Childhood Memories

Many years ago before I hit teenage years, my parents rented a pleasant new apartment. It was a big stoned house and surrounded by shacks and mud houses. This was in Manyatta, Kisumu City.

Although this house was big (or at least it was through my child-sized eyes) it only had one bedroom. Later we moved into a bigger one with extra bedrooms to support our family of three kids but on our first night, I shared the room with my older sister; while my parents slumbered with my baby sister in the master bedroom.

But on that night I had a dream that has haunted me to this day – several decades later. In the dream I awoke to hear a call for my name coming from the veranda. Between the room where I lay and the distressed voice, was the living room. Although my heart was racing, the distance between it and me gave comfort.

This voice had an odd intonation – almost a cry like, but it would continually call ‘Allan Tom’ in a chilling monotone, followed by a command ‘come here’ in a bizarre rising inflection.

Eventually I fell back to sleep until the voice called out again, this time from the living room. I speculated on why my sister had not woken, while I covered myself under the comforter, sweating and shaking. Eventually I fell back to sleep.

I remember as a child that I’d regularly see shapes moving and dancing in the darkness. At times I’d hear footsteps advancing towards my bed before fading suddenly. As I roused for the third time, the silhouette of a man peered at me. I hid under the covers too frightened to call to my sister asleep in the same room.

When morning came my bed sheets were drenched in perspiration. It so happened that even on warmer nights I‘d wrap myself in the duvet like an onion.

 Although I cannot elucidate what really triggered this freaky reoccurring dream, as a child it was easier to accept that maybe there was a ghost in our house.

As the years rolled on in that charming home, on several nights that I had stayed up to study, whenever I looked on the wall I always had a feeling that the photos, calendar and the artwork were not in their very position and that they kept changing. When my parents had turned off the lights and wished us goodnight, I’d see a shadow of a man on my window. Was my mind pulling a prank on me?

 I used to have a favourite spot to watch television. It was at the corner of the couch. The main door to my left. The door knob to that room would often turn while I sat there, although no one had their hand on it. The door itself would never open but the handle would slowly rotate, eventually giving me a sense that someone else lived in the house, and this someone was looking out for me.