om Slemen column: Silver Joey 21 Aug 2010 01:00 AS HIS older brother Des was downstairs, celebrating his 21st, 14-year-old Andrew Stephens was sitting up in the attic of his home in Toxteth, reading his favourite magazine, Look-In. Share on print Share on email AS HIS older brother Des was downstairs, celebrating his 21st, 14-year-old Andrew Stephens was sitting up in the attic of his home in Toxteth, reading his favourite magazine, Look-In. Downstairs in the front parlour, the talented neighbour ‘Box’ Cooper was playing his accordion, and Mrs Stephens was accompanying him on the old stand-up piano. The resulting melodic strains of Mungo Jerry’s In the Summertime were ironically swamped out by the out of season rain hammering on the panes and rooftops of the old terraced house. As the ale flowed from the giant cans of Watney Party Seven and Worthington Special Bitter down below, Andrew went on a ‘mooch-about’ in the attic. He found an old box with a gas mask in from WWII, a ration book, and a curious twelve-sided silver coin with three plants resembling dandelions on one side, and some unremarkable royal head on the other. It looked exactly like the old brass “threepenny bit” only a bit smaller, and bore the date 1941. Andrew kept the silver coin, and then went back to reading the Look-In magazine. About five minutes later there came the sounds of some tumultuous disturbance downstairs, and Andrew went onto the landing and looked down at the spiralling banister rail. He heard screams, and reflexively hurried downstairs. In the parlour, there was utter pandemonium. Andrew’s mum was crying and Uncle Ray’s head and shoulders were white with what looked like flour. “What happened?” Andrew asked. His dad shouted at him in reply, scolding him for letting one of his ‘hooligan mates’ into the house. ‘Where is he?’ Andrew’s grand-dad asked. He’d removed his belt, ready to thrash the (expletive deleted). A boy had entered the parlour, slammed the lid of the piano’s keyboard on Mrs Stephens’s hands and then pelted Uncle Ray with a bag of Homepride flour. ‘I haven’t let any mate in! Andrew cried. No one believed him, and so he sulked and ran back up to the attic in a huff. Andrew opened the attic window, and foolishly sat on the wooden ledge, which was warped with flaking paint. A hundred feet below, the crazy paving of the back yard created a peculiar optical illusion to Andrew – the ground looked as if it was only a few feet below. ‘Jump,’ said a boy’s voice behind Andrew. ‘Go on, chum, you won’t hurt yourself – it’s just a couple of feet down.’ Andrew carefully turned, and in the shadows, there stood a boy of about twelve with a short-back-and-sides haircut, and his sleeveless pullover, shorts and socks were all grey. Andrew got back into the attic. ‘No! Jump, go on, you won’t feel a thing!’ the strange young lad shouted, stepping forward. ‘No, I won’t!’ Andrew rushed past the weird boy, but was tripped by him as he tried to reach the attic door. When he got up, the out-dated lad was aiming a Y-shaped catapult at Andrew, and it was loaded with something deadly – a ball bearing. ‘If you don’t jump out that window I’ll put this bolly through your skull, and you’ll be dead!’ the boy threatened, and then he started to snigger with an evil radiance in his dark eyes. The menacing pre-teen gritted grinning teeth as he drew back the elastic inner-tube strips of the catapult. Then came the chilling countdown: ‘Five, four, three, two, one!’ Continued next week Tom Slemen’s 78-page Haunted Liverpool Magazine can be downloaded now for £2 from slemen
Posted on: Mon, 12 Aug 2013 02:13:14 +0000
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