Bitterhall by Helen McClory (story books to read .txt) 📕

‘A haunting,’ said Órla.

The pool lay black between us and the house. Through the glass we could see Mark moving about, in and out of the kitchen, Mark’s mother sitting on the fainting couch with a paper, a group of three freshly-washed strangers standing, looking back at us between the huge houseplants. We could see our reflections in the glass, and the reflection of the water.

‘I have to say, I don’t know him all that well – how well do you know anyone?’ Órla said, ‘I don’t mean to make anything of it, but that night, with you – it was not . . . entirely Tom.’

‘Mmm.’ Thinking I believed her, and I didn’t believe her, but I only said, ‘Do you remember what we talked about, after he left?’

‘He begged us both to stay near him. He was frightened.’

‘Are you worried where he might have gone off to?’

Then, when she didn’t say anything, I asked, ‘Do you love him now?’

‘That’s not a very helpful question,’ she said, touching my hand.

‘I think . . . I think he’s become obsessed with something, a book of mine . . .’ I said.

‘A novel?’

‘A diary.’

I couldn’t feel my toes. He had kissed me. More than that, grabbed me, stroked me, illuminated me. And everything with Órla too. And he’d hit me, and gone off somewhere which was something else to think about and understand. Later. Probably he’d a lot to sort out in his mind. My own head was thudding and yet I had never been happier to be where I was, or more physically strained by it, a disturbance below the surface of the body, which meant below the surface of the mind. It was clear to me, even then, that morning, that Tom was rolling off the edge of something. Órla walked in step with me, our arms interlinked. We did not have to say anything. Tom was a large figure floating over us like in that one Chagall painting, The Kiss. I felt the silk on my arm meet the wool of her coat. Tom was becoming our project together. He was in development and we must understand through observation, nothing further. I was loved, I thought, all of a sudden, that was why I was so happy, despite the fragmentation and the aches. Tom gone, hopefully to the flat, to his own bed and a comforting shower and second sleep, Órla at my side. And that morning I knew that I loved her, even with so little to go on I knew that she loved me, because, and through which, we had become conspirators, earnest ones, and we would always work for good together – or what we thought was good.

‘Shall we go in?’ I asked.

A fat wood pigeon burst out of a hedge and flew over the house. There was no such thing as always.

Resolving

Órla and I left in a taxi, and resolved to plan what to do in a few hours. I needed to excuse myself and go lie down in my room. She came back later in the evening, and we kept a vigil waiting for Tom to show. Only around one a.m. did she receive a text from him, a little star, no words. He did not come home that day, nor for three more days, but he sent cryptic messages. Órla responded with screeds of words, and each reply was an emoji, nothing else. A star, a moon, a hill, a horse, the sea. I tried to remember what we had done the day we knew he had vanished, and then a little bit before the party, when Órla and I had gone on a walk together and talked about everything else besides Tom. If we had neglected to realise how severe this problem was, then it was understandable, but perhaps not forgiveable, not redeemable, unless we did something to recover him.

The fourth day brought a texted photo of a Highland cow, apricot coloured, standing beside a telephone box, looking as Highland cows do, nonchalant and charismatic. I began looking for photos that looked similar online – it turned out there were lots, but only of a handful of places. Órla texted back instead of words, a globe and a question mark. Finally an answer came – a list of numbers, coordinates.

I packed and ran for Badr’s car – left, with instructions to use it any way we needed to recover him – while Órla stayed behind in case he should wander in, our ghost boy, our prodigal love. ‘Swear you’ll not start sending me emojis, by fucking Christ,’ she said.

I smiled and touched her shoulder lightly. And headed north.

Órla McLeod

Between Dog and Wolf

When I was a girl, I wanted to be exorcised. I liked the idea of possession and of some priest bending over me muttering the right prayers to rip the demons out. Speaking from my adult mind I think it was that I craved to be so open to the world as to take within my body something huge and lurid and melodramatically evil, to be utterly defiled and then – to be cured of that. To become again only a girl, bruised but ultimately just as I had been. Or to be killed by this expansive suffering, and to be through the other side and heaven-bound after the purgatory of my short life. Sometimes no one is around when you’re eight and you’re watching telly late at night. You see what you shouldn’t and it becomes a part of you. I wanted to be a nun too. A possessed nun seemed to me the pinnacle of career ambitions. I wanted to be pure and heaving with violence. At the same time godly, meek and being rent apart.

What has this to do with anything? Tom. Daniel. See, I’ve always had the attraction to the splintering, inhabitational and polluting. Or at least to a cultural idea of pollution