"Remember when you thought there was a house buried in the fields? Or the time you told me that Mr Brookby steals people's pets and paints his fence with their blood?" Mum said, laughing at my childish imagination that had apparently run rampant throughout my youth. All I could do was grin and nod - if she didn't believe me when I was five, there was no way she'd believe me forty years later. Not even when I had proof.
There was a lot that I'd "imagined" over the years and she hadn't believed a single word. At this point I do wonder if she actually thought I was making it all up or if she was just trying to convince herself that what I was seeing couldn't possibly be real. Now that I'm older I know that there are reasons for things being as they are, reasons for nobody believing me and reasons for these things happening in the first place.
They are all connected to the buried house out in the barley field.
It was built in the mid 18th century, a rugged stone thing with what might once have been a mossy thatched roof, now calcified and almost the same muddy grey as the rest of the building. When I was young, there was enough space to crawl inside through both the old window and the door. First time I fount it I went through the window, never even saw the door until I went back last month just to see if I'd made it up after all.
The window's too small for me now and I wonder how I ever fit into it at all.
Some part of me hoped it had all been daydreams but the floor was still covered in animal bones, the collars all nailed to the walls with the mouldy "missing" posters behind them. I took so many photos that day, using the flash on my phone without even checking any of the other rooms first in case the Resident was still at home. I saw glimpses of them in some of the images when I checked later on, their serrated fingers dripping from their latest meal of whatever Mr Brookby had stolen for them.
I'm sure they told me their name when I first saw them but I've long since forgotten it, just like I tried to forget the collars and posters and the entire house but I just can't seem to. I tried so hard but every time I come back to visit my mum she reminds me all about it. Not explicitly, at least not always, but in the little ways.
The tiny metal trinkets she kept from my childhood room that the Resident gave me are dotted all about the place, leaving faint stains underneath them like the way the pink sea-salt has stained my windowsill all these years later. Mum says I brought them from a local stall during the summer carnival but we both know she's lying on that one. I'd bring those little objects home, knees always bleeding, eyes full of tears and begging her to tell the police that the missing animals were all found.
Last week she phoned me to say that Mr Brookby had passed away. He was found stone cold dead in the same field where I'd played as a kid, where the house was buried, where he'd been feeding the Resident all his life, just as his dad and grandad had before him.
I felt my blood turn cold when the letter turned up yesterday from his lawyer.
He's made me his heir.
There was a lot that I'd "imagined" over the years and she hadn't believed a single word. At this point I do wonder if she actually thought I was making it all up or if she was just trying to convince herself that what I was seeing couldn't possibly be real. Now that I'm older I know that there are reasons for things being as they are, reasons for nobody believing me and reasons for these things happening in the first place.
They are all connected to the buried house out in the barley field.
It was built in the mid 18th century, a rugged stone thing with what might once have been a mossy thatched roof, now calcified and almost the same muddy grey as the rest of the building. When I was young, there was enough space to crawl inside through both the old window and the door. First time I fount it I went through the window, never even saw the door until I went back last month just to see if I'd made it up after all.
The window's too small for me now and I wonder how I ever fit into it at all.
Some part of me hoped it had all been daydreams but the floor was still covered in animal bones, the collars all nailed to the walls with the mouldy "missing" posters behind them. I took so many photos that day, using the flash on my phone without even checking any of the other rooms first in case the Resident was still at home. I saw glimpses of them in some of the images when I checked later on, their serrated fingers dripping from their latest meal of whatever Mr Brookby had stolen for them.
I'm sure they told me their name when I first saw them but I've long since forgotten it, just like I tried to forget the collars and posters and the entire house but I just can't seem to. I tried so hard but every time I come back to visit my mum she reminds me all about it. Not explicitly, at least not always, but in the little ways.
The tiny metal trinkets she kept from my childhood room that the Resident gave me are dotted all about the place, leaving faint stains underneath them like the way the pink sea-salt has stained my windowsill all these years later. Mum says I brought them from a local stall during the summer carnival but we both know she's lying on that one. I'd bring those little objects home, knees always bleeding, eyes full of tears and begging her to tell the police that the missing animals were all found.
Last week she phoned me to say that Mr Brookby had passed away. He was found stone cold dead in the same field where I'd played as a kid, where the house was buried, where he'd been feeding the Resident all his life, just as his dad and grandad had before him.
I felt my blood turn cold when the letter turned up yesterday from his lawyer.
He's made me his heir.
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