I had screamed, quite loudly, at the moment that my brother had opened the cupboard door.
“But, there is one thing I need to tell you: it was not my brother I saw opening that door.”
There was a delighted shuffling of feet and exchange of nervous glances at this revelation.
“No, as my eyes apparently deceived me, it was my grandfather who opened the door and discovered me. To be more clear: it was someone, or something, with the image of my grandfather as he might have appeared five or ten years previously. In my youthful innocence, and defying all lingering sense of fear, I even asked my grandfather why he had joined in our game.
“It was my brother who answered: ‘Now I’m certain you’ve lost your marbles,’ he said. ‘Grandfather was asleep until you woke him up with your screaming.’
“I was prepared to defend myself until I caught sight of my grandfather's face. Where my mother’s was filled with concern, and my brother’s was clearly delighting in the prospect of my insanity, my grandfather’s was a different picture altogether. I saw puzzlement, as might be expected, but that wasn’t what compelled me to silence. His face was a mask betraying equal parts fear and anger. I felt as though he might have reached across and throttled me had I been left alone with him. I could not imagine what I had done to anger him so, but I had at least enough wisdom to avoid any attempt at repeating the effort.
“I allowed my brother to help me to my feet and avoided any protest over his suggestion that the darkness in the cupboard had momentarily deluded me. Years later I asked about his own experience while hiding under the bed: he, too, described an irrational, but shapeless, fear that had gripped him. However, he confessed to nothing on that day. As we made our way out of the room, my grandfather made little effort to help. He merely stood in the background, watching me closely.”
Martin paused in his narration at that moment, causing some among our audience to believe he had reached his conclusion. There was an array of nods, a few shrugs. A ‘not bad’ was voiced by one listener and invoked a general sense of agreement. Then Martin began speaking again and our attention immediately returned to him.
“There are two further incidents you should be aware of. I believe these postscripts will clearly account for why I have presented this as a ghost story and not merely the symptom of a young boy’s irrational fear.
“As I said, we made our way from the upstairs room. My brother helped me initially, until I proudly brushed him off and insisted that I was fully capable of walking. It appeared that something wished to make me a liar, however. For, as we reached the top of the stairs I stumbled. I only describe it as a stumble because that’s the way it must have appeared to an observer.
“But what actually happened is that something pushed me.
“You'll observe that I did not say ‘someone pushed me’. I confess my first suspicion was towards my brother. But
he stood a short distance away, conversing with my mother, and could not conceivably have reached far enough to push me. My mother was, of course, beyond suspicion.
“Again I saw my grandfather’s face. He stood looking at me with the same expression of mute abhorrence that he had worn since I emerged from the cupboard. Ultimately, from his position there was no way he could have pushed me, and he was far from a nimble man.
“Nonetheless, I was pushed. I had felt a firm pressure on my back, as if from a hand, which had delivered sufficient force to send me a short way down the stairs. Clearly, however, that hand did not belong to anyone in my company.”
“Ha! The feverish imaginings of a frightened young child,” said our least engaged audience member, rising to his feet. “I shall hear no more of this.”
“Then you will miss my conclusion and a chance at understanding the cause for these strange happenings,” Martin said.
The man was not swayed. “But I should not miss the time I have already wasted attending to your tales,” he said. “Good night to you all.”
We waited until he had left the room and then, as one, nodded for Martin to conclude his tale.
“My brother and I grew older, and it wasn't many years before my mother handed the care of our grandfather