1914

‘Thomas? Thomas!’ Mamma shouted as Pappa and I returned to the house. She ran out into the yard, her feet muddying at she approached. Mamma embraced the both of us, kissed us on our temples.

She crouched to look into my eyes. ‘Now, you listen here, Thomas, and you listen good. You never - and I mean never - do that to us again. You understand? We thought we had lost you! Never wander off like that again.’

‘But the voice told me to,’ I replied. ‘It told me I needed to see.’

‘We’ve spoken about this, Thomas. There are no voices. That’s just your imagination.’ She looked up at father. ‘Pappa, tell him!’

But he remained silent.

‘Pappa?’ Mamma repeated, her voice weaker this time.

Father still did not speak a word, but instead dropped my hand, and walked, alone, back into the house.

She turned to me, her eyes wide. ‘What’s happened to your father? Did he hurt himself, somehow, Thomas? Did you see?’

‘No, Mamma. He didn’t hurt himself.’

‘Then what happened?’ she asked.

‘He saw.’

* * *

2018

‘I’m sorry?’ I asked.

There was no response.

‘Did someone say something?’

Still there was nothing.

‘...Hans? Is that you?’

I remained as still and silent as I could, listening for the voice again. I soon dismissed it as a weird echo, or perhaps someone outside or the sounds from a television carrying.

As I bent to open my bag, I noticed that the hairs on my arm were stood on end. I pulled a jumper from my bag, undoing my fantastic clothes folding efforts in the process.

‘Are you OK up here?’ El asked from the doorway. ‘On the phone or something?’

‘What?’ I asked. ‘No. Why?’

She shrugged. ‘Thought I heard you talking to someone. Were you just talking to yourself? Hans does that, sometimes. You’ll probably hear him, in the evenings. The walls aren’t thick here.’

‘I wasn’t talking to anyone,’ I lied.

El smiled. ‘OK. Maybe it was someone else.’

The room went quiet for a second, and El beat me in the race to fill the silence.

‘So… what you wanna do, while you’re here?’

‘I don’t know,’ I replied. ‘I figured you and Hans are the experts here. You tell me.’

‘Hans won’t be useful.’

‘OK, I figured you are the expert here,’ I corrected myself. ‘What you got to do around here?’

‘You see,’ El began. ‘I got the bad end of the bargain here. When I came to see you, you have all of London for us to look at. You can show me towers, and wheels, and everything. All I got is…,’ she paused to gesture out the window. ‘...This.’

I laughed. ‘Trust me, London gets boring. Compared to that, this is… refreshing.’

My cousin’s eyes narrowed at me. ‘Do you mean that, or are you being polite?’

‘Both! Maybe tonight we can go check out one of the bars, see if Hans is-’

‘The bar.’

‘I’m sorry?’

‘The bar. There’s one.’

‘OK, well, we’ll go there,’ I replied, then a thought occured to me. ‘Wait. How old are you? Can you drink?’

‘Yeah, I can drink beer and wine. And cider, too, but you’d have to burn my taste buds off first for that.’

‘Will Hans wanna come?’ I asked.

El shrugged again. ‘If I see him, I’ll tell him. He goes off, though. Wandering. Doesn’t come back for hours.’

‘Where’s he go?’

She pulled a face. ‘Hell if I know. I never asked. I’ll leave you to packing, then.’

El was already halfway out the door before I could reply. ‘Hey, El, wait-’

‘Yep?’

‘You hear voices a lot, here?’ I asked, that “come and see” still ringing around in my brain.

‘Not since the pills!’ she replied, running out the door. I was left not knowing whether that was a joke or not.

* * *

I put on a light blue semi-formal shirt to go out in, and was surprised when I found it littered in creases - even despite my thorough folding. Walking downstairs, I found El at the end of the hallway.

‘Think your Mum would come with us?’

El laughed. ‘With us? I think she would be more afraid to be seen out with her kids than we would be to be seen out with her. Besides, it’s her book club night tonight. They’re reading the Great Gatsby.’

‘I don’t remember her liking things with sad endings,’ I retorted.

My cousin shook her head. ‘She does not.’

‘I see,’ I replied, before seeing a shape move over El’s shoulder. A young man about my age strode confidently forwards, and thrust a hand towards me.

‘Daniel,’ he said, more as a comment than anything else.

‘Hans, good to see you, mate, how you doing?’ I asked.

‘I am well. And yourself?’ he replied.

‘Yeah, I’m good, I’m good. Great house you’ve got here, I should have come seen it sooner.’

‘Yes,’ he responded. ‘It is nice.’

I realised that trying to get to know my rather strange cousin was going to be a difficult endeavour.

‘You guys ready for a drink?’

‘Yep!’ El replied. ‘You’re paying, right? I told Hans already that you were paying.’

‘...I guess I am paying.’

We walked slowly down the hill, our path taking us in zigzags towards our destination so as to limit the rate of descent. El pointed out various landmarks around town - mostly the homes of her ex-boyfriends - while Hans walked silently a few paces behind us.

When we arrived at the bar, it turned out to be a small venue with approximately one hundred people sprawling out the front door.

‘Busy, then?’ I asked.

‘It’s spring,’ El replied. ‘People don’t mind drinking outside once the sun returns. In the winter it’s a lot quieter, though. Not enough space. Here, give me your card, I’ll get the drinks.’

El rushed off the minute the plastic touched her palm, leaving me alone with her brother.

‘So, erm, Hans, what you up to, these days?’

He shrugged. Perhaps shrugging so much was a family trait. ‘Not so much. I do web design, mostly. There is money in it. More than you might think.’

‘Oh yeah?’ I replied, wondering if it was rude to ask exactly how much money was in it. ‘What’s that like?’

‘It pays the bills.’

‘So you have a lot of those, yeah?’ I replied, hoping a joke might break this ice wall between us.

Hans didn’t reply, and I ended up counting down the seconds until El would return with the drinks.

We had one drink, then two, then three, and then, maybe four, but maybe it was five already and I’d forgotten one. Or maybe I’d forgotten too, and it was six drinks already, and I had lost count. Either way, the beer had gone to my head.

When the conversation lulled, El turned to Hans. ‘I heard him talking to himself.’

This was the first thing I’d seen Hans seem truly interested in. ‘Oh, really?’ he asked me, turning his body to face me.

‘No, I wasn’t talking to myself,’ I lied again. ‘I think it was someone outside. There was-’

‘Did you hear someone talking, Daniel?’ Hans asked, his eyes narrowed.

‘Did I hear…,’ I started, repeating the question back to myself to make it clear in my hazy mind. ‘Yeah. I mean… I think so. They just said-’

‘What did they say, Daniel?’ he repeated.

‘They said… they said… come and see,’ I replied.

Both El and Hans turned white and looked at one another with wide, fearful eyes.