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

I put my Marlboro to my lips and inhale. The figure does the same.

I click off the text messages and turn now to the voicemails. I’ve got plenty more, all from that private number, one after the other, the most recent one being from this afternoon.

Another line, I chop it right there on the window sill as the nothing watches. My heart shudders with trepidation but I snort it anyway. Outside, the nothing has crossed the street, standing now in front of my house. Movement up the street catches my eye. Something very tiny is crawling toward my house, slowly, on hands and knees.

I go to the living room and begin playing the voicemails. They sing about my broken cunt, cheerfully at times, amid that crackling static that I know isn’t static; it’s the fire eating its way through that room, chewing through drywall and plaster. Sometimes only Allison sings, barely audible over her screaming children. Or, as is the case in the more recent voicemails, Allison chants something incomprehensible while the kids laugh hysterically.

Through my dingy linen curtain, I spot the figure’s burning cigarette. As if guided by a wind to my back, I unlock the front door.

In the basement, I cut another line and try to force it up my callused nostril. There’s a quick, sharp pain and I sneeze, painting my twelfth canvas in blood and mucus and snot. The voicemails continue to mock me, but the deafening thunderclaps of my heart nearly drown out the voices, along with the sound of my front door opening, closing, the deadbolts clicking.

I’m getting dizzy, chewing meth, my nostrils no longer an option. The taste is sour and revolting but I swallow anyway, and the cellophane wrapper is empty now, and the world goes upside down and my cell phone bursts into flames, jagged plastic shards steaming hot in my palm, melting, merging with flesh. Yet the voices remain.

I press my ear to the earthen floor where I’ve pulled up the floorboards. Something rustles under the soil. Above me, footsteps cross the living room before coming to a stop in front of the basement door.

The Tapping at Cranburgh Grange

Felice Picano

I’m not at all certain how it was that we came to that particular village in that shire. Later on, Martin thought that it had been a bus tour we’d taken. We’d stopped at the village inn for lunch or tea and after we’d gotten back onto the bus, we’d already decided we had to return to the spot. We did return annually after that, taking rooms in the inn for first two, then three nights, then for almost two weeks: his entire vacation from work.

I recalled well, actually we recalled, that we were immediately drawn to the house among all the others. Naturally, we’d passed it on every trip we’d made to the village and every stay in the inn; we’d had to pass it since it was on the road between the railway and the inn, the largest, the handsomest, and altogether the most substantial house. But this last particular trip and stay, we had the misfortune of having rain for two and a half days straight. Hardly torrential rains, but steady enough that you heard it day and night, awake and asleep, and it rained—if not particularly hard—still it rained so steadily and regularly that it seemed at times to have never not rained ever in that village.

The local people took the rain for granted: it was “ordinary spring” to them. They dressed for it; at times even rather elaborately, wearing long capes, or multiple capes with hoods for their eyes. So, after the rain, we had but a single night left before we must leave again, and as the rain had for a minute stopped being regular, it was I who suggested we go for a lengthy walk in the village before our supper. We were both desperate to get out of doors, or at least away from the inn and its taproom regulars and the few attempts at entertainments they offered. There was something suggesting an actual part-afternoon of sun with a possible sunset if we could only get outside.

So that’s what we did, traipsing through the village and then out the eastern end of it, and we didn’t stop traipsing for at least one and a half hours. It was Martin who said he needed a rest, and frankly, so did I. We stopped at a friendly enough looking wall built on two levels, one clearly meant for a seat, the other a back rest, and that was when we really saw the house for the first time, before us. The tall, wrought iron gate was open, which it never had been before, and that was something of an invitation, so after a minute or so of Should we? Dare we? We did. We entered onto the curved gravel auto approach and there was the house so instantly present, it was almost as though it had leapt to meet us halfway. Even more inviting, in the door, and stuck askew presumably by the wind, was the crucial sign reading “To Let.”

Naturally that called for a further inspection of the premises, at least what could be obtained from the exterior alone, since we knocked and rang and there was no response within, so we obliged. It was on the far west wing ell that we found the magnificent sunset starting, so barmily beautiful over such a lovely landscape that we leant against the bottom of what appeared to be the dining room’s locked casement windows and watched and didn’t breathe a word. Once it had set and a little breeze arose, we set off without a word back to the inn, arriving at nightfall. But we passed and I—at least for the first time— noticed along the way, the sign in the office window not five doors away reading: W.R. Sheriff—Realtor—Solicitor: Local Properties. “That’s where we shall be tomorrow morning at ten