* * *
They are both waiting for me as I pull up. Lila wears her favourite shorts, cut dangerously high up her thighs. As far as I know, she’s never had a haircut. She doesn’t need one. Her hair hangs loose and lovely, almost to her waist, so much glossier than the unruly hair Mum and I inherited. Izzy always said it was from her Brazilian father, who had come to Scarborough as a child prodigy football player and left the season after. But then sometimes she told us that Lila’s father had been the son of a Russian immigrant who was killed by the Bratva. Either way, Lila has managed to skip our dark mess of hair, and has a brown curtain of loveliness instead.
One thing we do share are our dark eyes. We both have taupe eyes with chestnut flecks.
Izzy is like Mum, but with softer features. Her hair is long and wild, too, but not quite as thick as mine or Mum’s. She always wears skinny jeans and loose vest tops, and at thirty-four years old she is as beautiful as she was at sixteen. I’ve seen the photographs. Her smile comes easily, and she’s never still, but she moves in languid motions with her arms: a flick of the wrist to remove a stray hair, a sweep of her hand to get a crumb from her top, a stroke of her fingertips as she greets you.
Lila waves, but not just with her hand, with her entire arm, like a person lost at sea. Her eyes are bright in the evening sunshine. Izzy leans on one hip, a crooked smile on her face.
“Mary!” Lila shouts as I exit the car. I smile to her.
“What’s cookin’, good lookin’?” Don’t ask me why, but that’s been my Aunt Izzy’s greeting for me since I was seven years old. We meet each other halfway and she runs a finger down the scars on my neck. “I’m so sorry, Mary.”
I pull away. “It’s nothing.”
“What happened to you?” Lila asks. She stands next to Izzy with her arms folded and her brow furrowed.
“It’s from the fire. But at least I got out okay. Not everyone did,” I say.
“The one in the hospital?” Izzy asks.
I nod.
She shakes her head. “Su should never have sent you to that place.”
“Mum thought she was doing what was right—”
“By sending you to a psychiatric ward?” She lets out a hollow laugh. “I should have talked her out of it. I would never send Lila to a place like that.” Izzy’s eyes fill with tears and I give her an awkward hug.
“I’ll let you two catch up,” Lila says as she walks away to Izzy’s cottage.
“It’s not your fault,” I say. I pause and add, “My time in hospital wasn’t so bad, you know. I met some great people.”
She brushes away her tears and smiles. “You seem different. You’re more grown up.”
“I’ve made some decisions lately,” I say. “I feel better for them.”
“That’s good, kid. Come on up to the house. I’ll open some beers.”
“Cool, I’ll get my things,” I reply.
Izzy is one of those “cool” adults who lets you drink alcohol before it’s legal. I had my first beer at Izzy’s when I was sixteen. I had my first vodka and Coke here too. Mum lets me drink now I’m almost eighteen, but I’m not supposed to with the medication I’m on.
Anti-psychotics.
I don’t take them, so it’s okay.
At the door I’m greeted by the over-enthusiastic wagging of a tail connected to the worst guard dog in the world—Bentley. Izzy’s golden retriever. I lean down and scratch his ears.
“Aww, Bentley missed you,” Izzy says. “It’s been too long, Mares. I’ve missed you too.”
“And don’t forget me!” Lila rushes into the kitchen and goes to pat her dog, but Bentley backs away, his hackles raised and his teeth showing.
“It’s so strange, he keeps doing this recently,” Izzy says. When she reaches for his collar, he runs from the kitchen. “I just don’t get it.”
Lila sniffs her armpit. “Maybe I’ve been using new perfume or something. Crazy dog.” She shrugs off the strange behaviour of the dog and climbs onto a stool by the breakfast bar.
Izzy hums as she opens the fridge and pulls out a bottle of beer for me. “So what’s new with you, chick? Tell me everything, boys, booze, bad behaviour, the lot. I want to live vicariously through you as I approach middle age a spinster.”
I pull up a stool next to Lila, who has pulled her feet up and rests her cheek against her knees, sitting precariously close to the edge.
“There was a boy,” I admit. “I met him on holiday.”
“And?” Izzy asks.
“It’s complicated.”
“It always is,” Lila says, with a wicked grin.
Izzy tosses a tea towel in my direction. “Is that all I get? You’ve not seen your Aunty Izzy for months and then you leave out the juicy details?”
I catch the towel and laugh. “It’s really not that juicy. He had issues and it only lasted the week.”
“Did you screw him?” Lila asks.
“I didn’t screw him,” I say.
The three of us burst out laughing and I toss the towel back to Izzy. “Oh, Mary, you’re too sensible. You’ve got to throw caution to the wind sometime. Hold your hand out of the car window and get some air. Feel the world speeding around you.” She points at me. “But always use a condom.”
My cheeks burn with embarrassment. “Stop!”
“If you think this is bad, you should try living with her,” Lila says.
Izzy sighs. “I am a little too much sometimes, aren’t I? Sorry, Mary. I guess I just feel a little…” She chokes up, then controls herself.
“Like she needs a man,” Lila mutters under her breath.
“Have you considered internet dating, Aunt Izzy?” I ask.
Izzy almost chokes on her beer. “Me? Internet dating? Honey, have you seen the kind of men who live around here? And the ones on the Internet are the dregs. No thank you.”
“Then let’s move,” Lila says, her head snapping up from her knees. “Let’s move to a big city!”
“What’s stopping you from moving?” I ask.
Izzy picks up her beer and moves around the breakfast bar in the kitchen. “Nothing exactly, I just…” She wanders out towards the window and I follow behind. “Will I be able to see the sea when I move?”
I follow her gaze out of the window. A strong breeze plays with the grass. Where the grass ends, the distant sea begins. It’s grey in the slowly emerging twilight. It’s funny, but whenever I see the sea, I hear it, too. It makes no sense because we’re too far away to hear any of the waves, and there aren’t any windows open in the cottage anyway, yet still I can hear the gentle lapping, and the call of seagulls. My mind has a perfect loop of seaside noises, and whenever I think of the sea, those sounds pop into my mind and I instantly feel at ease.
“It is beautiful,” I say.
“Not as beautiful as Manchester looks at 2am on a Saturday night,” Lila calls from across the room.
I turn and offer a smile to her. But then, a feeling from the pit of my stomach has me turning back to the window. It’s one of those gradual feelings that builds up as though something is very wrong. I turn back to the window and gasp. My fingers go slack, letting the bottled beer clash against the kitchen tiles. Broken glass bounces against the tops of my feet.
“Don’t move,” Izzy orders. “I’ll get a dustpan and brush.”
Suddenly I hear Lila’s whisper by my ear. “You saw something, didn’t you? We’re not alone here, are we?”
“No,” I reply. “I don’t think we are.”
I turn and face Lila and neither of us breathes for a moment. She’s so close to me that I can see the freckles on her nose. We’re almost exactly the same height. We have been since we were children.
“What did you see?” she asks.
“I saw one of them,” I say. “I saw a Thing.”
Sweat builds on my forehead as I continue to stare out of the window, my eyes locked on where I had seen it. The Things that reveal themselves to me are not gh
osts or zombies or ghouls, they are warnings.
This one appeared as a woman, with a tattered dress billowing in the wind. Her eyes were sunken, and wild curly hair cascaded all around her. She might have been beautiful once, but now her skin hangs from her bones like melted plastic. I screw my eyes shut, wanting to forget, but I’m met with more images I’d like to discard from my memory.
They’ve never frightened me before. Sometimes they are a comfort. But there is something about seeing one of them here… It picks at that scab of a memory, something I saw as a child…
“What does it mean?” Lila asks.
“I don’t know,” I whisper.
“All right, I have a dustpan and brush,” Izzy’s voice sounds from the hallway. “I’ll get that cleaned up in a jiffy.” She strides into the kitchen. “Don’t move a muscle.” She bends down and begins clearing the mess. Lila backs up and stalks the kitchen, swinging her arms as though listening to her own music.
“Did something startle you?” Izzy asks. Her voice is laboured with the effort of crouching.
“I think it was a bird, or something,” I reply.
“This place does that to you sometimes,” she says. “I often see weird things late at night in my room.”
I spin around. “What kind of things?”
“Whoa, Mary, be careful.” She stands up. The dustpan is filled with glass, and there’s a malty scent of beer in the air. “You almost stepped on the glass.”
But I’m not hearing her anymore. I follow her as she tips the bottle into the bin. The distant memory claws at my skull, desperate to be released.
“What do you see in your room?”
She shrugs. “Shadows, I think. It’s just my mind playing tricks. I thought I saw someone standing in the corner of the room.”
My blood runs cold. My mouth goes dry. “Have you seen anything else like that?” I insist.
“Yeah, actually. When I was sat out on the porch, Bentley started barking and growling again like you saw earlier. His hackles were raised, and it was strange because it was just me and him out there. I think it was kinda late. I had a glass of wine on the go, I was relaxing after a long shift at the hospital. Anyway, like I said, Bentley seemed really upset about something. Then the door started rattling, as though someone on the other side was trying to open it, which is stupid, because why would someone be inside the house and trying to get out? Then, a few moments later, I thought I saw a shadow rushing across the fields.” She gestures towards the window. When we’re closer, she points to the field between her back garden and the cliffs. “Right across there. It had me going for a second. I thought it was someone coming towards the house. It was just my eyes playing tricks on me. It’s amazing what a long shift will do to your head.”
A shadow.
My heart hammers against my chest.
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