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  He was a tall, dark skinned man with curly black hair and stubble all over his chin. He was incredibly familiar to me, though I couldn’t remember his name; he was more familiar to me than myself. Sometimes he would crouch down low in the kitchen and cry for hours, and sometimes he would break up bits of wood and shout.

  Sometimes my skin erupted in prickles, and I shivered, watching him below, keeping my mouth shut. Seeing him gave me strange images of futures that would never happen.

  Once, he came wearing a dark green coat zipped up to his chin, and he stood in the kitchen and looked right up into my bedroom, his eyes glistening in the darkness, just staring and shaking his head.

  He had his hands in his pockets, and every now and then he would take out his mobile phone and stare at that for a long time, crying. I didn’t need to see it to know he had a picture of a particular boy on there, one who was even more familiar to me than the man downstairs. I remembered his name. My Peter Denton.

  I watched him for a while, holding my breath and keeping very, very silent. Then I had an image, or a dream, or a vision; I was never sure what it was.

  I dreamed that we bumped into each other one day in this very house, and we got talking about Peter, and we both cried and held each other, and he said he understood and forgave me for everything, because he understood even if nobody else could.

  ‘I’ve done some bad things in my life,’ he said. ‘And I’m not proud of myself.’

  Once we were done crying and talking about Peter, he took my hand and kissed it. Then he said, ‘I could look after you. We could go away together. We could be together, and you’d never ever be lonely again.’

  And right before I accepted, with tears streaming down my face, the dream died.

  The man was still standing down below, looking up through the ceiling at the stars above us. Then, like he always did, he went away.

  I wished I could remember why Peter Denton was so important to me, or what happened all that time ago, or why I loved him so much that it hurt, even now, though my body was stiff and old, and my flesh withering away. But I just couldn’t remember. I couldn’t remember anything anymore.

  Even so, I wished I could meet him, just once, because we belonged together. Don’t ask me how, but I just knew. Sometimes I would look up at the mirror, and instead of seeing my own hollow face, I would see Peter there — a bright, shining young boy who seemed so far away from me now.

  Everything seemed far away. I couldn’t even hear the waves anymore. I hadn’t heard them in a long time. But I would watch him, and think of him, and long for him, and then he’d fade away.

  The man stopped coming. I didn’t know how long it had been since he’d last come, though his hair was grey and he’d gotten shorter, more hunched over, and his face had become almost as hollow as mine, and his hands were wrinkled.

  Since he stopped coming, I did nothing but dream of the boy.

  I imagined myself walking up a long, steep grassy hill, with the wind whipping at my face, until the town and the harbour below got smaller and I could see for miles around. The sky was a stormy grey, and the clouds swirled about and bellowed like plumes of smoke, and ashes fell from the sky like snowflakes.

  On top of the hill were graves. There was one named ‘Father’, and one named ‘Mother’, and one with a name that I forgot as soon as I read it, though I knew it began with D. Then, right at the edge of the cliff, was a grave with a huge headstone and one, big, burial plot.

  In the dream I walked towards it, but the wind was so strong that my legs couldn’t take me further, and it seemed to take forever just to get a step ahead, though I fought on with all my strength. The wind flowed into my mouth and howled through my body, through my lungs, delighting in the absence of my breath.

  Eventually, I made it to the grave, and saw that one side of the stone was inscribed with a name: Peter Denton. The other side was blank. Suddenly I panicked, though I couldn’t feel my heart thumping, and I felt that if I didn’t open up the grave, something terrible would happen.

  I was in the wrong place, and I didn’t belong there — I had to get down, beneath the soil, where it was cold and safe and mine.

  I started digging, clawing the ground up with my hands, the soil sinking beneath my fingernails. Every inch I dug spurred me on further, while the wind picked up around me and whirled around my head, roaring in my ears. Soon I was elbow–deep in it, and I was smeared with mud and so, so tired, but I kept going because the panic wasn’t ceasing.

  I seemed to dig forever, but the end just never came. I dug and dug until the earth was all around me, suffocating me, and soon it would cave in around me and bury me itself.

  But I kept on going, and knew — if it was the only thing left that I knew for sure — that I would never stop digging, and I would never stop looking, until I found what was lying beneath. Until I found the boy I’d been searching and searching for, for such a long time.

  I wouldn’t stop until I slipped into that quiet earth beside him, our heads inclined to one another, witnessing us in this time, this place, this forever.

  And for always, even when our eyes stopped seeing:

  I would be looking at Peter, and Peter, would be looking at me.

  The End

  About the author

  Ava Bloomfield lives by the sea with her partner Matt and their Scottish Terrier, Sputnik. When she’s not busy with her day job as a transcriber, Ava can be found rummaging in charity shops for hidden treasure, mooching about in her local library, or writing her next novel.

  Ava writes stand alone books about angsty teenagers. Check out her other works: All Girls Cry, Leap and Beyond on Goodreads.

  Ways of chumming up to Ava:

  Twitter: http://twitter.com/avabloomfield

  Blog: avabloomfield.wordpress.com

  Alternatively, send her a psychic message over the cosmos. She’s not quite tuned into it yet, but she’s certain it’ll happen any day now.