The Silence by Pearce Daisy

Author:Pearce, Daisy [Pearce, Daisy]
Language: eng
Format: azw3, epub
Published: 2020-02-29T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 18

It has been just three days since I stopped taking my pills – the ‘drifters’ – and I’m wide awake. It feels like a circuit has blown in the soft tissue of my brain. My thoughts knot and tangle and the clarity, when it comes, is so stark I immediately shrink from it. The room is cold. Blue, lying at the foot of my bed, lifts his head and barks once, sharply. He looks at the ceiling and stands, whining uneasily, ears flat against his skull. The air feels electrically charged, an imperceptible buzz. I check the time, it is nearly a quarter to three in the morning, and I am starting to shiver. Blue begins to pace, and I cross the room to open the door for him, pulling my blanket around my shoulders. In the hallway the smell is rising like heat. Something like lakes and deep water slightly corrupted. Vegetative and overripe. With the light on I can see another huge damp patch on the stairwell. It covers nearly a third of the wall, right down to the skirting boards. I can see the places where it has dripped down onto the carpet. It looks to me like a figure in profile, one hand raised. I think of immurement, of being walled in. I can even see cracks in the plaster spreading out like tendrils of hair.

Blue is whining downstairs, back and forth in front of the back door. I open it for him and he disappears into the dark garden. I switch on the lamp and see another damp patch on the wall, blooming like a toxic fungus. Another in the sitting room, slightly hidden by the sofa, so wet it is almost black. I call for Blue but my voice has shrunk. It is a whisper. ‘Blue.’ There is a patch of water on the floor beside the back door. I’m sure it wasn’t there when I let the dog outside. I smell it but it is not urine, it is briny and rich. Seawater.

‘Blue!’

This time I hang in the doorway, peering into the darkness. There is no movement in the garden, no barking. The rain has stopped but the branches are still dripping, I can hear it.

‘Blue?’

I go outside. The moon is barely visible behind the clouds and there are no stars, just a perfect darkness. I cannot see the dog anywhere and I think of the cliffs and their lethal drop-offs and I am suddenly afraid. I call him again and turn back to the house thinking I should go after him, thinking I should get some wellies and a torch.

It’s not the movement I see first, although something has drawn my eyes to the upper window, my bedroom window.

There is a hand pressed against the glass, long, pale fingers which leave no residue, ghost-white. I stare and stare and then something shoots past me, moving at speed, and I see it’s Blue cowering in the doorway, and when I look up again there is nothing there at all.

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