The House of Little Bones by Beverley Lee

Author:Beverley Lee [Lee, Beverley]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2021-09-20T22:00:00+00:00

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David climbed into bed and pulled the duvet close. The lamp on the nightstand was off, although he’d deliberated leaving it on.

He remembered Luca used to have night terrors a lot when he was a child. They’d started after a New Year’s Eve party when Charles had returned from upstairs, his face pale and drawn. It took three months for Luca to trust David enough to tell him what had happened that night.

One evening in high summer, they’d been sitting on a sand bank watching the setting sun liquefy as it fell into the ocean. Luca laid his head on David’s shoulder, his skin glowing with a touch of too much sun, and David could still recall Luca’s scent, a warm, clean musk with a hint of citrus from his sunscreen.

‘It felt real, you know, when it was happening.’ Luca closed his eyes for a moment, and David turned his face to kiss his brow. ‘It still feels real if I think about it too much.’

Luca had believed. He still believed, and for the first time, lying here in the dark, David understood the abject fear of being afraid of something you don’t understand.

Something that defies explanation.

The first time Luca sleepwalked, they were staying at a cottage David had rented in the Dales. It was close to Eyam, the village infamous for cutting itself off during the plague of 1666, thus condemning its inhabitants. David wanted to get a feel for the place and take some research photos for his next project.

The tiny thatched cottage stood next to the churchyard and they’d spent an afternoon wandering through the weathered stones, enjoying the fact no one gave them a second glance.

By supper time Luca started to feel nauseous. His head hurt and he’d told David it was a migraine. David fussed over him, packing him off to bed and waiting until the pain pills had kicked in.

A line from one of his recent books had come back to him. A character discussing psychic abilities with a sceptic. Empathy with the dead can take many forms. One of the most common is a migraine, for the lifeless can only speak through pain.

He shook his head at fiction poking its way into his reality.

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