Paul John Lyon is the author of THE BENNINGTON BOY and FLOWERS OF THE MOON, amongst others.

He lives in the north of England.

Find more of his stories at pauljohnlyon.com

With Ravens Passing the Moon

Paul John Lyon

With Ravens Passing The Moon Copyright © 2025 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 the dearly departed.

"The meaning of life is that it stops"

FRANZ KAFKA

The End

We were gathered there to hear the Last Will and Testament of Arthur Parris, aka Robert Mort, aka P.J. Lowe, aka Max Faust, aka Sam Roskoe, aka so many other aliases and nom de plumes his solicitor didn’t even begin to name them.

“Shall we proceed?” He said, and when nobody disagreed, he began the reading. “I, Arthur Parris, being of sound mind and body, do solemnly attest to this being my Last Will and Testament.”

The body was sound, I’d agree, but Arthur’s mind was a mess. No surprise for a man who’d spent twenty out of every twenty-four hours in the company of a chattering typewriter for the last forty years.

“To Agatha, you murderous hack, I leave an unsolvable mystery with a hundred red herrings, ten dozen poisons, fifteen smoking guns and not a butler in sight.” The solicitor waved for his tall assistant, who handed a bow-tied manuscript to the prim and proper woman on my right.

Agatha pinched her face over pince-nez glasses. “The rotten bastard,” she said, under her breath, but her fingers had already started to rifle through the pages.

“To Louis, you old leather-faced cow-poke, I leave a town with no horses, a gunslinger with no bullets, and a thousand good and alive Indians to whoop and holler. Yippee-key-aye.”

Another manuscript, this time twice the size as the last, was handed over to a big, red-faced man, who hid his anger in the shade of a ten-gallon hat.

“To Isaac, a slender poem I leave for thee, not a rocket nor robot in sight. No faraway planets. No big ideas. A purple flower grows in a garden somewhere, and it is beautiful. I hope you choke on its perfume.”

The assistant dropped a single page into Isaac’s broad lap. It sat there untouched like a sleeping dog.

“Finally, to my young and oh so earnest assistant, Jonathan, I leave you a wish and a commandment. I leave you the greatest gift of all. Thank me later. The end.”

“The end?” Agatha, then Louis, then Isaac asked in turn.

“That’s what’s written here,” the solicitor said. “I can’t begin to tell you why. But it’s here in black and white.”

He held up the will for all to see. And there it was, in block capitals at the foot of the document. THE END. As though Arthur Parris’ was finishing off a story, not a life.

“The old fool,” Louis said.

“On his deathbed and still writing. You have to admire his tenacity, I suppose,” Agatha said.

“Or decry his stubbornness,” Isaac added.

I wasn’t concerned with the strange flourish in his will, only what had preceded those words: I leave you the greatest gift of all. Thank me later.

Thank him later? How could you thank the dead and buried?

I soon found out.

The solicitor waved for his assistant to hand over an envelope.

And in that envelope, a slip of paper.

And on that slip of paper, the words: GO TO MY CRYPT AT MIDNIGHT. START UP THE MACHINE.

* * *

A spotlight moon shined on Arthur Parris’ crypt. I followed the light down to where his coffin rested on a plinth.

“Evening, Arthur,” I said, patting the top. “I see you’re resting.”

Arthur didn’t answer, and I hadn’t expected much conversation from a corpse. Still, I continued speaking.

“Where’s this machine of yours, then?”

He didn’t—he couldn’t answer, so I gave the crypt the once over, searching for the obvious, and when I found nothing, I searched a little more.

My hands slid over the smooth drawers set into the wall, beyond which generations of Parris’ slept that long and never-waking sleep, but nothing opened to my touch.

I performed a clumsy tap dance across the marbled floors, listening for the hollow echo of a room beneath, but the floor was solid.

Lastly, I searched the ceiling, hoping to find a painted map that would hint at the machine’s location.

The ceiling, like the floor, was smooth and without a clue.

“So, Arthur, what is this?” I asked his coffin. “A practical joke?”

He’d liked to pull pranks. His favourite was hiding beneath his desk, then popping out and shouting, ‘Surprise!’ as I entered. Dead, he wasn’t shouting anything.

I knocked on the coffin lid just in case. “Hello? Anybody home?”

The dead couldn’t answer, I knew that, but they could leave instructions. I noticed then the writing on a bronze plaque set into the top of the coffin:WIND ME UP.

“Are you kidding me?” I asked, and the crypt returned my words to me.

How did you wind up a dead man, anyhow? Was there a hole in the coffin and a key that fit? Where would that key be?

I knew the answer, and I didn’t like it much.

“Arthur, you old weirdo,” I said, wincing at what I’d have to do next.

On display at the funeral parlour, they’d done a good job of making Arthur’s body more presentable than when he’d been alive. They’d dressed him in a neat black suit and combed the bird’s nest out of his hair. The eager undertaker had painted colour onto Arthur’s cheeks that he’d never possessed and scrubbed the typewriter ink from beneath his nails.

Still, I didn’t relish opening the coffin.

“You’re going to make me do this, aren’t you?” I said.

If Arthur had something to tell me from beyond the grave, he wasn’t speaking just then.

“Okay, have it your way.”

I slid my fingers under the coffin lid, lifted, then pulled, my head turned away throughout.

The smell of lavender and bleach wafted into my nostrils. Death’s scent was flowers and cleaning products.

“Now, where’s this key of yours?” I asked, before I looked, and then looking, another question quickly followed. “What?”

Arthur Prentiss’ body hadn’t changed since the funeral parlour, but now he wasn’t alone in the coffin. His typewriter, a distinctive teal Smith Corona Zephyr II, with its alphabet worn away over time, sat on his stomach, and Arthur’s pale dead fingers rested on the home row.

The roller held a single sheet of paper, and a new instruction: The key is under the typewriter.

I found the key, then the lock in the side of the typewriter, just below the return carriage.

I turned the key in the lock.

I waited.

I expected a loud bang. Another prank to make me jump, but the typewriter slowly came to life with a whir and a click.

The keys started to move. They carried Arthur’s fingers along for the ride.

I took a step back, wondering how much was puppetry, and hoping none of it was reanimation.

Words appeared on the paper.

It’s been lonely in here, Jonathan. I’m glad to finally have some company.

* * *

The dead didn’t talk, except on the pages of Arthur Prentiss’ books. They certainly didn’t type, yet here was a dead man doing just that.

Aren’t you going to ask me what’s happening, Jonathan?

“I know what’s happening. This is a prank,” I said, trying to convince myself.

Far from it.

“It must be. There’s an elaborate machine built into the coffin that’s responding to my words. That’s how this works.” I walked a circle, twice, around the coffin searching for cogs and gears, but found none.

This is not a prank. Believe me.

“Then what is it? What are…you? A ghost?”

Something like that.

“Oh,” I said, still not understanding.

I didn’t think you were this incurious, Jonathan. Don’t you want to ask me why, or how all this came to pass?

“Why?” I said.

To continue.

“Continue what?”

Telling stories.

I repeated my earlier curiosity. “Why?”

I still have stories to tell. Why should I let a little thing like death get in the way?

I said the obvious then, but it didn’t sound so obvious spoken out loud in a crypt after midnight. “But you are dead, Arthur. Aren’t you?”

A mere formality if you cross the palm of the right person with silver, and they say the right words under the right moon.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

The dead man typed, but the paper had reached its end. The keys chattered out an answer, but it was ink on ink.

“We’ve run out of paper, Arthur,” I said, feeling foolish for talking to a dead man.

The keys chattered on, so I grabbed the sheet, yanked it out and fed it in backwards to trap the last part of a sentence.

…under my head.

Carefully, I lifted Arthur’s head to find his pillow wasn’t a pillow at all, but a ream of paper.

I had my relatives removed, and in each tomb lies a fresh white corpse of paper. You’ll buy more as we go on, I’m sure, but for now, we’re fully stocked.

“I will?” I said, even as I pulled the wrapping off the ream and stacked it neatly beside the typewriter.

You will. And I’ll gift you something special in return for your help.

“What?”

What every writer wants.

Fame? Money? A good agent?

“What’s that?” I asked, leaning into the corpse.

The keys chattered.

The secret to a good story.

Five years I’d been a scavenger at Arthur Prentiss’ typewriter, picking up scraps of words here and there to feed my ambition, but always going hungry in the end.

How could I pass up such an offer now, even if it was from a corpse?

“Really?” I asked. “How?”

Simple. I write the stories, and you’ll carry them out into the world. For your troubles, you’ll learn my secret along the way. No longer my assistant, Jonathan, but my student.

I wondered then how long a dead man could type without losing mobility? What was the shelf life of a reanimated corpse? How long could a madness last?

Long enough, I thought, to learn a secret.

“Okay,” I said.

The dead man typed.

Let’s begin.

* * *

Most midnights I fed Arthur’s Zephyr II a fresh ream of paper. And in return, the dead man would feed me new words.

Each night a new a new story, a new chapter. A novel in that first month, two novellas, and six stories. And my name sat beneath each, haunting the by-line.

But it didn’t matter. The secret Arthur had promised was no closer to me than in the five years I’d worked as his assistant. At home, my own pages remained as blank as my mind.

Arthur sensed my mood one night in the second month.

What’s the problem?

“Nothing,” I said.

Something.

“A bit tired, that’s all,” I told the dead man.

Of me?

Yes, Arthur, I wanted to say. I spend my days in the company of the blank page, and my nights watching your corpse type. I want neither now.

“No,” I said.

Our arrangement is still intact, isn’t it?

It was. But already I’d broken the back of it. Instead of seeking publication using my name and his words, I’d kept his stories crated at home.

“Our arrangement is still intact, but…”

Where there’s a but, there’s an ‘and’, always.

“What?”

ButI can’t do this any longer,andI’m going to stop.

“No, I didn’t mean—”

ButI’m tired of this,andI think it’s time we quit.

“I didn’t say—”

ButI’ve had enough of you, Arthur,andit’s time we ended this arrangement.

It was hard to argue with a dead man. Harder to argue with words on a page. His fingers, now little more than white pegs, moved just as quickly across the keys as they had when his corpse was fresh.

“I’m worried, that’s all,” I said.

About what?

That I’ll never put a word of my own down on a page for the rest of my life. That your secret is just a lot of hot air.

“About someone finding out.”

Who?

“A critic, a fan. Someone who knows your work. They’ll know it isn’t my writing.”

Has anybody raised a suspicion so far?

Nobody could, I thought, with the pages locked away.

“No,” I said.

Forget it, then.

I couldn’t. I wouldn’t. It took me another week, but I knew then, with a clarity I hadn’t possessed in months, that I had to end my job as Arthur Prentiss’ assistant.

“It’s over, Arthur,” I said.

What is?

“This madness. I can’t go on.”

His dead fingers hit the keys hard enough to shake off a few flakes of stubborn skin.

And there’s the ‘and’ and the ‘but’ I knew was coming. You must carry on, Jonathan. You made a promise.

“I can’t anymore.”

You will, and you must.

I rose from the stool beside the coffin.

“It’s over. I’m sorry, Arthur.”

I took a few steps, and the keys rattled enough for me to turn and see what Arthur Prentiss had written.

It’s only just begun.

As I turned again to walk away, I felt a chill in the air and the space between my ears buzz like a bee trapped behind window blinds.

I clapped both hands to my ears, blinked, but it only grew louder.

I was waiting for a more opportune time to do this. I suppose that time is now, Jonathan. Now we’ll work together properly. As one.

The typewriter had grown silent, but now Arthur’s voice buzzed in my head.

“No,” I said.

It’s already done.

I shook my head.

If you won’t help me of your free will, Jonathan, I’m afraid we’ll have to do it the hard way.

I spun a circle, and Arthur pulled on the puppet strings within me.

Don’t fight this.

I whirled around, my hands no longer mine, my fingers twitching with new hidden pulses.

“Stop!”

Calm yourself, Jonathan. You should be proud. We’ll write a masterpiece together. Leave a legacy. Don’t resist greatness.

The pull was too strong. I watched as my hands found the typewriter. I observed myself setting up a desk from the coffin lid and plinth. He pulled, I pushed. He pushed, I pulled. But I couldn’t stop what was happening.

Sit.

I sat.

Feed.

I fed a clean white sheet into the typewriter.

Write.

My fingers stiffly struck keys. I looked down at words that were not mine; a title torn from me:MUST ALL ALIKE DECAY?

A good title, yes?

“What is it?”

A new story, of course. The first of many we’ll write together. Semi-autobiographical. It’s the tale of a dead writer who possesses the body of his earnest assistant.

I saw nothing in my head. No pictures. No words. Whatever he planned to write; I was a silent partner.

My stiff little fingers started to type again and stopped after only two letters:

By

By?

What name shall we use? Yours or mine? I think mine, from now on. Seeing as I’m the one in the driver’s seat now.

My fingers spidered across the keys and spun the black web of Arthur Prentiss’ name.

“No,” I said.

You’ll become used to it. In time. As will the fans. We’ll tell them you found a hidden stash of my manuscripts. Hundreds of them. Masterpieces, all.

Never! Once I leave here, I won’t ever come back, I thought.

You will. You’ll carry me with you wherever you go. I’ll be your muse, even when my own body rots to nothing. Think of that, Jonathan. Together. Forever.

It was then I realized what Arthur Prentiss had meant to do since the beginning. I wasn’t to be the face of his writing, I was to be the body, the machine which his ghost would pilot long after his corpse had rotted away.

“No,” I managed to say, but Prentiss had my hands and started to type.

Jonathan thought he was free, but the spirit who haunted his head did not agree.

“No.”

A good first line, I think you’ll find. There’s enough mystery there to keep the reader intrigued and wanting to know more. See, Jonathan? As I promised, you’re already learning the secret. Here begins the first lesson: leave them wanting more, always.

I shook as I fought his control. I managed to lift one hand and crab my fingers over the paper in the machine.

“Sod your lessons!”

How ungrateful of you, Jonathan. Here I am, gifting you the wisdom of my years and you throw it right back in my face.

If I’d had control of my body, I’d have thrown his Zephyr II, the coffin, and whatever else I could get my hands on, in his face.

Let us continue, shall we? A second lesson: the beginning is the end.

My confusion fought my anger and neither won.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” I said.

Simple. The opening of a story dictates its ending. The circle, once broken, must always be closed. And once the circle is closed, the story is done. Over with.

I didn’t have to say anything, my confusion carried across the puppet strings of my veins, and he understood.

A man walks into a bar. ‘Ouch’, he says. Get it?

I didn’t. My veins didn’t either.

A horse walks up to a bar, and the bartender says, ‘Why the long face?’ Get it now?

I didn’t.

I’ll try to make it more applicable, then. An earnest young assistant takes on a job with a successful writer. He wants to become a writer too. And he does, in the end, but not in the way he thought he would. Do you see?

I was beginning to, but it was like looking through a fog at what might be a tree or a man walking a dog.

“The beginning is the end,” I said, parroting his words.

Now you’re getting it.

I was. But not how Arthur Parris could have imagined. The fog was clearing. It wasn’t a tree or a man with his dog out there, but something better. Something far more useful: words.

“Let me go, and I’ll co-operate,” I said.

I may be dead, but I’m not a fool, Jonathan. You’ll run at the first chance you get.

“I swear I won’t. Let go of my hands, and I won’t fight back.”

I showed my intention by loosening the muscles in my hands, and I let my fingers rest, without tension on the keys.

“Tell me what to write, and I will.”

He pulled the puppet string again, testing the bow, ready to fire my fingers like arrows at the keys. I didn’t resist.

You’ll write what I say? No funny games?

I nodded at the typewriter as if it could see me and acknowledge the gesture.

You won’t resist?

“I won’t.”

Maybe you have learned something from me, after all?

“Yes. Yes, I have. The beginning is the end, right?”

And always leave them wanting more, don’t forget that one, Jonathan.

“I won’t.”

And now, a little test.

I felt myself tense. He felt myself tense.

Worried, Jonathan?

“No.”

You feel worried to me.

“I’ll be fine.”

We’ll see. Take a fresh piece of paper and feed it into the typewriter.

I gladly did as he said, and with the paper fed, I felt the last of the tension go out from the puppet strings he’d held onto.

We’ll continue with our earlier story, shall we? Must All Alike Decay? Do you think that title works for our tale of a dead writer inhabiting the body of his assistant? Too flowery, perhaps? A tad poetic? How about, The Haunting of Jonathan Franklin? A Machine For Ghosts?

I had a better title. More fitting for the story. I started to type.

The Last

The Last? I didn’t suggest that title Jona—

I typed some more. My fingers faster than his pull. My will finally stronger than his.

Word

He pulled, and pulled, but he couldn’t pull hard enough.

by

Jonathan Franklin.

No!

“Yes,” I said, through gritted teeth.

You can’t—

I could. He’d taught me how. I was no longer an assistant, and much more than a student.

“The end is the beginning, right, Arthur? The end is the beginning? How about this for a twist: the beginning is the end? How about that?”

What in the devil do you mean?

I wasn’t sure it would work. I had no clue if my small rebellion would lead to a victory over Arthur Parris, that ghost or poltergeist or whatever he might be, but I felt it would work. I felt the power in the words, and how they could shape the world. How the world was shaped by them.

I typed:

The End.

And there, in the now silent crypt of Arthur Parris aka Robert Mort, aka P.J. Lowe, aka Max Faust, aka Sam Roskoe, aka so many other aliases and nom de plumes I couldn’t begin to list them all, the story ended.

Timekeeping

Luke Gardner checked the clock.

One minute until the New Year.

Then he checked the other clocks. One after another, after another. Every room in the house wallpapered with clocks. And every clock stopped at one minute to midnight.

Fool proof, he thought. Flawless. But—

But what if I missed one?

And as if the house had heard his doubt, it made a sound. Soft enough in the silence for his one good ear pick it up.

Tick.

Luke turned like a dog trying to catch its tail.

Tock.

Where was it coming from?

Tick.

He hobbled to the kitchen, moving as fast as his eighty-year-old legs could manage.

Tock.

He checked all the clocks there, looking for tremors in their hands, but they were as still as a surgeon’s.

Tick.

To the living room, where he checked the grandfather, but it still had no swing in its pendulum.

Tick.

To the downstairs bathroom and the wind-up clocks that remained unwound.

Tock.

Where are you?

Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock.

He hobbled up the stairs, to the bedrooms, where all the wall clocks were missing their batteries.

Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock.

The sound was all around. It came from above and below.

This can’t be. How could I have missed one? I was so careful.

He’d spent years gathering the clocks and gutting them. Setting each so that midnight never came. Eighty clocks in total, one for every year of his life. Eighty ways to prevent a New Year from happening.

Eighty ways to make sure he wouldn’t come.

Tick.

Tock.

Now this? Where was that bloody clock?

Not in the attic, or in the basement; he hadn’t placed any clocks there to begin with. He checked them anyway, just in case his old mind had slipped.

Nothing.

Where else could it be?

Tick.

Tock.

He cast his mind back through the months and all the clocks he’d bought. All the times he’d pulled out a battery, unwound a coil, or taken the weight off a pendulum. Each time he’d double and triple checked that time had stopped and couldn’t move on.

Tick.

Tock.

Where the bloody hell are you?

Tick.

Tock.

And now the ticks and the tocks became a memory of the beeps and the bops of the hospital machines some sixty years in the past.

Tick.

Tock.

Beep.

* * *

Bop.

Luke’s eyes fluttered open as a man entered the hospital room.

“Evening.” He scraped a chair to the side of Luke’s bed, then sat down.

Luke tried to focus, but the man swam in and out of his vision like something moving underwater. At first tall, then short. Hairless and full of hair. A smile, then no smile.

In all these visions, he was a stranger.

“Who are you? A nurse? The doctor?” Luke asked.

“Neither.”

“Do you work here?”

“No. But I do visit quite often.”

A stranger who didn’t work at the hospital, but visited often? Who could that be? And why was he in a private room?

Fear fluttered in Luke’s chest. He thought of dying relatives given last rites.

Am I dying? I’m too young to die, right? I only came in to have my tonsils removed.

“Are you a…priest?” he asked.

The stranger laughed. “No, but I often hear the prayers said in this place.”

Luke tried to blink the man into focus, but his vision was the choppiest of water.

“You do?”

“I do. When people believe they’re alone, they often say things aloud. And prayers sound a lot louder at night, I find.”

Luke ran through the possibilities in his fuzzy mind, but could only fix on the fuzziest.

“Are you a taxi driver? I didn’t order a taxi,” he said. “I don’t think I’m well enough to leave yet. They said I’d be in for another day or two, to fully heal up.” He ran a hand over his throat and was surprised to find there was no soreness.

The man laughed. “Oh, no. That’s not my job. Although, some days it does feel that way. Some days, I do wonder.”

Luke rubbed at his throat again, still wondering how he’d managed to heal so quickly.

“Who are you, then?”

“Take a guess,” the stranger said.

Luke ran through all the professions he could remember in his head, and fished out only those that might end up in a hospital.

“Physiotherapist?”

“No.”

“Surgeon?”

“No.”

“Orderly?”

The stranger laughed.

“You really have no clue?” he said.

“No.”

The stranger nodded to the bleeping machines on the wall. They bleeped a little less quickly now. Their rhythm slowing.

“Oh, I believe you do. Give it a second or two,” the stranger said.

Luke gave it ten. Then twenty. Then thirty seconds.

Not a doctor, or a nurse. Not a priest, or a taxi driver. Not a physiotherapist, surgeon, or orderly. Who could he be?

Luke’s gut knew before his brain.

Uncertainty turned solid and became certainty, like concrete setting.

“I’m too young,” he said.

“That’s what they all say, even the hundred-year-olds. They say it more often, if truth be told. The older you get, the more peevish you become.”

“But I’m only twenty. It’s not fair.”

“No, it rarely ever is.”

“But I’m too young to—” He couldn’t force the word out, for fear that it would make it real and as solid as the feeling in his gut.

“If it’s any consolation, you’ll feel no pain.”

It wasn’t.

The noise of the machines had faded, and with their fading, so the stranger’s face became clearer. He was a gaunt man, cheeks pinched and grey in the divots. His eyes sank into his skull like black tar in white sand. His hands were still, pale spiders lying on his lap.

No doubting who the stranger was now, but Luke still had other doubts.

The gap between each beep and bop on the hospital machines had grown longer and longer, but he was sure the machines would throw up much more of a fuss in the event of someone—

He wouldn’t allow himself to think of the word now.

“I’m not… I’m still…” He nodded at the machines.

“Not yet, no. And yes, you’re still quite alive. For now.”

“Then why are you here? Don’t you come...after?”

The stranger rolled up the sleeves of his suit to show both arms covered in wristwatches. All of them ticking. All of them tocking.

“Even I have trouble with timekeeping, despite my precautions. You can call this a courtesy, if you like. This way it won’t be as much of a shock, will it? You’ll be prepared when the time comes.”

“What if I won’t go?”

“There’s no choice in the matter.”

“Why not?”

The stranger sighed. “Eighteen-year-olds and hundred-year-olds have one thing in common: they’re both stubborn. You want a reason? Because Y is not a Z and Z is not a Y, that’s why.”

Luke stiffened in the bed.

Why did it have to be this way? Wasn’t there something that could be done? Could the stranger be argued with? Could he be bought? Could he—

“If you can be early, why can’t I be late?” he said.

The stranger opened his mouth to speak, then closed it. A look of puzzlement crossed his face.

After a time, he said, “That’s not how it works.”

“It could work that way, though, couldn’t it? You’re the one who’s keeping time, right? I’ll just be late, that’s all.”

The stranger pulled on his earlobe as he thought.

“You’ll be late?”

“Yes.”

“Like I was early?”

“Yes.”

The stranger shook his head. “It’ll never work.”

“Why not?”

The stranger had another open mouth with no words in it for an answer.

“You’re arrived early. I arrive late. That’s how it’ll work,” Luke said.

The stranger’s eyes glinted.

“How late?” he said.

Luke did some calculations, but he’d never been good at mathematics.

“A lifetime,” he said.

“At least you’re not greedy, I suppose. How long would a lifetime be?”

New numbers ran through his head, along with funerals and obituaries. He’d lost an uncle at 50, an aunt at 95. A grandmother at 80, a grandfather at 76. He thought of all their faces and who had left the world quietly, and without pain.

“Eighty,” he said.

“You’re sure you don’t want more than that?”

He thought of his aunt who’d become a skeleton at the end; her lungs pulled up and down by machines. Her skin as thin as wax paper and the same colour. The last years of her life were years he didn’t want to live.

But then he thought of his grandmother at eighty, who’d gone to bed one night and never woke up.

“Eighty,” Luke said.

“Eighty-years-old, then I come back around, on time, this time?”

Luke nodded.

“I suppose it might work.”

“It will,” Luke said, excited.

“Technically,” the stranger said.

“What do you mean?”

The stranger crossed one leg over the other. He rested his chin on his hand.

“It can be done. But you’ll grow to despise it having been done. I can guarantee you that.”

“I won’t. I promise.”

The stranger nodded. “Do you have a job?”

“Yes.”

“Do you enjoy it?”

“What’s that got to do with—”

“At work, do you watch the clock when it’s close to quitting time?”

Luke nodded.

Who didn’t watch clocks? In the factory, the clock on the wall was as big as a full moon. The last half hour of the weekend shift, the hands moved so slowly it was as if they were taunting him.

“Then that is how you’ll live the rest of your life: watching the clock. But you won’t have the relief of quitting at the end of it all. There’ll be no end of shift. Not even anything close. Is that what you really want?”

Luke wanted to be alive, not dead.

“Yes,” he said.

“A life staring at clocks?”

“It’s still a life,” Luke said.

The stranger stood.

He rolled up a sleeve and turned the knob on the side of one of his watches. He nodded to himself.

“New Year’s Eve, 2024. On the stroke of midnight.”

“New Year’s Eve?”

The stranger nodded. “As good a time as any,” he said.

“I’ll see you then,” Luke said.

“You will. You’ll be late, but I’ll be on time, this time.”

Luke blinked, and his vision returned.

The stranger was gone, but the soreness in Luke’s throat had returned. As did the beeps.

And the bops.

Beep.

Bop.

Tick.

* * *

Tock.

Where was the clock?

He chased his tail in each room again; one ear cocked, searching for the sound. But it was in all rooms and none at the same time. It was far above and far below.

Tick.

Tock.

He spun circles in the kitchen, the living room, and hall, and when he came to a stop, he was dizzy and sick with new thoughts.

If that buggering hidden clock reaches midnight, then the New Year will arrive. And if the New Year arrives, then so does he. And if he arrives, then…

He couldn’t finish the thought, but another took its place.

Destroy them. Smash them. Take a hammer to every one of them in turn. It’s the only way to be certain.

If a stopped clock was right twice a day, then eighty of the buggers smashed to pieces would all be right, all the time, he supposed.

Eighty.

Eighty clocks. Twenty in the kitchen. Twenty in the living room. Fifteen in the hall. Five in each of the three bedrooms. Five in each bathroom. And…

That was it. That was the lot. But was there enough time?

With all the clocks stopped, he didn’t know what time it was, or how long of it he had left before midnight.

Time enough, he thought. I’ll have to risk it.

He hadn’t heard a firework yet. The New Year arriving would be louder than any alarm.

Luke grabbed his hammer.

He stalked from room to room, swinging, and counting. Taking a death tally as he went.

Kitchen first. Then downstairs bathroom, and living room. Hall, stairs, and landing, through the bedrooms and into the upstairs bathroom.

One clock left.

Luke paused, hammer over the last clock.

Tick.

Tock.

This must be the one. All the rest are gone. This must be the one.

He swung the hammer and the clock fell apart into hours, minutes, and seconds.

Tick.

Tock.

Where the bloody Hell is that ticking coming from?

He spun again, and on the second turn, a firework went off in the streets.

I’m too late! It’s New Year and—

Tick.

Tock.

“Where are you, clock?”

One firework became two, became three, became a riotous noise that blocked everything out, even the ticks and the tocks.

And nothing happened.

There was no knock at the door. No stranger came calling. Nothing but the fireworks, and when they’d subsided, the…

Tick.

And the…

Tock.

Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock.

Where the Hell is it?

The answer came as an itch that needed scratching. The hairs on his wrist stood on end.

Luke rolled up his shirt sleeve to reveal his wristwatch. Its leather band was so old it resembled beef jerky. Its face as cracked as dry skin. Its hand jittered from second to second.

Eighty clocks bought and gutted. Eighty clocks spread around the house as a ward against the New Year. One for each year. And the one he’d forgotten to set was on his wrist; as much a part of him as his own skin.

He laughed as he looked, and saw that it was now a minute past midnight.

He laughed some more when he poured himself a drink and sat in his favourite chair in the living room.

He laughed as he looked again at his watch and saw it was five minutes past midnight.

“Happy New Year to me,” Luke said, then downed his drink, and closed his eyes.

There was no more tick.

No more tock.

I made it, he thought. Midnight has come and gone. I’m in a New Year, and that means—

A chair scraped.

A throat cleared.

A voice followed.

Luke opened his eyes.

“Excuse my lateness,” the stranger said, tapping one of the many watches on his arm. “I do seem to have a terrible problem with timekeeping.”

The Unremarkable Death Of A Terrifying Man

My phone rang in the middle of the night. A suitable time for bad news and worse theatrics.

“He’s dying,” Tara’s shaking voice informed me.

I didn’t bother to prop myself up in the bed. Instead, I stared at the ceiling and let out a long, bored sigh.

“You have to stop doing this for him, Tara,” I said.

“Doing what?”

“I’m not angry at you. I’m angry at him. He did put you up to this, didn’t he?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” The shake vanished from her voice, which was answer enough.

I picked up the remote from the side of the bed and flicked on the TV news. A war was ongoing in some dusty part of the world we’d all forgotten. A company everybody hated, but couldn’t live without, was involved in a new scandal. I yawned. There was no mention of my father’s ill health.

“I know he’s not dying, Tara. It would be his doctor calling me, not you.”

A familiar silence moved through the grand rooms and halls of the house at the other end of the phone until it met my ear.

“Put him on,” I said, defeated. I pushed up in the bed, yawned, and rubbed the sleep from my eyes.

“I don’t think—”

“If he wants my attention, he has it. Put him on, or I’m going back to sleep. You can call me when he does finally kick the bucket.”

I could picture her at the other end, winding the old-fashioned telephone coil of wire around her fingers as she thought over my request. Finally, she spoke.

“Okay, Daniel, I’ll ask.”

A door opened, a door closed, both with a forced house-of-horrors squeal I was all too familiar with.

Five years had passed since I’d had the displeasure of hearing those unoiled hinges. Six, since I’d had the displeasure of hearing my father’s voice.

“I have something to tell you, boy.” His voice was a frail whisper over the phone, but I couldn’t be sure if it wasn’t part of his ongoing bid to put a scare into me.

“You’re dying? That’s what Tara said, unless it was just a lie.” I said, unable to keep the glee from my voice.

“Would that make you happy? Me dying?”

“If it was true, it might.”

He coughed. “The truth often lives in a lie.”

I had the urge to disconnect, but the urge to get one up on the old man was stronger.

“You should have that printed on mugs and t-shirts. They’d probably sell better than your last book,” I said.

“Will you hear me out or not?”

“If you stop with all the theatrics, I might.”

I heard a raspy breath. A rise and fall, and fall again.

“It got your attention, didn’t it?”

“You couldn’t have her phone me in the middle of the day?”

I knew he couldn’t. My father could no more resist a moment of drama than he could a moment of adoration from a fan.

“Would you have answered?” he said.

Unlike him, I hadn’t built my life on lies, and I wasn’t about to start in the middle of the night. “The only reason I’m still speaking to you now is to stop Tara from getting into trouble. Say what you want, and get it over with.”

He coughed, and it sounded like an old tree falling. “Not over the phone.”

It was typical of my father to keep me guessing. Just like one of his stories. Hold everything back until the big reveal at the end.

I gripped the phone like I had hold of his neck. “Go to Hell,” I told him.

“BTDT,” he said.

“What?”

“Been there, done that. Just you come home and hear what I have to say. Would you deny a dying man a few last words?”

A few words? I wanted to laugh. My father didn’t know the meaning of brevity. His books, they said, caused slipped discs in librarians.

“So, you’re dying, are you?”

He coughed as though it was an answer.

“Is that a yes or a no?”

“I don’t have much time left, boy. Don’t deny a dying man his last wish. Don’t deny him his last words,” he said.

I wanted to. I wished I’d had his coldness. I wished I had a room like his at the top of a house, where I might run to and hide just like he’d done throughout my childhood.

“I’m your last wish, am I?”

“Part of it.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Come home and find out.”

“I’m not playing this game with you. Tell me or—”

“You have to be here, Daniel. I can’t explain this over the phone.”

He coughed again, and a whole forest fell.

I didn’t want to believe him, but at three in the morning everything was possible, even one of my father’s lies being the truth.

His voice was replaced by Tara’s. “Daniel? Are you still there, Daniel?”

“I’m here.”

“Did you hear him?”

“Is it real?”

Silence made its way through the old house and met me again.

“Tara?”

“It’s real. He doesn’t have long,” she said.

“How long?”

“I’m sorry, Daniel, it’s days at the most.”

I stared at the night-darkened room and remembered all the other frights my father had put into me over the years, and none of them real. Now it was real, I could do only one thing.

“I’ll be there in the morning,” I said.

* * *

The press had called my father The Most Terrifying Man Alive, and his publisher proudly emblazoned that legend on his books: Andrew Card—The Most Terrifying Man Alive.

I’d called him father. At least, I had when he showed his face. The Most Terrifying Man Alive had, for the better and worst part of my childhood, locked himself away with a typewriter in a room at the top of the reconstructed gothic house we called home. All day and night, I’d hear the chatter of keys, but never a word from him.

I arrived home the next morning with a suitably ominous fog covering the grounds outside the estate. It was the kind of setting my father wrote of in his books, where ancient beasts and darkest fears lurked just beyond the mists.

No ancients waited, only a crowd. They gathered under the watchful eyes of two iron ravens fixed to the gates. Loyal fans clutched candles ready for the lighting and cradled hardbacks like sick infants. A scattering of TV news reporters talked into cameras nearby; their smiles as fixed as those of the gargoyles who clung to the roof of the house.

I drove past the crowd and found a spot down the lane where I could sit and let my temper idle.

In interviews, he’d called our home The House of Horrors. Turrets and spires crowned the roof, and a skeleton danced atop the weather vane. Arched windows trapped stained-glass spiders, and on the porch, a ceramic Halloween pumpkin smiled its crooked smile no matter the season.

A funeral dirge doubled for a door chime, but I came to the house through the graveyard of a garden he’d cultivated at the rear. There, crab grass replaced green, dead flowers the living, and from the blackened branches of a forever leafless tree, he’d fixed a swing crafted from nooses with fake femurs for a seat.

I entered through the kitchen, where butcher and steak knife alike he’d driven into a white porcelain skull. The labelled jars on the shelves gave no hint of the contents inside. Slices of Grandma held beetroot. Another, labelled ‘Puss’, contained mayonnaise.

Soon, I found myself before the grand, unlit fireplace edged in ancient Scottish castle stones. Above it, a grandiose portrait of my father dressed as a count stared down at me.

I held up an imagined glass and toasted him. “God fuck you.”

“Daniel! Don’t say that. Not now.”

My father’s nurse, Tara, stood in the doorway with a face as round and red as a ripe apple.

“I apologize. I’ll wait until I see the old bastard.”

“Oh, dear. That’s no way to talk.”

“He’s still with us, I take it?”

“Please, don’t speak that way. He’s very ill.”

I still had a suspicion that all this would be one of his elaborate scares. Part of me had begun to hope it was. Part of me hoped he’d lured me there to say all the things unsaid throughout my childhood.

“Is he up?” I said.

“No, well, I’m not sure. I mean…” She bundled me up the staircase to the locked door of his writing room. “He won’t let me in. He’s getting a little…odd,” she said.

“Odd?” I asked.

“You know he’s never been very…conventional. But now…”

“Now?”

“He’s started talking to himself. You’ve never heard the like. Going on and on about the Devil and all kinds of sick things like in those books of his.” Tara shivered.

I put an ear to the door. “Not saying much now.”

“That’s why I’m so worried. I’d almost prefer it if he was shouting like a madman. The quiet scares me.”

“Soon cure that.” I held up a hand to knock and stopped myself.

Go home, I thought. Go back to the green garden and correctly labelled food. Back to where the doorbell chimes out Que Sera, Sera, and the paintings on the wall are of flowers in vases, not egomaniacs dressed up like royalty. Go home and forget this man and this house and any connection you had with him or it.

Go home.

I knocked.

The funhouse machinery he’d had installed sensed my knocking and came to life with a whir and a clank. The door opened by itself with a purposeful haunting screech.

My father waited inside. He could do little else.

The Most Terrifying Man Alive lay in a cramped hospital bed, not much left but his black polo neck and a body as skeletal as the dancer on the weather vane a few feet above us.

“Boy?” he said, his eyes searching the ceiling. “You came.”

“Looks that way.”

“Come closer.”

It took all my will to accept his invitation and step inside.

The door creaked shut as it sensed my passing. I didn’t flinch. He’d introduced me at a young age to his horrors. He’d let me read the unreadable and watch the unwatchable until I gained immunity. Fear was a dull meal when you ate it for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

All those years had prepared me, and I looked on my father’s dying body with pity, not fear. He’d become a character in one of his own books; a frail ghost haunting his own haunted house.

“Not long left now,” he said, the words pulled out of him on an invisible string that brought his chest up with them.

I stepped closer. “Seems so.”

“Don’t cry.”

“I won’t.”

I’d shed enough tears over what he’d done to me and to my mother before she’d passed. There was nothing left in the reservoir.

Even so, a part of me yearned for a deathbed cliché. He would confess all his wrongs to me, ask for forgiveness, and the tears would flow.

At the thought of it, I felt my eyes start to sting.

Hold it together. I can’t let him see me like this. He’s not worth a tear.

“You’ve got to do something for me. Promise me,” he said, holding out one of his hands for mine.

Arthritis had twisted his fingers into pale pretzels. Ten years earlier he’d started talking to a computer on his desk to offset the cruel irony of the illness.

I ignored his gesture. “What do you want from me?”

“First…first…”

He dropped his hand onto the sheets, and it twitched like a banked fish.

“First?” I said, and stepped closer.

He snapped his head to face me. His eyes fluttered.

“You have to promise me.”

“Promise you what?”

“When I’m gone…when I’m gone…you have to…tell them…tell them the story.”

“A story?”

“Don’t let it end this way. You can’t let them know I died sickly in a bed. Do you understand me? On the desk. Story. A story.”

I glanced over to the ebony monstrosity he called a desk; its legs a carved tableau of screaming skulls, its edges gilded with silver. A stack of neatly printed pages lay on top.

I took the stack and read the title of the first page: THE END. The second page began with one of my father’s typical first paragraphs.

I made my bargain with the Devil at the age of sixteen, and from thereon in things got stranger.

“What do you want me to do with this?” I asked him.

“Read.”

“You want me to read this to you?”

“No!” His chest jumped as the word exploded from his lips. He took a few racking breaths. “Read…read it to them out there. Tell them…tell them it…it was real. All of it.”

I read a few more lines before I realized what he wanted from me.

I wrote my first story in a graveyard at midnight, when the souls of the dead were most lively, and the ghost trains whistled past on the hour, every hour. My typewriter, the true instrument of devilry, called them forth as I struck the keys. A symphony of the dead whose music I gladly savoured.

The paragraph reminded me of my father’s first novel: A Machine For the Dead. In it, a reporter found a typewriter that could summon the dead back to life. But this wasn’t a story, I realized. My father was merging fiction with his own life in a fantastical biography.

My thirteenth birthday became a sacrifice to an ancient horned demon. The death of my mother, now a Voodoo resurrection and badly written sex to follow. He’d reinvented every part of our family history to create this deathbed fantasy.

I pulled up a chair next to his bed and read through to the end where, in the final moments of his life, the Devil returned to walk my father into Hell, his debt now paid for a life of fame and fortune.

“Promise me. Promise me you’ll tell them the story…promise me…make them believe. Make it real.”

I wanted to laugh, but I kept my mouth shut. The Most Terrifying Man Alive had called on me to safeguard his legacy, not to say anything left unsaid. The man who’d ignored my childhood and left me and my mother to silences, now needed my words to spin a last, strange fiction for him.

“You’re serious, aren’t you?” I said.

“Of course. Tell them. Don’t let them know I died this way. Make them believe the lie. You must promise me.”

“You want me to lie?”

“The truth is in the lie, always,” he said.

I waved the papers at him. “This is bullshit. None of this is real.”

“Make them believe. A good story needs a good ending.”

I gave the papers another shake. “I’m not a writer, like you. I can’t make them believe this. Nobody could.”

I didn’t want to either. He’d treated me to a life of silence, and I owed him nothing but silence in return.

“You must. It’s my last wish. I’m your father.”

My fists clenched around the pages in my hand. I wanted to hurl them at him.

“This is crazy, you know that, don’t you?”

“Tell them. You must make them believe. Give them a good ending, boy,” he said. His eyes flickered like a faulty light, then his head sank into the pillow.

My father had no more words to say.

* * *

I left the house and walked out through the gates. The iron ravens watched over me as I stood and addressed the crowd.

“My name is Daniel Card. I’m Andrew Card’s son, and I’m sorry to inform you that my father passed away an hour ago.”

A few shrieks rose from the fans, and a bundle of microphones appeared before me.

“Did he have any last words?” The question repeated like an echo through the crowd.

I felt the manuscript in my hand. His last great work. A fiction he wanted the world to believe was truth.

A good story needed a good ending, he’d told me. And a bad one?

I wouldn’t end it how my father ended his stories. Not with bangs and earth-shaking revelations, but with something far more deserving.

I cleared my throat.

A hush fell across the crowd as it waited on me, and for the first time I realized how powerful my father had felt when he sat signing autographs for his loyal followers.

I didn’t like that feeling. Not at all.

“He passed away quietly in his sleep,” I said, then walked back to the House of Horrors, where I started a fire in the hearth with whatever I had at hand.

The Inheritance

“Don’t fuss now. I’m only dying,” Gayle Crouch said, waving Dr Finney’s helping hand away at the bottom of the stairs.

“You’re not dying, Gayle. You’re as healthy as a…”

“Say ox and I’ll hit you with this cane.” Gayle waved the knobbly stick at Dr Finney. It was hard to tell where the stick ended and her hand began; both gnarled, both browned with age.

“You’re as healthy…as can be,” Dr Finney said.

Gayle narrowed her milky eyes at him. “You’re missing a for.”

“A for?”

“Healthy as you can be for a woman your age.”

“I didn’t say that.”

“It’s what you were thinking. I’m old enough to know that.”

“Oh, so you’ve become a mind-reader since the last time I made a house call?”

“I know, that’s all. Old women know.”

“Do they now?”

“Yes. You live long enough, and you know things, then you become a set of stairs.”

Dr Finney cocked an eye at his oldest patient. Was there some new malady affecting her? A dementia he’d missed. Or a senility she’d somehow concealed.

“Stairs?” he said.

“Doctors,” she said, under her breath and made it sound like a curse. “All the training in the world and you can’t put two and two together. Listen.”

“Listen?”

Gayle took the first, then the second step. The old floorboards and her bones creaked and cracked in tandem.

“Oh, I see,” Dr Finney said.

“You hear, more like.”

Gayle glared at the top of the stairs. Thirteen steps in all from bottom to top, but she wasn’t superstitious. She’d walked those thirteen steps, up and down, for the last fifty years and no bad luck went with them.

Unless you counted dying. Was that bad luck? Was it luck if you knew what was going to happen beforehand?

“This will be the last time I walk up these stairs,” she said.

“What’s that?” Dr Finney said.

“I’m supposed to be the deaf one. I said, ‘this will be the last time I’ll walk up these stairs’.”

“And why is that, Gayle?”

“You fool. I already told you I’m dying. Dead people can’t take the stairs.”

“You’re not dying.”

“Says you.”

“Says this, and this, and this.” Dr Finney tugged on the stethoscope hanging around his neck. He rattled his doctor’s bag. He tapped the side of his head. “I checked you, pillar to post, only half an hour ago. That’s why you called me, after all.”

A knowing smile cracked Gayle’s lips.

“No, that’s not why.”

“Gayle?”

“You’ll be witness.”

“To what?” Dr Finney said, but the answer to that question was already in the tone of his voice. “You don’t mean dying, do you? I already told you, you’re not dying. You’re—”

“Revenge,” she said, and took another creaking step up towards the landing.

“What’s that?”

Gayle tapped the sides of her ears, where her hearing aids coiled and hummed. “I’ll leave you these when I’m gone. You seem to have more need of them than me.”

Dr Finney stepped up behind her. “What do you mean, revenge?”

“Payback.”

“On who? For what reason?”

Gayle took a step. Her bones and the floorboards cracked.

“Everyone, for everything,” she said.

Gayle took another step.

Dr Finney followed.

“I’m not following?” he said.

“Husbands, first,” she said.

“Tom?”

“And the one that came before him, Pete.”

Dr Finney scratched at his head. “What did Tom do to you?”

“Nothing, that was the problem. They got pills for it, these days. Little blue ones. You know the ones I’m talking about. But he wouldn’t have taken them anyway. Too busy with his bloody gardening.”

“And Pete?”

“The opposite. Couldn’t keep his hands off me. Couldn’t keep them on me either, that was the big problem. Kept putting them on every other woman too.”

“Oh.”

“Wasted two sets of vows with them. Two dresses. Two rings. Too many years. Well, they’ll get what’s coming to them.”

“And what’s that?”

She turned on the stair and gave him a milky glare. “Revenge. Are you listening?”

“Yes, but I’m wishing I was deaf. All this talk of death and revenge. It doesn’t make any sense.”

“It will. Once you see.”

“See what?”

“My revenge.”

She took another creaking step.

Dr Finney followed.

“I’m still not following,” he said.

“Then there’s the kids.”

“The kids?”

“Mary, Joe, and Dan.”

“I know their names. But why in the world would you want to take revenge on your children?”

Gayle tapped a stair with her walking stick. The drumbeat of it travelled the house and met them on the way back.

“You hear that?” she said.

“Yes. And?”

“Hear any laughing? Any voices?”

Dr Finney cocked his head. “No.”

“You know what that sound is?”

“It was you drumming on the stairs, wasn’t it?”

“No, after that.”

“I didn’t hear anything.”

“Yes you did. Listen close now.”

Gayle ran the dials up all the way to the top on her hearing aids.

Dr Finney tilted his head this way and that, then shook it when he heard nothing new.

“I don’t hear a thing, Gayle.”

“Yes you do. That’s the sound of birthdays, and Christmas Eves, and Christmas Days. Mother’s Days, and New Year’s Eves too.”

“It is?”

“It’s the sound of Sunday all year round.”

“But there’s no sound.”

“Bingo. It’s what you hear from children who can’t be bothered to visit. Children with children of their own. And all of them always somewhere else and never here.”

Dr Finney reached out and stroked her elbow.

“I’m sorry about that, Gayle. Makes you feel any better, got one of my own that’s the same. Always busy. No time for a visit, or even to make a call.”

“One?” Gayle asked.

Dr Finney lowered his head a little. “Marie, my daughter, visits. It’s my son, Jack, who doesn’t.”

“Often?”

“Often?”

“Does she visit regularly?”

He didn’t like saying it, but he couldn’t lie. “She comes on a Sunday, once a month.”

“Got any grandchildren?”

“Three of them.”

“Brings them with her?”

“She does.”

“And your house, on that Sunday, it isn’t so quiet, is it, with all those kids running around? Lots of laughing, I bet.”

Dr Finney nodded. “Maybe a little too rowdy sometimes.”

“Well, it’ll be rowdy round here once they find me. Oh, there’ll be a lot of raised voices once I’m dead. It’ll be a Friday night around here, let me tell you.”

“Will you please stop saying that, Gayle. There’s nothing wrong with you.”

She shook her head slowly and deliberately. “Except for the dying.”

“Why is it you think you’re dying?”

“You’re a fool. Can’t get my revenge if I’m not dead, can I?”

“I don’t know what your revenge is. And if you’re dead, how will you get your revenge anyway? Not much of a revenge if you’re not here to see it.”

She took another step. The stair creaked.

“That’s why you’re here. You’ll see soon enough. Won’t be long now until I’m dead.”

Dr Finney didn’t follow.

He looked up to the top of the stairs, into the empty silence there, and it reminded him of all the other empty silences in all the other empty houses he’d visited. And how such silences stretched into the rooms where lonely old men and lonely old women had died with empty pill bottles by their sides.

“I’m beginning to follow you now, but I wish I wasn’t,” he said. “What have you taken? Tablets? What kind were they?” He rummaged around his jacket pocket for his phone, then flipped it open. His thumb hovered over the speed dial for 999.

“Fool. I’ve not taken any tablets.”

“Then what? Poison?”

“I haven’t taken any poison, or let a venomous snake bite me. And I haven’t shaved my legs in two decades, so if there are any razors around, they’re as dull as dishwater. And you can check the bleach under the kitchen sink. It’s all still there.”

Dr Finney’s thumb ached over the front of his phone.

“Well, what have you taken then?”

“Nothing.”

“You can’t die from nothing, Gayle.”

“Of course you can, you fool.”

“What?”

She sighed and it lasted long enough for her to take another step, to take another look at the top of the stairs.

This would be the last walk she’d take, she knew. Death waited for her up there in the room. Not a dark figure sharpening a scythe, but a cold and welcomed hand. It was her time.

And behind her? Silence. Years of it. Like a snowdrift she’d never fully dug her way out from.

“Twenty-five years of Sunday every day, all piled up one on top of the other, will crush you eventually.”

“Oh, come on now. You’ll be fine.”

“I will. Once I’m dead. Once I have my revenge. Hurry up now, we don’t have much time.”

Gayle took the last few steps almost at a trot into her bedroom.

Dr Finney stopped on the landing, shaking his head.

“I don’t know what kind of foolishness you’re up to, but I won’t be part of it. I promise you that.”

“Hurry up. Not much time,” she said.

“I swear, whatever it is you’re up to, I’m—”

Dr Finney stepped into the room and lost his voice, at least for a moment.

He found it again a few seconds later.

“What is this?”

What it was, was an empty bedroom, as barren as a barracks, the sheets on the bed tightly tucked in. And on top of those sheets, Gayle lay in a Dracula pose, an envelope held in the hands she’d folded over her chest.

She giggled.

“I’m giddy,” she said. “Like a schoolgirl.”

“This isn’t anything to laugh at,” Dr Finney said, worrying again over a dementia he’d not seen nor heard before in his patient.

“Spoilsport,” she said. “You’ll laugh, eventually.”

“I’m not in a laughing mood.”

“You will be. Here.” Gayle handed over the envelope. “No reading it. Give it to those relatives of mine when they arrive.”

“They’re coming, are they?”

“They will, once I’m dead. They won’t be able to stop themselves.”

“And why is that?”

“To get what’s coming to them. To get what I’ve left them,” she said.

Dr Finney turned the envelope over in his hand. It wasn’t near enough to Christmas for a card, and there was no name on the outside. But he didn’t need x-ray vision to know what was inside.

“Is this a will?” he asked.

“You could say that.”

“Then I’m no use to you. You’ll need a solicitor.” Dr Finney tried to hand the envelope back, but Gayle waved it away.

“Already had one. He says it’s all above board. Don’t need you to read the letter, either. Better if you don’t.”

“What if I say no?”

“You’d deny a dying old woman her last wish, would you?”

“You’re not dying, Gayle.”

“Says you.”

“Yes. Says I.”

“I’d like a second opinion.”

“I’ll give you a second and a third one. You’re not dying. You’re not dying.”

“Then it won’t matter, will it? If I don’t die, you’ll be left holding an envelope, nothing more.”

Dr Finney opened his mouth and closed it again. He couldn’t fault her logic. But he could fault her plans.

“So, this envelope is your revenge, is it?”

She giggled.

“You’ll see. When they come, you’ll see. You’ll hear.”

“You’re not dying, Gayle, and I—”

Gayle undid the knot in her hands just enough to place them together for a prayer.

“Now, I lay me down to sleep,” she said.

“Gayle?”

“I pray the Lord my soul to keep.”

“Gayle, stop this now.”

Gayle closed her eyes.

“If I should die before I wake.”

“Gayle? Gayle.”

The house fell into a Sunday silence.

* * *

“Is this some kind of joke?” Gayle’s son, Joe, waved the envelope in front of Dr Finney’s face.

“I’m sure I don’t know what you—”

“Where is everything?”

“What do you mean?”

“The jewellery. The coins. The money. The paintings. The bank books. The…everything my mother had in the house. Where is everything?”

Dr Finney shrugged. “I don’t have the first clue. Your mother asked me to hand that envelope to you when you arrived, nothing more.”

“You haven’t read this note? Is that what you’re telling me?” He waved the envelope again.

In the nights after Gayle’s death, Dr Finney had stared at the envelope, wondering what could be inside. Mornings too. And afternoons, if he was honest with himself. But he’d managed to avoid the temptation of reading it, somehow.

“I haven’t read the note.”

“Read it then.”

Gayle’s son handed the envelope to him.

Dr Finney read, as the son, and the daughters, the grandchildren, and the ex-husbands all sat in silence, watching, waiting.

Dr Finney started laughing.

And laughing.

He read the note once again.

And laughed some more.

It was the only sound in the house.

The note read:

I leave you what you left me with: nothing.

Sunrise At The Sunset

As night washed over the sleeping town of St. Elyn, a creature swam up from the shadows.

Andrei.

Vampire.

He danced from darkness to darkness, avoiding the pools of street lamp light. For the sun wasn’t the only fire that burned.

Poof!

Vampires had tinder skin and sweated petrol. The world was a spark to them.

In another time, when only fireflies and candles interrupted the night, the dance was slower. A waltz Andrei danced all over the world. In the hidden city beneath Paris. Through the graveyards of Berlin. Through the fog of old London Town.

And tonight?

The Sunset Theatre.

It was a diamond set in the tarnished green ring of a dying town. A palace built for people, not kings and queens.

Andrei danced closer.

On the Sunset Theatre marquee there was a message:

CLOSED FOR GOOD. THANK YOU FOR YOUR CUSTOM.

Closed?

For good?

Not good! Bad!

This could not be. He would not let it be.

Andrei pulled a rear door off its hinges and tossed it aside as he would a hat. The wailing of an alarm greeted his entrance like a cat welcoming a dog to its home. He held an ancient finger to his ancient lips and whispered ancient words, until the cat fell silent.

He glided across the thick red carpets and through to the foyer where he stopped and saw himself in reflection.

No mirror could hold him, but the poster on the wall showed him nonetheless.

A bald creature, three quarters shadow, standing before a black moon.

Brother monster, Andrei thought. Kindred. A name written below:

Nosferatu

Andrei traced the word with fingers and mouth. He tasted it on his dry and dusted lips as a bitter fruit.

Nosferatu.

He closed his eyes and found history there.

Berlin, 1922. He had seen himself for the first time on the pages of the magazine Bühne und Film. A strange bald creature. Brother monster. Kindred.

Nosferatu.

He’d danced the shadows of the city to the Marmorsaal, the Marble Hall of the Berlin Zoological Gardens, to witness the unveiling of the monster on the silver screen, to find his reflection there.

He found only light.

New light as well as old.

A new way to burn.

The tikka-tikka-tikka-tikka of a projector filled the air like a trapped insect. A thunder of drums followed, and as they silenced, a violin wept.

It began.

Andrei felt the new heat as the first frames flickered on the screen and the projector’s light reached him in the darkness.

Nosferatu
eine Symphonie des Grauens

tikka-tikka-tikka-tikka

Invisible hands strangled him. A desert formed on his skin. He could feel himself as sand in the wind.

tikka-tikka-tikka-tikka

The music rose.

tikka-tikka-tikka-tikka

The drums thundered, and for a moment he thought it to be the beating of his dead heart.

tikka-tikka-tikka-tikka

He wanted to scream, but could not. He wanted to run, but so desperately wanted to see himself. He wanted to—

tikka-tikka-tikka-tikka

Andrei could stand no more.

He fled.

Back to the darkness and the waltz that would soon become a ballet that would one day end.

* * *

“You, hey, you! What are you playing at?”

Andrei shook off his memories at the sound of the voice.

Half a dozen lights went on behind him, but none reached his touchpaper skin.

Andrei turned to see an old man brandishing a broom.

“Are you the proprietor?” Andrei asked, his English seasoned by a London fog he’d shared with a famous Jack a century earlier.

“That I am. And you’d be?” the owner said.

“A customer, if you’d be so inclined.”

“I wouldn’t, as it happens.” He tilted left and right, looking beyond the shadows into the deeper shadows. “Did you set off the alarm? Was that you?”

Andrei glided forward and found a shadow to call home at the edge of the lights.

“I’d like to view a film, if you’d please. That is what you do here, is it not?”

The owner narrowed his eyes, trying to see the man in the shadows.

“That’d be what we used to do, not what we do any longer. We’re went out of business. Now, you give me one good reason why I shouldn’t call the police?”

“One?”

“One will do.”

Andrei leaned forward and allowed the light to burn him long enough for his monstrous features to show. He fell back into the shadows and left behind smoke.

“Did you see?” he asked.

The owner stuttered out silence.

“You saw.”

“Impossible. You’re him?” The owner nodded at the darkness and the poster there.

“Nosferatu. You will show Nosferatu for me tonight, Mr?”

The owner spoke his name three times before a sound emerged.

“Mr Pelham.”

“Well then, Mr Pelham, I’d say we’d best get started, don’t you? Lead the way.” Andrei gestured for the owner to join him in the shadows.

Mr Pelham didn’t move.

“Need I repeat myself?” Andrei said.

The owner found his nerve and steadied himself with his broom.

“Can I ask you a question?”

“A question?”

“If you are what you say you are, then I must know some things.”

“You must?”

Mr Pelham nodded shakily. “Is it true what they say about your…kind?”

“And what, pray, do they say?”

“The sun. The holy water. Blood. Garlic. That you live forever?”

Andrei allowed a smile to grow in the shadows.

“All things perish in sunlight, Mr Pelham. It steals from us even as it gives. Mayfly, Galapagos tortoise, and vampire, nothing can escape its fire.”

“And the holy water?”

“Belief gives power to all things, even water.”

“Do you…” Mr Pelham swallowed hard. He rubbed the side of his neck. “…drink blood?”

Andrei licked his sandpaper lips. His tongue fondly tasted a copper memory.

“What a sweet wine it is.”

“Garlic? Does it…”

Andrei laughed. It was the burning of dry wood.

“I was never partial, but it would do me no more harm than a rotten oyster if I should partake.”

A silence followed where a last question lingered, unasked.

“And?” Andrei said, breaking it.

Mr Pelham shifted his weight on the broom. “Can you live forever?”

In two centuries, Andrei had met as many mortal men who craved the darkness as those who feared it. Like all men they were greedy for time and willing to do what they could to gain a little more.

“Do you want to live forever, Mr Pelham?”

Mr Pelham didn’t need his broom to steady him. He held it to one side, standing on two firm feet.

“I do not. I’ve had my life and good it was. I don’t need more days. And I wouldn’t want them if it meant I’d have to live like you.”

A rare creature, Andrei thought. A human happy with their lot. It amused him.

“And how, pray tell, do you think I live?”

Mr Pelham shook his head. “I don’t know. I don’t think I want to know, either.”

“The cat is no longer curious?”

Mr Pelham rubbed at his neck again.

“The cat wants to see the morning with his neck intact,” he said.

“Pity. I was beginning to enjoy our tête-à-tête.” Andrei’s French was an echo through the Paris catacombs. “Let us get out of this burning light, and on with the show, then. Set up your machine, Mr Pelham, so I finally may see that brother monster of mine. Kindred.”

Nosferatu.

Mr Pelham gripped his broom with both hands.

“Burning,” he said, his eyes fixed on the gold-framed switch on the wall to his right. “Burning light, that’s what you said?”

Andrei followed the gaze. He followed the line of thought.

“Don’t waste your time,” he said.

Mr Pelham reached out with the edge of his broom and let it rest on the light switch.

“If I turn on all the lights, you burn. That’s how it works, right? Like before? The light will—”

The shadows flickered, and in that flicker, Andrei rushed out and pulled Mr Pelham back into the darkness at the edge of the light. Only a puff of smoke and a falling broom were left behind in the foyer.

* * *

Fear rose off Mr Pelham like the flames from a bonfire as they walked up a grand sweep of red-carpeted stairs towards the projection room.

“I have a wife, and children. Grandchildren too,” Mr Pelham said.

“How nice for you.”

“I’d like to see them again.”

“That would be nice also.”

“Are you going to…”

Andrei didn’t answer. He let the silence pour petrol on the fire and savoured the smell. A smell he would miss, he supposed.

But first.

“Have you any notion why I came here, Mr Pelham? To this place? To this town? On this night?” Andrei said as he walked the man into the projection booth.

The flames rose.

Mr Pelham swallowed his fear, and it was loud. “To…to feed?”

“Would you like to try again?”

The fire raged.

“I don’t know, please. I don’t know.”

Andrei found a home in the shadows at the corner of the old projection room. There, under posters of long-forgotten stars, he settled, and spoke.

“I have witnessed the birth of kings and the death of nations, Mr Pelham. I have walked through the fog of war and made my bed from corpses in the bloodied fields thereafter. I have met death and he has stayed his scythe for me, but in all that time I have wanted one thing and one thing only.”

Mr Pelham’s eyes widened like the ripples on a pond from a tossed stone.

“I don’t know what you want me to say. Please, just let me go.”

“Not love, no. For love needs a heart that beats, and that is but a memory to me.”

“W-what then?”

“Not riches, either. For coffins don’t have pockets, as the saying goes.”

“W-what?”

“A simple wish. Only one. To see myself, Mr Pelham. Too look into the mirror and see the monster I became. The monster that others see.”

“W-what?”

“No glass or water can mirror what I am. I have seen my face drawn on paper, but life, even that which lives on after life, needs animation. So, we come to this. This wonderful torture device.” Andrei pointed at the projector standing at the far side of the room like the exhibition of a strange skeleton of an even stranger creature. “This machine is suicide for me, but it is the only way I might answer the question that has gone unanswered since the darkness birthed me. This is my mirror. Do you understand what I’m telling you?”

“The film? That’s it? You want me to show the film?”

“Yes.”

“But the light will…”

“It will.”

“And if I do this, you’ll let me live?”

““I have only one instruction, Mr Pelham. One alone.”

“What would that be?”

* * *

tikka-tikka-tikka-tikka

The old projector filled the empty Sunset Theatre like the sound of a trapped insect. No orchestra played this time. No thundering drums or weeping violins. In the darkness, his body swaddled in a thick red stage curtain, Andrei waited and waited and waited a little longer until he was almost sure Mr Pelham had found some way to escape.

Then—

“Now!” Mr Pelham shouted from the projection booth, as Andrei had instructed him. “Now! He’s on the screen now!”

Andrei discarded his curtained shroud and stood. He stared into the flickering mirror of the screen.

He laughed. It was the sound of wet wood burning.

The monster on the screen, the monster that was his mirror image, moved in ticks and jerks as he came closer, closer still. Not a thing of nightmares, not the terror of the city beneath the city, nor the ghost that haunted the graveyard; not the killer in the fog, either, but a silly puppet held aloft by a drunken puppet master.

Brother monster.

Kindred.

Nosferatu.

Fool!

Andrei laughed, and continued to laugh until flames stole the laughter from him.

* * *

The sun had risen by the time Mr Pelham finally looked back at the Sunset Theatre.

The fires burned still.

The Time And The Place

Long past the hour he could convince himself he was still dreaming, Reginald Carson stood at his bedroom window and gazed with envy at the sleeping neighbourhood.

All the houses and cars, the trees, and the street lights slumbered under the warm blanket of a summer night. Yet there he stood at his window, a phone at his ear, wishing he wasn’t awake and the nephew of a strange old aunt.

“Dot, are you feeling okay?” he said.

“Oh, quite good, as it goes. Never felt better.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes, Reginald.”

She didn’t sound frail, or lost, or scared, or anything that prompted a call so far on the other side of sleep. Hard to imagine the old girl twisted and broken at the bottom of the stairs, or losing her mind, with her voice so clear and…happy? Did she sound happy, or was it some trick of the late hour and his brain still left behind on the pillow?

Reginald wiped at his face as though it might bring some sense to the conversation.

“You do know what time it is, don’t you, Dot?”

“I do. Do you, Reginald?”

“Yes…of course…I mean…” He pulled the phone from his ear to check the front of the screen: 04:30. “It’s very late,” he said.

“Oh, but there’s still a little time left, Reginald. Enough time, at any rate, to make a few calls before I go.”

“Go?”

“Yes. Go. Not yet though, not quite, got a few last things to do.”

Maybe Dot had lost her mind? Or, perhaps she’d fallen into that time machine of a disease which transported people to better times and other places without moving them at all.

No, that couldn’t be. She was as sturdy as the old tree in her garden, maybe more so. If anything, the tree in the garden had weathered worse over time with one single limb still hanging on, and leafless no matter the season.

“Where is it you think you’re going, Dot?”

“Where we all go! It’s exciting, isn’t it?”

“And where would that be?”

“Oh, you know, Reginald. Don’t play silly beggars with me.”

He had an idea.

He didn’t want to have an idea.

“Stop this now. You’re scaring me.”

“Everyone goes Reginald, it’s the way of things. Especially when you get old.”

A cold creature lay its hands upon Reginald’s stomach.

“Don’t say that, Dot. You’re not old, you’re not—”

“Shush. I’m older than I ever dared think I might be. And just old enough to know when I need some assistance. And that’s why I’m calling. I need a lift, Reginald.”

“Oh no, not on your lif—not a chance,” he said. “You can stop this right now. I’ll come over and—”

“If you’re not going to give me a lift, then I’ll find some other way to get there.”

“Stop it, now, Dot.”

“I won’t be late for my date, Reginald.”

“Date?”

“I’m not all dressed up to dance alone now, am I?”

He opened his mouth and didn’t close it.

One interrupted dream ago, Dot was that old tree of a woman who’d planted herself in a wild garden on the other side of town with her wilder cat, Tonk, for company.

Now?

He didn’t want to imagine, but he couldn’t stop himself.

“Wait, don’t do anything yet. I’ll be there in ten minutes,” he said.

“You promise? Don’t let me down now.”

Reginald crossed his pyjama-clad heart.

“Cross my heart and hope to di – just don’t go anywhere. I’ll be there shortly.”

Reginald hopped, skipped, and jumped into his jeans, then left the house and headed out into the sleeping summer night.

* * *

Dot’s house rose from a wilderness of plants and bric-a-brac. A plastic flamingo without its beak or its pink watched over a pond where only tossed copper and silver coins ever swam. A division of motley toy soldiers guarded the broken path to the house, each one armed now with daffodil or dandelion. To the right of the door, a bird table was planted that no bird had ever visited, but where a cat now roosted.

Tonk.

He was of no distinguishable breed and midnight in colour, but like everything in Dot’s world, he was missing some piece. In Tonk’s case, a right eye, which left him with a permanent wink.

“Evening, Tonk,” Reginald said, holding out a hand, forgetting their painful past.

Tonk reminded him. A claw to the back of the hand.

“I guess that’s some sort of hello.”

Tonk winked as always, licked at a paw, and returned to ignoring the guest.

Reginald reached the front door and closed his scratched fist just before the wood. There he held it.

What waited on the other side of a knock? A different woman? A woman he didn’t recognize any more? A woman who didn’t recognize herself?

The cold creature brushed against his stomach again.

He wanted to run and return to the dream Dot had woken him from.

No time.

The door swung open and a swirl of colours and fabric rushed past him into the garden. It twirled and twirled again, an excited squeal emanating from its centre, like the hum from a spinning top. When it stopped spinning, Dot remained.

“Ta-da!” she said. “How do I look?”

Her dress was a patchwork of a hundred other dresses. Blue here, and red there. Gold, and silver in another spot. Around the hem a bright garden of stitched flowers grew. Across her midriff, zebra stripes and leopard spots.

In her presence, Reginald forgot what had brought him to the house. He saw only the same bright woman in amongst the colourful confusion of cloth he’d always known. Nothing lost. Nothing needing to be found.

“You look wonderful, Dot,” he said.

She held her hem and curtsied.

“I think you might be right. Good enough for my purpose in any case.”

“Did you make it yourself?”

“Of course. You don’t imagine there’s a shop that sells something so unique, do you? This is a once in a lifetime kind of dress. See?” She traced the patches of fabric, one to the next. “This is from a summer that was too short and needed to be longer. Here’s a winter that was too long and needed to be shorter. This here,” she said, patting a Halloween orange patch over her ribs, “from an autumn that was just about right.”

The cold hand warmed on Reginald’s stomach.

“It’s beautiful,” he said

“In some parts, yes.”

“Some?”

“No biography is all sunshine and flowers now, is it?”

“Biography?”

Auntie Dot patted down the material of her once-in-a-lifetime dress.

“Some write a memoir, others take photographs, but I stitched this dress together. From the time I could first thread a needle, I collected a scrap from every dress I wore. Every good moment and every bad. And all for the time when I would finally have an occasion fit for such a dress. Look here.” She ran her finger through the flowers upon her hem. “A bouquet from my first love, and here my second, and here a single rose from when I finally stopped counting.” She reached and ruffled a ghost of white satin haunting her shoulder. “And this from when I was bridesmaid to a jilted bride. And here from when I suffered the same fate. And this, this…”

She pointed to a square patch of black stitched over her heart. Her smile became a shadow.

“Dot?”

“…this is for my date tonight,” she said.

“Date? You can’t be serious?”

She pointed to the shadow where her smile once was. “Is this not a serious face?”

“Yes, but—”

“You’re not thinking of going back on your promise, are you?” she said.

“Yes, I mean, no. But listen, Dot, this is all crazy, you know that, don’t you?”

“I know it, but that doesn’t matter. You must always keep your promises, Reginald. Always, no matter what anybody thinks of them. I keep mine, and you must keep yours.”

“But—”

She crossed her arms over the black square of fabric.

“I’ll walk if I must.”

“You shouldn’t be out walking alone at this time of night.”

She hooked an arm under his.

“Luckily for me, I won’t be alone. I’ll have my big, tall nephew for company, won’t I?”

He couldn’t say no. Not even to this kind of madness.

But he didn’t have to mean it.

“You’re not going to take no for an answer, are you?” he said.

“No.”

You will, he promised himself. If a baby could sleep with the lullaby of a car’s engine beneath them and the shades pulled down on the world, why not an aunt? Why not a crazy idea?

“Okay, okay. Where exactly am I taking you on this date of yours?”

She ran to him, flung her arms around his body, and hugged him tight. When the hugging was over, she gave her directions. Only one direction, not so hard to find in a small town with no cars on the road and the time long past midnight.

“The cemetery,” she said.

* * *

Even the smallest of towns had their short cuts and long ways home. Reginald took every wrong turn he could find, and asked every question that came to mind as they drove on through the night, until he came to the question he’d wanted to ask from the start.

“What’s to see in the cemetery, Dot?”

“Depends which side of the earth you’re on.”

“What was that?”

She brushed his hand.

“Those who are in the ground, those who are out.”

“Oh.”

“Buried don’t see much, I’ll give you that.”

“I didn’t think so.”

“Lot of worms, whispering. Lot of earth. Boring, really.”

“And those who aren’t buried?”

Dot looked out into the night and its passing lights, and there between the flickers, she found her answer.

“They come for the stories,” she said.

Reginald couldn’t imagine what stories a cemetery contained. There was lots of silence, and when there wasn’t silence there was crying. But stories?

“What stories?” he said.

“Graveyards are libraries. Lots of people there reading. Born when, died then, and all that comes between. Short stories. Large print.”

Reginald turned a corner and another, and headed back from where he’d come from a second time. He could loop around until dawn, and hopefully first light would cure the madness.

But not his curiosity.

“A cemetery is a library?”

“Among other things.”

“What other things?”

“Well, some come for the company.”

“The company?” He didn’t see what company could be had in a graveyard after midnight, none that he’d want to meet at any rate. And the only company in the day were other mourners and the occasional crow or two. “You mean other mourners visiting the cemetery?”

In the backwash of the town’s light, she raised an eyebrow at him.

“Ghosts,” she said.

“Ghosts?”

“You know? Spirits. Spectres. Things that go bump in the night, but don’t make as much noise in the day.”

Reginald squinted, and he wasn’t sure if it was the scant light, or confusion which caused it.

“I didn’t think ghosts came out in the day?”

She slapped him playfully on the hand. “They’re not badgers, Reginald. Best time to see a ghost is in the middle of the day.”

“It is?”

“Oh, yes. Just after lunch. That’s when they start haunting.”

Despite the madness, and the night, and the hoping for dawn, and everything to be just a dream he hadn’t woken from, Reginald found himself curious again.

“I’ve never heard of that before. I thought they just hung around old mansions and hotels. I thought they only came out at night.”

She tutted.

“What’s the use of haunting at night when everybody’s already asleep? Doesn’t matter how many chains you rattle if you’re around a heavy sleeper.”

He chuckled. He’d never thought about it before. The only thing that could raise him from his sleep was an aunt calling him up late into the evening. Chains, probably not.

“I suppose you’re right,” he said.

“I know I am.”

“So why has nobody taken a picture of a ghost in the day?”

She slapped his arm playfully. “Because ghosts only come out at night. Isn’t that so?”

Reginald forgot his purpose and why he was riding around in circles. “Excuse me?” he said.

“Nobody’s out in the day looking for ghosts, Reginald. And if they saw one, what would they think, you think?”

He thought.

He thunk.

“That it’s not a ghost?”

“Because?”

Reginald giggled. “Because ghosts only come out at night.”

Dot giggled. “Now, let’s stop going around in circles and get to the graveyard. I don’t want to miss my date.”

“I wasn’t—I’m not—I—”

She grabbed his wrist and squeezed. Her grip was thirty years younger than the years she’d measured on a calendar.

“I may be old, Reginald, but I’m not now, nor have I ever been a fool. Driving around and around trying to get me to sleep like a little baby isn’t going to work.”

“I wasn’t—I’m not—I—”

“You think I’ve gone a bit doolally, don’t you?” Dot twisted a circle with a finger around her temple.

“No,” he said, but it was a weak word on numb lips.

“Oh, yes you do. Can’t fool me. You think I’m a loopy old woman who’s lost her marbles. Well I’m not.”

“I don’t think that, Dot. I just—”

“I’m an elephant,” she said, matter-of-factly.

He stopped the car.

He stared at Dot, her face framed by the light from the street lamps.

It was a kind face, a warm face, a face with a wide smile and bright eyes. A face without worry or concern. A face that showed no madness.

But the face was only a door, he knew, to a hidden room piled up with who knew what crazy kinds of things.

She’s gone, he thought. I’ve lost her. I’m watching her mind slip away, and I can’t do anything about it.

Except speak.

“Dot, you’re not an elephant. Now, let’s get you home and—” he said, his voice as soft as if he was cooing a child in a crib.

“You fool!” She slapped him hard across the cheek. “Of course I’m not a real elephant. And if you say it again, I’ve got another slap waiting for you.”

Reginald rubbed his sore cheek. “Sorry.”

“I’m like an elephant,” Dot said.

“You are? How?”

She pinched the cheek she’d slapped, and it was only slightly less painful.

“Do I have to explain everything?”

“It’d be nice if you explained something.”

“What do elephants do when they know they’re dying, Reginald?”

He didn’t know. He didn’t even know the difference between African and Indian elephants, only that there was a difference, and it might have something to do with their ears.

“I haven’t got a clue.”

“When an elephant knows its time is up, it trundles off far away from the herd to its final resting place.”

“Resting place?”

“Where we’re supposed to be going, if you didn’t keep driving around and around in circles.”

“The cemetery?”

“In their case, an elephant graveyard. We won’t find any elephants where we’re going, though, unless you count me. Now start up the car.”

He put his hand on the car’s ignition key and kept it there without turning.

“You’re not an elephant, Dot.”

Dot showed him her hand. A good hand for slapping someone with. “I already told you—”

“I mean, you’re not dying. You’re in perfect health.”

“Health! What’s that got to do with anything?”

“Everything,” he said.

She pinched his other cheek. “You’ll learn when you get older.”

“Learn?”

“When you’re young, tomorrows are countless. When you’re old, today is always your last.”

He didn’t want this to be a last day, or night for that matter. But he could sense that’s just what it would be.

She wasn’t dying, but in the days that followed, it would feel that way, he knew. She’d forget his name and his face. He’d become a stranger when he visited. Worse, a flickering memory; a candle in a dark room that blew out all too quickly.

“I—”

“I know the time and the place, Reginald. I’m an elephant. Now start up the car.”

“Dot, please…”

“Start the car, Reginald. Or do you want me to walk?”

He didn’t want her to walk. He wanted to lock all the doors and drive as fast as he could back to that house in the middle of the wilderness on the opposite side of town. He wanted her to go to her bed and wake up the Dot he knew and loved. He wanted—

Reginald turned the key and started the car.

I’ll drive her there, and let her walk off this madness, he thought. It’ll all be over in an hour or two.

It’ll all be over.

The thought haunted him as he drove through the midnight dark of the town and onto the cemetery grounds.

There, with no ghosts for company, he walked his aunt through the summer-warmed night to the benches overlooking a miniature city of headstones. They sat together, the headlights from a few lonely cars in the far distance turning on lights in that land of the dead.

He uhmmed a few times before he could find a question.

“Can we go home now, Dot?”

She kissed him on the cheek.

“You may. I still have to make my date. Did you forget?”

“No, but—”

“Elephants never forget. And what am I, Reginald?”

“You’re not an elephant, Dot. Please, don’t—”

She jumped up from the bench and twirled.

“Goodbye, Reginald. Feed Tonk for me, will you?”

“You’re not going anywhere, Dot. Don’t be silly,” he said, the cold hand of the creature returning, snaking its way up to his throat.

“It’s okay.”

“No, no, it isn’t, stop this, please just—” His eyes swam.

She wiped a tear from his cheek before it could drop and stain the bench.

“Not now, Reginald. Save the tears for later, much later. Do you hear me?”

“But—”

“Goodbye, Reginald.”

He opened his mouth to speak and found nothing but a choked breath.

Dot danced off along the path, through the tiny city of the dead, and stopped before a tall marbled angel. She spoke softly to the statue in words that he couldn’t hear. She laughed. The laugh of a girl falling in love for the first time. A girl in an autumn that was just right. A girl in a dress stitched together from more good memories than bad.

And then she danced.

She danced alone amongst the headstones, her arms embracing the night.

She danced and danced some more.

And then she danced no more.

The Complaint

The first, and last day I ever worked for Chetwynd’s Funeral Services, they put me on what they called dead letters.

Fresh from a successful four-year stint of doing nothing at university, I’d been grateful of landing the job, but not overly excited about the prospect of being so close to the dead. So, when Mr Chetwynd, the owner, informed me of my duties, I was quite relieved.

“Welcome to the Chetwynd family,” he’d said that morning, snatching heavy words between heavy breaths.

“Thank you, sir,” I said, all my politeness learned from TV shows.

“Sir? I haven’t heard a young person speak like that in an age. Your mother and father are to be commended.”

There was no father, none that I knew by sight at any rate, and the last thing my mother was worthy of was a commendation, unless binge drinking and smoking earned such accolades.

“Thank you, sir,” I said.

“Well then. You’re a keen lad, aren’t you?”

“I am,” I said, but my keenness was more about pay cheques and having something on my CV other than a lot of white space.

“Good. Let’s begin with the dead, shall we?”

Where else would you begin in a funeral parlour?

Anywhere else, would be the best answer I could hope for.

“The dead? I’m not sure I’m qualified to—”

He laughed, and it was the sound of a kettle boiling over. “No need to worry. I’m not asking you to pretty the corpses up for the coffins. Dead letters, that’s where you’ll begin.”

“Dead letters?”

“You’ll pick it up soon enough.” He jabbed at his phone with a fat finger. “Maureen? Would you be a dear and show Mr Hayes the workings of the dead letter office? Thank you. I’ll send him on through.”

He sent me through and wished me a long and happy time at Chetwynd’s. It would be neither long, nor happy, as it turned out.

* * *

Maureen didn’t like me. Maureen didn’t like anybody, as far as I could tell. She looked like her favourite fruits were lemons.

“This way, hurry up. I haven’t got all day,” she said, as she walked me past the chapel of rest, and down a cold corridor to a door with a sign that read: LETTERS.

She pushed that door open and walked in, not asking me to follow.

I followed anyway.

Inside sat a single desk, on which sat two trays. One tray labelled DEAD, the other, LIVE. Between them was a stack of addressed and unopened envelopes.

“Listen, and listen well, because I have neither the time nor the patience to repeat myself. Your job is to open the letters and find out where they’re meant to be. Cross-reference them against the names in the cabinets.” She pointed to a brooding set of metal filing cabinets on the far side of the room. “If there’s no corresponding name, the letter goes in the DEAD tray. If you find a matching name, it goes into the LIVE tray.”

The instructions seemed as clear as fog.

“I…”

She sensed my confusion, and it didn’t help her mood. “The letters on the desk are from the relatives of the people we buried or cremated, usually. Are you following me?”

“Yes,” I said.

“But sometimes we get a letter sent to us by mistake, meant for another Chetwynd’s or delivered to the wrong address. Those letters go in the DEAD tray. Do you understand?”

The fog was clearing.

“Yes,” I said.

“You’ll know the letter is meant for us, because we’ll have the name of the deceased on file here.” She started to slow talk, as if I was a child being told not to play with matches. “You search for the name of the deceased in the letter, then check in the cabinet to see if it’s also there. When the two of them pair up, then you put that letter in the LIVE tray for Mr Chetwynd’s attention. Clear enough?”

It was, but I couldn’t help thinking they’d do a lot better with email. Not a likely outcome, I knew. Chetwynd’s had the air of a museum about it. It was stuck in a past that still reeked of nicotine and the pine scent used to cover up that stench.

“If the name in the letter matches one in the cabinets, it goes in the LIVE tray, everything else in the DEAD tray. Got it,” I said.

She scowled at me. “We’ll see how you do come the end of the day.”

* * *

If there’s anything sadder than a pile of letters written by the bereaved, I’ve never experienced it since.

The first letter I opened was from a widower of eighty-three, Mr Wallace. He thanked Chetwynd for the service held for his wife, Edna, and was particularly impressed with the professionalism of the undertakers. Four or five paragraphs of praise gave way to a page and a half of melancholy and despair, ending in a simple wish; bury me with Edna.

I checked for Edna in the filing cabinets and found her not under her married name of Wallace, but under E for Edna.

I dropped the letter in the LIVE tray and opened the next.

One sadness followed another.

A mother burying a child.

A child burying a mother.

Brothers burying brothers, sisters their sisters. Uncles their aunts, and aunts their uncles.

Death, it seemed, sharpened his blade against the whetstone of grief.

After lunch that day, I read the first letter of complaint.

And my last.

* * *

I sat on a low wall opposite Chetwynd’s, munching on a ham sandwich as the tearful entered the building in a steady stream. Despite the sadness of the letters, I thought I might be happy at Chetwynd’s. It wasn’t so hard to read letters all day, and it didn’t involve any heavy lifting. I’d already started making plans to cut myself off from the grief.

Yes, what had taken me a morning, would only take me half an hour if I searched only for the names in the letters. I could spend the rest of the time listening to podcasts or surfing the internet. My university training would pay off at last.

I forgot all my plans when I returned and opened the next letter.

Dear Sir or Madam, or whatever you deign to call yourself, I would suggest butchers and thieves as a good alternative,

I am writing to complain in regards to the funerary services I purchased from you. I was led to believe the package would include a horse-drawn carriage and at least one hymn sung over the grave by the local boys’ choir, but in fact neither was provided.

I checked the name and address at the top. Mr Daunt. 13 Hope Close.

Further, the coffin you supplied was of a shoddy material, barely plywood, if truth be known. Thin enough that the worms could eat through it in the space of a night.

I hadn’t seen anything but the fancy coffins in Chetwynd’s. They were solid and shined to a polish.

The satin sheets and pillows you promised to line the coffin, for which you charged a further five hundred pounds, were a cotton and polyester blend at best. And let us not forget the state in which the poor body was made poorer by that mortician who performed his butchery upon it. Is it common practice to stuff the dead with sawdust? Did you hire this mangler of yours from a local abattoir?

How had the letter writer known the state of the body? I wondered. Easy to explain away his knowledge of the coffin and its lining, but not the details of a body already buried

I read on.

You provided no choir, no hymns, and not a single horse to carry the carriage. What you did provide was a coffin that may as well have been cardboard, and a body stitched together and stuffed like a child’s toy. Yet none of these match the gross negligence of you and your so-called funerary services when it came to the last wishes of the deceased.

P.T.O.

I turned over, but I was not pleased in any way to read what came next.

Were you not instructed to place a red rose in the mouth of the corpse? Did I not specifically request two silver coins, provided at my own great expense, I might add, to cover the eyes of the dead? And correct me if I am wrong, but were you not asked to drive a stake through the heart of the cadaver?

I stopped there.

“What?” I asked the empty room.

A voice answered.

“What?” Maureen pushed the door open on my question. She stepped inside to drop off another stack of letters for me to sift through.

“Nothing,” I said.

She gave me a sour look, tutted, and left the room.

I got back to the unanswered questions.

Why was this Mr Daunt making such weird requests? Silver coins? Roses? A stake through the heart?

Silver coins and roses sparked nothing in my brain, but I’d seen enough movies to know what a stake through the heart meant.

“Vampire?” I laughed the question out.

I thought briefly I’d gone crazy surrounded by all the silence and grief. I wasn’t part of Chetwynd’s generation; that brood of older people who could sit in their own stillness for hours on end reading or doing a crossword puzzle. I needed noise. I fell asleep with the TV on most nights.

I calmed myself. I told myself the strange letter must be a work hazing. Chetwynd’s idea of a prank to pull on the new lad.

Yes, a prank, that’s all it was.

I read on.

Have you any notion of the torment you’ve put me through, Mr Chetwynd? Is it even within the realm of your understanding what pains I have suffered because of your negligence?

It seemed to be getting back to normal, I thought. But not for long.

I have lived four hundred years and suffered through every one of them. I entrusted you to end that suffering, finally. But no. I wake in a flimsy coffin, resting on cheap garments, my body filled like a fire bucket with sand. There’s no silver for my eyes, only hungry worms. No rose to taste, only the burning of hallowed earth beneath my buttocks. And my chest is without its signpost towards my eternal rest, as I ordered. If you’d neglected all but the last, I would not be writing this letter.

I stared at the final paragraph, repeating the word ‘vampire’, but this time without a question or a laugh in my voice.

Knowing there’s no earthly way to gain compensation for the trouble you’ve put me through, I shall endeavour to gain compensation in an unearthly manner. I shall see you soon, Mr Chetwynd. I hope you taste better than you look.

Yours Faithfully

Aristotle Daunt.

I stood, cold and shaking. I didn’t check the filing cabinets for matching names, or the corridor for Mr Chetwynd laughing about his joke, if joke it was. I dropped the letter into the tray marked LIVE and walked away, never to return.

dEar

Dear Cissy,

I’m not sure you’ll ever read this letter, but I must write to tell you it’s over, at last. I killed Marley early this morning. He died in my arms.

How foreign the word looks on this page. Killed. Would you have thought me capable, Cissy? Little Arthur, who couldn’t kill an ant, now a bona fide killer. I suppose I should feel some pride. I did succeed where all the others failed. Yet, I’m left empty and tired.

With Marley dead, the disease can no longer spread. Or so the calculations would lead me to believe. I’m reminded now of a quote from the Bible — The first shall be last, and the last shall be first. I believe that’s how it goes, but I don’t have a reference at hand here in the manor house. Only technical books remain and a few terrible paperbacks. In any case, that Bible quote fits Marley, for he was the first to suffer from the disease and now, I hope, he will be the last.

I’m getting ahead of myself, Cissy. You don’t know any of the background. How could you? How long since we spoke? How long since either of us knew how the other lived? That doesn’t matter now. All you need know is they swore me to secrecy when they came to my office in Oxford. All the scientists had to sign a declaration of secrecy on penalty of death.

The death penalty! How insane we’ve become. Eighty years since they last tied a noose around a neck, and yet in a matter of months they ready the rope so eagerly. Not that it matters now. How would it matter with the country so emptied of people? Of those who made me sign the document, how many survived the first and second waves of the disease? Who remains to tighten the noose around my neck for writing this letter, Cissy?

None, I guess. I do hope you made it out of the country before the first wave hit. I hope you found France before the madness wiped out this country. I tried to contact you several times, I truly did.

I should have stayed in touch over the years, I know. It’s all my fault. If we’d kept in touch, I’d have known your location. I’d have come to you, Cissy, I promise. I wish now we’d not drifted apart.

I must stop with this self-pity now. My mood grows sour thinking about mistakes I can’t correct. This letter is as much for me as it is for you. I must tell someone the truth if only to keep my mind from slipping.

You saw the effects the disease had on people, didn’t you? Even I, cloistered away in my Oxford office, couldn’t ignore the reality unfolding around me. They likened the first stage to a mild confusion, but when half the population suddenly can’t remember their own name or how to turn off a gas cooker, it doesn’t seem so mild any longer. Do you remember that first weekend in June when the rash of house fires began? I saw satellite imagery of the country at the time, and it looked like some strange Guy Fawkes’ Night celebration. A million people died in that first weekend, we calculated. In some ways I consider them lucky. They escaped before the worst of it took hold.

I remember a conversation I overheard at that time. Two young mathematicians in the corridor outside my office chatted amiably about the carriers of the disease. They had decided to name them ‘ramblers’ before the joke wore out its welcome and reality hushed them both.

I’d forgotten that nickname until I arrived at the manor house and I saw one of the diseased walking the road nearby. He reminded me of those men and women who’d cut along the path near to grandmother’s house in Burwash. Do you remember, Cissy, how happy they seemed? Do you remember how strange they looked out in all weathers without a care in the world?

The rambler I saw wore a bright smile and a yellow cagoule the same colour of the captain’s sou’wester hat on the book we both read as children. Do you remember the fight we had over that book? Do you remember, Cissy, how that fight ended?

I’m smiling now, because I pictured mother’s face as she ripped the book in half and gave it to us. Yet, we continued to argue over which torn piece had more of the captain on it than the other.

Sometimes, I wonder if the arguments of our childhood ever ended. Seems we carried our rivalries with us into our own quiet little corners of existence and let them fester there. I, in Oxford, surrounded by my numbers, and you…?

I must confess, I do not know who and what you became. The last I heard you’d settled in St Ives with a husband and a child. What of you now, Cissy? Do you have any more children? Does the marriage still hold?

What a fool! I spent all those years hidden away in silence, and now only silence remains. The birds don’t even sing here.

Excuse my maudlin digression. If I had more time, I would spend all of it in apologies. There’s an old typewriter here I’d considered using, but the ‘e’ key produces only uppercase letters, and I fear my touch-typing skills would only slow me down. So, I write this letter longhand, with apologies for my doctor’s scrawl. Where was I? Oh, yes, the ‘rambler’.

He came sauntering up the path near to the manor house as I arrived with my army escort. I hadn’t seen a soul in six months, barring the soldiers accompanying me from Oxford, and the sight of the man in his bright yellow cagoule stirred a useless hope within me. If this man could survive, surely, we all had a chance? I thought.

As we neared him, the full horror of the disease came into view. I’d heard stories of how it twisted the features. I’d heard rumours it turned people into gibbering wrecks with a taste for blood. I’d heard of rotting flesh and eyes turned as black as ink. I’d never heard once of the joy.

The rambler had a wide smile. His eyes flashed brightly, full of happiness. If I’d seen him in passing, I’d have thought he’d won the lottery. But as the army Range Rover slowed to a stop, I saw how that smile masked the madness beneath.

He wore his joy like a mask, Cissy. A terrible, porcelain face fixed tightly to the skin. Blood dripped down from a wound on his forehead, and his tattered fingers hung limply at his side like torn gloves.

Without a word of warning, one of my army escorts jumped out from the vehicle and shot the man in the head.

Later, after I’d settled into my quarters on the second floor of the manor house, I heard one of the soldiers, I cannot tell you whom as they both died before I got to know their names, ask a favour of the other.

“If you ever see me smiling like that, put me down,” he said.

“Done,” the other replied.

How could I have known then a smile equalled death? How could I have known Marley started it all, when I didn’t know my own role at the manor house or of his existence?

I’m getting ahead of myself again, Cissy. I apologise. A little more background, if you’ll indulge.

Long before the disease took hold, the manor house hosted hunting parties. With an abundance of red deer on the grounds, they turned the yearly cull into a paid event. Over time, as the hunters dwindled, the owners sought a new attraction.

Marley provided just such an attraction, suffering as he did from leucism. In a stag the effects of it produce a pure white coat, white antlers, and deep red eyes. They could sell tickets alone on the off chance of seeing the magnificent beast.

I must say, Cissy, Marley did stand out. The first time I saw him, I thought I had seen a ghost as he appeared through the mists. He stood twenty feet away from me at the edge of the lawns with no fear in his red eyes, only curiosity. Later, after reading the notes of my dead colleagues, I discovered they’d given him his name after Dickens’ chain-rattling spectre.

If only they’d made the connection to that story earlier, the world might not have fallen into such a terrifying silence. If only they’d seen his arrival as a warning against the future. But they had no reason to believe Marley had an infection or that the disease could jump from animal to human. Who could have known?

In the first stage of infection, the deer show signs of confusion and disorientation just as we humans do. During the second stage the brain rots and the deer often try to commit suicide. Blood stains the trees all over the grounds where the poor infected creatures have rammed their skulls until they died.

The manor house has similar smears on its walls now, but the deer didn’t cause them. I saw their creation first hand, not long after I met Fay.

At twenty years my junior, Fay had accomplished twice as much as I at that age. I envied her intelligence, but more so her sociability. Scientists make for unsociable creatures, favouring their lonely obsessions over most human interactions, but not Fay. Before I’d had a chance to stutter out my name, she’d taken my hand and given me a potted history of the who, what, where, and why of her life.

I forget most of it now, except the one question she asked of me: “Do you think it’s a form of CJD?” she said.

Oh, Cissy, what I didn’t know might have filled an encyclopaedia. I had no clue what the acronym stood for. I’d focused for twenty years on data to the detriment of all else. I stalled my answer until a senior army officer thankfully interrupted to inform us of a briefing we must attend.

CJD, my dear Cissy, is Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease, a degenerative brain ailment many scientists predicted as the cause of the initial outbreak. They were wrong. They were so dreadfully wrong. As was I.

My ignorance mattered little to Fay. Over the following days, our research helped form a strong bond between us. Her expertise fixed on biochemistry, mine data, and together we started to piece together a model of the outbreak. More importantly, we used the model to pinpoint where it all began.

The science would bore you, but it will come as no surprise that Marley was the first case in the country. He’d passed all checks they’d given him before transportation to England, but no checks existed for the disease. An outbreak of something similar in the American bison population had occurred previously, but remained isolated and ignored.

With the discovery of Marley as our ‘patient zero’, we tried to capture and study him. Even with the help of the few remaining soldiers, he’d vanish without a trace as soon as we got close. Some of the more superstitious amongst the group began to believe him more than an animal. I heard whispers of omens and portents, of punishments from God and End Times. None of that mumbo-jumbo scared me. It was Fay who brought the terrifying reality of our situation home to me a little while later.

Only a few days after our last expedition to find Marley, Fay woke me in the middle of the night, her face hovering inches above mine. I hoped, as all do when woken from sleep to a terrifying reality, that I remained in a dream.

“Who am I?” she said, and followed with a rush of questions so quick they merged into one: Whereamiwhareyouwhatyearisithwhereisit?

I had no answers that would satisfy her raving. I knew only the disease had taken control of her mind.

Fay scrambled off the bed and ran to the other side of my room. Stood in the open doorway, her body silhouetted by the light from the hall beyond, she began to pound at the side of her head with closed fists. The thud of bone against bone filled the quiet.

I tried to reach her, but as I approached, she hit me in the jaw and sent me failing to the ground. By the time I’d risen to my feet and reached the door, Fay stood at the other end of the long corridor beyond.

She’d stopped hitting herself, but the absence of that awful sound of knuckles against the skull only worried me more. My fear grew as she started to sing.

Oh, she had a pleasant enough voice, dear Cissy, but at three in the morning all songs sound sinister. Especially a song remembered from your own past.

The song she sang reminded me of our visits to the Duke of Edinburgh pub in the village. Do you remember how mother and father would take us there for lunch after Sunday mass? Mother would play a song on the jukebox every time. I don’t remember the name, or who sang the tune, but I remember the lyrics: To every season…turn…turn…turn.

Fay sang those words as if she’d plucked them from my memories. I tried to convince myself I was the dreamer still dreaming, but I couldn’t wake up. I stepped out into the corridor as one would onto floorboards turned black after a house fire, fearing they might break apart. I shouted for her to stop, but she continued to sing, repeating the chorus until it became nothing more than a jumble.

Toeveryseasonturnturnturn.

Toeveryseasonturnturnturn.

Toeveryseasonturnturnturn.

I searched the closed doors along both sides of the corridor. Surely, one of the others would wake at the noise and come to our aid? How could anybody sleep through all this?

I would soon have my answer. They weren’t sleeping, Cissy, they were infected also.

Fay stopped singing abruptly, but I didn’t even gain the reprieve of silence. She began to laugh. The sound of it rattled through the manor house and echoed back. Only, the returned echoes didn’t belong to her, Cissy, they belonged to others. A dozen manic laughs rumbled up from below in unison. Soon, the floor beneath me shook with the sound.

Instinct drove my hands to my ears, but I couldn’t block the terrifying sound. I thought to turn and run, but I had no idea where I might escape. Inside the house madness had taken hold, and beyond only the woods and the deer waited. I felt trapped, Cissy, and convinced I too would soon start laughing. I could feel some strange, untamed instinct, pulling at the corners of my lips.

Then it stopped. As abruptly as the laughter had exploded out of Fay’s mouth, it ceased, and a long silence took its place.

I waited in that dreaded silence for her to move, but I wouldn’t have dared guess what nightmarish action would follow.

Fay took a tentative step forward. Under the dim throw of the wall lights her face was as yellow as the s’owester on our beloved children’s book. She wore a smile as fixed and porcelain as the poor rambler who’d met us on that first day outside the manor house. I braced myself for a gunshot fired by a soldier hidden in the shadows, but none came.

Smiling, she approached me, and I could do nothing.

She stared through me. Her eyes fixed on the opposite end of the corridor and the wall there.

I knew then what would happen.

Fay ran, and I pawed at her as she bolted past me, but I might as well have tried to catch an arrow. A few feet from the corridor’s end she lowered her head, and a memory of the poor bull we saw at the Picador in Madrid came to mind. Do you remember, Cissy, how father took us there as children? Do you remember how the bull lowered his head and charged directly into the stands that day?

I’m sure I heard the roar of a Spanish crowd as Fay hit the wall with a sickeningly wet thud, and her body crumpled to the floor. She twitched like the poor bull. Her head jerking as if a broken current was passing through it.

Somehow, I found the courage to approach her.

Oh, Cissy, such stupid thoughts crowded my head. I imagined I might resuscitate her and cure the disease. I imagined myself a hero.

Stupid. So stupid. The disease has no cure. We never figured out how it jumped from animal to man. All we knew was to kill the disease, you had to kill the hosts. All of them.

Fay was dead. The force of the blow had cracked her head like an egg. Her brains leaked out onto the floor, and her face was masked with blood, but still the terrifying joy of her smile remained intact.

I don’t know how I didn’t vomit. No, I tell a lie, I know why I didn’t, as a new sound distracted me. In quick succession, the wet thud of heads crashing against walls rose all through the manor house. I didn’t count them, Cissy, but in the immediate aftermath as I walked amongst the dead, I found thirty corpses. Thirty cracked eggs. Quaint, when I describe it that way, but I swear to you the dead aren’t quaint at all, especially after a few days in their company.

In the week that followed, I dared not go outside into the world for fear the disease now hung in the air like the morning mists. I dared not walk the house either, as I worried my proximity to the corpses would have the same effect. But hunger forces us to do many foolish things. A wet towel wrapped around my head and mouth as though it might stop the madness from getting to me, I took one trip through the manor house gathering what food I could. Which wasn’t much, I must admit. Mostly snacks.

Isn’t it true, Cissy, all our guilty pleasures become our tortures if allowed? Do you remember how we used to sneak chocolate bars up to our rooms and eat them beneath the sheets at night? In the week after Fay and the others killed themselves, I ate my fill of chocolate for a lifetime.

What sleep I managed in that time consisted of a repeating nightmare. Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall. Humpty Dumpty had a great fall. Neither I, in the dream, or the King’s horses could put him back together again. In that dream, as I gathered his pieces in my arms, a shrill, haunting sound would pull me out of the nightmare and into another.

Out on the mist-strewn grounds, Marley’s roar woke me nightly. Whether that call of his was for company, or out of anger, I wasn’t sure. There was nobody else to hear him, anyway, Cissy. The soldiers had killed all the other deer as a precaution a week before the madness took them.

Two weeks later, I became sure the disease hadn’t infected me. In all that time I hadn’t cracked a smile, and the only madness I suffered was a bored mania any who’ve eaten the same food day in and day out might suffer.

Still, Marley’s roars haunted the night and disturbed my dreams. I could avoid the madness of the disease if I kept to myself, I reasoned, but the lack of sleep brought on by Marley would inflict another madness upon me given enough time.

I vowed to put an end to that noise.

Oh, Cissy, you should have seen me the morning I went out to put an end to Marley. I was like a child dressed up in his father’s clothing. I’d rummaged through the soldiers’ quarters and found a uniform two sizes too big. I wore a pair of combat boots three sizes above my own and clomped around in them like Frankenstein’s monster let free.

Next, I found a weapon. I chose the simplest looking, as I’d never fired a gun in my life. I knew enough to know what a rifle was and how it might be used.

The rifle I chose was longer than the others, and it had a scope fixed to the top. Good for hunting, I told myself in an internal voice far surer than its owner ever could be. I stood before one of the upper story windows that morning, looking out into the early morning mists through the scope, and like a dream, Marley appeared.

I thought I was dreaming too, or suffering some hunger-induced hallucination. The rifle shook in my grasp, and I had the notion Marley might sense my fears and run, but he didn’t move, Cissy. He turned his head, and I swear, fixed on me with those red eyes of his.

Without hesitation, I pulled the trigger. What I’d imagined would be the hardest act, killing another living being, was as easy as flicking on a light switch.

Or, it would have been if I’d loaded the rifle beforehand. The end might have come then, if I’d done even the most basic checks. But what was I to know of how a rifle worked? How was I, who’d spent thirty years with a head buried in numbers and theories, supposed to manoeuvre the practical mechanics of death?

It took me another two days to figure out those mechanics, although I was no more confident two days later than I had been when that trigger clicked dryly at my squeezing. If anything, my confidence had waned. I dreamed, on those last nights, of Marley turning the gun on me like in a cartoon, but the dream had no humour to it. I’d wake, sweating, convinced Marley was watching me from the corridor, his red eyes glowing in the dark.

Dawn the next day, I finally saw those eyes up close.

I walked out into the woods with the night still lingering in the air and the morning mists clinging to the edge of the world. I had no idea of how to track an animal or how I would continue to follow such a beast after I’d found him. Dressed in oversized fatigues, the rifle loaded and slung over my shoulder, I pushed on into the mists.

The rising sun brought Marley to me. He appeared on the crest of a hill; a silhouetted statue erected in some ancient time to some ancient god. He didn’t move, barring a few small nods of his head.

I failed a second time, Cissy. As I brought the scope up to my eye, I saw myself looking at blackness. At first, I was confused. How could such a simple thing as a glass lens suddenly stop working? Then I realised I’d put the lens cap back over the front of the scope before heading out from the manor house.

Scrambling, I took the lens cap off and aimed the gun once again.

Marley hadn’t moved. If he sensed danger, he had chosen to ignore it. There, atop the hillside, he was a perfect target.

Now, Cissy, I told you how I’d had no hesitation when I pulled the trigger the first time. But a repeat performance was not on the cards. My finger gained a drunk’s tremor. Sweat rolled down my face in a curtain.

The dead whispered in my ears then, not words, but the drumbeat of skull against wall. I heard the faint echoes of maddened laughter underneath it all. The disease had to end, and it would end where it began, with Marley.

The first shall be last, and the last shall be first.

I squeezed the trigger, and at the last moment, closed my eyes.

The sound from the bullet opened them up again. My ears felt as if they were stuffed with church bells, and a seasick roll came to my legs.

Do you remember, Cissy, the roller-coaster we visited as children? Do you remember how terrified I was, and how you took my hand? You told me I wasn’t to be afraid. You told me it wasn’t going to hurt, and it would be over with soon enough.

I believed you then, and I wish I’d had you here holding my hand when I fired that rifle.

I found Marley a half mile from where my bullet had struck him. Sharp silver morning breaths fired out through his nostrils, and his white coat was stained red with blood. Looking into his bright red eyes, I saw him then for the first time, not as a ghost, not as the beginning of a nightmare, but as a living creature, unknowing of his part in a catastrophe.

My heart broke at the sight of him. I reached out to sooth his brow only to jerk it back a moment later.

I was still unclear as to how the disease spread. I’d survived, somehow, and I wasn’t going to push my luck there and then. For the same reason, I couldn’t just walk away and let him die slowly either.

I whispered a half-remembered prayer, aimed the rifle at Marley’s head, and wrapped my finger around the trigger.

Whatever instinct in creatures and men alike drives them to fight, it came alive in both of us just then. Marley reared up and swung his antlers into my side, tearing a chunk off flesh from above my hip. And in that same moment, I whirled on him and squeezed the trigger.

I don’t know if Marley is truly the last, and sometimes I wonder if he was the first, but I do know he is dead. Only time can tell now, Cissy, whether I did the right thing or not. I patched the wound up in my side before I started to write this letter, but my knowledge is lacking, and I’m not sure if it will hold or not.

For now, I grow very tired. My lids are heavy and it’s getting harder and harder to write. Yet, at the same time, so many memories of us rush through my mind.

Do you remember, Cissy, that song mother used to put on in the jukebox in the pub? I don’t remember the name of it, or the name of the pub for that matter—the Golden Fleece? The Duke? Where was it, anyway? – but I do remember the lyrics, I think. I can’t help the smile on my face when I think of them now. Makes me feel happy. Makes me feel like singing.

To every season…turn..turn..turn..

* * *

dEar Cissy

This last part I writE on thE old typEwritEr. My arms arE wEak. I can’t hold a pEn propErly, but I can typE thEsE words.

EvErything sEEms funny to mE now. EvErything is a jokE.

I have an urgE to run, Cissy. I want to run and run and run.

I want to sing.

To EvEry sEason...turn...turn...turn.

The Mexicans Have Complained Quite Strongly About The Noise

His name was Robert Monk, and he hated time and the indicators of time.

He hated watches, and he hated alarms. He had a loathing for all kinds of pocket watches and stopwatches, and he had a particular loathing of the LCD displays on the front of microwave ovens.

* * *

His name was Robert Monk, and he was a successful writer who often sat on panels and answered questions for people who thought he might have some magic power, or an enchanted sword that would tell them, step by step, how he had gotten to where he was, but much more quickly.

* * *

His name was Robert Monk, and in his sixtieth year he started telling the truth to anybody who asked him the same question all successful writers were asked.

“Where do you get your ideas from?”

“I saw my own death, that’s how,” he would tell them when they asked.

Most took this as some ironic cue to ask:

“You’re not serious, are you?”

And so he explained.

He was ten, or twelve, or somewhere between when he saw himself die. The him that was him at age sixty, that was. The him that had come back to tell the earlier him what to do to stop the future him from doing what the future him was just about to do.

The him of then didn’t believe the him from the future any more than any other boy of ten, eleven, or twelve would. So the him from the future had jumped off the top of a car park to prove his point.

Hard to argue with a quivering splatter on the pavement.

Here’s what the sixty-year old him told the ten, or eleven, or twelve year old him before he jumped:

Write a novel that is a warning against all the bad things in the world and also a manual on how to combat all those bad things. Release this novel any which way you can before you turn sixty and everything will be okay. I will not jump off this building, and you will have never met me. You might even turn sixty-one.

“You’re serious?” they would ask.

And when he told them that he was, they would inevitably ask him this: “So did you write the novel?”

“No,” he would tell them.

“Are you going to?” they asked.

“I’m thinking about it.”

“But you’re already past sixty,” they would inform him as though he had no idea about his own birthday, or he’d forgotten the passage of time.

It was impossible to forget time.

All he thought about was time and how it worked, or didn’t work, and what his place was within all the madness.

He wasn’t really sure how time worked and doubly unsure of how time-travel worked, and the more he thought of it, the more he realised it could not work, but it had worked, and if he thought on that reality for just a little longer he would have to lie down in a darkened room until the pain in his head stopped.

Inevitably, and after some more fruitless questioning, they would return to their points of origin.

They would ask, in one way or another: “But that doesn’t explain where you get your ideas from, Mr Monk, does it?”

He would tell them it was the best explanation, because knowing how and when you were going to die gave you a little more urgency in doing what it is you had to do. Including the writing of tall tales, short monologues, and answering questions that were neither long nor tall.

In all his measured years he had never written a word that he considered good enough to be a warning and a cure all at once, he told them.

Although he might try, if it wasn’t too late now.

* * *

His name was Robert Monk, and in his fifty-ninth year on the planet he woke one morning from a dream of himself at sixty, and as a boy of ten, or eleven, or twelve. He woke that morning and began to write a novel.

The novel began this way:

Ernest Patrick Donavan wore borrowed shoes and a borrowed shirt that matched his borrowed suit. Everything about Ernest Patrick Donavan was borrowed. Including his dreams.

And sometimes it began this way:

Hope.

* * *

His name was Robert Monk, and in all his years he’d never written a damned thing longer than his name on a cheque.

* * *

His name was Robert Monk, and in his sixtieth year he vanished while walking along Brighton Pier one blustery Sunday morning.

The search for his body lasted three days, but no body was found.

Being a bachelor, and with no close family to mourn his passing, there was little fuss made.

Well, who would miss a lonely old man that nobody knew?

* * *

His name was Robert Monk, and in his fifty-ninth year on earth he found himself staying at a hotel that all writers knew at one time in their miserable lives. A dingy little dive that smelled too much of cleaning products and pine furniture, and had sheets made of Fibreglass, and a television that wouldn’t tune in properly, and a remote control that never worked. He stayed there because a home was no place for a writer, and caves were just too hard to come by. There, alone, with time for company, he thought of himself in the past, in the present, and possibly in the future.

There wasn’t much of him in any direction, he realised. He was stretched out too thin across his own life. Being reminded too early of how little time there was left had lowered the ceiling of his experience to where he could almost reach up and touch the damned ugly thing.

He wondered how he would travel back in time and if he’d say again what he remembered himself saying, and if in thinking about saying something different would he change what was said, or had he already changed what had been said and would never know what was changed, or if it had been changed or—

* * *

His name was Robert Monk, and when the headache stopped he decided to go for a walk, despite the weather.

* * *

His name was Robert Monk, and he was a boy of ten, eleven, or twelve. He stood over the corpse of a crazy old man who’d jumped off the roof of a car park. A crazy old man who’d told him to never, ever think about writing stories if he wanted to live a full life.

* * *

His name was Robert Monk, and in his fifty-ninth year of living he was institutionalised after he told everyone he was going to travel back in time and kill himself to make sure he made it to his sixty-first birthday.

On the mint green walls of his private room, he wrote a single sentence with yellow crayon that was the beginning of a novel he meant to write:

I hate clocks!

The doctors were sure about only one aspect of their patient’s madness, that of a particular phobia afflicting Robert Monk.

Chronomentrophobia.

The fear of clocks.

* * *

His name was Robert Monk, and someone was tapping on his hotel door in the sixtieth year of his life.

That someone was the short man called Harry Fitch who owned the dive.

Fitch had something to say.

So he said it:

“You want to keep the noise down, Mr Monk? It’s not me, you know, but the Mexicans have complained quite strongly about the noise.”

* * *

His name was Robert Monk, and he was talking to nobody at all while doctors looked on confused.

“Why does he keep talking about Mexicans?” they asked each other.

Nobody knew.

* * *

His name was Robert Monk, and he had figured out just how time travel worked.

Or didn’t.

It had something to do with Mexicans and noise.

Or didn’t.

* * *

His name was Robert Monk, and he was stretched out under a hot Mexican sun in the nineteenth year of his life.

There was a woman next to him who said, “Don’t take too much, it’s powerful stuff.”

He told her he’d be fine. That every experience he had would only make him a better writer. It was how Hemingway did it, he told her. After today, he would go run with the bulls too. Or maybe…maybe…

* * *

His name was Robert Monk, and somewhere between marriage and divorce, and never being married or divorced, he collected timepieces of all types for an annual bonfire of the damned things.

And he never collected anything.

He had a house full of the things.

And he didn’t have a house at all.

Once a year, he would burn all the timepieces in a bonfire.

And he never did that once.

* * *

His name was Robert Monk, and his wife, husband, robot companion was a long, short, fat, thin woman, man, gynoid half his age, ten years older, everlasting, dead, and they were celebrating and not celebrating their golden, silver anniversary, chip rotation ceremony. They lived together, and didn’t live together in a French Châteaux, a Manhattan apartment, a Brighton flat, and in the artists’ village of the first Chinese Moon colony.

They had no children, and five children, and three children, and they were all girls and boys, and they were twins, sometimes conjoined, mostly not, although one time they came in a kit that he lost half the pieces of, and his children were good for nothing but toasting bread and they were all killed in a terrible plane crash, nuclear plant meltdown, outbreak of viral pneumonia, electromagnetic pulse and they all lived happily for many years to come and bore him many grandchildren.

And didn’t.

A Failure Of The Light

The shop bell didn’t ring as Jed Harrison entered Madame Tulip’s.

He looked up to see a shining piece of brass unmoved above his head, no hint of a crack or dent, and he shrugged as it being ‘just one of those things’.

Like reaching fifty and suddenly waking up in the middle of the night worried about your future, and wondering if you could somehow see that future before it happened. Just one of those things.

“Shop?” Jed said, approaching the counter.

Madame Tulip’s was one of those stuffy little places filled with candles, dangling charms, and second-hand books that promised first-hand out-of-body experiences, and if not out of body, then at least your mind could be left behind. It was odd to him that the future could only be told by such backstreet psychics in their tiny shops where the air was heavy with incense and paperback dust.

“Shop?” Jed said, leaning over the counter.

“I’ll be with you in a minute, deary,” a voice answered from beyond a beaded curtain. “Just finishing up.”

Jed nodded as though the owner of the voice might see, then rocked his heels around the shop, looking at all the curios and tat on offer.

He never thought he’d be one of those people who spent their life sifting through teacup ashes and seeing the weekdays in constellations, but here he was. And feeling more foolish with every minute.

He picked up a dreamcatcher and spun it.

The feathers tickled his palm, and a tickle of doubt came to his stomach.

This kind of nonsense was best left behind in the darkness of a three in the morning bedroom when you’d woken in a panic. Nobody could see the future. Most people had enough trouble seeing the past.

Jed put the dreams down as the beaded curtain parted, and a tear-stained old lady shuffled through.

“You heed what your Peter said now, Margaret,” a voice chased her out through the curtain.

“Oh, I will. I will,” the crying woman said. “I’m just glad he’s all right.”

“No more vodka. Not even a drop,” the voice said.

The woman’s cheeks turned a different shade of red. Guilt and grief were complimenting colours. She placed a palm over the three layers of winter brown clothing above her heart. “I promise.”

“Mind how you go.”

The tear-stained woman left the shop, and the bell rang.

Jed looked at it.

Just one of those things.

“Well? Are you going to stand there all day, or are you coming through, Jed?”

He stood there, not for a day, but it felt like it.

How does she know my name?

“Because you’re dead, you fool. Now come on through. I’ve got other clients in a half hour, and I don’t want to keep them waiting.”

He stood there, for two days, it seemed.

“Jed? I haven’t got all day. Come on through.”

He walked, but it was the walk of all those who wake at three in the morning in a darkened bedroom and can’t find the light switch.

He parted the curtains, and what waited for him on the other side wasn’t what he’d expected.

Madame Tulip wore a blue pinafore, its front pocket as heavy with bits and bobs as a pregnant kangaroo. Her silver hair was mined with plastic rollers. A hand-rolled cigarette dangled wetly from the corner of her lip.

“Sit down,” she said.

He sat on the other side of a table that would have looked more at home in a greasy spoon café than where a fortune teller did her work.

“You’re joking, aren’t you? About me being dead?” Jed said.

“Where do fortune tellers dance?”

“What?”

“It’s a joke, Jed. Where do fortune tellers dance?”

A cracker banged in his memory and a tiny slip of paper fell out with a joke and its punchline written on it.

“A crystal ball?” Jed said.

“Yeah. Not much of a joke, is it?”

“No.”

“Don’t suppose you’re in the mood for jokes either.”

“No.”

“The dead don’t have much in the way of a sense of humour, I’ve found.” She sucked on the wet cigarette until its end glowed faintly, then blew smoke out through her nose.

“I’m not dead,” Jed said. “I can’t be.”

“You are. Did you hear the bell ring when you walked in?”

Jed glanced over his shoulder.

“No,” he said.

“See?”

“That means I’m dead? Because a bell didn’t ring.”

“It’s one of the signs. No bell, and you standing in the shop looking like you’ve just lost a puppy, those are other signs.”

“I don’t feel dead.”

“How do dead people feel, Jed?”

He didn’t know, but like everybody else he’d seen enough TV, and read enough books, and listened to enough songs to have a bloody good guess at what it might be like. He’d imagined it would be close to being transparent. Like a spiderweb. Or a fog. Or an icy breath on a cold morning.

“Nope, not like any of those.”

“Wait. Can you hear what I’m thinking?”

“Yep.”

If you can hear my thoughts, Jed thought, I’m thinking of the number eleven.

She puffed her cheeks like an annoyed squirrel. “Really? You’re thinking of a number? I’m a psychic, not a bloody stage act. And it’s eleven. You were thinking of the number eleven.”

Jed patted himself down as though he was a lost set of car keys that needed to be found.

“Am I a ghost?”

“Something like that.”

“Like that?”

“Not everybody gets to be a ghost. You got anything outstanding?”

The dead, it seemed, could still muster confusion. Jed’s eyebrows tried to dig a hole through the bridge of his nose.

“Outstanding?”

“A vengeance unfulfilled. A secret never told. A love never expressed. Anything like that holding you back?”

If he had any enemies, they were keeping it quiet. Secrets? None that would keep him up at night. Love? He’d been married thirty years and love was a comfortable chair in front of a warming fire.

“No.”

“Ghosts need something to live for…die for…stay dead for. Whatever it is, they’re glue and the world is something they stick to.”

“So, what am I?”

“A glint,” she said.

“Pardon?”

“Ever seen something out of the corner of your eye? A flash of something that wasn’t there once you looked?”

“I’m that?”

She nodded, and one of the plastic rollers escaped and dangled down onto her forehead.

She tossed her head, and the roller jumped back into place.

“Pretty much. Nothing to stay here for. And nowhere to go just yet. You’re a flash in the pan, Jed.”

A memory of school and a word that was neither here nor there came to mind.

“Purgatory?”

She laughed and the contents of her pinafore pouch jangled.

“There would have to be a Heaven and a Hell for a place to exist stuck between the two, wouldn’t there?”

“There’s no Heaven?”

“Better yet, there’s no Hell either.”

“So where do we go when we…”

He looked up, then down, then all around, and saw nothing there either.

“Buggered if I know. It’s somewhere. Not up, not down, and definitely not anywhere in between,” she said.

“But we do go somewhere?”

“That we do. That you do. Happy?”

He wasn’t.

“No. Do the thing. You know. The cards thing,” he said.

“Tarot?”

“That’s the one.”

“Why? They won’t show you anything. You’re dead.”

Jed saw cards turning over in his mind. If there were cards and those cards told of the future, then he couldn’t be dead. The dead didn’t have a future.

“Please.”

“It’s not a good idea, Jed.”

“Please. I want to see.”

“There’s nothing to see. You’re dead.”

“Please.”

She puffed her cheeks out again. “If I do this for you, I want you gone after. I’ve got an appointment at ten-thirty, and they don’t like to be kept waiting.”

“I’ll go.”

“Promise?” she said, reaching into the kangaroo pouch of her pinafore.

He crossed his heart with fingers that still felt whole, and not made of spiderwebs, or winter breaths.

“I promise.”

“Okay.” She took a deck of tarot out from her pinafore and fanned them out before Jed. Then she split them on the table, and took four out, laying them face down. “Have you ever done this before?”

“No,” Jed said.

“How this goes is you ask me a question. Then I draw the cards. Following me?”

He was, and he hoped it wasn’t into some kind of dead end.

He nodded.

“Okay, Jed, ask away.”

He swallowed two questions before he could bring up a third.

“Am I dead?” he said.

Madame Tulip pulled four cards off the top of the split deck and lay them down on the table in a rough circle.

“This top one is romance, on the right is finances, below, health and happiness, and on the left is career. Do you still want me to do this?”

“Yes.” And even as he spoke, a card flashed into his mind. The card nobody wanted to see in a deck of Tarot, and everybody told you wasn’t what you thought it was.

Death.

Madame Tulip reached for the top card, but Jed was quick with his hand, and he reached out.

“Wait,” he said.

“You’ve come to your senses, I see?”

“What if it’s the death card?” he said.

“It won’t be, I can guarantee you that.”

“How?”

“Because you’re dead. The dead can’t see death. It would be like an eye looking at itself.”

“The death card won’t come up?”

“It won’t.”

He nodded, and took his hand away from hers. “Okay.”

“You still want me to do this?”

“Please. Show me the cards.”

“Okay. Well, don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

She turned the first card over, then the second, and the third, and the fourth in turn, and all were alike in blandness. No Death. No Emperor, or Hierophant. Every card was as blank as paper waiting for ink.

Jed shook his head, and for the first time since dying he knew what it was like to be dead.

It was a coldness that spread up from the toes and tickled the hairs on the head. It was a weight on the shoulders; a change in gravity. It was walking underwater, and trying to find a light switch in the dark.

He didn’t want to be cold or looking for light switches in the dark.

Nor did his body.

“No! It’s impossible!” he said. He jumped up out of the chair and ran through the beaded curtains, not disturbing a single bead as he went. He yanked the door of Madame Tulip’s shop open, and closed it, and opened, and closed, and opened, and closed, as though he was trying to waft a bad smell out of the room.

And with every waft, the bell remained unrung.

He wafted harder and harder, and then slower and slower as he realized the bell, and the door, and what he was doing, none of it connected one to the other.

Jed opened and closed the door one last time, and when no ring rang out, he walked back through the beaded curtains and took a seat across from Madame Tulip.

“Believe me now?” she said.

He nodded.

“Cheer up, at least you don’t have to hang around being sad all the time, like the rest of them. You’ll be gone soon enough,” she said.

“What do you mean?”

“Ghosts. Told you. No sense of humour. They’re all miserable bastards, if you ask me. Then again, who wouldn’t be? Spending the rest of eternity hanging around waiting for a bus that’ll never come. And even if the bus does come, likely you won’t even get a seat on it. Isn’t that right?”

Her eyes moved their focus from Jed, and to the space behind him.

Jed turned.

“You won’t see them, Jed. Dead can’t see the dead, remember what I told you?”

Jed stared, and what the light failed to capture, and the air couldn’t quite grasp, was the ten-thirty appointment who’d arrived and had already started to complain.

Stella Is Not Here

Harry woke on the right side of the bed.

A rarity, or a dream, he thought, as he rubbed the sleep from his eyes.

He’d always slept on the right side of the bed before Stella. But she’d wanted that side after they got married, and who was he to complain?

He wasn’t.

He hadn’t.

Not in fifty years.

Harry scooped up his glasses from the bedside table and slipped them on. He swung his legs out from the bed and into his slippers. He cracked his back with a yawn, and like every morning, he uttered the same words, “I’ll make us a brew. You just stay there, and I’ll bring yours up.”

The world was how it should be. How it had been for the last fifty years.

Except it wasn’t.

He didn’t notice at first. Like all those embedded into a routine, the world faded around all the daily tasks. There was a rhythm to the mornings and his chores. A sleepwalker’s rhythm.

Switch the kettle on, pour muesli in a bowl. Open the blinds. Take the milk out of the fridge. Place the teabag and milk in a cup. One sugar to join them. Radio on, tuned to the news. Boiling water in the cup. Stir. Take out the teabag and let the cup sit for a minute or two. Pour the milk into the muesli bowl and—

The radio was silent.

Harry picked it up. The front LCD display showed it tuned to Radio 4, with 100% signal.

He stared at the screen, searching for a clue as to why it wasn’t working, but it didn’t have any answers.

He turned it around, and the machine was as much an enigma to him in the rear as it was in front.

“What’s up with you all of a sudden?” he said, as was his habit with all the inanimate objects in the house. Stella would often say talking like that was a form of madness. Stella would say a lot of things, though. She was always saying things. Sometimes he wished…

Harry pressed the tune button on the top and watched the display as it ran through the bands and found BBC Radio 3. 100% signal again.

And 0% sound.

He pressed the button again.

BBC Radio 2 tuned in an instant. Still no sound.

“Come on, now. Play the game,” he said to the radio, but it remained silent.

He placed it on the kitchen counter, making a mental note to check it again later and maybe see about a replacement.

That would be a fun conversation with Stella. She’d blame him, of course, as she always did when something failed and needed replacing.

Can’t you fix it?

Didn’t matter what the device, she always asked the same question, even after fifty years. TV, car, washing machine, roof, and plumbing; for some reason Stella thought he could mend them all.

Harry wasn’t capable of anything more than picking up a phone and calling someone who was capable. But that wouldn’t work when it came to Stella.

“I’ll give it my best go,” Harry mouthed, looking up to the kitchen ceiling, imagining the conversation to come.

Best isn’t fixed.

“I’ll try, Stella.”

Don’t try. Do.

Harry shook his head.

Maybe he’d be spared today. It was Sunday, after all. A day of rest. Best to keep it that way.

Harry returned to the kitchen and finished pouring the milk onto the muesli. He arranged the bowl and the cup of tea on a tray, then headed towards the stairs.

He stopped at the bottom. Cocked his head. Listened.

Is she awake yet?

He couldn’t hear her coughing. Fifty years of marriage and that cough was as much a part of the morning routine as him putting on his slippers.

Harry cocked his head in the other direction.

Quiet. Oddly quiet.

Not just Stella, or the radio, but the whole world seemed hushed.

It’s Sunday, he thought. No cars out this early. Everybody having a lie-in, except for the birds.

No birds.

He couldn’t hear a chirp out there in the trees that lined Churchill Avenue. They’d been noisier than usual this last week. A real racket the day before. He’d mentioned it to Stella.

They’re birds, Harry. What do you expect them to do? Moo?

“No, Stella.”

Then why bring it up? Birds are no concern of yours.

“Yes, Stella,” Harry said, talking to the past.

But it did concern him. Why were they suddenly so quiet?

Harry turned from the stairs and walked out through the living room. He stopped at the patio doors and looked out onto his garden.

At the centre of the neatly cut lawn sat a stone bird table.

An empty bird table.

There were always a few feathered friends out there whenever he’d cared to glance. He kept it well stocked with millet, seeds, and the occasional fat ball.

I’m overthinking it, he thought. It’s early. Maybe they’re still asleep like the rest of the world, and Stella.

The thought didn’t reassure him much as he ascended the stairs up to the bedroom.

Each step he felt the silence grow and with it his worries.

What if she died in her sleep and I didn’t notice?

Age made sleep a roll of the dice for a lot of people. And Stella being a smoker loaded those dice in favour of the reaper.

The thought dropped a weight in his stomach.

If she’s gone, I’ll be alone for the first time in my whole life. Nobody to talk to but the washing machine, or the tumble dryer, or the radio in the morning.

No more chastisement, either. No more angry looks and disappointed grunts. No more Can’t you fix it?

Harry couldn’t help the smile that flitted across his mouth.

If Stella wasn’t around, then he could do everything he wanted.

But even as the thought crossed his mind, he couldn’t think of anything he wanted to do. Except maybe feel bad about having the thought in the first place.

I’m a terrible man. And a worse husband. I should check on her.

“Stella? Are you awake, dear?” he said.

Whenever he’d asked that before, she’d coughed angrily, or worse, say, I am now, you old fool.

No coughing or words met him at the top of the stairs, only silence.

“Stella, dear?”

He toed the door open.

She’ll be dead in the bed, he thought. Grey as dishwater. Cold as February.

She’ll—

Stella was not there.

* * *

Her side of the bed was neat, turned down. His side, rumpled.

She’ll chew my ear off for leaving it in such a mess, he thought.

She’s got to be here to chew your ear off. And she’s not. She’s—gone?

Where?

“Stella?” he asked the empty room.

Another heavy weight dropped into his stomach.

Has she lost her mind? Is that it?

He pictured her making her bed in the middle of the night, then leaving the house on some errand that her confusion had made her believe was real.

He pictured her walking into traffic.

He pictured her falling down a well.

He couldn’t help the smile that spread across his mouth.

I’m a terrible man, he thought. A worse husband.

“Stella? Are you here, dear?” Harry said, as he placed the tray on the bed and headed to the walk-in wardrobe on the opposite side of the bedroom.

The best he could hope was for a confused mind convincing her to hide in the wardrobe as though she was still a child.

Or a cliff with a long drop.

Or that well.

Stop it, he told himself.

He opened the closet door, but Stella wasn’t hiding inside. Only her clothes and her smell. That lavender perfume she’d worn the last fifty years. Unchanging.

Unlike them.

He couldn’t remember himself as a young man any longer. Or Stella as anything but the Stella with the cough and the harsh words and the Can you fix it?

Not that he hadn’t tried. On a rare occasion, he found himself looking at her and the veil of years fell away. And there she was, the Stella he’d kissed, his eyes closed, at the altar.

There was no Can you fix it? Only an I do.

Harry closed his eyes.

He smelled the lavender again.

But he couldn’t hear her voice, past or present. There was only the silence and a hush on the world.

Where is she? Where has she gone to?

Harry found her phone on the bedside table, but they’d both reached an age where their contacts grew smaller each year. Death didn’t like a cluttered address book, it seemed.

He scrolled through looking for last calls, and found himself in there, ten times over, nobody else.

Yesterday, tea-time. She’d called to make sure he’d picked up the rice for tea.

White rice, Harry, not that pilau stuff. It smells like perfume.

Two days before that.

The workmen are coming at three, Harry. You’d better be home by then to deal with them.

And two days before that.

Fool.

He wasn’t sure what foolery he’d been up to, but fool was almost his first name according to Stella.

“Well, only a fool would leave their phone behind,” Harry said to the one who wasn’t there.

Why would she leave it? Harry wondered. It wasn’t like her to forget anything.

Until it was, he thought. Until the mind just stopped being itself one day and anything and everything was possible.

But there’d been no signs. Nothing he’d noticed. If Stella was anything, she was consistent.

Until now.

Where would she go to? And why would she go there?

He trawled his memories looking for clues, but the net was empty. She’d said nothing, and done nothing, to suggest she was going to leave him.

Has she run off with another man?

Harry wore a smile at the thought of his wife of fifty years packing her bags to leave with a lover. He checked those bags, just in case the thought might be real. They were still in the closet, and as empty as the house.

Then where has she gone?

And how did she get there?

Harry checked the garage, but the car hadn’t moved. The old bicycle too, which neither of them had the bones to ride any longer.

A taxi? A bus?

Harry checked the phone again, looking for calls made for tickets or pickups, but the closest he found was himself again.

I’ll be outside at six, on the dot. Don’t be late, Harry.

With no more of a clue than he’d had a half hour before, Harry returned to the house and called out her name through the bedrooms, the bathroom, the landing, and hall.

Stella was not there.

He called out her name in the attic, the cellar, the garden, and shed.

Stella was not there.

He put on his boots and strode out onto the street. He called her name there, like she was a lost puppy, but still no reply.

Stella was not there.

Neither were the birds.

Or anybody at all.

* * *

Harry knocked on doors, and they remained unanswered. He pressed his face to windows, and saw empty living rooms on the opposite side. He threw rocks into the trees, but only the leaves fell; not a bird took flight.

There wasn’t a soul on Churchill Avenue.

Harry checked the TV.

There wasn’t a soul there either. Every channel was black and muted.

Harry walked a mile in every direction, and the world was empty North, South, East, and West.

So was the town. No people there.

The river, fishless.

Farmer’s fields without a moo or a bleat.

Where was everyone?

In the town, he picked up yesterday’s news, but it was the same news as every other day; war abroad, disappointment at home. There was no warning of a great emptiness to come. Not a hint of anything untoward.

Harry rifled through magazines looking for articles on UFO sightings, sudden circles in the fields, portents in the skies, but the magazines were more concerned with who was kissing who, how often, and where.

What had happened?

Harry toured the local churches. If they’d had some divine revelation, none were advertising it. Apparently today was a good day for a jumble sale, according to one sign, but not any kind of rapture.

He returned home, to the scene of no crime, and lay on his bed, running through the day and the night before.

Kettle boiled. Milk poured. Radio tuned in.

The morning was the same as every other morning, nothing untoward there.

And the night?

Nope. Bed at ten. Read until eleven.

There were no lights in the sky. No fever dreams of the silent future. Not a single ghost visited him, and definitely not three of them. Nothing at all.

Dead. I’m dead, he thought. And this is what comes after.

The thought didn’t scare him. He smiled.

Heaven. I’m in Heaven.

No white lights, no tunnels, no relatives waiting. No fluffy clouds and golden gates. Heaven was an empty town.

And Stella wasn’t there.

Stella wasn’t anywhere.

Harry laughed.

Took me fifty years, but I’ve finally got some peace and quiet. And all I had to do was die. Fancy that.

I wonder what I died of, from? Harry thought.

The last check-up indicated raised cholesterol, arthritis wherever there was a joint to bend, and one of his ears wasn’t listening so well any more. But nothing too worrying. Nothing fatal.

Just one of those things, Harry thought. I died in my sleep, that’s what. Some people went to bed and never woke up. Probably the best way to go. No lingering about. No pain. No clue.

No Stella.

He shivered as he imagined having some prolonged disease, and Stella at his bedside throughout. He was sure she’d find some way to blame him for the disease.

Can’t you fix this?

He heard her voice inside his head.

“It’s fixed, Stella,” he said to the empty room. “Permanently fixed. Happy now?”

She wasn’t happy or sad.

She couldn’t be.

Stella wasn’t there.

Didn’t stop Harry from speaking to her.

“You know what I think I’m going to do today, Stella?”

Stella didn’t have an answer. Stella wasn’t there.

“Think I’ll have a fry up. Eggs, bacon, sausages, the whole works. Then I’m going to put on odd socks. Two different colours. Then I might just sit in the garden and smoke one of your cigarettes. What do you say to that?”

Stella couldn’t answer. Stella wasn’t there.

But Harry took it as a victory. The first he could remember in fifty years. And all it took was him dying.

Fancy that.

* * *

The morning answered a question Harry had never thought of before.

Was there food in Heaven?

The bacon sizzled in the pan alongside sausages and mushrooms. Two eggs waited patiently on the kitchen counter ready for their turn. Heaven, Harry soon realized, was the sizzle in a pan, eggs waiting, and Stella not being there.

He couldn’t remember the last time he’d had a fried breakfast. It had to be a few years into their marriage. Stella didn’t like bacon. She didn’t like mushrooms. She loathed black pudding. The sizzle annoyed her.

A black coffee and a cigarette sustained Stella through most mornings.

But Stella wasn’t here.

Where was she, then?

He finished the thought in the garden.

If not in Heaven, then…

Was Stella still alive somewhere back on Earth? She definitely wasn’t in Heaven, if Heaven this was. So where else could she be?

Harry looked down to his feet, and the warm patio flags beneath, but he was staring beyond the concrete.

Hell? Was Stella in Hell?

If Heaven existed then it only made sense that Hell existed also. And if Stella wasn’t here, and she wasn’t back there in the land of the living, then…

Harry chuckled to himself as he thought about Hell and Stella being there.

The devil would have an earful, that much was sure. Stella complaining about how hot everything was, and how the pitchforks hadn’t been sharpened properly, and oh, those horns are a bit overgrown, they could do with a trimming.

Harry lay back in his chair and let the sun warm his face as he thought of Stella getting warmed in another way.

He pictured her by a lake of fire, the weary Devil beside her, listening to her go on about how it was moving too fast, or some such. He saw her whining about how the cries of the damned and tortured were too loud. And finally, as he knew she would do in Heaven or in Hell, moaning about the food.

Stella always moaned about the food. If there was one constant in her life it was food was never good enough.

Too salty. Not salty enough. Too sweet. Not sweet enough. Too runny. Not runny enough. Undercooked. Overcooked. There wasn’t a meal that existed on earth that Stella couldn’t find fault with.

What did they eat in Hell, anyway? Harry wondered, as he loped into the kitchen and cracked open a packet of ginger nut biscuits.

She hated ginger nut biscuits. They left too many crumbs for Stella’s liking. Then again, she hated all biscuits. Rich Tea were too soft when dunking. Chocolate Hob-Knobs left her fingers stained. Custard Creams broke too easily.

Harry chomped into each ginger nut with glee. He smiled as small rocks of biscuit cascaded onto the kitchen floor.

If Stella was here, she’d give him an earful for that.

But Stella wasn’t here. This was Heaven after all.

With that thought in mind, Harry spent the rest of the day doing all he could to annoy the Stella that wasn’t there.

In the bedroom, he untucked the sheets. In the living room, he scattered the scatter cushions. He made cups of coffee and lay them on coffee table without a coaster. He put the house keys on the wrong hook. He left the bathroom light on, placed the toilet roll in paper side at the back, and the toilet seat up.

And with each small act of rebellion, Harry would say to the Stella that wasn’t there, “How do you like that, Stella?”

And the silence would respond in the only way silence could, which was the best response.

That night, tired of rebellions, Harry slept a soundless, dreamless sleep, his body sprawled over both sides of the bed.

He woke on the right side of the bed again.

Stella wasn’t there.

* * *

She wasn’t there on Monday, and Tuesday, and Wednesday, and by Friday, Harry had become quite used to her not existing in Heaven, and quite bored of his rebellion.

After fifty years of marriage everything became routine. And that kind of routine was hard to break.

He found himself unconsciously tucking the sheets in, arranging the scatter cushions equidistant from each other on the couch, and putting coasters under his coffee. The house keys were returned to the right hook. In the bathroom, the toilet roll turned paper out on its holder, the light turned off when he left, and the seat put back down.

He’d even started to use a small dish under his chin when he ate a biscuit, to catch the crumbs.

Stella wasn’t here, but fifty years of Stella left fifty years of silence in its wake. Heaven was all well and good, but it was too bloody quiet.

Two weeks without Stella, and Harry started wandering about the town looking for something to fill that silence.

“Hello? Anybody there?” He’d shout at the duckless ponds, the childless swings, and into the drunkless pubs.

Nothing.

Some afternoons he’d pull himself a pint in the silence of those pubs and talk to a barman that wasn’t there.

“How am I doing? Can’t complain. Keeping myself busy, you know. Pottering about at this and that,” he’d say.

He wasn’t pottering. And the only way to keep himself busy was walking about shouting at the town, hoping someone would respond.

At the allotments, he’d pop his head into every shed, but there were no old men on stools, just a lot of empty spiderwebs and dust.

In the supermarket, he let his call echo back to him, like someone was making an announcement over the speakers.

“Hello! Anybody there! Half off today on all the silence! Hundred percent discount on me being ignored!”

In the cinema, he’d sit and watch the silent screen. The same film every time, with the same plot. Stella Isn’t Here. It wasn’t much of a blockbuster.

Then, back from the silent town to a silent house where he’d sit in the silence until it was time to sleep.

And then he’d wake up on the right side of the bed.

And Stella wasn’t there.

* * *

A month of Sundays passed before Harry realized he wasn’t in Heaven, and not Hell, either. It wasn’t warm enough for Hell.

This place was somewhere else.

Purgatory?

Limbo?

What was the difference?

He looked it up in the library, and from what he could make out, limbo existed at the edge of Hell, and you ended up there if you hadn’t been saved. Purgatory was where you went to get your soul cleaned before they decided on which way you were headed: up or down.

Harry began to wonder what he’d done to deserve this fate. He began to wonder what he hadn’t done.

He’d always been nice to animals. Hadn’t stolen…much. A few pens and the like from the office stationery cupboard, but that wasn’t really stealing. He’d treated Stella well, or at least he thought so. If he’d sinned, they were small sins, white sins.

He found The Bible he’d never read in a church he’d never visited and looked up the top 10 sins in that.

You shall have no gods before me.

He had no gods to start with, or end with. Whatever God might be, Harry had the same relationship to it as a child would Father Christmas after they’d found out it was just a fat man wearing a false beard.

You shall not make any idols to worship.

In his youth he’d put up a poster of Bo Derek, but he wasn’t sure what he did around that could be called worship of a false idol.

You shall not take the Lord's name in vain.

There’d been more than a few Jesus Christs shouted in Harry’s time. Maybe that was the clincher when it came to being dropped off between Heaven and Hell?

Remember the Sabbath day and keep it holy.

The last time he’d visited a church, the only time he visited a church, was for the holy trinity of the agnostic: christenings, weddings, and funerals. Otherwise, Sunday was a day for garden centre visits and pub lunches, not God. Maybe the almighty was pissed off about that?

Honour your father and your mother.

He was solid on this one. He’d treated them both well.

You shall not kill.

He’d shot a pigeon once with a pellet gun, but hadn’t stayed around to see if it died or not.

You shall not commit adultery.

Never had. Never would. Never really had the chance.

You shall not steal.

The pens from the cupboard at work years earlier, but it wasn’t exactly a bank heist.

You shall not bear false witness.

He had no clue about this one.

You shall not covet your neighbour’s goods.

Simon, the neighbour from three doors down, had a lovely mower, and Harry had wanted one just like it. But he didn’t think that would draw God’s ire much.

Limbo, or purgatory, Harry couldn’t be sure, but he could be sure that he was getting fed up of being alone.

Fed up of the silence.

Fed up of waking on the right side of the bed, and Stella not being there.

* * *

None of the cars worked. They started up all right, but every one Harry tried had run out of petrol. And the petrol stations had run out of petrol too.

Purgatory or limbo, he couldn’t be sure, but there was no getting about on a car or a motorbike in the place Harry found himself, so Harry took the bicycle out of the garage.

It had been many a year since he’d last clambered aboard such a device, and he soon found out that old saying about never forgetting how to ride one, was just a lot of hot air.

He fell over a dozen times before he got close to finding some balance. He spent a few days just riding up and around the streets practising before he was confident he could make it any further. A week later, and with a lunch packed, Harry headed off looking for the edge of the edge of Hell, if it was limbo, or someone who might explain just what his sins were and how he could clean them, if it was purgatory.

Towns shrank the longer you lived in them. Every sight seen took a few inches off the waist of a town. Every experience slimmed a town down. After forty or so years, a town wasn’t measured in miles and metres, but in memories.

In the limbo-purgatory of Harry, it was no different.

All the streets were the same as he remembered. All the sights, too. In half a day he’d peddled his way past first kisses and last. Past where he’d broken bones and where they’d healed too. Past joys and sadness alike. Fifty years in half a day. That was some distance, and Harry only stopped when he reached the edge of town, and the sign there.

Harry didn’t wear glasses, but he wished he did, so he could take them off and wipe them clean to be one hundred percent sure of what he was looking at.

He read it twice just to be sure.

LAWTON VALE

Population: 2

* * *

Stella was here. He had to believe so. The sign had never had a population marker on it before, then again Harry hadn’t ever lived in a limbo-purgatory version of the town before. The old town. The town that existed before he died, had only a notice saying they were twinned with some small German village.

So, where was Stella? Why wasn’t she at home?

Harry turned his bike around and rode back into town.

It was quiet as usual. The kind of Sunday quiet when Sunday quiet was still a thing. When all the shops were closed and most people took their noise to the inside of a church or a pub.

He stopped where the fountain used to be and now was again. Limbo-purgatory had almost all the details right concerning how the town was, but not quite. This was the town from his youth, he realized. From when he’d first met Stella.

There, Harry leaned his bike against the fountain wall, cupped his hands around his mouth, and let out a six-gun salute of Stella!

Nothing.

Limbo-purgatory had nearly everything right, but not the pigeons, it seemed. Those little rats of the sky used to nest on the roofs overlooking the town centre; floating down like fat leaves to scavenge bits of discarded burger and last night’s abandoned takeaways. Even a small noise should have disturbed them from their roosts.

“Stella!”

Harry gave it another six shots, but he was firing blanks. She wasn’t in town. And why would she be?

If he’d thought a little more about it, he would have reasoned the town centre would be the last place Stella would hide herself. She didn’t like going there while alive, that was Harry’s job, so why would she bother after she’d died?

Then where?

Harry rummaged through the jumble sale of his memories, trying to think of Stella’s favourite places, but he couldn’t find much. They’d spent a life glued to each other. What stuck them together was a mutual disrespect, he supposed. The comfort of being uncomfortable.

And now, uncomfortable without the discomfort. And more than a little hopeful to get that discomfort back.

But where? And why? And…

Harry rode his bicycle around the neighbourhood, searching for a hint of Stella in the houses and the gardens. But he realized he didn’t know what that hint might be.

What was her favourite flower, colour, song? Dandelion, burgundy, Swinging On A Star?

No, that was his list, not hers. When he thought of Stella it was all lavender perfume, cigarette smoke, and coffee. And the only way to find any of those would be doing a house to house search, sniffing her out like a trained police dog would a corpse.

How many houses were there to go sniffing in, anyway? Did limbo-purgatory have an upper limit? It might take forever.

There had to be a better way.

Harry found it.

You didn’t need to know a favourite flower, colour, or song, only have eyes to see a house with a light on inside.

For all that limbo-purgatory got slightly wrong, at least it had the good sense to keep the electricity on. Every night, when the day dimmed, Harry would turn on the lights in the house. Even when dead there was comfort in that routine. Would Stella find the same comfort?

Wrapped in a thick woollen coat, bobble hat, and thermals underneath it all, Harry set off an hour after he’d switched the lights on in his house, in search of other light.

It wasn’t that cold out. It never got too hot or too cold in limbo-purgatory, but it was never just right either. The sun shined and it warmed the skin, but never heated it. When the rains came, they were showers more than downpours. Sunrises were muted, and sunsets a quiet draining of colour.

Harry’s front-mounted light pierced the darkness as he rode the streets of limbo-purgatory.

The houses were dark as he passed them. The street lights giving off just enough light to keep the pavements and roads illuminated.

Harry thought of shouting her name again, but old habits died hard, even for the dead, and he didn’t want to upset the quiet with his voice.

Up one street, down another, but still no lights on in any of the houses.

Where are you, Stella? Why are you hiding from me?

Maybe she did the same as I did? Harry thought. Woke up to see me not there and spent the rest of the time enjoying the new silence.

A thought popped into his head as he rode. Maybe it’s all a trick? The population number there on the outside of town, just a tease. A part of limbo-purgatory torturing me?

The thought settled heavily in his stomach and slowed the pumping of his legs.

Maybe that’s what this is? Harry thought. I’ll just ride around and around for eternity searching for Stella, and never finding her again.

Harry stopped pedalling.

Was that endless searching limbo or purgatory? Or was it Hell?

He ran through the top 10 bad things list again in his head, but didn’t think any of what he’d done would warrant a stay in the hot place. And even though he’d once imagined Stella was in Hell, he didn’t think she’d broken enough rules to end up down below either. Not truly.

So where was—

A light caught Harry’s eye. It zigzagged through the darkness far enough away he couldn’t quite tell what the distance was between here and there, or what the light belonged to.

But his legs knew. They started pumping even before a thought had entered his head.

It’s Stella!

It’s Stella!

Harry pedalled harder, and his thoughts tried to match the pace.

What if it’s a firefly?

We don’t have fireflies here.

Limbo-purgatory might have them?

That light is too big for a firefly.

Maybe they make them bigger here in limbo-purgatory?

There’d be no reason to make them that way.

But what—

The light died.

Harry stopped.

He craned his neck to find the light again, but only darkness remained where the light had once been.

That’s what it’s going to be, is it? Just as I’m about to reach the light, it’ll go out?

Harry broke his rule about not disturbing the quiet.

“What did I do to deserve this?” He clambered off his bike and let it clatter to the ground. He turned a circle, looking up, then looking down as he spoke. “Answer me! Whoever you are. This is bloody unfair, you know! I want an answer.”

The night had an answer.

“Shush, Harry, you’ll wake the bloody dead with that voice of yours.”

Stella rode out of the darkness and into the street light. She wasn’t looking at Harry, only the small lamp on the front of her bike.

“Stella?”

“You know, you’d think they could have given me a battery powered one, not this bloody useless dynamo. I mean, it’s just not on.”

“Stella?” Harry repeated, his voice numbed with excitement.

“Who else would it be, Harry?” she said.

“I thought…”

“Go on, what did you think? This’ll be a first, I’m sure.”

Harry couldn’t help but smile. Hearing her voice again, even as it was chastising him, was a joyful thing.

“I thought you were gone.”

“Oh, you’d like that, wouldn’t you? Eternity without me. That’d suit you just fine.”

He picked up his bike and pushed it forward, bumping into the front of Stella’s bike.

“I didn’t say that,” Harry said.

“Watch it. Don’t break the lamp. I don’t know if it can be fixed or not,” Stella said, pulling her bicycle back a few inches.

“Sorry.”

“Say it like you mean it, Harry.”

“Sorry,” he said, but he wasn’t sure, as always, if it sounded like he meant it or not.

She crossed her arms.

“Well then?”

“What?” Harry said.

“Are you going to explain yourself?” she said.

She’d asked him that question so many times before, and he never really had an answer for it, so he gave the same answer he had when he was alive.

“Explain what?”

She nodded towards him and the bike. “This. Why it took you so long to come looking for me.”

“Er…”

“Oh, that’s charming, that is,” she said. “Here I’ve been, riding around and around looking for you, and you—”

Harry held up a hand. “Why didn’t you come home?”

“I did.”

“When?”

“What do you mean, when? I live there. I mean, I’m dead, that’s for sure, but you know what I mean.”

“But you’ve…”

Something clicked in Harry’s mind.

“I’ve been there the whole time, waiting for you to come…” Stella said, but lost the thought as something clicked in her head too.

“It’s purgatory, or limbo, playing with us. That’s what it is,” Harry said.

“Neither,” Stella said.

“Neither?”

“Hell. It’s Hell, that’s what it is,” Stella said, and she looked about the night-dark of the town. “Yep, Hell.”

“How can you tell?”

Harry couldn’t tell. But he reckoned there’d at least have been some flames if he was in Hell. Hotter days, at the very least.

“Because we’re here,” she said.

Harry didn’t get it.

“I don’t get it.”

“Hell is other people. And that’s what this has to be. Can’t be anything else.”

“Hell is other people?”

“It’s a famous quote.”

“I haven’t read it before.”

She shook her head at him. “You would, if you read something more than spy novels.”

“I don’t see how—”

“Hell is other people. And we’re the other part of it. Each other. We’re each other’s Hell.”

“But why would we not be able to see each other until now? Why would…”

“That’s the torture of it, Harry, don’t you see? This place has given us just enough rope to hang ourselves with. And now it’s tightening the noose by giving us back to each other. I wouldn’t be surprised if this whole thing starts over again at some point.”

“Oh,” he said, and, “oh”, again.

“Get it now?”

“Kind of. But what did we do to deserve it?”

“We?”

“You’re here, too. I can’t have sinned enough for the both of us.”

“Oh, that’s right. Blame me.”

“I’m not blaming you.”

“Well, it bloody well sounds like you are.”

“No, I’m not, Stella. I’m just saying…”

She turned her bike in the direction of where Harry had come from, and started pedalling. The dynamo light flickering on and off in the darkness.

“You’re always yapping, Harry. Your voice is like a lawnmower in my head.”

Harry pedalled after her.

“I didn’t mean to sound…but, listen I’m just saying….”

“Just saying. Just saying. Just say it then, instead of all this waffling.”

“You don’t’ have to be so bloody testy, you know,” he said.

“I don’t have to be, but that’s what you bring out of me, Harry.”

“Well, Stella, if you didn’t…”

And they bickered their way home, where they bickered some more, and took their bickering to bed with them.

* * *

Harry woke on the right side of the bed.

Stella was not there, but he knew, like he always knew, he would find her again.

Forever.

A Red Unbroken Mile

Each Saturday the fires in the Connelly house raged.

Voices raised.

Doors slammed.

Plates smashed.

By evening the house fell into a tindered silence where every glance was a spark and little Jimmy Connelly, sensing new fires to come, fled to the land beneath his bed where it was safe.

It was a place more suited for monsters, but now populated by imagined friends.

He gave them names: Dust, and Grime, and Old Sock. They whispered to each other in the darkness.

“Let’s run away,” Dust said.

“Where to?” asked Grime.

Below, in the house, a spark caught, and the fires burned again.

“Anywhere but here!” said Old Sock.

Jimmy stared at the underside of his bed and conjured a blue sky and white clouds there.

“To the city in the clouds?” Dust said.

“How will we get there?” asked Grime.

“Train!” Jimmy said, without moving his lips.

“Trains don’t fly,” Old Sock said.

“Could,” Dust said.

“Might,” Grime added.

Jimmy shook his head. Old Sock was right; trains didn’t fly.

“Need something else,” Jimmy said, lips still sealed.

“Helicopter would be the best,” suggested Old Sock.

“Plane, better. The ones with the spinning bits on the front,” Grime said.

“Propellers,” Dust informed them all.

“A balloon!” Jimmy said, and closed his eyes, imagining his escape.

He flung himself into a basket and pulled the tongue that opened a mouth that burped blue fire into the balloon’s belly. He floated up, up, into the sky until the world was a map below.

Dust, and Grime, and Old Sock were there too, but new friends soon joined.

A passing stork stalled its delivery to perch and chat.

Three ducks flying south, turned frieze to say hello.

The moon, early to rise, smiled and—

In the house, the fires spread.

Jimmy clamped hands over both ears.

Flames licked their way up the stairs. Crackling.

Jimmy made a wish on stars not yet shooting.

The landing caught.

Jimmy curled himself into a full stop and imagined a balloon floating through the sky, where the ducks waved hello, the storks chatted, and the moon smiled a—

The flames knocked on his door.

* * *

At school he ate alone, a little, and in silence. Despite the summer heat, he wore long blue sleeves and long blue pants over the long blue bruises where the fires had burned his skin.

In classes he became transparent. On the playground the children avoided him like homework. Bullies sensed his defeat and let him be.

Jimmy watched clocks.

He watched the seconds on those clocks turn into minutes, turn into hours, turn into bombs. Three thirty was a lit fuse and two miles of wire between it and a waiting explosion.

Jimmy walked the wire every day.

First, he followed it through a half mile of quicksand, from the gates of the school to a corner shop. Then, a respite, as he reached the red, unbroken mile of sun-warmed brick wall that served as a divider between good houses and bad.

There, eyes closed, he flattened his hand on the warm brick, and in that trapped heat he found a mile of forgetting.

A mile of warm future.

A mile of calm.

But the mile always ended.

And the fuse was still lit.

Jimmy sprinted the last of the journey, until, at home, and panting, he’d pick the lock and cat-burgle his way up to his room.

But cats only had so many lives.

And young boys could only be quiet half of half the time.

* * *

“The Mariana Trench,” Dust suggested.

“North Pole,” Grime said.

“The South Pole,” said Old Sock.

In the shadows beneath the bed, Jimmy’s imagined friends imagined ways and places to put out fires.

“How do we send them there?” Jimmy asked, but there was no response in the dark, except his own. “Or maybe we don’t send them, maybe we…”

In the trail of the sentence, Jimmy found an if.

“If…” Jimmy mouthed.

“If?” Dust asked.

“If I can’t send them away, then…” Jimmy mouthed.

“Then?” asked Grime.

“Then maybe I can…”

“You can do what?” Old Sock said.

“If I can’t send them away, maybe I can leave?”

“To the Mariana Trench?” Dust asked.

“The North Pole?” Grime said.

“Surely not the South?” Old Sock added.

North, and South, and further south again were not places Jimmy wanted to be.

“How about a city?” Jimmy asked the dark beneath the bed.

“Which one?” Dust said.

“Too many too choose from,” Grime said.

“And all much the same. Too noisy. Too cramped. Not enough sky, if you ask me,” Old Sock added.

Jimmy ran his fingers across the wooden spine of the bed, playing it like a musical instrument, trying to strike the right note.

If not a city, then—

“The country?” he asked his imagined audience.

“On a farm?” Dust said.

“Or in a stable,” Grime added.

“No,” Old Sock said, “not noisy enough. Too big. And too much sky, if you ask me.”

If not the city or the country, where else was there?

Jimmy rummaged around in the few years of memories he’d collected—the swimming baths, the amusement arcade, the old aviary in the park—but none of them near enough nor far enough away.

Where then?

“The moon, that’s where you want to be,” Dust suggested.

“Light or dark side?” asked Grime.

“Fools, both of you. He doesn’t even have a spaceship yet,” Old Sock said.

The moon was too bright on the side he’d want to live, and too cold on the other.

If not the moon, then—

“The sun?” Jimmy asked, but he already knew he had an answer.

“Too hot,” Dust said.

“Out of the frying pan and—” said Grime.

“What kind of spaceship can travel to the sun?” Old Sock asked.

Jimmy knew.

“The sun!” he shouted excitedly.

Below the fires started afresh in response to his raised voice, but Jimmy wasn’t waiting for them to reach him that night.

He grabbed his backpack from the cupboard and emptied it of half-read books, half-chewed pencils, and a full year of mummy crisp dust, then packed for a trip to the sun.

“You’ll come back and visit us, won’t you?” a chorus of imagined friends asked from beneath the bed.

Jimmy didn’t answer.

He opened his window, slipped out into the darkness, and headed towards an old and friendlier fire.

* * *

Jimmy shivered his way towards dawn, his hand firmly pressed against the cold red mile of wall that separated the good houses from the bad.

The street lamps watched him with a bored buzz. A few stars wondered what the little boy was doing out there in the middle of the night. A cat sniffed at him, then trotted off following some other, more interesting scent.

Jimmy had no clocks to watch. No fuse to light. No wire to follow. Just his cold hand pressed on cold brick, and the disinterested sun still sleeping ninety-three million miles away.

Is the sun not coming out? he wondered. Has it gone forever?

No!

Jimmy pressed both hands on the cold red mile at the thought of it.

The sun will come out, he thought. I just have to wait. I just have to—

He slept.

He dreamed himself into the red mile of brick, where the fires couldn’t find him and the sun would soon rise.

And dreamed.

And dreamed.

* * *

The fires were quenched.

No voices raised.

No doors slammed.

No plates smashed.

A child’s backpack sat on the coffee table like an unanswered question.

How?

Where?

When?

But never, why?

With Ravens Passing The Moon

Death waited on the other side of Nana’s bedroom door. Death lay in Nana’s bed, buried in a shawl. Death stirred in the half-light and said, “Come in, Lilly. Don’t be shy now.”

Death had Nana’s voice too.

“Well?” Uncle John said, nudging Lilly in the back. “Don’t keep your Nana waiting.”

Lilly nodded, but she still couldn’t quite take the last step.

It wasn’t Nana on the other side of the door.

Nana was a big smile. She was the smell of cigarettes and perfume. She was a blue pinafore, its pockets rattling with wrapped sweets. But none of that waited for her in the bedroom.

“Stop dawdling, child. Go.” Uncle John turned the knob and pushed the door open.

“Let me see you, Lilly,” Nana said from the bed. “Come closer.”

Lilly’s legs shivered.

“Don’t be afraid,” Nana said, and something of her smile shined through.

“Nana?”

Nana laughed. “Who else would it be?”

Death, Lilly thought. Death was good at hide and seek. It had hidden in her parents’ car and jumped out one night during a rainstorm. Was it here now, playing hide and seek with her Nana too?

“Sorry,” Lilly said.

“Come to me. I have something to tell you. Hurry now, we don’t have much time.”

Lilly took root.

“Don’t be rude, Lilly. Go to your Nana.” Uncle John nudged her in the back, but Lilly didn’t move.

“Leave the child alone, John. She doesn’t need you prodding and poking. She’ll come to me in her own time. Won’t you, Lilly?”

Lilly nodded, but the distance from her feet to the bed seemed a million miles.

“The child is spoiled,” Uncle John said. “You coddle her, mother.”

“And I didn’t do the same for you and Maude, John?”

He snorted. “She should respect her elders. That’s what Maude couldn’t do, and I’ve had to try to do ever since…ever since…”

In that unfinished sentence was a rainy night, and a winding road, and death playing hide and seek there.

“Don’t you dare bring your sister into this,” Nana said.

“And why not? If Maude hadn’t spoiled the child—”

“Quiet!” Nana said.

Lilly heard her mother’s name and it was alien and familiar all at the same time. What she remembered was her mother’s hair falling on pale shoulders like a shadow across the snow.

She remembered the summer and the beach, and the rain that night. She remembered the scream of tires and the shattering of glass.

She remembered…

“Whatever you say, mother, but the child needs to learn some respect.”

Nana laughed.

“That’s rich, coming from you.”

“What is that supposed to mean?”

Nana shifted in the shadows, rearranging her bones on the pillow.

“Go, John. I don’t have time for the past and little enough left of the future. So, go.”

“I know what you’re up to, mother. I know what you mean to do.”

“Go, John. Go before you say something you’ll regret.”

“You’re going to leave me out of the will, aren’t you? I know it. That’s why you wanted to see her. You’re going to leave it all to the child.”

Lilly didn’t know the word ‘will’, but it carried weight like a lot of adult words. Adults could steal the air from a room and make it unbreathable, and all with a single word.

Nana knew a word that could shake a whole house.

“Leave!” Nana shouted.

Lilly’s body rattled.

“Fine, mother. Have it your way,” Uncle John said, “but don’t think you can trick me out of what is rightfully mine. Don’t you think that for a second.” He turned and stamped his way on every step going down into the house.

“That boy has always been trouble. Stubborn since I gave birth to him,” Nana said. “Your mother was eager to meet me, but if that one could have stayed inside a month longer, he would have.”

Nana sounded like Nana again, and the smile was fully in her voice.

“Well, are you going to stand there all day?” Nana said.

Lilly approached the bed.

“Sorry,” she said.

“There’ll be no sorry today. Promise me. No sorry.”

“I promise.”

Nana closed her hand over Lilly’s and squeezed. It wasn’t the hand Lilly knew. It was dry and brittle like autumn leaves. “There now. Not so scary, am I?”

“No,” Lilly said.

Nana pulled Lilly close enough to whisper into her ear. “This is important, Lilly. I don’t have much time left. I’m going tonight.”

“Where are you going?” Lilly said.

“Where we all hope to go.” Nana’s eyes drifted to the ceiling and the promise in the sky beyond. “You know what I’m talking about, don’t you?”

Lilly followed the gaze and saw what Nana saw beyond the roof of the farmhouse.

“You’re going to see mum and dad in Heaven?” Lilly said.

Nana squeezed her hand.

“I believe so. My mother too, and your grandfather. So, you mustn’t be sad when I go. Do you understand me?”

Lilly felt the weight of the words, but couldn’t fully hold them.

“How do you know you’re going?” she said.

Nana stared at the ceiling.

“I’m an elephant, Lilly,” she said, her voice filled with laughter.

“No, you’re not, Nana.”

“Oh, yes I am. Older you get, the more elephant you become.”

Lilly shook her head. “I don’t get it.”

“An elephant knows when its time is up. They feel it deep down, and do you know what they do?”

“What do they do?”

“When their time’s up, they tramp off to a hidden part of the jungle and lay their heads down. They call that an elephant graveyard.” Nana took her gaze from the imagined heavens above, and found Lilly’s eyes. “Well, I don’t have any place to tramp off to, but I’ve got the sense about me to know when my time’s up, and when to lay my head down.”

“No,” Lilly said.

“Yes.”

“I won’t let you.” Lilly squeezed her Nana’s hand, and felt it crackle at the touch.

“You must. And you mustn’t be sad, either. You’ll have an important job to do, Lilly. The most important job of all. That’s why I called you here.”

“What job?” she said.

“You’ll help me?”

Lilly shook a yes from her head.

“Good. Good. It’s very simple. You won’t have any trouble. All you have to do is watch for a bird.”

Lilly scrunched up her face.

“A bird?”

“Yes. One will visit the house after I’m gone. Are you following me, Lilly?”

She followed, but couldn’t begin to imagine where it might lead. Why did Nana want her to watch for a bird? What did that have to do with going to Heaven?

“Yes, Nana.”

“It’ll be a raven, or a crow. You know what they look like, don’t you?”

“Black,” Lilly said.

“Yes. Black feathers. You’ll see one land on the roof. Just one, mind you.”

Lilly never saw them alone. They were like the rain. One drop followed another.

“What if there’s more than one?”

“There won’t be.”

“But—”

Nana placed a finger over Lilly’s lips.

“You trust me, don’t you?”

Lilly nodded.

“A bird will come calling, and you’ll be here to see that bird takes off again, won’t you? You’ll make sure that bird gets away safely and none of the cats get at it?”

There were only two cats around Nana’s farm, both wild. But Lilly couldn’t remember the last time she’d seen either.

“I—” she said.

“Won’t you?” Nana said.

“But what if—”

“Won’t you?”

Lilly nodded.

“Good girl.” Nana cupped Lilly’s chin. “I knew I could trust you.”

“What’s so special about a bird?” Lilly said.

Nana chuckled, and it was dry twigs in a fire. “Well now, something’s got to carry me up to Heaven, and a bird it’ll be.”

Lilly looked to the window. Nana could fit through that window, she supposed, but there wasn’t a bird big enough to carry her in its beak, especially not a raven, or a crow.

“How will it carry you?” Lilly said.

Nana chuckled. “Oh, it won’t be taking my body, you silly goose. The bird will be carrying my soul.”

“What’s that?”

“That’s what’s left when we take everything else away.” Nana waved a hand over herself. “This is just the wrapping on the present.”

“I don’t get it,” Lilly said.

“There’s a part of us that nobody can see. A hidden part set free once all the other parts are gone. That’s the soul.”

Lilly tried to imagine what a soul was, but what came to mind was the time she’d seen an X-ray of her broken ankle.

“Nobody can see? Even on an X-ray?” Lilly said.

“Even on that.”

“The birds can see, though?”

Nana tried to nod but it was a shiver on the pillow.

“Yes. And that’s why I need you. You have to make sure the bird that comes to pick me up doesn’t get chased away by the cats, or anything else. Understand? You have to make sure it carries me away safe. Promise?”

“Promise.”

“Good,” Nana said, her voice fading. “You’re a good girl, Lilly. Nana loves you,” she said, and reached out with her hand, but it never touched Lilly’s face.

* * *

“What’s your name?” The funeral man said.

For two days Lilly had watched the house from the tree swing. Two days without birds. The only visitors to Nana’s farmhouse were the funeral men who’d come that morning.

All in black from hat to shoes, they arrived in three cars: two small, one long. And each man a mirror to their vehicle. Two short, one tall.

The tallest stood before Lilly.

“My name’s Lilly,” she said.

“Oh, yes. You’d be the granddaughter. Your Grandmother was a very good woman, I hear.”

On tip-toes, Lilly walked herself and the swing back, then let herself go and added a nod in with the motion.

“We’ll do her proud, miss,” the funeral man said, “don’t you worry about that. She’ll look good as new.”

Lilly dug her toes into the earth and stopped her swing.

“What do you mean?”

“You know? Makeup?” He mimed the application of mascara and lipstick on his face.

Lilly didn’t know anything of the strange theatre adults made when someone died. It was all a pantomime acted out on a stage they’d kept from her after the death of her parents.

“Why would you put makeup on Nana?”

The funeral man, like many funeral men, was more comfortable around the dead than he was the living. He coughed, and adjusted his tie, then looked for something and everything in the world that wasn’t a little girl.

“It’s just what we do when someone passes,” he said, to the sky.

“What for?”

He coughed again and adjusted a tie that didn’t need adjusting.

“To make them look presentable.”

“For who?”

The funeral man studied his face in the mirrored shine of his black shoes.

“For the family and those attending the funeral. Wouldn’t be proper if we didn’t. Have to have your Nana looking good for everyone when they see her.”

“See her?”

The funeral man stared out across the fields at nothing at all.

“Oh, has nobody informed you of the procedures? The services?”

Lilly shook her head.

“I think, perhaps, your uncle should be the one to tell you. It would only be proper. It’ll be about a week or so from now, so you’ll have plenty of time for him to walk you through it all.”

“When?” Lilly said.

“A week, most likely. But it can take a little longer, sometimes.”

Lilly cast her gaze to the house. She imagined Nana’s body lying in the thick dark upstairs, as still as a neatly made bed.

But Lilly’s thoughts weren’t still.

Would Nana have to wait alone in that room for a week until the funeral man took her away? Would the bird come before then?

“No, I mean when are you taking Nana away?”

The funeral man suddenly found his fingernails fascinating. “Sometime before lunch, I’d say.”

Lilly scanned the roof for birds, and seeing none, she jumped off the swing.

“You can’t take her. Not yet.”

“It’s okay, miss. We’ll be very careful.” The funeral man spoke as if Nana was a package.

“You can’t take her yet,” Lilly said, fists balled. “The bird hasn’t come yet.”

“Bird?”

“The bird. I haven’t seen one yet. You can’t take Nana until the bird has come.”

“Pardon me, miss, but what bird would this be?”

“The bird. The bird,” Lilly said.

She pushed past him, then ran a frantic line left to right as she scanned the rooftop.

“The bird,” she said. “Nana can’t go until the bird comes.”

“Does your Nana have a bird, miss? What kind of bird is it? A parrot?”

The funeral man followed her gaze to the roof.

“No,” Lilly said.

“A budgie?”

“Nana can’t go if the bird isn’t here to take her. I have to make sure the bird takes her.”

The funeral man had hugged a thousand sobbing men, two thousand sobbing women, and twice that number again of sobbing children. With each he’d uttered the same cold cliché; time is a great healer. Now his arms were limp, and he lost his familiar words.

“Miss, if you’ll just calm down for a second, I’ll get your uncle for you. Okay?”

There was no calm near Lilly. “I don’t need him. I have to wait for the bird.”

Why hadn’t the bird visited as Nana said it would? What if it came and Nana wasn’t in the house? What happened if it couldn’t carry her soul away?

“Okay, miss. I know you’re upset. Just you wait here, and I’ll fetch your uncle.”

What if it isn’t true? Lilly thought. What if Nana made it up, so I wouldn’t be sad? Adults tell lies. They all tell lies.

The rain, and the road, and a night long ago came to her mind. Words pitter-pattered through time and washed down across Lilly’s memory.

“It’s going to be all right, we’re nearly there,” Mum had said.

“Another five minutes. It looks a lot worse than it is, Lilly,” said her father.

And her own voice, such a tiny voice under the rain, “I’m scared.”

“Nothing to be scared about. It’s just a little rain. It’s just a little—”

Lightning bleached her memories.

Thunder cracked them in two.

A tyre screaming. The world spinning like clothes in a washing machine.

“Lilly! You stop this nonsense, right now,” Uncle John said, and he wasn’t a memory, but he was thunder, and it was rolling towards her.

Lilly gave him only a glance before returning her attention to the roof.

Her parents had lied on that rainy night, but Nana wouldn’t lie about something so important. Would she?

“Is this about that bloody bird nonsense your Nana told you? Is that what’s got you acting the fool out here?” Uncle John said.

There were no birds. None in two days.

“Answer me, Lilly.”

Uncle John’s shadow fell over her, and soon the funeral man’s shadow joined it.

“I didn’t want to worry you, Mr Kerr,” the funeral man said, “but I did think the child was getting quite hysterical.”

“Thank you. You did the right thing. That mother of mine put some crazy notion in the girl’s head.”

“Oh, I see.” The funeral man spoke with as much certainty as he would on popular music or how to dance.

“Dementia, I think, but who can be sure. That mother of mine has been a worry for a long time, let me tell you.”

The funeral man, sensing another uncomfortable interaction with the living, found the handkerchief in his breast pocket was at the wrong angle, and righted it.

“Yes,” he said.

Uncle John strode forward. “I will not tolerate this behaviour. Do you hear me, young lady?”

“But, the bird,” Lilly said.

Uncle John folded his arms. “You’re acting wild. Now, stop this silliness, and go get your bags.”

Lilly stared at the roof, then to the room where Nana had passed, and imagined the small bedroom across the hall where her bag lay on the bed, open and empty. “It’s not ready.”

“What do you mean?”

“I haven’t packed all my things yet.”

Uncle John’s lips thinned. “You’ve had all this morning to pack. Sometimes, I believe you do these things just to annoy me, Lilly.”

“I forgot,” she said.

“You forgot.”

Lilly nodded a yes, but her eyes fixed on the roof, searching for flutters.

Where was the bird? Why hadn’t it come?

Lilly turned and searched the trees far off at the end of the fields.

Birds?

She squinted.

Yes, dozens of black birds feathered the leafless branches of the trees in the field far away.

“Lilly!” Uncle John shouted.

The voice made her jump.

“I can’t. Not yet,” Lilly said, nodding to the trees.

Uncle John unfolded his arms and scanned the farm and the fields beyond.

“What are you looking at?”

Lilly nodded towards the trees.

“The birds. One of them will come soon,” she said.

Uncle John’s eyes narrowed to a paper cut. “What birds? I don’t see any birds.”

“In the trees.”

He shook his head. “That mother of mine has addled your brain with nonsense. I don’t want to hear any more talk about birds, do you hear me?”

Lilly heard, but wasn’t listening.

Uncle John didn’t understand, and he never would. None of the adults understood, only Nana.

Nana wasn’t like the rest of them. She was eight and eighty-two all at the same time.

A memory flashed into Lilly’s mind of Nana in the kitchen chopping onions, a hand-rolled cigarette dangling from the corner of her lips, eyes full of tears and smoke.

“Never see me crying at a soppy film, but give me a knife and a peeled onion, and I’ll weep like I’m at a funeral,” she’d said, the words churning the smoke around her face.

That was Nana, and Nana didn’t lie. Nana knew the truth. Yet the bird hadn’t arrived yet. They perched in the trees in the field far away like stubborn leaves refusing the season.

“I’m not taking no for an answer,” Uncle John said, and wrapped his hand around her wrist. “I want you up those stairs and your bag packed within the next ten minutes, or else.”

She was half his size and a quarter his weight, but uncle John didn’t have even the strength of Nana.

Lilly twisted, and pulled her wrist, then jumped back before John could grab her again.

“I’m not going until I see the bird.”

“Don’t you dare defy me.”

Lilly crossed her arms, shook her head, and planted both feet firmly into the ground. “I’m not going until the bird comes.”

Uncle John cast his eyes to where the birds blackened the trees.

He saw nothing.

“There isn’t a bird anywhere near here, Lilly. Whatever that mother of mine told you, she was wrong. They don’t even come close. She made sure of that herself.”

Lilly lost some of her footing to confusion. “What do you mean?”

“Your grandmother hated the bloody things. If she saw one around the garden when we were young, she’d take the shotgun down off the wall and shoot at it.”

It didn’t add up. Grandma wouldn’t kill something that might carry her soul to heaven. She just wouldn’t.

“No,” Lilly said.

“I figure the birds learned not to come close. Crows and ravens are smart that way. One thing’s for sure: the birds around here avoid this farmhouse, and your Nana was the reason.”

Lilly couldn’t remember Nana ever holding the shotgun. It sat above the mantle in the living room, a strange and ugly beast cradled on brass hooks. Dusty. Ignored.

Now, she started to wonder. She started to imagine.

She saw Nana walking out into the fields, the gun folded over her arm like fresh washing. A hand-rolled cigarette, unlit, dangling from the corner of her cracked lips.

“No,” Lilly said, trying to deny the truth her imagination conjured.

“She was old, that’s all. She wasn’t all here.” Uncle John’s anger faded as he spoke. “Wasn’t her fault, but sometimes it happens when people get on in years. They lose track. They get muddled. Your Nana hated birds. She taught me and your mother how to shoot them when we were your age. So, can you see now? All that talk of hers was just an old woman rambling.”

Lilly felt her heart breaking in two.

She didn’t want uncle John’s words to be true, but they felt true. They had that adult weight about them, like heavy stones dropped into a pond.

“But,” Lilly said.

“I’m sorry, but that’s just the way it is. Whatever your Nana told you, it was probably just her getting confused, that’s all.” Sensing a breakthrough, uncle John crouched and met her eye to eye. “Why don’t you go upstairs now and pack. We’ll be leaving as soon as the—”

The flapping of wings cut his words off.

A raven landed on the roof.

In the fields, she’d seen some as tall as a crouching cat, but this one was knee-high, and it had a stripe of white feathers on its head.

“Lilly! Are you listening to me?” Uncle John jumped up from his crouch.

Lilly stepped beside him, her eyes on the bird now preening its feathers on the roof.

Nana was right! The bird had come.

“I’ve had enough of this nonsense. If you won’t do it, I will,” Uncle John said. “Ten minutes. I’ll have your things packed in ten minutes, and you better be ready by then. Or else.”

Lilly’s eyes fixed on the raven.

It cocked its head and stared at her with glassy black eyes as she cocked her head and stared back at it with her bright blue eyes.

What are you thinking? Do you know why you’re here? Why I’m here? What we’re both supposed to do.

I watch, and you fly, Lilly thought, that’s what we do.

I watch.

You fly.

But was there enough time? Lilly wondered.

In ten minutes, uncle John would call for her again, she knew. Maybe less than ten minutes.

What if it takes longer? What if I have to wait here until night before the bird takes Nana’s soul away?

She couldn’t remember if Nana had said anything about the time of day, or night, or if a soul travelled better when the sun was up or the moon was bright, but she’d wait all night and a day besides if it meant Nana getting to heaven safely.

Lilly walked, and the bird mirrored her, stepping as she stepped, stopping when she stopped. She wondered if the bird was playing a game? And if so, what were the rules?

Nana hadn’t told her about a game. But what if there was more to do? What if Nana had missed out some important part?

“Hello?” Lilly said, and the bird cocked its head to catch her in a stare.

It could hear her, but did it understand?

“My name’s Lilly.”

The words felt stupid. The bird couldn’t speak, but in her imagination the conversation continued.

“Where are you from?”

“Beyond,” the bird cawed.

“Heaven?”

“Sometimes.”

“And sometimes not?”

“Sometimes not.”

“Is that where you’re taking my Nana?”

The bird shook its feathers. It wasn’t a yes or a no.

“What do I have to do now?”

“Be here,” it cawed.

“For how long?”

The bird’s stare was polished glass. She saw herself captured in its gaze; an impossibly small girl in an impossibly large world.

“For how long?” Lilly repeated.

The bird hopped twice before it found the lip of the window, then another hop onto the ledge. It raised its beak and tapped on the glass of Nana’s bedroom.

Can Nana hear it? Lilly wondered. Nana’s soul?

I should have opened the window, Lilly thought. But Nana didn’t say anything about the window. All she told me to do was wait and see the bird got away safely.

I’ll run up there. Avoid uncle John and—

She lost the thought to the creaking and cracking of wood as the bird stuck its beak into the bottom of the windowsill.

Inch by inch, it levered the window open, then squeezed through the gap into the dark room beyond.

What was the bird doing now? Lilly wondered. How did a bird pluck a soul from a body, anyway?

Before Lilly could think of an answer, the raven hopped out from the dark of the bedroom onto the window ledge. Clamped in its beak was a bright orange fish.

Lilly turned to stone at the sight.

Carrot?

No, it couldn’t be. Carrot swam in his bowl fifty miles away in uncle John’s house. But it was a goldfish, she was sure.

Nana didn’t have any fish. So, what could it—

A soul?

Was that what a soul looked like? It didn’t seem possible that all that was Nana might be such a tiny thing.

What else could it be? It had to be a soul, and soon that soul would be in Heaven, just as Nana had told her.

She’d imagined the ever after as white clouds and golden gates, but now Lilly wondered if Heaven was a fishbowl filled with clear water where a soul got to swim forever?

She liked the idea. She thought Nana would like it too.

The bird hopped off the ledge and slowly walked its way up the slope to where the roof met the sky.

Lilly watched.

Lilly waited.

The bird had to leave soon, she thought, for a fish couldn’t stay too long out of water, even if a fish was a soul.

“Go,” she whispered softly, more a wish than a command. “Go on now. Fly away.”

The bird shook its tail feathers, wings too. It cocked its head and caught Lilly’s concerns in the black mirrors of its eyes.

In her imagination it cawed, “There’s plenty of time yet. Don’t worry.”

Outside of that make-believe world, the raven stared, and the golden fish in its beak wriggled like a new tongue anxious to speak.

“Go,” Lilly whispered. “Go.”

The bird walked the line of the roof, then stopped and cocked its head.

Did it hear me? Lilly wondered.

She’d spoken softly enough so that it almost felt like the voice only existed in her head. But did birds, like dogs, hear much more than any human? And in hearing, did they understand?

If so, the bird didn’t act that way.

What do you want? Lilly thought. Why do you wait? Do I have to do something more?

The bird stared.

‘Go. Go,’ Lilly whispered like a prayer before bedtime. “Go. Go. G—”

The world exploded.

Church bells sounded in Lilly’s ears, and she clasped both hands over them to stop the peeling.

“I’ll show you just what my mother thought of ’em,” uncle John said, as he broke Nana’s shotgun over his leg and fed two red cartridges into the chambers. He snapped it shut and swung the shotgun towards the roof. “I’ll show you.”

The world took on the same washing machine spin it had on that night when the rain carried her parents away.

Lilly tossed and turned in the sickening spin.

“No. Don’t. Please. No. You’ll—”

Uncle John wrapped his finger around the trigger, closed one eye, then squeezed as hard as he could.

Twice.

* * *

Smoke filled the air, and Lilly stepped through it in search of the bird on the other side.

Ears still ringing, she tried to listen for cawing, but found no other sound.

Was the raven dead?

The dead didn’t make sounds, she knew. After Nana’s last words had faded, she was a silence wrapped in a silence in her bed.

Lilly shook the last of the smoke from her hair and fixed on the roof.

No bird, but a reminder of it. It had left behind a dance pattern of marks on the damp roof. A trail that led up and over.

No blood, either.

No feathers.

A good sign.

But just because one side was clear, it didn’t mean the other was.

Lilly broke into a run.

“Where do you think you’re going?” uncle John said. “Get back here right this instant!”

Lilly dodged the words, but froze as she rounded the side of the house.

White and black feathers floated down before her face like strange autumn leaves. The feathers were stained red at their edges.

“Your bag is packed. Don’t play this silly game with me now. I swear to God, young lady, if you’re not back in front of me in the next minute…”

Lilly couldn’t wait a minute. A minute might mean the difference between a soul getting into heaven or not.

She broke the freeze and bolted to the rear of the farmhouse.

There were no signs of feathers behind the farmhouse, and Lilly began to convince herself the bird had already flown away.

She stalked forward, searching for the bird, but hoping not to find it. Then she spied the orange glint on the ground, like the flashing vein of gold through a rock. Sunlight catching the curve of a bottle. A fish out of water.

Nana!

Lilly ran.

“Nana!”

The goldfish lay on the ground and flipped once, then twice before it fell into stillness.

Lilly knelt beside it.

What do I do? What can I do?

I was supposed to keep the bird safe, but I couldn’t do that. I was supposed to make sure it flew away, but now the bird is gone, and Nana’s soul will never—

Lilly cupped her hands and slid them under the goldfish. It lay in her palm like rusted jewellery.

“Sorry,” Lilly whimpered. “I’m sorry.”

I should take it to water, Lilly thought. I can’t fly, but fish swim. If I get it to water, then Nana might have a chance. Maybe another bird will come and take her. Maybe there’s still something I can do.

Lilly stood. She held her cupped hands close to her chest. She turned a circle and searched the land around her for water that wasn’t there.

There’d been a well at one time, but uncle John had it filled with concrete one summer when a rat’s nest was discovered in there.

Lilly focused on the farmhouse.

There was water there, but uncle John wasn’t going to give her enough time to fill a bathtub, or a sink, not even a bucket.

I’ll have time to fill a glass, though, Lilly thought.

She ran to the kitchen door. With both hands cupped, she tried to reach the handle with her knee, then her elbow, and finally her nose, but the door handle flicked back up at every attempt.

Lilly poured the fish into one hand, whispered a soft sorry, then closed her fist over it, before she reached with her free hand for the kitchen door handle.

She pulled down and found the same resistance as with knee, elbow, and nose. The handle only gave so much before springing back.

Locked?

Lilly tried again, defying what she already knew, but the handle sprung back each time with a solid twang.

“Lilly! That’s it. No more chances,” uncle John’s voice crested the roof.

I’ve messed it all up, she thought. All I had to do was make sure the bird flew away, and now it’s gone, probably dead, and Nana’s in my hands with no water and—

A flash in the sky pulled her away from the door.

The bird!

It turned two circles above her before swooping down and landing on the ground at her feet.

Lilly knelt, and cupping the goldfish once more, offered that cup out for the bird.

“It’s okay,” she said, “you can take it. It’s okay.”

The bird hopped forward and cast its black glare from Lilly to the fish and back again.

“Here. Take it.” Lilly thrust her cupped hands forward.

The bird hopped backwards, flicking its beak away in disgust.

Lilly’s hands shook, and the goldfish flopped under that movement.

“Please,” Lilly said, offering the trembling cup of her hands.

The bird took three more hops and one half-step away from Lilly.

It’s too late, Lilly thought. There’s only so long a fish can be out of water.

She didn’t like crying. After the rain had carried her parents away, it felt as if the tears would carry her too.

She cried again, now.

The tears flowed, and in them were all the winding roads on late nights lost in the past. In them was the promise she’d made to her Nana.

She cried, and the tears ran down off the slope of her cheeks and spilled into the cup of her hands.

A pool formed in that cup.

Tears were saltwater, and Lilly knew goldfish couldn’t live in the sea, but what about a soul?

The goldfish flipped and flopped with sudden animation, out of rhythm with her own trembling, but the motion made the bird curious.

In a flutter of wings, the raven made up all the steps it had taken away, and like a dog sniffing at something new, it thrust its beak onto the edge of her hand.

“Here, take her,” Lilly said.

The bird pecked at the pool, saw the goldfish flop twice, then pecked again, probing the tears.

“It’s okay. She’s…” Lilly wanted to say alive, but that word was heavier than any of the other adult words weighing down the last few days. Nana wasn’t alive. She was white bones under cold flesh, under colder sheets in the bedroom. The Nana that was smiles and cigarette smoke and perfume and sweets was gone. The tiny gold creature Lilly held in her hands was all that remained and might remain forever.

“Take her. You need to take her,” Lilly said, pushing her cupped hands forward.

“Lilly?” Uncle John’s voice reached the side of the house.

“You have to go now,” Lilly said. “Go now before he shoots at you again.”

If the bird understood, it didn’t show it. It pecked again at the salt water pool cupped in Lilly’s hands.

“There’s not much time,” Lilly said. “I don’t know how long this will last.” She nodded at the goldfish swimming in her tears, and she felt its flips and it flops weakening.

“Damned birds,” Uncle John said, his voice at the corner of the farmhouse, about to peek around the edge.

“Please,” Lilly whispered, as she thrust her cupped hands towards the bird yet again.

It took a hop back and carried away one of Lilly’s heartbeats with it.

No! You can’t go.

It returned the heartbeat as it hopped forward and struck the salt pool of her hands, snapping the goldfish up in its beak.

I’ve done it, Nana! You’re going to be safe now. You’re going to heaven to swim with all the other souls. The water’s clear there and—

“There you are!” Uncle John’s voice turned the corner and he followed. “Get away from that filthy thing, right now.”

He held the shotgun, and it was an angry beast now. Its triggers, tongues. Its barrels, a sniffing snout. Uncle John fed it two red cartridges, and the beasts jaws snapped shut hungrily.

“Step aside.”

Uncle John pulled the beast up and pointed its snout at the bird.

Lilly stared into the nostrils of the horrible creature. They were two dark tunnels and no light at their end, only blackness, like a darkened room after a nightmare.

“Stand aside,” Uncle John said.

She felt her heart leaping up into her throat, and followed it with a leap of her own in front of the bird.

“Lilly!”

“No,” she said, shaking her head.

Uncle John turned the beast’s glare away from her.

“Do you want to get hurt? Is that it?”

No, she thought, and I won’t let you hurt Nana either.

“Leave it alone,” Lilly said, extending both arms to protect the bird.

She heard its pit and patter on the ground behind and risked a glance over her shoulder.

The bird moved in a curious motion, head bobbing one side to the other as it tried to get a look beyond her legs.

Lily brought both feet together, but kept both arms wide.

“I’m not playing this silly game with you,” uncle John said. “I’ll count to three. Do you understand me?”

She understood all too well. Adult words were heavy and made heavier when they were numbers.

“No,” Lilly said, shaking her head.

She felt the bird at her heels, its feathers rubbing against her skin.

“One,” uncle John said.

The bird pecked at Lilly’s heel.

“Two.”

Lilly kicked back with her foot, hoping to shoo the bird away.

Fly away, she thought. Just fly away while you can.

She knew the future beyond the number three, and it was all blood and feathers.

“Two and a half,” uncle John said.

A half could last a lifetime, as all children knew.

Not this time.

“Three. That’s it. You’ve had a fair warning,” uncle John said, as he strode towards her.

Lilly rooted herself, but the roots weren’t deep enough. Uncle John pulled her up with one hand and planted her beside him.

“You’ve been nothing but trouble since you came to me. Just like your mother. Just like my mother. All of you, the same.”

Uncle John swung the shotgun up and aimed it at the raven on the ground.

“I can’t believe the nonsense she put into your head. These things are vermin. They need to be dealt with.”

The bird hopped to the left, and uncle John tracked its dance with the shotgun.

“They need to be…”

He thumbed back the hammers at the rear of the shotgun.

The bird cocked it’s head like a dog waiting for a thrown ball.

Uncle John curled a finger around the trigger.

“Say goodbye, you little flying rat,” he said.

“Go! Go!” Lilly shouted, waving her arms wildly as she ran towards uncle John and the bird.

The shotgun roared

Smoke filled the air, but from within the smoke came the flapping of wings. The raven spiralled up into the sky.

Lilly noticed the golden glint of the fish in its beak, and her hope rose with it.

“Go! Go!” she yelled.

From within the same smoke, uncle John emerged, the shotgun aimed into the sky.

The raven twisted, dropped, then rose again.

Lilly batted her eyes from it to the shotgun; back and forth. Uncle John’s aim was good, but the bird was too high up to hit, she thought. She hoped.

“Fly!” she shouted. “Fly higher.”

Uncle John shook his head. “I clipped it before. That bird has had its day.”

“No!” Lilly shouted.

“You’ll have to learn some time,” uncle John said, as he followed the flight of the raven with the barrels of the shotgun. “They’re nothing but flying bloody rats, that’s what your nana called them. Flying. Bloody. Rats.”

He pulled the trigger.

Lilly rushed forward, pawing at the shotgun, but it was too late.

The shotgun roared. The church bells rang in her ears, and when the smoke had cleared, she saw the bird twist, and turn, and drop down into the blackened trees on the far side of the fields.

Nana!

“There,” uncle John said, turning to face her. “All done. Now. You go inside and—”

Lilly didn’t hear him.

There was another voice, louder, and more insistent than a gunshot. It spoke only one word, over and over again.

Run!

Run!

Run!

Lilly ran.

* * *

The world rolled inside that familiar washing machine spin Lilly knew all too well. The sky shook, and everything at its edges was a jumble of black and white and…

…red?

In the trees, she saw a flash of red in amongst the black. A flash of white followed as the raven fell towards the ground.

Dead? Was the bird, and the soul it carried, beyond saving now?

She hoped not, and that hope kept her legs pumping even as uncle John called out to her from behind.

“It’s going to be night soon, Lilly. You don’t want to be out there all alone when it’s dark, do you?”

Her legs continued to pump, but the darkness uncle John talked of crept in at the edges of her hopes.

It would be harder to find Nana in the dark. If Nana’s soul was even still alive by then.

Lilly pumped her legs faster.

“I’m not running after you. Do you hear me? I won’t chase you. Lilly? Do you hear me, Lilly?”

She heard, but she wasn’t listening. All that concerned her was the bird and the fish it held in its beak.

The goldfish lasted a few minutes out of water at the farmhouse with her tears a temporary pool. How many more minutes would it last out in the trees? How long could it last if the bird was dead?

And if the bird is dead and Nana’s goldfish soul is still alive then…

What do I do? Lilly thought. Bring Nana back to the house? And then? Uncle John will take me away before I even have a chance to fill a glass. And even if I can fill a glass, I can’t just carry her soul around waiting for a bird. Would that even work?

Lilly didn’t know, but her legs did. They kept pumping, carrying her towards the trees and whatever waited there.

“Come back here, right now!” Uncle John shouted. “Believe me, you don’t want to be out there alone when it gets dark.”

She knew, but she didn’t want to be back at the house either, or listen to uncle John and his chastisements.

No, the woods were the only destination now, and she couldn’t turn away from them, no matter what she found in there.

“Last chance,” uncle John called, “and I won’t give you another. Get back here now, or I’ll leave without you.”

Lilly pumped her legs.

“I’m not joking, Lilly. You turn around right now, or I’m going home without you.”

The words rushed over her like a cold breeze, but she pushed on, hoping to see some colour ahead.

If there was gold, then there was still a chance Nana’s soul was there.

It wasn’t gold she saw, but white. A tumbling flash of white in the trees.

The bird?

The white streak dropped down through the trees, bouncing off black branches as it went.

Is it alive?

She wasn’t sure. It didn’t move like something living.

Maybe not dead, she hoped. Just injured. And if it’s injured then…

In the time between one thought and the next, a child could live a lifetime. And in that lifetime, Lilly saw herself bandaging the bird’s bloody wings and nursing it back to health.

She saw herself, one bright day in the future, releasing the bird into a sky as blue as the sea. And the bird held onto the goldfish soul with its beak as it plunged beneath the waters of the sky and onto some greater, grander imagined place.

“That’s it! I’m not going to give you the option now. You come back right this instant, or I’ll come and get you!”

Uncle John’s new threat only pushed Lilly on. But now, with that new threat at her back, everything had suddenly grown in length.

The trees, only a few hundred feet away, were now on the other side of the planet. The white flash in amongst the black was like a distant, shooting star, too faint almost to see. Hope, that thing so close to her in the last few minutes, now seemed so far away, she might never reach it again.

Still, Lilly ran. For even if the trees were a world away, even if the stars had burned out, she couldn’t turn back from her promise.

A promise, if kept, could shrink the world, and revive dead stars and hopes alike.

“Get back here! You can’t get away from me!”

Lilly risked a look over her shoulder.

Uncle John eclipsed the sun in the white winter sky.

Lilly pushed on. Muscles fed by dreams of a future that might be. Dreams of a bird bandaged and a soul swimming in the blue sea of a sky.

“Stop! Don’t defy me, girl!”

But Lilly couldn’t stop now.

“I’ll catch up. Just stop right now, and save us both some time.” Uncle John sounded almost bored, but the words were hot little knives stabbing into Lilly’s back.

Where she found the energy, she didn’t know, but Lilly pumped her legs harder, faster. It felt as if her knees might bruise her chin, they reached so high.

“You little brat!” Uncle John shouted. “Don’t you make me run, girl.”

But she was doing just that.

“I’m warning you,” Uncle John said. “When I catch up, you’ll be in the worst trouble of your…”

The trees loomed up before her like a black wall, but Lilly had too much momentum now to stop.

I’m going to crash right into the side of a tree, she thought. And it won’t be like those cartoons I used to watch with mum, where their face is all flat. It’ll be blood and…

She imagined herself exploding as she hit the tree. It was all meat and bone, red and pink like something Nana would feed through the grinder in the kitchen.

“…life! The worst trouble of your life!” Uncle John’s panting threat caught up to her as Lilly hit the edge of the forest.

Lilly saw a gap where there wasn’t one before. A change in colour from black to grey.

She plunged into the forest, with uncle John’s voice still chasing.

“Come back here,” he said. “You’ll get lost in there.”

Lilly brought her run down to a trot, down to a jog, then finally to a walk before she dared look back.

Uncle John was a faded shadow at the edge of all the other shadows.

“I’m warning you, Lilly. There’s things in there that won’t take kindly to a little girl being around.”

The warning put a shiver through her, and Lilly turned a quick circle, searching for eyes that might be watching.

She’d read lots of stories of little girls lost in the woods and what might be waiting for them there. Now, she was one of those little girls, and like all the other little girls lost, she wondered about how she’d get home.

But where was home?

It wasn’t the farmhouse, where Nana lay as cold as the sheets on her bed.

It wasn’t uncle John’s house, which had never been a home, not ever.

There was no home, Lilly thought. Not since that night on the road in the rain.

“No!” she shouted.

“For God’s sake, child. The temperature will drop soon. You’ll catch your death out here. Just stop this silliness.”

“I can’t,” she said, and the words were as heavy as any adult words. They were filled with the promise she’d made and had to keep, no matter how lost she was, or what was watching from the thickening dark.

“You will.”

“No!” Lilly shouted.

“I swear to God, if you don’t come out of there right now, I’ll—”

A light flashed in the forest. A bright white light that didn’t belong to the raven.

“What’s that? Lilly? What was that?” Uncle John said. “Do you have a torch with you? Did you take a torch from the house?”

Lilly focused on the light.

It shined as brightly as a torch, but not in the same way as any torch she’d ever seen. It sparkled like glitter as it danced around the matchstick trunks of the trees and left behind a bright slug trail in its wake. Wherever it was heading, its light seemed to push out before it.

Lilly forgot any fear of wild animals that might be watching. She forgot uncle John, standing at the edge of the shadows. All she could see was the light and how it moved.

At once it was a snake, slithering across the grey ground beneath the black trees, and then a squirrel hopping from branch to branch, only to fall like a leaf caught on the wind.

“Oh, you think you’re clever bringing a torch with you, don’t you? Well, I hope you brought a blanket too,” uncle John shouted. “It’ll be cold soon. Really cold. You won’t last an hour out here in that kind of weather.”

Lilly didn’t care about the cold. She didn’t care about anything but watching the strange light as it danced and shifted in the darkness.

“Last chance,” uncle John said. “Come out now, and I’ll forget any of this happened. Deal?”

The light swung upwards, a monkey climbing a tree, and then perched on a branch like a lizard, its bright tongue flicking the darkness as if searching for flies.

There were no flies, and the light was no lizard. The light was…

Nana? Could the light be Nana?

It wasn’t gold in any way. It didn’t have the shimmer or shine of a fish, but maybe this was part of the journey Nana would take to Heaven?

“Deal?” Uncle John repeated, his voice more urgent.

No deal, Lilly thought, stepping toward the light.

The light twisted on itself and pulled back into a ball.

“I’m not going to hurt you,” Lilly said. “I just want to…”

Touch?

Her fingers knew the answer. They shivered and shook like she was reaching for a Christmas present, still wrapped.

“I just want to…”

Know?

Is it you Nana? Lilly wondered. Is this light what Heaven is? Or is this what happens before you go to Heaven?

“Deal? Deal? Deal?”

Uncle John’s voice was a gunshot, repeating, but the bullets whistled over Lilly’s head

I just want to…?

Lilly reached out, answering the thought with an action.

The light shrunk back to a pin point.

Lilly yanked her hand away.

“It’s okay. It’s okay,” she said, holding up both hands, palm out. She stepped back. “I’m not going to hurt you.”

The light blinked, but it wasn’t a yes or a no. It wasn’t anything but a light in the forest, and she was just a girl who wanted it to be something it might not be.

What if it’s not Nana?

The thought was a shadow.

Lilly watched the light as it grew, unfolded into the shape of a mushroom.

“Deal?” Uncle John shouted from the edge of everything, and it sounded more like a cry for help.

Lilly didn’t answer. Curiosity tipped her head forward as she inspected the new shape of the light.

Is that you, Nana?

But there was no answer in the mushrooming glow. It grew. And grew. And grew, to the size of Lilly’s head, but it had no mouth to answer, no eyes to see,

It’s not Nana.

The idea was a lightning strike.

It’s not Nana.

It’s not Nana.

Nana is gold. Nana is a bright fish. Nana—

The white light pulsed. It shrank down to a needle point faster than Lilly could blink, then it turned and fired off into the trees.

Lilly followed, and caught a glint of gold in the tree cover. Then a flash of red. A streak of white.

She whipped her head around to catch the colours as they moved in jerking animation through the black filmstrip of the trees.

Was it the bird? Nana?

Both.

The raven flashed by her, the goldfish clamped in its beak, and close behind the white light zipped from tree to tree in chase.

“Answer me!” Uncle John shouted.

But Lilly couldn’t answer. She was already running.

* * *

The black ink trees smudged as she ran.

“Lilly! I know you can hear me. I know you’re listening to what I say. Answer me!”

The white light chased the bird, Lilly chased the light, and Uncle John’s words chased Lilly, but none had caught what they chased yet.

In the smudge of light, she saw the Raven; all black and white and red, and gold where the fish was clamped in its beak, come to a skidding stop, kicking up earth to avoid the zipping light.

But the light carried on, directly towards Lilly.

She placed both hands in front of her face, bracing for impact.

There was none.

The light leaked through her fingers like cold water from a dripping tap.

She turned.

The light ran down her back, soaking her jumper, and freezing the skin beneath.

She shivered.

What are you? Lilly thought. What do you want from me?

Lilly’s eyes found the tiny orange glow of the fish in the raven’s beak.

It doesn’t want me. It wants Nana.

The light left her like steam from a heated body and floated towards the raven.

She watched as the steam became a fog, became a…

A person?

The figure held out fingered curls of smoke beckoning the bird towards it.

The raven hopped, flapped its wings as if to take flight, but hopped again closer still to the creature as if it couldn’t help itself.

Fly away! Lilly thought. Fly away!

The bird hopped.

Fly away!

It flapped its wings.

The shape reached out and trapped the bird between its frosted hands.

Fly! Fly! Fly!

The raven tried to flap its wings once more, but froze under the touch.

Fly!

The bird had turned to ice, but the goldfish soul still had its colour and its movement.

The shape reached out for it with foggy fingers in a pinch.

“Lilly!” Uncle John shouted; his voice lost at the edge of the world.

Lilly blinked as if she’d just woken from a dream.

She blinked again, and when the blink was over, she was running.

What if I’m too late? she thought. What if I can’t stop it? What if I go right through it?

What if—

Lilly hit the shape before the thought had finished.

Then stopped.

And with her, all the clocks stopped too. Time was as frozen as the bird in the hands of the shape.

A darkness formed in the mist before her. A smile. A mouth. Words, as cold and sharp as icicles.

TOO LATE.

No, Lilly said without speaking. Leave her alone.

CAN’T.

Leave her alone.

MUST.

You leave my Nana alone.

NANA. NA-NA. NA-NA. NA-NA. NA-NA.

What are you going to do with her?

WHATEVER I LIKE.

Leave her alone.

CAN’T.

No.

MUST.

Trembling, Lilly forced herself to blink.

The clocks started ticking again.

Time returned, and Lilly’s momentum. She stumbled forward through the shape, unable to stop. She hit the bird with her shoulder, and it dropped to the ground, the goldfish soul still firmly in its beak.

FOOL! FOOL! YOU’LL RUIN IT!

Lilly dropped to her knees.

Fly! She thought. Fly! Fly! Fly!

The raven’s wings flapped.

Fly!

Lilly scrambled to her feet.

The bird took off.

Fly!

The shape turned its head to the sky, then exploded in a firework of light into the black trees above.

The roosting ravens took flight, forming a dark cloud in the sky. And in that cloud, a streak of orange.

Nana?

The light reformed and rushed directly at the orange streak within the black cloud of birds.

Lilly winced as white and orange collided.

“Nana!” she cried. “Nana!”

Lilly blinked, not trusting her eyes, but when the blink was over, the white light had vanished and only the orange remained. And now the colour grew brighter. Brighter still.

It started to move.

Lilly followed, breaking into a trot, but with her eyes on the darkness above, she didn’t notice the rock. Her foot caught its edge, and she tumbled forward.

As she fell, she saw the white light return. It chased the orange through the black, and where they zigged and zagged, a dozen birds flapped and broke away.

I have to help Nana, Lilly thought. But how?

A voice stopped her thoughts.

“I can see you there,” Uncle John said.

Lilly couldn’t see him. She didn’t even look. Her eyes fixed on the zig-zag game of tag in the sky above.

The raven, still clasping the orange goldfish soul in its beak, swooped down from the sky with the white light chasing closely behind.

“Once we’re back at home, I’ll lock the front door, and throw away the key. Do you hear me?”

At the edge of Lilly’s awareness, twigs broke and leaves crunched as uncle John stomped through the woods towards her.

“Maybe I’ll let you out again when you turn twenty-one. You might have learned a lesson by then.”

Lilly turned her gaze from the approaching bird to the ground at her feet.

It was stupid, and it was crazy, and it wouldn’t work, but Lilly knelt and grabbed the rock she’d fallen over.

I’ll wait ’til the light gets close, she thought, then throw it.

What a rock would do to a light, she didn’t know, and she didn’t know if it could do anything at all, but it was all she had, and it was better than doing nothing at all.

I have to wait until I see the light fully. Wait, and then throw. Wait and then—

The raven twisted in the air, revealing the white light behind.

Now!

Lilly heaved the rock over her head, but her arms twisted from the weight, and the rock sailed away from the light directly into the raven.

“No!” Lilly screamed.

The raven hit the ground in a ball of flapping wings and squawks, and from its beak the goldfish soul popped and landed on the ground a few feet away. In a flash, the bird jumped back onto its feet, but didn’t move another inch.

Grab it! Lilly thought. Why won’t you grab it?

The raven stared at the goldfish soul. The black mirror of its eyes reflecting something brighter, whiter, growing.

Lilly turned to see what the bird had caught in reflection and saw the white light rushing towards them.

She wanted to run, but couldn’t. She wanted to scream, but had lost her voice. She wanted to reach out and grab the glinting goldfish soul that was her Nana and—

The light zipped over the top of the goldfish soul and struck the raven in its chest.

Lilly held her breath.

Uncle John used his.

“I swear, Lilly, once I catch up to you. I swear…I swear…”

Lilly wanted to swear. But could manage only a gasp.

Is the bird dead? she wondered.

It looked that way. It felt that way.

“How bloody deep are these woods anyway?” Uncle John spoke to himself, between heavy breaths and heavier footfalls.

Lilly’s steps were just as heavy as she walked towards the fallen bird.

Dead birds can’t flap their wings, she thought.

Dead birds who can’t flap their wings, can’t fly.

Dead birds who can’t fly, can’t carry a goldfish soul into heaven.

Lilly looked from the bird to the goldfish lying on the ground, and her lip began to wobble.

Sorry, Nana. I’m so sorry. I wish I could have…I wish…I wish…

She stared into the sky, but there wasn’t a star to make a wish upon. Only a cold moon as it slid out from behind a cloud.

I’m sorry, Nana.

I wish…

I wish…

I…

The flapping of wings cut off her thought.

The raven hopped onto its feet. It blinked blackly.

And then it spoke, without opening its beak, its voice insider Lilly’s head.

THIS WILL DO. OH, YES. The raven spread its wings and ruffled its feathers. I WONDER? It flapped a few times more before taking off into the air.

It turned a graceless half-circle above Lilly’s head. More bluebottle than bird. Then it dropped to the ground, bracing its fall with one wing like a drunk trying to find their balance.

I’LL HAVE TO GET USED TO THESE THINGS. I’M SURE I’LL GET THE HANG OF IT.

“You can talk?” Lilly said.

AND YOU CAN HEAR, SEEMS AS MUCH. BUT NARY A WORD’S COMING FROM THIS BEAK OF MINE. ODD, AIN’T IT?

The raven flapped its wings, then looked at each in turn.

INCREDIBLE. HOW THESE CREATURES MANAGE TO FLY. A MIRACLE, TRULY.

Lilly saw something new in the black mirror of the bird’s eyes. A glint of white, but not a reflection.

“Who are you?” Lilly said.

From far at the edge of their conversation, uncle John’s voice joined them.

“Who are you talking to?” he asked.

“Nobody,” Lilly said.

The raven flapped its wings again.

SOMEBODY, I WAS MISS. I WAS CONNOR BARRY. I WAS NOT ALL THERE EVEN WHEN I WAS ALL HERE. NOW? NOW I AM ALL HERE, AND IT SEEMS WHAT I AM IS NO LONGER A MAN. BUT THAT’S MUCH BETTER THAN WHAT I WAS BEFORE.

Words clogged in Lilly’s throat, but she managed to cough them out.

“Wha—what were you before?”

The raven clacked its beak. I WAS DEAD. OR WHAT COMES SHORTLY AFTER DEAD.

“Dead,” Lilly repeated the word as though it would make more sense if she said it, but it didn’t.

“I can hear you speaking, Lilly. Is there anybody there with you? Just keep talking, and I’ll find you,” Uncle John said.

The raven hopped, delighted in its own movements.

DEAD AS A MAN CAN BE WHEN HE’S DANGLING FROM A TREE WITH A ROPE AROUND HIS NECK. AND THEN…” The bird danced left to right and back again. THEN THERE WAS THIS BRIGHT WHITE LIGHT. WASHED ALL OVER ME IT DID. UNTIL YOU WOULDN’T KNOW WHERE THAT LIGHT ENDED AND OLD CONNOR HERE BEGAN.

Lilly remembered the stories of Heaven and how bright the light was there.

“Heaven?” Lilly whispered.

“Speak up, Lilly! I can’t hear you now,” Uncle John said. His voice seemed to turn in a circle before fading away.

THOUGHT AS MUCH MYSELF. I’D CONFESSED MY SINS AND PUT MYSELF RIGHT WITH THE LORD BEFORE THEY TIGHTENED THE ROPE. BUT THERE WAS NO HEAVEN NOR HELL FOR OLD CONNOR HERE. ENDED UP SOMEWHERE BETWEEN, I RECKON.

Lilly’s eyes darted again to the goldfish on the ground.

“What’s between?” she whispered, wondering if Nana would end up there too.

The raven flapped his wings. A LOT OF NOTHING AND LOTS OF LIGHT.

“Are you a ghost?” she said.

The raven cawed and it was almost a laugh. OH, NO. MISERABLE LOT THEY ARE. MOPING AROUND. ALWAYS COMPLAINING. BAD COMPANY.

“What are you then?”

“Lilly! Lilly!” Uncle John shouted, and his voice was louder, closer, it seemed.

A BIRD NOW, SEEMS TO BE.” The Connor-bird preened it feathers, flapped, and seeing that its wing was still a little sore, didn’t bother to take flight. I SUPPOSE THIS THING WILL HEAL IN TIME. NOW, HOW LONG DOES A BIRD LIVE, DO YOU THINK?

“I don’t know.”

FIVE YEARS? TEN? FIVE IS BETTER THAN NOTHING.

Lilly fixed onto the goldfish on the ground, and her promise to Nana came rushing back.

“What about Heaven?”

WHAT ABOUT IT?

The crack of twigs snapped Lilly’s head around.

“Speak up, Lilly! Let me know where you are, for God’s sake. I’m not going to tramp around these woods all night!” Uncle John shouted.

“Don’t you want to go to Heaven?” Lilly whispered.

The Connor-bird preened a feather or two in thought.

BE NICE, I’M SURE. JUST HAVEN’T GOT THE FOGGIEST HOW TO GET THERE.

Does he not know what the raven was doing? Lilly thought. How could he not know?

“What if you could? Get into Heaven, I mean,” she said.

The Connor-bird cocked its head. WHAT’S THAT NOW, MISS?

“What if you could get into Heaven?”

“This isn’t a game, Lilly,” Uncle John shouted, and his voice seemed further away now than before. “If you don’t speak up soon, I’m just going to leave you out here. Do you understand me?”

The Connor-bird cocked its head the other way.

HEAVEN WOULD BE NICE, I’M SURE. BUT SEEING AS I DON’T KNOW HOW TO GET THERE…

Lilly’s eyes drifted back to the goldfish, then to the dark woods beyond.

Somewhere in there, Uncle John was still snapping twigs in the search for her.

“Nana would.”

NANA WOULD WHAT?

Lilly didn’t take her eyes off the goldfish.

WHAT’S CAUGHT YOUR EYE? WHY ARE YOU SO INTERESTED IN THAT LITTLE FISH?

“You should be too,” Lilly said.

GIVE ME SOME TIME IN THESE FEATHERS, AND I’M GUESSING I’LL BE INTERESTED IN ALL KINDS OF FISH. FOR NOW, I THINK I’D LIKE AN ALE AND A GOOD HUNK OF CHEESE ON SOME BREAD.

“You don’t know what the bird was doing?” Lilly said.

CAN’T SAY I DO.

“One last chance, Lilly. That’s all I’m giving you. Speak up now or—” There was a load crack, followed by Uncle John letting out a yelp. “Stupid bloody branches!”

“You don’t know where it was going?” Lilly whispered to the Connor-bird.

I BEEN A HUNDRED YEARS GLOWIN’ IN THESE HERE WOODS, NOT KNOWING IF I WAS COMING OR GOING. I DIDN’T EVEN KNOW I COULD DO WHAT I DID UNTIL I DID IT TODAY. NOW, IF YOU GOT SOMETHING TO TELL ME, MISS, I’D APPRECIATE YOU SPEAK CLEAR AND PROPER, LIKE.

Lilly cleared her throat.

“The bird was taking a soul to Heaven.”

The Connor-bird cocked its head to one side. PARDON?

Lilly nodded towards the goldfish. “My Nana. That’s my Nana’s soul. The bird, you, were taking her to Heaven.”

I WAS, WAS I?

“It was, yes.”

AND THIS BIRD THAT I NOW AM, WAS GETTING INTO HEAVEN HOW?

“Nana said birds take souls into Heaven. Only some birds. They carry them—

The Connor-bird hopped forward and spread its wings wide.

BIRDS CARRY THEM, DO THEY?

“That’s what Nana said.”

“Lilly! Lilly!” Uncle John shouted.

AND THESE SOULS THEY JUST HAPPEN TO LOOK A LOT LIKE A GOLDFISH, DO THEY?

“Nana said—”

A BIRD JUST KNOWS THE WAY, IS THAT RIGHT?

Lilly nodded.

“One last chance, or I’m heading back to the farmhouse without you,” Uncle John said.

AND WHEN THEY GET TO THE PEARLY GATES, ST. PETER JUST WAVES THEM ON IN?

Lily shrugged.

“That’s it! I’m leaving. I’ll put a light in the window. You can find your own way back, or you can stay out here the whole night on your own. I don’t care any longer,” Uncle John said, and his voice retreated back into the darkness, fading as it went.

WELL, LET’S SEE IF YOUR NANA WAS ONTO SOMETHING, SHALL WE?

The Connor-bird jumped forward and gulped down the goldfish. For a moment, an orange light flickered underneath the black feathers, like an old-fashioned bulb about to blink out.

CURIOUS. The Connor-bird flapped its wings and took off.

* * *

The Connor-bird flew into the trees and found a branch. Soon, it melted into the black of the other birds as they returned to roost.

Lilly ran beneath, trying to distinguish one bird from another, but it was no use. There was no sign of the distinctive white stripe the raven wore on its head, or the red of blood where uncle John had shot it.

She turned her attention to the rock on the ground she’d thrown earlier.

If…

She crept towards it.

If…

She picked up the rock.

If I throw it up into the trees it might get the Connor-bird to fly out.

Or…

I might hit the Connor-bird. And what if it dies for real this time? Will Nana’s soul survive?

The rock became sharp in her hand.

Lilly dropped it.

What do I do?

She turned stiffly in place, searching her surroundings for an answer.

Night had arrived just beyond the trees. No chance of finding a black bird in that kind of dark, even with the white stripe on its head. The goldfish, though? It had glowed brightly in the chest of the Connor-bird before it took off, despite all the black feathers. If only there was some way to make it glow again.

As the thought ran through her mind, a light turned on in the dark behind her. Not orange or white, but the soft yellow glow of a window in the farmhouse beyond the woods and across the field.

Was it Uncle John? Had he done what he’d promised and gone back to the house to turn on the light?

It seemed as much, and Lilly felt the darkness creeping in around her like never before.

But the dark wasn’t as chilling a thought as not finding Nana, or getting her into heaven.

Lilly tipped her head back. She cupped her hands around her mouth. “Mister Connor! Mister Connor!” she shouted.

A shadow slipped from above, but it wasn’t the Connor-bird, only a falling twig.

“I know you hear me, Mister Connor! I know you can hear me!”

Lilly walked a circle beneath the trees, watching for a flash of gold in the black.

“Mr Connor-bird! Mr Connor-bird!” she shouted.

The shadows shifted, but only enough to swap one darkness for another.

Lilly shivered, hugged herself, then remembered her voice.

“Mr Connor! Mr Connor! Please answer me!”

The darkness answered. It reached for her. Its cold hands gripping her ankle and sliding down to paint her toes black.

Lilly glanced over her shoulder at the light in the farmhouse, and it was a comfort no matter the how and the why of it. With it shining there beyond the trees, the darkness didn’t feel so dark any longer, finding Nana not so impossible.

“Mr Connor!” Lilly shouted.

What if he’s already flown?

“Mr Connor!”

How long could a bird live?

How long would Nana live inside a bird?

“Mr Connor! Mr Conn—”

A faint pulse of orange appeared in the black.

YOU DO TALK A FAIR BIT, DON’T YOU, YOUNG MISS? WOULD YOU LOWER THAT ROAR OF YOURS TO A SHOUT IF I SHOWED MYSELF?

“Yes, yes,” Lilly said, nodding her head quickly.

The orange light grew bigger as the Connor-bird tore itself away from the roosting dark and flew down to land on the ground before Lilly’s feet.

SWEET RELIEF, AT LEAST I’M HOPING SO. YOUR NANA SAID YOU WERE A BIT OF A GABBY ONE. BUT SHE NEVER MENTIONED JUST HOW LOUD YOU ARE.

Fear and confusion swapped seats in Lilly.

“She did?” Lilly said.

OH, YES. YOU AND HER HAVE SOME MOUTHS ON YOU. I BET THERE WERE A LOT OF MEN WHO SUFFERED FROM EARACHE IN YOUR FAMILY.

“Earache?”

The Connor-bird ruffled its feathers. The orange glow pulsed brightly within its stomach.

BECAUSE OF ALL THE TALKING AND THE VOLUME OF IT ALL. The Connor-bird stared with its glassy black eyes at Lilly, then ruffled its head. NEVER MIND. A JOKE EXPLAINED WAS NEVER WORTH THE TELLING.

“A joke?”

FORGET IT, YOUNG MISS. I’M NOT IN FINE ENOUGH OF A FETTLE TO GO AROUND IN LOOPS WITH YOU.

“Fettle?”

HEALTH. WELLNESS. FORM. ORDER. CONDITION. I’M NOT FEELING TOO GOOD, YOU MIGHT SAY.

Lilly wasn’t too sure what he was talking about, but he was talking. And for as long as he talked, Nana was close enough to save.

“Oh, why not?” Lilly said.

SOMETHING I ATE, I BELIEVE. GREEDY, YOU SEE. ALWAYS HAVE BEEN. EVEN WHEN I’M INSIDE OF A BIRD.

“What did you eat?”

The Connor-bird hopped.

WHATEVER THIS CREATURE FOUND CRAWLING UP THERE IN THE BRANCHES. BUT I DIDN’T TRY TO STOP IT, SEE? IT’S MY DOWNFALL. ALWAYS HAS BEEN. EYES TOO BIG FOR MY STOMACH. EVEN WHEN THOSE EYES AND STOMACH AIN’T MY OWN.

“Oh?”

THAT’S WHAT THEY SAID TO ME, YOU KNOW. BACK BEFORE ALL THIS. The Connor-bird looked down at the talons it now possessed. THEY SAID THAT CONNOR WON’T BE SATISFIED UNTIL HE’S EATEN EVERY PIE IN THE VILLAGE AND UPSET EVERY COPPER IN THE COUNTY. HE’LL CALL A GAOL BED HIS OWN, THAT ONE, IF HE’S NOT ALREADY DANGLING BY TWENTY-FIVE, THAT IS. AND DO YOU KNOW WHAT?

The Connor-bird cocked its head as it asked the question.

Lilly didn’t know the answer. She wasn’t even sure what the question meant.

“No,” she said.

THEY WERE RIGHT. NEVER A DAY WITHOUT FUN FOR OLD CONNOR, BUT FUN’S AS EASY TO TURN INTO TROUBLE AS BEER IS PISS, IF YOU’LL PARDON MY FRENCH. The Connor-bird chuckled to itself.

Lilly listened, but focused on the orange heart beating in the Connor-bird’s stomach.

There had to be some way to get it out? But how?

OH, BUT WHAT FUN IT WAS, I’LL TELL YOU THAT, LITTLE MISS. NEVER MET A BAKER, A BUTCHER, OR A CANDLESTICK MAKER, FOR THAT MATTER, WHO I DIDN’T FILCH SOMETHING FROM. GOT GOOD AT BEING WHERE I DIDN’T BELONG, AND TAKING WHAT DIDN’T BELONG TO ME. BROKE MANY A LOCK AND MANY A VOW BESIDES.

Lilly watched, not knowing what half the words meant, even though they sounded like they were in the right order.

If I grab him. Hold him down. Maybe I can…

Was there a way to force a soul to swim out from a stomach?

She remembered, vaguely, swallowing a marble, and her father holding her upside down to shake it out.

If I hold the bird upside down then…

THING IS, MISS, YOU BREAK A VOW SOMEONE ELSE MADE, AND THEY TEND TOWARDS WANTING TO BREAK YOU. AND I WAS NEVER TOO KEEN ON BROKEN THINGS, ’SPECIALLY MY BONES. NEVER KEEN AT ALL. GOT MY GOAT, IT DID. OH, AND I TOOK A GOAT TOO, ONE TIME. NOT IN ANY WAY YOU MIGHT THINK. I NEVER WAS THAT WAY INCLINED, BUT A GOAT COULD FETCH A PRETTY PENNY IF YOU FOUND THE RIGHT FARMER.

Both hands, Lilly thought. If I’m quick enough, I can wrap both my hands around the Connor-bird’s neck, then I’ll hold it upside down and…

An image of herself shaking the bird like a bottle of HP Sauce came to mind. She saw herself slapping the bird on its rear, but like the last of a bottle’s contents, Nana wouldn’t come out.

I GOT CAUGHT ONE TIME WITH MY PANTS AROUND MY ANKLES. FIRST TIME I FELT A BURN ON MY NECK WAS WHEN AN ANGRY HUSBAND GOT HIS HANDS ON ME. MEN WITH MURDER IN THEIR HANDS GET DEATH IN THEIR EYES. LIKE LOOKING UP INTO A STARLESS NIGHT, IT WAS. AND JUST AS COLD.

Now? Lilly thought.

Now?

Now?

Her hands ached. Her body was a spring that wouldn’t uncoil.

Now?

FRIT? SURE, I WAS. WHO WOULDN’T BE? THEN I WAS ALL A TUMBLE AND THAT POOR BASTARD OF A HUSBAND, PARDON MY FRENCH, HE CAME TUMBLING AFTER. EVER HEAR A NECK SNAP? LIKE DRY WOOD ON A FIRE IT IS, BUT A FIRE WARMS YOU, AND THAT SOUND DOES THE OPPOSITE.

Now?

WEREN’T MY FAULT, OF COURSE. NOT REALLY. TOLD THEM AS MUCH. CROSSED MY HEART AND HOPED TO DIE. DIDN’T THINK I WOULD, THOUGH. NOBODY DOES WHEN THEY PUT THAT MARK ON THEIR OWN CHEST. IT’S A LIAR’S PROMISE, IS THAT.

Lilly risked a foot forward, but didn’t put it back down on the ground.

I FLIT, THOUGH, NIGHT BEFORE THEY COULD PUT THE ROPE ON ME. I WASN’T GOING TO LET ’EM STRING ME UP FROM THE GALLOWS IN FRONT OF THE WHOLE TOWN. HEARD ’EM BUILDING IT FROM THE GAOL BED. LYING THERE WITH ONLY COCKROACHES CHATTERING AND DEATH DOING HIS CARPENTRY OUTSIDE. DOESN’T MAKE FOR A GOOD GUT, LET ME TELL YOU. MADE MYSELF A PROMISE I WOULDN’T DANGLE. HIT A GUARD WITH A TIN PLATE AND LEGGED IT. THING IS, YOUNG MISS, YOU DON’T NEED A FANCY GALLOWS TO MAKE A MAN SWING, JUST A STRONG ENOUGH BRANCH AND A STURDY ENOUGH ROPE. AND LET ME TELL YOU, A FOREST IS A FOOLISH PLACE TO RUN TO IF YOU WANT TO AVOID BRANCHES.

Now!

Lilly lunged for the bird, both hands out.

She found feathers.

She found the meat that feathers hid and felt the beating orange heart beneath it all.

And lost it all again just as quick.

The bird flapped and flapped again, breaking free, and hovered six feet above before she could blink twice.

HERE A MAN GOES SHARING HIS LIFE AND DEATH STORY, AND YOU TRY TO RECREATE IT!

Lilly stared at her hands.

“Sorry,” she said, but she was talking to her Nana, not the bird.

I wasn’t quick enough. I should have turned it upside down like a bottle. I should have…

The Connor-bird landed on a nearby branch and stretched its head.

I’LL GRANT YOU THIS ISN’T AS MUCH OF A NECK AS THE ONE I USED TO HAVE. NOT MUCH OF ONE AT ALL. BUT IT’S STILL A NECK, AND HAVING ONE IS BETTER THAN NOT.

“Sorry,” Lilly repeated, her eyes fixed on the faintly glowing soul-fish inside the bird.

What do I do now?

Is this the end?

“Please don’t take my Nana away,” she said.

The Connor-bird stared at her. A cold, starless sky.

PERHAPS… The rest of the sentence dangled like an autumn leaf ready to drop.

“What?” Lilly said.

WELL, I HAVE A THOUGHT.

“What?” she said.

A BIRD’S ALL FINE AND DANDY, I SUPPOSE. NICE TO FLY AROUND UP AND ABOVE THINGS. NICE INDEED. BUT OLD CONNOR HERE FANCIES A PIE.

“A pie?”

A PORK PIE. LOTS OF FAT ON IT. THICK CRUST. THAT’S WHAT I FANCY.

“You want me to get you a pie?”

NOT EXACTLY. SEE, THIS HERE BIRD’S GOOD ENOUGH FOR TEMPORARY LODGINGS, BUT IT AIN’T GOT THE STOMACH FOR A PIE, I FAVOUR. IT WANTS THINGS THAT ARE STILL LIVING, YOU SEE. GRUBS AND INSECTS, THAT KIND OF THING.

The leaf started to loosen away from the tree.

“So, you want…?”

NEW LODGINGS. JUST FOR THE NIGHT.

“Lodgings?”

The Connor-bird hopped off the branch and landed on Lilly’s shoulder, where it whispered, without whispering, in her ear.

LET’S SAY WE SHARE A ROOM, YOU AND I. JUST THE ONE NIGHT. ENOUGH FOR ME TO EAT THAT PIE I’VE BEEN CRAVING FOR THE LAST CENTURY. A NIGHT’S REST IN A COMFORTABLE BED, INSTEAD OF SOME NEST IN A TREE. WELL, IF YOU WERE TO LET ME DO THAT, I MIGHT SEE MY WAY TO GIVING YOU BACK SOMETHING SHINY IN RETURN.

The soul-fish glowed in the bird, brighter than ever.

The leaf on the tree fell.

Lilly caught it.

“Oh,” she said.

* * *

Lilly’s ‘Oh’ was as deep and cold as the darkness around her.

She couldn’t trust the Connor-bird, but the temptation was strong. One night, that’s all, and Nana would be hers again.

How would it work, though? Would all three of them be together inside her? Would it be like one of those noisy family parties when everybody shouted over each other and nobody listened?

And what if he wouldn’t let go as he’d promised? What if he wouldn’t return her body or Nana’s soul?

The Connor-bird flew from Lilly’s shoulder and found a nearby branch to perch upon.

PONDERING, ARE YOU MISS?

“One night?” Lilly asked.

ENOUGH TIME TO EAT A GOOD MEAL AND LAY MY HEAD DOWN ON A PILLOW. LET’S SAY, TIME ENOUGH FOR AT LEAST ONE DREAM BEFORE I HAND BACK THE KEYS TO THE HOUSE.

“You promise?”

The Connor-bird lifted its twig and talon legs, then thought the better of it.

WOULDN’T CROSS MY HEART EVEN IF I COULD MANAGE IT. A CROSSED HEART AIN’T WORTH MUCH. I DON’T SUPPOSE MY WORD WOULD MAKE FOR GOOD CURRENCY EITHER. YOU’LL JUST HAVE TO ROLL THE DICE, MISS, AND SEE IF THE NUMBER YOU’RE WISHING ON COMES UP.

She knew she couldn’t trust him, but his promise was another light in the dark to follow.

“What if I say no?” Lilly asked.

The Connor-bird shrugged its feathers.

THEN YOU DON’T GET WHAT I GOT, AND I DON’T GET WHAT I WANT, AND NOBODY GETS WHAT NEEDS GETTING.

“Why should I trust you?”

The Connor-bird cackled.

YOU SHOULDN’T. BUT WHAT ELSE IS THERE TO DO?

Grab you again, but this time I won’t let go.

Lilly saw a way forward in a lie. And it wasn’t a lie, not really. You couldn’t lie to a liar.

“One night?” she said.

TIME BETWEEN MY HEAD HITTING THE PILLOW AND ME LIFTING IT UP AGAIN. THAT’S ALL I’M ASKING FOR. AND A PIE. THAT PART’S NOT UP FOR NEGOTIATION.

“Okay,” Lilly said.

I’ll be quicker next time. He’ll be upside down and emptied before he has time to caw.

The Connor-bird hopped excitedly on the branch. WELL, NOW. LET’S NOT DAWDLE. COME ON IN CLOSER, MISS, AND LET’S HAVE AT IT.

How he would do it, she wasn’t sure. He’d been a light that struck the bird, then the bird swallowed Nana. An old nursery rhyme floated into Lilly’s mind:

There was an old lady who swallowed a fly,

I don’t know why she swallowed a fly – perhaps she’ll die!

Lilly took a step forward.

She took a step back.

“Wait,” she said.

FOR WHAT?

“Tell me how, first.”

HOW WHAT?

“How it works.”

YOU CLOSE YOUR EYES, AND BEFORE YOU KNOW IT, I OPEN THEM. THAT’S THE LONG AND THE SHORT.

“And my Nana?”

The soul-fish glowed in the Connor-bird’s stomach as Lilly spoke.

YOU SURE YOU WANT TO THINK ON THAT?

She wasn’t.

“Yes,” she said.

WELL, WHAT GOES DOWN, MUST COME UP, IF YOU WANT YOUR NANA OUT OF THIS BIRD, THAT’S FOR SURE. AND THEN…WELL, THERE’LL BE SOME FEASTING IF YOU WANT YOUR NANA LODGING WITH US. IT WON’T BE A TASTY PIE, THAT MUCH I CAN GUARANTEE.

“Oh,” Lilly said, the sequence of events becoming clear in her mind, and murky in her stomach.

ONCE IT’S DONE, THOUGH, WE’LL ALL BE ONE BIG HAPPY FAMILY.

Lilly thought of all the churning and burning of her stomach, and worry came up like bile.

“Will it hurt Nana being in my stomach?”

The Connor-bird flapped a wing over the orange glow in its stomach.

SHE’S DOING JUST FINE IN THIS BIRD’S STOMACH, SO FAR. I DON’T THINK A CHANGE OF SCENERY WILL DO MUCH HARM.

Lilly couldn’t think of anything but the how. The second part of the nursery rhyme returned to her mind.

There was an old lady who swallowed a spider

That wriggled and jiggled and tickled inside her;

She swallowed the spider to catch the fly;

I don’t know why she swallowed a fly – perhaps she’ll die!

She knew what the Connor-bird meant to do once he was behind her eyes. He would do as he’d done when he took over the bird: swallow the soul-fish down in one gulp.

The thought of it turned Lilly’s stomach, but the thought of saving Nana settled the nausea.

“Okay,” Lilly said.

YOU’RE READY?

“I’m ready.”

YOU DON’T LOOK READY. The Connor-bird’s black eyes trapped the reflection of her concern.

“I am.”

THEN CLOSE YOUR EYES, AND STEP FORWARD.

Lilly stepped, but kept her eyes wide.

LISTEN, I DON’T KNOW MUCH ABOUT THE INS AND THE OUTS OF THIS THING THAT I CAN DO, BUT I KNOW THIS: YOU’LL WANT TO CLOSE YOUR EYES WHEN IT HAPPENS, UNLESS YOU’RE KEEN ON GOING BLIND. AND I’M NOT KEEN ON LOOKING OUT FROM EYES THAT AREN’T WORKING. SO, CLOSE ’EM.

Lilly took one last glance at the bird, placing it like a target in her mind, then closed her eyes.

A few seconds, she thought. As soon as the light appears, I’ll grab the bird. As soon as the—

Lilly winced.

The light shined through blood and skin and turned everything red.

No!

Lilly swam against the red tide. She found her hands, then the bird.

And then its feathers.

And then the meat below.

She turned the bird upside down.

The red tide washed away, and Lilly opened her eyes to see the Connor-bird’s twig and talon legs kicking furiously under her grip.

She shook the bird, and the old nursery rhyme played in her mind.

There was an old lady who swallowed a cat;

Fancy that to swallow a cat!

She shook twice.

She swallowed the cat to catch the bird,

She swallowed the bird to catch the spider

She shook the Connor-bird a third time.

That wriggled and jiggled and tickled inside her,

She swallowed the spider to catch the fly;

The soul-fish glowed in the belly of the bird, but hadn’t dislodged.

She shook.

The bird coughed, but it wasn’t a soul that came out, but a caterpillar. And then a worm. And then a beetle.

Lilly shook again. And again. And again. Losing count, but still the sauce in the bottle wouldn’t come out.

But something else loosened. A laugh. The kind of laugh a raven would laugh if it could laugh. A laugh that shook feathers free.

Lilly shook the bird harder, but the laugh only grew louder in response.

And between the laughter, his voice in her head.

SILLY LITTLE MISS.

Lilly shook harder.

THINKING YOU COULD FOOL A FOOL.

Lilly shook, but slower now.

YOU’VE HAD YOUR FUN, MISS. NOW LET’S GET ONTO THE BUSINESS WE AGREED UPON. FIRST THINGS FIRST, TURN ME THE RIGHT WAY UP.

Lilly’s grip weakened.

He’s not going to give me Nana. It’s all a big joke to him.

But I can’t just let him fly inside me like he did the bird. I can’t. He’ll never come back out. He’ll—

Nana’s voice sang to Lilly through years of memories. She sang an answer.

I don’t know why she swallowed a fly – perhaps she’ll die!

If I kill the Connor-bird will the soul-fish survive? Lilly thought. Can I get it out in time after the bird is dead? And once it’s out, will I have to do what the bird did and gulp the soul-fish down?

Lilly’s stomach churned.

OY! MISS. PUT ME THE RIGHT WAY UP, SO WE CAN GET ON WITH WHAT WE SHOULD BE GETTING ON WITH.

But Lilly wasn’t listening. The last part of the nursery rhyme came back to her.

perhaps she’ll die!

Perhaps.

Perhaps.

Or maybe not.

Lilly’s grip tightened on the Connor-bird’s neck.

OY! WHAT ARE YOU DOING?

Lilly grabbed the Connor-bird as though it was a rounders bat and walked towards the nearest tree.

Once. Twice. Three times would surely do it, Lilly thought. Even she could hit the ball one out of three goes when playing rounders.

OY!

But its voice wasn’t the only one she heard now.

“Lilly!” uncle John shouted, as he crashed through the woods towards her. “Put that filthy thing down, right away. It’s probably covered in mites.”

Lilly lost her momentum. The swing was half-swung and the tree fully missed.

“Do you hear me? I said put that thing down right this minute.”

Lilly lost all her strength.

“You’ve exhausted my very last nerve, girl. I’ve been up and down all night, putting on lights, waiting for you to come to your senses, scrambling about in these bloody woods. I just won’t put up with this nonsense one moment longer. Put. That. Filthy. Thing. Down.”

Lilly lost her grip.

It was over. Nana would never get into Heaven now.

The Connor-bird flapped, righted itself, and flew at Lilly’s face.

She put up her hands.

She closed her eyes.

Then the light came.

The red tide washed over her.

This time she couldn’t swim.

* * *

The world was full of shadows, and one of them spoke.

“You’re awake at last. Good,” Uncle John said.

The forest was gone, and in its place the spare bedroom in Nana’s house emerged.

“You had me worried. Maybe you’ll learn a lesson about not playing around with wild creatures, won’t you?”

Nana, Lilly thought. The soul-fish. The bird. The man.

The man. What was his name?

Connor.

Remembering it sent a shiver through her.

Is he gone? Did I get rid of him somehow before I—

A laugh echoed through Lilly’s mind that wasn’t her own.

YOU’D LIKE THAT, WOULDN’T YOU? GET RID OF OLD CONNOR. DON’T HAVE TO KEEP UP YOUR END OF THE BARGAIN WITHOUT ME HANGING AROUND.

“Go away,” Lilly said.

“I will not,” Uncle John said.

HE’S A CARD, THIS ONE. YOUR FATHER?

“Uncle,” Lilly said.

“What?” Uncle John said.

“Where’s Nana?” Lilly said.

“Stop this foolishness now, Lilly,” Uncle John said.

SHE’S HERE, LITTLE MISS. I SAID WE’D BE LODGING TOGETHER, DIDN’T I? SOMETIMES EVEN A FOOL KEEPS HIS WORD.

The voice sounded like it was coming from the bottom of a well.

Uncle John pushed in the covers at the edge of Lilly’s bed.

“We’re going to leave first thing in the morning. I don’t want a repeat of all these shenanigans. You hear me?”

She heard, but she was listening to another voice.

AFTER THE TIGHT QUARTERS INSIDE THAT BIRD, I THOUGHT YOU’D BE A LOT MORE COMFORTABLE THAN YOU ARE, I MUST SAY.

He’s talking about me, Lilly thought. About my body.

She shivered.

Uncle John’s shadow fell across her as he pressed a hand to her forehead.

“No temperature, at least. Lucky girl. Another hour out there you’d have caught your death.”

I did catch death, she thought. Its name is Connor.

DEATH! HA! WHAT FLATTERY. I WAS JUST ON MY WAY TO SOMEPLACE ELSE WHEN YOU CAME ALONG.

Lilly held her tongue as well as her thoughts.

“Right then. Time for you to get some sleep. We’ll be up early in the morning and on our way. Promise me you won’t do anything stupid again?”

Lilly said nothing.

YOU’D BEST TELL HIM WHAT HE WANTS TO HEAR, OR HE WON’T GO AWAY.

“Lilly? Do you promise?”

GO ON, MISS. HE WON’T LEAVE UNTIL YOU DO.

Lilly nodded.

“Good. I’ll be back in the morning. Have all your things packed and ready. Night, Lilly.”

“Night.”

Uncle John’s shadow left the room and faded out under the light of the landing.

GOOD, NOW WE CAN GET DOWN TO SOME REAL BUSINESS. FIRST THINGS FIRST, THAT PORK PIE I WAS THINKING ABOUT, DO WE HAVE SUCH A THING IN THIS PLACE?

Lilly thought of the fridge and what she’d seen the last time she looked. Cheese and milk. Eggs and salad. Sausages. Bacon. No pies.

And as Lilly thought, Connor saw.

SHAME ABOUT THE PIE. I SUPPOSE A FRIED BREAKFAST WOULD DO JUST AS WELL, IN A PINCH.

She’d been old enough to make toast, and boil a kettle for a cup of tea, but Nana had never let her use a pan on the hob.

“I don’t know how to,” Lilly whispered into the darkness of her room.

I DO. YOUR NANA TOO. I’M SURE BETWEEN THE THREE OF US WE CAN MUSTER UP A BREAKFAST.

Lilly’s heart ached at the mention of her Nana, but then she saw the light. Faint at first, until she pulled the bed covers over her head, and in the breathing dark she saw the soul-fish swimming inside the milky waters of her chest.

“Nana?” she whispered.

The soul-fish flicked its tail, but it wasn’t a good enough answer.

All this fuss over me. What a circus.

“It’s you?” Lilly whispered.

Who else would it be?

“I didn’t think you…I didn’t know you…”

TOUCHING. NOW, ABOUT THAT FRY-UP?

He’s a pain, this one. Pipe down. I’m talking with my Lilly. Go on, dear.

Lilly didn’t know what to say, or how to say it. But she knew how to smile, and how to wrap her arms around herself and hug as tightly as she could.

Nana was alive. Or at least her soul was. And that meant Nana still had a chance to get into heaven.

CAT GOT YOUR TONGUE? OR MAYBE IT WAS A BIRD?

Or maybe it was you? Can’t hear myself think with you nattering on. No wonder they let you dangle from that branch.

LISTEN, YOU OLD HAG, I’M THE ONE IN CHARGE HERE. YOU’D BEST REMEMBER THAT, IF YOU WANT TO GET TO WHEREVER IT IS YOU THINK YOU’RE GOING.

Nana huffed.

Seen your type before, I have. All mouth, no trousers. Now shush while I talk with my Lilly.

DON’T PUSH ME.

Or what, dear? You’ll talk at me some more? You’ll think a bit more about your stomach? My God, man! You have a head filled with meat and potatoes. Do you think about anything other than food?

I COULD THINK A THOUGHT, BUT YOU WOULDN’T LIKE IT, OLD LADY.

Sausage rolls next, is it? Or maybe trifle?

I WARNED YOU.

The world darkened beneath the bedsheets, and the soul-fish vanished into the black.

And in the darkness, a thought grew. Connor’s thought. And the thought was a man as black as burned wood. And the man held a knife in the gnarled root of a fist. And the man wore as smile as empty as a starless sky. And the man raised the knife and brought it—

Down!

Down!

Lilly jerked.

A laugh followed, as sharp as any blade, soon joined by Connor’s voice inside Lilly’s head.

YOU SEE? YES. YOU SAW. HOW COULD YOU NOT?

Connor laughed his stabbing laugh again.

But Nana wasn’t afraid.

Proud of yourself, are you? Scaring a little girl like that?

PRIDE COMETH BEFORE THE FALL, AS THEY SAY. BUT I’M NOT FALLING.

Six inches, less?

WHAT ARE YOU PRATTLING ON ABOUT?

Lilly wanted to know the same. Although both Nana and Connor occupied her brain, the back and forth wasn’t the same as if they were all in the same room. It was like that game they’d played once at school, where they passed whispers one to another, until the whisper became nonsense.

The distance between your neck and the tree branch. That’s how far you fell, wasn’t it? Six inches?

YOU WON’T GOAD ME WITH THAT, OLD LADY.

Did you hear it snap?

THE BRANCH HELD, AS WELL YOU KNOW. I WOULDN’T BE HERE IF IT HADN’T HELD. I WOULDN’T BE WASTING MY TIME WITH A—

Nana laughed, and it wasn’t the dark sound Connor had made, but close enough to put a chill through Lilly.

I mean your neck, you fool! Snapped like a twig, I’m betting.

SHUT UP!

Just like that. Snap! No more Connor.

YOU JUST SHUT YOUR MOUTH, YOU OLD HAG.

Bet they didn’t even have to use a rope. A shoelace would do the job. Or a cotton thread.

I DIDN’T GO OUT EASY. NOT CONNOR. NO WAY.

Man like you who tries to scare a child, my bet is you were begging and crying to the very last. Isn’t that so?

Connor tried to puff out his chest, but it wasn’t his chest to puff, so all that happened was Lilly took an extra breath.

HUNTED ME, THEY DID. I GAVE THEM A MERRY CHASE. THEN I FOUGHT THEM, TO A MAN. FIVE, MAYBE TEN MEN, BEFORE THEY FINALLY SUBDUED ME. NOBODY WAS GOING TO TAKE OLD CONNOR OUT JUST LIKE THAT. TOO WILY, YOU SEE. LIKE A FOX, I WAS, BACK THEN.

Connor lifted Lilly’s hand to tap the side of her head, but it went limp before he could.

IF IT HADN’T BEEN FOR THOSE WOODS, AND THE TIME OF YEAR, AND ALL THE FALLEN TREES, I’D HAVE ESCAPED, I TELL YOU. ONE ROTTEN OLD TREE IS ALL IT TOOK. WASN’T LOOKING AT MY FEET, YOU SEE, I WAS TRYING TO FIND A WAY OUT OF THERE AND…OY! ARE YOU LISTENING TO ME?

Watching.

The word was ice.

WATCHING WHAT?

Lilly wanted to know the same, because all she’d seen was the grey dark of the room and the bright landing light beyond. What was there to watch?

You.

MAKE SENSE, WOMAN.

It all makes sense, now I’ve seen.

SEEN WHAT?

What lies on the other side of a lie.

Confusion rolled in across Lilly.

YOU’VE SEEN NOTHING.

I’ve seen everything.

More ice.

LIAR. LIAR.

Let’s see.

And before Connor could speak, or Lilly could feel, a memory revealed itself.

A man as black as burned wood. A fist all rooted and gnarled. A knife glinting in those roots.

Then a face.

A boy, terrified.

HOW?

No…what.

WHAT?

Watch.

They watched.

A terrified boy, a terrified man, their faces swapped back and forth. Boy to man, man to boy.

The memory changed in a flicker.

The woods now, animated under the falling snow. Each winter-blackened tree a flickering frame.

Tracks in the white, red and black. Black and red.

Talking pictures, now.

The baying of dogs.

The baying of men.

And then…

NO, PLEASE! DON’T.

As the face of the boy and the man swapped, so did the woods.

Winter to summer. Summer to winter. Man, and boy. Boy, and man.

Winter.

The man ran through the snow. One boot cherry red from spilled blood, one boot black with soot. One hand grey with cold. The other warmed red by splatter.

Summer.

A boy, his feet as clean as his hands, ran the same path, disturbing, briefly, the shafts of light reaching in through the canopy.

Light and dark. Dark and light. But the fear remained the same. It was without a season, and always there.

As was the falling.

In winter, the man’s red boot struck a buried log, and he tumbled.

In summer, the boy toed a rock and took a similar spill.

They hit the cold white/warm green ground at the same time.

They turned in both seasons.

And the same shadow fell over them.

NO.

Connor tried to close eyes that weren’t his.

The shadow fell in summer. It fell in winter. It was as long as the months and the years of a life.

A shadow that held a knife as bright as the promise of murder.

A shadow that didn’t belong to Connor, but shared his blood and a last name.

NO!

And Connor said the same in a summer long before and a winter long after.

The apple fell, and not too far, Connor.

YOU DON’T GET IT.

Neither did Lilly.

“Nana?” she said.

Boys carry things around with them, Lilly. They can never let go. Lots of useless junk in their pockets: sweet wrappers, lint, marbles, sticks and stones, and shadows, too.

Lilly still didn’t understand, but there was no need to ask, as Nana was already answering.

Here’s a boy, all nerve endings and twigs, he is. He tries to run, but he’s as clumsy as he is frail. That’s why the shadow chases him. The shadow knows, and the shadow hates the little boy for being so breakable.

“Why?” Lilly asked.

Because it reminds the shadow that it’s breakable too. That everything is. And the shadow doesn’t like that.

“Who is the shadow?” Lilly asked.

The moving picture of memory started up again. Flickering. Revealing. Answering.

The shadow caught light from the summer sun and a torch in the winter dark. Under its illumination, a face formed. Connor and not Connor all at the same time.

FATHER.

Connor spoke as if the word itself was a confession.

Apples don’t fall far from the tree. Shadows either.

YOU DON’T KNOW ANYTHING.

I know what I saw.

IT’S NOTHING.

It’s everything.

IT’S A LIE. ALL OF IT. I JUST MADE IT UP.

No. See?

And the memory movie machine started up again.

Two hands, both black and gnarled. Different whorls at the end of the fingertips, but similar blood running in the veins beneath.

A father, plunging the glinting blade of a knife into a mother.

A son, grown, driving the same glinted knife down into a father.

A son, grown into a man. A man turned into a shadow. A shadow on the ground beneath a tree, swinging in the breeze.

NO, PLEASE.

That’ll teach you for trying to scare a child, you fool.

I WON’T DO IT AGAIN. I PROMISE.

Lilly felt her Nana furrow her brow.

Swear?

CROSS MY HEART AND HOPE TO—

Connor tried to lift a hand and cross a heart that wasn’t his, but could do neither.

Isn’t that a liar’s promise?

YOU HEARD THAT?

I heard everything.

I MEAN IT, THIS TIME.

I don’t believe you.

I SWEAR!

On what? Not a heart, I hope?

I’LL PROVE IT TO YOU.

How?

YOU TELL ME.

Nana thought, and in so thinking, she scratched an itch that didn’t belong to Lilly.

If you keep yourself quiet for a bit, and let me speak to my Lilly, then maybe I’ll take you at your word.

FINE.

I mean it. I’ve had a peek inside that head of yours, and when it’s not pies, it’s all darkness.

CROSS MY—

Just shut your gob, and we’ll get along fine. Okay. Now, Lilly. We need to have a little chat.

“Yes, Nana,” Lilly said, her voice a warm breath under the covers.

Not much time left. Birds will be gone soon. Night too. Do you understand what I’m telling you?

Lilly felt it rather than knew it. It was a twist in the stomach. A cold heat across the skin.

“I think so,” Lilly said.

Got to get back out there, first thing. Hope one of them birds still as an eye for something shiny. First though, we’ve got to figure how I’m getting out.

I’D LIKE TO KNOW THAT TOO.

Shush, you.

Lilly felt Connor thinking. It was a cold and hot thing, like a shifting fever.

I’M NOT LEAVING.

You are.

NOT A CHANCE.

Last chance.

YOU DON’T SCARE—

Nana shifted inside Lilly, pushed, pulled, as if moving something around, then…

The flickering cinema of memory started up again.

The wind blew through some other season, and there, a shadow swung beneath the limb of a tree like the pendulum of a grandfather clock.

Tick-tock.

STOP IT.

Tick.

STOP IT.

Tock.

YOU’RE A HORRIBLE OLD WOMAN, YOU KNOW THAT?

Have to be with so many horrible young men around. Learned that early on. Lilly will learn it too. But not now. Now we’ve got to figure out an escape plan.

YOUR ESCAPE PLAN.

Ours. Unless you want to spend the rest of time as an uninvited guest in somebody else’s house?

BETTER THAN A BLOODY LIGHT IN THE TREES.

Is it now?

I’LL GET TO EAT, AT LEAST. MAYBE A DRINK OR TWO. MAYBE I’LL—

Lilly. I’m going to teach you a lesson that all women have to learn sooner or later. Are you listening to me?

“Yes, Nana.”

Throughout this life you’ll meet a lot of men. Some tall, most short. Some kind, but most meaner, and every single one of them with an opinion they just can’t help but share with you, whether it’s right or wrong. It’ll mostly be wrong, though.

Lilly nodded beneath the sheets.

And here’s how you deal with them.

A static filled Connor’s mind. Words filtered through, but never fully formed. It was a radio station he couldn’t tune into, but one that kept mentioning his name.

HEY! WHAT ARE YOU SAYING ABOUT ME? WHAT ARE YOU SAYING?

The static crackled where ears might have been.

HEY! YOU BETTER NOT BE TALKING ABOUT ME. I SWEAR I’LL—

— and that’s how you do it.

DO WHAT?

Show him, Lilly.

SHOW ME WHAT?

The static returned to Connor’s mind. Not as dense as before. Not as crackling. Words slipped through, but none formed a sentence, only a feeling.

A feeling of surprise. Of joy. And there, on the edge of both, power.

WHAT’S GOING ON?

Nothing, if my Lilly doesn’t want it to. Are you following me, Connor?

He wasn’t.

“My Nana showed me how to make you go away,” Lilly said, her voice almost a giggle under the sheets.

THAT’S IMPOSSI—

Static filled Connor’s ears, or where ears might have been, and then was replaced by Lilly giggling.

She’s a quick learner, is my Lilly. And that’s what you have to look forward to if you insist on hanging around her. She won’t listen to you. Won’t even hear you, if she doesn’t want to. You’ll be the loneliest man that ever was. Or maybe you’ll wish you were.

WHAT?

If I’m trapped here with you, you’ll wish you were alone in short time, believe me. I’ve got eighty years and a bit more of stories to tell, and it’ll take eighty more to tell them. And you’ll be my only audience.

YOU CAN’T.

I will.

YOU WON’T.

Nana cleared a throat that no longer existed.

At the age of eighteen I bought a Singer sewing machine. I’d saved up for almost two years from my job as a chambermaid. It was an expensive thing to own for such a young an inexperienced girl at the time. But I wanted it more than anything else in the world.

A MEMORY OF YOUR TEENAGE YEARS? IS THAT ALL YOU’VE GOT?

A pretty dress was good enough for most, but I wanted a machine to make my own. A device that would allow me to have a dress no other girl would have.

KEEP GOING. I DON’T CARE.

Beneath the machine was an iron pedal that when you pressed down on it, made the sewing machine wheel turn. Of course, there were electrical models already at that time, but I loved the look of the older machines, and they worked just as well as any new-fangled devices.

YOU’LL GET BORED BEFORE I—

The feel too. Sometimes, when I worked on that machine, I imagined myself a concert pianist; the hum and whir of the needle as it stitched were notes in the grand piece of music I was playing. Then came the patterns. Hundreds of them.

I’M NOT GOING TO BUDGE!

There were hundreds, thousands of them, and I can still recall every one of them to this day. And all the special words we used for those patterns. Bet and BO and AG and... I’ll start with the first, and we’ll go through to the last, shall we?

ENOUGH. I GET IT.

Do you?

YOU’LL KEEP NATTERING ON UNTIL THE END OF TIME. I GET IT. YOU WON’T GIVE ME A MINUTE’S PEACE.

Exactly. So, are you going to be quiet and let me get on with what I was telling my Lilly?

NO.

No?

NO. FIRST THING’S FIRST, I WANT SOME FOOD. THAT’S WHERE I DRAW THE LINE. IF YOU WANT ME OUT. THEN I WANT FEEDING. NO FOOD, NO CONNOR.

Food? Are you serious? After all this, you’re still going on about food?

LISTEN, IF I’M GOING BACK OUT THERE TO SPEND ANOTHER CENTURY IN THE WIND, I WANT SOMETHING TO EAT BEFORE I DO. THAT’S THE DEAL. NO FOOD. NO CONNOR.

Static filled Connor’s ears. The radio untuned. Then the station came back.

Fine. You can grab something from the fridge before we go. Agreed?

AGREED.

Connor nodded. Nana too. And Lilly nodded three times.

* * *

The house was a menagerie from landing to door. The stairs a cat’s meow when stepped on. The banister, brushed lightly, a growling dog. Every wooden joist a talkative parrot as it settled.

I HOPE THAT UNCLE OF YOURS ISN’T A LIGHT SLEEPER, LITTLE MISS.

That boy of mine sleeps heavy, I know that much. Always did. Better luck waking a statue than rousing him for school when he was young. We’ll be fine. You’ll be fine, Lilly.

She didn’t feel fine as she toed every step on the stairs going down like a swimmer testing the water.

Didn’t matter. The cat meowed, and the dog growled despite how carefully she tread.

THIS HOUSE NEEDS OILING.

You get used to the sound a house makes when you live in it long enough. Same for your bones. Everything creaks and moans given enough time.

I REMEMBER MY BONES. ’SPECIALLY THE SOUND THEY MADE WHEN THEY SNAPPED.

Lilly pushed on through the dark of the house to the kitchen, where moonlight streamed in through the window and pooled in the chair where Nana usually sat.

DINNER TIME.

Connor’s voice echoed inside Lilly’s head as she opened the fridge door and let out a yellow ghost of a light into the kitchen. It ran out across the floor and possessed the seat opposite the moonlight.

TIME FOR MY FEAST! I’M GOING TO EAT EVERY LAST—

As the fridge door stopped, so did Connor.

YOU’RE KIDDING ME! MOTHER HUBBARD HAD MORE THAN THIS!

The fridge was empty.

HOW CAN THIS BE? I SAW IT! BACON. SAUSAGE. I SAW LOTS OF FOOD IN HERE BEFORE. NO PIES. BUT…BUT…

You saw what was. What Lilly saw before.

BEFORE WHAT?

Before I died and my son came in to clean up the house, is my guess. The dead don’t eat much. Neither does a son who doesn’t intend to hang around. Either which way, there was never going to be a pie, Connor.

YOU TRICKED ME.

You tricked yourself.

I WANT SOMETHING TO EAT. I’M NOT LEAVING IF I DON’T GET SOMETHING TO EAT.

You will leave, you stubborn goat.

Connor tried to cross arms that weren’t his. Lilly’s hairs stood on end.

I’M NOT BUDGING. I WANT SOME FOOD NOW, OR I’LL START SCREAMING. I MIGHT NOT BE ABLE TO PULL THE STRINGS OF THIS PUPPET GRANDCHILD OF YOURS, BUT I BET I CAN BELT A FEW SOUNDS OUT IF NEED BE. ENOUGH TO WAKE THE LIVING. LET’S SEE NOW…

Lilly felt a tickle at the back of her throat.

Right, that’s enough of that.

MAYBE I’LL SING A SONG, THAT’LL DO IT. I BET THAT SON OF YOURS WON’T SLEEP THROUGH A CHORUS OR TWO OF AT THE OLD BULL AND BUSH, EH?

The tickle in Lilly’s throat became an itch that someone else was scratching.

A song.

Lilly couldn’t stop it.

“COME, COME, COME AND MAKE EYES AT ME

DOWN AT THE OLD BULL AND BUSH,”

The voice was half a little girl and half a drunken man. A record played at two different speeds simultaneously.

Oh, you’ve done it now, you silly fool. Lilly? Remember what I taught you? Do it again now, if you would.

Lilly squeezed her eyes shut. She bit on her lips. A familiar rhyme filled her head.

There was an old lady who swallowed a fly,

I don’t know why she swallowed a fly – perhaps she’ll die!

HEY! DON’T YOU—

Connor’s voice fell into static and drowned there. Nana’s remained.

Well done! Now, keep that rhyme in your head until I tell you, okay?

Lilly nodded.

There was an old lady who swallowed a spider

Good girl. Just a little more, and we’ll be there. Keep it up!

Lilly crept through the house to the front door, lifted the latch, and slipped out into the night.

The moonlight met her there, all white tinsel and sparkling. But Lilly didn’t gawp. She kept the rhyme going as she walked out under its sparkle.

That wriggled and jiggled and tickled inside her;

Lilly jogged out across the field, towards the woods.

She swallowed the spider to catch the fly;

There, the moonlight darted like silver fish between the trees. And where it swam, so its light reflected on the roosting ravens.

There were hundreds of them now. More ravens than there’d ever been leaves on the branches, it seemed.

Where had they all come from? Lilly wondered. And in wondering, she forgot her rhyme.

And Connor remembered his song.

Lilly’s mouth opened. Lilly’s mouth closed.

“COME, COME, COME AND MAKE EYES AT ME

DOWN AT THE OLD BULL AND BUSH,”

Lilly! Concentrate!

“Sorry, Nana.”

Lilly closed her eyes, but her mouth moved beyond her will.

“COME, COME, DRINK SOME PORT WINE WITH ME,

DOWN AT THE OLD BULL AND BUSH.”

I swear, once we’re out of here, I’ll give you such a good hiding, Connor!

A laugh escaped Lilly’s mouth that she didn’t own. She clamped her hands over her lips, trying to stuff it back in.

YOU OLD FOOL! YOU CAN’T TAN A GHOST’S HIDE.

We’ll soon see.

YOU’LL SEE NOWT. BUT YOU’RE GOING TO HEAR PLENTY. ANOTHER CHORUS, EH? LET’S SEE IF THAT SON OF YOURS SLEEPS AS DEEP AS YOU SAY.

Lilly! Now!

NOT FAST ENOUGH, YOU OLD FOOL! I’M THE ONE PULLING THE STRINGS. NOT YOU.

Lilly turned on heels that no longer belonged to her. She cupped her hands around her mouth and opened wide.

Nothing came out.

WHAT’S THIS NOW? WHAT ARE YOU TWO PLAYING AT?

The silence wasn’t an answer he wanted to hear.

HEY? WHY CAN’T I HEAR YOU? WHAT ARE YOU TWO COOKING UP? HEY!

Connor had heels and hands, he had the lips and the vocal cords, and he could turn them this way and that, but the mind was a locked room and he didn’t have the key.

TALK TO ME OR I’LL—

A voice inside the locked room spoke, but he couldn’t hear it.

IF YOU DON’T SPEAK, I’LL, I’LL…

Muted laughter came from behind the locked door.

I WARNED YOU!

Connor turned the body. And turned it again. And kept turning. A dizzying circle.

I’LL KEEP GOING UNTIL SHE FALLS OVER! I’M WARNING YOU, YOU OLD FOOL!

Lilly turned.

But it was Connor who felt the spin. A stomach that didn’t belong to him churned, and he felt that churn.

The world spun. The land and the moonlight, the black trees, and the ravens roosting in them, merged in a sickening blur. He felt bile rise in a throat that wasn’t his. He felt the stomach that wasn’t his, rebel.

He felt the girl bending forward. She took three deep breaths into her lungs, and the merry-go-round stopped.

OKAY. I’LL STOP. I WON’T DO IT AGAIN. JUST SPEAK TO ME.

Silence.

PLEASE. I SWEAR, I WON’T DO ANYTHING ELSE. I SWEAR ON MY LIFE.

Life? You haven’t got one to your name. And your name isn’t worth much to begin with.

THERE YOU ARE!

Didn’t go anywhere. Nowhere to go. Not yet, anyhow.

NOT NEVER, PROBABLY. SEE?

Connor lifted Lilly’s arm and pointed to the trees, where the ravens roosted in thick clumps.

I see plenty of birds. That’s what I see. Only takes one.

Connor folded Lilly’s arms.

AND THEY’RE ALL SLEEPING. IF I COULDN’T WAKE THEM WITH A SONG, WHAT MAKES YOU THINK YOU CAN? AND EVEN IF YOU COULD, YOUR SOUL’S ALL LOCKED UP IN HERE WITH ME, AND IT’S NOT GOING ANY PLACE.

Is that a threat? Are you saying you’re not going to let me go?

MAYBE, MAYBE NOT.

Maybe we don’t need your help. Did you think of that?

OH, YOU NEED MY HELP, YOU OLD FOOL. YOU AND THE LITTLE MISS. THOUGHT YOU WERE BEING ALL CLEVER LOCKING ME OUT, DIDN’T YOU? GIVING CONNOR THE OLD SILENT TREATMENT. WELL, WHO’S LOCKING WHO OUT NOW? AND WHO’S GOT THE KEY? ME, THAT’S WHO.

More than one way to skin a cat, Connor. You should know that.

AND CURIOSITY KILLED THAT SAME CAT, SO MAYBE YOU SHOULD START LISTENING TO OLD CONNOR AND GIVE HIM WHAT HE WANTS BEFORE—

Lilly. Now, if you would be so kind.

WAIT! NO. DON’T—

Static drowned Connor out. A rhyme took its place.

There was an old lady who swallowed a fly,

Lilly knelt and dug both her hands into the dirt. She shovelled the sodden leaves and the damp earth behind her. The rhyme played in her head, but with new lyrics.

I do know why she swallowed a fly. Perhaps she’ll—

Lilly froze as her fingers touched something moving in the earth.

Perhaps she’ll—

That’s it, Lilly. You can do this.

There was an old lady who swallowed a worm,

A shiver ran through Lilly as she pinched the worm between her fingers. She stood.

I do know why she swallowed a worm. Perhaps she’ll—

That’s it. Be brave now. Be a big brave girl for your Nana.

Lilly dangled the worm in front of her face. She opened her mouth. She closed her eyes tight.

I do know why she swallowed a worm. Perhaps she’ll…fly?

Lilly dropped the worm into her mouth and clamped her mouth shut. She swallowed.

It wriggled and jiggled and tickled inside her, but Lilly held on, hoping that what Nana had told her would work.

The rhyme was forgotten now. The static too.

WHAT DID YOU DO? WHAT IS THIS?

Lilly squeezed her jaw tighter as the worm wriggled its way down her throat.

Good girl, Lilly. You’ve made your Nana proud.

The world resumed its spin. Faster. Faster. Faster.

OH NO YOU DIDN’T! YOU CRAZY OLD—YOU—OH, GOD I’M GOING TO BE—

Lilly dropped to her knees. She opened her mouth wide as her stomach emptied itself.

First the worm.

Then the bright soul-fish.

Then a white light, flashing like a broken bulb as it popped out from her mouth and rocketed into the trees, bouncing off each.

Lilly blinked tears from her eyes. Her head felt like a balloon with all the air let out of it. There were no more voices. No more rhymes. No more Nana. But there was the soul-fish on the ground before her.

“Nana?”

She scooped it up in both hands.

“I did it,” she said, her voice shaking. “It worked.”

It had, just as Nana had told her in that secret locked room of the mind. And now there was only one thing left to do: keep her promise.

Lilly stood. She held her Nana up towards the raven-black trees.

As she did, the white light of Connor raced towards her.

Lilly clasped the soul-fish close to her chest. She squeezed her eyes shut and—

A coldness passed through her.

She opened an eye. Then the other. But the bright white light was gone from the world.

Lilly let out a sigh.

At least she wouldn’t have to deal with Connor again. He was gone and—

FANCY MEETING YOU HERE, LITTLE MISS!

Lilly remembered what Nana had told her and began the rhyme anew in her head.

There was an old lady—

WHO THOUGHT SHE COULD GET THE BETTER OF ME. I DON’T KNOW WHY.

There was an old lady who swallowed a—

WORM? THAT WAS SOME CRUEL KIND OF TRICK TO PLAY ON ME BY THAT OLD WOMAN. BUT I’VE GOT TRICKS OF MY OWN.

There was an old—

WAS. ISN’T ANY LONGER. THERE’S ONLY ME AND THEE NOW, LITTLE MISS. AND OH, WHAT FUN WE’RE GOING TO HAVE TOGETHER. WHAT TREATS WE’LL HAVE.

Without Nana to urge her on, Lilly was lost. Without Nana to tell her what to do, Lilly wasn’t sure what she could do. The rhyme seemed to have vanished from her memory. All that was left was the soul-fish in her palms, and the annoying voice of Connor in her head.

FIRST, WE’LL FIND US A FRIDGE THAT’S FULLY STOCKED. THAT’S WHAT WE’LL DO. BOUND TO BE ONE IN A FARM NEARBY, I’LL BET.

“No,” Lilly said, but her voice was weak as it came out.

PIES AS FAR AS THE EYE CAN SEE AND THE STOMACH CAN TAKE. THAT’S FIRST THING. THEN WE’LL HAVE A FEW BEERS. I’M SURE YOUR DAD HAS SOME OF THOSE BACK IN YOUR OWN HOUSE, RIGHT?

“No,” Lilly said, and she risked a peak at the soul-fish in her palm.

It was weaker now. Its colour beginning to fade.

FORGET THE OLD WOMAN. TOO LATE NOW. BIRDS ALL ASLEEP. DREAMING THEIR BIRD DREAMS.

“No.” This time the word came out more forcefully. Lilly remembered what her Nana had told her to do in that locked room of the mind away from Connor’s gaze.

She turned to the trees.

She held her hands up

Please.

Please.

Ple—

WHAT ARE YOU PLAYING AT? DIDN’T I TELL YOU THERE’S NO CHANCE OF A—

First one. Then another. Then another. The ravens woke.

Please let this work.

THIS WON’T WORK.

Please.

YOU MAY AS WELL MAKE A WISH ON A SHOOTING STAR, LITTLE MISS. YOU’VE GOT NO CHANCE.

Please.

Ple—

The trees shed their black leaves all at once as the birds took flight.

The moon, exposed now, gazed down, the ravens a black flickering eyelash over its white iris.

They were leaving. One by one. One by one. Merging with the blackness beyond the moon’s eye.

TOLD YOU SO. FOOL’S ERRAND.

Lilly stretched her hands out.

“Don’t go! Please don’t go!”

THEY AIN’T LISTENING. LITTLE MISS. GOT BETTER THINGS TO DO, AND BETTER PLACES TO BE.

The soul-fish flopped in Lilly’s palm, and flickered like a candle losing its flame.

“Please!”

BEST YOU GIVE UP NOW AND—

One raven peeled away from the rest and drifted down towards Lilly.

Please.

Please.

The bird came to rest at Lilly’s feet, its head bobbing and nodding in the direction of her hands.

Lilly dropped to her knees and held out her palms.

The raven hopped back, suspicious of the offering.

PUT YOUR HOPES ON A DUMB BIRD AND YOU’LL GET NOTHING BUT PECKED FOR YOUR TROUBLES. TRUST ME.

Lilly didn’t. She only trusted her Nana, and the promise she’d made.

Lilly pushed her palms forward.

The bird met the gesture, pecking around the edge of her hand.

The soul-fish was a faint pulse of orange now.

NOT ENOUGH LIGHT IN THAT SOUL FOR A BIRD, LITTLE MISS. THEY LIKE ’EM BRIGHT. THAT’S WHAT. SHINY.

Lilly pushed her hands forward again.

The raven shook its head as though saying no. It hopped back.

“Please, take her,” Lilly said.

THAT BIRD YOU GOT THERE ISN’T INTERESTED. BEST GIVE UP THE GHOST NOW, LITTLE MISS.

Give up the ghost.

Give up the ghost.

Give up the ghost.

The words reverberated through Lilly’s mind like an echo in a cave.

Give up the ghost.

Give up the ghost.

Give up the ghost.

They reached Connor soon enough.

HEY! WHAT ARE YOU THINKING OF DOING? WHAT ARE YOU—

Lilly scratched around on the ground before her again.

DON’T YOU DARE!

Her hands pulled back the earth and her fingers touched the wriggle and tickle of a worm.

I’M WARNING YOU!

Not just one wriggle, but two, and three, and four, all beneath Lilly’s fingers.

IF YOU’RE THINKING OF DOING THAT AGAIN, THEN YOU’D BEST—

Lilly scooped up a handful of worms and jammed them into her mouth like they were sweets.

DAMN YOU! YOU’RE JUST LIKE YOUR—YOUR—OH GOD! NOT AGAIN!

Lilly wretched.

The worms, tangled up in white light, dropped from her mouth. Lilly pounced, and mashed them down into the earth, until the light had faded and all the wriggle was gone.

“Get lost! Get lost, Connor!” she shouted, still mashing.

The raven, curious at the action, hopped forward. It pecked at the ground where Lilly had buried the light. It cocked its head and looked up at her.

Lilly took a deep breath.

Her arms shaking, she held out Nana in her palm.

But there was nothing left of her Nana now. All the colour had drained from the soul-fish. What Lilly held in her hand was a broken promise.

“Please. Take her. Or…Or…”

Lilly began to cry. The tears burned her skin. They dripped down off her cheeks and into her palm.

“Please,” she said, but it was the please uttered in dreams too far from waking.

Still.

“Please. Please. Please,” Lilly said.

And with each please, a new tear.

And with each tear, the pool in her palm grew.

“Please.”

And in that pool a light grew.

At first a flicker. A flame in a window in a storm. But the flame grew stronger, stronger still.

Lilly opened her tear-burned eyes to the new light in her palm.

The candle was lit now, and the flicker much stronger as the soul-fish came back to life. Bright. Brighter still.

The raven hopped at Lilly’s feet in excitement.

The soul-fish glowed brightly now. Brighter than ever before. It lit up the forest all around her.

The bird pecked at Lilly’s hand impatiently.

And now she didn’t want to let go. She didn’t want to ever stop seeing that light in her hand, or lose her Nana again.

But she knew she had to be brave. Nana had told her what to do. Nana had made her promise.

Lilly held her cupped hands to her chest. She felt the warm golden glow beating in time to her own heart.

“Goodbye, Nana,” she said, then held out her palms.

The bird gulped down the soul-fish in one, and took off.

There, in the moon’s eye, Lilly saw an orange glint, and then, in a blink, it was gone.