The Bricked-Up Gates

My earliest memory is not of a face or a voice, but of a smell. A damp, earthy smell that clung to the walls of our new home, a smell that never quite left, no matter how many windows we opened. I was four, and my parents had just moved us into the end-of-terrace house on Bramblewick Lane, a place that my mother called ‘a project’ and my father called ‘a bargain’. The house itself was narrow, with a long, narrow kitchen that ran along the back, overlooking what my sisters and I called the ‘wilderness’ – a large, overgrown garden that had once been two separate plots. You could still see the old bricked-up gateways in the back wall, one on either side, like blind eyes staring at the house.

Bethany and Erin were too young to remember the move, but I have vague flashes of unpacking boxes, the sound of my father’s hammer as he repaired the fence, and the constant presence of that damp smell. It was in the winter of 1991 that the first strange thing happened. I was six, and I was playing in the garden, tracing my finger along the rough bricks of the left gateway, when I heard a child’s laugh – not my sisters’, but a higher, more distant sound. I spun around, but there was no one there. The laugh seemed to come from the gateway itself, from behind the wall of bricks. I ran inside, and when my mother asked what was wrong, I told her I heard a ghost. She smiled and said, ‘There are no such things as ghosts, love. It was just the wind.’

But I knew it wasn’t the wind. And over the years, the strange events in that house became a recurring part of our lives. The first really terrifying thing happened when I was ten. I had a dream that I was standing in the back garden at night, and a woman’s voice whispered from the left gateway, ‘Let me in.’ I woke up, my heart pounding, and I heard the same voice – not in my dream, but coming from the hallway outside my bedroom. I crept to the door and peered out. The hallway was empty, but the voice continued, low and pleading, ‘Let me in.’ I ran to my parents’ room, but my father told me to go back to bed, that I was having a nightmare.

The occurrences became more frequent as we grew older. Sometimes, we would find the kitchen chairs arranged in a circle in the middle of the room, as if for a meeting. Other times, we would hear the sound of someone walking on the gravel path in the garden, even though no one was there. The most disturbing was when we would look out the kitchen window into the garden, and we would see a faint, translucent shape standing by one of the bricked-up gateways – a shape that seemed to be watching the house.

When I was fourteen, I confronted my mother about it. She sighed and told me that the house was built on the site of a tragedy. During the war, two houses had stood next to ours, and a family of four had been killed in a bombing. Their bodies were never found, and the ruins were simply cleared and the land incorporated into our garden. The bricked-up gateways were the entrances to their cellars, which had been sealed off for safety. My mother said she had always felt a presence in the garden, but she didn’t want to scare us.

That revelation made everything worse. I started having nightmares about being trapped in a dark cellar, with a woman’s voice whispering, ‘Let me out.’ And then, when I was sixteen, I had an experience that I will never forget. I was in the garden, weeding the flowerbed by the left gateway, when I heard a loud thump from behind the wall. I froze, and then I heard a voice – clear as day – that said, in a child’s whisper, ‘We just want to play.’

I ran inside and grabbed my father’s crowbar. I was determined to open the gateway. My father came out and saw me, and I could see the fear in his eyes. ‘Don’t,’ he said. ‘Please, don’t.’ But I was not in my right mind. I wedged the crowbar into the bricks and started to pry them loose. It took several minutes, but finally, a large section of the brickwork tumbled away, revealing a dark, narrow passage that descended into the earth. A cold, foul air rushed out, and I heard a cacophony of whispers, all saying, ‘Thank you, thank you.’

My father grabbed my arm and pulled me away, and he quickly re-bricked the hole himself, using cement he had in the shed. He was shaking, and he made me promise never to tell my sisters about it. But I did tell Bethany years later, and she admitted that she had also heard the voices, and that she had once seen a hand reaching out from the gateway, grasping at the air.

We moved out of that house when I was twenty-two, and I was glad to leave. But the final incident happened on the day we were moving out. I was carrying a box of my old belongings from the garden shed, when I walked past the left gateway. The brickwork was still intact, but I saw, sitting on the ground in front of it, a small, faded photograph. I picked it up. It was a picture of a family – a man, a woman, and two children – standing in front of a house that looked just like ours, but with a second and third house attached. The family was smiling, but their eyes looked hollow. On the back, in faded ink, was written: ‘To the new owners, please let us out.’

I dropped the photograph and ran. I didn’t look back. Now, living in a new house, I still sometimes hear that whisper, especially at night. And I know, deep in my heart, that the family is still there, waiting behind those bricked-up gates, and that one day, they will find a way out – and when they do, they will not be seeking welcome, but revenge.