Hell and Heaven in Easterhouse

Gary MacLauchlan

A day I have never forgot took place around 30 years ago on a very dark November night. I came face to face with the devil himself (Yeah, I know it sounds a bit far out but, ermm! stay with me here I am not lying).

I don't know if it's because I came from a kind of religious family or went to a catholic school or whatever but the thought of ghosts and spirits and evil things had always freaked me out to the point that my only comfort was the uncertain knowledge that Jesus and God and all the saints and Mary and co. were far more powerful than all the bad guys that were out there, a kind of like he-man versus skeletor relationship, and 'cos I was a good catholic boy then I would be 'protected' if you like.

Anyway, one night, cold November around 8pm, as I have said it is really, really dark, I hear the magical sound of an ice cream van - every eight year old in the scheme's favourite, favourite sound. Ginger bottle in hand, I raced down the stairs of our Easterhouse tenement into the blackness of the close, the thoughts of daintys and fizz bombs racing through my head.

We lived on the top floor, four up. It wasn't uncommon for all the lights to be out in the closes from top to bottom, power cuts or stolen fuses or whatever and from memory when it was dark and if I became scared I would simply run as fast as I could towards the lights of either my front door or the mouth of the close - whichever direction I was aiming for. This night however, I was to be stopped in my tracks!

Racing from floor four to three and then at floor two I had one set of fourteen stairs to reach the safety and light of the close mouth, and as I took my first step down the steep stairs, my eyes were drawn in a flash to the figure of a man at the bottom of the stairs. In a split second alarms bells started to ring in my mind.

He was tall, the tallest man I had ever seen, and he had dark features. He wore a long black trench coat that hung from his shoulders right down to his feet and his hair was like a big frizzy afro, dark brown in colour. His face was large and white; he had a heavy and dark beard and a broad nose. His eyes however, were the black and evil eyes of the evillest monster that had ever existed in any form, small and narrow and black, like the eyes of a killer shark. He stared at me right into my eyes, he stared through me, I stood motionless. I was caught in the eyes of the devil, I could not run, nor walk away, I was rooted to the spot, what would happen to me?

I thought I was going to faint, my legs started to fall from under me and the motion snapped me into reality. I ran down the stairs straight at the devil and then past him out of the close mouth and into the safety of the streetlights, I had made it, the relief was almost too much too bear.

Now I was only eight years old and this was probably the most scared I had ever been in my short life to that point, but after emerging from the close I remember still going to the ice cream van with my little ginger bottle and buying the necessary sweets that were required.

I also remember going back into the close with my sweets in hand and heart in mouth, checking there was no devil there and then bolting into the darkness, up the stair and reaching the safety of my house, my heart was pounding with fear but as I flopped onto the woolly rug in front of the coal fire it all passed and sweets and TV took over. The memory has never really left me though.

Thirty years later I still wonder about the guy at the bottom of the stairs that night; who was he? Did I give him a fright? Did he laugh about it later with friends or did he not even notice all the excitement of an eight year old boy's imagination. And I remember my childhood in Easterhouse where the winters were damp, dark and cold, with real snow that lasted for weeks and the summers that were full of glorious sun when we were allowed out to play from morn till the sun disappeared.

I have great memories of my childhood, mainly filled with laughter, adventure and many victories to boot. But when the dark nights start to draw in and I am driving through or visiting family in Easterhouse, I ask myself who did I see that night? Could it have been, surely not?

Perhaps there is a part of me that will always believe the imagination of an eight year old boy.