Chapter 10.1

 

Roisin’s breath caught. It looked familiar, this silhouette, but she couldn’t remember from where. Tall despite the hunched shoulders, a crooked lean to one side and the odd stance. Had it been a film she’d seen? Something on the internet? Babbadook or Slender Man? Something from Creepy Pasta? She blinked, and the figure dissolved into nothing—just a trick of the light, a shadow cast by a passing car, a shape made by branches and rain.

She exhaled slowly, her pulse settling.

She kept walking. The rain softened again, turning to a mist so light it was hard to know whether to keep the umbrella up. One the one hand the rain was so light the weight of an open brolly was an inconvenience and on the other – well, she was still getting wet. The mist was almost worse than the downpour, since it penetrated even the dense fibres of her clothing and shoes, which clung to her, heavy and cold.

By the time she reached the bandstand the rain had stopped altogether, and although the sun was still sojourning behind the clouds, she felt oddly awake; more present than she had all day. The park around her seemed sharper, edges clearer, as though the rain had stripped away a layer of illusion. She was able to check the route on her phone and adjusting slightly. According to the map on her phone she wasn’t far from the house now, She was already close to the northmost exit and then it was only two minutes along Kingston, five along Newhampton and the up Evans road and she was there.

The rain began again by the time she reached the house, and she paused at where the gate would have been if it was still attached to the posts, and not leaning against the inside of the knee-high wall marking the boundary of the property. Water dripped from her hair, her sleeves, the hem of her coat. She felt as though she were crossing a threshold—not just from outside to inside, but from one version of herself to another.

She took a step across the boundary just as a van roared past behind her, making her jump from the sudden engine noise. She turned to look and spotted the same silhouette as earlier, a hundred metres or so back the way she’d come. Only when another car passed, obscuring her vision for no more than a second, did it resolve once more into branches, a streetlight, a battered umbrella hanging from a washing line.

She shook her head, ridding herself of both the fear and some of the rain from her hair, and headed to the front door. By the time she’d reached it, fumbled out her key and got through into the tiny vestibule at the bottom of the stairs, she was soaked all the way to her bones. Her clothes clung to her skin, heavy and cold, as though the clouds had tried to claim her as their own. She closed the door behind her with a soft click, shutting out the sound of dripping gutters and distant traffic. The quiet inside felt fragile, like something that might shatter if she moved too quickly.

She stood for a moment at the bottom of the stairs to her flat – she felt it was hers, now, not just Pauls. Her super-ego, the one she’d laid bare on the wall of her room, had claimed it as their own. She let out a long breath, letting the silence settle around her. Water dripped from her sleeves, forming small dark circles on the battered Edwardian tiles. Her hair clung to her cheeks. She felt as though she were still outside—still walking through the rain, still carrying the weight of the gallery on her shoulders.

She peeled off her coat first. The fabric made a soft, wet sound as it dropped it to the floor, and she stooped to drag it up to one of the free coat hooks in the vestibule. It looked sad next to Pauls heavy greatcoat, surplus from the military and sold for a fraction of the cost the government had paid for it. Her jumper followed, heavy and misshapen from the rain, then her boots, her shirt, her jeans. Each layer felt like shedding a skin. She moved slowly, almost ritualistically, as though the act of undressing might loosen the images lodged behind her eyes.

But they remained.

The rib.

The spine.

The gaze from beneath the decomposing flesh, staring into her soul.