Page 14 of We Live Here Now
Emily
With a sense of trepidation, I look into the study, but the fire is still glowing hot and all the books are on the shelves where they’re supposed to be. It must have been just in my head. My aching body is testament to the fact that I’m far from fully physically recovered. What sort of state are my senses in?
With the sepsis leaflets stuffed into my pocket, I go straight to the bathroom to brush my teeth, happy to leave the others drinking downstairs, but as I push open the door, I’m startled to see Freddie there. He’s standing with his phone in one hand, face furrowed, as shocked to see me as I am him—we’ve never been a couple happy to share toilet habits—and I stumble an apology.
“Sorry, thought you were downstairs.”
“I thought it was locked,” he mumbles, pushing his phone into his pocket and then flushing the toilet. “Got distracted by a work email. So much for the company policy of protecting weekends.”
“I’m going to bed. So tired. It’s been lovely though.”
“It has.” He gives me a squeeze as he passes, and I expect him to say something about the Ouija board but he doesn’t, maybe still distracted by whatever was going on at work. “Shout if you need anything,” he adds as he looks down at the doorknob, confused, then heads back to the others. When I lock it, I rattle the handle to make sure it doesn’t open again.
The toilet lid is down, which is odd. Leaving the seat up is Freddie’s specialty; he never closes the lid.
Unless he was using it as a seat.
I remember his phone sliding into his pocket. Did he come up here just to do something on his phone away from everyone else?
My skin prickles with a sense of something not right, but I dismiss it. I’ve got enough crazy in my brain for one day. He had an email from work. That’s all. It probably required some thinking about.So why did he flush, the small voice in my head asks,if he hadn’t used the toilet?
Habit, I decide firmly.What else could it be?I’m second-guessing myself enough at the moment. I don’t need to add second-guessing Freddie into the mix.
Teeth brushed and face washed, I close the bedroom door, relieved to be on my own. I flick through the leaflets, and while much of it seems scary, the general consensus is that any strangeness will pass. Sooner rather than later, I hope. Maybe I’ll speak to Dr. Canning. Just in case. I let the warmth of the duvet encase me, and although I don’t expect to, I fall asleep within moments. With people in the house it’s like sleeping on an old boat, the occasional creak infiltrating my sleep as the others move around, but they’re comforting sounds, humanly heavy and recognizable, and they pass through me like kind whispers.
When I finally do wake, in the heart of the night, it’s not a bird or a haunting that disturbs me in the quiet, but a woman’s murmuring. I sit up slightly, frowning to see the bedroom door is open a few inches, allowing the voices in. Freddie must have come to check on me and forgotten to close it properly. The voices come again, and a floorboard creaks as someone shifts their weight on it.
They’re on the stairs maybe. The murmuring turns to urgent whispering. A man and a woman. Are they arguing? The whispering continues, getting louder but not loud enough to make any sense of it, and then the deeper tones of quietly spoken words. A man. Placating. Then a gentle laugh. Something else. A wet sound. Is that kissing? Maybe Mark and Iso on the way to bed. They get annoyed with each other sometimes after too much wine and then are all about the making up.
I lie back on the pillow as their whispering drops to almostimperceptible. Outside, the raven scratches the night with a series of caws.Ravens are drawn to death.That’s what Sally had said. As I drift back into sleep, I hear the echo of my own voice—Were you murdered in this house?—and feel the sharp tug of the planchette, and it pulls me into such a heavy sleep that I’m almost back in the empty void again, so much so that I don’t even feel the mattress shift when Freddie finally creeps in beside me.
18
His mate is dead. The raven knows that.
But still, he picked up her desiccated corpse from the edge of the house, so light he could lift her by her scarred wing as if she were a winter twig, and carried her up to the tree by the wall, forcing her husk between the trunk and the branches so she wouldn’t fall. He sleeps close to her, plumping his feathers for both of them, keeping out the cold.
In daylight, he leaves her and scavenges for food, picking at the carcass of a dead rabbit on the road before the foxes claim it. Taking the eyes of a dead sheep far across the moor that the farmer hadn’t yet found. He brings back morsels for her even though he knows she can’t eat. She’s dead. He left her to die, panicking in that dark void, as he raced back toward the sky. Perhaps that’s why he can’t let her go. He should leave and roost at night with the others, but instead he stays in the branches of the old tree, watching the house, now with light in the windows and warmth coming through the walls.
The air is getting colder, not only at night. He can feel the threat of more snow and ice hanging in it, sharp and friendless. He wonders if perhaps he should move her and roost on the roof near the chimneys for warmth. Perhaps he will not fear the house so much now that there is life and heat in it.
He looks to his mate for answers, but her eye sockets are dull and empty of anything but reproach.
19
Emily
“This is such a beautiful house.” Russell’s ready to leave first, always the most organized. While he waits for Cat to finish getting her stuff together, I stand with him on the drive by the front door, drinking coffee. The air is crisp and cold but clean and the sun is bright.
“And you have all that right here on your doorstep. Unbelievable.”
“I don’t miss the bus fumes, that’s for sure.” The moor does look wonderful in a barren, austere kind of way, craggy outcrops and wild land littered with hardy shrubs built to survive.
“I saw a massive raven on the wall this morning,” he continues. “Through the window on the top floor. When I went upstairs to have a proper look around. The views from there are incredible. And that main room is as big as our flat. It’s gorgeous.”
He obviously didn’t feel anything horrible up there. It must have been my imagination.
“And,” he goes on, “if me and Cat don’t stop sniping, then maybe I’ll rent it from you.”
