27.3

 

Below her feet are flagstones, but the grout between them has long since been eroded and replaces with the soil from withered leaves and garden debris. Her foot nudges a pebble, and as it moves away, a quabble of woodlice separate and scuttle in all directions, one particularly large one carrying its young like a clan of undercarriage opossums. A jobbing gardener could make a week of work out of this garden.

She reaches the door and her hand hovers over the wood, about to sound out a confidant knock. Should it be as foreboding as her she feels? Tap… Tap… Tap…. Or a jaunty ‘shave-and-a-haircut?’

She doesn’t need to knock at all.

The mantle shows her the shape of the moment inside: There is a woman at the sink, her hair matted and unbrushed, the stains of dinner still displayed on her apron. He hands are elbow deep in dishwater a film of scum driving the last few soap bubble to disconsolate suicide. She is staring through the window in front of her, or at her own reflection, if she can see one through the glass.

A man is still at the table, hands clenched, jaw tight, the remains of a small meal in front of him and the detritus of a family dinner spread across the Formica tabletop. Words have been spoken, and they have not been pricked free of poison.

Upstairs, the child is listening, waiting, holding their breath, hoping the argument goes no further, that her father will calm down and not do The Thing he does when he gets overwhelmed with emotion.

The next seconds of this average family in an average house in an average street will, without an intervention, nudge the world into a downward spiral which will summon the Horsemen to cull the contagion from the surface of the land.

Roisin closes her eyes, feeling the mantle send tendrils of knowledge up her spine and into her frontal cortex. It awaits her decision, for any intervention will he hers to make, but it has the duty of ensuring she is fully informed of all the details that have led to this point. She feels the world waiting.

She opens her eyes and steps through the door. Not by opening it, by being a part of the shape of this moment. The house accepts her the way a dream accepts a new figure — seamlessly, silently, as though she has always belonged here.

Inside the hall, hung with coats and a neat line of boots and shoes, where only the smallest pair despoil the conformity, the air is thick and heavy with unsaid words and pent-up emotions. The breath here has never been so bated, so pregnant with the weight of Things To Come. Shaft of light divide the shadows into piano keys, light and dark, dark and light, each shadow flat or sharp as her glance passed over them. She walks toward the kitchen, her sneakers silent against the cheap nylon carpet. Roisin realises what she’s wearing. Jeans, tattered and muddy from the walk home from the gallery and from fighting angels in the house, a loose tee-shirt and her second-best sports bra fighting the stretch of her shoulders. She’s the Fifth Horseman for fucks sake. Even if she doesn’t ride a horse, she should look the part. Lawyer’s robes, maybe, or a judge’s cape. Maybe even Liberty’s toga.

When she                                                                                                       enters the kitchen the woman at the sink doesn’t turn and the man at the table doesn’t look up. She knows already that the child upstairs will not move, though whether she is aware of Roisin’s presence is a matter best left to the psychotherapists in her future.

Roisin stands in the doorway, casting a shadow longer and broader than any she has ever cast before, sunlight from the glass panels in the front door behind her cast prisms across the floor, across the walls, and onto her hair, History is about to be derailed by something older than the house itself. The mantle hums.

This close, she can see the man has stubble across his cheeks and longer hairs art the perimeter of his shave, as well as old scars from where he’s tried to tidy those remaining. His skin has a sheen of oil or grease, pinheads of black where dirt has taken refuge from cleanliness in his pores. His fingernails are ragged, bitten short by necessity and practicality. His right hand has been battle hardened into a sea of calluses by tools, so he  must be a manual worker;  a mechanic or builder. Across the room, the woman’s hands are still immersed in the greasy water, and Roisin draws them gently out, revealing water-sodden flesh hanging off the finger bones. How long has she stood in this position?

Roisin inhales.  And for the first time, she acts as the Fifth.