Christmas story: The haunting of Adam

Mind you, you have no idea how intoxicating it was then. The secret words; the look; the likely spots, the places where you knew you had every chance of a casual "click". Public toilets were best. "Cottages". Lingering at the ornately-tiled, Victorian pissoire, waiting for that word or that glance – or that policeman!

I got out as soon as I could. Small villages are unforgiving places. A man's a man for a' that. Unless he's a fairy. Once it became clear that I had no interest in football or of growing up into a proper "real" man, then my card was pretty well marked. Singing had been my passport away. Out, out and away.

By this time, in the 1960s, I had left home and had been picking up work in Glasgow with Scottish Opera. Mum and Dad had stayed in the same wee village, but had retired to a different house. I hadn't seen it yet. Dad's brother, my uncle Stanley was at the terminus of long illness. I was asked to come home because he wouldn't last more than a few days now. It was the Christmas break. Why not?

"Coming home" is always more an emotional reality than a geographical one. Stepping off the bus and walking through those narrow, cobbled streets in the town where I grew up, I felt the anvil in my stomach. Still there, the school; still there, the church; the pub – my personal Stations of the Cross in that small, suffocating community. Every street corner held another memory of my daily humiliation of not being "man" enough.

"Ian!" His voice brought me to the surface. It was my brother Davy. Davy was always going to be the Golden Child of the family. Funny, intuitive, home-loving and – most importantly – straight. "Where have you been? I missed you at the stop."

"I was just, you know…"

Davy grinned his knowing grin: "Let's get you indoors. Before the villagers light the torches. Come on, I'll show you the new house. It must be the bargain of the century"

Mum and Dad were in their fifties now. Having survived two World Wars and a Depression, they worshipped at the Church of Don't-Make-a-Scene. I think that Mum knew about me (how can a mother not?) but she never said. Dad just pretended that it was Artistic Temperament. Fine by me.

The New House was unexpectedly roomy. It had – in its more God-fearing days – been an old manse. Then, some years ago, it had been sold off and partially renovated by a businessman who had relocated to our village with his wife and son. The family left, the house was emptied and it remained unsold for what seemed ages. Then Mum and Dad had bought it. Smart move, because it had heaps of (in modern parlance) "potential".

"Ian!" Mum – in full mother-hen mode – clucked and brooded, telling me that I was too thin and sitting me down, force-feeding me sugary tea and scones just out of the oven. Dad sat smiling, his newspaper splayed out over the kitchen table, shaking his head and sucking at his pipe. The dogs sat by my side, offering paws and smiles and blinking their affection.

"You didn't tell me that you'd bought a palace" I smiled. Mum blushed a wee bit and stumbled over her words: "It's not quite the way we want it yet…"

"Come here you daft duck," I held her by the wrists "It's just lovely – now where's my room?" and at that point – and just for a split second – I though I saw a cloud of fear flick over her eyes.

"Ian, it's a wee bit cold up there…"

"No fears, mama, I can sleep in my scarf."

"Come on," Davy dug me in the ribs, "I'll race you upstairs."

Waves of nausea come in different types. Sometimes they come gradually, slowly, like an army of ants marching up inside your throat until you need to wash them out. Other waves hit you much faster, like pressing the skoosh on a soda siphon. It was the second kind that hit me as soon as I went into that room and the vomit was spectacular.

"How's the head?" Davy's brows were knit in concern.

I sat up in bed: "Let me just unscrew it for half an hour, then I might live." I smiled feebly.

I looked around the room. Nothing out of the ordinary. The low winter sunlight spread out evenly along the room: a single bed, wash-hand basin, desk and chair, a coal fire crackling in the hearth. Nothing unusual. Except the cold. The bitter cold.

"It's freezing in here. Maybe I'll need that scarf after all"

"You know these old houses." Davy stood with his back to me and stared out of the window.

One thirteen am. I wasn't sure what woke me at first. A sound like a low moan in the throat, perhaps, or a child sobbing on an empty wasteground. I opened my eyes. And then I saw the face. He was standing at the foot of the bed. Looking at me. A boy about my age. Anguish in his eyes. In the darkness, his face seemed to be melting slowly like a candle. So sad. The tortured eyes staring right at me. Then I felt it.

Wave upon wave of despair. I closed my eyes and counted to five. Opened them. Still there, that face. That body standing at the foot of the bed. I tried to sit up. I couldn't move.

"What happened then?" Davy and I sat amongst the breakfast things.

"I'm not sure. I might have blacked out. Or fallen asleep."

"Then maybe it was a dream."

"Maybe."

We sat silently, staring into our teacups.

I visited Uncle Stanley's bedside later that morning. No change. Comatose now. Bible by the bed. Stanley had always loved the Psalms.

Auntie Lil sat by the bed reading to him: "He shall cover thee with his feathers, and under his wings shalt thou trust…" His eyes were firmly fixed shut now, as if in rehearsal for the long sleep ahead. I had always been a bit wary of Stanley. If he was a Good Christian, then what did that make me? As I was growing up, his Faith had always seemed a sort of rebuke. His kind of worship had become another place from which I had been discretely blackballed. And now he lay there, as if in silent prayer, quietly confident of his fate. Auntie Lil too. Death held no fear for people like them. It was like slipping into a hot bath after a long, hard day's toil. "One glad morning, when this life is over, I'll fly away…"

The bedroom. After 2am this time. The waves of nausea and despair woke me. The boy's tortured face, like an anguished, luminous moon filled my eyes. And tears this time. Tears of shame running down his face. He stood there choking and sobbing. Inconsolable. My insides began to churn in dread. I felt the sickness rise.

Davy was looking out of the window again. "Maybe he's always there, and you're the only one who can see him."

"But why me?"

I waited up that night. Nothing. The moon was darting restless through the clouds and threw its changing silhouettes against the wall. The fire was out and I listened to the coal, brittle and spent, shifting and cracking in the darkness. Then I felt him. I felt the sadness. I shifted up. This was it:

"Hello." I tried to be gentle "Can you see me? Can you hear me?"

The boy looked at me more intently. He was staring now.

"Don't be sad. Please don't be sad. Look around you. This isn't where you're meant to be. It's all finished now. All done. Look. It's all just things here. There's nothing left here for you. It's time to go now. You must feel it yourself. Whatever happened here – it's done.

It's the end of the chapter. You must know that. Remember, in the Bible, it talks about "my father's house… has many rooms". That was meant for you. That's where you need to be – not here. You must know this. Whatever happened, it's finished now. Whatever you did, it's over. They can't touch you now. Please – it's time to move on."

For a long time the boy just stood there. He said nothing. And then, slowly, the body began to drift. It began to drift towards me. Through the foot of the bed. Towards me. Through my feet. Through my knees. Through my chest. His face moving closer to mine, as if he was about to kiss me. That tortured face gradually getting closer and closer, his lips falling into mine.

Then I blacked out.

A cold hand shaking my shoulder and squeezing tight. I felt the breath hissing on my face. "Iain…" I opened my eyes. It was Davy. "Iain, wake up. It's Uncle Stanley. He's died."

The next day was a blur of activity and exhaustion. Tea at Aunt Lil's; the obligatory examination of the body by relatives; kissing the corpse (er, no thankYOU); sitting with a cup and saucer in lap, nodding as strangers visited the house with their recollections of Stanley as a fellow "believer".

Oddly, Mum seemed very chipper: "Ian, you'll never guess. This morning, I went into your room and I found the dogs in there. The wee rascals, they were actually sitting on your bed. They wouldn't go in there before…"

I smiled. Had something lifted? The room seemed to wear the low winter sunlight in a different way. Thin and austere, but beautiful now.

There are no real secrets in a small town. Of course, at Stanley's funeral, it all came out. The local gossips couldn't resist mixing some black paint into my parents' bargain buy. The previous owner of the house had been a local businessman. He had a son my age. The boy had been caught soliciting other men in the village public toilets. He had been arrested and the case was pending. One morning, when his mother went up to his room to rouse him, she found him. Hanged.

We ended the funeral service with one of Stanley's favourite hymns: "O Love that Will Not Let Me Go." I remember the tears running down my face as the whole village sang together: "I trace the rainbow through the rain…"

Small towns don't really change, do they? For all its live-and-let freedom, in the last analysis, the 1960s hung over that town with no more permanence than holiday bunting or snow. The town remains the same to this day.

Mum and Dad died years ago. Davy is married with kids.

Me? I'm still singing. And teaching. I live in London now. I have created my own small community of friends, my own family. Being a voice coach is a wee bit like being a detective. Everybody has a voice, you know. It's just a question of finding it and setting it free. That's what I do. That's what the journey is about. And what about you? Have you found your voice?