Introduction

Through my father’s passion for horror, I was exposed to a range of frightening films in my childhood. I was petrified, justifiably I think, to have my own room. I remember sleepless nights curled beneath my covers, slick with perspiration in the windless haze of summer ... terrified to let my limbs reveal themselves within the covers. Straining my bladder, scared to make the hallway run for fear of something other than a sleeping dog. Notwithstanding my familiarity with Regan MacNeil bound vomit-soiled to her bed ... Joseph Carmichael’s watery, childish hiccups ... the Grady daughters, butchered by their father in the Overlook ... or Danny Glick floating at his brother’s window - I harboured a bank of unsettling ideas already.

When my second brother was born, he had the vacant third room. My parents naturally slept together. I shared a room with my first brother, overlooking the busy main road. For years I recalled mum telling us over Chinese how she’d sleepily gone to the baby’s room one night. He was crying. Screaming not hungrily but in fear. In wild gestures, he kept pointing at the window.

Our house saw other strange, though subtle, occurrences after my Great Nanna died. Her printed diary kept disappearing then turning up in obvious places. My brother woke up to a cloudy figure resembling her outline, watching from the doorway. My dad was plagued with cryptic dreams where she begged him for a headstone. One night a thundering crash awoke him: a heavy wooden chair had toppled over quite impossibly in the dining room. To dad in his half-sleeping state, the slanted angle of the back-rest appeared remarkably headstone-like. These dreams stopped when her grave was properly adorned. Another incident almost coinciding – one we found more comical than anything - was when Mum and Dad were having a rough patch. A galah came out of nowhere. It came into our house, adopted a spot above the longue-room doors or waited near the back-door. Like Poe’s raven, it assumed an authoritative attitude over the household. And it had a bone to pick with Dad. Without provocation it went for him whenever he appeared. The bird violently hated him. Combine this with the fact that galah have a large beak and decent claws, and you would understand why Dad childishly refused to exit the house unless his wife kept the bird (often unsuccessfully) away. “Is it still out there?” he’d shout, peeking through the blinds. “I mean it, I’m not coming out there till it’s gone!!” After about a week it disappeared. It returned intermittently over the years. It would stay for a little while, then vanishing again. Dad is yet to make amends with that strange creature, and whenever it returns the half-joking thought that Dad has done something he shouldn’t have comes to our minds.

These things, plus other more obscure incidents, sufficiently ensured that I was scared to be alone at night. A delightful barrage of horror films – for which I am subversively grateful – sealed my phobic inability to sleep alone. Before I was more than distantly interested in girls or money or any real ambition save that of being a Sydney railway driver of all things, I knew I hoped to marry someday. Solely because I could not bear the thought of living alone. People feared their future. Their physical, psychological and fiscal wellbeing. I feared extortionate electricity bills for leaving my lights on permanently.

I did of course grow out of this. For a while I really thought I wouldn’t.

It happened one cold cramped night in 2005. In preparation for our first Duke of Edinburgh hike, two friends (Tommy; Austin) and I, camped in the deep wooded gully behind Tommy’s house. Like any teenage boy, I had many worries at the time. Most pressingly: that I would have to sleep inside my tent alone (despite the Sixth Sense ruining such a prospect). The alternative was to confess my fear, so guardedly secret, so shamefully debilitating. I would be the laughing stock of all my friends – not to mention the rest of my grade if word got out. I was awkward enough as it was.