The Grief House by Rebecca Thorne

Author:Rebecca Thorne
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781526656278
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Published: 2023-02-18T00:00:00+00:00

The Star (Reversed)

Blue turned her back on the painting, but the image burned itself into her vision. She staggered to the table. Her mouth smacked of bitter medicine, so strong it was hard not to gag. She felt that same pressure against her nose and mouth, felt invisible feathers and dust fill her windpipe. Tension pressed at her temples, her brain throbbed, her stomach churned from the flavour in her mouth and the dryness in her throat.

‘You all right?’ Milton said. He had stood up and shuffled over to look at Sabina’s canvas.

Blue poured a glass of lemon water, downed it in one go.

This was doing her no good. It wasn’t healthy. Over the past few years she had gone through a rigorous re-education, had numerous explanations for the visions she saw, yet she couldn’t get a handle on a single one. She wouldn’t go back, wouldn’t fool herself into believing that thing was real.

It was not real.

‘I’m fine, just thirsty,’ Blue said and refilled her glass. She had slipped the card with the Wi-Fi code into her back pocket and she could sense it there; an unpinned grenade if Mrs Park found it, a divining rod for freedom if she did not.

Minutes ago, the creature with long blonde hair and pale skin had balanced on the bridge above Mr Park’s head. Now she sat, faceless, in the branches of Sabina’s weeping willow. Blue had the feeling that, were she to turn around now, she would see it again in the room, hands reaching out, hair limp, dark eyes dead holes in her head.

Milton’s wheeze turned into a cough, a deep-chested painful sound, and Blue turned, asked him if he was OK. She was expecting his usual eye-roll, but he shook his head, coughed again and again into his elbow. His eyes were fixed on Sabina’s picture.

‘What is it?’ Blue ran to him, patted him on his back, but he shook her off and pointed instead to the water jug. Blue grabbed him a glass, and he sipped it in tentative swallows. His spare hand gripped the edge of his walking frame.

‘Can I get you anything?’ she said, and he shook his head, muttered something about his hat, a photo, but his voice was hoarse and low.

Blue couldn’t look at Sabina’s painting again but didn’t want to leave Milton’s side. Outdoors, the clouds thickened, and the view became grey, the shape of Joshua Park a blur of shadow and movement. The vice around Blue’s temples tightened; the medicinal taste became stronger.

‘Looks like Jessica,’ Milton muttered. He was looking at the girl in the willow tree.

‘Eleanor, Lauren, Jessica Pike.’ She spoke without thought.

‘What did you say?’ Milton startled. His eyes bulged at her; his thick white eyebrows knitted together.

‘Nothing, just—’

‘What do you know about Jess?’ His face was red, and Blue couldn’t tell if he was angry, scared, worried, surprised. The only sensation she had was the pharmaceutical taste on her tongue, the tension in her head, the dryness in her throat.

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