The Bennington Boy

Paul John Lyon

Paul John Lyon is the author of THE BENNINGTON BOY and THE GIRL WHO DREAMED A WAR, amongst others. He lives in the north of England.

Find more of his stories atpauljohnlyon.com

The Bennington Boy

Copyright © 2019 by Paul John Lyon. All Rights Reserved.

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. 

To Bedlam

A man is nothing but breath and shadow.

Sophocles

The 1st Trimester

1

“Don’t turn on the light.”

2

Amy Bennington turned on the light.

Under the yellow glow from a corkscrew CFL bulb, her new home looked like an alien landscape. Moving boxes littered the purple-flowered carpet surface. She breathed in an atmosphere of aniseed and antiseptic the ancient alien who’d occupied the house had left behind.

Mr Ainsley was the alien who’d sold her the house. A widower in his eighties who’d spoken a strange alien language through his shrunken lips. She’d managed to interpret his words on her last viewing.

“Teem faw a cheenge,” he’d said.

Time for a change.

How much time he had left, she didn’t know, but she agreed. She’d made a change herself. Now, standing in the new house, in a new neighbourhood far from the house she’d shared with her husband, she felt lonely for the first time in months.

An image of Owen in his permanently white trainers, and a permanent frown on his face, walked through her mind. That look hadn’t changed in all the years of their marriage. It hadn’t changed much even in the days after their child had died.

Six months had passed since she’d seen Owen. Sometimes she missed the stupid frown. Sometimes she missed his dumb white trainers. Sometimes only the trainers came to mind when she thought of him.

If I can so easily forget Owen, what hope do I have of remembering a child who never lived a day? she thought.

A chill ran through her at the thought, but Amy shrugged it away. She couldn’t afford to lose another night to tears. She’d vowed her new life would begin in the new house on Blakely Close, far from Owen, far from the memories.

Not far enough, she realised as she picked up the nearest box.

Constructed with red cardboard and sealed with brown packing tape, the box had once housed a colourful variety 24-pack of crisps – green packets of Salt & Vinegar, blue packets of Cheese & Onion, red Ready Salted, and pink Prawn Cocktail. Now it contained a single black wooden box.

Inside the red box sat a smaller, matt black wooden box, about half the size of those that Owen’s white trainers came in. And inside that box…

Amy dropped to the couch. She’d packed the smaller box inside the larger as an act of camouflage. A pointless trick, but it had felt right at the time.

Inside the red box, a black box, and inside the black box…

Amy took a deep breath and started to pick at the edges of the packing tape. It came away like sunburned skin, but didn’t expose enough of an edge to pull.

Inside the red box, a black box, and inside the black box…

A Russian nesting doll packed away in one of the other moving boxes came to mind. A childhood gift given to her by a friend of her father. The first doll, brightly painted in oranges and red, gave way to successively dully painted dolls beneath, the last almost sepia.

Nested inside the bright red box, a dark black box. Inside the dark black box…

Grey. Her son’s brief life reduced to a handful of grey ashes in a black box.

Amy fixed on the red box in her arms. She saw through the red, the black, through the grey and into the past.

She returned to the night in the hospital after Noel’s death. Alone in a room dipped in amber light, thick netted curtains on the windows trapping the stars, she’d cradled a baby who wasn’t there. She’d whispered a name, “Noel”, to a child who’d never hear it.

Inside a red box, a black box. Inside a black box…

Memories.

With Noel’s name still numb on her lips that night in the hospital, she’d ghosted her way through the pine-scented halls to stand in front of a large, wide window overlooking the sleeping new-borns.

She’d imagined Noel amongst them, swaddled in blankets, his tiny hands reaching up to hold onto her. But his hands would never grasp. His

lifeless body, wrapped in white, lay in a locker in the morgue, as colourless as the last nested Russian doll.

Everything is nested, Amy began to think. Everything inside one thing or another.

Inside a hospital, a woman, and inside a woman, a boy. Inside a boy a heart, and inside that heart an unseen flaw.

Amy turned from her memories and watched through the front window as the street lights shivered to life on Blakely Close.

A youngish couple dressed in luminous Lycra jogged out of the cul-de-sac, a thin German shepherd dog at their side. An old woman stood on her porch with arms folded, watching over two fat corgis as they relieved themselves on her lawn. A black cat yawned its away across the garden hedge, then lost itself in the shadows of the only tree on the close.

Life went on unmindful of Amy Bennington and her memories. Life went on, and so would her life, she’d vowed. A new home, and a new start. No matter how alien it felt, she had to put the past behind her.

Above her.

Half an hour later, Amy climbed the folding stairs into the attic with the black box in hand.

A layer of dusty footprints marked the pattern of her previous journeys from the attic entrance to the far corner where she’d stored her past. There, a pancake stack of birthday, Christmas and Valentine’s cards leaned up against a rucksack bulging with forgotten photographs. Her one-eyed childhood doll, Suzy, sat nearby, her hand extended for a cup of tea twenty-five years late. Above it all, Amy’s white wedding dress hung from a rafter like a tired ghost.

Amy felt the dull ache of grief and turned her back on the collected remnants of her past, but she couldn’t ignore the feeling. She carried that feeling with her like she had the weight of Noel through her pregnancy. She thought she might carry it with her forever.

No, she told herself. I have to move on. I must try to forget. New life in a new home. New me.

The box in her hand disagreed. It weighed as much as the earth, and Amy couldn’t hold it much longer without sadness threatening to overwhelm her.

She approached the gathered history in the corner of the attic, the box in hand like a sacrifice to some ancient and forgotten god.

All I have to do is leave it here and forget, she thought.

I’ll never forget. I can’t forget. I won’t forget him.

Hands shaking, she turned her back on the gathered past and walked to the opposite side of the attic, where a slanted window looked up into the sky above. She sat cross-legged beneath, the black box cradled in her arms.

Tomorrow, she thought. Tomorrow I’ll let go. Tomorrow I’ll make my new start properly.

And tonight?

Amy rocked back and forth, an unsung lullaby running through her head.

Go to sleep. Go to sleep. Go to sleep, little baby.

I wish he was alive, she thought. I wish. I wish. I wish he was alive.

She searched for a star to make her wish upon, but a starless sky looked down at her.

I wish. I wish. IwishIwishIwish.

“Noel,” she whispered, through fresh tears.

The wind howled across Blakely Close, and the street lights flickered off and on again as if in answer.

3

The howling wind broke Amy from her thoughts. She wiped the tears from her eyes, then carefully placed the black box containing Noel’s ashes on the attic floor.

Tomorrow, she thought as she walked back to the window. Tomorrow.

Amy stared out onto Blakely Close. Before her, the lonely oak crackled under the blowing wind. The street lights blinked nervously. A wind chime screamed, then lost its voice as the gale tore it off its hooks.

From the mouth of the cul-de-sac, the running couple emerged, their barking German shepherd dog whirling around them.

“Colonel! Stop that now. Bad boy,” the running woman shouted.

The dog twisted on its lead, trying to break free in one moment, then biting at the wind the next.

“Colonel! What’s got into you? Stop that!” She yanked hard, and the dog came up off its paws.

Amy gritted her teeth and stepped back from the window. The running woman reached five feet in height, and it didn’t look like she could pull a full-grown dog off its feet, but reality proved the opposite. Amy feared the dog might choke to death if the woman gave a few more yanks.

“Colonel!” the running woman shouted.

Amy stepped toward the window, ready to reveal herself if it would help stop the torture. Even a quick whistle might distract the woman long enough to save the poor dog from a hanging.

She had no need to interrupt. The running woman let the lead go, and the German shepherd landed back on its paws.

“Will you stop it? Stop it right now. Bad boy!”

The dog looked confused, but not for long, as it started barking and biting again a few seconds later.

The running woman turned to her partner. “It’s your fault he’s like this, David. I said we needed to get him trained, didn’t I? Didn’t I?”

The running man, David, looked everywhere but at the woman next to him. He lowered his head and nodded like a guilty school boy.

“I was all for a cat, but no, David wants a dog, so David gets a dog.”

David nodded.

“All you had to do was—”

The howling wind robbed the words from her mouth. An angry look crossed her face, and Amy thought the woman might start shouting at the wind as she had her husband and the dog. Then the lights went off.

One by one the street lights on Blakely Close blinked out. Darkness spread like spilled oil and swallowed the running couple and their dog whole, along with all their noise.

Amy hugged herself against a sudden chill in her bones.

The lights would come back on soon, she reassured herself. More than likely the high winds had damaged a local power station. It had happened before in her old neighbourhood, and the utility company had the lights back on in fifteen minutes.

The thoughts couldn’t reassure her as she stared into the darkness. Blakely Close had disappeared in the black. Beyond the cul-de-sac, the lights of the town twinkled and flickered like faint, unreachable stars.

A familiar and dreadful loneliness crept into Amy. She’d felt it the first night in the hospital after Noel’s death, when a crazy notion had entered her mind she was the only survivor after the end of the world. She’d pictured herself shuffling through lonely corridors in a lonely hospital, then out onto streets just as lonely. She’d seen herself walking forever in an empty world, and part of her had welcomed such a future after the death of her child.

Not any longer. Dread suffused her. The loneliness felt real, not a figment of grief and imagination. In the blacked out and silent neighbourhood only she existed now, and that terrified her.

Turn on, Amy thought, wishing as hard for the lights to come back as she had for Noel to return to her. Come on, whoever it is who fixes these things, get a move on. I don’t want stand here all night in the dark.

She didn’t want to stand there for fifteen minutes, or five minutes, or another second more with only her nervous heartbeat and the dark silence spreading through the neighbourhood.

Where are the running couple? Why aren’t they saying anything? Amy thought. People don’t just stand around silently in the darkness. Neither do dogs, for that matter. Why isn’t that dog of theirs barking like it was before?

The silence stretched out thin and frail as crepe paper around her. She felt herself about to tear along with it.

Where the bloody Hell are you? Where’s your stupid bloody dog? she thought.

Amy stepped forward, hoping the faint lights of the town would reach the couple below. Even an outline would do to calm her fears.

The wind howled, but the light from the town died long before it reached Blakely Close. In the black, Blakely Close no longer existed.

The light isn’t coming back, Amy thought. This isn’t a normal blackout. This is—

Her thought died as voices floated up from the darkness.

“David?” the running woman asked.

“Polly? Where are you?”

“Right here. Where else do you think I’d be?”

“Sorry.”

“Right, you’re sorry. Always sorry. That doesn’t help us now, does it?”

He mumbled something near to a ‘no’, but Amy couldn’t hear it as the howling wind muted him.

Amy reached into her pockets for her phone, but found them empty. She remembered she’d left it charging downstairs. As far away now, it seemed, as the town and its light.

From the street, the running woman spoke again. “Yeah, right,” she said. “Give me your phone, David. You did manage to remember that, didn’t you?”

On the street, a bright oblong of white bloomed in the running man’s hands. Under the light, both his and his wife’s faces shimmered like pale ghosts. Amy allowed herself a fantasy of the running couple as real spirits, doomed to run the circuit of the cul-de-sac forever.

“Just give the bloody thing to me, David. God! I have to do everything!”

The running man didn’t complain as he handed the phone over to his wife. Soon, she led the way, the phone held in front to guide them to a house at the end of the cul-de-sac. Her shrill, complaining voice haunted the night even as they entered the house, their barking dog closely behind.

“I should have bought a cat.” BARK. “Two of them.”

Amy felt the tug of fear again as the voice faded into the blackness.

I’m alone, she thought. I’ll always be alone. The lights won’t ever return.

She counted heartbeats like seconds, but time had slowed again in the presence of the darkness. She’d made it to ten and ten again, not knowing if a minute or five had passed, when the lights blinked back to life on Blakely Close.

Amy let out a held breath in relief. She’d never feared the dark, but she’d never faced it alone before.

I’m stupid, she thought. I’m not a child. It’s just a power cut somewhere, nothing more.

She shook the fear off as she descended back into the house.

With the lights on, the world had returned to normal, and life went on. Her life went on.

A new life in a new home, in a new neighbourhood.

She’d made three visits to the house before deciding to settle into the house on Blakely Close. The affordable asking price had spurred her on, but the neighbourhood had sealed the deal.

No curtains had twitched when she’d visited. Not a soul had visited after she’d moved in. Privacy, the time alone she’d thought she most needed, seemed guaranteed. Outside the house a faded metal sign bolted to the oak tree read: NEIGHBOURHOOD WATCH ACTIVE IN THIS AREA. But nobody watched on Blakely Close, and nobody cared.

With the lights back on, and the past hidden away in the attic, Amy started to unpack.

In her upstairs bedroom office, she shelved her books by colour. At the library where she worked, such organisation would equal a sin, but at home Amy preferred orange next to orange and green next to green. It didn’t matter if Charlotte spun her web impossibly close to the tree where Boo Radley left his trinkets, or the Swallows and Amazons rode the river beside the Hundred Acre Wood, they looked pleasing to her eye.

She finished the colourful display with crystal butterflies from her childhood collection, as though books and flowers contained the same nectar.

By midnight, her alien feelings had dissipated. Even the faint smell of antiseptic and aniseed had faded, smothered by the fumes of instant coffee and a microwavable tandoori chicken she’d eaten for a late tea.

The last of the moving boxes folded down, ready for recycling, Amy stood in the kitchen preparing lunch for work the next day when a loud crash came from the garden.

She jumped, dropping the butter knife from her hand.

Fool! she thought as she scooped it up. You’re on your own now. No more Owen to run to because you’re scared.

Like I ever ran to Owen for anything, she thought. He’d be the one running to me, if I’m being real.

She giggled nervously as she stepped out into a garden revealed under the backwash of the kitchen light.

A strip of lawn, ankle-high with uncut grass, reached back to a brick wall where the previous owner had left his garden tools to rust and rot. Under the weak light they formed a lumpy shadow, but Amy had inspected them earlier that day.

Two toothless rakes, a spade with a missing handle, a handle with a missing spade, and several rusted trowel heads formed the bulk of the shadow. Off to one side, a garden hose coiled up around the bottom of a three-legged stool with only two legs remaining. To the left, sat a collection of glass jars filled with brown rusted liquid and strange twists of metal.

Cat, Amy thought as the crashing sounded again like a clumsy one-man-band, all instruments out of tune.

Amy pulled out her phone and tapped the torch app.

The phone pushed out a slab of white ice light that melted the further from the house it reached. The last grey trickles of it touched the back wall.

Amy strained to see a cat under the new wash. The shadowed, toothless grins of rakes looked back at her. The coiled snake of garden hose rose up as she cast the light out and across it. Shadows grew in the glass jars and turned the twisted metal into grinning foetuses. She shivered at the thought of something living in the jars and turned her back on the garden.

She’d taken a few steps when the wind cried out.

Amy turned as the gale hit her and pushed her into the kitchen. She fell onto her rear, the phone spinning wildly across the kitchen floor and out of reach. Then the lights went out on Blakely Close again.

4

The phone spun, and the kitchen flashed under the strobe of light from it, at once illuminated, then gone. Cabinets and doors, sink and ceiling, there and not there as it turned on the floor behind Amy.

Man, not man.

Amy froze, her eyes on the back door where a tall man in a long coat stood as hesitant as an uninvited guest at a house party. He wrung both hands and peered into the darkness directly at her.

And he didn’t.

A sickening wave of fear rippled through her as she caught the shadow lurking at the door, once, twice, then lost again as the phone spun away.

Nothing there, Amy told herself. It’s my imagination.

The light from the phone came around again, a roulette wheel, all bets on everything but black.

Amy tried to force her eyes closed, but fear had frozen them open with the rest of her body.

The man stepped forward, ready to enter, but his shadowed foot didn’t cross the threshold as the phone took another turn and carried the light with it.

Not there! Not there! Amy thought.

There!

Not there!

The phone turned more slowly than she thought possible. The speed of its light reduced to the beating of her fearful heart. It came to a dead stop. A slab of ice white light from the torch app froze the sink and the side window in place. Next to it, the rear door looked like the black tombstones set into the ground in St. Jude’s cemetery.

Nothing there, she told herself once more, but her inner voice lied. The truth belonged in the light and the shadow it revealed.

A truth Amy didn’t want to acknowledge. She propped herself up on her elbows, eyes on the black tombstone of the door where the light couldn’t reach. She repeated the lie over in her mind until it lost its meaning.

Nobody there. Nobody there. Nobody there. Nobody there.

Above the chant, and beyond the rolling thunder of her heartbeat, she tried to listen for a noise.

If there’s somebody there, I’ll hear his footsteps, surely, she thought.

Her heartbeat thundered in her ears. Beyond the black doorway, the night wind howled, but she couldn’t hear footsteps.

Nobody there. Nobody there. Nobody there. Nobody there.

He’s not walking now, she thought. You can’t hear somebody if they stop moving. But why has he stopped moving?

Her eyes fixed on the black door where the light couldn’t reach. She imagined a pair of dark, glassy eyes staring back at her.

He’s watching me like some animal does with its prey, she thought. I’m the prey.

Nobody there. Nobody there. Nobody there. Nobody there.

What her inner voice thought impossible, every other part knew to be real.

Her clenched stomach was convinced a man in a long black coat waited at the door. Her beating heart acknowledged his dark, watching eyes. The hairs standing to attention along her arms and neck confirmed his reality.

Nobody there. Nobody there. Nobody there. Nobody there.

Nobody but the wind.

A cold gust of air reached into the kitchen with hard, icy fingers and closed around her neck.

She coughed, and her breath caught in her chilled throat. She coughed again and again, struggling to find the breath between each.

Not the wind, she thought. It’s him. The shadow man.

Nobody there. Nobody there. Nobody there. Nobody there.

The icy grip of the wind tightened around her neck.

I’m going to choke to death! He’s going to kill me!

Nobody there. Nobody there. Nobody there. Nobody there.

Amy scrambled onto her feet, one hand on her throat. She rubbed at the chilled flesh, hoping to dislodge the feeling like stuck chewing gum.

Nobody there. Nobody there. Nobody there. Nobody there.

Somebody there.

“Amy.”

She froze. Only the panicked beating of her heart gave her body a tremor of animation.

“Amy.”

The voice lived in the howling wind. It nestled in the tree on Blakely Close and rustled the leaves. It said only her name, but it spoke of all the possibilities of the night.

Nobody there. Nobody there. Nobody there. Nobody there.

“Who’s there?” she asked, flushed with fear at a possible response.

The wind answered, but gave no name. It spoke instead of dark wishes made on all the lonely nights by all the lonely people, when such madness felt possible.

I wish…

I wish…

The wind howled, and in the darkness, she thought she saw the man in the long coat cock his head and place a hand at his ear to listen.

I wish…

I wish…

She had only one wish. The same wish made on all the lonely nights since Noel’s death.

I wish…

I wish…

Amy thought she sensed the presence of Noel in the darkness beyond the door. Her heart beat hopefully.

“Noel?” she asked, not expecting an answer.

She didn’t get one.

All the lights bloomed at once on Blakely Close, and the darkness fled, along with the man, to the edges of the cul-de-sac.

5

December’s chill stripped the leaves from the tree on Blakely Close. It reached now with blackened skeleton fingers for the absent sun.

The running couple ran less, but their dog, Colonel, barked more. The old woman and her corgis hibernated, and her lawn went without a natural sprinkling for the month. Only the black cat kept its regular schedule, patrolling the hedges and walls each night before it found new shadows to wear.

Life went on.

Amy’s life went on, but the night of the blackout played over in her mind.

That night, after the lights returned, she’d gathered enough courage to search the garden, but she’d found no hint of man or shadow of a man on her search. Only doubt remained in the garden. The seed of a black weed named madness she vowed not to let grow.

Her worry over that lonely night quickly gave way to a worry of the morning. A week after the blackout, the sickness began.

Each morning a wave of nausea drove Amy to the bathroom. She’d felt the same sickness in the first trimester of her pregnancy with Noel. She’d counted herself lucky it didn’t last all day when she’d carried Noel, as some other mothers experienced during their ‘morning’ sickness. Now the feeling, no matter how brief, terrified, and confused her.

Amy checked her calendar in the kitchen. Each month a different butterfly flew over the days and weeks. Amy traced their flight back to the last time she’d had sex.

Six months. End of July. A Saturday.

A single word marked the event: OWEN. They’d signed the divorce papers that morning as coldly as if co-signing a car loan. She’d moved out in the evening. The sex occurred somewhere between the two.

Good sex, she remembered. Better sex than they’d ever had during their marriage.

Lying in bed with him that afternoon, she’d started to doubt the divorce. She’d wondered if the gap grief had caused might close between them. A picture of herself ripping up the divorce papers lingered in her mind until she saw his white trainers placed neatly next to the bedroom door.

The trainers told her everything she needed to know about a future with Owen. He lived a life filled with routine and neatness. A messy child would have never worked for him, no matter how much he’d told her it would. An afternoon of sex couldn’t rebuild the fallen bridges between them. A thousand afternoons of good sex wouldn’t cut it.

She’d left that evening in silence. He’d closed the door on her before she turned the key in the ignition, and she’d wondered as she drove away, if he would cry over their parting.

No matter how much she tried to picture him distraught over their separation, she couldn’t. An image came to mind of him dangling his trainers from the end of his feet, trying to keep them there for as long as possible without letting them fall. A silly game that reminded Amy how much of a child he was.

Amy ran her finger over Owen’s name on the calendar.

I’d be five or six months pregnant if I’d conceived that day, she’d thought. I can’t have morning sickness so far into a pregnancy, or a period, and I’m still getting those.

Amy marked her periods on the calendar by drawing over each butterfly on those days in black Biro. Every cycle that passed, she’d X out the butterfly in red. All the previous months had red Xs. The next black-Biro butterfly flew in January. Not a chance in the world of a pregnancy.

It didn’t feel that way. The morning sickness continued through December and into January, despite her calendar. By the end of that cold month, Amy couldn’t deny how ill she felt, and she booked an appointment with her doctor for the following week.

A week that no calendar could mark. A week that felt as if it lasted forever.

Amy made it through six days of sickness and crazy thoughts, before one of those thoughts drove her out of the house and to the local chemist.

During the shyest part of her teens, she’d never felt embarrassment over buying hygiene products. An understanding mother, and a quiet father, had guaranteed a lack of shame about her body and how to keep it clean. But as Amy entered the chemist that afternoon, her cheeks flushed red like a teenager buying condoms for the first time.

I’m a grown woman, she thought. I have no reason to feel shy about this.

Yes, I’m a grown woman, but I’m not here to buy cough syrup or bloody paracetamol. I’m here to buy a pregnancy tester kit, for all the good it will do.

Amy walked the aisles twice before she stopped at the shelves of pregnancy products.

Am I going to do this? she thought. It’s madness. I’m not pregnant. I can’t be pregnant. It’s impossible.

She moved back through the aisles and picked up toothpastes and haemorrhoid creams, children’s sunglasses with star frames, cough medicine and powdered flu-remedy drinks, before she gathered enough courage and returned to the pregnancy section.

Amy froze, perplexed by the pregnancy tester kits, fertility checkers, conception aids, and a slew of other boxes spread out before her. The names blurred before her eyes, only colours remaining, blue and pink, but mostly blue.

Behind the counter two young assistants with identical white smocks and identical bleached-blonde hair whispered to each other. Amy knew they weren’t talking about her, but she imagined it that way.

She’s forty, if she’s a day

Too old for a kid.

I don’t know. Look at Angelina Jolie.

She’s not Angelina Jolie, not by a long shot.

A strange compulsion came over her to shout, “I’m thirty-two! That’s not too old! That’s not too old to have a child!”, but she forced it down and continued her blind search of the shelves.

During her pregnancy with Noel, she’d had no confusion. She’d grabbed the first blue toothpaste-like carton from the shelf.

I was excited back then, she thought. I’m not excited now. I’m losing my bloody mind.

She searched the boxes again. Less fuzzy to her eyes now she’d calmed herself a little, but more confusing than ever. Each product had text in bold on the front next to the brand name.

Double check + date.

6 days earlier.

Accurate reading.

Proven to increase chances.

Why do they need to double check? Isn’t one check good enough? she thought. 6 days earlier than what exactly? Proven to increase chances? How could a pregnancy test improve anybody’s chances?

I can’t do this, Amy thought. Even if I was pregnant, this would baffle me.

She turned from the tester kits and focused on a shelf of cough medicines, faking an interest to avoid looking stupid in front of the two girls at the counter. She picked up bottle after bottle and read the labels.

Loosens mucus, soothing effect and non-drowsy.

For dry cough & sore throat.

Non-drowsy, soothing effect, deep penetrating relief.

A cheeky smile grew on her face.

Deep penetrating relief, that’s the problem, she thought. How do you get pregnant without the deep penetrating relief? I haven’t had any of that recently.

Amy shook her head and placed the bottle back on the shelf. She walked a few steps before she stopped and turned back to the pregnancy tester kits.

She knew she couldn’t be pregnant, but it wouldn’t hurt to know for sure. It wouldn’t hurt at all. Just a quick visit to the bathroom at work and—

Amy grabbed at a colour on the shelf without looking at any names.

Blue box again, just like with Noel. And just like with Noel, if the test came back positive, she’d see a blue cross appear on the device.

The thought that she might see that blue cross again terrified and excited her. An impossibility if it did occur, yet…

She trembled a little as she handed over the box to one of the assistants at the counter.

“Oh, it’s okay,” the assistant said, placing a tanned hand over Amy’s. “You’ll be fine. It’s dead easy.”

“Dead easy,” the other assistant repeated with authority.

She hoped so.

6

Amy felt watched, judged. Even the Reading Owl seemed to glare when she returned to work that day.

The plastic owl was perched on a stack of plastic books next to the children’s section. It wore a pair of overlarge spectacles that hid two video cameras behind. Next to it a mirror reflected what the owl saw, a layer of computerised magic imposed over the top of the reflected video.

She’d set up the display as part of a scheme to coax children off their tablets and phones and into the library. A successful scheme as far as it went. The kids came, and the mirror worked its computerised magic, but it couldn’t conjure up interest. The gathered children were turned into elves and witches, gnomes and dwarves, and all of them bored.

Amy caught her reflection in the magical mirror as she entered the library.

There was no reflection, only a formless grey smudge.

She froze before the magic mirror, blinking, wondering if her eyes needed checking or the computer wizardry hidden within the frame.

“It’ll stick if the wind changes.”

The voice came from Zoe. A waft of stale menthol cigarette trailed the words.

“Nnnh?” Amy said, still fixed on the mirror.

“Your face, hon. Your face will stick like that if the wind changes. Is there anybody home?”

“Sorry?”

Zoe waved a hand in front of Amy’s face, but Amy stared through it, confused by the image in the magic mirror. A clear picture showed of Zoe standing behind, but Amy’s face remained a black smudge.

“Amy? Hello?” Zoe said.

Amy’s attention flicked back and forth between the smudge and Zoe.

Zoe’s skin was orange with fake tan. A pair of overlarge, neon-pink framed glasses on a chord dangled above her pushed-up cleavage. She wore dyed red hair pulled back tight on her head. Mutton dressed as lamb, Amy’s mother would have called the look.

“Do you see that?” Amy said, pointing at the mirror.

“Do I see what?”

Amy watched the mirror as Zoe reached for her glasses and brought them up to her face.

As she made the move, the screen flickered and turned off. An after-image of Zoe floated in the grey reflection like the skin formed on refrigerated soup.

“Okay. What am I looking at?” Zoe asked.

Amy stared at the grey screen until the soup skin broke apart and Zoe’s image vanished.

“Amy?” Zoe asked.

“Nothing.”

“Oh good. I’m glad I put my glasses on for that.” Zoe nudged Amy in the side. An act of friendly contact Amy had never felt comfortable with, or thought they’d built up enough of a relationship to share.

“Sorry,” Amy said.

“What’s the matter?”

“Nothing.”

Zoe pulled her in close for a hug. The smell of menthol cigarette smoke and dusty perfume clogged Amy’s nostrils.

“Come on, let’s have a chat,” Zoe said, pulling out of the hug.

“I’m fine, honestly,” Amy said.

Zoe peered through the overlarge glasses with disbelieving eyes. “That’s what people who aren’t fine say, don’t they now?”

Amy didn’t want the attention. She didn’t want to be at work with a pregnancy test sitting at the bottom of her bag like a primed hand grenade. But she couldn’t escape from either.

“Honestly, I’m fine. Just a little...”

“Come on. I won’t take ‘no’ for an answer. Let’s get you some fresh air and clear out the fluff from your head. You know I always get what I want, don’t you?”

She did. It galled her to know Zoe, whose reading didn’t go much beyond Mills & Boon romances, controlled the library. The woman got what she wanted, and most of the time it meant the library and its patrons suffered.

“Okay,” Amy said.

“You’ll thank me later,” Zoe said, then led Amy to the other side of the library and the exit door.

She pushed it open to reveal a small courtyard at the rear. The bright winter sun carved a cold yellow door into the red brick of the wall on the opposite side of the yard. Before the wall, a crossword hopscotch pattern remained as the only evidence of the library’s prior purpose as a pre-school in the 1980s.

Amy’s breath came out in short silver spirals as she stood on the steps, looking out into the yard.

“Can we do this inside, Zoe? It’s a bit nippy,” she said.

Or we can do it on the moon, or the twelfth of never, that would suit me fine too, Amy thought.

Zoe stepped out into the yard and shivered as the cold met her. Her breath came out in silver puffs. She scanned the yard with a disapproving eye.

“Not too bad,” she said, but her whole body shivered.

“Really?” Amy asked.

Zoe hugged herself and rubbed her arms. “Okay. Maybe you’re right. Let’s get inside and have a cuppa instead. Agreed?”

Amy didn’t have time to agree, Zoe grabbed her hand and rushed her back through the library, past the horseshoe of the reception desk into the small office behind.

The space contained enough room for a couple of plastic fold-out chairs, a kettle, a microwave, and a few mugs on a small table. Zoe’s mug sat on the counter with the legend — WORLD’S GREATEST MUM — written on the side. Amy had a teacup and saucer decorated with blue butterflies.

“Okay then, tell me everything,” Zoe said, as she switched on the kettle.

“It’s nothing, really. I’m fine.”

“It’ll be fine when you tell me what’s going on. A problem shared and all that.” Zoey dropped a spoonful of coffee into her mug and Amy’s cup. She repeated the motion with two heaped spoons of sugar into her own mug.

A problem shared? I don’t even know what the problem is, except it can’t exist, Amy thought.

Like the man in the long coat who stood at my backdoor.

A chill ran through her. She shivered.

“I’m fine,” Amy said.

Zoe watched the whole performance. “Oh, you’re fine, are you? Could have fooled me. What’s going on?”

Nothing, literally nothing, she wanted to say, although it feels like something for sure. Feels like I’m standing on the edge of a tall bloody cliff and about to jump off.

“It’s nothing,” Amy said.

“Yeah? You can’t kid a kidder. I can tell. It’s written all over your face.”

A face that doesn’t show up in the mirror out there, Amy thought. How is that even possible?

More possible than seeing a man in the shadows at the back door. The owl’s cameras might have failed, or the screen, all feasible explanations. Nothing could explain the man in the long coat.

“Honestly, I’m fine. I’m seeing the doctor at the end of the week. I’m sure it’s nothing.”

Zoe looked intently at Amy. Behind her, the kettle rumbled and shook on the table, then a loud ‘click’ signalled it had finished.

Without saying a word, Zoe poured the boiling water, then finished both cups off with a drop of full fat milk. She handed Amy her butterfly teacup first.

“If you’re at the doctor’s, then there’s something wrong. You’re not going there for fun, are you?”

Amy sipped at her drink as she stalled. The milk tasted sour, the freeze-dried coffee had a chemical, almost plastic edge, and the sharp sting of sugar cut the roof of her mouth. She’d had the same kind of pallet during the pregnancy with Noel.

I’m not pregnant. I can’t be pregnant.

She peered at her bag on the floor. Inside, the primed hand-grenade waited ready for her to throw. She just didn’t know if she wanted to throw it any longer.

“Problems downstairs?” Zoe asked, breaking Amy’s thought.

It struck Amy as odd how old-fashioned Zoe talked sometimes. The woman changed boyfriends like most people changed plug-in room fresheners, and she wasn’t above bragging about her conquests. But whenever she talked about sex it came out in a childish kind of titter that belonged to a teenager, not a woman in her fifties.

“It’s not that,” Amy said.

Zoe pulled out one of the chairs and sat, her green leather skirt riding up high enough to show off purple silk panties beneath. Amy stared at her drink to avoid the show. It annoyed her to think a woman like Zoe headed up the library. A woman who called sex ‘snuggling’ and referred to gynaecological issues as ‘problems downstairs’.

“Is it a... you know...snuggle related thing?” Zoe nodded towards Amy’s lap.

Harry Potter came to Amy’s mind every time the woman mentioned ‘snuggles’. Whenever she’d happened to stumble on the film or read part of one of the books and the word ‘muggle’ appeared, Amy thought of Zoe, and then of Zoe having sex.

“No. No it’s not,” Amy said.

“You can tell me, you know. I’ve been through the mill a few times myself.” Zoe winked.

A cheeky gesture on most people, but the sight of it turned Amy’s stomach. Some poor doctor out there had to deal with whatever mill Zoe had been through and whatever she’d picked up there at the time.

“You don’t have to worry,” Amy said.

Zoe didn’t believe her. She crossed her legs, covering up any hint of the purple on show. She placed her mug down on the counter, then reached out for Amy with both hands like a palm reader with a client.

“Hands,” Zoe said.

“What?”

“Give me your hands, Amy. I won’t bite. I promise.”

What’s this now? Amy thought. She’s never mentioned being into palmistry or anything like that. The most she’s ever done is read her horoscope from the paper and giggled about how daft it was.

“Hands,” Zoe repeated.

Reluctantly, Amy offered her hands to Zoe.

The woman took hold and started rubbing both palms with her thumbs. “Noel,” Zoe said, her voice lowered to a breathy whisper.

“Excuse me?”

“Is it anything to do with Noel?”

The name stung like cold water thrown on her face. “What?” Amy asked.

“Is it nearly that time, hon?”

“What time?”

“You know…when he…you know…his birthday. The anniversary of…you know.”

Amy closed her eyes and shook her head slowly. Noel had died on the 3rd March the year before. The kitchen calendar had no mark for the day and it never would. Amy had torn out the month completely.

“No,” Amy said.

“Oh, right. Are you sure?”

“Completely.”

“Just checking. You did look a bit lost out there. Got to be honest with you, thought it might have been...but no, right. No.”

“No,” Amy repeated.

“So, what is it?”

Amy knew the reality of her situation couldn’t be explained, especially not to Zoe, so she searched for an excuse.

What am I going to tell her that she’ll believe? Not the truth, that’s for sure, Amy thought. I don’t even know what the truth is yet. I don’t know what the bloody hell is happening to me.

“It’s delicate,” Amy said, stalling.

“Oh, then you’ve come to the right person. I know how to keep a secret. You can trust me.”

Amy’s mind turned quickly to the chemist and what she’d picked up as she tried to avoid the pregnancy tester kits. She couldn’t possibly create a lie from cough medicine or flue-remedies, she didn’t look ill enough to need either, but one product did offer her the opportunity.

“Piles,” Amy said, thinking about the haemorrhoid cream she’d briefly picked up.

“Oh…ohhh. Yes, I see. That is…delicate, yes.” Any interest Zoe had shown vanished immediately.

“I need to get some extra strength cream. They only have it on prescription.”

“Yes, that’s a good idea,” Zoe said, squirming in her seat.

Amy found the sight amusing. She’d never seen the woman so visibly uncomfortable before.

That’ll teach you for making me put out that sappy romance display last year, she thought. Stupid bloody thing with a half-naked blond man on the front. What a sight.

“You should have seen what the doctor showed me. How bad it can get,” Amy said, pushing the punishment further.

Zoe looked at the door, barely able to hide her discomfort.

“Was that the bell out front?” she said.

Nobody had rung the bell at reception in years. The library had little floor space to begin with, and a patron stood at the main desk could wave and gain either of their attention whichever section of the library they occupied.

“I didn’t hear a bell,” Amy said.

“You sure?”

With every second that passed, Zoe squirmed more in her seat. Amy had never seen her so out of sorts before.

Zoe glanced at the office door. “I could have sworn I heard it,” she said.

“Do you want me to check?” Amy felt a smile growing behind her lips, one she couldn’t hide for much longer.

Zoe pushed up from her seat like she’d sat in something wet and only just realised. “No. I’ll do it, it’s okay. Yes. I think someone is at reception. I’ll just check. We can chat later, if you like.”

“Oh yes, we should,” Amy said, faking her enthusiasm.

“Good,” Zoe replied as he opened the door and headed back into the library. “Later.”

“Later,” Amy replied, knowing later would never exist for that chat.

Zoe mumbled something as the door closed, and Amy finally allowed the smile to grow on her face.

Now I know what to do the next time she starts going on about ‘snuggles’. What was the spell in the Harry Potter books? Evanesco to disappear something? Was that it?

Evanesco, haemorrhoido!

Amy’s instincts proved correct. By six, Zoe had left without mentioning the conversation again. Gone too, the last of the lonely pensioners, checking out books they’d never read, only use as an excuse to return.

Warmed with trapped breath and central heating, the winter dark kept at bay by drawn shutters on the windows, Amy retreated to the staff bathroom.

It took a few minutes to coax her bladder into action, and then she filled only half the cup provided by the tester kit. She read through the instructions three more times, twice accidentally reading the French portion, before she dipped the test strip from the pregnancy kit into her pee. It turned the colour of pink chewing gum, just as the instructions had said it would.

What if the test comes back positive? she thought. What if the test comes back negative?

The thought it might come back positive, terrified her. The thought it would come back negative terrified her too, for other reasons. If I’m not pregnant, then why am I sick in the mornings? It can’t be a good thing to feel so sick all the time.

Sat on the toilet, she held the plastic tester in her hands like a nun would rosary beads.

What if…

Fifteen minutes dragged by before Amy checked the little window in the applicator.

A blue cross would appear for positive. A blue line for negative.

It was neither.

What if…

The small window had filled with an inky black.

7

Dr Holt took off his spectacles and rubbed at his nose. A moment later he put his spectacles back on. He tapped at the small plastic bag containing the pregnancy testing kit Amy had brought with her.

“This is nothing,” he said, the faint lilt of Dutch in his accent. “A faulty test, that’s all, Miss Bennington. Amy.”

She’d prayed to hear those words since she’d taken the test. A fault made for a better explanation than any other, and hearing it from her doctor only confirmed it.

“Thank God,” she said.

“You thought it could be something else?” he asked, genuine curiosity in his voice.

“Well, yes. I wasn’t sure.”

“Such as?”

“Excuse me?”

He picked up the plastic bag from the desk and pushed at it from the rear until the black mark on the tester kit showed prominently.

“What did you think this might mean?”

Dark thoughts cast their shadow. The man in the long black coat flitted through Amy’s mind and vanished just as quickly as he had when the light from her phone turned away from him.

“Cancer,” she lied.

Dr Holt nodded, and a warm smile grew within his grey goatee beard. His eyes sparkled with a youth that his sixty-three years couldn’t account for.

“Oh, no. Nothing of the sort. You see, the test works by binding an antibody to the hCG hormone...”

Amy didn’t hear much of the rest of his talk. Science and technology jargon had the same effect as ear mufflers on her. She’d come for reassurance, not a science lecture.

“Can we...is the...I mean, the test you did, is it…?”

She’d given another urine sample, along with blood when arriving that morning. The results from the urine would take minutes, Dr Holt’s nurse had told her, the blood would take a few hours, possibly a day.

“Yes, of course. You’ll be wanting the results of the pregnancy test we administered earlier.”

“Yes, please.”

Amy braced herself. Something in her wanted the doctor to confirm a pregnancy. She’d sat in the same chair before Dr Holt and heard him ask the same questions before confirming her pregnancy with Noel. She remembered that day as glorious. The sun shined brighter as she left. A joy filled her unlike any she’d experienced before.

“Sorry, but you’re not pregnant, Amy. The blood test will confirm it, when we get it back, I’m sure.”

She sagged in the chair, both relief and disappointment placing a weight on her shoulders at the same time.

Dr Holt picked up on the movement. “Are you upset with the news, Amy?”

She wagged her heavy head. “No. I mean, I’ve just felt a little weird lately. I just had to be sure it wasn’t…I know it couldn’t be, but…”

“How long since you stopped taking your birth control pills?” He tapped at a few keys on the computer that sat on his desk, the answer to his question already displayed on the screen before him.

She’d stopped just after the last time with Owen. Some part of her thought she’d never have sex again. No sex, no need for birth control.

“About six months ago,” she said.

Dr Holt nodded at the screen. “No side effects?”

Dark shadowy men stood on my back door during a blackout and morning sickness, she thought, and nearly giggled at the madness of it all.

“No.”

“Any weight gains or loss? Did you experience irregularities in your periods afterwards? A heavy or light flow perhaps?”

He asked the questions like the utility engineer who’d come to the new house to fit the smart electricity meter.

“Nothing like that, no. Is it important?”

“No,” he said, wagging his head. “I’m being thorough, that’s all. Your pregnancy test came back negative. Your blood work, I’m sure will only confirm it. You were always a little low on iron, but never by an amount that would concern me. In this season, we’re all a little low, one way or another.” He turned the screen off and focused directly at her, his eyes not so sparkly now. “My guess at this stage is that you might be suffering from a mild form of pseudocyesis.”

“What’s that?”

“A fancy word for a phantom pregnancy.”

“You think that's what it is?” she asked, hope in her voice.

“I don’t know, just yet, but it could be, yes. I’ve come across it before, as a younger man.”

“What about all the symptoms? What about the nausea in the morning?”

“Firstly, I wouldn’t rule out that as side-effect of stopping your birth control. It’s not out of the realm of possibility at this stage. I’m not overly concerned about that just yet. What does concern me, is you, Amy.”

She felt a trickle of fear run down her back like rain.

“Me?” she said.

“Physically you look to be in very good health. Last time you were in here and we ran blood tests, it all came back fine. Of course, the iron was a little low, but I feel there’s something more going on with you currently. I think that something is directly tied to the sickness you might be feeling in the morning, and your obvious anxiety over being pregnant again. Am I correct?”

If you only knew half of it, she thought, but knew she couldn’t reveal the madness to him.

“I think...maybe, I don’t know. I’ve been feeling strange lately.”

“The nausea you mean? Or is it something else? Can you describe this ‘strangeness’ to me?”

Yes, she thought. I’m suffering from morning sickness that can’t possibly happen. I’m seeing men made of shadows who don’t exist. I’m taking pregnancy tests when I can’t possibly be pregnant.

“I think it’s the move,” she said, only part of her statement a lie.

“You’ve moved into a new house since I last saw you, haven’t you?”

“Yes.”

“And I guess it’s not feeling like a home just yet?”

She nodded. It wasn’t a clinical diagnosis, but he had it right.

“You think it could be that?” she asked, and part of her hoped the answer would explain all the crazy things she’d experienced.

“It’s a contributing factor, I’d say. You were recently divorced, weren’t you?”

She nodded.

“How long were you and your husband together?”

Long enough to screw each other up, she thought. Long enough to have a child, but not long enough to keep him.

“Ten years.”

“Was the divorce amicable? I mean to say, was there any undue stress during the separation?”

She thought of Owen again with his white trainers and permanent frown. He’d quietly agreed to everything she’d asked for. Often, she’d wondered if things might have worked out differently if he’d fought a little harder.

“It went as smoothly as I could have hoped for.”

“Well that’s good to hear. Still, even the easiest of divorces can add to our stresses. They pile up until...one day they become too much. Anything else you think might be contributing to your levels of stress?”

She nodded a nervous no.

“Amy? I’d hate to think you’re keeping something from me.” He nodded at her.

“No, I swear.”

“Are you sure?”

“Honestly, I’m...fine.”

Dr Holt took of his glasses again and rubbed at his nose. He put them back on before speaking.

“I think this,” he pushed at the edge of the plastic bag, “is a symptom of something deeper going on with you. Pseudocyesis occurs in women suffering from undue stresses and anxieties. As I’ve said, physically there are no complaints, but I do believe you might need some help with what’s up here and what’s in here.” He tapped at his head, then at the centre of his chest.

A memory of the time she’d visited Dr Holt after Noel’s death came to mind. He’d motioned to his head and his heart then and gave her a pamphlet about dealing with the loss of a child. He’d suggested a grief counsellor that day, but she’d not had enough strength to say yes or no.

Will a grief counsellor explain the man in the long coat stood at my back door? she thought. Can a counsellor make me understand how I have morning sickness for a pregnancy that doesn’t exist?

“Grief can affect us slowly,” Dr Holt continued. “It builds up over time. You’re certainly more than aware of that. What you’re experiencing now could be linked in some manner to the loss of your child, and a divorce might have heightened the symptoms.”

She nodded. “Can it be cured? I mean, how long will I feel like this, if it’s what you said it is?”

He looked at her with gentle eyes, far more honest than mere bedside manner would account for. “A week, a month, it’s not uncommon for the sensations to last for the duration of a pregnancy.”

She felt the cold trickle of fear again. “You’re telling me this might last for nine months?”

“Without any help, yes, it’s possible, although not likely in most cases.”

“Like a real pregnancy?”

“Your mind will act that way, yes.”

She thought of herself pregnant with Noel, her stomach bloated, ankles aching and every movement an effort.

“What about my body? I won’t put on weight, will I? If it’s not real, I won’t get bigger, will I?”

“Not the extent of an actual pregnancy, no, but if it turns out to be some form of pseudocyesis, you might feel that way a lot of the time. You could experience some bloating of the stomach and other symptoms that mimic a true pregnancy. Let’s not get ahead of ourselves just yet, though. If you’ll allow, I want to make you an appointment with a grief counsellor. Don’t say no just yet. I know you refused me last year when we spoke, but I think—”

“Refused you?” she said.

“I understand, of course. You were severely upset at the time.”

“Honestly, I don’t remember much.”

“Quite understandable. You were withdrawn at the time. I’m glad to see the fog has lifted, but I do think it might be beneficial for you to see someone and talk over your experiences. The cure for pseudocyesis is a cure for your stresses and anxiety.”

“Yes,” Amy said.

“Excuse me?”

She nodded. “Yes. I’d like to see a counsellor. I think you’re right.”

Amy didn’t know right from wrong as she sat in the chair across from Dr Holt, but if a visit to a counsellor could help rid the strangeness from her life then she’d give it a go. The idea of carrying around a phantom child for nine months terrified her.

Dr Holt turned his computer screen back on and started to type as he talked.

“I thought it would be more of a battle, but I’m glad you’ve come around. This is going to be good for you, Amy. Very good. Now, let’s see how soon I can arrange an appointment.”

Very good. Comforting words, but not a cure for what ailed her.

She didn’t know what ailed her yet.

8

A mild end to January didn’t mirror Amy’s condition.

The phantom morning sickness persisted, as regular as the barking of the neighbourhood dog. No amount of peppermint tea or luminous pink Pepto-Bismol could stall the nausea. New blood tests returned old results. Nothing physically wrong, Dr Holt reaffirmed. It had to be a by-product of grief, a phantom pregnancy, so he rushed through a meeting with a professional.

Not as much of a professional as Amy would have liked.

A letter arrived from the grief counsellor, Harriet Harris, two weeks after Dr Holt had first suggested the idea. She had no letters after her name, or a hint of accreditation, but she did sign her name with small hearts circling the letters like balloons. She did sign off her letter, ‘In peace and love until we meet’. She did live in place called ‘Shangri-La Farm’.

The farm had no resemblance to the fictional Shangri-La when Amy arrived for her first session. A muddy grey road, crowded on both sides by an audience of frail trees, led to a set of double wide gates. Besides the gates stood a woman, six feet tall, woven from wicker and straw.

Amy stopped her car and considered turning back as she stared at the straw monstrosity before her.

Two rotted apples served as the straw woman’s eyes. A cross-hatch of twigs formed her crooked smile. Her stomach had a dark hole torn in it.

Inside the blackness something moved.

Amy leaned forward, both hands on the steering wheel.

The darkness shifted within the black stomach of the wicker woman. It reminded Amy of the man in the long coat who’d waited at her back door.

It’s happening again, Amy thought. The man in the long coat will return. He’ll come back to finish what he started.

What did he start? she thought. What will he finish? He can’t do anything because he’s not real.

Amy’s knuckles whitened on the steering wheel.

He’s going to pull himself out of that hole and—

She couldn’t look away. Terror crept across her body like an early morning frost.

It’s nothing, she tried to tell herself, even as the darkness shifted in the belly hole again. I’m just imagining things. I’m just—

The darkness exploded within the wicker woman’s stomach. The beating of dark wings filled the air as a crow shot out and came hurtling towards Amy’s car.

Amy covered her face with both hands. She expected to hear the crash of glass as the bird hit the windscreen, but instead a hollow metallic thud rang out.

She pulled her hands down to see the crow standing on the bonnet of the car, its head cocked to the side, one black glass eye peering at her.

“Jesus fucking Christ,” she muttered under her breath. “Stupid bloody thing. You frightened me half to death.”

If she’d not known better, she’d have thought the crow understood her. It cocked its head to the other side, then gave her an angry stare.

“Go on! Get lost!” she said, shooing at the bird with both hands.

The crow hopped on one foot, then the other. It wagged its head and pecked at its wing feathers before returning its angry glare to Amy.

“Dumb bloody bird. Just get lost,” Amy said, and realised she should take her own advice.

She didn’t believe in good or bad omens, but the longer she waited outside the gates of Shangri-La farm, the more she felt like the world was telling her to turn around and leave.

There’s nothing wrong with me, she thought. It’s grief, just like Dr Holt said. Grief can play tricks on the mind. It’s just been playing a lot of tricks on mine lately.

Amy checked over her shoulder at the muddy path leading back out onto the road, then she turned back to the crow.

An image flashed into her mind of the bird flying off the bonnet and right under the wheels of the car as she reversed along the road. She didn’t want to be anywhere near the thing, but she didn’t want to kill it accidentally.

I’m not going anywhere with that thing near the car, she thought.

“Go on! Sod off!” Amy shouted, and followed it up by slapping her palms against the windscreen.

The bird hopped from one foot to the other in a mocking dance.

“Little shit,” Amy muttered. “I’ll teach you.”

She revved the car’s engine loudly, hoping the vibrations would scare the creature away, but it had the opposite effect. The bird hopped playfully from one foot to the other again, making a game out of it.

“You bloody stupid thing,” she said. “I’ll come out there and…and…”

She didn’t know what she’d do, but even the thought of nearing the creature made the skin on her neck itch madly.

“Come on. Just fly away you stupid bloody bird,” she pleaded.

The crow snapped its wings out to full length and shook them. It fixed one black glass eye on Amy and in a crackling, high-pitched caw said, “Go fuck yourself.”

Struck dumb, Amy stared at the bird.

I didn’t just hear that, did I? she thought. Did that crow just tell me to go fuck myself?

The crow had nothing more to add. It flapped its wings, then took off into the sky above her.

Amy strained forward, staring up through the windscreen at the grey sky above, where the bird made a circle, then darted off out of sight.

She lowered herself back into her seat, still cold with shock.

Did I imagine it speaking? Amy thought. Can crows talk like parrots? Did I see that on a YouTube video once?

It didn’t matter. The crow and the wicker woman added up to a pile of oddness Amy couldn’t ignore.

She had one more oddity to add to the pile.

Hand on the gear stick, ready to put the car in reverse, Amy finally noticed the squat, black stone cottage sank into more grey mud beyond the gates. With windows and doors tilted to odd angles, the tiny house had the look of something from a Grimm fairy tale. It reminded Amy of the Mother goose rhyme she’d read to a group of bored children one summer Saturday at the library.

There was a crooked man, and he walked a crooked mile.

He found a crooked sixpence upon a crooked stile.

He bought a crooked cat, which caught a crooked mouse,

And they all lived together in a little crooked house.

This is too weird, she thought. A talking crow and a wicker woman, now a bloody house that belongs in a fairy tale. What kind of counsellor has their sessions in a cottage out in the middle of nowhere anyway?

A crackpot, Amy thought. But maybe it took a crackpot to cure one.

She heard her mother’s voice whisper all the way from her childhood, ‘If you don’t get enough sleep, you’ll end up at the funny farm, Amy.’

Well, I made it mum, she thought, staring at the odd little cottage. I’m finally at the funny farm.

There was a crooked man, and he walked a crooked mile.

He found a crooked sixpence upon a crooked stile.

He bought a crooked cat, which caught a crooked mouse,

And they all lived together in a little crooked house.

A crooked man didn’t live in the crooked house before Amy, but a big bundle of unfettered joy did.

Before Amy had a chance to turn the car around, Harriet Harris came bounding out of the farmhouse towards her.

Her bare feet caked with dried mud, a long patchwork skirt dragging in the fresh muck behind her, Harriet Harris swung open the gates to Shangri-La Farm.

“Welcome! Welcome!” she shouted.

Amy smiled, hoping her discomfort didn’t leak through.

Harriet Harris kept her arms wide as she strode towards the car. Two sleeves of metallic bangles jangled like wind chimes as she approached. Her pendulous breasts swung wildly beneath a cotton blouse as grey as the hair reaching down to her lower back.

When she reached the side of the car, Amy caught a whiff of cinnamon that reminded her of baking classes in high school.

“Don’t be shy now,” Harriet Harris said, arms still outstretched for a hug that had not yet arrived. “Let’s have you out of that nasty machine and inside.”

Amy felt herself sink in the seat.

“Okay,” she said, and opened the side door slowly. Before she’d managed to step out, Amy was pulled into Harriet Harris’ cinnamon scented bosom.

“That’s it. Contact. Good old-fashioned contact. We all need it. Every new friendship should begin with a hug, I say.”

Amy couldn’t say anything from within the suffocating embrace of the woman’s breasts. An image of drowning in sponge cake flashed into her mind.

She didn’t drown. Harriet Harris grabbed Amy by the arms and pushed her out from the embrace, then eyed her from top to bottom.

“Let’s get a good look at you now, Amy,” she said. “Oh yes. You’re a bright one, I see. Tip-top. But I could sense that by your name, you know. Amy Bennington. Sounds like a butterfly, doesn’t it? A-my Be-nnin-g-ton. Like a butterfly flapping its wings.” She giggled like a young girl.

Amy didn’t know what to say or do. She knew her name didn’t sound like a butterfly, flapping its wings or not. The Amy part came from a maternal grandmother and meant ‘Dearly Loved’, or so she’d been told. Bennington she’d reclaimed after the divorce from Owen. Butterflies had nothing to do with it, no matter what the dotty old counsellor said.

“Well then, now the hugs are over, I’ll bid you another welcome, Amy Bennington. We’re glad to have you join us here at Shangri-La farm.” Harriet Harris grabbed Amy’s hand and pulled her towards the farmhouse, as excited as a child showing off a new toy.

“Us?” Amy asked.

“Oh yes, yes. We’re all a big family here! A family full of love. Love, that’s the remedy. That’s the ticket.”

Amy followed, her mind conjuring up a gaggle of little naturists running around the house, despite Harriet Harris’ age denying that possibility. She pictured a stoned old hippy of a husband too, his hair tied up in a ponytail, and a pot-belly poking out from beneath a Hawkwind band t-shirt.

No children or husband occupied the crooked cottage, only a bird.

A crow.

The crow that had danced on her bonnet, was now perched on the tattered arm of a dusty old reclining chair inside the house. It cocked its head and gave her the same angry look it had earlier.

Amy’s skin itched.

“This is my baby, Brigid. She’s a good girl, aren’t you Brigid?” Harriet Harris said, her voice descending into baby talk.

The crow spread its black wings and shook its feathers in response. It looked directly at Amy with its glassy black eyes.

The memory of the blackout and the howling wind came back to Amy. She shivered.

“Brigid’s a little shy around new people, but once she gets to know you, she’ll chat your ear off. She has a special talent, she does,” Harriet Harris said.

Never knew swearing was a talent, Amy thought. At least I didn’t imagine the bloody creature speaking.

“She can talk?” Amy asked.

“Oh, can she! Only problem is, she’s a little on the...blue side sometimes. Apologies in advance if she gets a bit lewd. I rescued her from a very salty old man, who taught her some quite impolite phrases.”

“Okay,” Amy said, not sure what reply would work.

Harriet Harris flopped down into the tattered chair and brought both her legs up under the folds of her patchwork skirt. She pointed to the sofa hulking beneath one of the crooked windows. “Make yourself at home.”

The sofa had a look of a museum piece that might fall apart if sat down on too quickly. Amy lowered herself gently onto it. She placed her hands on her lap, not knowing what else she might do with them. Her eyes fixed on Harriet Harris.

The woman sat, a happy grin on her face, saying nothing.

Amy coughed, hoping to clear the silence out of the room

Harriet Harris continued to smile. The bird continued to glare, but it wasn’t as chatty as Harriet Harris had promised. Amy didn’t know which was worse.

She coughed again, louder, less convincing.

Harriet Harris smiled.

“Excuse me, but—” Amy began.

Harriet Harris held up a finger for silence.

“I’m sorry?” Amy said.

“Just take it all in. Be, Miss Bennington. Simply be.”

“Okay,” she said, not knowing what the woman wanted.

A minute passed, and Amy’s annoyance grew. It cost forty-five pounds for the forty-five-minute session. Nobody could call her tight with her money, but a pound a minute to sit silently in a house began to feel like a rip-off.

Five minutes later, Amy broke the silence.

“I must apologise for wasting your time, but I’m not sure this is for me,” she said.

Harriet Harris closed her eyes and took in a deep, shivering breath. “Did you feel it?” she asked, ignoring what Amy had said.

“Excuse me?”

“What did you feel just now, Amy?”

Amy’s eyes flicked from the counsellor to the crow. She’d felt foolish and a little itchy, nothing more.

“Err…”

“Breathe in.”

“What?”

“Take a deep breath, Amy. In through the nose, that’s important. One, two, three.” Harriet Harris breathed in, her nostrils flaring. She let the breath out with a heavy sigh. “Like that. Breathe in for three through your nose. Hold that breath for three, then breath out through your mouth for three.”

“You want me to take a deep breath?”

Harriet Harris placed both hands on the folds of her patchwork skirt. She repeated her pattern of breaths as an answer to Amy’s question.

Amy didn’t want to follow. It felt more like a yoga class than counselling.

“Just follow my lead, Amy. In for three. Hold for three. Out for three. Hold for three.”

Amy glanced at a clock on the wall. The session ended at quarter to. The clock showed ten past the hour, and she wondered if she could last through another thirty-five minutes of nonsense.

“It's the first thing we learn here. Control your breath and you control your life. Everything after is built upon this fundamental technique. Now, come on. Don’t be a Silly Billy. Try it with me. Breathe in for three.”

Amy gave in and took the breath.

“That’s it. Now, hold for three. One, two, three.”

Amy held the breath and her tongue. She wanted to tell the woman to go and jump off a bridge with all her nonsense.

“Now, out for three. One. Two. Three.”

Amy followed the instructions.

“How do you feel now?” Harriet Harris said, her question filled with expectancy.

Amy felt her skin itching and a growing anger. She couldn’t tell the woman the truth, though. She vowed she wouldn’t tell the woman anything beyond the session, as she would never return to Shangri-La Farm, not for any reason.

“A little calmer, I suppose,” Amy lied.

“Good. Good. That’s where we want to be. A calm mind is a happy mind.”

“Okay.”

“You lost Noel, when?”

The question shocked Amy. She lost any calmness she’d had, and no amount of held breaths could bring it back.

“Last year. The third of march,” she said, her voice strained.

“NIB?”

The acronym stirred up memories of the hospital and all the forms she’d had to fill out in the aftermath of Noels’ death. Words had become meaningless in the months after he’d died. All in her life had atrophied, including her comprehension.

“Excuse me?”

“It was a new born infant death, yes? Did the doctors give you a definitive cause?”

The question felt like a barb sticking in Amy’s chest. She’d come here for help with her grief, not to experience more pain.

“No.”

Amy shook her heavy head as she recalled the terrible conversations she’d had with doctors in the aftermath. They’d had no certainty to give her considering Noel’s death, only possibilities, only educated and not-so educated guesses.

“It’s often the way with NIDs. So sad. So very sad. We have all the technology and science at our fingertips, but the mystery of life and death continues. That is what bothers us the most, isn’t it, Amy? Not knowing? Not having the big question answered?”

“The big question?”

A sympathetic smile parted Harriet Harris’ lips. “Why,” she stated.

Amy hated the woman for her correctness and hated her more as she continued to talk.

“Why me? Why now? Why my little boy when there are so many others out there who deserve it? Why? Why? Why?” Harriet Harris said.

“Why,” Amy mouthed numbly in agreement.

“It’s the wrong question, of course. A question that leads us to places we have a hard time returning from.”

“What question should I ask then?” Amy said, her voice prickly with annoyance.

Harriet Harris smiled a big, gleeful smile. “You shouldn’t.”

“What?”

“There is no question to be asked. The sooner you come to understand that, the quicker you’ll heal.”

“I shouldn’t ask why my son died? Is that what you’re telling me?”

Harriet Harris breathed. Three in, three held, three out, before she spoke again. “I feel you’re in a dark place. Let’s take you from there and to a calmer place. Just breathe. In through the nose for three. Hold it for three. Let it out for three.”

Amy wrung her hands in her lap. The next time she saw Dr Holt, she’d tell him just what she thought of his ‘counsellor’. She wouldn’t be calm about it either.

“You must breathe, Amy. To breathe is to centre yourself with the world. After me. In through the nose for three…”

Amy fought the urge to stand up and walk out. Breathing wouldn’t help. A cure for grief didn’t exist in a held breath, and it certainly couldn’t help explain her phantom morning sickness or the man in the long coat waiting at her back door.

“I’m sorry, Miss Harris, but I came here because I’m dealing with…I came here because…” She had no way to phrase it that didn’t make her sound crazy.

“A phantom,” Harriet Harris said, nodding to herself as if certain of her diagnosis.

“What did you say?”

Harriet Harris unfolded herself from the couch and walked to a roll-top desk in the corner of the room. She pulled the top open to reveal a mess of papers and trinkets beneath.

In the desk a row of tiny pigeon-holes housed a zoo of broken objects; a stitched fox with no tail, a porcelain owl with only one eye and one ear, a plastic horse jumping a fence, its rider’s legs still attached but the torso missing.

From within the chaos, Harriet Harris pulled out a white sheet marked on its rear by a splatter of melted green candle wax.

“Here we go!” she said, with some relief.

She produced a pair of tiny, round glasses from a pocket in the patchwork skirt and perched them on the end of her nose.

“Are you still feeling the sickness in the mornings?” she asked.

Does she have that written down on the paper? Did Dr Holt give her my medical history? Amy wondered.

“Yes, but what has that got to do with—” Amy said.

“Phantom pregnancy. Yes. That’s the ticket. Pseudocyesis is the medical term, although I fear I’m butchering the pronunciation.”

“My doctor said as much, yes, but—”

“I’ve never come across it first-hand, but I’ve heard stories before,” Harriet Harris said, once again folding back into the tattered chair. She wagged the paper like proof.

“Stories?”

“Does your sickness feel like the morning sickness you experienced during your pregnancy with Noel?”

“Yes, but these stories, what are they? What stories?”

“How long?”

“What?”

“How long have you been experiencing the morning sickness?”

“I don’t see how—”

“Are you at the end of your first trimester yet?” She squinted through her tiny round glasses at the piece of paper.

“I’m not pregnant. Didn’t the doctor tell you that? It’s a phantom pregnancy, or it might be...”

“You feel it though. You feel pregnant. Yes? We’ll work under that assumption for now.”

Amy had to think about it. Other than the sickness in the morning, the other symptoms of a pregnancy hadn’t yet plagued her. She’d not experienced bloating or mood swings, only a slight craving for liquorice like she’d had carrying Noel. She hoped to be cured before any of those phantom symptoms increased.

“I’m sick every morning. That’s it. It’s like morning sickness, but I know it can’t be. I know I’m not actually pregnant.”

“How long?”

“How long have I been feeling sick?”

Harriet Harris nodded.

Amy counted the weeks in her mind. The weeks became months – November, December, January.

“A few weeks short of three months,” she said.

“What was the pattern of your morning sickness with Noel? Can you remember?”

“Yes. It lasted about twelve weeks, just like the doctor said it would. I was fine after that.”

Harriet Harris nodded as though she had all the answers.

“Does the sickness feel worse this time around, less, the same?”

There was no ‘this time’ Amy wanted to tell her.

“It feels…different.”

“Are you taking anything for it? Any kind of medication? Have you been prescribed any anti-nausea medication?”

Dr Holt hadn’t prescribed anything during her pregnancy with Noel, and he’d suggested nothing this time around.

“No.”

“Well then, lets treat that first, shall we? We’ll get that body in a good place, then we’ll start in on solving the rest.”

Amy couldn’t follow the grief counsellor’s logic. She couldn’t follow much of what was being said.

“I’ll be right back,” Harriet Harris said.

A few minutes later she returned with what looked a like a wicker Christmas hamper and lay it down on the floor. She squatted down, then opened it up to reveal a dozen bottles topped with wax paper and tied off with rough-hewn string, resting on a bed of green satin. Each bottle had a handwritten label — Mint, Ginger, Lemon, Fennel, Curry, Bael, Pennyroyal.

“I’d recommend bael myself. But from your symptoms, Pennyroyal tea might be the ticket. Only a little, mind you. If you were actually pregnant that stuff would certainly be a bad idea.” Harriet Harris ran her hands over the bottles like a perfume counter assistant demonstrating a new range. “Nature provides, but nature doesn’t provide us with sense a lot of the time.”

Amy’s confusion grew. The grief counsellor sounded like a presenter on a TV shopping channel trying to flog cheap jewellery.

“What’s this for?” Amy asked.

Harriet Harris picked up the bottle marked ‘Bael’. She held it in the palm of one hand, while giving out a speech as rehearsed as any of those given by the hosts on the shopping channels.

“Bael consists of the juice of hundred percent organically grown wood apple. Not only is it used as a cure for morning sickness, but also works on constipation. Take one teaspoon a day with boiled rice or drink two to three times a day. It comes in this thirty-millilitre bottle, but I can offer the larger sizes at a discount if you want to buy more than one at —”

“You want me to buy this?”

Harriet Harris looked hurt. “I can vouch for it. The best cure I know for your sickness is—”

“I’m not sick, though. Not really.”

“But, Amy, you feel that way. This will most certainly help with that feeling. I guarantee it. If not, we can try the Pennyroyal tea and see how that goes.”

Amy checked the clock on the wall. Thirty more minutes until the session ended.

She could handle thirty minutes if she never had to return.

“How much?” she asked.

“Thirty-five pounds for the small bottle, but I can offer you the medium-sized at forty pounds if you buy more than three, and the large bottle at eighty if you buy four. If you buy ten or more, I can give you a thirty-percent discount on the lot.”

All pretences of hippy love had disappeared, taken over by her rehearsed sales pitch.

What a con, Amy thought. How could Dr Holt have recommended such a woman?

She didn’t know, but she knew she’d wouldn’t return to Shangri-La Farm to be conned again.

Amy bought the smallest bottle of bael and smiled her way through another thirty minutes of held breaths and hippy affirmations. At the end she agreed to a hug and another session the following week, one she would cancel as soon as she’d cleared Shangri-La Farm and the crazy woman that lived there.

Harriet Harris hugged her. The smell of cinnamon lingered in the air. “We’ll fix you up yet. Don’t you worry,” she said by way of goodbye. “See you next time.”

There’ll be no next time, Amy thought, a big smile on her face.

“Goodbye,” she said.

The crow, Brigid, had something to say by way of a goodbye too.

“Go fuck yourself!” she said.

9

With February a few days away, the morning sickness finally found an end, and it had nothing to do with Harriet Harris’ bottle of expensive nonsense.

Amy woke feeling queasy. The bed beneath her felt like a slowly deflating lifeboat on a choppy sea. The waves pushed her up only to bring her back down again with a sickening tremor.

If I just lie here and don’t move it’ll pass, she told herself. It must pass. Five more minutes. Just five more minutes.

It didn’t pass.

The waves threw her from the bed and into the bathroom. She clung to the rim of the toilet as tightly as the sweat dampened pyjama top to her skin.

Outside, the running couple’s dog, Colonel, barked at nothing, but sounded as though under attack.

Shut up! she thought. Stop barking, you stupid bloody mutt!

The dog bothered her. She’d managed on most other mornings to put the noisy animal out of her mind. That morning every bark churned her stomach. Every loud yelp brought out new sweats across her forehead.

I swear if I ever get my hands on that bloody mutt, I’ll wring its—

A full body spasm cut the thought dead. Amy lurched towards the toilet bowl and vomited. It felt like her whole body emptied. Twice. Three times.

She lifted her head from the toilet, tears stinging her eyes and lips. Her breath came in shallow gasps, and she shivered uncontrollably.

Done, she thought, but then she turned back to the toilet.

Amy stared into the bowl through a mist of tears and saw a black mass floating in the water beneath her.

Not floating. The black mass twitched.

Fuck!

Amy scrambled and pushed her back against the cold tiles, but she could still see the dark black shape twitching in the water like an insect caught in frost.

Fear fused her to the tiles. She turned as cold as the ceramic. She couldn’t take her eyes off the thing that lived in the bowl.

It’s not real. I can’t be real. It’s not—

Amy squeezed her burning eyes tight. She felt the hot sting of tears run down her cheeks and over her chin.

It’s not real. It’s not real. It’s not real.

It is real. It’s real, and it was living inside my stomach. Now it’s out. Now it’s out.

Now it’s gone.

She forced her eyes open.

The black shape had vanished from the toilet bowl. Only a soft brown mush of vomit floated in the water.

Where is it? Amy thought, panic setting in.

It’s not an ‘it’. I imagined it. I’m seeing things.

She searched the small confines of the bathroom anyway.

A walk-in shower cubicle, glassed in on all sides, couldn’t hide her nakedness and had no chance of hiding the dark thing. A small mirrored cabinet over the sink trapped only the reflection of the cold, empty bathroom.

I imagined it. It wasn’t real. It couldn’t be real.

Just like Noel, she thought.

She’d had the same thought on that first night in the hospital after he’d died. She’d never held her son. She’d never felt his breath on her skin. It had all felt like a bad dream. It all felt like she’d imagined it.

Now, a year and some odd months later, Noel, like the dark thing in the toilet bowl, like the dark stranger waiting at her back door, felt unreal too.

She checked the bowl again and hit the flush hard three times until the water turned blue from the toilet-rim cleaning block.

It wasn’t real. I’m just tired. Sick. It’s over with now.

She felt the sea start to calm beneath her shaking legs.

It’s over. It’s—

The waves rose up again and swallowed her.

Outside, Colonel’s bark rose in accompaniment to her heaving. She cried, not because of the sickness now, but the thoughts she couldn’t stop running through her mind.

Noel wasn’t real, but he could have been. He could have been. It’s my fault. I shouldn’t have had a child in the first place. He died because of me. This madness I’m experiencing now is probably in my blood. I must have twisted DNA. I have a time bomb in my genetic code, and it went off in my baby boy moments after his birth.

My fault. My fault. My—

Dry heaves soon robbed her of the self-pity. When they had passed, she lay her head on the bathroom wall. Time unwound under the cool touch of the tile.

Another morning in another bathroom in another time. Amy’s bump had not yet begun to show, but she’d felt the swelling of life in her belly and had started to walk in a way to compensate for what would come. Owen had called it a ‘duck walk’, but she felt more like a mother goose, confident in her waddle, proud of herself, ready to honk and snap if anybody threatened the child she carried.

The last morning of her sickness she’d vomited, cried, and laid her head on the tiles until stillness came over her. In that stillness she’d known the worst had passed, but it was a lie. She would meet her worst a few months in the future, in a hospital with her boy’s tiny heart stopped in his chest.

Now the stillness returned, and Amy couldn’t help think worse waited for her around the next corner. But what?

Colonel barked and Amy snapped.

She forced herself from the cold comfort of the tiles and threw open the small bathroom window. “If you don’t shut that bloody mutt up, I’ll wring its neck! Do you hear me? I’ll wring its bloody neck!” she shouted.

Nobody heard her, and if they did, they didn’t reply. A bird, out of season, sang an unusually happy song in a tree. Somewhere, a car horn honked once and then stopped as if thinking better of making a noise so early. Colonel barked, not caring who slept.

Amy slammed the window shut. Her anger started to fade along with her sickness, but a residue of it stuck to her like her dampened pyjamas. She showered hoping to get rid of it.

That night, a thought caught her as she sat eating a microwaveable curry and blank-watched a TV reality show.

I really am pregnant.

The thought had come to her before, a soft and doubtful whisper. The same whisper had driven her to Dr Holt and the chemist’s.

I really am pregnant.

A familiar excitement lived beneath the whisper. As familiar as the stillness and the cold touch of bathroom tiles. The same voice had whispered to her about the future with Noel. A future with a husband and a house.

I’m not pregnant, Amy had to remind herself. It’s a phantom. That’s all. The doctor gave it a name: pseudocyesis.

The morning sickness was a phantom too, she had to believe. Nothing real grew inside her, too many tests had proven that. No white egg of a tumour pressing down, or a black tar cancer eating away from within, not even a weakened heart unable to keep up its rhythm. A phantom named grief had gestated inside her, sickening body and mind.

What about the dark thing I puked up? she thought. What about the dark man that waited at the back door? What about...

Not real, she told herself. None of it. I’m not pregnant, and none of that is real either.

On the TV, a man with a fake smile, fake tan, and fake hair, faked his tears. Two shiny TV hosts laughed awkwardly. The commercials shouted for attention. A loud, bright distraction from her thoughts. Live life to the fullest, they said. Drink this, drive that, smile, and win!

I’m not pregnant, Amy thought, and carried the thought to bed with her where she fell into a deep, dreamless sleep.

At three in the morning, the wind woke her.

A howling gale rattled the doors and windows as if a jilted spouse returning home. It gripped the skeleton hands of the single oak and gave them a bully’s shake. Under the wail and the moan, Colonel barked, then whimpered as if the wind had chastised him.

On Blakely Close, the lights went out one by one.

Amy scrambled across the bed, her hands blindly brushing book, lamp, pen, and notebook, before she found her phone on the bedside table. She yanked, but an umbilical of charging cable kept it tethered to the wall socket.

The wind howled.

The dog whimpered.

Amy fumbled in the dark to cut the umbilical with her fingers. It held fast, rigid, daring her to panic.

It won the dare.

Her hands shaking, Amy guided her thumb to the power button on the side of the phone and held it down.

The phone mistook her urgency for a wish to restart, and it did so with a loud beep.

The wind howled.

The dog whimpered.

The last of the street lights popped like balloons. Night seeped into the bedroom from every corner, threatening to drown her. She found herself adrift again, but not on a seasick ocean. This time she sat on a raft slowly sinking into black tar.

Comeoncomeoncomon.

Amy’s thumb hovered over the power button, a self-destructive charge of electric fear in the loops and swirls of her fingers wanting to push down again and speed things up. She resisted the magnet, pulling her thumb far enough away it felt like it might snap off.

Comeoncomeoncomon.

The wind howled.

The dog whimpered.

The robot beeped.

A green robot appeared on the screen. It beeped a couple of times, its mouth opening and closing like a door shutter. At the bottom of the screen words appeared — WELCOME BACK.

I didn’t leave, Amy thought.

The robot beeped. Its shuttered mouth spoke silent words. A swirl of dots appeared beneath, turning, turning, marking the passage of time in an ancient, undecipherable language. How long remained and how long had passed only those who could decipher its hieroglyphics might guess at.

Comeoncomeoncomon.

The wind howled.

The dog whimpered.

The robot beeped.

The screen bloomed brightly to life, and Amy hit the camera button on the front of the phone accidentally with her thumb. A blinding flash of light whitewashed the room and burned, briefly, an impossible shadow onto the wall.

At the sight of it, Amy screamed and dropped the phone. It lay at the foot of the bed, freezing the bed in blue light.

She’d seen her shadow in the flash. Now the light had gone and with it the impossible shape she’d seen. But she couldn’t get it out of her mind.

I’m imagining it. It’s not real.

Just like the black thing in the toilet, and the dark man waiting at the back door, just like...just like...

She crawled across the thin sheet of iced bedding and peered over the edge.

The phone shined up at her from the black tar shadows beneath.

The wind howled.

The dog whimpered.

The phone rang.

A call at three in the morning? Who calls at three in the morning? Amy thought.

Nobody.

Except…when somebody has died.

Owen? One of the family? Mum? Dad?

Amy peered down at the phone. UNKNOWN NUMBER, and beside it the template silhouette of a man. A Dark Nobody.

The wind howled.

The dog whimpered.

The phone rang.

Amy couldn’t ignore it. She reached down from the edge of the bed and scooped up the phone from the black. She felt the sticky night cling to her hands, but the feeling passed as she swiped the green call button and placed the phone at her ear.

“Hello?” she said.

A familiar silence answered her. She’d met it first in the darkness of another blackout as it waited on her back doorstep. It was the silence of the night when you woke from a nightmare and wondered if the dream had ended. The silence of a Dark Nobody, broad shouldered and tall.

The Dark Nobody spoke in a language as indecipherable as the spinning dots on the front of the phone, in a tone as mute as the shutter-mouthed green robot. He spoke, but did not speak of things she didn’t want to hear, of things she didn’t want to think about, of shadows and phantoms.

Amy’s heart sputtered. She threw the phone as if it was a spider that had landed on her hand.

It hit the wall, flipped, and landed on its back. The silhouette of the Dark Nobody looked out at her accusingly from the front. The light from the screen grabbed her and cast an impossible shadow on the wall for the second time that night.

Amy looked, but didn’t want to see.

She stepped off the end of the bed, and the shadow on the wall stood to mirror her.

A pregnant shadow.

The 2nd Trimester

10

February snapped its icy fingers, and Blakely Close froze at the sound. On the street, the lonely oak gave up on ever feeling summer again, its skeleton limbs hanging limply in defeat. The running couple continued to run on pavement they’d salted for grip, their whimpering dog dragged behind them. Inside the old woman’s house, her corgis decorated the front window like fuzzy ornaments as she hibernated in the back room. Only the cat kept its schedule, but it found the shadows more quickly with each passing evening.

As the neighbourhood froze, Amy turned to the mirror as her only confidant. The mirror told the truth. The mirror soothed her fearful thoughts.

In the mirror a woman in her early 30s stared back. A woman with bright young eyes and no crow’s feet. In the mirror the woman had a flat stomach with no sign of a bump.

In shadow the bump showed. In shadow a pregnant Amy stood.

She’d tried to reconcile it as a trick of the light. Part of a long, impossible nightmare she would eventually wake from. These thoughts kept her sanity in check but couldn’t keep her from angling lamps to cast the shadow puppet theatre of herself on the walls. It couldn’t stop her from marvelling at what the shadow showed, but the mirror couldn’t reflect.

The shadow showed a pregnant woman.

Some nights, Amy would close her eyes and run her hands over the phantom rise of her stomach, only to jerk them away in shock as she realised her error. No chance of a pregnancy, she’d remind herself, but she felt that way. She felt her body growing. She felt a familiar dull ache in her lower back, the same as during her pregnancy with Noel.

History repeated, and a craving for liquorice laces took her over halfway through the month. She’d filled one kitchen drawer full of the long, black sticky sweets. She’d sneaked them into work and come back one too many times from lunch with her lips blackened. Zoe had made a joke about it, but Amy wasn’t listening. The cravings beat any sense of public propriety.

History repeated, and the shadow grew large enough for Amy to book another appointment with Dr Holt. But a secret desire had started to grow in her as strong as her hunger for liquorice.

She wanted the baby.

A delusion couldn’t become a reality, but afternoons in the library she entertained fantasies of immaculate conceptions. She looked for examples online and found them, to her surprise. Seventy species of vertebrates reproduced on occasion without the need for a male. Parthenogenesis occurred in sharks, Komodo dragons, and snakes. If one animal could do it, why not another?

Why not me? she thought.

Because this isn’t immaculate, she chided herself. This is all in my brain. It has a name too: pseudocyesis. I know what it is. I know this isn’t real.

Yet…

Sometimes she imagined Noel growing inside her again. She allowed herself to believe a tender and shy God had brought him back. She imagined this God stood silently outside doors in the middle of the blackened night.

“Anybody home?” Zoe would say, waving her tanned hands before Amy’s face to bring her back from her daydreams.

An empty home waited, Amy knew. Lonely and filled with silences for her return.

“I drifted off, sorry,” Amy would answer.

“You’ve drifted far enough this week you could make it to France and back.”

Amy never had a comeback to the quip. She shrugged and got on with work, but she’d drift again out in to the library between the Dantes and DuMauriers, where she imagined the secret birth of her shadow child. A home birth with the howling wind as midwife, and a silent stranger beside her bed.

Her shy God waited as he had that first night of the blackout. He’d answered her unspoken prayer that night, breathed life into her. Later, he’d returned to check up on his gift. He’d called her on the phone, spoke without speaking, and she’d heard without the need to listen. He’d—

She walked the stacks in two circles, the books still on her trolley. Dante and DuMaurier next to Kafka and King, Steinbeck next to...Asterix?

She couldn’t figure out why the child’s book had found a place amongst the others. She turned it over in her hand.

Asterix, the tiny hero who gained his strength from a magic potion, stood at the front of a boat on choppy seas. Obelix, his large companion, stood behind.

She’d felt just as large as Obelix when she’d carried Noel. She felt that weight now with the shadow pregnancy. Before too long she’d start walking like a mother goose all the time, and it worried her.

So far, the shadow’s growth had affected her in minor ways: a lack of concentration at work, a strange craving for liquorice, but what might follow? She couldn’t walk around like a goose without a pound of extra weight on her body. No way she could convince anybody of her condition without something to show. You couldn’t prove a phantom existed.

Or could you?

Excited by a crazy idea, Amy jogged to the children’s section and left her trolley behind.

With no school classes on Wednesday afternoon, she had the section to herself. Amy replaced the Asterix book and retreated to the opposite side of the shelves, out of sight of Zoe.

I’ll catch my shadow, she thought. If I can catch the shadow, I can show the shadow, and if I can show the shadow, then it’ll be real.

She thought of the shadow as Noel now. An impossible wish granted by a shy God. Impossible, but sharks and Komodo dragons did the impossible too. If she caught her shadow, then the impossible would surely become the possible. Wouldn’t it?

Amy fished her phone out of her jeans. Her excited fingers slipping and sliding over the screen, she tapped at the torch app.

An LED light on the back of the phone blinked and stared brightly out at the world as Amy wedged the device between The Iron Man and the Iron Woman on a shelf.

She turned to find her shadow, but the bright winter sun gave too much competition to the phone’s light. Her shadow on the wall wavered as if a reflection in the muddied waters of a pond.

I’ll have to wait for the sun to go down or find another room. I’ll film my shadow and trap it that way. Then I’ll show Zoe. After Zoe, the doctor, after the doctor...everyone!

Snatching the phone, she turned towards the greater library beyond. After a few hurried steps, she stopped dead.

The winter sun touched the lattice across a window and dropped a black ladder of shadows over her. Her own shadow climbed up after rung by rung.

A lying shadow. A horrible, lying shadow.

Amy broke free. She turned enough to see what lie lurked behind. She held her breath.

A slim shadow climbed the ladder behind her. It had no weight to it. It had no hint of a bump or a bulge.

Terrified, she hurried from the children’s section and caught her breath only when she saw Zoe again.

The slim shadow followed.

11

At night the shadow grew. In day, it shrank away.

Amy found the pattern accidentally after another night of cheap wine, tears, and a knocked over lamp.

The lamp rolled, as did she, across the living room floor until they tangled in the corner. She fought the tangle at first, but soon enough the absurdity of the situation and a wine buzz left her giggling.

Her maddened laugh filled the empty living room. A laugh fit to bounce of padded walls and inside locked attics. Tears soon followed.

Grief had played a dirty trick on her. Loss had twisted her mind. Shadows didn’t grow. Babies didn’t develop in secret, she knew. Gods didn’t exist, shy or otherwise.

Still gripped by the tangle of lamp cord, Amy spied her shadow on the ceiling. A heavy shadow wrapped in the creeping vine of lamplight cord, bulging at the centre. A hill now, not a bump.

She closed her eyes and opened them again, hoping at once for the hill to vanish and for it to remain.

It remained.

She twisted, and the shadow bump followed. She thrust her hips upwards, and the bump grew with her. She ran her shadowed hands across her shadowed self and felt the cold rise of an impossible wish made possible.

I’ve gone mad, she thought, and madness is cold to touch.

She felt a heat too. The same deep and crackling flame she’d felt while carrying Noel.

It flickered again now.

It crackled.

It kicked.

Amy’s hand jerked up as if stung.

She stared at her stomach. It had no hint of bump or bulge to it. Nothing to it, but the quickened rise and fall of flesh that followed fear.

From stomach to shadowed stomach, Amy’s eyes flitted. From floor to ceiling and back again, she watched carefully for the kick to repeat.

Her stomach rose and fell, in shadow and out, with an uninterrupted rhythm.

Amy risked a trembling hand to trace the shadowed bump. She held it as a dowsing rod to strike a rich and hidden current.

And hoped to strike nothing at all.

She yanked her hand away before she felt another kick, untangled the lamp, and turned off the lights, but she couldn’t turn off the fear.

In the days that followed, Amy shunned the light as best she could. But nobody could successfully run from their shadow, and her shadow caught up every time.

It paced her in the windows of shops on the high street as she walked by. It waited behind her at the front door when she returned home. It rode beside her in the car.

Slim in day and heavy after dark. The shadow grew, but only at night.

She’d blamed the cheap wine and tossed out the last bottle, vowing never to buy another. But sobriety couldn’t rid her of the shadow’s truth.

At night the shadow grew. In day, it shrank away.

An old idea returned with her sobriety. She would catch the shadow and show it to the world. She would prove her madness wrong or right, finally.

12

“What are you doing with that thing, Amy?” Zoe said.

The plastic Reading Owl cradled in her arms like a new puppy, Amy stopped at the double doors to the library. “It needs fixing,” she lied.

“It’s broken?”

“Yeah.”

“How?”

Amy didn’t know the first, or the last thing about how the owl worked, only that it worked. After two unsuccessful tries with the webcam on her laptop and the weak camera in her phone, the owl would have to do.

“The cable,” Amy said, speaking the first word that came to mind.

“Which cable? The USB one? Didn’t we get a spare with the box? I’m sure we did. I’ll go check.”

“No need.”

“It’s okay. It’ll take me a minute.”

“Uh…okay.”

Amy didn’t wait a minute for Zoe to return. Fear and hope pushed her from the library and rushing back to the house on Blakely Close, where she perched the owl on a stack of brown books facing a blank wall in the living room.

The owl would witness impartially, she thought. Madness couldn’t trick it one way or another.

Curtains drawn, lamps arranged on the floor, and her laptop ready with a program dedicated to the recording of the owl’s webcam eye footage, Amy stepped before the light.

The owl saw. The owl witnessed. The laptop screen mirrored her slim shadow with no bump and no pregnancy in sight.

A wave of relief and disappointment hit her. Replaced in the blink of an eye by fear.

The blink of an owl’s eye.

Amy caught the motion and wondered if she’d ever seen it happen in the library. She couldn’t account for the flicker of plastic lids as they shut and opened again. No instruction in the manual suggested it had such animation.

The owl doesn’t blink, she told herself. It can’t blink. Why would it blink?

It blinked again, and in the time between one blink and the next the shadow changed.

Amy turned from screen to wall and back again, moving quicker and quicker as if to catch the reality out and find it false under her stare. But the shadow remained the same on the wall and the laptop screen. The shadow showed the rise in her stomach, and the owl had witnessed it all.

I’ll show them. I have proof now.

Doubt cast a shadow all its own.

Proof of what? Am I pregnant? Why me? Why did the shy God answer my prayer? Why can I only see this at night?

Why?

It wasn’t her own voice that asked the question, but that of the hippy counsellor, Harriet Harris.

She couldn’t answer the question, Amy thought. She didn’t think there was an answer. So, what chance do I have?

Amy stared at the shadow again, and a book from the library came to mind. It was a tale of ancient gods waiting in the darkness for a vessel to hasten their return. It seemed the worst kind of fiction, nothing more than childish nonsense, but she’d imagined her own God in the darkness. A shy God returning Noel to her, which wasn’t much different than the premise of that book.

Amy stared at her pregnant shadow on the wall.

What if it’s not Noel? she thought. What if this God is like one of those in the cheap horror novels? What if he put something else in me?

Like what?

Like that thing I puked up.

It wasn’t real.

Is this real? Am I real? Am I mad?

Her throat crackled as she tried to swallow the thought.

The owl’s eyes clicked shut, and Amy focused on the its plastic head, waiting, counting heartbeats in her head.

Am I mad?

Is this real?

The eyes opened.

On the laptop screen she saw what the owl saw and stifled a scream.

13

Amy stared at the laptop. A bright silver sheen had fallen over the screen, showing her body beneath like an X-Ray negative. A familiar shadow marked the centre of her stomach.

A child.

Can’t be.

It is. It is.

A baby. No doubt in her mind she was staring at a baby, its tiny hand holding a tiny thumb towards the tiny lips of a much larger head. If it had stopped there, she might have felt a moment of joy, but this child had a deformation in its silhouette. The shadow child sprouted dark spiked wings from the shoulders like a bat.

“Jesus,” she mouthed, the word lost on her lips.

The child slithered within her stomach. It turned a circle, and all the while its dark little wings beat a frantic rhythm. Amy thought of flies caught in spilled cola, mindlessly flapping as they tried to escape.

The more she stared, the more the child took on the aspect of an insect to her. It wasn’t boy or girl, not a son nor a daughter, but a grub in a cocoon.

It can’t be.

It was.

The wings flapped. Amy ran a trembling hand over her stomach. Nothing kicked beneath the touch.

Why can’t I feel it? she thought.

Because it’s not real. It’s not real!

It is.

Amy hit the space key on the laptop to stop the recording.

She had her proof now. Nobody could deny the truth the owl had witnessed…except her. She wished to wake from the nightmare. She wished for time to move backward. She wished she’d never heard the wind howl or sensed the presence of the dark visitor at her back door.

The mirror image held her like the fly in the sticky cola.

Impossible.

The thought ran through her mind repeatedly, until it became a meaningless jumble of words.

Impossibleimpossibleimpossibleimpossibleimpossible.

Amy reached with trembling fingers to touch the screen, expecting at any moment to lose her fingers in the silver shine.

Not water, but as cold as a winter pond to the touch. A chill ran through her bones and up to her shoulders.

She ran her fingers away from the shadow child and found herself on the screen, her fingers warming at the touch.

Warm.

Cold.

Amy pushed her fingers from her outline to the shadow insect foetus. From the woman to the child. From the crazed to the creature.

Warm.

Cold.

Back and forth her fingers touched to find the truth. Her mind followed, back and forth, hot to cold, woman to child, crazed to creature. Mad not mad. Sane, insane.

Sane, insane. Sane, insane. In-sane. In. Sane.

Amy drew her hand back slowly from the screen as if the shadow child might leap out and bite her hand.

It’s real. It’s real.

Sane.

In-sane.

In.

Sane. Sane. Sane.

An insane thought took her over.

It can’t exist if I erase it off the laptop. No video, no proof. No proof, no child. No child, no madness.

The shadow flapped its wings as if to disagree. Amy felt the rough edge of dark leather against the inside of her stomach. She fought the urge to vomit.

Erase the footage. Erase it and its gone!

Amy jabbed at the [ key to bring the recorded video back to the start. Her fingers trembled on the laptop trackpad as she dragged the cursor across all the darkness and the light. She hit the DEL key repeatedly and—

Nothing happened. No matter what she did, the footage remained.

Amy stared blankly at the screen, until she noticed the tiny lock icon to the left of the video timeline sat in the ‘locked’ position.

I must have hit it accidentally, she told herself. Jesus! What am I doing?

Hope spurred her hand, and she ran the cursor back across the timeline towards the lock/unlock icon. In her rush she clicked on the play button, and the screen showed the shadowed self again.

Amy froze.

Her slim and slender self played back before her without a hint of bump or bulge.

No shadow lived within.

No child with dark wings.

No child at all.

14

“I need to see Dr Holt,” Amy said, “now.”

It felt like an age since she’d slammed the laptop lid shut and retreated to her bedroom. She’d hidden beneath the sheets like a child trying to escape thunder and lightning, but a storm had raged inside her all night, and sleep had come slowly and hard. Two hours after waking, Amy gathered the courage to snatch her phone from the bedside table and sneaked it under the covers to make a call to the local doctor’s office.

“I’m sorry, but we have no appointments available today. The earliest I can arrange an appointment is a…week from now, Miss Bennington, on Friday. Would you like me to schedule an appointment for you?” The receptionist spoke with a robotic friendliness.

“I need to see him today,” Amy said.

“I’m sorry, but that’s not possible. He’s all booked up for the next week. You could call back in the morning, between eight and nine, to see if we have any cancellations.”

“What about today? Have there been any cancellations today?”

“Sorry, no.”

“What if it’s an emergency?” she said.

“Oh.” Keys tapped at the other end. “Have you phoned the emergency services?”

“What? No.”

“Are you physically injured? Is there someone there with you who can stay until an ambulance arrives?”

The stilted way in which she spoke, convinced Amy the woman had a script before her.

“No, it’s not that kind of emergency. I need to see Dr Holt. He’s my doctor. It’s urgent.”

“It’s not an emergency emergency?”

Amy gritted her teeth. “No. Please, can you put me through to him?”

“I’m sorry, but that’s not possible.”

“Can you give me his number then?” She knew the question would receive a negative answer, but her fear didn’t care about that.

“I’m sorry, but that’s not possible.”

Are you a fucking computer? Amy thought.

“Are you telling me I’ll have to wait until next Friday to see him?” Amy said.

The woman tapped at keys. “He’s booked through until next Friday, yes. Would you like me to schedule you an appointment for then?”

If it was an emergency, I’d probably have died by now if I had to deal with this woman, Amy thought, but she stifled her anger and tried one last time to get through to the doctor.

“Does he have a lunch hour?” she asked.

“Excuse me?”

“Maybe I can catch him then. Can you tell me when he’s due to go for lunch?”

She heard the reply inside her head before the woman spoke.

I’m sorry, but that’s not possible.

“I’m sorry, but that’s not possible.”

“Why not?”

“Err...it’s just not possible, that’s all.”

“Thought so,” Amy mumbled.

“What was that?”

“Nothing.”

“Is there anything else I can help you with?”

You haven’t done anything for me yet, Amy thought.

“No. I’ll phone back,” she said.

“Between eight and nine in the morning is the best time.”

“Yes,” Amy said, then disconnected the call.

She stared at the front of her phone. A whole day and a night stretched out until she could phone again. The day she might survive, but she didn’t want to risk another night.

Slowly, Amy pulled back the covers that had protected her from the world and its shadows.

The blue tide of pre-dawn had washed away under the light of the morning sun. The shadows formed softly and none large enough to hide a silent God or trace the bloated form of a pregnant woman.

A small sense of relief came to her. The night and all its horrors seemed far away and dreamlike now. She could make it through the day. She could make it until the night, but she didn’t want to do either. Amy only needed to make it through until lunch.

The doctor’s lunch.

What am I going to do if I find him anyway? she thought as she scrambled into jogging bottoms and a hooded top, keeping her eyes averted from any shadows that might form around her. He can’t stop this madness. He’ll nod and tell me it’s all in my head. Not like he’s going to give me a prescription that’ll make it all better.

No, he won’t give me a prescription, but he can make me an appointment. Preferably one with a therapist who isn’t trying to flog me herbal crap

The hopeful thought spurred her on through the rest of the morning. It helped her as she phoned in sick to work.

“I can’t make it in today, Zoe. I’m feeling terrible.”

“Oh, honey. I’m so sad to hear that. Anything I can do for you? Can I drop off anything on my dinner hour?”

Zoe spoke with a genuine concern, and Amy felt a momentary pang of guilt until she remembered the Mills & Boon display she’d had to erect in the library at Zoe’s request.

“I’ll be fine. It’s the piles. They’re flaring up again.”

Along with my madness.

Zoe swallowed hard at the other end. “Oh,” she said.

“Maybe you could get me a refill on my prescription if I run out?”

“Oh...err...yes, possibly, but...I...”

“I’ll phone you.”

“Err...yes, you do that. Stay well, Amy.”

“Thanks.”

A momentary spike of triumph gave way quickly to guilt again.

I shouldn’t be so mean to her. It’s not her fault she’s so squeamish. It’s not her fault she likes terrible books.

Amy shrugged off most of the guilt by eleven, and stood at the door looking out through frosted glass onto Blakely Close.

The blurred oak tree leaned over the street like a mother beckoning a child into a hug. The cat walked the hedge, stopped dead in a topiary pose, then broke free to walk on. The running couple’s dog, Colonel, barked wildly at nothing at all.

Amy held her breath as if about to plunge into water, then opened the door on the world.

She stepped out, and the crisp morning air pinched the held breath from her cheeks.

Not so bad now, she thought. It’s not so bad now the sun is up.

And the night before not so real any longer. Not so real.

Did I dream it? Amy began to wonder. Did it all come to me in a vivid dream?

Dream or reality, she needed a fix. Only the doctor could help her now, and she wouldn’t face another night without some reassurance.

Shadows followed and shadows formed all around her as she drove to the doctor’s surgery, but none of a man in a long coat and none of herself bloated with an impossible child.

Amy parked the car across from the surgery and watched the private car park adjacent for the doctor to leave.

A tall spiked fence ran the length and breadth of the car park. A notice pinned to a locked gate read: PRIVATE. STAFF ONLY. Beyond she saw a black BWM, a silver Mercedes and a dark blue Audi. Doctors’ cars. A more modest collection surrounded them, probably belonging to the nurses and admin staff. Amy counted three Kias, a Citroen, and a Yamaha scooter.

What if he has his lunch in the office? she thought. What if he wasn’t in the office to begin with and that’s why the receptionist couldn’t make me an appointment? I can’t just sit here all day waiting.

She could. She knew she could. What other options were there? Stay at home all day worrying?

I could look him up online, he might have a home address somewhere, even a phone number.

Amy searched his name after the thought had come to mind. Dr Holt had a Facebook page with lots of smiling family pictures of grandchildren and happy holidays, but no personal details. Not that they were needed.

I’ll send him a private message. That’s what I’ll do. I should have done that in the first place, saved myself all the hassle.

What do I say? How do I even broach the subject?

Hi doc! I’ve gone mad. Drop me a line when you’ve got the time! :D :D

Amy shook her head at the thought, then began typing a more formal message.

She’d managed to tap in ‘Hello’ before she noticed Dr Holt exiting the surgery and walking onto the car park. Amy tossed her phone onto the passenger seat, fumbled her way out of the car and ran to the railings.

“Doctor? Doctor, it’s me, Amy. Miss Bennington.”

What if he doesn’t recognise me? He must see hundreds of patients each month. What if I’m just another appointment to him?

Dr Holt, car keys in hand, stopped and searched his surroundings with confusion over where the voice had come from.

“Over here!” Amy said, waving at him through the railings.

She felt foolish instantly and pulled her hand down mid wave.

I’m acting like a child at the school gates waving to a parent. He’ll think I’ve gone crazy.

He’s probably right.

“Amy?” Dr Holt said.

“Sorry to interrupt you. I know this is crazy and everything, but I couldn’t get an appointment so...”

So, I decided to stalk you instead.

“Are you okay?” he said, but didn’t move from his spot next to the BMW.

No. I’ve gone mad, I think. I need my head fixing, or shrunk, or whatever a real therapist does.

“Can we talk somewhere else? In private?” Amy said.

He looked at his surroundings again with confusion. “Oh, yes. Of course. Just a moment.”

Dr Holt walked to the locked gate and pushed it gently. It swung open with no resistance.

I could have just pushed the gate open instead of hanging on the railings. What a fool I am, Amy thought.

“Please,” he said, waving for her to come through the gate. “We can go into my office. Are you feeling okay?”

Never worse, she thought.

“Not good. Not good at all,” she said.

A private door led into the building at the rear of the car park. Dr Holt walked Amy through and back to his office.

“Now,” he said, after taking off his coat and turning his computer screen on, “the last I saw of you, Amy, we’d arranged a meeting with a grief counsellor, hadn’t we?”

Amy nodded.

“Did you attend the session?”

“I did.”

“I assume from your rather unconventional way of attracting my attention today that the counsellor wasn’t too helpful?”

“She tried to sell me...herbal remedies or something along those lines. Stuff in little fancy bottles. I suppose you could call that useful.”

“Oh dear,” Dr Holt said. He tapped at his keyboard, then leaned into his screen as he read through a list that appeared. “We’re usually good with vetting our therapists. If they’re on the list, it’s safe to say they’re reliable. But this one tried to sell you something, you say? Did I hear that correctly?”

“Yes.”

“Herbal remedies?”

“Yes.”

“Such as?”

“Stuff for morning sickness. I can’t remember the exact name of it now.”

His confusion turned to anger. “This woman understood your condition, didn’t she?”

“I think so.”

“Did you explain to her your situation?”

You did, doctor, not me. She had them on a sheet stained with coffee that you must have sent her, Amy thought.

“I think I did. I’m not sure now,” Amy said.

“Not that you needed to in the first instance. We would have sent her all the pertinent details as part of the process, so there’s no excuse on her part. No, this won’t do at all.” Dr Holt ran his finger over the screen and tapped at it in time with a disapproving tut. “Harriet Harris was the name of the counsellor, yes?”

“She was.”

“I’ll make a note. I’d like to have a word with this woman. I’m not keen on the kind of people who’d abuse the system for profit.”

“It’s okay,” Amy said.

“No, it’s not okay. I don’t like being made a fool of by such charlatans. If I had more time, I’d personally vet all the suggestions we get on the list, but I often don’t. Let me try to make amends, if you will.” Dr Holt picked up his phone from the table and swiped the screen. He jabbed at it with a thumb, twice, then lay it on the desk.

“Hello?” A soft-spoken voice asked from the speaker on the mobile phone.

“Ryan, it’s me, Jan. I’ve got you on speaker phone, and I’m here with a patient I’d like you to see. Her name is Amy Bennington.”

“Morning, Miss Bennington,” the soft-spoken man said.

Amy felt shy as she responded, “Morning.”

“She’s had the run-around of late, and I’d very much like it if you would consider taking her on as a patient. Do you have any slots free this week?”

“I’ll have to check. Just a moment.”

As the muted sounds of the man talking with a woman came from the phone, Dr Holt leaned forward and spoke in a whisper to Amy, “He’s a friend. You’ll do very well with him, I’m sure.

“Jan?” the soft-spoken man asked from the speaker phone.

“Yes.”

“I can do one o’clock tomorrow. Is your patient available then?”

“Ask her yourself. She’s sat right here, remember?” Dr Holt said, a cheeky smile on his face.

“Of course. Apologies. Miss Bennington, are you free tomorrow at one o’clock?”

Amy lost her voice. She hadn’t expected help so quickly even though she’d hoped for it. Now it had arrived she didn’t know what to say.

“Amy?” Dr Holt said.

Amy stared at the mobile phone on the desk.

“Amy? Are okay?” Dr Holt said.

“Sorry. Yes. Yes. I can make it.”

Dr Holt gave her the thumbs up. “Did you get that, Ryan?”

“Yes. One o’clock it is then. I’ll leave you to sort out the details, Jan. I’m in the office until four if you’d like to send me over anything.”

“Will do. Thanks, Ryan.”

“No need,” he said. “Miss Bennington? I’ll see you at one tomorrow.”

Amy nodded as though he could see her.

“She nodded a ‘yes’,” Dr Holt said.

“Good then. I’ll see you soon, Jan, and Miss Bennington, I’ll see you sooner.” The soft-spoken man ended the call.

Dr Holt pulled his phone back from the table and swiped at the screen once more. He placed it down on the desk near a stack of papers when he was satisfied the call had ended.

“Gifford is not a man of many words, but the ones he has are usually helpful.” Dr Holt said. “I must apologise again for sending you to that Harris woman. I don’t like making that kind of a mistake.”

“Gifford?” Amy asked.

“Ryan. Dr Gifford is the name you’ll see outside his office. Just a moment and I’ll find you the address. He’s in the city. You’re okay to drive there, aren’t you?”

“I think so.”

“Here we go,” Dr Holt said, pulling out a sheet of printed paper and handing it over to Amy. “It’s not a map as such, but it’ll work just as well. Should give you a good impression of what Gifford is capable of too. I’ll send you an email as well, to confirm.”

The sheet had the ‘About Dr Gifford’ section from Dr Gifford’s website, with his office address below. Amy skimmed through it quickly and found herself impressed by the qualifications.

A full member of the BACP (British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy) and on the accredited register of counsellors and psychotherapists compiled by BACP. Expertise in Transactional Analysis (TA), Cognitive Behaviour Therapy (CBT), Cognitive Analytic Therapy (CAT). Training in EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitisation Reprocessing).

She wasn’t sure what any of it meant, but it had to be better than the herbs and spices Harriet Harris offered.

Had to be.

15

“Good morning, Miss Bennington. Please, if you would,” Dr Gifford said, ushering Amy into his office.

He stood tall in the doorway. A man in his mid-40s with the grey at his temples indistinguishable from a barber’s fade. Amy couldn’t place his accent, except that there wasn’t much of an accent at all.

Beyond the office building, the sounds of the city had softened. A radio played, but from the bottom of what sounded like a swimming pool. Cars passed on the streets wrapped in cotton wool. An argument rose up like hot steam from a boiled kettle, then faded.

The city felt too large and Amy too small within it. She wished she’d not agreed to the meeting with the psychotherapist. She wished she’d made it sooner at the same time.

“Yes?” she said.

“This way, Miss Bennington,” he said, waving again to the office.

As Amy passed the receptionist, the woman flashed a pitying smile, then turned her attention to an Instagram feed on her phone of happy people who didn’t need any kind of pity.

Amy had imagined old leather seats and books on shelves from floor to ceiling in the room, but the office interior looked like a display room in Ikea.

A grey, L-shaped cloth couch dominated the centre of the room. A smaller companion chair sat beside in the same style. A glass coffee table, empty on the surface, nestled between.

“Please,” he gestured towards the couch. “My name is Dr Gifford. Some of my clients find it more comfortable to call me Ryan. How would you prefer to be addressed, Miss Bennington?”

“Amy, please.”

“Good. Okay then, Amy, I have some background from Dr Holt, but as this is our first session, I’d like it if we begin with some basics.”

Amy sat stiffly with both her hands in her lap. “Okay,” she said.

The basics consisted of a series of questions Amy knew Dr Holt had already answered and sent to his colleague. When did it all start? How long since the death of Noel? How long since the divorce? Had she suffered anything similar after the death? Any guilt or shame?

On and on. Amy answered with nods, stiff yeses and noes, until he asked her the question that turned her stiff all over.

“Do you believe the child you’re carrying is Noel?”

“Excuse me?”

“Do you think the child you’re pregnant with is Noel?”

“I’m not pregnant,” she said.

He nodded and wrote a note in the pad on his lap. “Yes, of course, but do you believe the child you’re carrying is Noel?”

Not a child, a shadow, Amy thought.

She felt the phantom weight across her stomach. She knew the shape and the size of the shadow within. But something in her stopped her from speaking of either.

“Sometimes,” she admitted.

Dr Gifford scribbled a note in his notebook. “Is there a pattern, do you think?”

“A pattern?”

“You don’t think of the child as Noel all the time, I assume?”

“No.”

“When these thoughts do surface, is there an accompanying mood, a set of circumstances, perhaps, in which the thoughts are more prevalent?”

“I’m not sure what you mean.”

“Well, Amy, those I treat with depression report their condition worsens during the winter months and when there’s less sunshine. They often find their symptoms heightened around certain times of the day, or during certain events. I wondered if your thoughts of pregnancy become heightened at any time or in a specific set of circumstances?

“I’m not depressed.”

“Yes, of course. I’m merely trying to establish a pattern. From there we can go about tracking your feelings and devise a plan of treatment.” He spoke like the council auditor who’d visited the library a year earlier to talk about their budget.

“Okay,” Amy said.

He tried to smile at her, but his thin lips wouldn’t stretch far enough. “So, can you tell me if there’s any specific time or circumstance in which your thoughts of pregnancy are heightened?”

She knew the answer now. At night, she thought. At night the shadow grows. In day, it shrinks away.

“At night,” she said.

He nodded and wrote another note in his pad. “Yes. You’re divorced, aren’t you?”

“I am. Does that matter?”

“Are you separated from your husband? Do you still co-habit?”

“Co-habit?”

“Do you still share the same house with your husband?”

“No, he doesn’t live with me. Why would he live with me?”

He scribbled a note in his pad, and Amy felt like the child in the classroom with a teacher writing down a bad mark on an essay.

“Did you separate amicably?”

“Yes, but I still don’t see what you’re getting at.”

“In the aftermath of a divorce, some couples choose to continue sharing a mortgage or the rent payments on a house. It’s a practical concern over finances, I know, but I had to ask.”

“Well, Owen doesn’t live with me, no.”

“How long?”

“How long?”

“How long have you been divorced?”

“A year, give or take.”

“Do you have a new partner now?”

Amy grabbed the hem of her skirt and tugged at it with annoyance. “What does that have to do with anything?”

“I’m sensing a little irritation, Amy. Is that so?”

A little? Try a lot, she thought.

“Sorry,” she said.

“Perfectly understandable, but we must achieve a level of trust in each other. You must feel comfortable here if we’re to make any progress. Agreed?”

How can I feel comfortable with my belly bloated and—

She caught herself in the thought and stiffened.

I’m not pregnant. I can’t be pregnant. I’m just…

“Okay,” Amy said.

“So, are you in a new relationship? Have you taken on a new partner since the divorce?”

“No, but I still don’t see what it has to do with anything.”

“Pardon me, I’m merely trying to establish your environmental situation. I might have gone about it a little clumsily, I admit.”

“Why?”

He scribbled a note in his pad and crossed one leg over the other, then leaned forward as he stared at her. “Isolation often triggers negative thoughts. When we have nobody to talk to, or at in some cases, we can retreat into ourselves. There’s nothing chattier than a person alone. And when we’re alone, we’re often the worst kind of company when it comes to our mental health.”

“Oh, I see.”

“Do you have any pets?”

“No.”

He made another note in his pad. “Are you active socially? Any activities? Do you take regular exercise?”

I’m as lonely as the bloody oak out on Blakely Close, she thought, and I only leave the house for work and shopping.

“Not enough,” Amy said.

“That’s one aspect I’d like us to improve as quickly as possible. Regular exercise is as important to the health of our minds as it is our bodies, I find.”

She agreed, but it was hard to get her mind and body to agree on anything these days.

“How are you sleeping?” Dr Gifford asked.

Badly, she thought, and not enough to make it feel valuable. The preceding night had lasted an eternity. She’d turned on every light in the house long before the dark arrived, then she’d retreated under the duvet like a child hiding from monsters. Sleep had found her only a few hours before her alarm went off, and she’d driven to the city after waking in a kind of haze.

“I could do with sleeping more, I think,” Amy said.

“Yes. Sleep and regular exercise are going to be major factors in your treatment, I think. We’ll start with a journal first, though.”

He placed his pad on the glass table before him and walked to his desk. A moment later he brought back an identical pad and handed it over to Amy.

She took it with confusion.

“What I’d like you to do, Amy, is note down when you have any thoughts of being pregnant, along with the time and date, if you would.”

I’ll need a hundred pads to do that, Amy thought.

“Is that necessary?” she asked.

“I believe so,” he said, as he took his seat again. “Writing down your thoughts will make it all feel more concrete. Trust me, I’ve done this with many patients before and it’s always been a help.”

“Okay.”

“What I’d like you to do is note down anything unusual before the thoughts come to mind, too. It might help us as we go forward with your treatment.”

Anything unusual? You wouldn’t believe me if I wrote all that down.

“How long?” Amy said.

“How long?”

“How long will it take until I’m...” Amy shifted uncomfortably in the seat and felt the phantom weight across her stomach more acutely than she had since entering the office. “…cured?” she said.

“Don’t think of yourself as needing a cure, Amy. Therapy is a process of helping us resolve problematic behaviours, feelings, and thoughts. You’re not ill, as such, and you’ll get to where you need to be in time. Time is what helps us heal most of all.”

How long though? she thought. A week? A month?

Nine months?

The baby will be here by then, she thought before she could stop herself.

Amy felt tears ganging up behind her eyes. “I just want to stop feeling it, that’s all. I don’t know how much longer I can cope,” she said.

“Well, you’re in the right place. We’ll have you feeling better soon enough.”

I don’t want to feel better. I want to feel normal, she thought. I want to stop jumping at shadows.

“Okay,” she said, nodding stiffly. The mob of tears had dispersed, but they loitered behind her lids waiting for an opportunity.

“I’m going to suggest a weekly session, if that’s okay with you. I’d also like to suggest hypnotherapy, if you’re willing.”

“Hypnosis?”

A gaudy book cover from the shelves of the library came to Amy’s mind. A moustached man in a top hat held a pocket watch out in front of him. Both his eyes had red swirls instead of irises.

“Don’t worry, there’ll be no pocket watches and spinning circles,” Dr Gifford said, as though he’d seen the same picture in his mind. “And I promise, I won’t make you cluck like a chicken. You can trust me.”

But can I trust myself? Amy thought.

She wasn’t sure, but she would find out soon enough.

16

“Imagine a staircase in the sky,” Dr Gifford said.

Amy sat on the grey couch and placed both hands palm down at her side as Dr Gifford had instructed. Eyes closed, she listened to his soft voice wafting across the dimly lit office.

“Can you see the staircase, Amy? What does it look like?” he asked, his voice nearing a whisper.

An image of a white escalator emerging from a bright oblong door in a night sky came to her mind.

She nodded.

“What colour is the sky?”

“It’s dark. It’s night,” she said.

“Can you make it bright? Can you imagine a sunny day?”

She concentrated, and to her surprise the dark skies peeled back like wallpaper to reveal a blue sky beneath. White clouds popped up here and there like bubbles in a bathtub.

“Okay,” Amy said.

“Do you see the bright sky now? Is it sunny?”

At his question, a sun bloomed in her imagined sky. It had the spider legs of a child’s drawing and the smile of an emoji.

“Yes,” Amy said.

“Now, Amy, I want you remember the happiest time in your life. I want you to remember where you were when you felt that feeling. Take your time. There’s no rush.”

She cast a wide net through her memories and trawled the dark waters there.

When was I last happy? she thought. I can’t even remember what it feels like.

I know what pregnancy feels like even if it is just in my mind. If he’d asked me to imagine that, it would have been easy.

She cast the net further, going back years and years until she caught the right memory in her mind.

“Think I have one,” she said.

“Okay then. Can you describe it to me?”

“It’s the summer holidays when I was ten. I’m in the park with my friends.”

“Go on. Describe what you see.”

Her memory hid behind the blur of time. Amy saw herself as a child sat on the swings, her friends occupying the seats to her left and right. Nearby was a large white Victorian manor house, repurposed as a cafe. Through a bay window four waxy shadows lost their darkness and became people.

“Our parents are in the cafe nearby watching us. The cafe used to be a Victorian manor house. It seems like it reaches right up into the sky and never stops. There’s a bay window on the side. I can see my mum and dad, Lorraine’s dad, and Sally’s mum through it. They’re having lunch together.

“Where are you?”

She watched her memory from above and saw the circle of a playground cut out from the grass. She swooped in closer and could almost smell the wood mulch they’d laid down to soften any falls. Closer still, she looked directly into the bright eyes of her younger self as she sat on the swing.

“I’m on a swing nearby. Lorraine is on the swing to my left. Sally on the right.”

“How do you feel?”

The memory tickled Amy’s stomach.

“Giggly. Excited.”

“Why?”

“It’s the first day of the summer holidays. Our parents are going to bring us ice cream soon. My mum has promised to buy me the NSync album I want.”

“Good. Can you feel anything? What about the sun? Is it warm on your face?”

Amy turned her head towards the memory of the sun. She felt its heat caress her cheeks.

“It’s very warm. A hot day.”

“And you’re happy, yes?”

She was. Back then the world had stretched out into forever like the top of the white manor house into the sky. Boys were the strange creatures a few years away from discovery. She still had a collection of dolls and semi-regularly played with them. The shadows in her life trailed behind her, not in front.

“I am,” Amy said.

“Good. Now, I’d like you to imagine that time and place at the bottom of the staircase. Can you do that for me?”

The playground appeared in a green field below the imagined white escalator. Playground apparatus sprouted like Jack-in-the-Box: swings, see-saw, slide, and roundabout. Children appeared as moving dots, their playful cries rising like lost balloons.

“I can see it.”

“Good. Now, I’d like you to start walking down towards the playground as I count backwards. With each step you’re going to feel increasingly relaxed, increasingly happy. Do you follow me?”

“I do,” Amy said.

The escalator stopped dead before her.

“Okay, then. One hundred, take a step down.”

She imagined the step and took it.

“Ninety-nine. With each step you’ll feel more relaxed, happier.”

Amy stepped, and a warmth spread through her like she’d snuggled beneath a blanket on a cold, rainy day.

“Ninety-eight. With each step you’re feeling happier, more relaxed.”

She stepped. With each step she burrowed deeper beneath the blanket. With each step she felt the giddy tickle of happiness spreading through her.

If this is hypnotism, I want more of it, she thought.

She stepped, and each step she took felt lighter, smaller. She imagined herself shrinking in height and years as she got closer and closer to the happy playground beneath.

“Thirty. By the time we reach the bottom you’ll be as happy as you’ve ever been.”

The child version of Amy had no worries beyond what member of NSync she liked the most. The child thought only of when the ice cream would arrive and how many days remained of an everlasting summer.

She stepped.

“Ten. When we reach the playground, you will be fearless.”

I am fearless, she heard inside her head. Nothing scares me.

She stepped.

“Five. Nearly there. Happier and less afraid with every step.”

She stepped.

She stopped.

A black dot appeared in the sky above her. It moved with the jerky animation of an old cartoon.

Amy felt a jagged spike of fear in her breast.

“Four. Happier. Less afraid. Nothing scares you.”

Amy stared into the sky as the black dot grew.

What is that? she thought.

“Three. You’re happy, and nothing can stop you from being happy. Nothing at all.”

Is that a bird? Amy thought.

The spot grew larger and blacker, its form becoming more defined as it got closer to her. She squinted and saw two black wings jutting out from its side.

“Two. You are unafraid. Nothing can scare you.”

The voice faded. No longer a whisper, but something that lived within a whisper, beneath it.

Nothing can scare you.

The black spot became a bird, became a crow. It circled the air above her, and with each turn and twist it painted out the blue of the sky with its black wings.

Nothing can scare you.

The words meant nothing as Amy stared into the blackened skies and watched the circling bird. Fear had stolen the warm blanket from her body, and now she shivered as the bird painted the last of the sky black.

“One. Take the last step, Amy.”

She turned from the skies towards the playground below, but it too had succumbed to darkness. The swings and the see-saw, the slide and roundabout, had sunk into the black tar with a balloon-busting pop. Then the black tar bubbled, and from its depths it spat out a new landscape.

Amy watched as Harriet Harris’ crooked house emerged from the darkness. The crow cawed excitedly in the skies above her. It sounded like the crack of thunder, and Amy jumped.

“Take the last step, Amy. Amy? Can you hear me?” His voice wasn’t a whisper now. It had the urgency of fear in it.

She turned and stared at the top of the escalator from where the voice had seemingly come.

“Hello! Hello! Can you hear me?” Amy shouted, and waved her arms at the door in the sky.

“Amy? Amy, can you hear me? This is Dr Gifford. I’d like you to come back to me now. Amy?”

“I’m here! I’m here!” she shouted.

Her pleas excited the crow. It turned ever more maddened circles in the sky above her. Its caws sounded like an air-raid siren.

“Doctor! Please! Can you hear me? Can you hear me?”

“Amy? Wake up! Amy!”

The world rumbled and shook around her.

“Amy! Wake up!”

I must get out of here, Amy thought.

It’s not real. You’re just imagining all this. Stop imagining it, and it will all go away.

Amy closed her eyes.

This doesn’t exist, she told herself. I just have to open my eyes, and I’ll be back in the doctor’s office.

The sky rumbled, and her imagined world shook.

“Amy! Wake up! Amy!” Dr Gifford shouted.

I’m not here. I just have to open my eyes, and I’ll be back in the office. All I have to do is open my eyes.

She risked one eye first, a pirate’s glance, but the blackened world remained.

If I can imagine all this into existence, I can imagine something else to take its place, she thought.

Amy gripped the sides of her dress tightly. She squeezed her eyes tight enough to feel the rumbling pressure at either side of her temples.

It’s a sunny day, she thought. It’s a sunny day and I’m ten. I’m in the park with my friends and everything is good in the world, couldn’t be better. I’m in the park and there’s mum and dad having lunch in the cafe. I’ll have ice cream soon and...and…

She opened both eyes, but the darkness remained.

“Amy! Amy!” Dr Gifford shouted from the door in the sky.

The world shook with his voice. Amy fell to one side of the white escalator, and grabbed the rubber of the rail to stop from tumbling down the last few steps into the bubbling darkness of Shangri-La Farm below.

Can’t imagine it away, she thought. I’ll run away. I’ll—

She stared at the door in the sky.

The door! If I can make it to the door—

Amy picked herself up, took a glance at the bird circling above her and the bubbling darkness behind, then broke into a run.

The first few steps came easy. Dr Gifford’s advice about every step making her happier and less fearful ran through her mind.

One, two, three, four...how many more to reach the top? A hundred coming down, so a hundred going up, she thought.

Ninety.

Eighty-nine.

The crow cawed wildly above her. Amy thought she heard anger in its call now.

Eighty.

Seventy-nine.

Seventy—

The escalator rumbled beneath her. She jerked forwards as it came to life under her feet. She looked down and saw each of its steps edged with jagged, shark-like teeth.

Don’t fall! Whatever I do, I can’t fall or it’ll eat me!

It’ll eat me!

Steadied, she started to run again, but the escalator matched her pace, then passed her in the space of a few steps. For every step Amy tried to take, the escalator carried her two steps back towards the bubbling dark.

“Amy! Amy! Wake up!” Dr Gifford shouted, his terrified plea only making her plight worse.

“Help me! Help!” she shouted, but her words were smothered by the lightning crack caw of the crow in the sky above.

It’s not real, she told herself again. It’s in my mind. It’s all just in my…

The escalator whirred angrily as it sped up beneath her floundering feet. Amy toppled backwards, and the sharp teeth of the steps bit into the back of her dress.

She reached around and pulled, but the teeth of the stairs held her in place as they carried her inevitably towards the bubbling black of Shangri-La Farm.

Amy kicked, but couldn’t free herself.

“Help,” she said, but her voice had softened in defeat. “Please, help me.”

Nobody can help me. I created this. I have to stop this.

Did I? Did I create the Dark Nobody at the back door? Did I create the pregnant shadows on the wall? Did I?

Who else?

She didn’t want to know. At that moment, madness seemed preferable to the existence of a shy God who waited in the darkness.

“Amy! Please!” Dr Gifford shouted, and the world shook again.

Amy pulled limply at her dress, defeat in her motion. The elevator would carry her all the way to the black replica of Shangri-La Farm, and she couldn’t win that fight, she knew.

But what fight would come next? What other horror waited when the escalator reached the bottom?

One step.

Two steps.

17

Amy heard the material of her dress rip as the escalator came to a chugging halt. She risked a lean forward, and her dress tore free from the bite of the steps like Velcro.

She glanced back to see the dress, blue in the world of Dr Gifford’s office, now a strip of white caught within the smiling maw of the escalator.

This isn’t a dream, she thought. In a dream I’d have woken up by now. In a dream those steps would have pulled me into the ground, no matter how hard I struggled.

In a dream...

So, what is this?

Amy glanced up the stairs towards the white door in the black sky. Dr Gifford’s worried voice wafted down from above. “Amy? Will you please wake up? Amy?”

I’m not asleep, she thought.

Not here, but up there I am. Up there I’m hypnotised or whatever it is he calls what he did to me.

There is no up. I’m lying on a couch in his office right now, whatever I might imagine in front of me.

Am I imagining this?

She wasn’t so sure as she turned to face the bubbling black of Shangri-La farm.

It looked like the place she’d visited in every way, except now it had a sticky coating of tar dumped over it. The roof of the crooked house dripped at its edges. The wicker woman stood vigil before the gates, her empty stomach a flat tyre melted under a vicious heat. The ground boiled along the drive leading towards the house.

If I’m not imagining this, why is it here? Amy thought. Why am I here?

Only one way to find out, she knew, but she didn’t want to move.

I must do something, she thought. I can’t just stand here and wait for…

The image of the Dark Nobody ran through her mind.

What if he’s here? What if he’s brought me here to—

A paranoid itch between Amy’s shoulder blades urged into action. She crept towards the gates, the sticky ground beneath pulling at her feet. She thought a few times she’d lose her shoes to the grasping black but recovered them at the last moment. All the while the itch between her shoulders grew into a burn.

He’s here. I know he’s here somewhere. And he isn’t a shy God like I thought. He’s a mischievous God. A God who plays games with people.

He’s playing games with me, the bastard!

The angry thought couldn’t counter her fear. She dared not look behind.

If I don’t see him, he isn’t real, she thought. If I don’t see him, he isn’t real. But the black lands of Shangri-La farm lay before her and they couldn’t be real, either.

Amy reached the blackened form of the wicker woman. Weighed down with the black tar, it looked like she’d bowed her weary head to an inevitable fate. The hole at her centre had shrunken too, almost filled in.

Is that me? Amy thought.

For the first time since she’d entered the blackened lands, Amy felt the weight of the phantom pregnancy.

She looked down, expecting again for feeling and figure to contradict one another, but instead her swollen belly stretched the fabric of the brilliant white dress she now wore.

She hesitantly traced the bump with her fingers.

Despite the horror surrounding her, and the insanity of the bubbling black world, an instinct as old as fear took over.

Love.

All the terror and the fear retreated momentarily in the presence of the feeling she felt for the child she carried, whether real or imagined. She’d felt it in the months when Noel had nestled within her. She’d felt that heat moments after his birth, only to have reality rob it from her.

Amy ran her fingers across her stomach, and a warm smile spread across her face.

Noel.

Her lips moved across the name, but didn’t sound it out.

Noel.

She moved her lips again, but a new sound broke her reverie.

Black wings beat in the sky above. Amy turned her head to see the crow circling a few feet above. Its glassy eyes met hers.

Go away! she thought. Get lost! I won’t let you ruin this for me!

Ruin what? I’m not pregnant. This isn’t real. It can’t be real. I’m just…

The crow twisted and turned in the sky above her head, the beating of its black wings an angry drum.

“Fuck off!” she shouted at it.

The crow tucked its wings in tight, aimed itself at Amy, and shot towards her like a black dart.

She covered her head instinctively as the bird swooped down. Amy felt a chill wind across her face as it passed over her that spread quickly down her throat, across her breast, and trickled down her stomach like melted ice.

She felt something snap within her. She stared at where the rise of her stomach had stretched the white dress out, only to find it flattened again.

Noel!

Desperately, she ran her hands over the material of the dress.

Noel!

It’s not Noel. You’re not pregnant. This isn’t real.

Her hands slowed to a limp pat.

I’ve got to get out of here before I go completely mad. I have to find a way out.

She glanced over her shoulder, searching for the door in the sky, but it had vanished along with the escalator.

For fuck’s sake! How am I supposed to get out of here now?

Amy turned back to the crooked house.

A car. Did Harriet Harris have a car when I visited her? she thought.

Amy strained to see anything on the grounds of the farm. Beyond the house, the world bubbled, but nothing close to a car formed in the black mess.

This isn’t real, she reminded herself. Even if there is a car, what am I going to do with it? There’s no road out of here. There’s nothing here but the bloody farm. There’s nothing here but…

Him.

She felt the burn between her shoulder blades again as she trudged towards the house.

If there’s nothing in this world but the house, then I’ll go there. I’m the one dreaming this, after all.

It’s not a dream, she reminded herself. In a dream I’d have to fall off the edge of the cliff before I woke up fully.

It didn’t feel much like falling as she approached the house. The sticky ground pulled at her. Every step had become a small battle. If the Dark Nobody came now, he would catch her without much effort.

The idea of him spurred Amy forward. She didn’t know what the house might contain, but she felt the burn of what might lurk behind.

As she got within a few feet of the door, the windows opened in the black house. A flicker of candlelight burned within and just as quickly went out.

Who’s there? Amy thought.

Who do you think? she answered herself.

The lights flickered on and off. A shadow flitted between each flicker.

Is it him? Is it the Dark Nobody?

The lights blinked on and off within the black house. The shadow moved between.

Amy tracked it as it shot past the window on her left and reappeared at the window on her right.

She watched in horror as the shadow slowly took the shape of the man who’d waited at her backdoor on the night of the blackout.

Two eyes opened in his shadowy head like the windows had within the black house. His eyes were blue gas flames. He fixed on her.

The strength went out of Amy’s legs. She stood upright only because the sticky ground had a firm grip of her.

What do you want from me? she thought. Why can’t you just tell me instead of torturing me?

He’s not real. I’m imagining all this. There’s something wrong in my brain.

He looked real. As real as anything else in the bubbling black world as he stood, the blue flames in his eyes growing stronger. She felt the burning heat of his stare as it travelled from her face to her stomach.

A bloated stomach.

Amy didn’t dare look down, but she felt the sudden rise in the flesh beneath her dress.

Noel!

Not Noel. Not real. None of this is real, she told herself.

If it’s not real, then what is it? If it’s not Noel, then what is it? What am I?

The tourniquet of madness tightened around her skull.

Amy fixed on the blue flames.

Say something you bastard! Say something! she thought. Answer me!

A mouth appeared within the shadow. “And one, two, three! We’re back,” the Dark Nobody said, his voice the same as Dr Gifford.

Amy blinked.

The house before her started to crumble and flake into ash.

No! she thought. I imagined all this for a reason. I didn’t find out why. I didn’t find out—

She blinked.

The house and the black bubbling world vanished. Dr Gifford sat across from her in his office, a pleased smile on his face.

“How do you feel now?” he said.

Mad. Mad. Mad. Mad.

“I don’t know.”

“I believe it went well for a first attempt. You’re far more receptive than most.”

“It did? I am?”

“Yes. We’ve made great progress today, Amy. A few more sessions like this, and we’ll be making significant breakthroughs.”

He didn’t seem worried or even capable of the worry she’d heard in his voice within the strange bubbling landscape.

Did I imagine that too? Amy wondered. Did any of what I heard him say, happen?

“Breakthroughs?” she said.

“We won’t get ahead of ourselves, but I do believe we’ll make progress rather quickly in your case, Amy. Now, isn’t that the best of news?”

She nodded weakly.

I didn’t have a breakthrough, she thought. A breakdown more likely. He doesn’t seem to have experienced any of what I did, or he doesn’t think it’s serious.

Or I’m just plain old mad.

Mad.

Mad.

Unless...

18

“And how are you faring, Amy? Anything new you’d like to discuss with me?” Dr Holt said, his glasses off, and the bridge of his nose rubbed red.

March had passed into April. The tree on Blakely Close had embraced the spring with open branches. The corgis sprinkled the lawn again as the old woman watched. The running couple now left the cul-de-sac each morning and evening, their barking dog pulled behind.

Amy had grown quiet and invisibly large.

She carried a phantom weight with her wherever she went now and couldn’t ignore it. Her ankles felt like she’d filled her socks with sand. Her back ached, yet her figure remained slender when not in shadow. The cravings had only increased, and she’d eaten enough liquorice to stain one of her back teeth grey.

“Nothing major,” Amy lied.

“Do you still feel pregnant?”

All the time, she thought, squirming in a seat that felt too small for her.

“Every so often,” she said.

“And Ryan? Dr Gifford? How is it going with the therapy?”

“He helped, yes,” Amy lied again.

“Good, good. And again, I’m sorry for the mix-up with the original counsellor. I cannot for the life of me figure out how that woman ended up on our lists. We do get recommendations from time to time, but I’m still not sure why she was on my list. It’s fixed now, anyway.”

“It’s okay. She helped, in her own way.”

He put his glasses back on. “She did? How so?”

Amy couldn’t tell him the real reason why Harriet Harris would be the help she needed. An idea had formed in the aftermath of the hypnosis. A crazy notion she couldn't discuss with either doctor.

“I think those herbs she gave me, calmed me down a little.”

“They did?” He sounded surprised.

Amy nodded.

“You’re feeling calmer overall?”

“I think so, yes.”

But not because of any stupid herbs, she thought. Not yet, anyway.

“Good, good. I’m glad of that. And that woman won’t be conning anybody else in the future, believe me. I’ve seen to it.”

“She won’t?”

“Not a chance. I’ve reported her behaviour. She won’t be peddling her woo much longer, you’ll be glad to hear.”

She wasn’t. “Oh, good,” she said.

“Anyway, let’s forget that little hiccup and put it in the past. For now, we’ll focus on the therapy, shall we, Amy?”

Amy nodded again, but her mind drifted out to Shangri-La farm.

A little research, some trembled typing, and she’d discovered what the grief counsellor had only hinted at with her cloaked warnings. Pennyroyal tea ingested in a large enough dose could trigger a miscarriage.

In a large enough dose.

“How do you feel the therapy is going?” Dr Holt asked.

“Yes, the therapy is going good. I’m okay with it,” Amy said.

“Has Ryan, Dr Gifford, suggested anything about a plan going forward?”

“Did he not discuss it with you?”

“I’m afraid our schedules haven’t allowed for anything in-depth just yet. In any case, I’d rather hear it from you.”

He’d advised her to keep a journal of her dreams. He’d suggested she write down every delusion with the time and her feelings in a separate column beside. The pros and cons of madness.

The analyst had a plan, but Amy had her own plan now, and she’d scrambled out of his office after the hypnosis, promising herself she’d never return.

Not to Dr Gifford’s office, at least. Amy had another destination in mind.

“We’ve met three times, and I’m due to see him again next week,” Amy lied.

“You’re making progress, yes?”

I’m making nothing with him after today, Amy thought. After today I’ll be free.

“I think so.”

“Good, good. Okay then. It looks like we’re well on the road to recovery. You're feeling well in yourself, yes?”

Amy did feel better, she couldn’t deny it. The fear remained a shadow at the edge of all the other shadows, but now she had a plan. A crazed plan, yes, but in a life brimming with crazy, it felt sane in comparison.

“I’m feeling fine,” she lied.

“Anything else you’d like to discuss with me? Any questions?”

She had a few. Like, how do you kill a shadow? And, can you terminate a pregnancy that doesn’t exist? And, is there any way to abort madness?

She said no, and left Dr Holt’s office, covering up her strange goose-like waddle as best she could.

19

The wicker woman no longer stood guard at the gates of Shangri-La Farm. From her car, Amy noticed that the house looked shabbier than it had when she’d last visited.

One of the downstairs windows had an unrepaired spiderweb crack at one corner. A few tiles had slipped from the roof. Weeds climbed the side of the old stone.

Amy experienced a sinking feeling as she watched, and she thought she knew why.

My bloody doctor has run her out of business, she thought. She’s probably packed up and left the place. Where am I supposed to go now?

Amy leaned forward and checked the sky for the presence of the woman’s pet crow, but there wasn’t even a cloud. She tilted her head back on the car seat and closed her eyes.

I’m a fool. I shouldn’t have come out here. It was madness to think I could go through with this.

She’d spent a handful of sleepless nights going over the idea. It always made sense at first, but her certainty died as the dawn approached. It had taken all her courage to drive out to the farm, and she’d turned around more than once.

Just chalk it up as a close call, Amy thought. It wasn’t meant to be. I’ll count my blessings.

It didn’t feel like she had anything to feel blessed about. It felt like she’d reached a dead end. The phantom pregnancy hadn’t lessened. If anything, the feelings had heightened, and the shadow grew within her as any other child might.

A child that couldn’t be. Shouldn’t be.

Amy sighed. A crazy fantasy of setting up home in the crooked house at Shangri-La farm flashed through her mind.

She saw herself decked out in Harriet Harris’ patchwork skirt, dancing barefoot through the fresh mud. Kids in town would tell stories about the crazy lady who lived out on the farm. Teenagers would dare each other to knock on the front door, and they’d find—

The window rattled to Amy’s left. She jumped and slapped both hands down onto the steering wheel. The horn blared, and she jumped a second time.

Harriet Harris stood beside the car. Her arms weren’t open wide this time, she’d crossed them over her breasts.

“You scared me,” Amy said, as she pushed the button for the window.

“Sorry about that.” Harriet Harris had no hint of sorry in her voice. “I hope you’re not here for any counselling, because it’s off. Done with.”

“Off?” Amy felt a pang of guilt, but tried not to show it.

“I no longer offer that service. I can’t. Sorry.”

If the woman recognised her, she didn’t show it. Amy didn’t know if that was a good thing or not.

“Oh,” she said. “Do you remember me?”

Harriet Harris stepped closer to the window. She bent forward, and Amy caught a whiff of cinnamon.

“You’ve been here before, I take it?” Harriet Harris asked.

I can’t have changed so much in the last few months, Amy thought, but she doubted the assumption. The weight gain only appeared in shadow, but age showed in the mirror now. She couldn’t deny the worry lines in her eyes and the sallowness in her cheeks.

“Amy Bennington,” Amy said, as though it might help.

“No, I’m sorry. It’s not ringing a bell.”

“I came here because I was suffering from...a phantom pregnancy. I bought some bael from you?”

Recognition flashed brightly in the woman’s eyes. Anger dulled them soon after.

Harriet Harris stepped back from the car. She crossed her arms more firmly across her chest. “I’d like you to leave now.”

“Excuse me?”

“Leave my property. Thank you.” Harriet Harris turned back towards the gates and started walking.

“Wait!” Amy shouted. “Please, I just need a few minutes of your time.”

Harriet Harris didn’t break her stride.

Fuck! I should have kept my mouth shut with the doctor, Amy thought. It’s my fault she’s out of business, and now she won’t help me at all.

She couldn't help me if she tried. That stuff she peddles won’t do anything. It’s just water, probably.

Probably felt like a certainty in a life descending into madness.

Amy opened the car door and followed.

“Please,” she said, before she’d even caught up. “I’m sorry if I got you in trouble. I didn’t mean to. I need your help.”

Harriet Harris stopped, one hand on the top of the gates. She took an age to turn around.

“Why should I?” she asked.

“Err...I...I...”

“You are the one who reported me, aren’t you? That stuck-up doctor never gave me a name when he called, but I can put two and two together.”

“No, I mean I didn’t report anybody. I just mentioned something to my doctor and... he did the rest. I didn’t ask him to do anything. I swear.”

Harriet Harris eyed Amy with suspicion. “Even if I believed you, still doesn’t change anything. I’m out of business, and I can’t help.” She pointed to the far end of the drive and the road.

“I’ll pay,” Amy said.

“Pay for what? Didn’t you hear me? I’m out of business. Now, please, I’d like you to leave me alone and—”

Amy had come prepared with enough money to appeal to the side of the woman that flogged the herbal remedies. She hoped.

“There’s two hundred pounds there,” Amy said, holding out a sheaf of twenties and tens.

Harriet Harris’ eyes shined a little brighter, then she shook her head. “I told you, I can’t do any more therapy sessions.”

“I don’t want therapy. I want the Pennyroyal tea.”

“Pardon me?”

“You were selling some, right? You had it in that case you showed me. I’m sure you did.”

“Yes, I did, but it’s not worth two hundred pounds. Not even close.”

Amy knew. She’d checked online and knew she could purchase it cheaply there, but had hesitated each time she’d filled her cart with an order. Paranoia hadn’t kept her debit card safe in her wallet, but the strange hypnosis session she’d had with Dr Gifford. She’d seen Shangri-La farm in that strange dreamlike state and it had meant something, she was sure. If not an omen, then a guide to where she should go next and what she should do.

“Do you have any, or not?” Amy asked.

Harriet Harris eyed her suspiciously. “You can get it online. I’ll give you the address.”

“I want it now,” Amy said, trying to force the urgency out of her voice.

“Why?”

To kill a shadow, Amy thought.

“For the morning sickness.”

“You’re still feeling it?”

“Yes.”

“You should go back to your doctor, you know.”

“I did.”

“What did he tell you?”

Nothing much, because I lied through my teeth to him. He’d probably have a fit if he knew I was out here.

“He said it wouldn’t hurt to try alternatives.”

Harriet Harris looked up along the drive as though she expected company.

“Two hundred pounds, did you say?”

Amy waved the money. “Whatever you can give me for that. More the better.”

Enough to kill a shadow.

Harriet Harris reached for the money, but she pulled her hand away before touching it.

“No, I can’t. It wouldn’t be right. It’s too much.”

Jesus Christ! She tried to flog me this crap a few weeks ago, and she decides to grow a conscience now.

“Please, you’ll be doing me a big favour,” Amy said.

It took some bargaining, but eventually Harriet Harris accepted the money for the last glass vial of Pennyroyal tea she had. The rest, she told Amy, was on its way her new home in Cornwall.

“Did I give you instructions the last time?” Harriet Harris asked, the vial still held in her hand.

“For the bael, yes, but not this.”

“The bael didn’t work? I mean, it’s not working now?”

“It did, but you said if I needed something stronger, the Pennyroyal tea would work better.”

“Yes, I think I remember our conversation now. Okay then. You’re to put one tiny drop of this in boiling water. Don’t put in any more than that, Amy, or you won’t like what happens. It can make you quite sick.”

And hopefully kill all my madness too.

“I won’t, I promise.”

“You’re not actually pregnant, are you?” she asked.

Amy glanced at her body. “Do I look pregnant?” she said, forcing some humour into her voice.

“No, no. Of course not. It’s for the cramps you’re having, isn’t it?” Harriet Harris sounded as if she was trying to convince herself.

Amy nodded.

“Well then, it’ll help you a great deal, if you use it correctly. Just one drop, mind you. No more than that.”

“One drop, no more, I promise,” Amy lied.

20

At home, Amy emptied half the vial into an overlarge mug of boiling water. She stirred until the water turned brownish green, then promptly poured it all down the sink.

She stood for fifteen minutes watching the empty sink as if it might contain answers. She imagined it was a wishing well, and that she’d offered the Pennyroyal tea like a thrown coin.

I want to be normal again, she wished.

That night she ate three strips of liquorice as long as her forearm and went to bed black-lipped with a cramped stomach and a churning mind.

What was I thinking? I could have killed myself with that tea nonsense. I could have ruined any chance of having a child again.

A child? Who would have a child with me? Who would want a crazy old woman who’s afraid of her own shadow?

Two in the morning, staring into the bathroom mirror, she answered the question that had stalled her sleep.

“You’re not old,” she told the mirror self, but the mirror self didn’t listen.

The mirror self stared back. Anxiety had cut dark circles beneath her eyes. Madness had left its tracks at the corner of her eyes. She looked ten years older. Ten bad years.

Amy turned her back on the mirror, but her anxieties followed into dreams.

Twisting and turning, tangled up in sweat dampened sheets, she fell in and out of nightmares built from black smoke and shifting, unseen lights. People passed through each other. They were dark clouds in darker skies. They shivered and broke apart like cigarette smoke touched by a probing finger.

A heart formed within her dream body, greeting-card simple, and as black as its surroundings. It beat a peculiar rhythm, like a metal detector passing across sand.

Tucktucktucktuck.

Tucktucktucktuck.

Tucktucktucktuck—beeep!

Amy turned within her dream and followed the clicking of her heart.

A long road unwound like black liquorice lace beneath her, a blinking light at its end. She felt Noel’s presence in the light. She knew if she reached into the light all the blackness would vanish.

Amy walked the black road, her feet sticky with fear, until she touched the light and drove both arms into the brightness.

She felt Noel within reach of her fingers.

I’m coming, she thought.

Alone in the hospital, she’d imagined cradling Noel in her arms. She’d made the motions, but death had robbed her of his tiny touch, his gurgling breaths. So close, yet…

That night a domestic cleaner had entered the room. A young woman with soft, sympathetic eyes sunk into the dark wells of her sockets, and a series of faded bruises, like regretful tattoos, sleeving her right arm from wrist to elbow.

“Are you all right?” the woman had asked.

She didn’t wait for an answer before she’d wrapped her arms around Amy.

There’d been a small comfort in the stranger’s embrace, but it wasn’t the closeness she needed, not the warmth of a child. She felt that warmth within the dream light. She felt Noel closer and closer to her grip.

I’m coming, Noel, she thought.

The cut-out heart within her started to redden. The black fell from it like heated tar as she drove deeper into the light.

I’m coming, Noel. Your mummy is—

A dog howled.

The light winked out before her. Amy fell back onto the liquorice road as the howling came from all directions at once.

She scrambled to her feet in a fury. “Stop it! Stop it!” she cried out into the dream, but the dog-wind continued to howl. “I swear I’ll ring your bloody neck!” she called out, her dream-spoken words repeating earlier realities. “I swear I’ll ring your bloody—”

The wind stopped abruptly and with it, the dream.

Amy woke alone in the darkness, the taste of bitter liquorice on her lips.

She wiped an arm across her forehead to dry the sweat, then the other arm across her lips to take away the taste.

So close. So bloody close to finding him, she thought, the dream lingering behind her eyes, the possibility of it still bright.

“Noel,” Amy whispered into the darkness, and his name tasted like a penny on her lips.

Wrapped in darkness, she waddled into the bathroom and turned the tap on without glancing at herself in the mirror. Face doused in cold water, she rubbed at her lips to rid herself of the strange aftertaste of her nightmare.

Parts of the dream leaked through. She felt, briefly, the heat of the light at the end of the black road. It warmed the back of her eyelids like the sun on a hot summer’s day.

Amy splashed her face again. Twice. Three times. She grabbed a towel from the rack and wiped, hoping to rid herself of the bitter taste lingering on her lips. She stared at herself in the mirror.

The older woman returned her stare. A woman aged by fear and worry. A woman bleeding.

Amy touched at her bloodstained lips with a numb finger. The blood formed a jagged clown’s smile. It looked like a child had applied red lipstick to a doll.

Oh God! What have I done?

She rubbed at her lips with the side of her hand, then her wrist, finally her whole forearm, but the stain remained.

Amy rubbed harder, faster.

I bit my lips, she told herself. I must have bitten them while I slept. Wiping won’t work, I have to wash it off! I have to—

How can I have bitten them if they’re not hurting me? she thought.

Sink filled with cold water, Amy submerged her face in the chill. She scrubbed at her mouth until the pressure of a needed breath brought up her to the surface, gulping for air.

Breathe in for three. Hold it. Breathe out for three.

Breathless, shaking, she stared at her reflection in the mirror.

Impossibly, the stain remained.

Sobbing, Amy attacked her lips with the side of a closed fist. She stopped only when she heard a cry from the street outside.

“Colonel!”

21

Amy pulled the blinds aside to see the mayhem unfolding on Blakely Close.

Five in the morning, and a slow tide of blue morning light washed across the rooftops of the cul-de-sac. Lonely beneath the white spot of a street lamp, the running woman held onto a dog’s lead. She turned this way and that, searching the dark beyond the light, calling out the dog’s name.

“Colonel! Here boy! Colonel!” With every repetition of his name, her voice rose in pitch and urgency. “Colonel! Colonel!”

The shadow of her husband entered the light. The shadow nodded in defeat.

“You checked everywhere? You’re sure?” she asked.

The shadow husband nodded.

“The field behind the newsagents?”

The shadow nodded.

“The old fire station? Behind there?”

The shadow spoke, meekly. “Yes.”

“Are you sure, David? Did you check it properly?”

He lost his voice, but not his nod.

“You’re sure? You checked the sheds, did you? He could have got in there. Did you check the sheds?”

The shadow lost its voice and its nod.

“David? David? Answer me. Did you check the sheds at the back of the old fire station?”

The shadow didn’t move.

“Jesus Christ! I asked you to do one thing, and you can’t even do that, can you? He’s probably bleeding to death in one of those sheds you didn’t check. My poor little boy.”

She strode out from beneath the light into the darkness, the shadow of her husband following, head hung low.

Amy let the blinds fall.

Bleeding? Was that what the running woman had said? Colonel was bleeding?

Just a coincidence, she reassured herself. I bit my lip in a dream, but that doesn’t mean…doesn’t mean I…

Amy felt a cold connection to the disappearance of the dog and her nightmare. She couldn’t make it work in her head, but in her heart and gut it made a terrible, guilty sense.

She licked her lips and tasted pennies.

This time it brought no fear, but she felt something new and infinitely more terrifying: hunger.

22

Amy stood beneath the cold waters of her shower, hoping to blast away the strange feeling.

A craving as deep as the one for liquorice ate at her stomach. She wanted more of that copper in her mouth. She wanted to gorge herself until she burst.

Mad. Mad. Mad.

The words repeated in time with the drumbeat of water on her head.

Mad. Mad. Mad.

She’d heard of people eating coal and even their own hair during pregnancy, but she’d never heard of anybody craving blood.

I’m not pregnant, she reminded herself. I’m not pregnant. I’m just…

Mad. Mad. Mad.

A hysterical giggle escaped from her lips and grew into a roaring laugh.

Mad. Mad. Mad.

Laughing, shivering from the cold, Amy lay her head on the shower tiles.

Mad. Mad. Mad.

When will it end? she wondered. When will I get my life back? It has to end, doesn’t it?

A pregnancy lasts nine months, she thought. A fake pregnancy can last the same. Nine months. I’m not even in my third trimester yet.

Amy shook her head.

I’m crazy. That’s what it is. I’m just…

Mad. Mad. Mad.

Amy traced the phantom lump of her stomach, feeling it form in the flow of water.

Mad. Mad. Ma—

THUMP-THUMP-THUMP.

She yanked her hand from her stomach at the sound of the knocking at the door.

THUMP-THUMP-THUMP.

Amy jumped from the shower and wrapped herself in a towel.

THUMP-THUMP-THUMP.

She crossed the bedroom to the window and peeked out onto Blakely Close.

A police car waited on the street by the oak tree. An officer stood below her window with his thumbs hooked into a chunky stab vest. He looked up at her with a face too young to fit his gruff voice.

“Miss Bennington? Hello? Are you in there? This is the police.”

23

He gave his name, but Amy didn’t hear it. He apologised for calling so early in the morning, but Amy didn’t recognize the apology. He asked to come inside, and Amy froze.

Her lips burned. She tasted blood on them.

“Miss Bennington? Are you okay?”

No, she wanted to scream. I’m not even close to okay.

The hall mirror disagreed. Amy glanced at her reflection and saw her old self looking back, the smear of blood vanished from her lips.

“Miss Bennington?”

She forced down a relieved sigh and broke her stare. “Sorry, I’m still a little tired.”

“I apologise again for the unsociable hour, but I must speak with you.”

Guilt settled in Amy’s stomach like too much liquorice.

“Of course. Please, come in. What’s the problem?”

He told her a concerned neighbour had filed a report about a missing dog. The neighbours thought the dog might be in her garden. He wondered if she might give him permission to search the garden for the missing animal.

Amy stared through the kitchen window.

The blue tide of early morning light had reached Blakely Close and lapped at the empty shore of the garden. She saw no hint of a dog, bleeding or not. She’d heard nothing in the—

The nightmare returned to her mind.

It wasn’t the wind, she realised, it was a dog. I heard Colonel howling in the nightmare.

Just a dream, she told herself. Just a dream. Just a nightmare.

“Yes,” she told the officer, “of course you can look. I hope that poor dog is all right.”

Amy opened the back door and ushered him into the garden.

The officer took his thumbs out of his stab vest. He slipped a torch out of its holster, aimed the light from it into the far reaches of the garden and followed.

Amy noticed the running woman standing on tiptoes near the side gate to the house.

I can’t just leave her there, she thought. It’ll make me look guilty if I don’t at least go over and sympathise.

I’m not guilty. I haven’t done anything to be guilty about, Amy thought.

Her stomach disagreed. It rumbled painfully.

Amy watched the officer walk the length of the garden before she grabbed her coat from the hall and headed to the side of the house.

“Please, come in,” she said, opening the side gate. “I do hope you find your dog soon. It must be horrible.”

“Yes,” the running woman said in a cold voice as she strode past Amy, her husband following behind.

A chill ran across Amy’s back.

What do they know? she thought. What could they have seen? I’ve been asleep all night. I haven’t done anything to their dog. I haven’t seen their bloody dog.

Bloody dog.

An image flashed into Amy’s mind of the dog with its side torn open to reveal the steaming wet tangle of its innards. A pool of blood haloed its twitching head. She saw herself lapping at the sticky red with a hungry tongue.

Dear God! What am I thinking?

As though she’d picked up on the thought, the running woman shot Amy an accusing glance.

This is madness. Why am I thinking these things? Amy thought.

Involuntarily, she licked her lips and tasted pennies again. The horrid craving for blood returned, and a new image to crowd her mind.

The dog lay on a white table presented as the main dish. Amy sat at the head of the table her face smeared with blood.

Mad. Mad. Mad.

Amy pinched hard at the skin on her wrist, hoping to wake herself from a nightmare.

This is not me. This is not me.

Mad. Mad. Mad.

At the end of the garden, the police officer scanned the lumpy collection of tools with his light. He kicked at the edges several times, then headed back towards the rear of the house.

“Nothing,” he said, wagging his head as he wagged the torch light. “There’s not a trace of an animal in this garden.”

“Check again,” the running woman said, speaking with the same tone she used on her husband.

“I assure you, your dog’s not here. I suggest inquiring at local animal shelters. Has the dog been microchipped?”

“Of course. What kind of owner do you think I am?”

“I don’t think you’re any kind of owner, Mrs Moran. I’m merely inquiring about the state of the dog’s registration.”

“Well he is registered. We did it when we bought him.”

“Good. Have you checked any of the local shelters to see if he’s been handed over?”

“No.”

“Well then, I suggest you do that now, and we can go from there.”

The running woman nodded towards the garden. “You didn’t look properly. Search the garden again. I know he’s in here somewhere.”

“I’ve done a thorough search already.”

“Search again.” She pushed forward.

With a sidestep, the officer met her and blocked the way.

“I’ve already told you once, and I don’t want to tell you again. Your dog is not here. I’ve already suggested your next course of action. I’d like it if you followed that suggestion now.”

The running woman had no intention of following any suggestions. “I know she did something to it. I know she hurt my bloody dog! She’s hidden him!”

“What did you just say about me?” Amy asked, a real shock real in her voice.

“Don’t think I didn’t hear you shouting about how you were going to ring his neck. Don’t think I don’t know what you wanted to do to Colonel.”

Amy couldn’t deny the truth. She’d shouted those words in a dream and out of it, but she wasn’t a dog killer. It was just a moment of madness.

Like blood on the lips and dark strangers at the door. Like foetuses with wings and...

Mad. Mad. Mad.

“I said no such thing,” Amy lied.

“Yes, you did! I heard you. David heard you. Didn’t you, David?”

David shifted on his feet, his eyes darting nervously from wife to officer to Amy and back again.

He nodded.

“See?” the running woman said.

“Leave this to me, please, Mrs Moran,” the officer said, before turning his attention to Amy. “Did you threaten the dog, Miss Bennington?”

“No,” Amy replied.

The young officer’s face, washed in the blue of early dawn, twitched in concentration.

“You didn’t make a threat against your neighbour’s dog?” he asked.

“No. Why would I do that?”

She had an answer, but not one she wanted to admit.

Madness.

Mad. Mad. Mad.

The running woman tutted. “Why would you do it? Are you serious?” she said, her voice high enough to wake a sleeping bird in a tree. It whistled shrilly as though answering her. “Because you hate us, that’s why.”

“I don’t hate you. I don’t even know you.”

The running woman snorted like a horse. “You never tried either.”

Why would I try? Amy thought.

She’d come to Blakely Close to find peace and quiet but had found shadows and madness instead. She’d found this pushy woman with her doormat of a husband, too. Just then she wished she'd never set foot on the cul-de-sac.

“Whatever you say, but I didn’t hurt your stupid bloody dog,” Amy said.

“See? Just see how she acts about my poor Colonel,” Polly Moran said to the young officer.

“I didn’t mean anything by it,” Amy replied.

“Yes, you did. You know you did.”

“I didn’t hurt your dog.”

“I’ll prove it. You just see if I don’t.”

The running woman took another step towards the garden, but the young officer remained a wall before her.

“Mrs Moran, you’re welcome to come down to the station and file a formal complaint, but let me make this clear; you cannot search this property. Do you understand me?”

“But my dog is—”

“Do you understand me?”

“But—”

“Do you understand me, Mrs Moran?”

The running woman glared at Amy before acknowledging the officer. “Yes,” she said.

“Good. Now, let’s all get back to where we should be at this time of the morning, agreed? I’d like you and your husband to go home now,” he pointed to the street. “Miss Bennington, I’d like to have a quick word with you before I go.”

Amy nodded.

Oh God! What does he know? What can he possibly know if I don’t even know where that bloody dog is? she thought.

The side gate slammed shut, and the officer turned back to Amy.

“Idiots,” he said.

“Excuse me.”

“Those two. Sorry about all this, but we have to take every report seriously, even when it’s a couple of lunatics who make the report.”

She nodded and felt relief lightening her head. “It’s fine, completely fine.”

“I don’t know how many times that woman has called us out for nothing. We’d have arrested her by now, but there’s always a little truth in what she says.”

Truth? I didn’t do anything to that stupid dog, that’s the truth, Amy thought, but her stomach called her a liar.

“You think I did something to the dog?”

The officer took his thumbs out from beneath his stab vest. “No, not at all. But the dog is missing, and there is a bit of blood out there on your drive.”

Amy felt her lips stinging. “Blood?” she asked.

“No need to worry. I guess those two idiots let it off the lead, and it got tangled up in something nearby before it ran away.”

“You don’t think it’s dead, do you?”

“Doubtful. Not enough blood out there for a serious injury. I’m not a vet though, just taking a guess.”

“You think they’ll find it?”

I hope I don’t, Amy thought. I don’t want to see…

She saw.

A vision of the German shepherd plated up at the table, side exposed, blood pooling out around its head, flashed into Amy’s mind.

She licked her lips, then hid the motion by wiping a hand across her mouth.

The officer gave her a quick glance but carried on. “It’ll turn up. Or if it knows what’s good for it, it’ll keep well away. Wouldn’t put it past the animal to have legged it to get away from those too. I know I would.”

Amy stared at the side gate. The annoyed voice of Polly Moran floated across Blakely Close. “I swear, David, I’ll find him, no matter what it takes.”

“You think they’ll file a report against me?” Amy asked.

The officer shrugged. “If they do, it won’t go anywhere. I could tell you dozens of tales about those two, but I won’t waste your time like they waste ours. If they do file, we’ll ask you to come in and make a statement, but I can pretty much guarantee you won’t face any charges.”

He smiled. It reminded Amy of Owen back in the first days of their marriage when everything felt possible.

“I’ll let you in on a little secret, shall I? You know what their second name is, don’t you?”

“I think so. Moran, isn’t it?”

“Well, down at the station we call them ‘The Morons’.” He chuckled.

Amy giggled in reply.

“Right then, you just forget about all this. If you can, try to keep out of their way. They’ll only be encouraged if you make any contact.”

“I will.”

“Thanks for your time this morning, Miss Bennington. Let’s hope we meet under better circumstances the next time.” He tipped his hat and gave her a smile before walking away.

“Yes,” she said, an enjoyable tickle in her stomach.

Was he flirting with me? she thought.

A blush came to her cheeks as an answer.

He can’t be older than twenty-three, she thought, watching him walk away. What would someone so young want with a pregnant woman in her early thirties?

The thought slipped through before she could stop it.

I’m not pregnant! I’m not pregnant! I’m just—

Mad. Mad. Mad.

Mad.

Mad.

Mad?

The 3rd Trimester

24

May arrived, and the tree on Blakely Close reached with bright new hands to welcome the sun. In the warmth beneath, the black cat spent its days as a new shadow. The old woman and her corgis resumed their lawn games, and the running couple bought a juvenile replica of Colonel to run beside them. They’d named him the same, and Amy wondered if they’d meant her to hear it and feel guilty.

If they’d meant her to feel guilt, they’d won, but Amy soothed the bad feelings with logical explanations. She’d bitten her lip as she slept, which accounted for the blood. It couldn’t explain the stain on her lips after she’d scrubbed them, but that, she told herself, was nothing more than the residue of a bad dream. As to the dog, its pained howling had filtered into her nightmare, nothing more.

It made perfect sense if she ignored her strange cravings, but they were getting harder to ignore.

She’d caught herself staring at the corgis on the old woman’s lawn, the cat beneath the tree, and the new Colonel, like items on a takeout menu. She’d imagined them served with salads, on buns, and laid out on overlarge plates just for her.

Madness. One more lunacy in a third trimester of crazy. No psychotherapist, doctor, or counsellor could stem the flow. No drugs or breathing methods could end her delusions, she’d come to realise. The long months stretched out towards an end point she couldn’t ignore. She’d started to think of a birth, but the idea of a child born of shadows and madness terrified her.

What would it be? Whatcouldit be? she thought.

Could it be?

No. Impossible.

At night the Pennyroyal tea whispered a solution to her from the back of the cupboard where she’d hidden it, but she buried her head beneath the pillows and hummed a tune to drown it out.

The end of May brought a new shadow into her life.

The shadow sat behind the wheel of a blue Fiat Punto in the library car park for a week before he finally made himself known.

Not a shadow any longer, but a man in his fifties with a nervous smile that grew like a patch of black in his grey, straggly beard. He gave a quick burglar’s glance over his shoulder before he disappeared into the history section.

A thief? Amy thought as she snatched a stack of science books from behind the reception desk and followed him. At the shelves, she pantomimed returning the books.

The man picked up a volume of WWII history and flipped through it like a shoe catalogue, never reaching D-Day. He rushed through the rise but not the fall of Rome. He discovered Egypt, but never opened up a tomb.

Amy followed him from history to science. He slid A Brief History of Time off the shelf and stared at it blankly. She couldn’t fault him for his reaction. She’d done the same.

After ten minutes of following, Amy had convinced herself the man had an eclectic taste and nothing more, but then he moved to the young-adult section. He selected The Period Book: A Girl’s Guide to Growing Up and flipped through it with all the shoe-catalogue interest he’d had with the other books.

I’m being paranoid, she told herself. He might have a child he has to care for. He might be the guardian of a young grandchild, and he’s doing his best.

But the thoughts didn’t reassure her. Instinct told her the man hadn’t come to the library to pick up a book for a young child in his life.

“Can I help you with something?” she asked, in a tone suggesting it had nothing to do with help.

“I’m fine,” he said, but he looked lost as he turned to the shelf of Judy Blume novels.

“Are you looking for a book for your daughter or grand-daughter? A niece?”

“No, why?”

Amy nodded in the direction of the shelves. “This is the children’s fiction section. I assumed you didn’t want them for yourself, of course.” She sounded polite as she talked, almost bubbly.

He followed her gaze, and his eyes widened as if he’d noticed the books for the first time.

“Oh,” he said, “that.” He offered no more in the way of explanation.

Amy felt a prickle of fear as a new thought entered her mind.

What if he’s a child molester staking out the place? What if he’s here for the kids?

It would explain his waiting out in the car park for so long, she thought. Time enough to gather his courage, the pervert.

They’d never had to deal with abuse in the library, but Amy had watched a video titled BEWARE: PREDATORS, as part of a one-day council training course. The video featured a tall and serious female host sat on the edge of a desk. Behind her, on a video wall, was a series of slow-motion images of children playing.

“Although a rarity, public abduction does happen. Follow these simple steps to prevent predators in your place of work,” she’d said, then pushed off the edge of the desk. Behind her, the image changed to a smiling older man in dirty overalls with a prominent VISITOR badge pinned to his chest.

“Make sure all visitors and guests have signed in. Issuing a visitor badge will help quickly identify them to others. Be vigilant, and monitor all out-of-place or suspicious behaviour when it occurs. If unsure, ask these simple questions.”

The advice had stuck with Amy.

“Are you a new member with us here, Mr…?” she asked.

“Tobin. John Tobin. No.”

“New in the neighbourhood?”

“Not really.”

“Oh, would you like to sign up for an account? It doesn’t take too long. Do you have any I.D. on you?”

John Tobin glanced around the library. His face scrunched with annoyance. “No, thanks.”

“You don’t have any on you?”

“I mean, I don’t want an account. Thanks.”

“You’ll need an account if you wish to lend any books.”

“Oh,” he said.

“Do you intend to lend anything today, Mr Tobin?”

He stared at the book in his hand, noticing the title and subject for the first time. A flush of embarrassment reddened his cheeks beneath the grey of his scraggly beard.

“Just doing some research. I shouldn’t need to take any books out currently.”

Researching what? Amy thought, and didn’t like the answer she gave to herself.

Children. He’s here for the children.

Don’t be silly, she told herself. There are no children here, and I don’t know what he wants yet.

“Research? What kind of research?” Amy asked, trying to keep the suspicion out of her voice.

He checked the book in his hand again. His eyes flitted like stunned wasps. “A book,” he said.

“What kind of book?”

“Fiction,” he replied, with no conviction.

“What kind?”

His eyes darted away from the shelves and fixed on the adult fiction shelves on the other side of the library. Amy followed his gaze to a prominent sign above the shelves that read: LATEST MYSTERIES.

“Mystery,” John Tobin said, his eyes brightening as he began to believe his lie. “Yeah, a mystery novel. Just doing some research on a mystery novel.”

“You’re a writer?” Amy asked.

“Trying,” he said, a fake smile on his face.

Amy had never felt the urge to write, but she’d picked up a few of the How To books out of curiosity. In one book, the author had advised not to start work until you had a title for the piece in mind. She wondered if Jon Tobin followed the same logic.

“What’s it called?” Amy asked.

“What’s what called?”

“The novel you’re writing. Do you have a title yet?”

John Tobin’s eyes searched the shelves before him, then to the book in his hand. “Murder of a…a…young girl.”

A bad lie and a worse title, Amy thought.

“How far are you?”

“Excuse me?”

“How much have you written so far?”

He giggled nervously. “Nothing yet. I figured I’d get the research done first. You know how it is.”

She knew, from the books, many writers researched as a first step, but she also knew a lie when she heard one. Whatever John Tobin wanted in the library, it had nothing to do with books.

No kids here yet, though, so the pervert is out of luck. At least we’re safe on that front. I’ll keep an eye on him and get his license plate number before he leaves, just in case.

“Well, I wish you the best of luck with it,” she said, forcing a happy tone in her voice. “If you need any help with your research, you can find me at reception just over there. My name is Amy.”

“Amy,” he said, his tone a little too knowing.

Amy felt a shiver of revulsion, but forced it back. “That’s right,” she said.

“Ta, very much. I’ll be seeing you again, no doubt. Amy,” he said.

I hope not, she thought as she headed back towards the reception desk.

A few feet away, Amy considered pulling a Columbo, turning back and asking him about, ‘Just one more thing’, but she didn’t have ‘one more thing’ to ask, just a lingering bad feeling about the man.

When he left the library, she followed and wrote down the licence plate number of his car.

Who and what John Tobin wanted she would only find out a week later.

25

A week passed. Amy had all but forgotten John Tobin, until she noticed the blue Fiat Punto trailing behind her as she left the library.

Rain had robbed the light from the day. Cars filled the streets with their low beams turned on. Amy doubted her eyes at first, but as she took a turn, the Fiat Punto followed.

Is that the weirdo from the library? she wondered.

She strained to see her follower's face in the rear-view mirror, but only a shadow sat behind the wheel, just as it had when she’d noticed the car parked outside the library.

It’s him. I know it’s him.

She took another turn, and the blue car followed her.

Who the bloody hell are you, John Tobin? she thought, but she already knew the answer. John Tobin was nobody.

The day after he’d visited the library, she’d searched for his name in the council database and on Google. There were plenty of John Tobins in the world, but none of them matched the man who’d visited the library.

Amy turned right, then turned right again with no destination in mind.

Are you following me? Is that what you’re doing?

The blue Fiat answered as it mirrored her every turn.

Why are you following me? she thought. What’s your game?

He’s not after kids, she thought. He’s after something else. He’s after…me?

What would he want with me?

Nothing good.

The thought sent a chill through her. She’d read enough thrillers to know a man in a car following a woman never ended well.

A feeling of vulnerability flooded Amy. At the first sight of an Asda supermarket she turned onto the car park hoping to lose her pursuer. She drove three circuits around the sea of parked cars, but the blue Fiat hadn’t followed.

Where did you go? she thought, her eyes darting left to right as she did one last circuit. I can’t have lost you so quickly.

He might have given up, Amy thought hopefully. He might not have followed me. What if it isn’t John Tobin?

Her instincts had told her the car belonged to the man from the library. The absence of the blue Fiat Punto suggested her instincts were wrong, and Amy sagged a little with relief.

Look at me worrying over nothing. I’m jumping at my own shadow these days.

Who wouldn’t if they had my shadow? she thought, and a nervous giggle rose up in her throat.

About to drive away, Amy noticed a flash of blue in the rear-view mirror.

No, please don’t let it be him. Please.

She checked the rear-view mirror again as the blue Fiat pull appeared behind her.

Amy ignored her better morals and parked in a handicapped space nearest the entrance. An old woman with a ragged Poodle shot her a disappointed look, but Amy brushed it off and headed inside to the cafe. She took a seat near the window, grabbed a menu, and pretended to read it as she searched for the blue car.

After five minutes of searching, she started to believe she hadn’t seen the blue Fiat at all.

Maybe I imagined it? she thought.

Just like the man at the back door. Just like the shadow living in my belly!

Amy stifled a manic giggle. She turned her attention briefly to the menu in her hands. She scanned it like John Tobin had the books in the library, not taking in any of the information before her.

I’ll have to order something, or I’ll look weird, she thought.

Weirder than I already do.

The giggle escaped. She tried to trap it with the back of her hand.

An old couple turned towards her and wrinkled their faces in disapproval.

Oh God! What am I doing to myself? Amy thought. I should book myself a room in a secure facility before I go off the deep end.

She turned her attention back to the menu. Before her was a selection of bland meals prepared in bland ways. Eggs and bacon, toast and beans, sausage and chips, all could be had if she had the stomach for it, but fear had pinched her stomach so tight, she doubted she’d be able to eat more than a slice of toast.

“Get you anything, hon?” A young waitress in a dark brown uniform appeared at Amy’s side.

“I’m still deciding.”

“Cup of tea or coffee while you’re waiting? Glass of water?”

Amy wasn’t listening. She’d focused on the car park as the blue Fiat Punto appeared like a shark fin in shallow water.

She watched as it slowed near to the handicapped space where she’d parked. From her position, she still couldn’t see if John Tobin sat behind the wheel.

“I’ll come back when you’re ready,” the waitress said.

“Coffee,” Amy answered, when the girl had left earshot.

The blue Fiat circled Amy’s car, then slid into a spot beside the shelter where the supermarket trolleys were housed. Now it was just a blurred blue mirage through the frosted plastic of the shelter.

You’re waiting for me, aren’t you? Why? What do you want with me, John Tobin?

Nothing good, the answer came back again.

Amy gritted her teeth.

I shouldn’t be sat in here, scared, she thought. I should call the police.

And tell them what? she asked herself. He’s not done anything. Yet.

She bounced between fear and anger for a few minutes before the anger won out.

You’re not going to scare me, John Tobin, whoever the bloody Hell you are. I won’t let you.

I already have for the last half hour.

Not a minute longer.

Amy took her phone out and aimed it at the car park, ignoring the old couple’s disapproving looks from the table nearby. She focused on the fuzzy outline of the blue Fiat.

This is useless. I’ll be taking a photograph of a blur, nothing else. What good will that do?

Amy slid out of her seat and trotted out of the cafe. She broke into a jog as she left the supermarket behind.

I’ll get a good clear picture of you now, John Tobin. Let’s see how you like being watched and followed and—

Amy viewed the world through her phone’s screen. She saw her car clearly. She saw all the other cars in front and behind, but the blue Fiat had gone.

I saw it. I’m sure I saw it. I didn’t imagine the bloody thing.

She turned a dizzying circle looking for a flash of blue in the car park, but found nothing.

You can’t have driven out of here so quickly, John Tobin. I would have seen you. You’re here, and I’m going to find you.

Amy walked the length of the car park and back again. She checked the petrol station on the opposite side of the main supermarket, but found no trace of the blue Fiat.

Back in her car, she sat staring off into space.

Where could the blue Fiat have gone too so quickly? she thought.

She had no answer to the question, and in the days that followed, it became no clearer.

She thought she saw the blue Fiat behind her as she drove to work in the morning and again as she returned home, haunting the edges of Blakely Close like a lost ghost.

She thought she saw it cruising past the post office window as she bought stamps, and in the street outside the dentist’s building as she booked an appointment. It glided past the cafe where she ate lunch and waited down the street when she’d visited Dr Holt to lie once more about her ongoing condition. It never got close enough for her to take a picture or confirm John Tobin sat behind the wheel.

She’d started to think of the blue Fiat as another madness. A delusion made as real by her faltering mind as the man in the long coat at her back door, or the thing inside her with its beating wings.

Then it vanished completely.

A week passed and no car. Another week, still nothing.

Amy reluctantly added the blue Fiat to the Jenga tower of crazy she called a life, then, as May gave way to June, she forgot about the car altogether and added a new block that threatened to topple the tower altogether.

A cat.

26

When her obsession began, she couldn’t mark on a calendar, but after the strangeness with the blue car, Amy’s concentration turned towards the neighbourhood cat.

She bought tuna in sesame oil, in brine, in water, and offered all on her front step to coax the cat closer. All the while she lied to herself about how she merely wanted to pet the creature and nothing more.

The cat stopped at the gate each time, sniffed the air, and turned its tail.

Thinking the cat was a more refined creature, she threw out the tinned tuna and turned to fresher food. She bought pink salmon, white cod, red snapper, and a rainbow of other fish to feed the feline, but the cat turned its nose up at the colourful offerings every time.

Amy began to wonder if the creature preferred cat foods and purchased Whiskas, Butchers, Felix, and Lilly’s Kitchen to test her point.

The cat wouldn’t even cross the hedge for the new treats. It hid in the tree and the shade below. By the end of the day, it wandered away from Blakely Close, the food ignored.

Amy decided to follow the creature. She told herself a lie about wanting know who owned the cat and find out from them what the cat liked to eat. The lie extended out to fantasies of how much good she’d do if only she knew what food it preferred. The cat made its home on Blakely Close most of the day, she couldn’t let it go hungry, after all.

The lie didn’t stick. Beneath it, a sinister truth lived. Amy didn’t want a pet; she wanted a main course.

One night in June, with the last of the sun racing off towards the edges of town, Amy left the house, telling herself another lie about needing to buy milk.

Yes, I’ll need some sugar too and maybe some instant coffee, she thought as she bundled out of the door. I’ll grab some Jaffa cakes as a treat.

As she followed the cat out of the cul-de-sac, she knew she’d never reach the shops. A tickling excitement had already started to grow in her as she thought of where the chase might take her.

She imagined the cat lived in the old house on the corner of Albert Lane, where it seemed autumn had arrived and never left. Whenever she’d happened to walk past the house, the garden burned under a covering of orange leaves, and the windows flickered with lit candles.

A fitting place for a black cat, Amy thought. Maybe a witch lived inside?

The cat didn’t. It passed by the autumn house, and Amy followed.

Two more rights and a left. Another left, down a small alley, out past the abandoned playground where rust had stopped play forever. Over the quiet waters of a brook that had never run quickly enough to babble.

Soon the cat came to a stop in the graveyard of St June’s.

More bodies lay beneath the ground than attended mass these days, Amy knew. She’d seen the sorry few parishioners on Sundays, gathered outside the main doors like smokers outside offices.

That evening, the graveyard was as quiet as the dead who populated it. Beneath the setting sun, the light dappled a path that Amy followed until she reached where the cat mourned at a solid black gravestone set flat into the ground.

She froze, remembering the door to her kitchen on the night of the blackout. She saw the man in the long coat again, her shy God waiting silently for her. A shiver ran through her from toe to top.

He’s not here now. It’s too bright for him. He only comes at night.

He only comes at night.

Amy shook the thoughts away as she focused on the cat. It lay its head on a golden name etched into the black stone – DOROTHY DAVENPORT.

The cat’s owner? Amy thought.

She’d heard of dogs mourning at the graves of their masters, but never a cat. Cats didn’t mourn, they feasted on the dearly departed.

Amy crouched beside the grave, and the cat gave her a disinterested look before curling back up again. She reached out to brush its fur, not to pet but to feel the pulse of a heart beneath.

She pulled her hand away before it touched fur.

What’s wrong with me? Have I turned into some kind of monster?

Amy forced her trembling hand down onto the sun-warmed black gravestone and away from the cat. She left it there long enough for her heart to stop pounding.

I haven’t done anything yet. It’s just crazy thoughts. I’m just…

Mad. Mad. Mad.

It’s all in my head, Amy thought.

And in my shadow.

The weight of her delusion bore down on her shoulders. She felt the shadow inside shift and beat its dark wings.

It’s just a thought. Just a delusion. I’m not pregnant. I’m just…

Mad. Mad. Mad.

About to turn away, the cat stopped her with a paw dropped on her hand.

Amy’s heart beat excitedly.

It’s a sign, she thought. This is a sign the cat wants me to…

Eat it?

Stop it! I’m not going to eat the cat. I’m not going to…

She licked her lips.

No!

The cat twisted and turned, curling itself up around Amy’s wrist like a furry band. It purred contentedly.

Amy licked her lips. She pictured herself tucking the feline under her arm and carrying it back home like a takeout meal.

She licked her lips again.

I’m not going to do this. It’s insane. I’m insane.

I’m not going to do this.

Amy did it.

27

The cat sat on the kitchen table unaware of its status as meal-to-be.

Amy sat before it, frozen in her seat between fear and her ravenous craving.

What have I done? she asked herself.

Nothing yet.

But I am going to do this, aren’t I? I’m going to eat this poor animal.

The cat purred as if to say, ‘yes’.

A Bugs Bunny cartoon flashed into Amy’s mind. He sat in an overlarge cooking pot happily cutting up ingredients for a meal made of himself.

Was the cat the same? A happy meal?

The cat purred.

Amy licked her lips.

No, I can’t do this. I can’t possibly do this, she thought. This isn’t me.

What is me? Who am I now? What am I? she thought.

I’m half madness, and the rest of me a shadow. I should get more help. I should go to another doctor. I should take medicine. I should—

The impossible shadow within her flapped its dark wings.

Please, God! Help me. Please. I can’t go on like—

The cat purred.

Amy licked her lips.

Blood crashed in Amy’s ears. She reached out with a trembling hand not meant for pets or feasting. It fell woodenly on the cat’s back.

The little feline purred contentedly.

Why did you let me pick you up? Amy thought. Don’t you know what’s going to happen? Don’t you know?

The cat purred.

Amy ran her crooked hand over its back and felt the rush of blood beneath the fur. Her lips moistened. Her breath came in short gulps.

I can’t do this. I won’t do this!

She licked her lips.

“Stupid cat! Shoo! Go away before I hurt you! Go on. Shoo!”

Amy shooed, but the cat had found a spot on the table better than any sun-warmed gravestone. It closed its eyes and purred as if at home, not a chopping block.

She forced her hand away. She stood beside the table watching the cat for long enough that the lights on Blakely Close shivered to life.

Under the new light, Amy’s shadow drifted on the ice sheet of the kitchen floor. She looked down and felt the dark flutter of wings within her.

I can’t kill a cat, but I can surely kill—

She fished out the vial of Pennyroyal tea from the back of the cupboard where she’d hidden it.

What if it doesn’t work? she thought. I’m not pregnant, and this stuff, even in high doses, isn’t guaranteed.

The purring cat distracted her.

Get rid of the bloody thing, she told herself. Put it outside. You can’t do anything stupid if the cat isn’t here.

She felt a spur of hope in the thought. She would get rid of the cat. She’d put the temptation out of reach like a chronic dieter hiding their food.

“Here, little pussycat,” Amy whispered.

Whatever ease the cat had displayed was lost, and it backed across the table, hissing at Amy.

Oh, Christ! Do I have to deal with this now?

“If you know what’s good for you, stop this nonsense,” she chided the feline.

I’ve gone completely mad now, she thought. I’m talking to a cat like a small child.

“Come on. I’m not going to hurt you. I promise. Come on…just…let me grab a hold and…” She rubbed her fingers together as though they contained a treat.

The cat swiped the air, claws out.

“Okay! If that’s how you want it. Fine.”

Amy stormed into the living room and pulled the purple throw rug off the back of the couch. She’d always hated the thing since Owen’s sister had gifted it to her. Now she saw a way to get rid of it and the cat too. But when she returned to the kitchen, the cat was gone.

“Oh, come on,” she mumbled.

She flicked on the light but couldn’t see a cat shaped shadow lurking anywhere. The kitchen clear, she searched the house.

Think like a cat, she told herself as she stalked from one room to the next with the purple rug clutched in her hand like a net. Where would an angry cat hide?

She checked beneath the couch and found half-empty ballpoint pens, pennies, and a marble. She checked the dining room and the hall for places where a cat could easily pour itself. She searched the kitchen once more, before taking the stairs on tiptoes to hunt in the bedrooms.

Amy stripped back the covers and crawled beneath the bed. She rifled through her cupboards, but still no cat.

She dug through the clothes hamper in the bathroom, searching for it like a missing sock.

She found the sock, but not the cat.

“Here, pussycat. Tss-tss. Come here,” she whispered on the landing, her voice sounding like the crazed old woman in the centre of the town who talked to herself about aliens.

Mad. Mad. Mad.

Balls to it! If I’m mad, then I’m mad. It won’t make me any less mad if I put this cat outside. It’s the sanest thing I’ll have done in months.

“Here, pussycat. Tss-tss,” she said, her voice baby soft. “Come to Amy. Here, pussycat.”

She rubbed her fingers again, as though she had food to offer. A pointless motion, she knew. The creature had refused fresh fish, cat food and tuna, cocking its nose up at one and all. It wasn’t likely to be tempted by imaginary food.

Amy persisted despite the doubt, rubbing her fingers, cooing, and tiptoeing around the house three times before she remembered the box.

Zoe shared funny cat videos through the work email account all the time. For some unfathomable reason cats liked to sit in boxes, even lions and tigers in zoos. Amy hoped the black cat shared the same fascination.

She searched the cupboard beneath the stairs, found a plain brown shoe box, then returned to the kitchen.

Lid removed, she placed the box on the kitchen table, and retreated out into the hall. She crouched beside the stairs, and readied herself like a hunter watching for prey.

The cat appeared out of nowhere, it seemed, emerging from a portal only felines could pass through. It stalked towards the kitchen table, sniffing, drawn magnetically by the presence of the shoe box.

Go on. Just climb in. Go on.

The cat hopped up onto a chair. It lay both paws on the edge of the kitchen table as it inspected the box.

A few more inches. Climb in. Just climb in.

Amy imagined running the length of the hall and tossing the purple throw rug as if casting a net into the sea. With the cat caught beneath, she’d hurl the hissing, scratching bundle out into the yard, her temptation gone for good.

Another image surfaced in her mind. She saw herself beating the purple bundle with her fists until blood seeped out. She saw herself bloodstained and gorging on the pulverised cat as though—

Amy shook the horrid thought away.

No! I’m not going to eat it. I’m not going to eat the bloody cat!

Bloody.

She licked her lips.

No!

The cat hopped up onto the table, walked a circle around the shoe box and stopped. It dipped a paw into the interior of the box like a child placing a toe in a drawn bath.

Go on! Amy thought. Go on!

The cat dropped a paw inside, then lifted its other and jumped into the box.

Amy rushed forward and tossed the purple throw rug before she reached the kitchen. It dropped perfectly over the cat, which sat beneath frozen as an ornamental lamp.

A similar paralysis froze Amy. She’d read about birds tricked into sleep by having cloth draped over their cages. It couldn’t possibly be the same with a cat, could it?

What if it’s a trick? she thought.

What if I’m mad and imagining it all?

Mad. Mad. Mad.

She broke her freeze and crept forward. She reached out hesitantly, expecting a feline explosion to go off beneath her.

The cat remained frozen as Amy gathered the edges of the purple throw rug together.

Why no scratching? Why is it so quiet? It’s not even purring.

The cat had no answer as Amy bundled it up. It still didn’t answer as she elbowed her way out of the back door.

At the side of the house, she shook the purple throw rug like a dusty sheet.

Amy finally had an answer to her question as the cat dropped onto the floor at her feet, stiff and lifeless as her childhood doll in the attic.

Oh, Christ! Did I smother it? Did I give it a heart-attack?

She prodded the cat’s soft belly, and it felt warm like a joint of beef left to rest for a few hours after cooking.

Amy licked her lips.

Stop it! Stop it! Just get rid of it! Throw it away! Put in the bin!

Amy stared at the dead cat, her nostrils flaring, her stomach growling. She licked her lips repeatedly as the hunger grew wildly inside her.

No!

Head turned, she patted the ground blindly until she found the edge of the purple throw rug. Bunched up in her fists, she took a guess and hurled it out to cover the cat.

Amy risked a look.

The throw rug lay on the ground, one small corner touching the cat’s paw.

Oh, come on!

Amy turned her head and patted the ground. She touched paving slabs, cool now after the last of the day’s heat had faded, and the warm body of the cat itself, but not the rug.

Come on! Look! Just look for a second until you know what you’re doing.

She looked and couldn’t look away. The cat sat at the swirling centre of the universe. She bit at her lips drawing blood, then licked the blood away, only to repeat the action.

Mad. Mad. Mad.

The words floated through her head, balloons at a party with no guests. They popped one by one, and Amy blinked.

Blinked again.

She blinked her way out of madness and woke to a horrifying reality.

Amy held the cat in both hands like a foot-long sandwich from Subway, her mouth open and ready to bite down.

She shrieked, and the cat dropped the cat from her hands. She wiped the bloody spittle from her lips, and fearing the madness might return too quickly for her to escape a second time, she kicked the cat onto the purple throw rug at her feet. No hesitation now, she rolled the dead creature up and dropped the bundle into the beige garden waste bin. As she slammed the lid shut, the hollow plastic thud it made brought reality back sharply.

The street lights glowed brightly on Blakely Close. Underneath their touch, the leaves on the oak tree shivered and danced. Somewhere, a bird confusing night for day, sang a shrill little ditty, before realising its mistake.

Amy rushed back into the house and buried herself beneath the duvet. She tried hard to forget the cat and the night and all the other madness in her life. A difficult task, but as the first blue light of morning trickled in through the slats of the bedroom blinds, Amy fell into a dream, not a nightmare.

Her nightmare would only begin on waking.

28

Amy dreamed of a playground that stretched out to the horizon. She dreamed of pushing Noel on the swings. She dreamed he waited with open arms at the bottom of an impossibly long slide. She dreamed he spoke.

“Open the door, Miss Bennington. Open the door, please, it’s the police,” he said, but the voice wasn’t his.

The dream broke, and Amy blinked awake.

“I’ll not ask again. Open the door, Miss Bennington. This is the police,” a voice shouted from the street outside.

The last of the dream faded. Amy clambered out of bed and into a dressing gown. The dull ache of grief left over from the dream clung to her as she opened the front door.

The young officer who’d visited her before, waited at the door. The running couple stood behind him, and one more visitor, new to her home but not to Amy: John Tobin.

“Officer? What’s the matter?” Amy asked.

“I’d like to come inside. This will go better for us all if we’re not on the street,” he said.

Any notion of flirting had vanished from his demeanour. The young officer had only business on his mind.

Amy’s worried glance flitted across the gathered group until it fixed on Polly Moran’s face. The running woman wore a proud smile, as if she’d won an argument.

“What is this all about?” Amy said.

“I’d much rather we clear this matter up inside, not out here on the street in front of everyone. If you would,” the officer gestured towards the house.

Amy searched the neighbourhood. Not a curtain twitched. Not a door opened to witness the unfolding scene.

“You can’t tell me what it’s about?” Amy said.

“It’s a sensitive matter. Please, let’s go inside.” The officer waved towards the interior of the house again.

“Okay,” she said, as she stepped aside.

The officer led the way into the house, the rest following behind like uninvited guests at a house party. Amy stepped forward with every intention of telling them to get lost, but the young officer did the job for her.

“Go home,” he said to Polly and her husband.

“But—” Polly Moran began.

“I said go home, Mrs Moran. I’ll inform you of any further developments later. You’ll know the outcome soon enough. I’m sure your man here will confirm it all for you.” The young officer nodded toward John Tobin.

“Bu—” Polly Moran said.

“Home.”

Polly Moran grumbled her way back along the drive, her silent husband following obediently behind.

Amy offered tea and water and had both declined. The officer asked her to sit at the kitchen table while he spoke.

“The man accompanying me today is John Taylor, I know you’ve already met,” he said.

Amy nodded. Met and distrusted him the moment I laid eyes on him. Met and wondered about ever since.

“He told me his name was John Tobin,” Amy said.

The officer shot the man a suspicious glance. “Is that true, Mr Taylor?” he said.

“I use other names sometimes. Part of the job.”

“I’ll have a word with you about that later,” he said, then turned back to Amy. “In any case, this man was hired by your neighbours to find their missing dog,”

“They did?” Amy said, shock in her voice.

The reality of John Tobin started to unfold before her. He’d not come to the library to steal books or abduct children. He wasn’t a sick stalker from one of the thriller novels she’d read. He’d been hired to find a bloody dog, of all things.

Bloody dog.

Amy bit at her lips to stop from licking them. She dug her nails through her dressing gown and into the flesh beneath.

Keep it together. Smile. You haven’t done anything wrong.

The cat.

The bin and its feline bundle were only a few feet away from where she sat. She felt its presence like heat from a fire. Her cheeks flushed red.

“In the course of his search for the dog, Mr Taylor was instructed to follow you. Your neighbours were still convinced you had an involvement with the disappearance of their pet.”

“Blue Punto,” Amy said.

“Excuse me?” the young officer asked.

Amy nodded towards John Taylor, who stood in the hall beyond the kitchen doorway.

“He came to the library a few weeks ago, and I thought he was a bit suspicious, so I took down his licence number. I kept seeing his car afterwards, a blue Fiat Punto. Now I know why.”

“Yes. Mr Taylor also captured video footage late last evening, and he brought that footage to the attention of your neighbours. They, of course, called the station. That’s why I’m here.”

“Footage?”

Amy had a terrifying intuition the man had filmed her putting the bundled cat into the bin.

“Yes, footage,” the officer said.

“Footage of what?”

“You don’t know?”

“I’ve no idea,” she lied.

The officer nodded gravely. “I see. Do you, by any chance, own a cat, Miss Bennington?”

Amy felt her heart ready to leap through the window and run faster than either of the Morans out of Blakely Close. She steadied herself. She wouldn’t admit to anything unless they said it outright.

“No, I don’t own a cat.”

“Are you sure about that?”

“I don’t own a cat. I don’t have any pets.”

“Have you seen a black cat around your home recently?”

Amy pretended to think about the question. She looked off towards the ceiling and back to the officer. “Around the house, no. I did see a cat up in the tree the other day, but it might have been a shadow.” The lie sounded natural, but it wouldn’t last long if John Taylor’s footage showed the truth.

“You definitely haven’t seen a black cat on your property recently? Say, last night in the early hours of the morning?” the officer asked.

“Why?” Amy said, surprised at her own voice for sounding so natural and undisturbed.

“I think you know why, Miss Bennington.”

“I’m not sure what you’re getting at, but I went to bed around ten. I wasn’t awake in the early hours of the morning to see a cat or not.”

The officer smiled a knowing smile. “You’re a hundred percent sure that’s true, are you?”

The truth lay wrapped in a purple throw rug at the bottom of the bin a few feet from where she sat.

“I might have gone to the toilet at some point, I suppose, but I don’t remember exactly.”

The officer sighed heavily. “That’s not what you were doing at all, Miss Bennington. Mr Taylor? Could you come in here please?” The officer looked over his shoulder to call in the man.

John Taylor shambled into the kitchen. He had a video camera in his hands in the shape of a cylinder. A silver SONY logo marked one side.

“Mr Taylor, would you please play back the footage you shot last night?”

“Gladly,” he said, and he sounded far too glad for Amy’s liking.

He placed the video camera on the table, the LCD screen pointed in her direction.

The screen showed Blakely Close under a green shimmering light. The oak tree and her house glowed white in the green.

“Night vision and heat vision. Cost a fair packet, but worth it,” John Taylor said.

“Who the bloody hell are you anyway?” Amy said, her annoyance rising.

He reached inside his coat and brought out a business card. He held it out for Amy to take.

“Taylor Investigations. Private Hire.”

Amy glanced at the offered card. It had dog-eared corners. A brown coffee stain cut off half of his mobile phone number.

“Oh,” Amy said, and focused on the screen. “What am I supposed to be seeing here?”

John Taylor tucked the card back inside his jacket. “That’s your house, last night. Timestamp is in the bottom right corner there.”

“This is your house, isn’t it, Miss Bennington?” the officer asked.

Amy squinted as though she needed a closer look. “Possibly,” she said.

“I think it is,” the young officer said.

Amy gave in. “Yes, that’s my house.”

“And this is you?” The young officer tapped at the white ghostly figure of Amy that appeared on the green screen.

She squinted, unsure of the apparition before her. The ghost had the same shape as her, but under the green wash of night-vision, the face had vanished.

“It looks like me,” she said.

“Let’s agree that it is, shall we?”

“It is,” John Taylor said, annoyance in his voice. “Who else would it be?”

“Thank you, Mr Taylor. If you’ll just let me deal with this.”

“It’s her. I’m not lying.”

“No one has accused you of lying.”

“She’s as much as saying it,” he said, nodding at Amy.

“Mr Taylor, if you persist in this manner, I will ask you to leave while I conduct the rest of this interview alone. Do you understand me?”

“Yes,” he grumbled. “but it is her. You have my word on that.”

“Good, now we have your word, I’ll get on with it. Miss Bennington, I want you to pay attention to the screen and tell me exactly what you were doing.”

Amy nodded.

Numb, she watched as her ghost walked out to the bins at the side of the house and shook the cat out of the bundle onto the floor.

Amy’s sick craving flooded back at the sight of it, and her stomach grumbled.

“Miss Bennington?” the officer said.

“Yes?”

“Do you have any explanation?”

John Taylor let out an angry grunt. “She killed the bloody cat. A blind man could see that.”

“Mr Taylor! Please.”

“Look, I saw her. I filmed her. That’s a cat, isn’t it? It’s not moving. I saw her bring the bloody thing home with her too. I showed you her bringing it inside. Get her to explain that.”

“Mr Taylor, I won’t ask again. Please refrain from—”

“I’ll bet you anything you want the missing dog is somewhere around here. I’m telling you. You need to get a warrant and search—

“Out,” the officer said. He stood.

“Listen—”

“I said out,” the officer said, walking John Taylor back out of the kitchen.

“Wait, I’m sorry. I was just trying to—”

“Leave now, Mr Taylor, or I’ll place you under arrest.”

“What for?”

“Obstructing an officer in the performance of his duty.”

“I wasn’t doing anything of the sort.”

“Leave.” The young officer took another step forward.

“Look, she’s done that cat in, I’m telling you. Check the bin outside. It’s there. You just check and—”

“I’ll add assault if you don’t start moving towards that front door right now,” the officer said.

“I didn’t touch—” Realisation came to John Taylor’s face as he felt his chest bang up against the officer’s stab vest. He took a step back, hands in the air. “I’m going, but you tell her I’ve got my eye on her. I’ll be watching.” He jabbed two fingers towards his eyes, then reversed them and pointed them at Amy.

“Mr Taylor!” The officer pushed forward.

Amy heard a single word from outside as he left, ‘killer’, and it stabbed her in the chest. She couldn’t deny the truth now. She’d killed the cat and dropped it in the bin like the wrapper from a microwave curry.

“Sorry about that,” the officer said, taking a seat at the kitchen table. “I shouldn’t have brought him into your house. I apologise.”

“It’s okay,” Amy said, knowing it wasn’t.

“Now, the issue still remains, I’m afraid. I have to know what happened to the cat. I have to check your wheelie bin. Are you following me, Miss Bennington?”

Amy could barely focus. The world consisted of shadows and madness, ghosts in the green glowing white. What answers would make sense? How could you explain craving blood and being pregnant with a winged shadow for a child?

Mad. Mad. Mad.

“Miss Bennington? I need to take a look in your bin. Are you okay with that?” the officer asked.

Amy nodded numbly.

“I’ll have to report the incident. Do you understand what I’m telling you?”

She barely heard a word, but she nodded in any case.

“There could be a criminal prosecution. I’d advise you to tell me everything now, as it might save you some mess in the future.”

I can’t tell you everything when I don’t know anything, she thought. If I describe it, you wouldn’t believe a word I say. Most of the time neither do I.

“Yes,” Amy said.

“Yes? Is there anything more you have to tell me? Is it about your neighbour’s dog?”

I heard his screams in my dream. I tasted blood on my lips. When I think of him, I get hungry. Is that enough, officer? she thought.

“No,” she said.

“Do you know something about the dog? Yes or no?”

“No.”

He seemed disappointed. “Fine. We’ll see. Let’s take a look at that bin now.”

He didn’t wait for her to lead the way. He left by the rear door, strode out to the side of the house and took out a pair of blue plastic gloves from his pocket. He stretched them over his hands.

Amy crossed her arms. She wished she was the ghost caught under the green glare of the night-vision camera. As ghost could disappear. As ghost could walk through walls. A ghost…

Her eyes fixed on the oak tree as a shadow shifted in amongst the leaves.

“Officer?” she said.

Elbow deep in the brown plastic wheelie bin, he didn’t hear her at first. He continued his search, pulling out empty cartons of microwaveable meals for one, half bottles of cheap wine, and a Tampax box.

“Officer?” Amy said, her excitement growing.

“A minute,” he said, his voice echoing from within the plastic bin.

“I think you should look at this.”

“Got it!” he shouted, as he yanked the purple throw rug out of the bin.

It looked tattered at the edges, torn in the middle as though cut with a sharp knife. Debris flew off as he shook it, but not a cat. Confused, he dropped the throw rug to the floor and dove back into his search of the bin.

“Officer, please,” Amy said, urgency in her voice.

“Miss Bennington, I’ll get to you in a moment,” he said, his voice touched with frustration.

Half a minute later, he emerged from the bin, his cheeks flushed with anger and exertion. “Where is it?”

“The cat?” she said.

“Yes, Miss Bennington. Don’t play silly games with me. Where did you put the cat?”

“I didn’t.”

“You did. No use lying about it. It’s on film, remember? Now, I need to know—”

“I did, but not how you think. Look, it’s there.” Amy pointed at the black cat that had started to climb down the side of the oak tree.

“Miss Bennington, don’t be—”

“The cat! It’s there. I swear it. Look!”

He didn’t believe, but he turned his head. “Miss Bennington, I don’t like having my time wast—” He grunted in annoyance, then mumbled something about morons under his breath, before he turned back to Amy. “That is the same cat he filmed you with, isn’t it?”

“It is.”

“Can you tell me what exactly you were doing with it last night?”

“I thought I’d hurt…killed it. I didn’t know what to do. I panicked.”

“You panicked? Is that what you’re telling me?”

“Yes.”

“Why didn’t you tell me this before? It would have made matters a lot easier.”

So many reasons, she thought, but mostly because I’ve gone insane, officer. I see things nobody else can see. I feel things I shouldn’t feel. I’m a shadow in amongst shadows, and a ghost in my own life.

“I don’t know,” she said.

“Okay, fine. The cat is alive, that’s a good thing. I’m glad we could clear it up. Next time, Miss Bennington, please call the RSPCA, or the local council.”

“I will,” she said.

“Okay. Let me just have a word with your neighbours for a moment. I’ll be back shortly to clean up this mess I made.”

“No need,” Amy said, “I’ll do it.”

He seemed relieved. “You’re sure?”

“It’s the least I can do for putting you to all this trouble.”

“Miss Bennington, believe me, it wasn’t you putting me to the trouble. It most certainly wasn’t you. Goodbye.”

He strode out to the front of the house. Amy followed, stopping short of the side gate to listen as he chastised both Polly Moran and the investigator, John Taylor. When they started to protest, he said, “The cat sat under the tree right there? That’s the cat she killed is it?”

Silence gave an answer for them.

“I don’t want to hear one more thing from any of you,” the officer continued. “Next time you call the police, it better be for a bloody good reason. Now, the lot of you, leave before I lose my patience.”

“But—” Polly Moran said.

“Leave!” the officer barked.

29

June turned to July in the blinks of a black cat’s eye. It had taken up a permanent home in the branches of the oak tree, judging Amy, it seemed, whenever she dared peek through the window.

The days grew heavy around her, dipped in the golden syrup of summer. Clocks ticked slower. She walked as if underwater, so much so that she’d phoned into work with a story of a prolonged sickness, hoping and wishing for her madness to leave in that absence.

All the while, the black cat watched with its judging green eyes as one hot unbearable day melted into the next.

Then…

Unable to take any more, Amy gathered the courage to brew up the last of the Pennyroyal tea.

She sat in the bedroom with the cat outside as her only witness. She gulped a whole mug of the poison down in one, her tears dripping into the liquid.

‘Goodbye,’ she mouthed at the swollen shadow of herself on the wall, the word an echo in her brain.

Goodbye to the boy who wasn’t.

Goodbye to the thing that couldn’t be.

Goodbye to the howling winds and the scream of blood.

Goodbye.

Goodbye.

Goodbye.

Blackness followed with no shadow and no light, only a faint and familiar voice calling to her at the bottom of the dark well into which she’d sunk.

It said, “Are you all right?”

Birthday

30

“Owen?” Amy asked.

Her ex-husband sat by the side of the hospital bed wearing his immaculate white trainers. “Are you all right?” he asked.

She blinked the room into focus, and it had a terrifying familiarity.

Thick curtains hung from the window. Daylight struggled through here and there to dapple the floor. A pine scent stung her nostrils, and a bank of machines blinked noiselessly at her side.

In a room just like this she’d spent the longest night of her life. A stranger had asked her if she was ‘all right’ then too, but it wasn’t.

What happened to me? she thought. Why am I here? Did I hurt myself? Did I…I give birth?

Panicked, Amy threw the sheets back.

The blue paper hospital gown hugged her flat stomach, but she felt the swollen bump beneath. The phantom pregnancy hadn’t ended. Not yet.

She started to cry.

“Amy? Amy, do you need me to get a doctor?” Owen said.

“No.”

“You might need something. I’m going to get a doctor. Just hold on.” He rose from his seat, but she reached out and pulled him back.

“I don’t need a doctor.”

He stared at her hand, then at her face, the same unchanging worry in his features he always had no matter the situation.

“Don’t you think we should let a doctor decide that?” he said.

“I’m okay.”

“You’ve only just woken up. How do you know if you’re okay or not?”

The words, “Because I feel okay”, jumped to her mind, but couldn’t make it to her lips. Memories returned in sharp fragments. The cat’s eyes in the tree. The Pennyroyal tea. Her swollen shadow on the wall. Blackness.

It didn’t work! This thing is still inside me! It still has a hold of me!

“Amy, let go!”

She looked down to see she’d gripped Owen’s wrist so tightly, the skin was red.

“Sorry,” she said, unclenching her grip.

“It’s okay. You’re just a bit…a bit…”

Mad?

Mad. Mad. Mad.

“What?” she said.

“Out of sorts. You’ve been sedated.”

“Sedated?”

“Yes, to help you…get better.”

In his pause lay a truth that scared her.

“What happened?” she asked.

He lowered himself back into his seat. “What do you mean?”

“What happened to me?”

“You don’t remember?” Owen had a hint of relief in his voice.

“No, remind me.

He shrugged. He searched the room as though there was some other who might help shoulder the task ahead of him. “You really don’t remember, do you?”

“Would I be asking if I did, Owen?”

“Okay, fine. They told me you had a bad reaction to something you ate or drank. They pumped your stomach to get rid of it, then they sedated you.”

He didn’t pause, but Amy could sense the gaps.

“Then?” Amy said.

“Then?”

“You said they sedated me. They don’t usually sedate people after pumping their stomachs, do they?”

“I don’t suppose they do, no.”

“So, what happened?”

Owen rubbed at the back of his neck. He dragged one immaculate white trainer over the other, causing a muddy stain.

“They said you were ranting.”

“Ranting about what?”

He shrugged. “Ranting. Just ranting.”

“What did I say?”

“I wasn’t here, Amy. They called me after the man brought you in here.”

She eyed him suspiciously. “Man? What man?”

“John something. He gave me a card.” Owen patted down his pockets.

John Taylor? Amy wondered.

“What did he look like?” she asked.

“Does it matter?”

“Grey beard?”

“What’s this got to do with anything, Amy? Yes. Yes, he had a grey beard.”

“And he said he found me?”

“No, the doctor told me that. The fellow just gave me his card and asked me to give him a call when I had the time. I can’t seem to find the bloody thing though.” Owen patted down his pockets a few more times

“About what?”

“He didn’t say. Do you want to get into this now? You need to relax and get your strength back.”

John Tobin’s warning about keeping an eye on her came back to mind.

Was he watching me when I drank the Pennyroyal tea? she thought. What else did he witness after I passed out?

But the thoughts didn’t last for long. Owen’s reticence to reveal anything pushed to the forefront of her mind.

“Did the doctors tell you what I was saying, Owen?”

“You don’t need to bother yourself with that now. What you need is plenty of rest. The doctor told me that at least.” He patted the edge of the bed. “I phoned your parents. They’re driving up tomorrow. Your sister said she’ll try to make it up this weekend.”

Amy didn’t hear him.

“But they told you, right? They told you what I was ranting about?”

He took his time to answer. “Yes,” he said, in a defeated tone.

“What was it, Owen? What did I say?”

“Nonsense. Babbling about a baby. You mentioned Noel, too.”

“What exactly did I say?”

“I don’t know, exactly. The doctor said you were delirious. He put that down to you having such a high temperature. He asked me did I know the name, Noel, and of course I told him I did and why.”

Amy’s hand ran across the cold sheets on the bed and into the past.

The night of Noel’s death she’d stroked the sheets the same way. The cool touch had anchored her to reality and soothed her for a short while.

Now it no longer worked. She couldn’t reclaim that moment of calm or reality. The shadow child clawed at her from within. Soon, the shadow would emerge.

“Amy? Are you okay?” Owen said, reaching over to place his hand upon hers.

“I’m fine,” she lied.

“No, you’re not. I’m going to get the doctor, okay? He’ll need to speak with you anyway. He asked me to fetch him once you’d woken up.”

He rose, but Amy gripped him by the wrist.

“Don’t leave,” she said.

“It’s okay. I’m only going down the hall. You’ll be fine.”

“No, please. Stay,” she said.

“I have to tell the doctor you woke up. I’ll leave the door open, okay? Just shout if you need me.”

A childhood memory came to Amy’s mind. Her mother always left the bedroom door open and a landing light on. Like so many children, Amy knew the only thing that killed a monster was the light.

Could it kill my little monster? she wondered.

The thought comforted her, despite its oddness.

Light kills monsters.

Light. Kills. Monsters.

“Amy? Amy?”

“Yes?”

“Would you let go of my hand?”

She stared at her claw-like grip on Owen’s fingers, then let go.

Light. Kills. Monsters.

“I’ll be five minutes,” he said.

“Okay.”

He kissed her on the forehead. “Right back.”

“Right back,” she repeated.

He slipped out the door and left it open a crack just like her mother, but Amy didn’t feel like a child now. A new strength grew in her along with new thoughts.

Light. Kills. Monsters.

Day. Kills. Night.

When the day came, she would drag herself out into the hot summer sun and give birth to the monster. The shadow child couldn’t possibly live in the light.

Light kills monsters.

Another madness to add to the rest, she knew, but this madness gave her hope.

Light kills monsters.

Day kills night.

Amy kills the shadow.

31

Five minutes turned to a half hour, and the overwhelming pressure on Amy’s bladder pushed her out of bed as the birth of the shadow child grew close.

Light kills monsters.

Day kills night.

Amy kills the shadow.

She cracked the door to the room and peeked out to see Owen stood near the ward desk with Dr Holt.

Dr Holt? Why was Dr Holt at the hospital? Amy wondered. Why was he talking to Owen? It couldn’t be a coincidence, could it?

Amy pulled back, hiding herself behind the door, but she could hear their whispers.

“If it persists, yes,” Dr Holt said. “Has she said anything?”

“About what?” Own asked.

“Has she mentioned the child since waking?”

Owen shook his head.

“A good sign.” Dr Holt took off his glasses, rubbed the bridge of his nose, then placed them back.

“You think it’s done with?” Owen asked.

“Hard to say. Your wife’s in a delicate state. She’s lucky to be alive.”

“Ex-wife,” Owen corrected.

Amy felt an irrational surge of anger at the description.

“Ex-wife, of course,” Dr Holt said. “In any case, we mustn’t make any hasty decisions at this point. No need to rush. She’s safe, and the doctor looking after her is a personal acquaintance. I can vouch for him.”

“Good,” Owen said. A dark shadow crossed his face. “And if she does mention the child? What then?”

Dr Holt matched Owen’s worried look with one of his own. “There are options,” he said.

“What kind of options?”

“If Amy becomes a threat to herself, you might consider applying for an order of committal.”

“Have her locked up in a loony bin?” Owen asked.

A shiver ran through Amy’s bladder. She clenched her legs together, hoping to create a dam against the inevitable.

“No, no,” Dr Holt said, wagging his head. “It would be a medical facility. Perhaps even here at the hospital.”

“I don’t like the idea of having her…what would happen exactly?”

If he didn’t like the idea, he quickly changed his mind about considering it.

“We’d need to apply for the order, and I’d need to vouch that the situation had reached a point of immediate crisis. There would be some paperwork involved, not much, I don’t think. She’d be confined to a private room while under observation for however long the order was granted. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. We must be patient with Amy. Let’s see what happens first, shall we?”

Owen gazed along the corridor, his eyes filled with worry.

Amy froze, thinking he could see her in the shadows behind the door, but Owen quickly turned back to the doctor.

“What will they do to her if the worst comes to the worst?”

A smile grew on Dr Holt’s face. “We’ve advanced greatly since the days of Bedlam, you’ll be glad to hear. There’ll be a few psychological tests and a possible regime of medication to follow, depending on the outcome of those tests. The idea will be to make sure Amy isn’t a danger to herself.”

“Or others,” Owen said.

Amy clenched her hands into fists.

How could he believe that about me? she thought. I’d never hurt a fly.

How about a dog or a cat?

“Do you have any reason to believe Amy might harm others?” Dr Holt asked.

Owen remained silent.

What do you need to think about? Amy thought. I’m not dangerous. I’m not a psychopath. I’m just…I’m just…

Mad. Mad. Mad.

As if to confirm that madness, Amy felt the pinch of her bladder again and crossed one leg over the other.

“No, I don’t think she would harm anybody. I’m worried that’s all,” Owen said.

“It’s good to be concerned. Amy is in a delicate situation, and she’s going to need all the support she can get.”

“I’ll do what I can, but…but…”

But what? Amy thought.

“Yes?” Dr Holt asked.

“What if she does something in the meantime?”

“Such as?”

Yes, what will I do, Owen? Tell us all what I might do!

“What if she tries to hurt herself again? Whatever the hell she took to get rid of the baby…the…I know there’s no baby, but that’s what she thought. It could happen again, couldn’t it?”

“If she’s not mentioned the child, then that’s a good sign it’s not at the forefront of her mind. If she does try to hurt herself, then this is the last place on earth she would have any luck with that kind of thing.”

“I don’t know,” Owen said, throwing a glance back along the corridor towards the door.

Amy thought she saw recognition this time, as though he could see her.

She retreated further behind the door.

Own turned back to the doctor. “What if she tries to leave?”

“Excuse me?”

“I can’t be here all the time. I’ve got to go back to work. What if she leaves the hospital when I’m not around?”

The doctor nodded. “She won’t leave.”

“How can you be sure?”

“The medication is still in her system. She’s not fit enough to leave.”

“What if she’s mad enough?”

Amy felt the sudden urge to run out into the corridor and slap Owen in the face. She stopped herself at the door.

“Your wife isn’t mad. Please don’t use that outdated terminology.”

“I’m sorry. I’m worried. And it’s ex-wife.”

“Yes, you’ve made sure to remind me of that several times now. I’ll have a quick chat with Amy to make sure, but I’m quite confident the worst is over with.”

“For now.”

“You won’t let this go, will you?”

“I’m worried she’s going to kill herself. What if she discharges herself? She can do that, can’t she?”

“She could.”

“Nothing can stop her?”

“No, I suppose not.” A look of worry crossed Dr Holt’s face. He reached up to take his glasses off, but then stopped himself. “You might have a point.”

“Yes. That ‘order of committal’, would that keep her here?”

“It could, yes.”

Owen nodded. “She couldn’t discharge herself from the hospital?”

“No, she wouldn’t be allowed to leave.”

“Who would stop her? Would it be the police?”

“It depends on the situation. It depends on many factors.”

Owen wore a look of confusion. “I don’t know though. Committal seems so cruel.”

“No crueller than restraining a patient during a seizure. In this case the seizure isn’t so visible.”

“Oh,” Owen said.

Don’t you do it, Owen. Don’t you dare—

“What do I have to do?” Owen said.

“You mean to proceed with the committal?”

“Yes. If it’ll help Amy, I’ll do it. Just tell me what to do and—”

“It’s not such a simple matter. It might take a few days, even a week to…” His voice trailed off, following his vision as he looked down the corridor to the hospital room. “In the meantime…”

“Anything could happen in a week. Do we have that much time? I don’t want her to hurt herself just because we’re waiting around.”

Dr Holt turned his gaze to the opposite end of the corridor. “I’ll talk to my friend here, see if we can’t improvise a little.”

“What does that mean?”

“No need to concern yourself with the details. For now, let me see how Amy is doing. We might be worrying ourselves unduly in any case.”

“Okay, fine. But I don’t think we should be wasting any time, if we can help it.”

“We won’t. Trust me.”

The doctor turned towards Amy’s room and started walking.

Amy scuttled back from the door and climbed into her bed, pulling the covers up to her neck just as the door opened.

“Amy. Glad to see you again,” Dr Holt said.

“Glad to see you,” Amy lied.

32

Dr Holt talked and talked and talked some more. It felt like two hours had passed as she listened to him, and all the while she watched the filtered sunlight through the curtains grow dimmer and dimmer. Night seemed as eager to arrive as the dark child within her.

As Dr Holt talked, a smile crossed her lips as practised as any she wore in the library dealing with members of the public. The smile said, ‘I’m feeling better. I hope I can put all this madness behind me soon enough.’

She thought the smile had worked, but when Dr Holt left, she followed and listened to his words with an ear pressed to the door.

“I think she might be hiding something,” he said

“What?” Owen asked.

“I’m not sure. She said all the right things to put me at ease, but I don’t want to hear all the right things. All the right things can often indicate all the wrong things.”

“What do you mean?”

Yes, what do you mean? Amy thought.

“Amy has suffered a tremendous physical and mental trauma in the last few days, yet she showed little reluctance in acknowledging her delusions while I spoke to her.”

“Isn’t that a good thing?”

“No. If she believed she suffered from a delusion, she’d be far more reticent to admit it. When I asked her about the child, she told me quickly and confidently grief had caused it all.”

Owen looked like a lost child as he stood there. Amy felt a ripple of pity for him, soon forgotten as he spoke again.

“You think she’s lost it?”

“Lost it?”

I’ll lose you! Amy thought.

“She thinks she’s pregnant, doesn’t she? I mean, that’s crazy right?”

“I’m certain she’s holding something back. Enough to convince me we must take the earlier course of action we discussed.”

“Committal?”

“I believe it would be the best thing to do right now.”

“But you said it would take a week. Do you think she’ll just sit here in the meantime and twiddle her thumbs?”

“No, but I have a notion she’ll not be going anywhere.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

Dr Holt didn’t answer. A tall, blond doctor dressed in blue scrubs interrupted.

“Jan!” he shouted.

“Alex,” Dr Holt said, his voice more subdued.

The two men shook hands, then hugged. The tall doctor towered over his older, smaller colleague.

They exchanged a quick bout of small talk about family, the university in Holland where Alex had studied and Holt had taught. Owen kept off to the side, and Dr Holt made no attempt at introductions. Finally, the two men reached the reason for their meeting.

Alex pulled Dr Holt to the side wall, his back shielding them from any casual listeners, but not to Amy’s ear.

“You think she might harm herself?” Alex asked.

“I can’t be sure, but I’d rather we didn’t take any chances.”

“Restraints?”

“Not just yet, no.”

“I see. Well, how long do you think we’ll need this special arrangement?”

“A day or two at most.”

“Is that a promise?”

“I’ll have the order of committal by then, I’m sure.”

“Ahhh, Jan. You’re always pulling strings. You’re like Geppetto.” Alex laughed, and it came out like a rumbling thundercloud from his belly.

“So, you’ll do this for me?”

Alex nodded. “Yes. I’ve instructed our head security guard to come up here to help.”

“He knows about…” Dr Holt glanced towards Amy’s room.

“He knows not to let anybody out of the room, and that’s all he’ll know.”

“What about letting people in?”

Alex patted Dr Holt’s shoulder. “I can’t stop the cleaners and the nurses from doing their jobs, can I?”

“Of course not. Thank you.”

“You’ll thank me later with a nice bottle of wine, won’t you?”

“That too.”

“Not a cheap one, you old bastard.”

Dr Holt laughed.

Amy shrunk back from the door, and the room pressed in around her. The daylight through the curtains had grown as pale as dishwater.

I can’t give birth to this thing here! If it’s born in this hospital, then it’ll get free. It’ll live.

What if it does live? Amy thought. What if it’s a child like any other?

The image of dark wings beating, her face in the mirror, lips smeared with blood, came to mind.

No, it wasn’t a child, and she wouldn’t be a mother to such darkness. She knew what she had to do.

Light kills monsters.

Day kills night.

Amy kills the shadow.

She pressed in near the door, watching through a tiny crack for her chance to escape, but the chance didn’t come. Instead, an overweight security guard in a green security uniform joined Dr Holt in the corridor.

He nodded sagely as he spoke to the doctor. He reminded Amy of the ineffectual community officers in their bright blue caps. The kids called them ‘bluebottles’, and they had about as much fear of them as they did the flies.

How could you do this to me, Owen? Amy thought. How could you, Dr Holt? What kind of doctor keeps someone locked up like this, anyway? They should strike you off for it! Once I’m well, I’m going to make sure you never practice medicine again, you bloody quack!

The thought of wellness felt like a lie. So many months had passed since she’d felt well. She’d have an easier time remembering how her favourite ice-cream tasted as a child.

“Yes, I know what to do,” the fat guard said, with all the seriousness of someone taking a pledge to fight for Queen and country. “That room will be locked tight from now until I’m told otherwise. Not a soul to get out.”

“What time do you finish?” Dr Holt asked.

“I’m done at eight in the morning on the dot, but I’ve had a word with Ste, and he’ll pick up when I leave. He’s a good lad. You don’t have to worry about him.”

“I’ll try not to,” Dr Holt said.

“Good, reliable lad.”

How reliable? Amy wondered. Could I slip past him when he swaps his shift?

She entertained a brief fantasy of climbing out of the window and tracing the ledge to the end of the corridor. The fantasy crumbled as she felt the phantom weight pulling down on her again.

How long do I have now? I can’t last until the morning. I don’t think I’ll last the next couple of hours before my waters break.

Amy turned back to the room in a frantic search for a way out. She locked onto the chair beside the bed and thought of hitting the guard over the head with it. He wouldn’t collapse like in the movies, but it might put him out of action long enough for her to make it into the lift.

She waddled over and picked it up, but her arms wobbled and ached as she lifted, despite the chair’s lightness.

If I can’t lift the chair, I’ll not be able to hit that bloke with enough force to hurt him. Even if I could, then what? I take the lift down, and he’ll have informed the security at reception by the time I reach the ground floor. Even if he doesn’t call, I’m in a bloody blue paper gown. They won’t just let me walk out of the hospital in this state.

Close to hysteria, she waddled back to the door and inched it open.

The security guard sat on a plastic chair, its hollow legs bowing under his weight, but Amy’s focus shifted quickly from him to the woman at the end of the corridor.

A pale purple uniform hung loosely from her wire-hanger shoulders. A dark bangle of bruises circled her right wrist as she reached up to a mirror and wiped it down.

Amy’s heart beat hopefully.

It was the same woman who’d held her on the night of Noel’s death. This woman had brought kindness with her along with her cleaning supplies.

Amy whispered a prayer for help to any God that might listen, begging them to guide the woman towards her. She crossed her fingers over the door handle. She crossed her legs to ward off the phantom pressure inside her.

The woman pushed a stainless-steel trolley before her. Its wheels rattled like chains. She reached the security guard, but didn’t say a word, only nodded towards Amy’s room.

The guard nodded back.

Amy quietly shut the door and waddled back to her bed, still repeating her whispered prayer until the door opened.

33

Amy lost her voice along with her nerve as the cleaner entered the room.

The woman smiled but showed no recognition she’d seen Amy before.

Have I changed so much in a year or so? Do I look so different? Amy thought. How much does madness age a person anyway?

I’m not mad. It’s not in my mind. It’s real. The creature is real, and I have to get rid of it.

She ran through all she might say to convince the woman to help her, but it all sounded so crazy and unconvincing.

I’m pregnant with a shadow, and I have to drag it out into the light to kill it. Could you help me escape before my doctor and ex-husband have me thrown in a loony bin?

It’s like this, if I don’t get out of here before the sun sets, I’m going to give birth to some kind of shadow demon, and I have no idea what this creature might do after its free.

Amy stifled a laugh as the thoughts tumbled through her mind. She felt as if she was standing at the edge of a cliff, a dizzying urge to leap taking her over.

What do I say to her? What can I say that will convince her to help me?

The woman had showed her a kindness over a year earlier, but that didn’t guarantee she would help now, whatever Amy said. The situation seemed impossible, and time ticked quickly away inside her head as the cleaner moved swiftly around the room performing her routine.

She’d already emptied the small bin near the door, and now she pulled a spray bottle filled with blue liquid and a thick, yellow sponge from her trolley. She headed towards the window, her face impassive and still showing no recognition.

Amy expected the woman to finish the room in ten minutes. After the bin and wipe down of the interior windows, only the adjacent bathroom remained.

How am I supposed to convince her to help me in ten minutes? What can I possibly tell her?

Nothing, Amy realised. The truth won’t work. The truth is too crazy to believe.

A lie then, Amy thought. I’ll tell her a lie.

The thought gave her a moment of hope, but doubt followed quickly after when she couldn’t think of anything convincing.

I could tell her I’m being held against my will. Maybe she’d be on my side if told her that?

Who’s holding me here? How? It's a hospital not a prison.

Amy knew she couldn’t make the lie convincing. The door wasn’t locked, and she wasn’t restrained in any way.

Come on! I have to say something before she leaves, or I’ll never get out of here.

The cleaner finished the window and passed the bed. She swung the toilet door wide, then moved back to her trolley to gather new supplies.

Amy watched her move, words tingling her lips several times, but she couldn’t get them out.

The domestic cleaner, a thick yellow plastic bin bag in her hand, entered the adjacent bathroom.

The woman had a few inches in height on Amy, and from the look of her, she weighed about eight stone. It wasn’t her height and weight Amy focused on, but the uniform she wore.

If I could get hold of one of those purple smocks she’s wearing, I might be able to sneak out past the security guard. I could keep my back to him, and he wouldn’t even notice I’d left. He’d just think I’m another cleaner and if I could make it to the stairs then…

A fantasy, Amy realised. The domestic cleaner wouldn’t just hand over her uniform. What reason would she have to do such a thing?

I could take it from her.

The new thought rivalled her earlier thought for its level of fantasy.

What am I going to do? Knock her out with my bedpan and steal the bloody clothes off her back?

Amy felt herself sink into the bed. She stared at the ceiling and saw nothing there to foster hope or fuel any of her fears.

“Excuse me,” the domestic cleaner said.

Amy thought she’d invented the voice at first. Another madness to add to the rest.

“Miss? Excuse me?” the domestic cleaner repeated.

Amy faced the woman.

She’d had no recognition on her face when she entered the room, but Amy saw it now. A new light glinted in her dulled eyes.

“Yes?” Amy said.

“This is an odd question, but have you been in this hospital before?”

Amy didn’t want to lose herself to a false hope.

“I have, yes,” she said.

The cleaner looked down at her feet, then back to Amy, almost embarrassed by speaking. “It wasn’t on this ward, was it?” she asked.

“No. No it wasn’t.”

“Maternity, by any chance?”

Amy felt the connection like a warm blast of air through an open door.

“Yes, I remember you,” Amy said.

“Oh, really?” Now the embarrassment brought colour to the woman’s pale cheeks.

“Yes, I never did get to thank you. You helped me a lot that night.”

The domestic cleaner looked down at the floor. She bit at her top lip and looped her hands into each other. “I didn’t do anything,” she said, wringing her hands together.

“It meant a lot. I promised myself I’d come and find you to thank you, but it just got away from me. I must apologise for that.”

The cleaner nodded, her eyes briefly making contact with Amy’s before looking away again.

Oh God! I’ll never be able to convince this girl of anything, Amy thought. She’s too shy to hold a normal conversation with.

But Amy knew she couldn’t let her chance go, not even the smallest of chances.

“What’s your name?” she asked.

The girl lifted her hand up and pointed to a tag pinned to the breast of the purple smock. “Gloria.” She spoke the name softly, as though unsure of it.

Amy tapped at her chest, in lieu of a name tag. “Amy. Glad to meet you, Gloria. Meet you again, that is,” she said.

Gloria giggled, then stopped herself half-way through like someone might hear and tell her off.

Silent seconds passed after the laughter died away. Amy didn’t know how to rekindle the conversation beyond the short exchange, and she doubted Gloria knew how to do the same.

A correct assumption, as the young girl twisted her head and looked at her trolley beside the door, before returning an apologetic gaze to Amy.

“I have to get back to it. There’s a set time we get for each room. Sorry.”

Gloria turned and headed towards the trolley.

Amy felt the urge to reach out and grab the girl’s wrist. She couldn’t just sit and watch as Gloria and her hopes walked slowly away. But Amy didn’t want to add to the bangle of bruises on the poor girl’s wrist.

The bruises! How could I forget the bruises? I know how to get her on side now. I know what will work, Amy thought.

“Wait!” Amy shouted.

The girl jumped like a firework had gone off behind her. “Are you okay? Do you need a nurse?” she asked, facing Amy.

“No. No nurses or doctors, just you,” Amy said.

“Me?”

“I need you to do something for me, Gloria. I need your help.”

The girl wore a look of bewilderment as she replied. “My help? I…don’t know how I…what do you mean?”

Gloria took a few steps backwards, her hands tangled in each other again as she wrung them together. She reminded Amy of a frightened cat poised to leap and twist at the first sudden movement.

Amy held up a hand. “Please, just listen to me. I haven’t got much time.”

The lie hadn’t come to her lips yet, but Amy already felt guilty.

Am I really going to do this? Hasn’t this poor girl been through enough? she thought.

She fixed on the girl’s hands, picking up the purple of bruises on both wrists that matched the purple of the uniform.

Those bruises could be from something other than a violent boyfriend, Amy thought. I’m pinning all my hopes on her sympathy when I don’t even know what’s happened to her.

The moment of doubt passed. The bruises alone didn’t guarantee Gloria had suffered abuse, but her timid nature helped sell Amy on taking a gamble.

“I’ll get a nurse,” Gloria said.

“No! I don’t need a nurse. I need you to help me.”

“I’m not qualified. I’m just a cleaner. I can’t—”

“Please, I need to get out of here. I need you to help me escape.”

Amy felt the sick ripple of guilt. The poor woman didn’t deserve to be used in such a way, and Amy had no doubt Gloria had been used her whole life by one person or another.

She forced the guilt down and made a promise to return and help the girl later. A promise she vowed to keep this time around.

Gloria didn’t jump at the suggestion, and Amy’s hope grew.

“Get you out? What do you mean?” Gloria asked, and even as she spoke, Amy sensed a level of understanding beneath the question.

She knows what’s it like to be trapped and want to escape. She’s dreamed about escaping before, many times I’d guess, but she didn’t have anybody to ask for help.

“My husband,” Amy said, forcing down the guilt, hoping Gloria would bite at the simple statement.

Gloria’s hands squirmed in a twisting mess of fingers. She untangled herself and started rubbing at her left wrist.

“What about your husband?”

Amy didn’t know how good of an actor she was, but she had to act quickly or end up in a psychiatric ward.

“He put me here. I’m not crazy. I’m not sick. He just wants…” Amy watched as Gloria’s hand rubbed frantically against her already bruised wrist. “…he wants to get rid of me.”

“I…I…” Gloria said.

“Please, can you help me?”

“What do you want me to do? I don’t know if I can…I don’t know…”

“Please,” Amy said, her voice brimming with honest emotion.

“I don’t know…I can’t…”

I’m stupid! Amy thought. This girl had those bruises a year ago when she hugged me. She’s stuck in an abusive relationship and too timid to get out. Why did I think she’d suddenly find her courage now?

She didn’t let the thought stop her. Only Gloria could help her now.

“All I need is a uniform. I’ll do the rest. That’s all I’m asking you for,” Amy said.

“A uniform?”

Amy nodded to the purple smock Gloria wore. “Yes, I just have to make sure he doesn’t recognise me when I leave, that’s all.”

“Who?” Gloria asked.

“My husband.”

A picture came to mind of Owen in his clean white trainers, no hint of anger on his face, just the perpetual frown. The notion of him as a violent stalker almost made Amy laugh.

Gloria glanced over her shoulder at the door to the hospital room. “He’s out there?” she asked, breathless.

Oh great, I’ve scared her. She’s probably remembering every beating she took from the bastard who gave her those bruises. She’ll probably be too scared to even consider getting me a uniform now.

“No, he’s down in the cafe. But he’s got that security guard out there watching for me. I heard them talking before.”

“The fat one? Mike?” Gloria asked.

Amy nodded vigorously.

“I just have to get past him and out of the building. If I don’t, the bastard will have me sent to some nut house or something, I’m sure of it,” she said.

Gloria’s nervous eyes darted back towards the hospital room door a few more times before they settled on Amy.

“Won’t he find you after you leave?” she said, but Amy sensed Gloria had asked the same of herself many times before.

Amy scrambled for a reply, and an event at work came to mind.

The library didn’t just lend out books and facilitate as a meeting place for the old. Several times a year it served as a focal point for local council initiatives. A domestic violence awareness program had featured prominently a few years earlier, with information and contact numbers for women escaping abuse.

The information flooded back into Amy’s mind, including the number of the nearest shelter. She’d given that number out so many times on the day it had stuck forever, and it was an easy number to remember.

“There’s a refuge I’m going to. They’ll take me in on the spot. They take anybody in, no questions. The number’s 0151 496 1111. You can check it if you like. 0151 496 1111.”

Amy hoped the number would stick with Gloria as it had with her. It didn’t do much to help with the guilt, but if some good could come of the interaction, then it wouldn’t be a waste.

“They’ll just take you in like that? Don’t they need proof or something?” Gloria started rubbing at her bruised wrist again, but Amy noticed hope in the young girl’s voice.

“No questions at all. They’ll keep me safe.”

They’ll keep you safe, Gloria, she thought.

“What’s the number again…so I can check it?” Gloria asked, but Amy knew she’d won the girl over now.

“0151 496 1111.”

Gloria reached with a shaking hand into the front pocket of her smock. She took out a tiny blue disposable pen and a pink National Lottery ticket.

“0151,” she said, beginning to write down the number on the back of the ticket.

“0151 496 111. It’s real. I’m not lying. I just need a uniform for an hour. Can you help me, please?”

Gloria folded the ticket in half and slipped it back in her smock pocket. She smiled at Amy, but nothing in the smile confirmed her willingness to help.

“Can you?” Amy said, desperation creeping into her voice.

Gloria took hold of her trolley and started pushing it to the door, but she didn’t say a word. She opened the door onto the corridor, slipped the trolley out, then stopped and turned to Amy.

“Ten minutes, okay?” she said.

“You’ll help me?”

“I’ll be back in ten minutes.”

“Does that mean—” Amy said.

The door shut softly without a noise and left Amy alone in the room with her doubts and a growing silence.

34

Amy stared at the clock on the wall. It felt as though the hands had stopped.

How long until night? she wondered. How long until the woman returns? Will she come back?

Amy watched the shrinking light through the curtains, fearful the clock had lied.

Where are you? Why did you lie to me? Why did you—

Two small raps on the door jolted Amy from her thoughts. She swung her legs out of bed, waiting for the door to open.

It remained shut, but a piece of paper slid in under the bottom of the door.

Amy approached it like a pecking bird around thrown seed.

She unfolded it to reveal a printed work sheet with room numbers to the left and columns to the right with tick boxes.

CLEANED.

NEW BEDDING.

EMPTIED BIN.

A handwritten note was scribbled over the neatly printed sheet.

Uniform on top of bin next to door. Leave 6:45. Take stairs behind me.

6:45. Five minutes away, if the clock told the truth. How long until night?

In July, the sun set at eight o’clock. She had time still.

As if the phantom could sense her plans, it beat its dark wings within her. Amy felt like a balloon nearing the needle’s prick.

She forced the fear to the back of her mind and started counting seconds.

Five minutes. Five times sixty. 300 seconds.

300

299

298

How could a second last so long? she wondered, as she counted them off in her head. After a hundred more, it felt like she’d never reach zero.

198

197

196

Amy stared at the clock on the wall, but it didn’t match her count. It read 6:41 still.

Am I counting too quickly?

The clock answered by blinking from 6:41 to 6:42.

Amy continued her count. Another hundred and a handful more counted backwards.

60

59

58

At 6:44, Amy opened the door and peeked into the corridor.

The domestic cleaner stood on the opposite side of the fat security guard, Mike, with her bony arms folded, sleeves pulled down to hide her bruises. She nodded and smiled uncomfortably at him.

Amy made another promise to return and help her when the madness had passed.

A last look at the clock showed 6:45.

Swallowing a nervous breath, Amy opened the door and snatched the folded uniform and a pair of slip-on rubber shoes from their resting place on the bin beside the door. She fumbled into the purple smock and lost herself for a moment in a thought that it wouldn’t fit her swollen body, only to look down and catch the wildness of her delusion. Finally, she slipped on the rubber shoes.

She approached the door to the room again, her heart pounding loudly enough to feel it in her hands.

Oh God! I hope this works! she thought as she slipped out of the door, her back to the guard and the woman keeping him busy.

The window nearest her overlooked the manicured lawns of a convalescent area at the rear of the hospital. Through it, Amy spied a few old men on walking frames, shuffling like old wind-up toys. A young man with one leg inspected a prosthetic limb in his hand like a jigsaw piece from the wrong puzzle. A little girl, her legs laced with straps and braces, propelled herself joyfully forward with two crutches, giggling all the way.

Amy turned and started the walk towards the stairs nearest the distracted security guard.

Every step felt as if she’d traded her legs in for those of the little girl outside. She wished she’d found a little of the child’s joy and lightness too. The phantom weight added a waddle she couldn’t correct.

If he glances at me, he’ll know something’s not right.

Amy waddled forward, unsure of where her strength came from.

He’s going to turn around and see me. He’s going to know who I am. He’s going to—

As Amy got close, Gloria stepped sideways to block the fat guard’s view.

“You could say I was too on the ball for the regular police, when it comes down to it,” the security guard said.

Amy reached the door that read: EMERGENCY EXIT: STAIRS. She blinked sweat from her eyes.

It can’t be this easy, can it? I can’t just walk out of here and—

“Amy? Amy what are you doing out of bed? Amy?” Owen shouted from the far end of the corridor.

She felt the words branding her between the shoulder blades. She wanted to move but couldn’t force her legs to obey. She wanted to push the door open, but both arms had fused to her sides.

“Amy? Amy, will you please answer me. Amy!”

“No!”

She thought the voice belonged to her, but when it repeated, it came from behind her.

“No! You leave her alone!” Gloria shouted.

“What are you doing? Let me through,” Owen said.

“No, I won’t let you,” Gloria said, her voice shaking but firm.

Amy turned enough to see the cleaner blocking Owen’s way in the corridor.

Two waves of guilt hit her. The first she felt for lying to the woman. Whatever continuing Hell the cleaner had to experience, she’d stood here and made a stand in solidarity. She’d risked her job for a lie.

The second wave hit as she looked into Owen’s eyes. He wasn’t the monster she’d portrayed to the cleaner and never could be, not even after Noel’s death. Not even for wanting to get her committed.

“I don’t know what you think you’re doing, but I—” Owen said.

“Okay, now. Just step aside there, Miss, if you would, and let the man pass,” the security guard said, his voice brimming with authority, but his body still firmly fixed to the seat.

“I won’t let you hurt her!” Gloria cried.

“Hurt her? What are you talking about? Hurt who?”

“You know who.”

“I haven’t got a bloody—” His eyes drifted toward Amy. A flicker of recognition, like the nervous light in the street lamps, came into his gaze. “Amy?”

“Get lost,” Gloria said. She pushed him back once, twice along the corridor, ignoring all the staff and patients who’d gathered to watch.

“Right, that’s enough of that.” The security guard started to pull himself out of his chair.

Owen and Gloria ignored him.

“I don’t know what you think I did, but I didn’t,” Owen said, as he rooted himself to the spot. “Amy, tell this woman who I am. She seems to think I’m going to hurt you or something.”

“Oh, like you already haven’t,” Gloria said.

“I haven’t. I swear to—Amy? Will you tell this—”

The security guard pushed his way in between the two of them. “Let’s all calm down before things get out of hand.”

“Just do your job and keep this bastard way from his ex-wife, okay?” Gloria said. She glanced at Amy.

Her face seemed younger flushed with anger. Her eyes shined brighter. She’d found her courage.

Guilt gnawed at Amy, but she couldn’t let it hold her.

The sun would set soon enough. She’d give birth to the darkness if she didn’t hurry.

Light kills monsters.

Day kills night.

Amy kills the shadow.

“Tell her, Amy. Tell her I’m not going to hurt you,” Owen pleaded.

All eyes fixed on her. Amy burned under their glare.

Light kills monsters.

Day kills night.

Amy kills the shadow.

She pushed the EXIT door open and ran.

35

Each step sent electric shocks through her legs, threatening to rob them of their strength. Each flight down, she grew surer Owen and the guard would burst through a door and stop her escape.

She reached the 2nd floor. A large painted orange 2 on the wall screamed to her how close she was to freedom.

All I have to do is make it outside and grab a taxi. There’s bound to be plenty of taxis waiting.

A shroud of pain and hazy memories lay over her last trip to the hospital. Owen had driven her on the day of Noel’s birth, but she vaguely recalled several private hire cabs waiting outside.

She reached the 1st Floor. A large painted orange 1 on the wall teased her again with imminent freedom.

I don’t know what I’m going to do if there are no taxis, she thought. I can’t just hop onto a bus. I don’t have any money on me for a bus…

…or a taxi!

Amy slipped on the edge of the step as the thought hit her. She grabbed hold of the bright orange bannister nearby and righted herself.

I’ve not got any bloody money! How am I supposed to get a taxi if I can’t pay for it?

She imagined herself walking home along the streets, the night closing in behind her. It was a footrace she knew she’d never win.

Fuck!

I’m not going to outrun it. I’m getting a bloody taxi. I’ll just have to…I’ll just have to…

Not pay! I don’t have to pay! Jesus Christ! What am I thinking? Who cares about money right now? Who cares if I run out on a bloody taxi fare?

Amy stopped as she reached G – GROUND FLOOR. She approached the door and the porthole window in it, which allowed a view into the hospital.

Floor to ceiling windows fronted the hospital. A bright July sun warmed the nervous people waiting on sticky plastic couches in the main lobby. Outside, taxi cab drivers with lobster red arms and faces leaned against their private hire cars and chatted.

Thank God! Amy thought and didn’t wait to thank him again as she pushed the door open.

She froze as a cleaner in a purple smock walked directly in front of her.

Shit!

Amy readied herself with a stupid excuse about having to leave her made up job early, and how she was new on the job that day, but didn’t need to use it. The cleaner walked past her, oblivious to everything but the silver bins next to the door. She moved from one bin to another like a sleepwalker, the world and Amy non-existent around her.

Amy strode forward, a prickle of paranoia between her shoulder blades.

Don’t go too fast, she thought and slowed her pace. But it felt like walking through a deep drift of snow. Don’t go too slow, either, idiot!

Slow or fast, it felt like all eyes had fixed upon her as she headed towards the entrance doors.

I have to be natural. I have to look like I fit in here.

Yeah, I look like a madwoman in a borrowed uniform, sweating as if I’ve just run five miles. All very bloody natural indeed. I stick out like…like…

One of the lifts pinged open, and Amy saw a flash of white at the corner of her eye.

Owen?

She dared herself to look. The flash of white belonged to a woman’s bleached designer jeans as she stepped out into the lobby.

Amy’s eyes caught the flickering LCDs above the bank of three lifts – G 4 2. One lift at ground level, one still on four and another at 2. She had to guess Owen and Dr Holt occupied one of them along with the fat security guard.

How long until they make it down here? she thought. How long until they alert the rest of security?

As long as it took me to get down here, that’s how long. They’ll be all over the place in a minute.

Or maybe not?

Amy scanned the lobby. A single security guard sat on an elevated stool behind a desk near the main entrance. He had his eyes fixed on a phone in his hand and hadn’t looked up once as Amy neared him.

I might be in luck, she thought, but didn’t allow herself to get lost in the hope.

Just a few more steps she thought. I just have to make it out to those taxis and…

She didn’t know how many steps or how far away the door was, but it felt like she’d started to walk the black liquorice road from her dream again. It felt like she’d walk the walk forever, the exit always just a few steps away.

A lift pinged. Amy felt the sound like heartburn in her chest. She forced herself not to stop.

Just a few more steps. Just a few more steps, and then I hop in a taxi and—

Where am I going? Amy thought. I can’t go home. Owen will look for me there. I have to go somewhere close by. I have to go somewhere with plenty of daylight too.

Light kills monsters.

Day kills night.

Amy kills the shadow.

Where? Where do I go? she thought.

The lift pinged again. Amy swallowed her heartburn and took the last few steps towards the door.

“Amy!”

No mistaking Owen’s voice. Even in distress he didn’t sound too distressed. He might just as well have been calling to tell her she’d forgotten her car keys.

Amy ignored him and pushed the doors wide.

The last of the daylight greeted her. On another day, in another life, she might have closed her eyes and looked up to the fading sun and felt the warm caress of the evening. On this day and in this life, she had no time for the warmth, and neither did the shadow living inside her.

She felt it tear at her from the inside.

Amy gritted her teeth and hustled forward, all too aware now of what followed behind.

A cab driver nodded at her then towards his private hire car. A concerned look flashed across his sunburned face.

“You okay?” he asked.

“I will be, once I get out of here.”

“Rough time? In the wars, were you?” he said, opening up the back door of his car.

Amy didn’t reply. She bundled her phantom weight into the rear of the taxi cab and fixed on the hospital.

She couldn’t see Owen’s face, but his white trainers gleamed like a beacon as he came towards the doors.

Outside, the cab driver had embroiled himself in a discussion with another driver about the weather. They batted ‘global warming bollocks’ and ‘climate change, my arse’ back and forth to each other like a friendly game of tennis.

Hurry, you idiot! Hurry up! Amy thought.

The shadow child had other ideas. It liked the darkness in the back of the cab. It settled within her stomach, comforted now the sun couldn’t reach it.

“Polar bears? You’re having a bloody laugh with that one,” the cab driver said.

The other driver laughed.

Amy couldn’t hold her voice any longer. “Excuse me?” she said, her voice laced with anger.

“Sorry, luv,” the driver said. “Be with you in a tick.”

But he wasn’t.

“Hotter than this when I was a lad. Your bloody shoes would stick to the floor back then, it was that hot,” he said.

“Aye, I remember that,” the other cab driver said.

Amy saw the flash of white trainers near the entrance to the hospital, then she saw Owen clearly.

He stood with Dr Holt and the fat security guard. He pointed out through the doors, but not at Amy, in another direction.

Does he see me? Amy thought.

He pointed again, but to the left of where she sat in the back of the taxi.

He doesn’t see me. He doesn’t see me!

The fat security guard pushed open the doors and led the group out to the front of the hospital. He’d taken charge. He pointed to Dr Holt and at Owen, then to the left of the hospital and the right, giving them instructions. Finally, he pointed to himself and turned to nod in the direction of the taxis.

He hasn’t seen me yet, but he will if he walks over here, Amy thought.

“Excuse me!” Amy said, out of the side window of the cab.

“Okay, luv. Hold up a minute.”

“I’ll get another cab, thanks,” Amy said, but didn’t move. The fat security guard had already started to wobble his way over in her direction.

The cab driver grumbled but didn’t complain as he climbed in behind the seat and said, “Where to?”.

Amy stared at the approaching security guard. The words ‘anywhere but here’ hovered behind her lips.

“Library,” she said.

36

Night trailed the taxi at a slow pace.

Amy searched behind expecting Owen to take chase, but the streets had emptied and only the darkening sky bothered to follow.

Hurry, hurry, hurry! she thought, but the taxi didn’t pick up any speed, only the driver’s idle chatter increased.

“If you ask me, we never should have been in the bloody thing to start with. I mean, come on? You heard about them straight bananas they wanted to foist on us? Bloody nonsense.”

Amy heard fragments. Brexit, council funding, global warming again and how it was all a big bloody sham, polar bears or not.

“I take it back, they don’t need to arrest that joke of man, just lock him up in the loony bin,” he said.

I’ll probably be sharing a padded cell with him, whoever he is, Amy thought. Do they even have padded cells now? Or is it all just pastel coloured walls and fat security guards in the corridors?

The cab driver laughed at a joke Amy hadn’t heard.

A smile came to her lips, but it wasn’t for his punchline, it was for the library building as it appeared up ahead.

I have time. Plenty of time before it’s born. I’ll take it out into the light and…

Light kills monsters.

Day kills night.

Amy kills the shadow.

What if it doesn’t come? What if it knows and waits until dark?

It’s not real, she told herself, but didn’t believe the thought.

It was real. Real in all the ways it made her feel. Real in the way it had stolen all the months and sanity from her.

“Here you go. Place looks closed, though. You sure about this?” the cab driver said, as he pulled up outside the library.

With the lights off, the old building looked as cold and uninviting as Dracula’s castle, but Amy couldn’t return home. Owen knew her address, so did Dr Holt. The library would have to do.

“Ten thirty. Call it a tenner even for cash,” the cab driver said, as he tapped on a mobile phone screen that doubled as a fare calculator.

Amy didn’t hear him.

What if I’m in labour with this thing for hours after my waters break? It happened with Noel, why not this thing?

“Tenner, Miss,” the cab driver said, his voice on edge.

“Sorry,” Amy said, shaking her head.

“That’s a tenner cash. Ten fifty if you want to put it on a card.” He smiled nervously at Amy in the rear-view mirror.

She didn’t meet his glare. Her eyes fixed again on the library.

I should turn back, she thought. I’ve lost my mind. I should be committed, like Owen and Dr Holt want. Can’t cure madness if I run away.

“Miss? Hello?” The cab driver reached back and waved his hand in front of Amy’s face. “Can you hear me? Are you all right?”

Amy heard. She had an answer.

No.

No, I’m not all right, she thought. I’m as far from ‘all right’ as any person can be. I’m about to give birth to a shadow, and that’s not ‘all right’ at all.

Unless I go back?

Amy slowly turned her head and glanced behind.

An old man walked a young bulldog pup on a short lead. Two young boys, mounted on bikes, faced off against each other, handlebars to handlebars like rutting stags. A gaggle of teenage girls in bright make-up skipped along like a strange, single creature with many mobile-phone holding arms. Beyond them all, the night reached with long, dark fingers, ready to smother the day.

The child will be here soon, Amy thought with a terrifying finality. It’s going to kill me if I don’t kill it.

Light kills monsters.

Day kills night.

Amy kills the shadow.

“Miss? Hello?”

The cab driver didn’t exist for her. Amy opened the side door and forced herself out onto the pavement.

“Miss! Your fare! Miss!”

She hobbled towards the library steps as if approaching the gallows.

“Hey! Don’t you walk away from me!”

The world filled with the beating of dark wings.

“I’ll call the police. I swear to God, if you don't—”

Amy punched in numbers on the electronic lock, her fingers remembering for her. A loud thunk announced the library doors opening.

Am I going to do this? she thought.

“Right, that’s it. I’m calling them,” the cab driver shouted.

She did.

37

Amy shuffled through the library as if the penitent towards communion. On all sides, a congregation of books silently observed her passing. The courtyard at the rear of the building, lit by the last rays of daylight, waited like an altar.

A thought stopped her at that door.

What if it’s Noel? What if he’s been returned to me, and I’m about to kill him?

The dark shadow within her flapped its leathered wings, and a sharp pain ran through Amy’s groin, threatening to pull her down to the ground.

It had started.

The shadow child was coming.

Thoughts of Noel vanished under the hot sting of pain. She pushed open the courtyard doors just as her waters broke.

It didn’t feel as it had with Noel. Her inner thighs itched like a trail of ants was crawling down them.

She dared a look.

Black, clinging liquid dripped down the inside of her legs and rolled out across the courtyard like melted tar on a hot summer day.

Amy stifled a scream.

Oh, God! Please! Oh, dear God!

God had no ear for her. Only the darkness heard. It beat its wings excitedly in preparation for freedom.

Amy tried to gather her thoughts. She knew what to do, but the black tar held her at the steps.

Light kills night? Is that it? she thought.

Day kills dark?

Once, her thoughts had order, despite the madness. Now, she couldn’t put them together again.

Dark kills day? Night kills dark? Amy kills the night? And the monsters? What kills the monsters?

The dark drumbeat of wings grew within and without. Thump-thump. Thump-thump. Thump-thump.

Amy kills the day?

Thump-thump. Thump-thump. Thump-thump.

Amy kills the night?

Thump-thump. Thump-thump. Thump-thump.

Amy kills the light?

Thump-thump. Thump-thump. Thump-thump.

Amy kills the dark?

Thump-thump. Thump-thump. Thump-thump.

Amy kills the monsters?

Amy kills….

Amy kills…

A block of oblong sunlight warmed the wall on the far side of the courtyard. Amy locked onto it and saw a door in the light. Her thoughts cleared. Her memory returned.

Light kills monsters.

Day kills night.

Amy kills the shadow.

She pulled her feet out of the sticky black and started the journey across the courtyard.

The shadow inside sensed danger. It clawed at her belly with sharp talons, trying to dig a hole towards freedom. Its wings beat wildly out of rhythm.

Thump-thump-thumpthuthummp.

Amy struggled forward. Every step now was a spear of pain lancing her stomach.

The shadow’s claws grew longer, sharper with every step she took. It tore at her insides, ripping through flesh like a plastic bag.

Amy felt the hot/cold touch of blood on her stomach. She gritted her teeth against the waves of pain.

A few more steps. Just got to make it a few more steps, she thought.

The shadow screamed like a wounded animal trapped at the bottom of a forgotten well.

Amy forced her shaking hand onto the warm door of light in the wall, and a wave of comforting nostalgia followed. Summer days in her childhood, the park and the swings, playing rock-paper-scissors with friends.

She closed her eyes and pressed her back against the warm wall. Childhood returned in the warm touch of brick.

Rock. Paper. Scissors.

Amy clenched her fist into a rock, the memory in her muscle.

Rock breaks scissors.

Scissors cut paper.

Paper covers rock.

Which one kills a monster? Amy thought.

She shook her fist three times, then unfolded her hand as a new memory played on the back of her sun-warmed lids.

Suzy.

Suzy, the doll in the attic with her hand stretched out for twenty-five years. Suzy, the doll Amy had rocked in her arms and sang lullabies to as a child.

Go to sleep. Go to sleep. Go to sleep little baby.

The memory faded as Amy remembered where Suzy now lived. The doll sat in the attic amongst all the other forgotten things in her life: a wedding dress, printed pictures in a bag. Ashes in a box never opened.

Noel.

Amy cradled the son she’d never held. Hot tears rolled down her face.

“Go t-to sleep. Go t-to sleep. Go t-to sleep little baby,” Amy sang, her voice crackling. “Go t-to sleep. Go t-to sleep. Go t-to…”

A terrifying fear swept through Amy that if she forgot the end of the song, she would forget Noel too. She knew the words, she’d searched for them in the library during her pregnancy, but they wouldn’t return.

Go to sleep. Go to sleep. Go to sleep little baby.

Go to sleep. Go to sleep.

Amy rocked the empty cradle faster.

Go to sleep. Go to sleep. Go to sleep little baby.

Go to sleep. Go to sleep.

She rocked harder and harder.

Go to sleep. Go to sleep. Go to sleep little baby.

Go to sleep. Go to—

Pain stole the song from her lips. She dropped down onto her haunches, her body submerged in hot boiling oil.

Amy made rocks from her fists.

Rock breaks scissors. Rock breaks scissors!

The shadow shifted within and turned south.

Amy’s legs shook like the hollow legs of the chair under the weight of the fat hospital security guard. The lullaby played over in her head.

Go to sleep. Go to sleep. Go to sleep little baby.

Go to sleep. Go to sleep.

The song triggered the shadow. It gouged away at her insides, searching for a new way out.

Go to sleep. Go to sleep. Go to sleep little baby.

Go to sleep. Go to sleep.

Amy walked through her memories to the music section of the library. She opened a book there of American Folk Songs and snapped it shut in revulsion as she remembered the ending of the lullaby.

Go to sleep. Go to sleep. Go to sleep little baby.

The buzzards and the flies

They pick at his eyes

And the little thing

hollers out mammie.

She didn’t want the ‘little thing’ hollering mammie at her. She wanted it dead. Dead and gone.

The shadow child had other ideas. It reached with long, black fingers between her legs. She felt its cold, sticky touch on her thighs.

GET OUT OF ME! GET OUT OF ME! GET OUT OF ME!

The shadow jerked its hand back inside.

Panic rose in Amy. The shadow knew her plan. It knew not to come out into the light.

Go! Please go. Leave me alone. Just…

She stared through burning eyes at the deep shadows of the courtyard.

I can trick it! she thought. I’ll lure it into the shadows. It’ll come out then. Surely, it’ll come out then.

Amy crawled forward, her teeth gritted against the burning pain. As she touched the shadows, the dark thing within probed the air from between her legs.

That’s it, she thought. Good little boy. You just come out now. You just be a good little boy.

She laughed manically at her crazed thoughts, but the sound died in her mouth as the shadow child tore its way free.

The world shrank down to a spot of dark concrete below her. Amy felt herself falling to the bottom of a deep, endless well. The lullaby came back to mind.

Go to sleep. Go to sleep. Go to sleep little baby.

Go to sleep. Go to sleep. Go to—

Shadow touched shadow as the dark child found the air with both hands.

It’ll kill me getting out! Once it’s free, it’ll kill someone else. I can’t let that happen. I can’t let that—

The shadow child rammed forward, both bony shoulders ripping her skin as it slid its head out into the world.

A bolt of pain rattled Amy’s body. The dark bottom of the well called to her.

No, please! Not like this. I can’t let it happen this way. I have to stop it.

A wet shluck sound pulled her back from one darkness, only to see another drop down between her legs.

Amy screamed. She scuttled backwards.

The creature she’d seen through the eye of the Reading Owl didn’t exist on the courtyard, only a child.

“Noel?” Amy said, tears filling her mouth. “Noel?”

A pale twin of her dead child lay in the shadows before her. A living, breathing, gurgling replica of her son.

He turned to her, reaching with tiny hands, his eyes slowly coming unglued.

Blue eyes.

She’d never seen the colour before. The undertaker had closed Noel’s eyelids in a mimicry of sleep for the funeral service.

The baby held out its tiny, curled hand again, reaching for Amy.

I’m not mad, she thought. This is a miracle. God brought Noel back to me. My shy God performed this miracle, and I didn’t believe. I’m sorry that I didn’t believe. God forgive me for—

It’s not real! her mind screamed. It can’t be real! None of this can be!

Amy reached out a trembling hand towards the child.

Their fingers met, and Amy felt a love she’d only imagined before running through her.

She scrambled forward and scooped the child into her arms.

“Noel,” she said, cradling him tight against her breast. She rocked back and forth as she repeated his name.

The child giggled and gurgled.

Amy’s smile grew. She kissed the clammy skin on her son’s forehead.

The taste of copper, charred wood and match heads burned her lips.

Amy stared as the child in her arms faded and was replaced by a spreading, swirling darkness.

Noel’s face bubbled up from within. A black reflection of madness in a mirror she’d stared at for far too long.

Amy turned her eyes away and crawled towards the door of light on the wall.

The darkness twisted within her cradled arms. From within the void a child cried out in a voice she’d never heard, but knew as her son’s.

Amy ignored it, and with shaking arms, she held up the writhing darkness towards the door of light.

The black stuck to her hands like oil. It twisted into a foetal curl within her arms. Her son’s smiling face appeared on the surface.

“Noel,” Amy whispered from her tear-salted lips. “Noel.”

Black bubbles formed on the creature’s tarred lips. It reached up for her with five tiny black nubs like the burned ends of matches.

Instinct pushed her hand towards the child, but she yanked it back.

It had to end. It had to end now.

Light kills monsters.

Day kills night.

Amy…

She grabbed the darkness with both hands and ran headlong for the door of light.

Blackness followed.

38

“Don’t turn on the light.”

“Excuse me?”

The young nurse behind the reception desk put down his cell phone. He looked up at the new cleaner standing before him.

“The patient down there flips out if you turn on the light in the corridor. Room 16. So, leave it off. Okay, mate?”

“Sixteen?”

“You’re new, aren’t you?”

“Yes.”

“Are you doing the floors tonight?”

The new cleaner stared at the trolley he’d picked up from the supply room. It had a selection of bottle sprays, cloths, and plastic bags resting on the top, but nothing big enough to clean a floor.

“They didn’t say anything about doing the floors, no,” he said.

“Doesn’t matter. Just keep the light off while you’re down there.”

The cleaner had worked in a dozen hospitals and psychiatric facilities before the Rainfall Institute. He’d had a dozen pranks played on him too. The nurse’s warning felt like a piss-take to him.

“Are you serious?” he asked.

“Turn the lights on and find out. Look, it’s the last room on the left at the end. Least you can do is keep that last light off down there.”

“Really?”

“Your funeral. Mine too if you turn ‘em on. It’ll be me dealing with her screeching the rest of the night, not you.”

“Okay,” he said.

“Really, don’t turn the light on down there. You won’t like it if you do.”

The cleaner forced a smile. “I’ll keep it in mind,” he said.

In the dark, the corridor seemed three times as long as it had when he’d first walked up to the desk. Paintings of indistinct subjects lined the walls between the rooms. A round steel bin sat at the far end like a powered down robot.

“You do that,” the night nurse said.

A small pulse of fear ran up the cleaner’s neck as he pushed his creaking trolley along the corridor toward room 16.

Who’s in that room, anyway? he thought.

An image of a filthy woman bound in a straitjacket came to his mind. He pictured her bouncing of shit-stained walls and crashing through the door.

He took a nervous step back from the room as he neared it.

I’m an idiot, he thought. There’s nothing to be afraid of in here, except maybe one of the nurses playing a stupid prank on me.

He stared at the dark porthole window in the door of room 16 and saw nothing beyond.

I bet there’s nobody in there. Not a patient, anyway. I’ll turn on the light and one of the other nurses will jump out. Bastards.

He glanced back along the corridor.

The young nurse concentrated on his phone. The light from its screen danced across his slightly upturned smile.

Fuck it, the cleaner thought, pushing his cart away from the room. I don’t need the light on anyway. I’m only emptying a bin. I could do that with my eyes closed.

He could have, most of the time, but the bin had a lock on the side. After a minute of fumbling in the darkness for his key, he knew he’d lost the battle.

“Hey, mate! I have to turn this light on, okay? I’m near enough blind down here,” he shouted up to the far end of the corridor.

The nurse’s face turned angry under the glow of the phone screen. “Fine, it’s up to you. Try to make it quick, though,” he said, shaking his head.

The cleaner gave a thumbs up. Under his breath he muttered, “Fuck off.”

Finger over the light switch, he stopped himself.

Some bastard nurse will jump out as soon as I flip this switch, he thought. Well, I won’t give him the satisfaction of seeing me flinch.

He hit the switch with a closed fist and readied himself.

LED strip lights cut the corridor in half. The pictures on the walls revealed themselves as a series of dull landscapes of fields and skies. A woman appeared through the porthole window sitting quietly on the edge of bed.

Despite all the promises he’d made himself, the cleaner jumped at the very ordinary sight.

Bloody fool! he thought. It’s just a patient. Calm down.

He took a step toward the door for a closer look.

The woman sat frozen on the edge of her bed. She stared at the shadow of a chair cast on the wall. Whatever madness afflicted her, it had carved dark angles into her cheeks and pulled the skin tight across her bones. She seemed catatonic, not the screaming crazy the young nurse had suggested with his warning.

Jesus, what kind of Hell has she gone through? he thought, taking another step closer.

He’d seen a number of patients on the wards, but none as lost as the woman in room 16.

He took another step.

Why did that stupid bastard tell me not to turn on the light? he thought. What kind of trick is he—

The woman leaped off the bed.

The cleaner jumped, expecting the door to come off its hinges as she hit it, but it remained untouched. The woman wasn’t coming from the door, instead she clawed at the wall. Chunks of plaster came out in her hands. Blood streaked the shadow of the chair before her.

She screamed a name, “Noel!”

Or was it, ‘No!’?

The cleaner backed away from the door as the nurse came running.

“I told you, didn’t I? Jesus fucking Christ,” the nurse muttered under his breath. “She’ll be at it all night now. Thanks a bunch, mate. Thanks, a fucking bunch.”

From within the room, the woman’s screeching voice murdered a lullaby.

“Go to sleep. Go to sleep. Go to sleep little baby,” she moaned as she scratched bloodied fingers into the wall. “Go to sleep. Go to sleep. Go to sleep little baby.”

The cleaner fixed on the wall and the shadow there. He thought he saw it shift and change beneath the woman’s maddened clawing.

He thought he saw the beating of wings.

The Shadows That Grew on Blakely Close

Writers keep lists. Lists of things to do, which quickly become lists of things not done. Lists of character names never to be christened on the page. In my case, I have lists of titles, hundreds of them.

My latest novel, The Bennington Boy, began a long time ago as a throwaway title — B-Boy — on such a list. As a title it doesn’t conjure much on its own, unless you’re a Beastie Boys fan. There’s none of the literary allusion of Something Wicked This Way Comes, or the blunt mystery of IT, but in my mind it brought forth a striking image. I saw a half-bat child peeking through the curtains of a quiet house at the end of a quieter cul-de-sac. The creature, a child in size alone, had the face of the famous Bat Boy of Weekly World News fame, and it fed off the bodies of old, childless couples. I envisioned a short story with a nasty ending; the B-Boy of the title escaping to another quiet cul-de-sac to feed off another childless couple. I do like an unhappy ending.

Unfortunately, I’d have to forgo an ending, unhappy or otherwise, for a few more years to come. I started writing the short story not long after putting down the title but soon consigned it to the growing folder of orphaned and abandoned monstrosities I named ‘Bedlam’. In there, I lock away all the malformed ideas, blind beginnings and mute endings of stories I wish to keep hidden from the world.

As with all the creatures I consign to the folder, I have a hard time keeping them contained for long. A year later, B-Boy peeked out from behind the curtains again, and I began writing a novel based on the little sucker. I threw in a dash of slovenly police detective, a pinch of a ridiculous subplot about Romanian orphanages breeding vampire children for sale, and more than two heaped spoons of blood. I let the story cook for a month or two, and sixty-five thousand words later, I stepped back from my creation, smiled, and promptly banished B-Boy to Bedlam again.

The story didn’t work. My detective had all the fashion sense of Columbo and none of the charm. The orphanage somehow made a profit from vampires, but I could never figure out who would buy a vampire. The B-Boy fed. He peeked out from behind the curtains, but as the novel progressed, I became less and less interested in him and more and more in the shadow he cast.

In a pivotal chapter of the abandoned novel, my knock-off Columbo investigates a house on Blakely Close. Inside the house he finds an old couple shrivelled down to husks in their bed. He sees the shadow of a boy flit by at the edge of his vision. He chases the shadow onto the quiet of the cul-de-sac. For the rest of the novel, the shadow chases him in one way or another.

That shadow chased me too. Six months later, it chased me back to Bedlam to pull out B-Boy and revisit Blakely Close.

A new character appeared. Amy Bennington, living with a husband who had all the presence of a ghost, looked out of her dead son’s nursery onto the silence of Blakely Close. She too noticed an impossible shadow cast across the cul-de-sac. She too wanted to know who owned that shadow. And she too would soon take a trip to Bedlam to stay with the rest of my orphaned monsters.

Amy’s story would take her from the quiet of the cul-de-sac to the deathly hush of a library where the B-Boy nested in the rafters. It would take her from vegan to meat eater; often that meat belonging to still breathing animals. It would take her to an ending that didn’t make sense, in a story I no longer enjoyed.

Three, they say, is the magic number. It is also my limit for chocolate biscuits (not really), alcoholic drinks (one, and I’m out of it, usually), and stories (more than often true). I thought B-Boy would rot in Bedlam alongside the typewriter fed by blood, the zombie stuntman, and the pirate ghosts trapped on a lake. To my surprise, the shadow of B-Boy caught my eye again ten months ago, and I returned for a final time to Blakely Close.

I found Amy there, but the B-Boy no longer peeked out from behind the curtains. All that was left was a shadow. A shadow now growing within Amy. A shadow that would slowly drive her insane.

The journey from title to shadows took three years. I visited Bedlam far too many times in that period, but I can finally put the B-Boy and his shadow behind me.

Now, I put his shadow in front of you.

Paul John Lyon

September 2019

About the Author

Paul John Lyon's passion for fiction began at the age of ten when his grandfather gave him a box of well-thumbed paperbacks. Between the yellowed pages of those books, he discovered tales of detectives and criminals, spies and lovers, grand victories and grander defeats. More importantly, in that box were the seeds of a love affair that has lasted a lifetime. A few years later he was gifted a typewriter and began writing. He hasn't stopped since.