The Half That You See by Rebecca Rowland (best summer reads .TXT) 📕

And at home, Dad saw the signs and knew what to do. He withdrew.

I went to my room and sat at the window, eyes open to the evening’s coming gloom. Opposite, an old concrete way ran off, to end, I knew, in an asphalt plot strewn with burst mattresses and household junk. My gaze became fixed upon this pointless place, and in the way that your reflection does if watched too long, its features soon began to rearrange themselves. The broken glass in the tussocked verges, the lumps of rain-bleached plastic, the cloven hands of the trees, the vivid curl of spring’s first leaves; elements sprang forward, enlarged, while others retreated.

Buddleias and elders grew around the track, meeting overhead in a natural arch, and the shadowed spaces that lay between them flickered beneath the fixity of my gaze, and then, as if they had conjured something from themselves, a moving thing appeared. My window was closed, but its single-glaze gave little insulation and so it was remarkable that, as before, I heard nothing. As though it had been newly calved, the filthy car pitched forward in a rush, stopping only in time, and with a violent lurch, when it met the road and then, as seemed inevitable, it bumped across to stop before our house.

A moment passed before the driver’s door opened, and a hand, as thin-fingered as my own, appeared and grabbed the upper seal. The whole person followed, clad in an old beige mackintosh, floor length, too large for height and build, and the face concealed, when seen from above, by the brim of a cowboy hat. This clumsily disguised figure flapped over to our door, and then back to the car, head down, hunched, ridiculously furtive, and instantly, the vehicle was reversing, turning, and jolting off towards the town. How strange, I thought, with little interest, that such an incongruous thing, that very same car, should turn up here. And what does it mean, I thought, as I watched my father run out into the road? Why is he looking around like that? In my abstracted state, these frantic actions seemed completely inexplicable.

My father went back inside, and I heard the door slam and a rustling, and then his footsteps on the stairs.

“Sorry, matey.” His face appeared in the gap of my half-open bedroom door. “I know you need your peace and quiet. But did you just see someone?”

“An old car.”

“Right, right. Did you see who was in it?” He spoke breathlessly, as if it were something terribly urgent.

“I couldn’t see them. They had a hat.”

“A hat? Right. Don’t worry, don’t worry. It’s just, well, they posted the stuff through the door. What kind of dickhead does that? Never mind, never mind. I’ll leave you to it.”

I didn’t move from the window until it was fully night, when I sought the familiar refuge of my bed. When I awoke, hours later, I could make out the bulks of my desk and wardrobe in the dark, and outside, through the open curtains, a starless patch of sky. I had awoken from a perfectly ordinary exam anxiety dream; the ink didn’t flow, the paper kept disappearing, I had forgotten to wear clothes. I clicked my alarm clock. Three fifteen? Dad must have people in, because I could hear what sounded like voices. But why? He never had people round that late. I strained to listen, quietening my breath, and as if in answer to my efforts, the sounds became more precise. They had a rhythmic quality, a rise and fall. A hiss and click that swung near and then away. But was it voices I heard? There was a loud, startling crash; something heavy falling and smashing.

“Dad?” I called out and swung myself out of bed. The floor was soft, shivering. In the golden brown light that now filled the room, I saw that my feet were deep in a quivering, living growth of grass.

And then I awoke, for real, in dark silence.

“I’m fine,” I told my father in the morning, but he looked at me as if I were possessed as I buzzed around the kitchen, wiping down, scrubbing the sink, sweeping.

“I’ve just got lots of energy this morning,” I said.

“You’re not on speed, are you?”

“God, Dad, no. It’s just, how I was yesterday, I think…I think it won’t happen again. I think I’m better.”

“Why?”

“Just do.”

I couldn’t tell him that I’d worked it out. It was those stupid flashbacks, those visions I’d invented myself, that had been messing with me all these years. Now it was over. I’d beaten it, seen through it, neutralized its power. And that dream last night—nothing. Nothing like the ones of the past. Just a field, no psychedelic storm, no baleful presence.

I began to laugh, not madly, just a little, as I put the brooms and brushes away, and Dad came over and put his hand on my shoulder and said, “OK, but just calm down a bit for me, yeah?” And he gave me a nub of resin.

“Great! I’ll take it to the party tonight,” I said. I didn’t even ask about the sepia grass. That whole thing was over.

And it made me briefly popular, that bit of hash, when I got to the marsh that night. There were already twenty or so there, and they’d set fire to an old mattress which they’d piled with wood, and they were drinking cheap wine and cider and smoking some really bad stuff. The scarlet flames flared up, and we dodged random bullets of red hot ash and wood. Jude was there and she had an old aerosol can which she threw into the flames and we all dashed back and whooped at the explosion. She came over to me, her eyes shining and strange, and handed me the last puffs of one of the joints I’d rolled.

We all kept moving round the fire and the other kids’ faces slid in and out of the leaping light and shadows