Free Half-Sick of Shadows by David Logan

breakfast, so his breakfasts were excesses. And they were wicked ones because people were starving in China.
    ‘Go now and chase dreams with your other half.’
    When Mother smiled the sun shone in my heart. My smile and I went out through the back door to look for Sophia.
    Exactly as I had last seen her, Sophia was still arranging daisies on Granny Hazel’s grave. Less time had passed than I thought. Although I meant to join her there, I held back and watched. Wrapped in moving daisies around on the palm of her hand. Mouthing the words of some song. Happy. That’s what she was experiencing: happiness! If only for this moment, feeling neither too hot nor too cold, lost inside herself, Sophia had found happiness. I belonged to no part of her now. Something of the nature that used to bind us had dissolved for ever.

5
    The Horrible Wipple
    Wellington boots and dirty hands were permitted in the kitchen, but forbidden elsewhere in the Manse. I kicked off my Wellingtons at the back door and washed my hands at the kitchen sink, then dried them with the tea towel that Mother dried dishes with and said that I mustn’t keep using as a hand towel.
    The hall sounded normal – like my socks on the floor – and smelled of fresh flowers. The flower smell should have warned me to advance cautiously; the hall normally smelled like wet coats. Innocently, I opened the living-room door, went inside without looking and shut the door behind me – Mother constantly reminded us to close the door and keep the heat in.
    Orange and hairy, like an orangutan getting off all fours and on to two! Although I saw the creature for a split second only, that was long enough for it to transmogrify from its demonic into its human form – a head and the correct number of arms and legs. A poker shot up my spine and my hair stood on end. Father said the Devil wears many disguises. I made a noise of fright. Even as I spun on my heels and ran into the shut door, my senses confirmed that I had seen the Devil change himself into a hideously ugly woman who had no right to be there. My hand found the handle, and I escaped into the hall to almost collide with Mother carrying a tray containing a pot of tea, two cups, two saucers, and a plate of shortbread. She spoke my name with considerable alarm while swinging the tray clear of my head.
    Nothing spilled, luckily for me.
    ‘There’s a, there’s a …’ I trembled, pointing.
    ‘There’s a there’s a, is there?’
    ‘No,’ I whined, tugging her dress, but in no particular direction. I wanted whatever waited for us in the living room to be a figment of my imagination, like the smoke-shaped people I saw in the cemetery from my bedroom window at night. Mother said they were figments of my imagination, which meant I had to ignore them, as if they were unreal. ‘You have to look.’
    ‘Let go, Edward. You’re behaving like a big baby.’
    Mother pushed past me, taking tea and shortbread to the very place where I had seen the ghost – or monster – or disturbed the burglar who had broken out of an asylum – or done whatever I’d done, accidentally. I didn’t mean it.
    ‘A dead crow fell on Tennyson’s grave from nowhere,’ I said, but Mother ignored me the way she expected me to ignore the figments of my imagination. As she entered and rounded the door out of sight, I hung back, half expecting a scream and a clatter as the tray and its contents hit the floor. My feet stayed on the ground, but I jumped when I did indeed hear a dreadful sound.
    Not a scream, but a voice. Several seconds passed before I recognized the language it spoke as the same as my own. Its accent was the same too, but different. I had read about accents in the encyclopedia … something to do with talking. In the Garden of Eden, the Devil disguised himself as a talking snake. People don’t normally expect snakes to talk, so it was a pretty good disguise.
    ‘Oh, shortbread! My absolute favourite! How did you know? What adorable