Path to the Night Sea by Alicia Gilmore

Author:Alicia Gilmore [Gilmore, Alicia]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Regal House Publishing
Published: 2018-08-31T15:47:38+00:00

Day Four

The voice woke her. He was calling.

‘Ellie.’

It had always been this way. There had always been Daddy. He called and she came.

She rolled over in bed and flexed her legs. She felt stiff all over. Her body ached from digging and she groaned. She hurt, but it wouldn’t do to complain.

‘Us Clements women don’t complain.’ Grandmother had told her that. She’d lost her husband and she didn’t complain. She had pain, but pain didn’t matter. No point talking about it. That wouldn’t help. Ellie sat up. She could be like Grandmother. She’d be tough. Besides, she had to look after Daddy. A delay in attending to him could result in a blow, a slap. It hurt him to hurt her, he had told her that. Sometimes he almost looked sorry. A flash of regret after the words, ‘You made me do that.’

‘Ellie!’

His voice seemed louder, angry. She’d neglected him, spent too long thinking of herself, not of him. Of course he was still with her; there wasn’t a world without him. She started to walk down the corridor to his room but stopped, her skin prickling. The very air felt wrong. The house should have been still, silent, waiting for the living to make it a home. But she felt…something. As if someone had intruded while she had slept the better part of the morning away, something that had spied into the hidden corners of her world.

‘Not alone,’ she whispered. Ellie scratched at her arm, scratched until the skin was red and weeping. Perhaps these walls that had borne silent witness were now releasing their secrets. If not the walls, if not someone, then…

‘Daddy?’ She pushed open the door to his room and shivered. There was something in there, but it wasn’t Daddy. Her Daddy didn’t have those sunken eyes. Her father who art in…where? Ellie pulled the door shut and placed a hand on it, wanting something solid beneath her touch, something real. Rules, routines, these were real. Things to do. Breakfast.

‘A cup of tea and toast.’ That would make everything better.

Ellie filled the kettle with water and smiled. The shell she had gathered on her first night out was sitting on the windowsill. It was hers. Proof. She’d been to the ocean, all by herself. She’d been brave. Her fingertips traced the swirls and whorls of the shell, its silky lustre inside and the rough scaling outside. It had been warmed slightly on the sill and grew warmer still in her hand. Closing her eyes, she let her finger circle the lumpy exterior.

‘I found you,’ she whispered ‘You’re mine.’

The clock in the living room chimed. She jumped. Daddy’s clock. Shouldn’t it have wound down by now? It was Daddy’s job. Daily he would set the clock, check it, and polish its wooden surface. The only other thing she had ever seen him polish was his gun. Ellie placed her shell down on the mantelpiece next to the clock and picked and scratched at the raw skin on her arms.

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