Love, Elsie | Enoch O'Connor

Two

I jolted upright in my bed, hearing the sounds of Annie crying over another nightmare. I sat down on the edge of her bed and she sat up, wrapping her arms tightly around my upper body. Her nightmares are a regular occurrence, sharing a room means I'm always the first by her side, helping to soothe her. Annie always says I do a better job than both Mum and Dad, and that whenever I'm near, the monsters in her dreams are chased away.

"Are you okay? Did you have a nightmare?"

Annie shook her head.

"The monsters are back."

I held her tight for several minutes, holding her to my chest and smoothing down her hair. After a while, I felt her arms begin to droop and my little sister stifled a yawn. Whilst she wouldn't admit it, she was tired so I told her to shuffle back into bed. I tucked her back into the warmth of her blanket and kissed her forehead goodnight.

I saw the monsters too, typically the night after Annie's nightmares, but sometimes it was a few hours later. It's almost as if I replay her nightmares in my own mind. The monsters were horrible creatures; tar black tongues and a hideous stench of putrefaction, each of them standing taller than any human. They staggered around, looking as if they were on the brink of death and acting inhumane, their flesh hanging loosely around their bones, almost corpse-like. They didn't seem, and couldn't be, real, it was only a nightmare. I'd never seen such a thing so I couldn't imagine where Annie had.

Sharing her dreams and having my own alongside it was exhausting. When I was little, they started off as just little things, but scary in the way they predicted a lot of things. For example, there was coincidental events like my mum coming home with a bag of shopping and I could list everything she had in the bag, without her emptying it. At first, I always ignored this as it was items we had recently ran out of either in the pub or in our cupboards. It developed into being able to see the small events around town the night before they'd even happened. Most of the time they were down to the very detail.

Sometimes they weren't accurate though, typically the nightmares were the more inaccurate ones as nothing ever happened. With age the the dreams got more accurate but the nightmares never improved. I never saw any of the monsters that lingered in mine or Annie's dreams. I never saw any of the horrific events rolling out in reality, only insignificant ones.

It was always difficult trying to sleep when my little sister had a nightmare too. Whilst she always fell back into a deep slumber, I'd find myself creeping down the dark, creaky, wooden stairs, to the arm chair in the corner of the pub's open room. It was shut away; a perfect view of everything that happened but people never spotted you at first. A place you could watch, undisturbed.

After coming from the kitchen, hot chocolate and a borrowed copy of The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe in hand, I curled up into my chair and began flicking through the pages. This was one of the perks of having access to the library all the time and knowing my best friend didn't care how long I loaned a book.

I stopped at the page the Cairnholm postcard was placed to mark where I had left off and submerged myself into a different world far from home.

With no school during the summer, the days became repetitive; I watched the clock tick by the second, working, reading, eating, sleeping and repeating. Exam season was over, I'm just waiting on grades and final university offers too. With my applications sent to the mainland and other parts of England, I have a better chance at escaping reality more than books would ever allow me to.

As I was about to react the part of my novel where Edmund is bribed by the White Witch, the bell to the pub chimes.

I look up. At first, there is just a shadow until Jake comes completely into view. Taking one look at him, I could tell he had been to the children's home. I could also tell he took the route, Worm's recommendation no doubt, through the small patch of marshland; dirt marked his jeans to the middle of his calf and he was only wearing one shoe.

"No use crying over a lost shoe, boy," I said.

Jake jumped, clearly startled by my presence. He looked down at his mud-soaked sock and then back up at me. Taking this as an invitation to talk to me, he sat down in the other armchair. I flipped my book over and placed it on my knee to keep it open.

"The children's home. What happened to it?" He questioned, and I knew it, he had visited the home.

"A German air raid. A bomb fell right on the roof," I struggled to remember the date, I had read A History of Cairnholm in my history class as an extended reading project and there was only a brief mention of the children's home, "I think it was September 3rd, 1943 but I can't be too sure."

Jakes demeanour changed from wholeheartedly defeated to more upbeat, as if there was a rekindled spark or he had a lightbulb moment.

"But where did they go after?" He pressed on, "The headmistress and the children?"

"No survivors. A literal bomb dropped on their house, I can't imagine anyone recovered from that." I said. Jake's smile wilted once more and then he stood up. With that being the only proper interaction I have had with him, I was not going to waste the opportunity to find out more about him and his mini adventures. Not before he gets himself killed.

"What's with the interest with the children's home?" Whilst I knew his and his dad's interests with the island, I couldn't grasp why two Americans have travelled upwards of four thousand miles to come to a remote island for birds and a partially destroyed, inhabitable building.

"Oh, nothing," He stood still, "Just heard about it and was curious."

"And that brought you all the way to Cairnholm?"

"My dad heard here was a good place for the puffins. He's writing a book on birds."

"Puffin season is over. He would know that." Unconvinced, I brought my hot chocolate to my lips, my eyebrows raised smugly to make him aware I was onto him.

"You ask a lot of questions."

"I have an inquisitive mind."

I typed to Hattie a quick message, I found out Jake went to the children's home, he came back missing one shoe! xx

My phone chimed with a response filled with shock, saying that everyone knows better than to go to the other side of the island and that Jake was a force not to be reckoned with.

After Jake was upstairs and out of sight, I couldn't return to my book. I knew better than to eavesdrop on his conversation through the thin walls of the inn, but my dad told me 'when an opportunity arises, seize it'. I had to pass his room to reach mine and Annie's anyway, so there can't be any harm in hovering for a moment or two.

The Priest Hole was in need of serious renovations. Paint curled at the edges of the doorframe, revealing a rainbow of browns. The wood of the door itself suffered from many generations of wear and the varnish that trapped it's moisture must have been gone two decades previously, small fragments dotted in a few areas. The Priest Hole needed serious renovations.

Nonetheless, I pressed my ear up to the door, creeping at a conversation that sounded too personal.

"Why didn't he tell us that they all died?" I heard the sadness pour from Jake's voice as he spoke to Frank.

"He leaves to join the army, and three months later, everyone he knows gets killed?" There was a pause in their conversation.

"Not even Grandpa could turn that into a bedtime story." Jake mumbled. I sensed from their conversation that Jake was closer to his grandfather than his dad, I can't imagine Frank to be as imaginative as his son was.

"Well, no wonder he was scared of being a dad... being close to anyone."

With that, I walked away from their bedroom door and towards mine. Closing it behind me, I leaned against it for a while and saw Annie fast asleep. Her hair was fanned out on her pillow and her face was crushed against her teddy bear. I exhaled; there were no monsters catching her in her dreams now.