by Tim Lebbon
“What?” she asked, looking him up and down. The shy flirt had left her now. Perhaps being a single mother only ever allowed her the briefest opportunities, the shallowest flirts.
“Something happened, and I don’t think I can remember what. There’s a room in my house, and something’s missing from it. It should matter to me. I slept in there last night, and . . .” He trailed off, shaking his head and wondering what her nervously flitting eyes meant.
“Are you . . . okay?” she asked.
“Yes. Yes, I’m fine.” And he was fine. He felt a twinge of guilt when he eyed Rachel’s breasts, but Elizabeth had left him. It had been long enough now to make it right for him to move on. There was that disturbing feeling, leftover from some strange dream, but he knew that would fade as the day wore on. So yes, he was fine.
Fine.
“That was Toby’s room,” Rachel said quietly.
“Toby,” Ray said. Something pulsed within him — a surge of heat and pain, quickly fading. He gasped softly, glanced around the bakery — empty but for him and Rachel — then back at the woman before him. “Who?”
“Ray?” she said.
“Toby who?” And he meant it. There’d been that reaction, like something passing through him. Goose walking over your grave, he heard his long-dead mother say, and he smiled at her precious memory.
“Ray?” Rachel said again.
Toby who? He turned and left the bakery without his bread and cakes. Rachel did not call him back, though he felt her watching him go. And the village felt hollow, like a thing of place and substance replaced with something light and false, and Ray felt a hollowness opening at the heart of him that was far larger than he could ever hope to understand.
He started walking, and the weight of that hollow place followed.
We see him walking away from the bakery, and perhaps from the hope he’d had for a new life. Inside, Rachel is watching him go, confused and a little scared. For months now she has been entertaining the idea of she and Ray becoming involved. She’s dreamed about it, and sometimes fantasized, but now he is a stranger walking away, and she no longer knows his gait.
Ollie, precious to her, is her whole world. She’ll not risk that world by becoming involved with someone. . . .
“Unhinged,” she says. She starts whistling uncertainly as she lays out another tray of iced cake slices.
Outside, along the street, Ray walks. There’s pain gone from his heart, but in its place is something worse. It’s not always best to forget. Sometimes, to remember is all we have.
We should know. We’ve been doing this long enough, and remember it all: every loss, every breath of deceit, every illness and broken bone and impact of family fist on family flesh. It wears us down, and sometimes we drown beneath the weight of it all. But there’s always that moment of floating when something works so well, and sadness is mended as easily as a broken toy.
We move quickly away from Ray who will grow to be our guilt — but we’ll live with it — and away from Skentipple. Been there too long. Other places to go.
We drift inland far from the sea, until the solid weight of another place draws us down with the gravity of pain.
About the Author
TIM LEBBON is a New York Times-bestselling writer from South Wales. He’s had twenty novels published to date, including The Island, The Map of Moments (with Christopher Golden), Bar None, Fallen, Hellboy: The Fire Wolves, Dusk, and Berserk, as well as scores of novellas and short stories. He has won four British Fantasy Awards, a Bram Stoker Award, and a Scribe Award, and has been a finalist for the International Horror Guild and World Fantasy Awards. He has also been a judge for the World Fantasy Award. In 2004, Fangoria named him “one of the thirteen rising talents who promise to keep us terrified for the next twenty-five years.” Only nineteen years left to go . . . better get busy.
Forthcoming books include The Secret Journeys of Jack London for HarperCollins (coauthored with Christopher Golden), Echo City for Bantam in the US and Orbit in the UK, Coldbrook for Corsair in the UK, 30 Days of Night: Fear of the Dark for Pocket Books, the massive short story collections Last Exit for the Lost from Cemetery Dance and Ghosts and Bleeding Things from PS Publishing, as well as several other projects not yet announced.
He has written several screenplays, and is currently developing two TV series with a British TV company.
Several of his novels and novellas are currently in development for screen in the USA and UK, and he is working on new novels and screenplays.
Find out more about Tim at his website: www.timlebbon.net.
