Authors Speak Out - Maz Marik

Fading Away by Maz Marik

The bungalow was always filled with a welcoming aroma: a pleasant place to spend the evening. Grandma would be fretting about something in the kitchen, while Grandad watched the football or rugby in the cosy lounge. The smell of cooking lingered in the hallway, teasing and tempting, whetting the appetite before the feast finally arrived.

It was a place for big family days, notably when the annual carnival procession passed by, or the family from Wales visited for a few days. Each event seemed timeless; the joy and togetherness felt like they would last forever.

But nothing lasts forever. Things change. Families move on. People die.

Over a decade earlier, I had lost my Grandma following a stroke. She passed in hospital with her family by her side. The moment itself was tranquil, and even the sadness was short-lived, replaced by the pride of having known such a great woman. But even so, things were never quite the same again at the bungalow.

In the years that followed, the rest of the family would pop in more often to check on my Grandad, who was still in good health despite being in his eighties. He was a regular sight walking the short distance to and from town, carrying his own shopping. We watched football together, and my mother took over responsibility for the cooking, so even the lingering smell of dinner persisted, even if not quite so appealing…

But still, carnival days came and went and, though the family in Wales had diminished due to death and illness, their occasional visits still made my Grandad’s eyes sparkle.

As a young man in my late twenties, I could see the end of an era was in sight. The generation I had looked up to as a child were fading away, soon to be nothing more than memories and photographs in dusty albums and on mantelpieces.

The years were clearly starting to catch up with Grandad, and even sitting through an entire football game seemed too much for him. He would doze off in his chair, or simply wander into his bedroom and go to sleep long before the final whistle. By this point, his ambles into town were few and far between, and the weekly shop was collected by family or friends, most notably Maurice, whose moans and complaints always kept Grandad entertained. But he had grown visibly frail. His once sharp mind began to wander. His concentration was affected.

Eventually, we convinced him to allow us to take him to the doctors where, after tests over the course of several months, he was diagnosed with Parkinson’s-related Dementia. We had suspected as much. His hands could barely hold a cup of tea, his legs wobbled when he walked, and his mind was never settled.

He received medication to help, but there is no cure, and we knew he would only deteriorate. As a family, we increased our visits throughout the day, and even had a nurse pop in now and then to see him. Eventually, however, after trying to deny the inevitable, a decision had to be made.

When confronted with the reality of the situation, it was an easy one to make. In just a short time, my Grandad had gone from being alert and able to walk around and fend for himself, to barely mobile and constantly unsure and confused, lacking the confidence to do even mundane things like making tea, or taking the rubbish out. Either someone would have to move in with him, or he would have to go to a care home, but either way he needed twenty-four-hour assistance, even if it was only to put his own mind at ease.

And so it ended up that, having the least commitments out of my family members, I moved in with my Grandad, taking the spare room and making the bungalow that had been my most cherished childhood memory into my home. I would try to sort out his breakfast each morning, make him cups of tea throughout the day, and do many of the little jobs he simply could not do for himself any longer. Just having someone there helped him. Or at least I think I did. Well, I hope it did.

I can’t remember exactly when I realised the days he was clear-minded were outnumbered by the days he was in a muddle, but anyone who has known a dementia sufferer will tell you it quickly becomes a struggle for all involved. A once strong, intelligent and independent man was frequently unsure of what decade it was, and sometimes had no idea who was talking to him.

“It’s me. Your grandson,” I would assure him, but he looked back blankly, as if even the idea of having a grandson was ridiculous. Maybe to him it was.

Around that time, the hallucinations started. This was probably the hardest stage of all, as the confusion and frailty were compounded by the one thing we could do nothing to help him with: fear.

The things he was seeing genuinely terrified him.

This is different to having a wild imagination. Sometimes I write about zombies or demons and such things, but when the book is closed, the story ends. My Grandad, however, was left scared and bewildered as to why faceless women and strange children were harassing him in his home. Why walls would go up in flames for no reason, or the hallway would suddenly flood. Why he had to watch his faltering step for deep gaping holes that would appear in the hallway.

“Help!” he shouted one night. I ran in to see what had happened, expecting him to have fallen. When I burst through the door he just looked at me and told me to tell the woman behind me to leave. Instead, I offered him a cup of tea. The default solution for not knowing what else to do or say.

“Who is that boy who keeps waking me up?” he groaned one night.

“Cup of tea?”

And so it went on.

The cost of tea bags increased.

On one particularly cold night, at around 3am, I heard keys jingling. I jumped out of bed and into the hallway, to be confronted by the sight of my Grandad dressed in his best suit.

“Where are you going, Grandad?” I asked.

“To work,” he replied. “Waiting to be picked up by a friend.”

“Come on Grandad, lets get you back into bed.”

At times like this, there was always a dilemma; should I ignore his confusion, and just let Grandad know he was tired and his mind playing tricks? Or should I humour him, and provide an explanation that fitted in with his delusion, such as that the ‘friend’ had called to cancel due to bad weather, or illness?

“We’ll call him tomorrow and you can make the afternoon shift,” I replied, helping him back into bed. He obviously wasn’t convinced.

The next morning, he seemed almost back to normal. Almost.

“So who is the faceless woman?” he asked.

“Grandad, I don’t think she’s real. That’s why you take your tablets. To try to help with these things you see.” By this stage there were a dozen or so pills he had to take at certain precise times of the day.

“You think I’m mad,” he would mutter.

“I just don’t see her.” What else could I say?

“I know your game,” he grumbled, before walking back to his room.

Looking back, it must have been hard to trust anyone, when the people he loved the most were ignoring everything he said. The things he saw must have seemed as real to him as everything else he had ever seen with his own eyes, but when he told us about them, we either avoided the subject, or dismissed it. As well as being confused and scared, he must have grown more and more frustrated.

But then that is what dementia does. It allows two people to be seated in a room together, but be separated by what might as well be a million miles and a good few decades. Nothing makes sense when confronted with it.

I knew one thing for certain, however, even though I felt bad for admitting it: I could not carry on like that, as a near-full-time carer. It was too hard, too upsetting. He needed more help than I could give, and so other people came to care from time to time, and the nurse visited more often. All these steps were, of course, taken to delay the day when he would have to move into a care home. He had always insisted, just like Grandma, that he would never go to one.

“Help!” he called out again one night. I ran into the hallway, noticing his bedroom light flicking on as I moved to his door.

“You OK?”

“There’s a Nazi in the chair and he won’t let me leave”

Walking over to the chair, I moved it, and pretended to examine it. “Well, it looks like he’s gone now. You should try and get back to sleep.”

As I was about to leave, a thought crossed my mind. How had he turned the light on, when the switch was near the door, a long way out of his reach? Did I imagine the light coming on? I stood for a moment, before looking back at the empty chair. How odd.

Perhaps it was that moment, the incident with the light switch, that unsettled me. Some nights I would hear shuffling from somewhere in the hallway, or the feeling that something was scraping around outside. But I was also intrigued. I decided to keep a journal, a log of all of my Grandad’s hallucinations, as well as things that did not make sense, like the light switch, or the sound of breathing. Was it all in my mind? Was I making something out of nothing? Paranoia?

Either way, it intrigued me, as whatever I was experiencing, for my Grandad it would be even more severe. Sadly, it did get a lot worse for him. Two battles with pneumonia and a fall which resulted in a broken hip confined him to his bed for his final few months.

In that time, the dementia seemed to take a real hold. Apart from the odd moment, my Grandad was lost in a bewildering, chaotic ocean of random experiences. On one occasion, he explained to me that he had no children or grandchildren, and that he had to go to ‘the butchers’, a reference to the family home in Wales where he lived as a child. In his mind, he was back in 1935, aged fourteen, and with no children, let alone grandchildren. To him it made perfect sense, and I was the madman from the future.

And then, bang, another visit from the faceless woman would turn his face white with fear. I kept writing them down, and I also gathered accounts from family members and carers.

For example: “I was in bed one evening (care workers often worked ‘sleep-in’ shifts), and heard someone in the hallway. I knew it would not be [my Grandad] and was actually convinced the place was being robbed. I lay on the floor and looked under the gap between the floor and the door, and saw nothing. The next thing I got back into bed, still listening, when the footsteps suddenly seemed to be in my room, circling the bed. Believe it or not, I actually pulled the duvet over my head!”

So it wasn’t just me. Other people were getting freaked out too.

Another example: “I got used to hearing the toilet flush when nobody was there, and lights going on and off, but one night I went to the window because I thought I could hear something rummaging through the bins, like a fox or a cat. I peered out into the darkness and noticed a patch on the window, as if someone had been breathing on it from outside. I kept looking, but saw nothing. On the window-sill was a ‘handover’ book we used to record anything [my Grandad] had done, usually to do with medication, or changes of behaviour. Looking at the most recent entry, the carer on the previous shift had recorded that [my Grandad] kept repeating, ‘It’s in the garden!’

On my next visit, I checked the garden, and it looked as pristine as it always did. The gardener must have been recently. Perhaps it was him clattering in the garden after dusk. Or, just as likely, it could have been a local drunk or a homeless guy who would sometimes climb into the garden for a shortcut. But it could just as easily have been something sinister. A manifestation of bad thoughts, and equally bad vibes.

I spoke to a few people online, who had lived with dementia sufferers, and they all said the same thing: the worst part was seeing a loved one deteriorate to the extent that they no longer even recognised you.

I disagreed. For me, the worst part was that my Grandad was living inside a horror movie that the outside world scoffed at and ignored. If experienced and professional care workers had got into a panic over strange noises, then my Grandad must have been in an unimaginable realm of fear. At least the care workers could leave at the end of the shift. For my Grandad, there was no escape.

In a strange way, what I wanted most of all was to share his experiences; to share the burden of such horrible sights with him for one day. If nothing else, it would enable me to empathise more and not resort to the trusty cup of tea as a cure-all solution.
But that was not possible.

So I decided to write instead. I decided to use my own experiences, the accounts of the carers and those described by my Grandad and write a book. But instead of having the world of dementia through a sufferer’s eyes, I would write from my own point of view: an ordinary, healthy person, plunged into the bizarre world my Grandad inhabited.

That is the genesis of The Absent: an attempt to bring to life the reality of dementia. Another quick sample of how terrifying things can become:

“The worst part was when [my Grandad] would talk to someone who wasn’t there, while looking at the space next to where I was sitting. I left the room once to make some tea, and heard the television go up to full volume. When I got back to turn it down, the control was still on the table. Unless I was away longer than I thought, [my Grandad] could not have reached it.”

“The sound of running water was a constant theme. But sitting there, sometimes you just felt you were being watched.”

“Every now and then, the room would drop to freezing, and my bed would feel damp. It wasn’t winter. I don’t really know what it was.”

“I lost count of the number or times I would see something move in the corner of my eye.”

Intrigued by similar accounts, I asked care workers from all around the country to share their own stories. They all had two things in common: the sufferer was convinced of what they saw and the care workers often felt something as well. One reported hearing whispering in a room where an elderly man was talking to himself. Another said a figure walked out of a room and into another, but when she checked, no-one was there. And the most common experience was the sufferer talking to deceased family members.

Are they all just dreams? Crazy visions from a thousand brains that are no longer functioning correctly?

I decided to keep these accounts separate from The Absent, as I wanted that to be based solely on stories around my Grandad. Nothing was to be altered. It was to be written exactly as it had been experienced and described.

I am currently writing the next novel, again using only genuine accounts from care workers with other patients. It will be called The Vacant.

I hope both novels can shed some light on what people with dementia may be experiencing so that, instead of ignoring their pleas, they might be understood. Sufferers are not lost causes, but may well be very literally facing their demons. Real life doesn’t get much more terrifying than that.

“The oldest hath borne most: we that are young,
Shall never see so much, nor live so long.”
– William Shakespeare,
King Lear, Act 5, Scene 3

Questions for the Readers
1) If you believe in the paranormal/supernatural, what do you think the ghosts or entities get up to when they are not appearing in front of us?
2) Is there anyone whom you would unquestionably believe if they claimed to have seen a ghost or UFO?
3) Have you ever been involved in a paranormal or supernatural incident?
4) What is your favourite documented case of paranormal activity?

About Maz Marik

Author Bio:

Maz Marik is a horror author from England. Born in the small town of Threapwood, he grew up in the midlands and has also lived in the USA, the Caribbean, Spain, Mexico, Turkey and Egypt.

He currently lives in the south of England, a setting he has employed for both novels so far in the End Storm Saga.

Connect with Maz

| Website | Blog | Facebook | Twitter | Goodreads | Books by Maz Marik |