11.5

 

Once Steve had shifted all five of the remaining boxes to his room in the attic, Roisin tried to go back to sleep. She stretched out on the bed, pulling the duvet over her shoulders, turning her face toward the cool pillow. For a moment, she thought she might drift. Her breathing slowed. Her body softened.

But the moment she closed her eyes, the colours returned.

Not as images at first—just tones, bruised purples and sickly ochres blooming behind her eyelids like watercolours spreading through wet paper. Then the shapes followed, slow and deliberate, as though rising from deep water.

The rib.

The spine.

The half‑formed face turning toward her.

Her eyes snapped open.

The room was dark except for the faint glow of the streetlamp filtering through the curtains. Shadows pooled in the corners, soft and unmoving. Nothing shifted. Nothing breathed. But her pulse was too fast, her chest too tight. She glanced at her phone, plugged in to charge next to her bed, and saw it was three thirty-three AM. How long ago was it that she’d been racing for the train at Laverstone station? Five days? Six? It felt like weeks had passed and she was no closer to becoming a professional artist than she’d been in her mother’s house.

She sat up, pushing the duvet aside. The air felt thick, as though the room had been holding its breath with her. She ducked under the curtain divider and crossed to the window. The rain had thinned to a drizzle, tapping lightly against the glass. She pressed her fingertips to the pane. The cold steadied her for a moment.

But then—just at the edge of her vision—she thought she saw movement in the reflection. A flicker of colour. A smear of pale light.

She turned sharply.

Nothing.

Just her room in the dim light. Just the damp underwear in the cardboard box she was using as a laundry basket. Just the grinning skeleton she’d drawn staring back at her from the shadowed wall.

She exhaled, long and shaky, but a movement caught her eye.

A flicker in the ceiling.

No on the ceiling but inside it, as if she were inside a graphical video game and there was a clipping error, sending sections of one fractal image through another that was supposed to be solid, leaving a shifting amalgam of the two. She stared at it, at the shifting colours, reminiscent of the kaleidoscopes she’d played with as a child, where she could look through one end and a set of mirrors would reflect six-sided patterns as she rotated the tube. She shifted her makeshift palette off the table and moved it under the anomaly. By standing precariously on the top, she could reach the shifting patterns. They gave no sensation as they clipped through her fingers, and she likened it to putting her hand in the beam of a projector. The colours remained, but the overall image was fragmented.

She returned to the bed and lay down again, this time on her back, staring at the moving fragments. It was obviously one of Steve’s new acquisitions; one he’d left on the floor and was projecting down through his floorboards and into the plaster beneath. It was oddly soothing, and she had a fleeting image of looking up at a mobile with small soft toys dangling from a yellow moon. She tried to empty her mind; to focus on the rhythm of the rain, the shifting patterns of the artifact, the faint grumble of Steve snoring above her.

But the images seeped in anyway.

This time they didn’t come as paintings. They came as sensations.

A pressure behind her ribs.

A warmth spreading through her spine.

A faint, impossible flutter beneath her shoulder blades.

She sat up again, heart pounding.

“No,” she whispered into the dark. “Not this.”

She pressed her palms to her sternum, as though she could hold herself in place, keep herself from shifting into something she didn’t understand.

The room felt smaller now, the air heavier. She got up again and paced, the old carpet cool and rough beneath her bare feet. She tried to shake the feeling off—literally shake it, rolling her shoulders, rubbing her arms, grounding herself in the physicality of her body.

But the sensation lingered.

Not pain.

Not fear.

Something else.

Something like… anticipation.

She stopped in the centre of the room, breathing hard.

“I’m not changing,” she whispered. “I’m not.”

But the words felt thin, unconvincing.

She returned to the bed, curling on her side, pulling the blanket over her head like a child afraid of the dark. She squeezed her eyes shut.

This time, the images didn’t come as colours or shapes.

They came as a presence.

Something standing just behind her, just out of sight. Not threatening. Not comforting. Simply there. Waiting.

She turned over, eyes wide, heart racing.

The room was empty.

But she didn’t sleep.

Not for a long time.

And when she finally drifted—just before dawn, when exhaustion blurred the edges of her thoughts—she didn’t dream in pictures.

She dreamed in light.

A thin, trembling light that pulsed behind her ribs, as though something inside her was trying to wake.