A Childs Imagination

When I was in third class (aged approximately 10 years old) I caught glandular fever and was ill with it for about three months. For your information I am now 27 years old.

During that time I spent all of my days in our living room with my books, puzzles and schoolwork together with the TV My mother did not have to work for a living and was there every moment to watch over me.

I remember it being a nice day it must have been a summer month or else late spring. I was lying on the couch in my makeshift bed that my mother lovingly prepared for me everyday watching daytime children's TV.

Our living room had a wall that had glass in it half way up from the middle of the wall to the ceiling and to the left- hand side of this wall was the doorway. You could look out this glass window to see the hallway and stairs. On this particular day the door was open and the couch was situated beside the door, back against the third wall. Well as I lay there engrossed in a cartoon I kept seeing something move in my peripheral vision. The movement was at the top of the staircase, which I could see being in the position I was. I got a little startled when it happened more then twice and I realized that I wasn't imaging it. I called to my Mom but received no reply. I then remember telling myself she must be hanging out the clothes and I tried to convince myself that I was dreaming. But it happened again.

This time I slowly got off the couch and very timidly went to the door and noticed someone's feet walk up the remaining two steps of the stairs so that I could no longer see them. I edged with my back to the wall opposite the stairs to the kitchen and called my mother once more. When I did this ? bear with me because it still upsets me ? the only way I can describe this being was that he looked like a soldier, a Roman soldier to be exact - He pounced back down the two steps and bent over so that he could glare at me through the spindles of the stairs and he was grey in colour almost like he was from a celluloid movie but it was a more sinister colour then that - he looked dead!

He was very dirty and very angry looking but what scared me even more was that his eyes looked alive I could even tell you the colour of them - blue - they were filled with such hatred I've never seen before or since. My heart jumped into my mouth and I instinctively knew that if I did get into the kitchen he would snap me up and away from my mother!

I ran as fast as my two legs could take me and I met my mother in the garden hanging out the washing ? she caught a hold of me and told me to calm down. I could not talk initially but when I could I just said I thought I saw somebody ? even then I knew if I elaborated it would be fobbed off as my imagination.

Perhaps it was my imagination after all, in retrospect I did have glandular fever at the time but why would I imagine something so horrible when I would not have cause to even know what a Roman soldier would look like at that age. And after 17 years how is it I can still picture him in my mind's eye like it was only yesterday.

I don't think I want to know the truth.

God bless