The Night Hag

a short story by Stuart Neville

​

She is awake. This is certain. She sees the room in the half-light, the nightstand, the lamp, the mobile phone. Someone is here. They embrace her, pinning her arms to her side. A leg wrapped around hers, pressing it down onto the mattress. She wants to lift her head, but a hand forces it into the pillow.

   It is a woman, she is almost sure of that. Although she cannot see her, she knows her skin is blackened as if smeared with soot and ash.

   She thinks, who’s there?

   Lips against her ear. A low, breathy giggle.

   She wants to scream. No one is here to help her, but she wants to call for help anyway. She tries. The hand slips down around her jaw, closes it tight. Her tongue is locked in place. Her voice churns in her chest and throat but can’t escape her mouth. She cries with every exhalation, pulling air through her nose, in and out, in and out, more frantic with each breath.

   Help me.

   God someone help me.

   Help.

   Then she’s gone.

​

***

​

Catherine woke again, a second return to the room and the half-light, the nightstand, the lamp, the mobile phone. Her breath rasped in and out of her, her heart knocking in her chest, feeling like it could come untethered.

   Calm, she told herself. Be calm.

   She closed her eyes and turned her face into the pillow, smothered a low groan. Her hands grasped the bedsheets, her feet kicking against the mattress as if she were trying to climb it.

   “God,” she said, the vowel drawing out long and thin, the consonants swallowed by the pillow.

   She turned onto her back, saw the flame-retardant tiles on the ceiling, the ones she’d wanted to tear down ever since she’d moved into this house.

   “Oh, God,” she said, a whisper this time, because it was a blasphemy, and fear was no excuse for taking the Lord’s name in vain.

   Catherine sat upright, letting the duvet slip away, feeling the early morning chill creep under her nightdress.

   Might as well get up and go downstairs, she thought.

   Have a cup of tea.

​

***

​

Catherine was at the library before opening time, waiting for them to unlock the doors. She had driven her ten-year-old Skoda Fabia into town and enjoyed a scone and a milky coffee at the little café next door, pretending to read one of the newspapers they kept in a rack for the customers. That had kept her occupied until ten minutes to ten, and she had been waiting out here in the cold since then.

   Helen, the manager, let her in at three minutes to the hour.

   “Morning, Catherine,” she said, wearing a layer of cheer over the fluster. “Sorry to keep you waiting, Tanya’s off sick and I’m single-manning today.”

   “Not to worry,” Catherine said, her own cheer masking her impatience.

   She entered the library and walked straight to the row of computers along the side wall.

   “Were you looking to use the internet?” Helen asked. “The network’s on a timer, so it won’t come on until ten. It’ll be another minute or two to get everything switched on and booted up.”

   “No hurry,” Catherine said, keeping her voice warm and smooth.

   She sat down at the first computer and waited for what seemed an unreasonably long time.

   As Helen fussed at something in her little office at the back, she called out, “Would you like a cup of tea? A coffee, maybe?”

   Catherine almost said, yes, a coffee, please, but then she remembered the one she’d just had with a scone. She wasn’t in the habit of drinking coffee, finding it made her jittery. Along with the three cups of tea she’d had that morning already, she decided against any more caffeine.

   “No, thank you,” she said.

   A small red light blinked into life on the front of the computer terminal before her. She pressed the power button and waited while the machine booted up, her nails digging into her palms as she watched hourglasses and spinning wheels.

   Finally, at last, the login dialogue appeared. Catherine knew her membership number and password by heart, and she typed them in, one stabbing forefinger at a time, clunk-clunk-clunk-clunk. Now the desktop and the scattering of icons. She chose the one for the web-browser, click-click.

Catherine knew how to do a Google search, having attended a class on using the internet at this very library. She typed once more, forefingers seeking out the keys, jabbing at them as if they were getting a scolding.

  Woman holds me down on bed.

   A few seconds of spinning wheels, then a list of results.

   “Goodness,” she said. “Oh, my goodness.”

   This wasn’t what she expected to see. Not at all. She scanned the list, the lurid descriptions, thinking, surely the library would block this sort of thing?

   “Everything all right, Catherine?”

   Helen’s voice from behind, coming towards her. Catherine grabbed the mouse, couldn’t see the pointer on the screen, jiggled the mouse around until she found it.

   Helen, right behind her.

   “No,” Catherine whispered, and her finger reflexively hit the left button, clicking a link to who knows what.

   A page loaded on the screen.

   Erotic Stories for Couples, it said.

   And there was a photograph. Not entirely pornographic, but certainly not appropriate for a Tuesday morning at the library.

   “What are you . . .”

   Helen’s voiced tailed off, her question answering itself.

   “You might want to keep that sort of thing for home,” Helen said. “I’m not judging, mind, just saying. There’s a time and a—”

   “I didn’t mean to search for that,” Catherine said, rather too forcefully.

   Helen reached around her and took the mouse, guided the pointer up to the top of the browser window, and miraculously made the Google home page appear in its place.

   “Then what did you mean to search for?”

   Catherine felt herself stiffen, unused to sharing details of her life with people, even those she knew passably well.

   “A . . . a dream I keep having. At least, I think it’s a dream. It doesn’t feel like one when it’s happening.”

   Helen took the seat next to her. “What kind of dream?”

   Catherine took a breath, clutched her hands together in her lap. “No. No, it’s all right, I don’t want to trouble you with my old nonsense.”

   “Tell me,” Helen said, placing a hand on her forearm.

   Catherine remained still and silent until Helen squeezed her arm.

   “I wake up,” she said. “That’s the thing, you see, I’m wide awake when it happens. I know I am. I can see everything around me, I can hear everything. And I know there’s someone with me. A woman. It’s always the same woman. It’s like she’s holding me.”

   Catherine wrapped her arms around herself, tight.

   “And I try to ask, who’s there? But she holds my mouth shut. I try to turn my head, but she’s holding it in place. I can’t move my arms or my legs, she’s got me pinned down, and she’s so strong. So, so strong. But she’s gentle, too, she doesn’t hurt me. Not really. And then she starts whispering to me. That’s when I try to scream, but I can’t. She’s holding my jaw too tight, and my tongue won’t work.”

   She realised she’d been digging her nails into her upper arms. A small angry sting remained there when she took her hands away.

   “And then she’s gone,” Catherine said. “She just . . . dissolves away, and I can move again.”

   Helen sat with her chin resting on her hand, her elbow on the desk. “How often does this happen? When did it start?”

   “The first time was about six months ago, then it happened again a couple of weeks later. And a couple of weeks after that. But it’s happening more often now. Twice this week. It’s getting to be so I’m afraid to go to sleep in case she comes again.”

   Helen remained quiet, watching.

   “I suppose you think I’ve gone mad,” Catherine said.

   Helen smiled. “Not at all. It’s called sleep paralysis. I’ve never had it myself, but my husband has had it a few times.”

   “Sleep paralysis,” Catherine echoed.

   “From what I’ve read, the brain sends out a hormone that stops you from moving while you dream, but sometimes it overlaps with waking. You’re awake but you’re dreaming, and that hormone has you paralysed. It’s sometimes accompanied by hallucinations, very often an old woman. The Night Hag.”

   “The Night Hag?”

“My husband saw her at the foot of the bed, then she’d climb on top of him and hold him down. Scared the life out of him.”

   Catherine nodded. “It is . . . frightening.”

   Bloody terrifying, she thought.

   Helen stood. “Wait here.”

   Catherine watched as she crossed the library and browsed the nonfiction section, running her fingertip first along one row of spines, then another. Eventually she found what she was looking for, pulling a large book with a colourful cover from the shelf. She carried it back to Catherine and set it on the desk with a thump.

   “Let’s see,” Helen said, fanning through the pages. “Here.”

   She turned the book so Catherine could read the title at the top of the page.

A Terrifying Nocturnal Visitor: The Night Hag.

   Below the title, a reproduction of an old painting, a grotesque image. A woman lay on her back, her head and shoulders falling back off the bed, her breasts indecently close to spilling out of her nightclothes. And perched on her stomach, a squat devil of a creature, grey skin, long red tongue hanging from its gaping mouth.

   “Well, she doesn’t look like that,” Catherine said.

   “Read the text,” Helen said. “It might help you understand what’s happening.”

   “Maybe,” Catherine said, but she suspected it wouldn’t.

   “You said it started six months ago,” Helen said.

   “That’s right.”

   “Wasn’t that around the time your mother . . . the accident?”

   Catherine looked at the creature on the woman’s chest. Its gnarled features, its wicked gaze.

   “Around then, yes,” she said.

   “Perhaps it’s related. Grief can do strange things to a person’s mind.”

   Catherine didn’t respond, having been given an answer to a question she hadn’t wanted to ask. Of course it had occurred to her that the appearance of the woman in her bed coincided with her mother’s death—in fact, the woman had first visited the night of her mother’s funeral—but she had refused to link the two in any way.

   “You okay, Catherine?”

   Helen’s words pulled her from the idea, the ridiculous notion dissolving in her mind like steamy breath on a morning breeze.

   “Yes, I’m fine,” she said, but she really wasn’t.

   Not at all.

​

***

​

Catherine took the book home and read the piece six times. The book was about dreams, their meanings and interpretations. She leafed through it, mostly hokum about symbolism, the names Freud and Jung appearing here and there, along with a host of other shysters and heathens. But the section on the Night Hag felt true and real.

   For some, the Hag stood in a corner, watching. For others, she sat on her victim’s chest. And for many, like Catherine, she held her prey down.     Sometimes she wasn’t a she at all.

   Catherine read it again after her dinner of a fishcake and boiled potatoes. She read the hysterical accounts of old crones and their watching and sitting and holding. But the most important passage of all, the one she read over and over, was that the Night Hag was not real. Not real at all, only a dream for the waking, a malfunction of the brain.

   “Not real,” she said aloud several times as she fetched herself a cup of hot chocolate and two digestive biscuits. She said it again, numerous times, as she dressed for bed, even as she brushed her teeth, spitting toothpaste onto the mirror over the washbasin.

   She said it one last time as she pulled the bedclothes up to her chin and closed her eyes.

   “Not real,” she said, and believed it to be true.

​

***

​

She is awake. This is certain. She sees the room in the half-light, the nightstand, the lamp, the mobile phone. Someone is here. They embrace her, pinning her arms to her side. A leg wrapped around hers, pressing it down onto the mattress. She wants to lift her head, but a hand forces it into the pillow.

   The woman is back. The Night Hag.

   Catherine wants to tell her to go away, to leave her alone, but the hand has closed around her jaw, sealing it shut.

   The lips against her ear, the hot breath.

   Oh God, oh Jesus, make it stop.

   Catherine can’t see the blackened hand, but she can feel it, the fingertips seeking her lips, pressing between, penetrating, the jagged nail against her teeth, scratching her gums.

   The woman giggles.

   I know what you did, she says.

   Now Catherine must scream. She must, but she can’t. Her throat won’t open to let it out. Her cries gurgle there, drowning.

   I know what you did.

   Now, at last, Catherine can open her mouth. She screams, a high wailing cry, and her arms and legs are free. Turning in the bed, rolling over, she sees the shape of a woman crawl away, sinking down the side of the bed, out of view.

   Catherine cries out once more, a formless howl.

   I know what you did.

​

***

​

Catherine opened her door to Pastor John Lipton exactly one hour after she’d called him. She had offered to walk to the church, but he said no need, he would come to her. A panicked sixty minutes later, she had tidied and hoovered every room that he might possibly enter, including her small kitchen, to which she brought him.

   “I like what you’ve done with the place,” he said as he took a seat at the fold-out table.

   “Thank you,” she said, even though she hadn’t done anything to the house she’d been renting for half a year. The same tired off-white paint and avocado tiles covered the walls, the same linoleum flooring underfoot as when she’d moved in. “Tea? Coffee?”

   “Tea would be lovely,” Pastor John said.

   Catherine had boiled the kettle in preparation only a few minutes before and it hissed and bubbled immediately when she flicked the switch. Two matching mugs sat ready, along with a caddy full of teabags and a sealed jar of instant coffee. A sheet of clingfilm covered a plate of biscuits. They talked as she prepared the tea.

   “You seem to have found your feet,” Pastor John said. “After everything that happened, it’s good to see you soldiering on.”

   “I’ve you and everyone at the church to thank,” Catherine said, “the way you all rallied round me.”

   “Well, that’s the whole point of the church, isn’t it? It’s not just a building. It’s a community. Have you thought any more about getting out and about? A little job somewhere, maybe? Even volunteering. It does you no good to stay cooped up here all the time.”

   “Maybe in a month or two,” Catherine said. “I seem to be able to fill my days without too much trouble. Sugar?”

   “One, please,” he said. “It’s not just a matter of filling time, though, is it? It’s also about connecting with people.”

   Catherine placed the two steaming mugs on the table, removed the clingfilm from the plate of biscuits.

   “I see people,” she said. “When I go to the shops, and there’s Helen at the library, and everyone at church.”

   “You need more than that,” he said. “You were a carer for your mother for . . . how long?”

   “Nearly thirty years,” Catherine said, sitting down.

   “And now she’s gone, what do you do with yourself?”

   “Like I said, church, the library. The shops once or twice a week. I keep busy.”

   “Okay, but think about it. There’s lots you could contribute. Don’t shut yourself away. Anyway, what was it you wanted to talk about?”

   Catherine dropped her gaze to her tea, still untouched on the table in front of her. She had been certain of the question she wanted to ask when she called Pastor John an hour ago, but now the certainty cracked.

   Pastor John reached out, touched his fingertips—

   to her teeth

   —to her forearm.

   “Catherine, what’s wrong?”

   “You believe in heaven,” she said, her voice small and trembling.

   “Of course.”

   “And hell?”

   “I don’t know if it’s a fiery lake or not, but yes, I believe there is a place that is apart from God.”

   “Is there another place?” she asked, unable to look at him.

   A pause, and then he asked, “What do you mean?”

   “Is there a place that’s neither heaven nor hell? Somewhere different?”

   “Do you mean somewhere like purgatory? That’s not something I believe in.”

   She scratched the side of her index finger with her thumbnail, peeling skin away.

   “Catherine, what is this about?”

   She looked at him, saw the concern on his face, and she felt a shameful wave of foolishness.

   “Has something happened?” he asked.

   She shook her head, no.

   “I’ve just remembered,” she said. “I’m sorry, I have an appointment. I need to go.”

​

***

​

The wind blew hard across the municipal cemetery, no trees to break it, no structures other than the maintenance buildings down by the gates. Miserable drizzle came with the wind, dragged from the low grey cloud and into Catherine’s cheeks and ears. She pulled up her coat’s collar and wished she’d worn the new anorak she’d bought herself for Christmas.

   Dead flowers lay scattered on her mother’s grave, the vase having long tipped over. It had been six weeks since she’d last visited. At first, she’d come every day, then every few days, then once a week. Then a month. That’s how these things go, she supposed. A fresh grave is like a new toy to a child, a thing that loses its shine as days go by. All of the plots in this row appeared neglected, old leaves clustered in the gravel, ornaments toppled.

   Catherine felt no guilt. Instead, she felt relief. She wasn’t sure what she had expected to find other than the modest headstone and a rectangle of white gravel hemmed in by a low wall of granite. Some sign of disturbance, perhaps. A corner of the concrete cap broken away, earth pushed aside.

   “You’re dead in there,” she said. “You’re nothing but bones and old skin and you can’t hurt me. Not anymore.”

   At Pastor John’s insistence, Catherine had gone to a grief counsellor after her mother had perished. An effeminate young man whom Catherine assumed to be one of those, as her mother would have put it.

   “I only need this one appointment,” she had told him as he sat in the opposite armchair in his inoffensive little office.

   “Oh?” he had replied, smiling gently and raising his eyebrows.

   “You see, I’m not grieving. I’m glad she’s dead.”

   He said nothing. She felt a mild disappointment that he didn’t express some surprise.

   “I prayed she would die,” Catherine continued, unbidden. “I’ve been praying for a long time. I didn’t love her. She didn’t love me. She made bloody sure I had nothing resembling a life, I was nothing more than a servant to her, and now she’s gone and I’m glad. The night she died, I thanked the Lord Jesus for freeing me of her.”

   He remained quiet for a moment, then said, “Catherine, when we lose someone so suddenly, and in such circumstances, it can be difficult to process how we—”

   “Oh, pish-posh. I’ve visited her grave every day for the last fortnight, and do you know what I’ve done each time? I’ve spat on it.”

   Now she stood there, rolling saliva around her tongue. When she had a good mouthful, she leaned over and propelled it as hard and as far as she could. Had it not been for the wind, it would have reached the headstone.

   “And stay dead,” she said.

​

***

​

She is awake. This is certain. She sees the room in the half-light, the nightstand, the lamp, the mobile phone. Someone is here. They embrace her, pinning her arms to her side. A leg wrapped around hers, pressing it down onto the mattress. She wants to lift her head, but a hand forces it into the pillow.

   And something else.

   A high repetitive shrieking. Not her, not the Hag, but something else.

   The smoke alarm in the hall downstairs.

   There is a fire.

   Oh God, no, please, not that.

   Lips against her ear, a breathy giggle. Fingers creeping to her lips, between, nails scratching at her teeth and gums.

   I know what you did.

   Catherine screams with every breath, but each one is trapped in her throat, drowned out by the smoke alarm and the voice in her ear.

   I know what you did.

​

***

​

Catherine fell out of bed, landed hard on her shoulder, her legs following, still tangled in the duvet. She kicked herself free and scrambled to her feet, reaching for the door. The floor tilted beneath her, and she fell again, the carpet tearing at her chin. She used the handle to haul herself upright, opened the door, and stumbled out onto the small landing. A moment of disorientation as she navigated the darkness, thinking of her mother’s house, the place she had lived for fifty years. The upstairs landing in that house, while it stood, had been long and wide, not the small square of the place she now rented. The top of the stairs in that house was more than a few feet away, and she gasped with shock as her toes reached into cool and smoky air. She grabbed for the handrail, but it was not there, not in this house, and her knuckles slammed into hard plaster and coarse wallpaper.

   Weightless, arms wheeling, she cried out. She barely saw the stairs as they raced up towards her, slammed into her chest, punched her thighs, her shoulders, her head. An age seemed to pass before her back hit the hall floor, the rear of her skull cracking on the laminated wood flooring.

   Her vision funnelled, time stretching like half-dried glue. She saw the smoke alarm on the ceiling above, the small bright red light in the far distance, its high shriek penetrating the thunder behind her eyes. Then she was gone.

​

***

​

Hammering on the door. A voice calling through the letterbox.

   “Catherine? Catherine, are you there? Are you all right?”

   A man’s voice. Young, familiar.

   “Catherine, I’m going to call the police. Or the fire brigade. I don’t know, one of them. Are you there?”

   The young man from next door, the semidetached next to hers. He always smiled at her when they passed on the driveway they shared. What was his name?

   Catherine lifted her head from the floor and gasped at the pain in her neck, then once more at stabbing in her left side.  The smoke alarm still beeped its incessant beeping, the sound of it cutting into her brain like—

   a fingernail against her gum

   —a dulled blade. She wanted to cry out, but she held it in. With a grinding effort, she rolled onto her side, registering new pains, both sharp and dull, around her body.

   “I’m all right,” she called.

   “Are you sure? Do you need help?”

   She couldn’t see the front door from here, so he could not see her lying on the floor.

   “I’m all right,” she repeated. “Everything’s fine.”

   “Are you sure? Can you come to the door?”

   She caught the scent of smoke, bitter, acrid, and she coughed. A wave of pain passed through her body, from her head to her feet, before centring on her side.

   “No,” she said, with more urgency than was necessary. “I’m not dressed. I just . . . I just burnt some toast, that’s all.”

   A pause, then, in an uncertain voice, he said, “Okay, if you’re sure. Do you think you can do anything about the alarm? It woke me up.”

   She pushed herself up onto one elbow, then onto her knees. That stabbing in her left side again. She gave a low groan and took a shallow breath before answering.

   “Yes, I’ll get it to stop. Just give me a few minutes.”

   “Okay. Goodnight.”

   The letterbox snapped shut.

   A cracked rib, she thought. A strain in her neck. Lucky that was all. She braced her forearms on the telephone table and pushed herself upright. As she got to her feet, she turned her head, testing the range of her movement. A spasm fired in the muscles between her shoulder and neck. Her knees buckled and she had to support herself on the telephone table until the spasm passed, taking thin breaths so her side wouldn’t protest.

   That smell, dark and gritty in her nose and throat. The alarm still screeching.

   She opened the kitchen door and black cloud billowed out around her, stealing the breath from her lungs, stinging her eyes. Her rib sparked and flared as she coughed. She reached for the light switch and saw a dark blanket covered the ceiling, thinning as it neared her eye level. Crouching down, she pulled the neckline of her nightdress up to cover her nose and mouth, then hurried to the back door, grabbing her keys from the bowl by the sink on the way. Once the door was open, she staggered out into the clean night air. A fresh peal of coughing erupted from her chest, and she clutched at her left side, fearing that it might burst open. Then she vomited onto the paving stones, the foulness splashing onto her bare feet.

   Catherine leaned against the windowsill and rested for a time, keeping her breath as shallow as she could. When the thunder in her head had subsided enough for her to think, she peered into her kitchen. The smoke had mostly cleared, and there, on the hob, she saw the charred remains of something. After a few moments, she realised it was the tea towel she had hung on the handle of the oven door before going to bed. The ceramic ring still gave off wisps. From here, she could see the dial on the front of the cooker had been turned up full. Parts of the towel had fallen to the floor, causing the linoleum to blacken and bubble, while others had spilled into the open metal bin she used for her recycling materials. Newspapers, cardboard. Some of it had caught light and burned out.

   “Thank God,” she whispered.

   What if it had spread? What if there had been more paper and cardboard stacked up around the recycling bin? After all, she knew how dangerous such a thing could be. Hadn’t that done for her mother? A stack of old newspapers and boxes piled up beside the cooker, spreading onto the worktop alongside it. When the tea towel in her mother’s kitchen had caught alight on the hob, there had been the makings of a bonfire all around it.

   Catherine hadn’t put the newspapers and cardboard by her mother’s cooker, she was quite sure of that. But she hadn’t cleared them away either. It was purely accidental that she had knocked some of the newspapers over, and they had spread towards the hob, and the tea towel that had been carelessly left there on the electric ring.

   None of it on purpose, oh no.

   When she had put her mother to bed that night, enduring her moaning and complaining about every bloody fucking thing that she had done wrong that day, Catherine had absolutely not intended to turn the ring up full before heading out for a late trip to the big supermarket in town, the one that stayed open all night.

   Catherine hadn’t intended for any of that to happen. And yet it had. An accident, pure and simple and fatal and tragic.

   And now it had almost happened again.

   Except she couldn’t remember leaving the tea towel there on the hob before going to bed, nor turning up the ring.

   But who had? The doors were locked. No one had broken in.

   “Do you think you could sort out the alarm?”

   Catherine cried out at the voice. She turned her head to its source and her neck spasmed, causing her to cry out once more. She placed her hand there to calm the muscle.

   The young man from next door, peering over the fence at her. She remembered he was quite short, so he must have stood on something.

   “Sorry, I didn’t mean to scare you,” he said. “Do you think you could sort it? It’s quite loud. Or I could do it for you.”

   Catherine coughed, grimaced at the pain, and said, “I’ll do it now.”

   She covered her mouth and nose again and went inside, through the kitchen, and out to the hall. She closed the door behind her and went to the bottom of the stairs, mounted the first step, and waved her hands at the alarm, trying to disperse the smoke and shut it up. The attempt was unsuccessful.

   There was a cardigan drying over the hall radiator. She fetched it and waved it beneath the alarm. Still, it shrieked.

   “Bastard,” she said. “Bloody bastard.”

   A moment of shock at her own language passed, and she went to the closet where she kept the vacuum cleaner and other such items. She grabbed the broom, went back to the stairs, and stabbed the alarm with the end of the handle.

   After three strikes, the alarm came loose and fell to the floor, scattering white plastic on the laminated wood.

   It did not quiet.

   She inverted the broom and brought the handle down on the alarm with all the strength she had, ignoring the pain it triggered.

   The alarm’s casing split open and the battery spun away to clatter against the wall.

   Silence.

   “And stay dead,” she said.

​

***

​

Her mobile phone rang as she steered the Skoda into the petrol station. She pulled up to the pump, took the phone from the cup holder, and got out of the car, grunting as her rib reminded her of its cracked presence. She checked the phone’s display as she walked towards the items stacked at the front of the shop.

   Georgina, the display said.

   Her sister, three years older, had lived in South Africa for twenty years now. A lecturer at the University of Cape Town. Hasn’t she done well for herself, people would say. You must be proud.

   Yes, very, Catherine would say, smiling.

   She pressed the answer button.

   “Morning,” she said.

   “Catherine, sweetheart, how are you?”

   Georgina soaked up accents like a sponge. She sounded like she’d been born native Afrikaans. Catherine fought the urge the drop the phone and grind it into the ground with her heel.

   “I’m fine,” she said. “How are you?”

   In front of the shop stood bags of coal, firelighters, peat briquettes. She lifted a five-litre jerry can from the stack and walked back towards the pump, her gait stiff from last night’s fall. She held the can between her knees as she unscrewed the cap, then set it down.

   “I’m good, darling. When are you going to fly down and see us? I have a room just waiting for you.”

   “Soon, I promise. I just need to renew my passport.”

   “You’ve been saying that ever since Mum died.”

   “I’ll get the forms from the Post Office this week.”

   “Promise?”

   “Yes.”

   “Good.”

   Catherine removed the nozzle from the pump and inserted it into the can. She squeezed the trigger and the pump hummed.

   “Listen, I got a call from that pastor yesterday evening. The one who spoke at mum’s funeral.”

   “Pastor John,” Catherine said.

   “That’s him. He said he was worried about you, that you weren’t yourself. Is everything all right?”

   “Everything’s fine. I told him yesterday.”

   “He’s concerned that you’re isolating yourself,” Georgina said, her voice taking on that babyish tone, the one she used when she pretended to care about anyone but herself. “He thinks you need to get out more, do more, see other people.”

   “I do see people,” Catherine said, feeling her anger rise. “The church, the library, the shops. In fact, I could do with seeing fewer people.”

   Petrol spilled over the top of the jerry can before she could release the trigger. It splashed onto her shoes.

   “Oh, goodness. Oh, you bloody bastard.”

   “What?”

   “Nothing,” Catherine said.

   “Did I just hear my sister use a profanity?”

   That sneer in her voice.

   “Yes,” Catherine said. “Yes you bloody did. And what f— . . . What fff— . . . What bloody fucking of it?”

   Silence for a moment, thousands of miles of it.

   “Catherine, do you think you should talk to someone?”

   “I am talking to someone. I’m talking to you, aren’t I?”

   “You know what I mean.”

“Can’t you just leave me alone? You and everyone else. Can’t you just bloody well leave me in peace?”

   Another few seconds of quiet, then Georgina said, “It wasn’t your fault.”

   “I need to go,” Catherine said.

   “What happened to Mum was an accident. The police, the fire investigators, they all said so. It wasn’t your fault.”

   Catherine smiled.

   “Oh, Georgina, for all your education, you really are stupid, aren’t you?”

   She hung up and tucked the phone into her coat pocket. As she walked back to the shop with the jerry can, screwing the lid on tight, she felt the phone vibrate. She ignored it as she paid for the jerry can and the petrol, thanking the cashier as she took her change.

   When she opened the Skoda’s boot to put the—

   fingers in her mouth

   —jerry can inside, she saw three others lined up. She tested their weight. All full. Twenty litres of petrol all together.

   She did not remember buying the others.

   “How odd,” she said.

​

***

​

For dinner, Catherine treated herself to a small honey-glazed gammon joint she’d bought from Marks & Spencer, along with mashed potato. The whole meal cooked in less than an hour with little effort on her part. She even had a glass of white wine with it, though she wasn’t overly keen on the taste of wine. After the second glass began to make her feel ill, she poured the rest down the sink.

   As she turned away, she noticed how the recycling had built up. A stack of it next to the cooker. So many newspapers. So much cardboard. It had begun to topple and spread around the floor, and onto the work surface by the cooker. And there, that book Helen at the library had found for her, the one about dreams. It lay open, face down, its pages stretching across the hob.

   “Goodness,” she said aloud.

   I should move that, she thought. That and the recycling. It’s dangerous.

   As she climbed the stairs to ready herself for bed, she found the carpet damp beneath her slippers. And a strange smell. Sweet, chemical, cloying. It made her lightheaded. In the bathroom, she changed into her nightdress, washed her face, brushed her teeth.

   In her bedroom, she noticed the same dampness on her bare soles, the same smell that seemed to make her head float above her shoulders. She climbed into bed and shivered. The sheet beneath her body clung to her back, as if she’d had an accident, like her mother had been prone to, and the liquid had crept across the mattress.

   As she lay in the darkness, she found the sweet chemical smell had become almost comforting. When she inhaled through her nose, the odour seemed to reach deep inside her head, and she began to drift on its currents and soothing waves.

   How nice, she thought.

​

***

​

She is awake. This is certain. She sees the room in the half-light, the nightstand, the lamp, the mobile phone. Someone is here. They embrace her, pinning her arms to her side. A leg wrapped around hers, pressing it down onto the mattress. She wants to lift her head, but a hand forces it into the pillow.

   She wants to speak, to say, I know it’s you, but the hand clasps over her mouth, sealing her jaw shut. The fingers find her lips, and this time she does not resist. She welcomes their intrusion. If she could open her jaw she would allow her tongue to greet them.

   She feels no desire to scream. Even as the bright glowing orange crackling dancers enter the room and climb the walls, even as they advance towards her bed, she is calm and quiet.

   The breathy giggle in her ear.

   I know what you did.

   So do I, she wants to say, but she can’t.

   She closes her eyes and kisses the hand that holds her still.