Too Spooked
My grandfather and I went to London when I was in sixth grade.
I don’t remember how the trip got planned. My mother later told me I’d given him the idea after saying I wanted to travel the world, though at that age “the world” mostly meant places I’d seen in movies, on wrestling intros, or hidden behind cheat codes on PlayStation games.
At the time, my grandfather and I had almost nothing in common.
He believed in church, hard work, and getting places early. I believed I would someday play bass for Limp Bizkit and eventually become starting running back for the Redskins, despite possessing neither athletic ability nor the emotional stability required for junior high locker rooms.
Still, he took me.
On the streets of London, I became somebody else entirely.
I juked through crowds like Barry Sanders, weaving around tourists while my grandfather lumbered behind me trying not to lose sight of me. He was tall and moved with this long mountain-climber stride people warned me I’d never keep up with one day.
I still beat him everywhere.
Once I jumped off a subway car just as the doors closed behind me, leaving him trapped inside as the train pulled away. I can still see him shouting through the glass while I stood frozen on the platform trying to look less terrified than I actually was.
A tour guide later told us Charles Dickens had died after being struck by a carriage, but I barely listened. I was busy imagining Neo smashing Agent Smith through walls.
That was my brain then.
Half history
Half movies
Half panic
The hotel was tiny. The bed folded up into the wall so drawers could open. The bathroom sat at the end of a long hallway that smelled faintly of bleach and old carpet.
I slept unbelievably hard there. Jet lag hit me like anesthesia. One afternoon I fell asleep in daylight and woke in another daylight entirely, convinced I had briefly died.
My grandfather operated London with ruthless efficiency.
Fanny pack
Walking cane
Tour maps folded with military precision.
He marched us through cathedrals, museums, castles, crown jewels, hedge mazes, and endless hallways filled with paintings I pretended to appreciate. Sometimes he’d stop strangers and ask them to photograph us together. His arm would settle awkwardly around my shoulder while I squinted into the blinding sun pretending not to hate every second of it.
You can’t tell in the pictures.
That’s the strange thing about photographs.
They record appearances, not weather systems.
Mostly I remember Madame Tussauds.
I had never been to a wax museum before and haven’t been to one since. I barely remember the celebrity figures now, only the feeling of following crowds through dim corridors while fake historical horrors unfolded around corners.
At some point the normal attraction split in two.
There was an exit.
And there was the London Dungeon.
I remember the deep thudding heartbeat sound effect first.
Then screaming
Then darkness
The place was supposedly “family friendly,” which in Britain apparently means psychologically damaging but educational.
There were plague streets filled with rats, execution scenes, off-key nursery rhymes, severed heads, torture chambers. Somewhere a guillotine kept dropping rhythmically while actors screamed in fake agony.
People around me laughed.
I didn’t.
Something in me reacted badly to that place.
Not fear exactly.
Recognition maybe.
I became hyperaware of myself in a way I didn’t yet understand. My body. My thoughts. My awkwardness. The sense that everyone else had quietly been handed instructions for living that I had somehow missed.
I stared mostly at the floor while we walked through.
My younger brother had once become terrified after watching Child’s Play and slept in my parents’ room for months afterward. I’d mocked him for it relentlessly.
Inside the Dungeon, I understood him completely.
My mind tried escaping into distractions. Tony Hawk combo runs. Football highlights. Girls from school. Then suddenly boys from school. Then shame about the fact that my brain had gone there at all.
Adolescence arrives like a home invasion.
I remember getting back to the hotel feeling hollowed out.
At some point during the night I rushed to the bathroom convinced I was going to vomit. Maybe I did. Maybe I only dry-heaved dramatically while my grandfather waited half asleep outside the door pretending not to worry.
Memory edits itself after enough years.
What I remember clearly is this:
Sometime deep into the night, both of us sat upright in bed at exactly the same moment.
Neither of us could sleep.
My grandfather turned on the television. I think it was the only time during the entire trip I saw him willingly watch TV. Some quiet British drama flickered across the screen. Two people talking softly beside water somewhere. I couldn’t understand a word they were saying.
When it ended, he turned the television back off.
Darkness reclaimed the room
We never discussed any of it
The trip happened near the end of winter break during sixth grade, which may be the worst age any human being can temporarily survive.
I came home on a Sunday afternoon rested but strangely fragile.
Perfect football weather, my mother said.
I went looking for friends.
Luke was already with Daniel. They were heading to meet Lawson and Stephen at the school field. Everyone already had somewhere to be. A role. A place in the formation.
I went home and played Starfox instead.
A while later my mother walked into my room and asked why I’d come home so early.
I remember trying to answer her.
Instead I started crying.
And the worst part was I truly did not know why.