Vanished by James Delargy (free novel 24 TXT) 📕

on the far side of the house had collapsed on top of him. But surely she would have heard that. Nothing fell in complete silence. The saying about trees falling in woods was bullshit. Everything solid made a sound. Especially if it fell and hit that block of wood Lorcan called his head.

Letting Dylan drag her she approached the front door. Inside was dark, which was both fantastic and forbidding. It meant the roof was still intact, something that her husband could work with. Whenever she found him.

He had carefully rested the door against the inner wall but the wide split in the wood looked like a drunken mouth laughing at her stupidity and growing terror. She would have to go inside.

She pulled Dylan’s hand, yanking him back with all her strength. Another few years and he would be stronger than her. ‘Get into the ute.’

‘I want to—’

‘Wait in the ute. We have to make sure that there are no… animals living in there.’ It was the insects she was more worried about. But Dylan was at the age where he was more afraid of things that were bigger than him than smaller.

‘But I don’t—’

‘There’s a KitKat in the esky,’ she said. That finally broke the resistance, the boy pulling away from her, not in the direction of the house but in the direction of the ute and the ice-cold chocolate bar that awaited in the cooler. It would keep him occupied for a few minutes, enough time for her to figure out what the hell was going on.

She turned back to the doorway. The laughing drunk continued mocking her foolishness. She was reminded of Lorcan’s grandfather, the Irishman who was unable to pronounce her name and took to calling her Neeve, a disrespect she lived with for the sake of family appeasement. He had died not long after their wedding. She had used the excuse of being pregnant to avoid going to the funeral.

‘Lorc?’

She tested the front step. It was solid underfoot, maybe the only solid part of the whole structure. Again a multitude of horrors that could have befallen her husband choked her thoughts. Could she and Dylan drag him out from under a wall if needed? She doubted it. The thought of being without him suddenly seemed real and distressing. Was that a sign she loved and needed him? Or that out here he had suddenly become of use once again, that his physicality – one of the reasons she had been attracted to him in the first place – would be essential to their survival?

Leaning in she went to poke her head around the door. She would call out again before entering. As if asking permission of the previous owners so as to not disturb their ghosts.

‘Lor—?’

A face popped into view.

Stepping back and almost falling off the front step, she screamed.

The face was smiling, and almost demented with glee.

Lorcan came to the front door and looked out. A grin that she thought looked almost evil was stuck on his face.

‘It’s perfect,’ he said.

6

Naiyana

Lorcan led her into the house by the hand. Whereas Dylan couldn’t pull her, her husband certainly could, the loose T-shirt he wore masking a set of broad shoulders and strong arms. The arms of a farmer as Seamus, her father-in-law, often said, though neither of them had been near a farm in their lives. In fact as far as she was aware, this was the closest any of the Maguire family had come to country living.

They left Dylan outside with the job of finishing off his chocolate bar and pulling the weeds that were growing in the crack between the ground and the edge of the building. After first checking for spiders and snakes of course. It didn’t fill her with confidence that the first check was for spiders and snakes. Not a hole in the wall or a major structural defect, just that there was nothing venomous that might incapacitate or kill their only child.

Her bigger child, Lorcan, was bounding around, ultra-keen to get started. Like the obscure law about adverse possession, he had read up about renovating a house; everything from bricklaying to plastering to simple wiring. She didn’t doubt that he had a basic understanding of it all but the house needed a lot of work. More than he could manage. More than both of them could manage. Especially in six weeks. Twelve at the most. However long it took for things to die down.

The living room was covered in dust, anything of value removed. The wooden floor creaked loudly but after a few tentative steps she was confident that it would hold out. As long as they didn’t throw any wild parties. Which out here wasn’t likely. She couldn’t help but think that their crossroads kangaroo might have died from boredom.

The hallway and bedrooms were in a similar condition, the dry air and the roof maintaining them reasonably well. She suddenly found some positivity creeping in. What could be done replaced what needed to be done and where she found herself. This was the get-up-and-go disposition that had proved such a boon when infiltrating animal testing centres, protesting refugee conditions and campaigning for weeks on end. This was the firebrand she had rediscovered in the last couple of years after staying home to raise Dylan. The teenage Naiyana had returned. And then she had overstepped the mark. People had suffered because of it. Even Lorcan.

A final insult was out back, separate from the house. The toilet. Consisting of a tin shed over a hole in the ground. A thunderbox according to her husband. That was what she was reduced to. At least the years of disuse had eliminated any stench. A small mercy. And it had four walls, unlike the worst affected room. The kitchen. There the top part of the gable wall had collapsed, cracked from the effects of frost or extreme heat, Lorcan suggested. With it the roof had sagged losing a few