Oblivion by Lene Kaaberbol

Author:Lene Kaaberbol [Lene Kaaberbol]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781782691136
Publisher: Steerforth Press
Published: 2016-08-14T04:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 16

The Sisters

“‘Go away’,” I said to The Nothing. “Are you sure that’s what they said?”

“No,” she began to waver. “Not if you don’t think so.”

But she was sure, or at least she had been before I started questioning her.

“Who are they?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “I’ve never seen them. I can only hear them… very faintly.” She pointed a wingtip at her head. “In here.”

I got goose pimples all the way down my spine. Now a lot of people might have dismissed it and concluded that The Nothing had lost her marbles in captivity, but I remembered the kestrel dive-bombing in front of me like a fighter plane. And since meeting Cat, I’d learned that not all the voices in your head are your own.

“What do they say?”

“Just ‘go away’.”

“Are they angry?”

“No. Not with you.”

“Then why do they want me to leave?”

“I don’t know.”

I took a deep breath. Closed my eyes. Tried listening with my wildsense, and listen properly. But although I tried for several minutes, I picked up nothing but silence, which in an old house isn’t really silence but a creaking, a whisper, a gurgling in the pipes.

Hang on. Wait.

Someone was here. Right on the other side of the door I was thinking of opening, there was life. But it was a strange form of life. I sensed many different breaths, many different hearts, and yet… oddly unified. Something was waiting, without stirring, and although I was convinced there was more than one life behind that door, they were all completely identical.

“Someone’s in there,” I said, pointing at the door. “Is that what you mean?”

“Oh no,” The Nothing said. “That’s just the sisters.”

“Sisters?”

She nodded. “My sisters. They turned out better than me.”

“And they’re the ones who want me to leave?”

“Oh no,” she said again. “They’re not like that. It’s… the others.”

I closed my eyes. Tried to get past the still, waiting presence which The Nothing called her “sisters”. It was difficult, it was as if they formed a wall around me, but faintly, ever so faintly, I began to sense…

Oscar.

There are times I get the feeling that he and I are connected by an incredibly thin, red thread, finer than a fishing line. Most of the time I can’t see or feel it, but now that I concentrated… I was almost certain that it was him. Almost.

I opened the door – first only a crack, then when nothing happened, a little more.

On the other side of the door there was a hall with a large staircase leading all the way up to the top of the house. There wasn’t very much light, only a single big round stained glass window above what I assumed must be the front door. Several of the window panes were cracked or were missing completely, so only the iron frame remained. This hall might once have welcomed guests with some degree of warmth and charm, but those days were long gone. An icy draught blew through the broken window, and the floor was covered with bird droppings.

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