The Vessel by Adam Nevill

Author:Adam Nevill [Nevill, Adam]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Ritual Limited
Published: 2022-10-30T22:00:00+00:00

25

The rain-speckled bus window overlooks the grey smear that is the world. Sat in the window seat, Izzy’s eyes flick across a landscape that increasingly urbanises and darkens, casting its shadows and symbols and abrupt noises at her glum face. With her shoulder she holds her sleep-deprived mother upright. Mum’s dozed off, her long face weary from defeat. A faint whistling passes through Jess’s nose.

A flicker of white on waste ground outside, between two buildings, catches Izzy’s eye and makes her alert. When the next space between two soot-shaded facades appears, Izzy eagerly peers into the gully and the waste ground beyond. When the wheezing bus slows in traffic, for just a moment, she glimpses a distant figure dressed in white. Izzy smiles.

The figure acquires more detail the harder she looks. Impossibly, Flo is there and dressed in her gown from the night before. Upright with her arms raised from her sides and her palms uppermost, her feet hover a short distance from the soil and patchy weeds.

Izzy’s eager fidgeting to see more of the figure wakes Jess, who comes round, blinking. She looks at Izzy then follows her daughter’s eyes.

When Jess sees Flo in the distance, framed between the two buildings, the elderly woman’s spindly arms are drawing circles in the air. The aged face has tilted back and her mouth either gulps at the sky or cries for help.

Bewildered by the apparition, Jess stands up. She tugs open the top window. From the distance, a piped and bony melody pierces the open slot in which drizzle and cold air spray.

‘You mind?’ a gruff voice announces from behind her seat.

The bus lurches, tipping Jess forward then planting her back in her seat. The figure of Flo vanishes from sight as the bus ambles on. Behind Jess, the irritated passenger stands up and slams shut the little window.

Jess turns to her daughter and for a few moments she can’t speak. She swallows to regain some control of her voice. ‘Did you see…’

But Izzy has lowered her face and is now engrossed in inspecting the little unicorn that dangles from the strap of her rucksack.

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