Don’t Step on the Cracks

Looking back on it now I’ve realised that everything started earlier in the evening.

I don’t know if it’s because I was older than my brothers, or maybe I was just more receptive or susceptible to that kind of thing, but the fear that struck me that night still strokes me now when I think about it.

My brothers have vague memories of what happened. Some are funny. And I’ll laugh, tentatively, because the shadow still looms.

I’m certain now that it started when my mum turned ever so slightly on the couch, her legs still crossed, and she frowned over her shoulder into the darkness of the hall just through the open living room door.

Her movement made me look up from whatever I was doing and I watched as she slowly crept her hand down towards her left foot, slipped off one of her Caterpillar boots and lobbed it into the hallway.

I asked her what it was.

Nothing, she muttered, turning back to the tv.

But it wasn’t nothing. I knew it wasn’t. She didn’t fully settle. Something about how she held herself. On edge. Coiled.

I was seven years old at the time and my imagination was on fire. I knew she had a fear of rats and for some reason this is what I pictured. A huge, rank, sweaty, greasy rat, with shining eyes and teeth like broken slabs.

Then she turned again. This time I think she left the room to investigate.

But I’m sure this is where it all started.

Later, my brothers and I were sleeping in her bed. My dad must not have been there. He worked on the rigs and was away for a few weeks at a time. If he was there, would this have happened?

A scream woke me and I immediately sat up in bed and saw my mum running down the stairs, frantic. 

He’s there, she was saying to someone. He’s in the room poking at me with a stick.

I immediately constructed an image of this person and in my mind he was like a scarecrow come to life with a mangled, lopsided face that looked carved from wood and straw-like hair and tattered clothes and I saw him jumping out and thrusting a knobbly stick at my mum as she investigated a bump or a creak.

Then two men came creeping up the stairs and onto the top landing, and I say men, but realistically they were probably teenagers, and I recognised them both, sons of my mum’s friend.

What is it? I asked them.

It’s okay, one of them said. We’re just looking for someone.

They passed the open bedroom door and disappeared towards my room or my brother’s. Soon they came back and went downstairs.

There’s nobody there, I heard them say.

Later mum was in bed next to us. My brothers were both awake. We were all kneeling and mum was saying to my brother, What’s that on your neck?

There was nothing there. She traced fingers across the skin on my brother’s neck.

A white thing, she said. A disc.

Then we were downstairs. Mum was distressed, glancing nervously out the back window while typing numbers into the landline. My brothers and I sat on the couch. They were busy dummy fighting, giggling and laughing. I was engrossed in my mum’s behaviour, drawn into something unseen. I kept looking towards the back window but there was nothing there.

With the phone receiver to her ear she panted, They’re in the garden. They’re stealing your washing off the line. Oh my god.

I pictured little pink devils with pig snouts clambering over the back fence and tearing washing off the line. What was I to do if they got into the house?

When you see your parent, the person supposed to protect you, when you see them scared like that it fills you with an indescribable fear. A fear that seems to coat your bones.

Soon she was dragging us out the front door and into the night, all of us in pyjamas and slippers.

Quickly, she urged us, pushing us through the garden gate. She pointed to the pavement and said, Don’t step on the cracks, that’s how they’ll find you.

And I didn’t. I didn’t step on the cracks. I imagined great fissures tearing through the earth revealing deep, steaming, magma red pits, and I imagined us falling into them and being trapped forever.

And all the while trying to dodge these cracks, she was taking us to people’s doors and rattling the letter boxes and banging on the wood pleading for help until, finally, somebody answered and they took us in.

While we waited, my mum stood pulling invisible threads out of thin air and pressed them against the door frame.

Look at this, she whispered. There’s hundreds of them.

And her eyes were glazed and far away.

Next, we were travelling in the back of a police van and she was urging the driver to Hurry up, there’s a UFO chasing us.

I think it was then that I realised her mind was broken.

In the police cells that night, the officers, I think, were being kind to us but my brothers and I were acting like caged animals. We screamed for our mum and we reacted violently when they brought us all cooked breakfast.

I chucked the plate against the wall and screamed, I don’t like beans, and watched the contents of my breakfast slither to the floor.

It’s this moment that my brothers and I talk about and have a bit of a laugh. When I bring this night up with my mum she also laughs and says, I was losing my fucking mind. It was the drink.

But I think she laughs to ward off the same fear that creeps through me when I remember that night. She must see those things vividly in her mind, much as I do, but differently.

I created a version of her nightmares without knowing what she was really seeing, and in the end, what she was seeing wasn’t actually there.

But to me it’s as real as the ulcers in my stomach.