Holly and the Nobodies by Ben Pienaar

Author:Ben Pienaar [Pienaar, Ben]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HellBound Books Publishing LLC
Published: 2021-06-03T16:00:00+00:00

29

Under the House

Spring, 2002

A ll alone, at last. Only, it never felt that way. It wasn’t Jane’s whimpering – Gregory had put a stop to that an hour before. He picked up his scotch, the cool glass a blessing on his bruised hands, and strode back and forth around the study, trying to make sense of it – this niggling, biting, crawling feeling all over him. It was worse when Holly was yelling and jumping around and distracting him, and it was worse still with Jane fussing and running errands for the little tyrant and being so damned weak. But even when they were gone it was still there, a sense of someone watching him all the time and worse, someone laughing at him. It was intolerable.

Everything seemed intolerable, lately. Coming home to a house of mess and chaos and trying to put it into order as best he could. Searching endlessly for a minute alone to soothe his mind with some scotch and never quite finding it. Being laughed at behind his back. Being watched.

He closed his eyes and took a long sip, listening to the sounds of the night. The grandfather clock ticked steadily from the second floor. It would be two or three by now, and the only sounds should have been the natural creaks and groans of the house itself. But there was a layer beneath that: a wall of silence that hid something more sinister.

An imposter.

He suspected that Holly had been talking to the neighbour children over the walls, or as they passed the front gate in the hours after school ended and he had yet to arrive home. He heard her talking when she was alone, and he wondered if she wasn’t sneaking others into the house. Boys, maybe – like the weaselly little beasts he dealt with at the school.

The thought made his guts twist in rage. That was the problem with that damn girl – and it was all her mother’s fault. This tendency to sneak, to hide around corners and dark places, to be deceptive. She lied, and her mother lied to cover it up. He couldn’t help but think they were conspiring against him, concealing some secret from him.

He took another deep sip and was on the point of letting his thoughts carry him away, as he often did on these long nights, brooding and pacing with glass in hand and teeth clenched – when he heard something over the clink of ice blocks. He paused with a mouthful of scotch and opened his eyes.

Holly stood in her pink pyjamas at the entrance to the kitchen, curly haired brown teddy dangling from one hand. “Daddy?” She said, her voice full of terror – knowing that to be awake at this hour and disturb him was two crimes in one. He gulped down the mouthful, the burning fuelling the fire inside him. Perhaps he could shake it out of her now that her mother wasn’t around to get in the way – what this great secret of theirs was.

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