LITMIR.BIZ

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I don’t know why people don’t hibernate. We’re mammals after all, and some mammals hibernate.’

      Alex: ‘Do you think my mum and dad might be hibernating?’

      Elizabeth looks away to the wrecked trawler.

      If the sun’s low we can watch the bottles bobbing and shining for a bit, until they pass over to the sound. This morning it isn’t long before they disappear, which makes me think about how big the sea is.

      Big enough for the nearest island to be blue. The mainland, to be gone.

      Back when we used to take the ferry it was five hours to Oban. It never seemed too far when there were TVs and DVDs and games and dinner and showers and friends to run around with. But now the sea goes on for ever.

      Alex: ‘Goodbye bottle.’

      Me: ‘It can’t hear you, it’s a bottle.’

      Alex: ‘Are you sure there’s no ghosts on that ship?’

      Elizabeth: ‘Positive.’

      Alex: ‘My bad dream is when everyone starts to come alive. I see them coming from the boat. They walk along the bottom of the sea. Then they start to come up the beach and I’m running and crying. But I’m not proper running – my legs are too slow. Are you really sure?’

      Elizabeth: ‘Yes.’

      Alex: ‘How sure?’

      Elizabeth: ‘Listen: Dad said there was no such thing as ghosts. He said ghosts were just a figment of the imagination.’

      Alex: ‘What’s a figment?’

      Elizabeth: ‘A part that’s not real. A part you ignore.’

      There’s no hazard tape on the door. Elizabeth’s rule for this is: Be aware anyway. Someone was digging in the back garden: there’s a pit, lined with tatty plastic. There’s no broken windows, and the door’s unlocked.

      Elizabeth goes in first. ‘Hullo?’ she shouts.

      No answer.

      The carpets are red and gold in patterns like a king’s robes. No smell. So far. Stairs with a metal chair for going up and down on, for someone old, or with a bad back, or broken legs. Elizabeth signals us in.

      Downstairs there’s a front room, kitchen. It’s very untidy. The walls are golden from smoking. Out the kitchen window we see a back garden with gnomes. Some of them are fallen over, sleeping. Windchimes trying to wake them up.

      In the kitchen cupboards of old people you’ll usually find golden syrup, gravy powder. Good finds today: oatcakes, digestives, lemon curd. Hot chocolate to add to our hot chocolate supply back home.

      The fridge: shut. I wear my perfume-hanky and open it. Instant pong. The food inside gone slurpy black. Elizabeth works away behind me, collecting all the worthy stuff I can’t be fashed getting: hand-spray, mousetraps, gloves, hats, scarves, clothes. Alex comes back from the cupboard under the stairs with new bedsheets.

      ‘This is good – we’re working as a team,’ Elizabeth says. ‘See? It isn’t so bad, is it?’

      Alex: ‘It is so bad. I’m never wearing those. That’s a scarf for an old dead lady, it’s poisoned.’

      ‘You won’t be saying that when it gets cold.’ ‘It’s summertime. It won’t get cold.’

      ‘It will in winter.’

      ‘But we won’t be here in winter. We’ll be rescued by then, won’t we?’

      Elizabeth doesn’t even answer, just packs her New Shopping into plastic bags.

      Upstairs, there’s a bathroom, two bedrooms. The bath and sink are unfilled. The main bedroom has one enormous TV. Nobody in the bed, but we knew that because there was no smell. Pill packets, dried-out cups, plates. A cross on the wall. Loads of old-fashioned DVDs, which Elizabeth says are of a type called westerns. Shane. High Noon. The Magnificent Seven. It smells of dust. There’s a dressing table with loads of pairs of crinkled tights hanging from its mirror.

      The bed feels warm where the sun was on it.

      Alex: ‘Dust is skin. Every single second skin is falling off you. But how does dust fall when nobody’s home?’

      Elizabeth: ‘Dust is other things as well.’

      By the end, we’ve got a good haul. Elizabeth finds creams called Elocon and Eumovate and Liquid Paraffin, which she says are good for skin. Alex finds a ship in a bottle, plus the bedsheets. I find another clock to add to our collection. The clock is called a barometer. Elizabeth says it measures air. Right now the air is

      We almost go right into next door. But Alex stops us.

      ‘That’s my auntie’s house.’

      ‘Are you sure?’

      ‘’Course I’m sure! I always came here. That’s her name if you want proof.’

      We read the doorplate. Then Elizabeth finds a scrumple of tape by the step.

      Then I notice a B sprayed in gold on the doorframe.

      Me: ‘I think … Calum Ian’s been in.’

      Alex: ‘He can’t do that! He shouldn’t be going into my auntie’s house!’

      Elizabeth: ‘Look … let’s just move on to the next house, all right?’

      The tape makes a ripping then a sucking noise as we pull it off. Flies come out – we wait for them to stop. There’s a smell. Elizabeth pushes the door, but it’s stuck.

      We know already what the problem is. There’s someone behind it.

      Actually it isn’t a someone, it’s a something. A dog. Gone flat, like dead things usually are.

      It’s easy to push aside. Once inside we find a carpet to cover the dog over with.

      You can hardly even see it, once it’s covered.

      Duncan used to reckon that dead things went flat because their souls had left their bodies.

      He told us that Father MacGill once mentioned an experiment where they tried to measure the weight of a person’s soul, by taking their weight before and then after they had died. The difference in the sums, he said, was how much the person’s soul weighed.

      Calum Ian, however, thought it was rubbish.

      ‘Flatness is the difference between sheep and sheepskin rugs,’ he said. ‘It’s fuck all to do with souls.’

      The carpets are grey, the walls white. It feels like a dentist’s. In the front room there’s a fishtank. The water has turned green. The dead fish are floating in stringy black bits of mould. I go to dip my finger into the water just to hear what the plop sounds like.

      Elizabeth: ‘Don’t!’

      She comes and sprays my hand with soap.

      There’s a big mess in the kitchen. Wood splinters, dust, bits of ceiling. The roof’s broken down. Amongst the dust and splinters are lots of black bags, tied. I check inside, but they’re empty. They feel damp still.

      Me: ‘What happened?’

      Elizabeth: ‘The roof caved in.’

      This person was starting to get prepared. We find pots filled with water, but not covered. The downstairs bath got half-filled, but still not yet covered. The windows of one room are blocked with cardboard and sheets.

      Then in a hallway cupboard we find food hidden in a cardboard box – enough, maybe, for weeks.

      Alex: ‘We can eat and eat!’

      Me: ‘And eat and eat!’

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