Fear of Curtains...

and no, not because my play clothes were made out of them and my ex nun nanny dragged me around the Swiss Alps singing on bicycles.....

Its faces at the window.
I cant bear the thought of closing curtains when it is dark in case there is something there that shouldn't be. It doesn't matter if I am 22 storeys up .... I mean, wouldn't that just make it worse if there was a person staring back at me with blank, dead eyes and blood dripping from their teeth?

I think it stems from seeing Salems Lot when I was about 12 and the kids scratching at the window trying to get in .... just floating shadows with glowing red eyes....... but to this day, i only close curtains when its dark if it completely, totally, absolutely has to be me. But what you have to understand, is that i cant leave them open either ... because then something is sure to get me. I am not entirely sure exactly what mystical powers I feel curtains have. This amazing ability to hold back all manner of evil. I guess its the same that they put in blankets and duvets that means you are safe under them when you run back from the loo at 3.30am because its dark and the zombies are using the noise of the flush to mask their groanings and dragging feet as they come for you down the hall. But once you are under those blankets, you are safe. Batfink was a fool having wings like a shield of steel, he only needed a nice bit of lined floral polyester.

But to the stories.... yes plural.

Picture it. 1987. I am just 16 and the family holiday is to a caravan park in Selsey. Mum, John (her 3rd hubby), James (Next bro down from me), Eleanor (my mothers only daughter but not my only sister) and my best mate Alex are there for the week. I am not best pleased as that was the week that Whitney Houston knocked Madonna off the no.1 spot as I recall. As most family holidays are, it was a Saturday through Saturday thing but by Monday night, Mum & John have blown all of their money on cigarettes and alcohol and cant afford to stay, so they go home taking the siblings with them. Since friends were having to pick Me and Alex up anyway, we figure we might as well stay on our own as our money is lasting just fine and given we have just left school, its all one big adventure right now.
So Tuesday night, being Me & Alex, we went to a park in the pouring rain to play on the swings and chat sci fi n stuff. It was a hot summer night and we were soaked to the skin but we didn't care. We got back to the van around midnight and were sat watching The Rock Gospel Show and waving bits of torn newspaper with Thora Hird on them .... and largely being derogatory and unkind to these poor Christians.
And then something started tapping on the windows. Slowly gently sinister ..ly .. ?
We turned off the tv, crouched down on the sofa and waited. What do you do? You have never been away from home on holiday without an adult! How easy is it for a vampire to rip into a caravan? If its a mad axe man, will he want to do unspeakable things to me before dicing me into small pieces of roughly one cm cubed? Is it right to die a virgin when you have only ever had a bj? Who will actually be better off in 20 years time for being the number one single this week? Madonna maybe with a family or perhaps Whitney with a former crack addiction? So many questions...... A brief whispered conversation along the lines of ...
Alex: You look first you re oldest ....
Me: No , you, you;'re almost a foot taller than me!
Before we decided, on the count of three, to pull open a curtain each ........ to reveal a wide, mad, staring face screaming at us.

My mother.
They had borrowed more money and came back. Apparently, the sound of us arguing over who went first almost blew it for them as they were laughing so hard......

And on to the second story.
Its um .. 1989 ... I think ... yeah, it must be as I am living in Abbey Drive but neither Alex or I have a drivers license yet....... anyhoo .....
We have just been to see Dead Poets Society and as we walk up through a very dark and deserted alley to take a short cut up to the estate. We recount the scary story about the lady and the jigsaw...... and I get well and truly spooked. Like totally freaked out. Alex walks up to my place, then heads off to back home... I stick my head in to say goodnight to mum ... she was single at this point, well, this week i should say as her and John split up for a few days around once every six weeks for most of 88/89 (before I booted him out for good in the July) and then go to my room, which was above the front door. Every time I go to close my curtains, the tale of the lady doing the jigsaw came back .. and how as she completed the jigsaw she realised it was of her house ... and of her, sat doing a jigsaw ... and that as she completed the window section, it revealed a face of a madman, his eyes blazing, with a knife and then she hears the window smash.......
I ask my mum to come in and close my curtains for me .... to which she refuses to get out of bed and for goodness sake, i am 18 years old and blah blah blah .. so i inch towards the window, lean over my bed to grab each curtain .... and a person appears screaming outside .... and do remember I am one floor up! i scream the house down to see Alex curled up with laughter, standing on the little bit of concrete above our front door, directly below my window.
neither him or my mother ever let me live this down.......

So, is it any wonder I am terrified? And this is without the stories Adele told me about genuine ghostly faces that used to appear in her windows back in Doncaster.....
Dan is so going to use this against me...................