Blood Jobs: The Home Help.

The worst job I ever had?

I'd been a nun for fifteen or so years and I came to the point that I no longer believed. No that's not the job, obviously. 

The worst job was after I left. I became a home help. Now don't think evil of me, almost everyone I dealt with was a pleasant person thankful for the help and most days I'd go home happy. That all ended when they added Mr Dreshcu to my list. To be fair to my management I was warned that he could be a bit of a handful but I had in mind that he might be a bit crude or racist. As it turned out he was both those things but much much worse.

I can still remember the first visit I had to his home. It was as unkempt and filthy as he was which given I had just replaced another home help meant someone wasn't doing their job. The place reeked of cat urine, yet he had no cats. As for him, well, imagine a grumpy old man who has a scowl so broad and deep that he looks more like some wizened goblin than a real human. After that imagine him being the most cantankerous, paranoid and mean son of a so and so and then you have Dreshcu.

On first meeting him he demanded that his old home help return or there would be "consequences.” No matter how much I explained he would not listen until I eventually just ignored his constant threats and demands and got on with my job. It wasn't easy, even the dust seemed ingrained into the furniture. He protested my interference, got on the phone and shouted his demands in Romanian to what he said was my boss, though my supervisor later confirmed she received no such calls. The old grump finally settled down once I'd got some food ready for him. I put it down to him being upset about readjusting. He was old, very old. According to his records he was ninety seven.

The next visit was just as bad as the first. This time he demanded I never enter his bedroom without his permission, nor his basement which had a locked door and was hidden behind a bookcase. I never knew it was there until he pointed it out. He ordered me to buy him a bottle of sherry when I came back with his groceries, which I declined to do. After all that he started claiming I'd stolen his wallet and he'd see me in jail and my degenerate family ruined.

He only became passive when a meal was placed in front of him. I asked him if he had any family locally or back in the country of his origin. He told me they well all dead, he had outlived them all. Just as I was about to express my sympathy he began to laugh which was more akin a rattling chesty cough than a moment of mirth. He told me he was pleased he'd outlived them all, was glad they were all dead. As I said, he was a mean old S.O.B.

Eventually once common ground rules had been negotiated, I found out a bit more about him. He was born in Romania, and belonged to an ethnic group known as the Szeklers. For most of his life he had been in the military but ended up becoming a butler to some General in the Romanian army who moved to Britain just after the war. That was his life-story. I would try to engage him on other topics, like the news but he'd just dismiss it all as lies and fairy-tales for idiots. He had nothing but contempt for the papers, the media, T.V. in general.

In fact there was nothing much he did like. The best days were the ones where he sat quietly, reading some old book or other and letting me get on with my job. Most attempts at conversations turned into him complaining about whatever was the topic and then using it as a jumping off point to just be horrible about anyone he felt like. He hated black people, called them “farmyard animals”, can you believe that? He hated women, said we were nothing but fat children useful for bearing children and little else. He hated Englishmen, Scots, Europe, America, Islam, Communism, even democracy, can you imagine. I once heard him say that democracy was little more than mob rule by peasants and the sign of a nation whose leaders are too weak to take real control. You know he even hated murder victims and claimed one of the young women who'd been abducted in the city as little more than a whore anyway. As you can imagine I concluded that Mr Dreshcu was a bit of a Nazi.

To what extent became apparent after that evil terrorist drove a bus load of school-children into a synagogue and blew himself and everyone else to bits. I mean people in the centre were in tears when that happened, everyone was horrified. Mr Dreshcu was the opposite. I had never seen him so delighted and was disgusted when he said “ah they were just Jews. The Jews are a disease, and Muslims their offspring.”

I had to button my lip, I really did but it became clear to me then that old Dreschu probably didn't fight for the allies in WW2. When I got back to the centre I reported it to his care worker, Glynis, who told me that it was well known that he was a horrible old racist bastard and just to keep conversation to a minimum. So that is what I did.

It was fine like that for weeks and would have stayed that way if I hadn't opened my big mouth. He was complaining about immigrants using terms like impure and dogs to describe them and so I said that he was an immigrant, was he an impure dog too?

Well, he flew into a rage at that and starts saying something like, it was people like me who had turned this planet into a world of mongrels and that I should have been grateful that people like him stemmed the tide of such subhuman filth into Scotland. I lost the rag. I know I shouldn't have but no one should have to listen to that. I'm ashamed of what I said in response. I told him the only subhuman filth I'd met in Glasgow was him and the only thing I was grateful for was that the Allies killed so many Nazis.

He chuckled, shook his head and said “Nazis” in a scoffing manner. He added that I knew nothing and was about to brag about something when he clammed up. I think it was at that moment I grew suspicious about our Mr Dreshcu. I wondered if he might be a war criminal. At first it seemed like a preposterous idea, wouldn't someone who had escaped justice be less blatant? I reasoned that perhaps he no longer cared, he didn't have long left anyway.

I began to wonder if that was why I was forbidden to enter his bedroom and basement. Was it where he kept all his Nazi paraphernalia? In retrospect it seems a bit silly but at the time I managed to convince myself that I'd uncovered a hidden war criminal. The internet tried its best to convince me otherwise, there was no records of any Dreshcu linked with holocaust or concentration camps.

I let it go but it was always on the back of my mind. I kept my mouth shut even when he gleefully cackled about another local whore going missing or another lunatic committing mass murder. He soon stopped realising I was no longer reacting to his mockery of decency.

You know what? He died a couple of weeks later, in silence, alone in his living room, while I was in the kitchen making him sausage and mash. He was just sitting there with his eyes open, just stopped. I should have called the authorities right away I know that but I didn't. Instead I went into his pockets and took out the keys to his basement and his long forbidden bedroom. It was disappointingly just a bedroom but it had not been used in decades. There was dust everywhere, the place was covered in cobwebs and dead insects and the sheets on the bed looked like they were in fashion in the Fifties.

In for a penny, I thought and so went downstairs and pushed the bookcase a few feet to get to the basement. There was a light-switch and I turned it on, it wasn't dark by any stretch of the imagination. I know people always think of horror in the dark but what I was looking at was as clear as day and just terrible.

My brain immediately tried to shoo away the reality of it. It was props for a movie, or perhaps some kind of weird re-enactment. I knew better, I was looking at the dried up husks of five dead women. I did not recognise any of their faces, that would have been impossible but I did recognise the pink leg warmers hanging off one's thin leg-bones. I recognised the tacky shiny black plastic jacket of another. I'd seen them in pictures, in the news, of abducted women. At the back of the small room, standing upright were two very ornate and very old looking coffins.

I'm not stupid, I made to leave and doubled my pace when I heard a voice in what I presumed was Romanian saying something from inside one of the coffins. The voice was deep, rattling and did not sound like it was made by any human tongue. I walked up the few stairs and straight into Dreschu. He was not dead after all, in fact he was smiling and holding a large thin knife. “The master is surprised that it is time for another meal so soon.”

I did not need to think twice, I charged past him, he was a frail old man after all. I was out of the house in moments. I got in my car. I glanced in the rear view mirror as I turned the key and saw Dreshcu and behind him I saw his master, saw its pale glowing eyes atop its tall thin shadow. It was no man, no General in any human army. I was in tears as I started driving and called the police, gave them the address and told them I was coming into the nearest station. I was in a right state when I got there, I was shaking. They found the corpses. Dreschu and the coffins had disappeared in the minutes it took from me leaving until the police arrived. They asked me so many questions I worried they thought I might have killed those poor girls but they didn't. They put out a search and arrest warrant for Dreschu but he's never been found.

As for me, I rejoined the faith, I knew that there were demons in this world, demons that people like Dreschu served and if there were demons, there was Satan and if Satan, God. Still this knowledge no longer comforts me and I felt blessed in my ignorance before hand. That is why it was the worst job I ever had. I now know Hell is real and live every moment of every day in terror of it being my last destination.