Chapter Nine
1280 Words
The scream never left his throat. It stayed there, caught like glass, as Graham sat bolt upright in bed, sweat slicking his chest and back, his curls damp, sticking to his brow. He sucked in a ragged breath and dragged his hands over his face, like he could rub the nightmare off.
The air in the small attic room was heavy, sharp with old wood, turpentine, and the burnt edge of incense his mother liked to leave by the window. But tonight, it didn’t calm him. Nothing did.
He lit a cigarette with trembling fingers, the flame from the match brief and jittery, his hands refusing to steady. The first drag made his lungs seize, but the second helped. Just barely. He closed his eyes, leaned back against the wall, and exhaled slow. He needed the smoke. Needed the burn to remind him he was awake.
In the corner of the room, barely touched by moonlight, was the clipping.
That girl. The curly-haired one. That photo he shouldn’t have. Couldn’t throw away. He cursed softly, pressing his palm to his temple. The headache pulsed behind his eyes like an old wound flaring up.
The dream hadn’t started badly. That’s the cruel part. It never did.
He was back in Dublin, maybe twelve or thirteen, barefoot in the doorway of that stone cottage they never called home. Cold air drifting in through the windows. A deer, freshly killed, strung up in the kitchen like it belonged there. Blood still thick and slow.
And standing in the middle of it all was Garda Nolan—local deputy, part-time hunter, his father’s drinking buddy when the bottle wasn’t half-empty or shattered. A big man with a copper beard and a voice like whiskey over gravel. He’d show up sometimes when his da was away, give his ma a nod, tousle Graham’s hair, bring meat he’d shot himself. Said boys needed to know how to cut through bone.
"Grip it here, like that," Nolan said in the dream, hand guiding Graham’s around the worn handle of a skinning knife. "Clean, deliberate. You can always tell a man by how he treats a blade."
His ma was in the corner, clutching Saoirse tight to her hip, her smile too wide, too still. Like someone had painted it on.
Graham had nodded, focused on the meat, on the metal. Pretended he didn’t hear the car in the distance. Pretended the boots crunching gravel weren’t his da’s. But in the dream, like always, the moment shattered when the door slammed open, and that voice thundered down the hall, all rage and liquor and cold.
He woke before it got worse. He always did.
Still panting, he leaned forward, elbows on his knees, cigarette dangling from his lips. His eyes flicked back to the clipping.
"f**k," he whispered, dragging his hand down his face. He took another long drag and stared into the dark, waiting for the memory to settle, knowing it never really would.
He flicked the ash into an old coffee cup near the bed, its rim stained and chipped. It clinked against the other butts inside—tonight wasn’t the first time he’d woken like this. Wasn’t the first time he’d thought of her.
In the soft light of the attic, the clipping pulsed like an open wound. Her photo, torn from a Parisian magazine, folded, unfolded, worn soft at the creases. She was behind a bakery counter, head turned slightly, curls unruly, flour dusting her cheek. He’d clipped it months ago, told himself it was about the composition. The lighting. The way the background blurred around her like she’d stepped into focus while the world fell away.
But that was a lie.
It wasn’t the art. It was her. Always her.
He rose, bare feet hitting the cold wood floor, and crossed the room. The photo curled up slightly on the edges, refusing to lie flat. He touched it, fingers brushing over her face like a penitent at a shrine. A woman like that, he thought, she doesn’t know what it means to be seen. Not really. Not like I see her.
A sharp knock echoed from downstairs.
Graham froze. The cigarette burned forgotten between his fingers. He turned his head slowly, listening. Another knock, more insistent this time. Then a voice. Soft. Female.
“Garham? You in there?”
His spine straightened. He hadn’t heard anyone approach. Hadn't invited anyone. Not tonight.
He grabbed the cigarette, crushed it out in the cup, and slipped the clipping into the hollowed-out book on his desk—a leather-bound edition of Dorian Gray, spine long cracked, pages eaten away at the edges by damp and time.
Another knock. “It’s Maeve. You missed your appointment.”
He exhaled through his nose. “Bloody hell,” he muttered. Maeve Brennan. His caseworker. His keeper. The woman who checked in once a month with soft words and veiled pity, like he was a boy with skinned knees and not a grown man who saw the world in frayed edges and smoke.
“I’m not decent,” he called, voice hoarse from sleep and smoke.
“You never are.”
He opened the door anyway.
Maeve stood on the landing with a paper bag and that tired, too-kind look in her eyes. Her scarf was crocheted, hand-dyed—a gift from one of her clients, no doubt. She stepped inside without asking, glancing around the small attic room like it might rearrange itself to please her.
“I brought soup,” she said. “You looked thin last time.”
Graham shut the door behind her, locking it out of habit.
“I’m not hungry.”
She set the bag down anyway. “You’ve been smoking again.”
“You say that like it’s new.”
Maeve sighed, brushing a curl from her face. “I worry, Garham.”
“You shouldn’t.” He picked up the soup, sniffed it. Lentils. Irish guilt in a biodegradable container. “I’m not one of your lost causes.”
“No,” she said softly. “You’re one of the ones that linger.”
He didn’t answer. Instead, he turned away and walked back to the window, peering through the thin curtains. The street was empty. No one lingering. No one watching.
Except him.
He saw her sometimes—Yesenia—crossing the Rue de la Harpe in the early light, head down, coat collar turned up. The city moved around her like she didn’t belong in it. Like she was already halfway out of this world.
That’s what drew him in.
The silence around her. The ache in her spine. The way she never looked up, not really.
“Have you been sleeping?” Maeve asked behind him.
“No.”
“Nightmares?”
He paused. “Memories.”
Maeve said nothing for a moment. Then: “And the girl? Is she still… visiting you?”
A pulse of heat fired in his chest. He turned slowly.
“She’s real,” he said. “Don’t talk about her like she isn’t.”
Maeve studied him for a long time. Her voice, when it came, was gentle but firm. “I’m not saying she’s not real, Garham. I’m saying this—” she gestured to the hollowed book, to the clutter, to the clipped photo just barely hidden—“this isn’t real. Not the way you think it is.”
He stepped forward. Close enough to see the worry in her eyes.
“She sees me,” he whispered. Maeve didn’t argue. She never did. She only nodded, as if that truth could live beside all his other ones.
- Writer
