Couldn't Scare Less!
Kathy took a sip of her water as she sat down nervously in the heavily-padded leather studio chair.
Opposite her, across the cluttered desk covered in recording equipment and fast food debris, sat Spencer Da Silva.
THE Spencer Da Silva.
Of ‘Couldn’t Scare Less! With Spencer Da Silva’ podcast fame.
Spencer didn’t look up immediately. He was flicking at the screen of his phone, scrolling and tutting and occasionally shaking his head.
“Unbelievable. Pfft. Anyway…”
He tossed his phone onto a pile of wrappers and then turned his attention to Kathy, who was sat anxiously watching him and was mid-sip of another mouthful of water.
Spencer suddenly bounced out of his seat and leant across the desk, his hand outstretched.
“Spencer Da Silva, great to meet you…”
He left the words hanging.
“Oh, erm, Kathy,” swallowed Kathy, shaking his hand, “Great to meet you t-“
“Brrr. I’m cold, are you cold?” Spencer interrupted, but didn’t wait to see Kathy shake her head before turning round and continuing the one-sided conversation over his shoulder: “I’m cold. I’m gonna just stick the heating on.”
Spencer rattled this off in his trademark machine gun fashion, all while darting across the room to the thermostat on the wall. He turned it up three clicks, then span on his heel and immediately leapt into the next topic on his mind.
“OK! I’m guessing Mel told you how this would all work today right?” he was staring intently at Kathy, “I’ve read through your notes and it’s interesting stuff. Spooky. Creepy. Could be good. So, we’ll start with a little on-brand interview to get a flavour of the story. Record it. Then, depending on how it all sounds today, we can look to investigate further and see about turning it into an episode of the show.”
Spencer barely caught his breath before continuing, “You’ve signed all the forms, right? Mel?”
His eyes flicked up to his assistant’s booth. He didn’t clock Kathy nodding as he was busy trying to look through the glass panel to where Mel was usually sat, but she wasn’t there.
“Oh dammit,” he theatrically rolled his wrist and looked at his clearly very expensive watch, “She’s already gone. But you’ve signed all the waivers and shit, yeah?”
Kathy nodded, “All signed and ready to go, and I have to say it’s a real honour to be a part of the show and…”
“Whoa, whoa,” Spencer held his hand up, “Let’s hold on a second ‘n see how this all shakes out first. But, if there’s something here, really something we can get our teeth into, then we can start the conversation about next steps.”
Kathy looked a little crestfallen, but still managed to smile half-heartedly in response.
Spencer continued: “OK, let me just concentrate on getting all this rolling and then we will jump right in, yeah?”
He was already clicking around on his computer desktop, setting up the microphones for him and his guest, testing for any background noise or interference.
After a few minutes, Spencer looked back up at Kathy, who was patiently sitting there, cup of water still in her hand.
“Right then, we will start rolling in a moment,” explained Spencer, “And I will just keep rolling until we get the whole story. Try and keep your answers brief, but detailed. Upbeat, but terrified about the eternal torment of apparitions…”
Kathy stared at him, a little bewildered.
“You know what, you’ll probably just get the hang of it as we go…”
Spencer started counting down:
“5, 4, 3…”
He mouthed the last two numbers and then gave a thumbs up to Kathy before launching into his opening spiel.
“In this week’s ‘Couldn’t Scare Less! with Spencer Da Silva’, we are investigating a terrifying tall tale from a typical suburban home in 1980s Suffolk, England.
“And I’m joined by an eyewitness to the unexplained events that transpired - welcome to the show, Kathy Bloom…”
“Hello Spencer, great to be here,” Kathy responded.
“So, Kathy - this all happened when you were just a little girl, right? You’re in a happy, loving home, safe and peaceful and idyllic really - and then, then it all changed?”
Spencer left the words hanging once more and gestured towards Kathy, encouraging her to embellish on the story he had started.
“Yes, umm, absolutely,” Kathy answered, “It was a great childhood we had. I remember having a lovely time and being so happy.
“And then we moved to the house in Clifton Gardens and that… that… “ she struggled for a moment to get the words together, “Then everything changed and our lives were never the same again.”
“Mm, mm, mm, mm,” nodded Spencer knowingly, “And so your story really began at the age of 13, when you moved into the house in Clifton Gardens, which is just a normal house on a normal street…”
“Well,” Kathy said, “It was a normal street and the house seemed normal, but it really wasn’t.”
“It really, really wasn’t.”
Spencer rocked back in his chair, and animatedly gestured again for Kathy to go on.
Kathy straightened her back and continued: “I know it doesn’t always make sense. I know I don’t always believe it myself. But I know what I felt, what I saw and heard in that house and common sense kind of just evaporates when you’re faced with it all, especially as a child.
“We were so excited to move into our new house. It was so much bigger and nicer then where we had been living, but it was old and it needed some work doing to it.”
Here, Spencer interjected: “So an old house and it felt creepy I guess? Probably full of creaks and groans and ‘things that go bump in the night’?”
Spencer made air quotes and pulled a silly face as he said the words, just for Kathy of course, as if to underscore any potential predictability of the story.
Kathy continued: “It was a bit creepy, yeah – but it was exciting too. A new home, a great big new home in fact. And we couldn’t wait to live there.”
“So what went wrong?”
Kathy thought for a moment. Composing herself.
“It all started when our parents were out for the night. It was the first time I was left in charge with my brothers…”
“Babysitting…”
“Yeah, babysitting and we started hearing noises,” Kathy jumped in quickly, leaning forward to head Spencer off at the pass, “Not just the usual creaks or the house settling or anything like that, but proper, actual noises.
“We had a big, long hallway through the centre of the house, with a similar landing on the first floor. We heard footsteps walking up and down those. Creeping along really. Slow deliberate steps that would reach a room – usually the room we were sitting in and then stop, as if someone was waiting, watching in the doorway. And then they’d move on slowly, surely, all the way back along.
Spencer smiled, leant forward himself and scoffed slightly as he said: “I mean, old houses do make noises, but you’re telling us it was more than that?”
Kathy nodded enthusiastically.
“Oh yeah. The usual creaks and stuff, you can write those off, right? But this was most definitely footsteps. And doors opening and closing. And, well, just something, someone, moving around, moving things, in the rooms.
“We tried to ignore it, but it didn’t stop. It didn’t go away. It kept on and on until our parents got home and we told them what happened… and they didn’t believe us of course. I mean, who would, right? So we just tried to move on and got on with our lives again.”
“But this wasn’t just one night was it?” Spencer asked, “This was just the start…”
Kathy nodded nervously in agreement: “A few months later, my parents went out and I was on babysitting duty again. It was late and my brothers were asleep in their room and I was just getting ready for bed and that’s when I heard it. The footsteps.”
Spencer’s eyes widened momentarily and then narrowed as he burrowed them into Kathy’s story.
“Downstairs this was. They started by the front door and they walked, crept – stalked – down the hallway, stopping at the doorway to the front room, and then down to the kitchen and the dining room and then tracking back along the hall to the stairs. And then something different happened.”
She rapped her hand hard on the desk in front of her.
Spencer jumped back, genuinely surprised by the volume.
She rapped again.
“Clomp, clomp, clomp. The footsteps were coming up the stairs. Closer and closer.”
“And then as the footsteps reached the top of the stairs, they stopped, as if they were waiting for something. And then clomp, clomp, clomp they walk along the landing on the first floor, stopping at each door.
“Now my room was at the end of the corridor, with the bed facing the closed door. All I could hear were the steps getting closer and closer and then the sound reached my room and there was a sharp, distinct bang on the door…
Spencer leant forward: “And?”
“And I felt strangely calm,” added Kathy, “I can’t quite explain it, but I went to the door, opened it and there was… nothing. But it was cold, really cold and there was no one - nothing - there.
“Then, a few weeks later, our parents are out again and we are alone…”
Smirking, Spencer sharply added in: “Or so you thought at least.”
“Yeah… yeah, I suppose you’re right,” Kathy replied and Spencer encouraged her to keep telling the story.
“We were all in our bedrooms again and the noises start. This time, it’s footsteps down the hall but then a slamming door and a sort of scraping and crashing and you could hear some of my brothers’ toys whirring away to themselves.”
“That must’ve been pretty creepy?”
“Oh for sure, I was terrified. My brothers refused to come out of their rooms at all, but I knew I had to do it because I was in charge. I had to do it for them.
“And I get to the bottom of the stairs and the front room door is closed. Now, my parents never closed doors, so I knew something was wrong right away, and I could still hear the noise, even more intense now, on the other side of the door, and I put my hand on the handle and it felt frozen, but I wrapped the cuff of my pyjamas around my hand, pulled it down and pushed the door open and…”
“And what did you see?” Spencer asked.
“Absolutely nothing!” Kathy replied. Spencer deflated once more.
“The room was exactly how we’d left it. So much noise, but nothing had been disturbed at all? That was somehow worse than finding someone, something - anything - in there.
At this point, Spencer took over: “So, you’re not sure how or what or why, but you very much start to think there’s someone else with you in your new home? Something other, that’s making all these noises, moving things round, just generally creating an uneasy environment for you all.
“Yes, there was definitely something else, in the house I mean. We weren’t sure if it was a ghost or a poltergeist or a ghoul or something else entirely. So me and my brothers, we try and stop ourselves from getting scared, and bundled all the weirdness, all the strange goings-on, into one thing, one personality and we called it Jack, because it seemed to be a ‘jack-of-all-trades’ in terms of ways it scared us.
“And putting a name to it all worked,” she laughed nervously, then her face fell stony and grim, “Until it didn’t.”
This perked Spencer up again. “So what happened next? What did your parents say?”
“The knocking, the steps, the noises,” Kathy continued, “It all kept going on. Always when my parents went out. Always when we were alone. And it got to the point where my brothers would plead with my mum and dad to stay, to not leave them alone and I felt bad because I was only a child myself and I didn’t know how to protect them and I… I was scared too.
“And my parents, bless them, they didn’t know what to do either. They were scared, not of whatever it was that was going on, but for us, for what was going on with us, what was going on in our heads.
“I mean they’d never seen anything. And I’m not saying they didn’t believe us, but they had no evidence at that point, so you can hardly blame them.”
“But all that changed?”
“A-ha. One night, I was asleep in bed and all of a sudden I was awake and I was being shaken. And when my eyes adjusted, I could see someone at the end of the bed - my younger brothers. They were crying. Shaking with tears.
And how old were they at this point?
“They were about…” Kathy did some quick mental maths, “They must’ve been about 6 and 8 I guess?
“So, the youngest, he was screaming and pulling at me and trying to hug me. My older brother, he was just sat silently, his head down.
“He kept saying ‘He won’t leave us alone , he won’t leave us ALONE!’
“‘Who, who’, I asked? Although I already knew in my heart what the answer was.
“My brothers both shouted ‘HIM!’ and pointed out of my open door and down towards their room.
“Then, through the silence, my older brother started repeating: ‘He won’t go. He won’t go! He won’t GO!’
“And he just broke down and collapsed in my arms. They got into bed with me, and they both just sobbed themselves to sleep.”
A moment of silence filled the studio.
“But that wasn’t the end of the night though…” Spencer said, “Not for you?”
Kathy swallowed hard and sighed, her eyes were already welling up as the memory rolled back into her mind.
“That night, Spencer… it has stayed with me, forever.”
Spencer let a lacertilian smile pass over his lips: “Please, tell us all about it…”
Kathy continued: “So, with my brothers in bed with me, I found it difficult to get to sleep at first, but eventually I drifted off but then… then it happened.
“At first I thought it was my brothers again. I could feel something on my shoulders, something was squeezing, putting pressure into my shoulder, like it was in a vice. An ice cold vice squeezing it tighter and tighter.
“And then I realised I couldn’t move. People have said, ‘oh Kathy, it’s probably just a dream or sleep paralysis or any other more sensible explanation’, but I know I was woken up, I know what happened and I know the fear, the sheer terror I felt.
“And I felt cold. Colder than I ever have, before or since. It started on my…”
Kathy choked on the words momentarily.
”On my face. It started on my face and then it spread down into my mouth and then deeper and deeper and then I don’t remember any more. I just remember a muffled darkness and then the next thing I knew, my mum was holding me and my brothers were crying and my dad was on the phone to the ambulance…
Spencer leant forward again. “And so you don’t remember anything of what happened?”
Kathy shook her head softly, tears gently rolling down her cheeks, “No nothing at all and my parents, my brothers - they just never wanted to talk about it. Told me not to worry about it. To forget about it all and just look forward. But I couldn’t of course and eventually my dad put the house back on the market and we moved away.”
Spencer leant back in his chair, confidently.
“And so then the nightmare ended…” he began, a smile spreading out grimly across his lips.
“Oh! Oh no,” said Kathy, her face dropping, “It… it never stopped. It just kept on, for years. I mean, it’s still going on now. Like, right now…”
Kathy’s gaze moved from Spencer to just over his right shoulder. And she smiled softly: “Aw, he likes you. He’s a bit of a fan.”
Spencer didn’t even get a chance to turn around.
He felt the chill of an icy grip on his shoulder. It squeezed tighter and tighter, making him wince and lean into the pain.
“Don’t… don’t try to resist, Spencer,” said Kathy, “It won’t help you. This is just how it has to be.”
The frosty fingers dug in deeper and sharper. Spencer found himself unable to move.
His mouth involuntarily fell open and he looked at Kathy with pleading eyes.
He tried to speak, to scream, but no noise could escape his throat.
And then he felt the creep of long, clammy, unseen fingers across his left cheek and over his lips and into his mouth. Pushing deeper and deeper and filling his mouth.
Spencer’s eyes rolled white, flickered for a few seconds and then returned with pupils wild and wide.
“Hello, Kathy,” a voice said from the depths of Spencer’s body, “It’s been a while.”
Kathy smiled awkwardly.
“Hi, Jack.”
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