The Burning House by Neil Spring

Author:Neil Spring
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Tags: Horror, Suspense, Thriller
Publisher: Quercus
Published: 2018-10-17T23:00:00+00:00

9

With a horrid fluttery feeling in her stomach, Inghean Kilgour walked beside her mother – who held her hand tightly – along Glendole Road, towards the corner building where her friend Clara had lived.

She had told her mum she didn’t want to come with her to the shops. Not today. Her mum had asked her why, and she’d told her mum why. But her mum had just said she had to ‘stop this foolishness’. That nothing bad was going to happen.

Inghean knew her mother was wrong. But her mum didn’t realise the pictures were back in her head. She didn’t want her mother to know anything about them, in case it meant she’d be taken back to the bad place with the locks, where the nurses were supposed to take care of her. But it was so hard for Inghean to ignore the whispers, because what they were telling her was that Clara, her good friend, was in danger. And not just Clara. Everyone in Abersky.

Because of him.

Because of that house.

Because of what he was doing there.

Inghean had felt this way since the day the man with the yellow curly hair and the black turtleneck jumper had approached her on the loch shore a few weeks ago. He had a memorable smile. Pearly white. That smile was the reason she had ignored her mother’s advice about talking to strangers; it was his smile that had captured her gaze when she should have been paying better attention to his eyes and the darkness in them. And it would have been impolite to walk away from him, especially because he said he knew her mother, had done business with her.

The man with the curly yellow hair had a soft, magical voice. It made her think of the bedtime stories she had heard as a child – a gentle voice lulling until she felt tired.

She remembered him telling her that he was preparing for something important and that Inghean should go and visit him sometime in his magical house. She would be perfectly safe. She would know when the time was right to go there, because Inghean was a special girl with special talents.

Was she? She didn’t think so. Her drawings were special, maybe; the power behind them. And he had a name for that power; it was a name she had heard before, a name her grandmother had used: an da shealladh, the gift of premonition.

The second sight.

It was funny, but Inghean couldn’t remember how her conversation with the man on the loch shore had ended. All she remembered was drifting over the loch in her mind, swooping low over the water; then opening her eyes, expecting to see him standing right there, next to her, only to find herself utterly deserted at the water’s edge. She couldn’t even remember hearing the scrunch of his feet on the pebbles as he walked away. Which he must have done, surely?

Yes, of course, but the fact that she had to ask herself that question was probably part of the reason that Inghean was drawn to the shoreline.

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