Half-Sick of Shadows Read Online Free

sleep. ‘Who’ll sleep in Granny Hazel’s room now?’
    ‘I don’t know,’ I replied, because I didn’t know. Until then, I hadn’t thought about it. I thought about it. I thought about it for longer than I thought. ‘Gregory, probably.’
    Sophia didn’t answer. She’d gone to sleep.
    Next thing I knew, the bedroom door creaked and candlelight came in with Mother – and Father too this time. I must have been asleep because no creaks came from the stairs.
    Father had shaken Gregory and Edgar awake, and brought them in dressing gowns and bare feet to speak to all of us together. We were all there: Sophia and me in bed, Mother, Gregory and Edgar shivering, and Father, the white of his face glowing between his head hair and his beard. How could anyone say, as Mother did, that Gregory had inherited Father’s square chin and strong looks? How did anyone know what Father’s chin looked like? In Gregory, I could see only Father’s ugly disposition, which, up to that point, Mother had never mentioned.
    None of Father’s strong looks or ugly disposition remained when my and Sophia’s turn came to be born. Our birth called upon Mother’s substantial resources. Even as a child, I saw shards of her in us: the splinters of solemn mood, the sharp edges of delicate features, and the jigsaw piece of sallow pallor. I was less a handsome boy than a pretty one. Sophia reflected Mother in every way. Mother depleted herself when she produced us. I came out of our birth best. Neither Mother nor Sophia came out of it whole. As Sophia gained strength through infancy and grew into childhood, Mother’s remaining strength shrank in equal measure. They were ghosts of each other.
    Father’s voice crackled with emotion as he gave us our instructions for tomorrow: no dawdling, no talking, no laughing and no horseplay. We were to get up promptly, wash, and get dressed in our Sunday best. We were to be respectful at all times. Were we to step out of line there would be consequences. ‘Justified consequences,’ he said. I wondered how justified consequences differed from ordinary ones.
    Our Sunday best should have been for church. We only attended at Christmas. The nearest church was two hours away and two hours back if the horse hurried and the cart kept all its wheels.
    While Father talked, Gregory’s and Edgar’s feet turned blue.
    Blue feet were common; we all had them.
    But we didn’t mind blue feet. We didn’t mind groaning, crooked rafters. We were deaf to creaking walls and joints. We made peace with the wind that penetrated brickwork gaps like the breath of ghosts. We were accustomed to straining noises at night like the noise our gums made when Farmer Barry pulled a rotten tooth. Commonly, a whine somehow different from the usual whines awakened one or other of us – me, Sophia, Edgar, Gregory, Mother or Father – and sometimes a whine woke all of us together, and we would be twelve eyeballs in the dark. One of us might frighten another downstairs, or in the corridor, with or without our candles, as, unable to return to sleep, we prowled in search of dawn.
    When Father had done talking, he left our bedroom without saying goodnight. He never said goodnight. Gregory and Edgar never said goodnight either. They limped out behind him and went to their room. Mother kissed me and Sophia, and muttered as she tucked the sheets in that we would catch our deaths, which made me aware, for the first time, of death’s existence as my future possession, waiting for me to claim it, drumming its fingers, bored, because I had two left feet – according to Mother – and took ages at everything.
    Sophia went to sleep before our parents went down the creaky stairs. I decided to stay awake and listen in case she woke. On that night, as on most others, I was useless at staying awake.
    Granny Hazel, dead on the kitchen table, and only a floor or ceiling between us! She looked up at me with her eyes closed. I feared looking over the side of my