It was March 2015.
Before diagnosis, but not before symptoms.
I was staying with my parents, sleeping in my old bedroom. The steroids had left me wired. I couldn’t rest. I lay awake with my feet pressed against the adjoining wall.
Terraced houses carry sound. I knew that. I’d grown up listening to life on the other side.
But that night there was no sound.
Only a pulse.
A steady, insistent beat through the wall. Probably my own. Probably nothing. But once noticed, it wouldn’t leave.
Later, much later, I understood why that moment stayed with me.
I was living inside a body that no longer behaved as expected. Sensation misfiring. Signals crossing. Pain and numbness arriving together. Something attacking from within, without a face.
The idea of a presence next door took hold.
Something old. Malevolent.
Strong enough to be felt through walls.
Cribbins didn’t begin as a character. He began as a sensation.
Writing him gave shape to something otherwise invisible. It allowed me to turn an unseen attack into a figure I could confront. In doing so, I made a kind of peace with what my body was doing without my permission.
Some stories don’t come from imagination alone.
They arrive through nerve endings.
They announce themselves by touch.
R. H. DIXON 