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But when she goes to take my hand, mine slips through.

The room, the bed, Tilly – it’s all fading. All fading back into darkness. And there’s nothing I can do. I try to reach for her, but it’s as if she’s forgotten me; she’s looking down, but a frown strains her delicate features, she doesn’t know me. Not anymore.

Pain lances through my chest. Because maybe it would’ve been better if that had been the end. Maybe my heart wouldn’t beat dead in my chest if we hadn’t gone on to be such good friends. If she and I weren’t each other’s lifelines, if I hadn’t made her my source of light, maybe then the darkness wouldn’t feel so full of despair. I would never have known what it was to be loved, and then I would never have grieved it.

I spiral further down. It’s like sinking to the bottom of a tall lake. Her reflection above me, peering down, ripples in the surf⁠—

‘This is all very drab.’

I gasp in slow motion. The darkness, a sea of sloth making me move too slow with a response. ‘You need to get out,’ I say around the mouthful of water.

Walker studies me with a look somewhere caught between disgust and apathy.

‘You need therapy,’ he says, tilting his head as he floats along next to me, looking the epitome of relaxed nonchalance.

‘What the hell are you doing in here?’

‘Your spirit is very boisterous,’ he speaks into the chasm, chastising. ‘Very loud.’ His voice echoes. ‘I came to investigate, but all is well. You’re just indulging in a spot of self-pity, I see.’

‘Self-pity?!’ He thinks the most intimate memory of my childhood is a pity party?

‘If you’d like, I could help you access much cheerier stimuli for your subconscious state. Let’s see, here… we have.’

Then – horror of horrors, he begins rifling through all my childhood memories. Flitting through them like a photo album. Perhaps worst of all, is that they are the happy ones. They are the moments I felt most at peace, moments that brought joy and warmth. But all they ever do is hurt, because they were, and are, always ripped out from beneath me. I don’t want to feel any of it. I don’t want the pain that always follows. I’d rather stay down here at the bottom of the darkest depths, then to go up for air only to be pulled under again.

He pauses on another memory of Tilly. Later than when I’d first met her. Much later.

In fact, this is it. This is the last night we shared at Orcwell’s orphanage together. Her green hair falls in vivacious curls over her shoulder. She’s staring up at the North Star through our window. She looks at me and smiles, opens her mouth to speak but I can’t, I can’t, I can’t chants in my head. I can’t hear the words from her again. I can’t relive the beginning of the end. I can’t relive that hopeful naivety that perhaps we might stay as we were.

‘Get out!’ I say, shaking my head against the vision.

‘No need to be rude. I was only⁠—’

‘Get out!’ I scream, pushing with enough force that he launches into the distance, swallowed by the darkness that continues to close in around me. His bitter look would be almost comical if it weren’t for the fact he’d just seen into my inner-most insecurities.

‘Tilly?’ I call.

I know it’s useless, but I call for her anyway. I have no one else’s name to scream.

‘Tilly!’ I try again. ‘Till⁠—’

I sit up, ramrod straight in bed. The house jolts and then stills, as if it had just been shaking. I rub the nightmare from my eyes with the ball of my hand and let out an everlasting sigh.

Just then, the lights start flicking on and off, and the windows slam open and shut repeatedly.

Well.

It would appear the haunting has well and truly begun.

Chapter Eight

The Job

Elbow deep in loo-water, shit seems to be the operative word today.

Which is just wonderful really, because I’m working off of about three hours sleep and I have a banging headache, so why not throw some ogre defecation to really round out the perils of my mortal life?

I’ll concede, the optimist in me had perhaps been a little too hopeful this time round when I’d believed Walker would just disappear. Alas, even among the more reasonable of my theories of how I might be haunted, I’d never been prepared for Walker to rifle through my memories and drudge up my sensitive past.