My mother died first, that year I was twelve.
They’re meant to come back on the afternoon of the second day and they do not.
I wonder is it a test, a new way to be tried and wounded? In my worst thoughts, I imagine them deciding to stay off away from me.
Walking back to the house in darkness without them from the beach on that second day, my heart pounding, I flinch at every noise. I am not prepared for this, I think, and I get to wondering how long I’d last here alone, and then how long I’d want to last here. I fall asleep in my mother’s bed, which still smells like some sweet herb, like lavender.
I’m angry as well, I’m furious with them.
I tell myself that they’ll be there when I wake up in the morning. We’ll kill a chicken and eat dinner, and tomorrow night Mam will brush the hair back from my forehead so she can kiss me good night. And then we’ll all leave Slanbeg together, a family.
I spend a bad night listening for them in the darkness.
In the morning they still haven’t come home.
When the sun’s up, we’re up. I get through push-ups, sit-ups, I practice my favorite strike techniques in the cold, empty house. I feed the chickens, and try to read, and think about settling into my secret camp to look at the old maps and think about banshees, or going to the village to see is there anything I haven’t looked at enough yet. I do not have the concentration—I need to keep moving.
Instead, I run the course. Back out to the beach for stretches in the cold morning air, then a run, out fast to the fingers. Off up then into the woods to climb the tree Maeve marked and down again toward home, sneaking through the old abandoned houses I know so well as if I don’t know them, as if they’re infested with skrake. In the last, Maeve has drawn the outline of a monster on to the back of a wooden bookshelf in mud and oil; I fling my knives, two to the body, one to the head, a killer shot, so Maeve’d say. My breath coming fast in the solid silence of the ghost house. I trace my fingers over the drawing of the skrake, trying to find the shapes of the fingertips that drew it.
When the light is gone and there is nothing else for it, I turn my feet toward home. In the bathroom, with a precious candle lit, I wipe away the dust off the mirror and look to see can I find Mam in my own face; anything of her kindness or softness. Instead, it’s mostly Maeve looking incredulously back at me.
The day after that, I start thinking about going after them.
It’s the day after that they come back.
As soon as I see them, I know that home is not home anymore. It’s that day I learn that home only exists in the past. It’s that day our house becomes haunted like the rest.