Monster in My Mind

By Alison Pepperton

Prepare to be captivated by Monster in My Mind, an enthralling journey into the world of a tormented child. Alison’s harrowing truth unfolds within the pages, exposing the depths of her troubled upbringing. Step into her shoes as she navigates a harsh reality, locked away within her own mind. Through resilience and determination, she eventually finds the strength to break free from her confines and soar to new heights. This poignant tale will leave you spellbound, shedding light on the indomitable spirit that can emerge from even the darkest of circumstances.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Austin Macauley Publishers
• Release date: Sep 15, 2023
• ISBN: 9781528989947

Alison Pepperton

Alison Pepperton unfortunately had a dramatic start to her life. Years spent living in fear in the one place most people thrive within. She has managed to make her life complete, and in her later years, she became a successful business woman against all the odds. Alison wrote this book for all the people who choose to have children. An excellent example of her strength and resilience, she chose to write her life story to educate everyone about the dangers children still face today.

Book preview

About the Author

Alison Pepperton unfortunately had a dramatic start to her life. Years spent living in fear in the one place most people thrive within. She has managed to make her life complete, and in her later years, she became a successful business woman against all the odds. Alison wrote this book for all the people who choose to have children. An excellent example of her strength and resilience, she chose to write her life story to educate everyone about the dangers children still face today.

Dedication

For every child who suffers today.

Copyright Information ©

Alison Pepperton 2023

The right of Alison Pepperton to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by the author in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.

Any person who commits any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

All of the events in this memoir are true to the best of author’s memory. The views expressed in this memoir are solely those of the author.

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

ISBN 9781528987646 (Paperback)

ISBN 9781528989947 (ePub e-book)

www.austinmacauley.com

First Published 2023

Austin Macauley Publishers Ltd®

1 Canada Square

Canary Wharf

London

E14 5AA

Acknowledgement

Many thanks to Mr. Steve Harris, Stepping Stones North Wales

(Non-profit Organisation).

Without your support, this book would not have been written.

Prologue

I waited a long time to write this book, it was just too hard to attempt sooner and reading on, you’ll understand why. Aged 56, I count myself lucky to be a strong survivor and even luckier to have become a business woman and a good mother, though I admit, I am still very different to everyone around me. In recent years, I had help over a two-year period from an excellent therapist, John, from Stepping Stones. I found it easier writing about my memories rather than talking about them. Writing has helped me to uncover vast hidden parts of my memories hidden deep in my mind in a safe environment and hopefully, having now addressed some of the traumatic moments and negative experiences of abuse, I have achieved a personal level of closure and am able to now live the rest of my life without as many flashbacks dropping into my thoughts. I lived keeping everyone at a distance, apart from my two daughters who mean the absolute world to me. They deserve a gold medal for putting up with me. I dedicate this book to them, because for me, they are and will always be my entire reason for still being here. People will always be uncomfortable talking about child abuse, but everyone needs to discuss it more openly. By reading what child abuse can actually be, it may encourage people not just to talk about it, but to take action to prevent it, rather than turn away because they find it an awkward subject. If you know what paedophiles are capable of, even though it makes you uncomfortable, you may see something, and possibly even have the chance to save a child.

Introduction

This book is a true, factual and often graphic reflection of my childhood but, please don’t put it down. I have changed the names in this book, but it contains many of the memories I dare to recall, without damping down the facts about the abuse I endured. I have relived every moment through my fingertips, similar to a pianist playing their written piece, the music just comes to them, and similarly through my fingertips I let it flow from my mind, recounting every fear, terror, feeling and emotion I faced or felt, and after each memory of those events that resurfaced, like a light switching on in the depths of my soul, somehow, I had the ability to switch it off when I closed my laptop, an ability for which I am forever grateful.

Until I started to write, my recollections were snaps of the abuse I’d endured, like short horror movie trailers and photographs in my mind, it was like watching someone else but I always knew it was me. I’d always felt different, we certainly lived differently in our family to everyone else. I’m still quite reclusive even now, but I didn’t realise quite how different I was and that this way of surviving was actually a normal response to what had happened to me. I wrote this for myself too, to deal with all the past horror, trauma and experiences this book brought back to me. To look at me you’d never know these were my secrets, or the hurdles I’ve faced and still face every day of my life. I’m a successful business woman, I employ around fifty to sixty staff at any one time, I have holidays at least twice a year, own my own home but those who know me well can identify that their lives are very different to mine. The worst years though, the years of multiple horrors were my childhood and I hope you read this and learn that for a child, getting over trauma and abuse doesn’t come easy, you can never draw a line in the sand and just get over it as many people have said to me in the past. (First lesson) You’d never say it to a war veteran, so don’t say it to an abuse survivor, no matter what sort of abuse they’ve suffered.

This book will stay with you, torment and interrupt your thoughts for a while, but it will make you think about those free offenders out there right now, make you think about the way children are suffering, as you read every line of this book, someone’s child somewhere, maybe even your child, will be going through similar or even worse, and knowing the signs may help you to help an innocent child.

Monster in My Mind

My earliest recollection takes me back to 1967, I know I have the right year because we moved into Yew Tree House that year and my sketchy memory had always given me small pieces of that moving day. Writing this has been my personal therapy, fitting the flashes of memory together by returning there in my mind, through my fingertips and onto the pages of this book. It’s been a difficult experience, but I needed to do this for me, and because I need people to know and understand more about what child abuse actually is, what can and does happen and the effects of abuse throughout life.

Most children would be excited to explore a new home, having a new adventure and new beginnings, especially a two-year-old, but my memories weren’t welcome memories, my entire childhood was devastating beyond belief, but my need to share this has led me to where you are now, in the first pages of my book.

1967 the only year I can date exactly from my many jigsaw pieces. I was two years old.

I was helping carry my swing from the enormous furniture van down towards the back gardens of our new home. I can remember how heavy it was in my tiny hands but it was the only thing I was allowed to carry, obviously due to my age and related clumsiness. The swing seat was a slab of solid wood and the handles were rods of cold green metal which would hook onto the metal frame once erected, rather than the usual type of swings made with metal chains or rope, it was really awkward to carry. I was now half way down the side of the enormous Edwardian house, and was slowly tiring under the weight of it. I had already stopped around three times on the way down the long driveway. I’d caught sight of large bits of stones in all sorts of shapes and sizes over the old stone garden wall; they were amongst the trees whose branches hung like a dark canopy over them. There seemed to be plants growing all over the stone surfaces too, almost covering the ones far under the branches where the sun couldn’t reach. I was still looking over the wall whilst trying to engage with two very steep concrete steps next to a large side window when suddenly I felt myself losing grip of the metal swing pole in my tiny right hand… Oooops, I could feel it falling away from the grip of my hand like a slow-motion film clip, ‘Smash.’ I froze in that moment like a solid block of ice but instinctively I already knew what to expect, even though I was only two, I knew what I had to do, if I wanted to stay safe, I knew I needed to hide, to find somewhere as fast as I could.

As the rest of my swing dropped to the floor amongst the splintering of glass, I jumped down the final step, over the wooden seat and started to run in the opposite direction from him. I could just about hear him starting to snarl in anger, but I didn’t dare look back, I never looked back. Instead, I was running like the wind, as fast as my tiny legs could carry me, down the rest of the concrete path, around the back and swiftly up through the back porch and into the house. I didn’t stop once inside either, I kept running, past a large fireplace, up a tiny flight of stairs, I flung open a door into an enormous hallway and continued up a large wooden staircase, one step at a time, over an enormous landing and down a flight of steps just off it. I had no clue where I was going but at the bottom of that little stairway, I found a built-in cupboard, I flung open the door, backed into the bottom of it and froze. I was listening, I was waiting for any sign of him, listening for him, my heart pounding in my chest.

Alison, he growled my name in the most frightening way, just like a talking wolf.

I could envisage the saliva leaving his mouth and imagine his lips pulled back revealing the yellow stumpy teeth as he growled in anger. I shuffled backwards towards the rear of the cupboard, disappearing into the darkness, listening to him taking two stairs at a time, speeding around the first landing I’d just crossed, searching for me in different rooms, slamming the doors and snarling with anger like a monster searching for its enemy, but I stayed silent and still. I was two years old and already knew that I needed to stay still and safely hidden. He was getting closer, I’m trembling with terror, I could smell his cigarette wafting in through the tiny crack of daylight slipping in through the closed cupboard door concealing my whereabouts, I could see the dust particles floating around in the thin strip of daylight, I must have agitated them when I backed myself in there, I picked up the sickening smell of rolled up cheap Turkish tobacco and John Player Specials, I still recognise the smell today and it still repulses me. My heart’s pounding so fast I thought he might possibly hear it as loud as I could hear it pounding inside my head. I concentrated on breathing as quietly and slowly as possible, holding both my hands flat over my mouth and nose to stop myself from crying, screaming or breathing too loud. I drew myself further towards the back wall of the cupboard, hoping it would swallow me up into the dark corners somehow, hoping and wishing I could disappear. He was right outside the cupboard, slowly creeping around, almost like it had become some sort of game for him, but it was far from any game I ever wanted to play. I felt warm wet tears rolling down my cheeks, I was suffocating myself with my hands, holding my breath to the point of feeling the need to gasp for air, but I daren’t, I couldn’t gasp for the air I needed because he would hear me and it would be my fault when he discovered me. I’d be angry with myself, so I kept my breathing to the absolute minimum, controlling every breath in and out, slowing everything down and pushing my tiny back up against the dark cold cupboard back wall. He was creeping back and forth outside, the strip of light was repeatedly interrupted as he passed, his movement of the air caused the dust particles to fly around in the crack of daylight so every time he passed, they gave him away. My head was starting to feel fuzzy inside, my throat felt like he had his hands around it, tightening and tightening, all across my jaw and down my neck like a vice, numb with fear. I was panicking as I watched the flash of darkness passing intermittently outside the cupboard doors, my heart pounding, face now tightening with pure dread, then suddenly to my relief, I heard him creep back up the small flight of stairs, across the landing, and down the large flight of stairs. I sat there silently crying, slowly breathing in and out to slow down my pounding heart. I stayed hidden in the cupboard for around an hour. I could hear my sister Jane running around, but I still didn’t move, even when she ran past the cupboard a couple of times. I didn’t dare move until I heard my mum calling me, until I knew it’d be safe to come out. I’d been waiting to hear her calling me, I wonder now why it took her so long, anything could have happened to me.

My legs were so stiff with pins and needles, I couldn’t run back down the stairs, so I crept slowly, taking each massive wooden stair carefully, checking through the old elaborately twisted wooden bannisters for any signs of him as I went, sniffing the air for the stench of tobacco and sweat, but I couldn’t see him, or smell him and eventually I made it down into the kitchen I’d run through earlier to escape him. I can’t remember if I got told off, it’s missing, like lots of my memories, my jigsaw pieces, but I do remember staying in the kitchen for the rest of the day, whilst Mum unpacked all her pots and pans. I sat in the window, gazing over at all the strange concrete shapes over the old stone garden wall, fascinated by all the massive green yew trees cascading down over them, their branches swaying gently in the breeze. It was a dark mysterious looking place, little did I know then that it would be one of my safest places to hide.

The house of horrors, and that’s an accurate description, was a large, imposing six-bedroom semi-detached Edwardian house over eight levels, in a quiet little town in North Wales. Next door, over an aged stonewall, was an old cemetery with a chapel of rest. Our house had quite large gardens to the front, side and rear with a cream double garage alongside the cemetery wall. The rooms were enormous, with large fireplaces and long sash windows with old painted rope that helped them to roll up and down, there were two large reception rooms and an even larger hall on the ground floor. We called the reception rooms the front room because it was at the front of the house, and the big room which was at the back. The big room had an enormous real stone fireplace and three very tall sash windows overlooking the rear garden. Off the main hallway there were steps down to where the servants would have worked in the past and now it was the kitchen and dining area. There was a side toilet room off the large downstairs hall by the front door and vestibule, and then further down the steps, the kitchen and dining area benefitted from a large Raeburn fire which had a large door with strips of glass in it. Underneath the house was a large cellar, with under house access through a square hatch, and a room to the side which housed the large chest freezer. There were six bedrooms over three upper floors and because of the size and age of the property, there were lots of places to run and hide, which was very fortunate for me, most of the time.

I remember my bedroom was off the first-floor landing, down a small staircase of five steps, along with my bedroom, there was the only bathroom and a separate toilet room, with a very large airing cupboard opposite. I had hidden in the other small cupboard at the bottom of this stairway the day I broke the window, but over the 16 years we lived in that house, I found so many hiding places, I had to. My favourite hiding place was in the large airing cupboard opposite the toilet room, it was stacked with folded bedding and towels, it must have been at least six-foot-long, four-feet-deep and higher than a normal door and had a shelf of wooden slats in the middle. I was so tiny; it was easy for me to roll into the bottom layer very fast. I’d made an area at the back of the airing cupboard in the corner where I could roll over all the bedding to the rear of the airing cupboard and quickly back myself down into its feet first and arrange the folded items snuggly around me. I could even cover my head if he or anyone else opened the door. It was a deep hiding hole I’d made, there was no light in there, but it felt safe and secure, nobody ever found that hiding place, and it was warm all year around… The first person I ever talked to about my special hiding places was my therapist, John, when I was 54 years old. I remember them so well, having spent so many hours hiding in them. It backed onto the chimney breast so was really warm in the winter months, all those blankets surrounding me were my only friends, just like the Yew trees in the cemetery I used to hide in, the old Victorian pram in the garage, the chest freezer in the cellar or any of my other hiding places, they were all my friends, even the walls of the readily dug graves in the cemetery, where I’d spend hours chatting with the bodies I knew were surrounding me. It may seem strange, but I’d have whispered conversations in the darkness of the airing cupboard, just me, the bedding and my tears. I’d whisper to the wall of bedding if I could hear him in the same area of the house, I used to tell the wall of sheets and blankets why I was hiding from him or why I was crying into them after what he’d done to me, or I’d hold tight the branches of the trees if it was a windy day, or hold the blankets over my head inside the Victorian pram, but I remember most of the time just waiting there inside the hidey hole in the airing cupboard, with just the blankets, a one-legged Sindy doll. A little yellow whistle on a string that I’d found in the cemetery along with a worn wooden building block with ABC’s just visible still on the sides. I’d listen intently to him moving around the house, listening to my heart beating in the silence surrounding me, and most of the time I felt safe hiding in there. I was safe, even when my mother came to the airing cupboard for fresh bedding, she never knew I was in there, I was glad when it was her moving around on the landing and not him though. Sometimes when she came to get fresh bedding, I’d creep out of the cupboard a minute or so later to follow her, pretend I’d been in the toilet, or in my bedroom and I’d stay around her because she was safe too, even though he always told me he would kill us all if I told anyone, I knew that when she was home, there were moments when I felt safer. I couldn’t ever let her or anyone else know about my hiding places; not anyone, because he always told me he’d kill us all. I was especially good at keeping secrets, people’s lives depended on it, as well as mine.

The monster on his quest for flesh

Pure fear pushed her to those depths

For the child who had friends in the walls of dug graves

She fled there to escape he who made her his slave

Climbing down to dark depths to be safe with her friends

There she told them her fears that her life would soon end

She always felt safe with the walls of the graves

Safe underground, cherished friends all around

She wasn’t the best mum in the world, she turned a blind eye to what he was doing, and she chose to stay with him. There was never any affection between them, or any shown towards us, I can only assume she was glad that he used me instead of her. I never knew if she was glad because he was always dirty, had rotten teeth and breath from the tobacco or did she actually approve of the monster he was. I can’t ask her to answer all the questions I have now, she’s too old and weak with dementia and besides, it’s pointless as it wouldn’t change anything. She’s in an EMI home now, and only last week, she told us all, my sister and my daughters, that her husband used to try to kill her, that he used to try to kill us all, I couldn’t believe that after all these years, she just blatantly told us quite openly that she had known what he was. I don’t believe she ever cared about me or my sister really, she knew what he was like not long after she married him, she knew he was a sadistic monster, but she chose to stay with him. She had eight children with him and lost six of them before full term, and even after both of us grew up and left home, she still chose to stay with him. As I write about my life, I’ll be writing about her too, and then you can come to your own conclusion about the witchcraft, finding bodies and all the other things she instigated. Maybe she was a victim too, but the closeness or affection was never there from her, and my sister Jane has confirmed the same now that we talk to each other about our childhood.

New Places to Hide

The cellar under the house was always sparsely lit, the smell stays with me, even to this day. The stench of engine oil, gun oil and paraffin always filled the damp air, even if he wasn’t there the smell always was, on all his tools, the surfaces, metal, wood, brick it all smelt the same. I used to avoid touching the cold damp walls or even the door but Mum would send me down to the freezer to get something for her whilst she cooked the tea and I’d have to wash my hands at least twice when I got back into the house. I’d moved things around in the freezer so that I could hide inside it, and there was a space and on the window ledge next to the freezer where I had placed a long piece of flat metal. I must have been around seven the first time I used the freezer as a hiding place but it’s one of the memories that clearly stayed with me, the bad ones always did. But if these are the ones I remember, I can only assume the things I’ve forgotten are even worse and writing this book will help to bring some of them back so that I can have clarity on the movie trailers and photographic recollections I keep recalling in my damaged mind.

Mum sent me down to the freezer to get some bread, it was deep inside the large chest freezer so I had to grab the three-legged milking stool, as tea was almost ready and she wanted to defrost some bread to have with the stew she was making for tea.