When the houses in places like Cantril Farm and Kirkby went up in the 1960s, there were virtually no shopping facilities, and so the mobile-shop owner did a good trade in the new towns of the outskirts in those days. In 1969, the year when the following strange story took place, it was usual to see Scott’s Good Bread vans, Blackledges bread lorry, and the “moby” van that sold everything in the new towns across Knowsley. Another place to buy necessities – as well as the superfluous luxury – was the old Kirkby Market. Two 18-year-olds we shall call Ronnie and Tony, both hailing from flats in the Northwood tower-blocks, visited the Kirkby Market in January 1969, and being known as rogues to a few of the stallholders, the teenagers took to wearing scarves across their faces under the pretence of fending off the bitter winter cold, and they also wore woolly hats pulled down over their eyebrows. Ronnie and Tony mingled with the mostly skint post-Christmas shoppers, and a few items were pilfered that day. Five pairs of socks, a lovely floral headscarf for Tony’s “mam” and a tweed flat cap for his “arl fellah”, a few pairs of silk stockings for Ronnie’s girlfriend Rita, and the last object to be stolen was a beautiful and rather unusual hairbrush with the jade-coloured face of a woman carved on the back of it. Ronnie wanted that for his girl Rita. He asked how much it was, and if he gave Tony the signal, his friend would distract the old woman selling the item with either a fake fight, a mock collapse, or some other diversion. The ruse always worked. The old woman didn’t hear Ronnie’s question so he asked her again. ‘How much is that brush love?’ he said, and the elderly stallholder replied in a foreign-sounding accent that the brush was her own and not for sale, and she smiled, and put it in an old scuffed handbag, but its handle protruded, and Ronnie couldn’t help himself. He gave the signal to Tony, who suddenly pointed to an innocent middle-aged man in a trilby and thick overcoat who was browsing the goods of the neighbouring stall. ‘Hey! He just picked that woman’s pocket!’ Tony claimed. The man in the trilby shot a perplexed look at his young accuser, and several shoppers all looked at the accused man instead of the scally who was falsely pointing the finger of blame. Ronnie swiftly took the unusual brush from the old woman’s handbag and he walked off, followed by Tony a few moments later as the man in the trilby swore at the latter for his serious accusation. The two light-fingered lads laughed and were soon back in their respective flats in the Northwood tower-blocks. Rita asked Ronnie where he had obtained the brush with the face on its back, and Ronnie said, ‘It doesn’t matter, I got it for you.’
‘It does matter, Ronnie,’ Rita glared at him. ‘I’m gonna be sticking to you like Evostik from now on when you go out.’
Ronnie turned his back on his girlfriend of 17 and gazed sulkily out the windows of his high-rise home. ‘I’ll take it back if you want then, and the silk stockings,’ said Ronnie in a choked up morose-sounding voice.
‘Ronnie I love you but you don’t have to go tea-leafing for me,’ Rita said, feeling guilty, and she leaned over Ronnie’s right shoulder and tried to kiss his cheek but he turned his face left from her caress.
That evening when Ronnie went out ‘to see a man about something’ – her boyfriend’s vague explanation for going missing for a few hours – Rita went home to her own home off Bewley Drive, where she lived with her widowed mum and two older brothers Ted and Pete, who were ready to leave home any day soon. Neither of them approved of Ronnie, but Rita’s mum Edna thought Ronnie would get a steady job once he settled down and married her daughter. Edna was undoubtedly a psychic woman, and when she saw the brush with the pale-green face with its closed eyes carved on it, she sensed there was something sinister and tragic about the thing. She held the brush and sensed other things too; ‘That’s from a gypsy Rita, I can just feel it. It's got a history. Oh, get shut of it girl.’
‘Oh, don’t be daft mam,’ Rita smiled nervously and snatched the brush off her, ‘you and your balmy feelings and dreams.’
Rita had a bath, and went into her bedroom afterwards with a towel wrapped around her head. She sat on the bed, reading Jackie magazine – when she had the unshakeable feeling of being watched. She looked up – and there on the dresser, leaning upright against a stack of vinyl records, propped up exactly as she had left it, was that brush with the face on – and the eyes of that face were now wide-open, gazing at Rita with pure hatred. Rita also thought she could see the lips of the uncanny face moving. The teen ran screaming out the bedroom and told her mum and brother Pete what she had seen, but when they went into her room the face on the brush had closed eyes again. Edna said, ‘I told you there was something weird about it,’ but Pete convinced his sister she had imagined it. The room was dark, and the low-light had played tricks on her eyes, he maintained. But that night, Rita was awakened by the eerie voice of someone singing in a foreign language in her room. The singing came from the dresser – where the brush was. Rita slowly got out of bed. Light from a full moon was blazing through the net curtains of the room, and this lunar radiance revealed the girl’s worst fears. The eyes on the jade face on the back of the brush were looking at her, and the mouth of the unearthly face was open wide as the entity sung its unintelligible song. As Rita froze with fear, hysterical laughter came from the brush, and the eyes started to glow. Enough was enough, Rita ran out the room and straight into her mother’s room in a terrible state. On this occasion, as Rita, her mother, Edna, and her two brothers Ted and Pete approached the bedroom, they all heard the creepy singing coming from that brush. Ted bravely rushed into the room and the singing stopped immediately. Ted also noticed that the expression of the face on the brush had changed, for now he could see teeth between the lips – whereas the mouth had been closed when he last set eyes upon the carved visage.
Edna put the brush with a Bible in a drawer in the kitchen, and on the following morning, Rita went to Ronnie and gave him the brush back, and told him to immediately return it to the person he’d taken it from, because it was haunted. He refused at first, and left the brush in his wardrobe, but he had the worst run of bad luck in his life; accidents, health problems, and even three bereavements, including the loss of his beloved grandfather. Ronnie went back to the stall at Kirkby Market where he had first set eyes on the brush, and when the old woman was distracted by a customer, he placed the accursed hairbrush in her old handbag, then hurried home. After that, Ronnie’s luck changed for the better. He later married Rita and became an honest law-abiding citizen.