I’m back up in my room, having finished my joint. I managed to pick up the grass in Dublin when I arrived, hanging around Temple Bar with all the tourists. Not sure it’s as strong as the stuff I get from my usual guy but hopefully it will help me sleep. I need a bit of help tonight.
Here on the island it’s like we’re back there, at Trevellyan’s. Maybe it’s to do with the land. The cliffs, the sea. All I can hear is the sound of the waves outside the windows, slamming into the rocks below. I remember the dorm room: the rows of beds and the bars outside the windows. To keep us safe or to keep us in – maybe a bit of both. And the sound of the waves there, too, rushing up the beach. Shush, shush, shush. Reminding me to keep the secret.
I haven’t thought about it, not properly, for years. I can’t. Some things you’ve got to put behind you. But it’s like being here is forcing me to look right at it. And when I do I can’t fucking breathe properly.
I lie in bed. I’ve drunk enough to pass out, and then the weed on top.
But I feel like something’s crawling all over my skin, a million cockroaches in the bed with me. They’re here to stop me getting any rest. I want to scratch at myself, tear into my skin if I have to, to make it stop. And I’m afraid that if I do sleep I’ll have dreams like I did last night. I haven’t had them for as long as I can remember … years and years. It’s the company. It’s this place.
It’s so dark in here. It’s too dark. I feel like it’s pressing down on me.
Like I’m drowning in it. I sit up in bed, remind myself that I’m fine. Nothing trying to suffocate me, no cockroaches. It could be the weed – different stuff, making me more paranoid. I’ll go take a shower, that’s what I’ll do. Get the water nice and hot, have a good scrub.
Then I think I see this thing, in the corner of the room. Growing, gathering itself together, out of the darkness.
Nah. I’m imagining it. Must be. Don’t believe in ghosts.
It’s got to be the weed, the whisky. My brain playing tricks on me.
Fuck, but I’m sure there’s something there. I can see it out of the corner of my eye, but when I look directly at it, it seems to disappear. I shut my eyes like a little kid scared of monsters under the bed, press my eyelids with my fingers until I see silver spots. It’s no good. I can see it even with my eyes closed. It had a face. And it’s not an it, it’s a someone. I know who it is.
‘Get the fuck away from me,’ I whisper. Then I try a different way: ‘I’m sorry. It wasn’t my fault. I didn’t think—’
My stomach gives a heave. I just make it to the bathroom in time before I’m spewing over the bowl of the toilet, my whole body shaking with fear.
