Charlie, 1984
It was so dark. So very, very dark. Not the sort of blackness you get used to, either. To move, Charlie had to feel around the walls with his hands. He’d become familiar with all the objects on the floor and the shape and size of the cellar. The paint tins he sat on, the length of pipe he held onto when he was relieving himself.
The pain from the last beating had subsided, but the little boy imagined it was just a temporary relief. He’d tried to hit his grandfather back during that attack, but the older man barely registered the blow. It was like the flapping of tiny wings against a larger predator.
As each day passed, Charlie wondered if anyone would come for him. Did anybody even know he was there?
Cold and hunger had been replaced with despair and abandonment.
More than anything, he wanted his mother.
On one of the nights, Charlie had no idea which one or how long ago, his grandfather had opened the cellar door and thrown down some dinner scraps.
The little boy had discovered a tap at the edge of the cellar, so he’d had water to drink, but that hadn’t been enough to stem the hunger pangs that gnawed at his swollen belly.
He was so grateful for the food that he swooped on it without thinking, stuffing soggy potatoes into his mouth. He had swallowed so fast, he’d almost vomited, his stomach contracting and trying to repel the now foreign feeling of sustenance.
It took a few minutes before Charlie realised that his grandfather was still standing at the open hatch, looking down at him.
‘Animal!’ he spat, when the little boy looked up. He dropped his trousers and urinated down the cellar steps, the sharp, overpowering stench filling the small space, worse than the collection of waste already in the corner of the room. Drops splashed at Charlie and onto the food, even as he jumped out of the way. He caught his grandfather’s satisfied glance before he dropped the door shut with a bang.
The young boy’s eyes filled with tears. He’d mistaken the scraps for a sign of kindness – a message that he hadn’t been forgotten.
As he ate food covered in piss, he knew he preferred the beatings to the torture he was being subjected to. He would rather the feeling of fists landing on his face because that was real and something he understood. This treatment, this captivity and … hate. His young mind couldn’t comprehend it.
It was sending him mad.
For four weeks, Charlie lived in the black cellar, surviving on the odd scrap of food and the tap water. He didn’t know how long he was there. Days faded into nights, nights faded into weeks. All he knew was that he’d been made to disappear. The little boy who shouldn’t have been born in the first place.
He was alone. Even his little brother was gone – and that had been her fault too. She’d taken drugs when the baby was in her tummy and he’d come out too small. There was something wrong with him. And still, Charlie had loved him.
His mother had been a slut. That’s what his grandfather roared over and over, the words cutting into Charlie’s skin, tattooing themselves in his thoughts. Her behaviour was his shame to carry. As time passed in the cellar, he began to believe it. He was only ten when she’d abandoned him that spring, days before Easter when the only worry he should have had was how many chocolate eggs he would get. She’d left him at the mercy of the evil man upstairs. So how come he still longed for her? For her gentleness and warmth. She could be silly at times, especially when she drank, but she never hit him. She used to cuddle him and tell him he was her little prince. Her Charlie.
Then, one day, after he’d been in the cellar for a long time, he heard yelling. Not his grandfather’s voice. It sounded like a stranger.
Charlie climbed up the stairs to the trapdoor. Survival instinct, something he didn’t even know he had left, kicked in. At the top, he summoned everything he could and screamed, bashing at the door with his little fists.
Realising the clamour probably wasn’t enough, he scrambled back down the steps and found one of the empty paint tins. Despite his weakness, despite the pain in his limbs and near starvation, he raised the tin over his head and started to hit the trapdoor with it. Bang, bang, bang. He gave his arms a rest and listened. The noise overhead had stopped.
Charlie panicked and began to bang again, roaring at the top of his lungs. He was so lost in what he was doing that when the trapdoor was flung open, he barely noticed. Suddenly he was blinded by light. He dropped the tin and looked up, shielding his eyes from the stinging beam.
A woman was standing there, staring down at him – a skinny little boy, covered in his own filth, eyes wide with fear. She was wearing a plain grey jacket and skirt, the clothes of a professional woman. Her eyes were wide with shock; her nose wrinkled at the smell that had spilled out the door.
To Charlie, she was beautiful. The prettiest princess he had ever seen. Like the ones from the story his mother used to read.
Maybe this wasn’t real at all. Maybe he was no longer alive and this was heaven. She was an angel.
‘Charlie?’ she said, her voice filled with horror. ‘Are you Charlie?’
He nodded mutely. His eyes were dry, but inside, he was crying.
‘Oh, my sweet Lord,’ she said. ‘Oh, you poor little boy. You’re okay. You’re alright now. He’s gone. Your granddad is gone.’