Start with Part 1 of The End of The Road Here.
[From Part 4]
Shaking himself out of it, he found his rucksack and pulled a light-weight sleeping bag from the thing. He thought about sleeping on the floor, but soon saw the couch had a foldout mechanism, and brought the small, lumpy cot out from its hiding place. This, at least, was dust-free, having been tucked away for so long. He used one of the couch cushions as a pillow, draping his small towel over the thing to avoid the dust in his mouth. Pulled himself into the sleeping bag with the curtains wide open and laid down to rest, falling asleep watching the moonlight creep up the opposite wall.
He woke the next morning clutching his throat, the pre-dawn sky casting an eerie pink light across the dark room. His eyes ran to the door. The door with the latch. It was closed.
He blinked, and blinked again. Still closed. His heart hammered in his chest.
A dream. It was just a dream. The door is closed. The door is closed.
He swallowed the bile that had risen in his mouth, but couldn’t look away from the door for a long time, even as the light began to turn blue with the coming sunrise. Couldn’t shake the dream until finally the sun rose above the treetops and sent it’s blinding white light right into his eyes.
He blinked. A dream. His heart began to settle, and his breathing returned. His arms still felt like jelly, though, and his mouth was thick with sleep and bad breath. He thought about the bread in the fridge, the cheese. He needed water. He needed air. He needed people, he realized. Usually he had someone – at least someone – in the old house with him. But waking up like that, with no one to rattle off to…
…deciding he needed a smoke more than anything else, he put his feet back in his boots and walked to the back of the house where it was still dark. Opened the fridge and jumped back, slamming the door shut. Then shook his head and opened it again. The light came on like normal, and the bread and cheese and smokes were there, inside—but for a moment he could have sworn they weren’t, and that the fridge was filled with moss and mould and stink. It had looked that way, hadn’t it? he thought, reaching for a smoke and the cheese. Nah. It’s just the dream on ya. He lit his smoke. Made himself eat the cheese when that was finished. While he ate, his eyes were far away, staring out the back broken window off into the marsh. He was thinking about town. Whether he’d seen a liquor store. There was a lot to do around the place. He would need a couple brews to get through it all until Trent packed up the rest of his stuff. Then he wouldn’t need the beer so much.
He scratched the crook of his elbow absent-mindedly and decided it was better to go to town early, before the day got hot. Maybe some old biddy could cook him a breakfast to shake off the taste of the bad water, the bad dream, the bad day before.
Grabbing his smokes from the fridge, he strode back to the front of the house, emptied his pack onto the bed, changed his underwear, put the same clothes back on and opened the door to go outside and get a move on.
Only, when he opened the door, out in the field of gravel and scrub-grass leading to the house, there stood a small girl. Not too small, mind you. Probably 10 or 11. With rude eyes and chubby cheeks and a dress that hung all the way down to her ankles. Her dark brown hair was tangled as if she hadn’t brushed it for a while, and her dusty too-big-for-her cowboy boots gave him the impression that she had slipped on someone else’s shoes for a morning walk.
The girl spoke first.
“You live here, mister?”
“Yeah.” He felt itchy. Impatient. He had to go before it got hot. He’d wanted people, not some little girl.
“You’ll probably die. Some other people died.” She didn’t move or stop looking at him. Just said it and stared.
He rolled his eyes. He knew kids. Their little tricks.
“Lots of people die,” he said. And then, “You live around here?”
“Yeah, over there.” The girl pointed behind him, back out toward the marsh. Then a few seconds later she asked, “Where did you come from?” But he didn’t have time for questions, or for games. The sun was truly up now and he was starting to feel anxious about it, like he’d lost his window. Like he hadn’t seen a liquor store, or a grocery store, or any stores at all when he’d passed through.
“There a liquor store in town?” was all he asked next, pushing his feet in front of one another to walk closer to the girl. She seemed to blur as he got closer. He rubbed the sleep from his eyes.
“Dunno.”
“What about food?”
“Dunno.” She just stood there, looking at him, the freckles on her nose and cheeks mocking him. He began to get angry. And the cheese wasn’t sitting right in his stomach.
“Well fuck off, then,” he said as he went quickly by. He resisted the temptation to push her to the ground. Something in her reminded him of his little sister growing up. She’d made him angry too. Just by being there. Just by being alive.
Forget it, he thought, walking toward the trees up ahead, already desperate for their meagre shade.
And he didn’t look back, but if he had, he would have seen the girl watching him go. Would have seen her turn back to the house and look at it, and smile with all her teeth. Might have heard the house groan. Might even have seen her walk toward it, and past it, and disappear off into the stinking, impossible marsh.
This story is currently a work in progress.
Read Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, or Part 4 of The End of the Road, or try reading a short comedy to shake the scaries here.
Jessica Barratt 