The Nightmare Place by Steve Mosby Read Free Book Online

hanging in the air. Other times I’d wake up and she wouldn’t be there at all. And when she was elsewhere, I never had the remotest impression that she might be thinking about me, or worrying.
    Despite all that, I loved her fiercely. My memories of her are nothing but fond. When she was around, she was the most attentive and caring person on the planet. I remember her as a young woman made old before her time: always unkempt, wearing tatty jeans and cardigans, and often – incongruously – a cheap crimson beret. Thinking about her as an adult, I notice an air of regret about her: the knowledge that her life had not gone the way she wanted, and that even on those reduced terms, she was failing to live it the way she ought to. I see the sadness of an inebriated woman dancing happily, clicking her fingers, in an almost empty pub on a sunny afternoon.
    There are other memories, of course. I remember the men in drab grey suits who would turn up at our house. As a child, I couldn’t understand why my mother allowed them in; she clearly didn’t want them there. I’d always know when they were coming, because she’d suddenly be far more present, and would enlist me in frantic cleaning exercises, usually pretending it was a game. When they arrived, I’d sit patiently beside her on the settee, and look at the men seated across from us, sad expressions on their faces. I’d notice the difference between them and my mother – that she would always try to look happy, even when really she was feeling sad and serious, while the men were the opposite.
    I didn’t know why they were there, only that it had something to do with me and my mother, and whether we loved each other enough. Sometimes I’d cling to her arm while she talked to them, her voice more careful and controlled than I was used to. There was no raucous laugh; it was as though a dial had been turned down inside her. She’d place a reassuring hand on my own. Everything’s going to be okay. And that was the kind of life we had, looking back. Never really okay, but always going to be.
    I think it’s to her credit that I didn’t notice those things until I was an adult. Whatever flaws she stumbled so frequently over, she tried to do her best, and she loved me, and I loved her. In my head, I try to keep her frozen at that age, barely older than I am now. There are later images, of course, as the carefree young woman who liked to drink and should probably have cut down transitioned into the woman who needed to, and then the woman for whom it was too late. The woman lying in her final bed, in the hospice, as small and thin as a child. But I try not to think about that. The point is, I never got to see her age.
    Not so with John.
     
    He still lived in the same house he always had: a slim terrace only a short distance from the estate I’d grown up on. The road sloped steeply upwards, and John’s house was close to the top, so that, standing in the overgrown front garden, you could see the spread of cheap houses stretching out in the distance.
    Tonight, his house key in my hand, I stood there for a moment, looking down at it. From this far away, the haphazard sprawl of tiny buildings and warren of pathways looked peaceful and still. The sky above was pale lilac, with threads of cloud that appeared dull green in the slowly dying light. I tried to pick out the waste ground, and eventually found it. There were tiny figures crossing it: children, I imagined. At this distance, they seemed to be dissolving and rolling rather than walking.
    As always, the sight of it made me think about the nightmare.
    Although I had a key to John’s house, I knocked hard before unlocking the front door, then called out his name as I let myself in.
    ‘It’s only me.’
    The hallway smelled musty, and my shoes scuffed up an itch of dust from the threadbare fuzz of the carpet. There was another odour, as well, which I found hard to place at first. It smelled like cats, I decided finally, but