Leave This Place by Spike Black

amazing he looked. He was young again, almost fresh-faced - the Silas he had been two months ago.
    She realized she couldn’t do it to him. She couldn’t drag him back there.
    She forced her head, which felt like a huge boulder on her neck, into a slight nod. “Yes,” she said, her voice barely more than a whisper. “Yes, I’m fine.”
    She noticed that her hands were trembling and hid them behind her back.
    Silas showed her the contents of the frying pan. “Bacon?”
    Bacon? She wanted to shake him. There’s a ghost upstairs in our bed and my entire belief system has just crumbled around my feet and you’re asking if I want bacon?
    “I did it just how you like it,” he said. “Extra crispy.”
    She fell into the chair. Silas placed a plate of bacon and eggs before her. She almost vomited.
    I’m not sitting for breakfast, you fool. I’m sitting because if I don’t, I’ll collapse onto the floor, curl up into a fetal position and start crying. And once I start, I fear that I’ll never, ever stop.
    “Looks like it’s going to be a lovely day,” he said. “Ketchup?”
    She gazed out of the window, squinting at the brightness that greeted her sore eyes. If she had not been in a traumatized state, she would have chuckled at the irony.
    It really was a beautiful morning.

    ***

    Oona shivered as she wandered the lower level of the cottage in her nightdress. That’s the problem with discovering you’re sharing your bed with a ghost, she thought. You don’t stop on your way out to grab your robe.
    She considered asking Silas to get her clothes for her. But he’d want to know why she couldn’t just get them herself, and that was a conversation she couldn’t have. No, she’d have to just tell him she was having a lazy day in her nightie. In the freezing cold.
    He’d think she’d gone mad, and maybe he’d be right.
    She pictured Weddup laying in bed next to her, still wearing the tweed jacket from the photo. His crawling, curling, spider leg fingers wrapping around her arm, the overgrown, yellowed nails digging into her flesh…
    Stop it. Just stop thinking about it.
    She entered the living room searching for any kind of distraction. She found herself studying the painting on the wall above the couch. She’d never paid any attention to it before, and that was unsurprising, really; it had artistic merit but it was glum. The only emotion it evoked from her was misery.
    She stared at the focal point of the painting, a lonely building in danger of being swallowed by the surrounding moorland. It was several seconds before she recognized it as Cairn Cottage.
    She figured she was used to the chocolate box view painted by the brochure; she’d never seen the landscape represented so honestly before. The muted winter colors, the solitary structure of the cottage amidst the stark, unattractive backdrop.
    Her eyes dropped to the bottom corner of the canvas. The artist’s signature, messy but legible: W. Weddup.
    “Hey,” a voice blared from behind her, and she gasped with such ferocity that it made her throat hurt.
    “You’re jumpy this morning,” Silas said, smirking.
    She really wanted to hit him.
    He put a hand on her arm, and she flinched. She tried to cover it up with a roll of the shoulders. He cuddled up to her, his arms wrapped tight, his hot breath on her neck, and suddenly she felt claustrophobic and hot and her limbs were worms that wanted to wriggle free.
    “Get off me.” The words exploded from her mouth. She regretted them instantly.
    Silas huffed. “Fine. Whatever.” He picked up his book from the coffee table, dropped into the armchair and started reading.
    Oona noticed that he was almost a third of the way through his book, now.
    Good for him.
    She left him to it, exited into the hallway and passed the telephone table. She stopped and looked back. The guest book taunted her from its stand with its promise of overwhelming positivity, and if ever she needed a dose, it was now. She grabbed the