“He’s still at it! They say he goes around in tunnels under Carlinsrest, pricking people with pins and collecting their blood, to make his own version of the village, a little toy town under the ground.”
I became very aware of the pinprick in my heel.
Rowan shook his head. “He’s pulling your leg again.”
Fergus broke out into a wide grin. He nodded at me.
“Got ya, again!”
I made the face of a laugh, but no sound came out of it. I sipped one of my pints to hide it.
“He did work on the whole Dolly thing though. That bit’s true. Point is, he’s mad. As for the lady.” Fergus sniffed. “She’s a witch.”
CHAPTER 16
Fergus went on with his stories, though I didn’t remember much of what he said because at some point I finished the two pints in front of me. I felt good—well, at least not totally and completely inhuman—so I ordered two more pints, to keep the joke going. I was doing it! I was becoming someone better! Someone easy-going, outgoing, warm. And then I had a few drinks more, though I couldn’t say what they were. I vaguely remembered Rowan getting another alert on his phone, then bringing a jug of water to the table. Around midnight, my inebriation reached its peak and my happy buzz quickly turned to dizzying nausea. Time to leave. I hadn’t seen my neighbour since her entrance, so I snuck out of The Curtyard before she could catch me for an awkward walk back to the Sgàthan Sìth cottages. With any luck I’d be back and asleep before she started up her nightly racket. I’m not even sure if I said goodbye to Rowan.
I staggered home, walking alone in the dark, something I would never do sober. But the alcohol had made me bolder, braver, stupider.
This is going to be my home, I thought. I’m not going to be afraid of my own home.
How I must have looked to someone—or something—watching, unseen. Drunk woman weaving in and out of the road, swerving into the hedgerow more than once. No streetlights. No moon. Only the navy sky overhead, dotted with faraway stars, and the shadow of the woods beyond the quiet fields. In the still air, my shambling footsteps echoed for miles.
I sifted through the conversations from the pub in the filter of my growing post-drink paranoia.
God, why had I claimed that second pint so quickly? And taken a sip of both! Like I was licking it to claim it was mine. It was Fergus’s fault. What the fuck was his problem? Why had I let him rattle me so much? Ugh, I need to ignore arseholes. That’s what you’re supposed to do with arseholes, ignore them. Because they feed off… they feed off… Shit. What did I just step in? Shit? Cow shit? Horse shit? Sheep shit? Some kind of shit. That’s the countryside though. Full of shit. Just like me, har har! What was that about the old guy? Dolly the Sheep. I saw Dolly at the museum. Dead. Stuffed and dead. Spinning on a little turntable, round and round and round and…
I vomited, bracing myself against the hedgerow. Only the hedge had turned hard and smooth. The back end of a car. Oh no, I’d thrown up right under the back wheel. That would be gross for someone in the morning. I wiped my sleeve across my mouth and looked around. I hoped no one saw. There was no one. Just a tree full of fluttering paper seeds. I edged my way up the side of the car, trying not to alert the car’s owner.
Ugh. Why do my sleeves feel damp?
I wiped my hands down my jumper. I saw the car’s windscreen. Totally smashed in.
Probably abandoned. What a relief!
I shuffled away, fell up a hill twice, and found myself at my front step.
I wrestled my key out of my jeans pocket. On the third try I got it into the keyhole, but it wouldn’t turn.
“The fuck?”
I tried a few more times, rattling the door handle violently, before realising the handle felt different to before. I looked up. The door said ‘1a’. I almost fell back down the step.
“Sorry,” I said, “wrong house.”
The dark windows stared down blankly at me.
A laugh burst from my mouth.
Wrong house!
I creased over, laughing into my sleeves. Ugh, they were sticky. I clapped a hand over my mouth to make myself quiet. A laugh escaped around the seal of my hands, making a delicious fart noise. Just like the one the old man had done yesterday. I laughed harder and collapsed to my knees. I shhh-ed myself. I got up, one finger on my lips, the other hand waving an apology to my neighbour, unseen. I stumbled up to the right door and got the key in first time.
I flicked on the lights and flinched at their brightness. At least the electricity worked now. Still, all this light after so much darkness made me feel vulnerable somehow. My windows were a beacon. My location was lit up on the map.
I looked for curtains to pull closed over the living room window, but there were none.
Fuck’s sake.
