Skellig

Chapter 4

I HARDLY SLEPT THAT NIGHT. EVERY time I did drop off I saw him coming out of the garage door and coming through the ragged backyard to the house. I saw him in my bedroom. I saw him come right to the bed. He stood there all dusty and white with the dead bluebottles all over him.

“What do you want?” he whispered. “I said, what do you want?”

I told myself I was stupid. I’d never seen him at all. That had all been part of a dream as well. I lay there in the dark. I heard Dad snoring and when I listened hard I could hear the baby breathing. Her breathing was cracked and hissy. In the middle of the night when it was pitch black I dropped off again but she started bawling. I heard Mum getting up to feed her. I heard Mum’s voice cooing and comforting. Then there was just silence again, and Dad snoring again. I listened hard for the baby again and I couldn’t hear her.

It was already getting light when I got up and tiptoed into their room. Her crib was beside their bed. They were lying fast asleep with their arms around each other. I looked down at the baby. I slipped my hand under the covers and touched her. I could feel her heart beating fast. I could feel the thin rattle of her breath, and her chest rising and falling. I felt how hot it was in there, how soft her bones were, how tiny she was. There was a dribble of spit and milk on her neck. I wondered if she was going to die. They’d been scared about that in the hospital. Before they let her come home she’d been in a glass case with tubes and wires sticking in her and we’d stood around staring in like she was in a fish tank.

I took my hand away and tucked the covers around her again. Her face was dead white and her hair was dead black. They’d told me I had to keep praying for her but I didn’t know what to pray.

“Hurry up and get strong if you’re going to,” I whispered.

Mum half woke up and saw me there.

“What d’you want, love?” she whispered.

She stretched her hand out of the bed toward me.

“Nothing,” I whispered, and tiptoed back to my room.

I looked down into the backyard. There was a blackbird singing away on the garage roof. I thought of him lying behind the tea chests with the cobwebs in his hair. What was he doing there?