Hauntologies by David Rees-Thomas

Author:David Rees-Thomas
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: horror
Publisher: Acid Publishing
Published: 2021-08-21T06:00:00+00:00

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I stay in the chair for a few hours, just thinking, watching, as darkness encircles the house, just the orange glow from a few streetlights and the constant churning sound of the ocean only a hundred meters away, maybe even closer.

I know that Linda is still awake also, and after a while I walk up the stairs and tap on her door. She doesn’t open it or acknowledge me in any way and I don't tap again. I suppose it doesn’t make any great difference if I tell her that I know or not, might even make things easier between us.

I keep my voice to a whisper, but loud enough that she will hear me. “I know what happened, Linda. I know about your life, and I’m sorry. I know that probably doesn’t mean much, but I am.”

Again she doesn’t answer, and that’s fine. I head back down and continue staring out into the black, the occasional flash of the foam tipped waves illuminated by a moon that has struggled to be visible through the vast cushion of cloud.

A little while after, when my body has ceased to be the vessel for my thoughts, where I’ve disassociated from the physical world, and I’m just sitting there, in a trance, awkwardly meditating on the simple rhythms of the sea, the day and the night, my own life, I sense a change in the air flow and return my thoughts to my body so that I can look around.

Linda comes in, softly padding over to the bay window, and she sits in the other chair, her face so pale like the fading moon, in the strange shadowed darkness of the room, a room which is our portal to the ever expanding forces of the natural world.

“I’m so sorry,” I say, without looking at her, and both of us just stare out the window. “I can’t even begin to imagine.”

“I’m sorry you lost your job,” she says. “And that they said such things about you.”

I nod, and glance at her. Thin scars track up and down her wrists, the skin paler than the rest, illuminated by this strange thin moonlight.

“I only meant to kill him, that was my only intentional act, and for years I felt as though the universe punished me for this one mistake by killing my kids, it all seemed so unfair, it all seemed so nasty and wretched and evil. I’d endured so much at his hands, and now I was getting punished again.”

Gentle rain taps against the open window, adding another layer of nature sounds, and she continues.

“Eventually I realized that none of this was true, that there was nothing in this except what happened, that’s it, no punishment, no divine anything, just a series of events compressed in time.”

I shift in my seat, becoming a little more aware of the physical world again, and I don't want to feel aware, I want to retreat back into this other world that we’ve created.

“For me, I think I’m not really surprised by what I did to Carter.

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