Bright Blessings

Flora plunged her fingers into the warm earth, rooting around with patient dedication. She turned up nothing. Rising to her feet, head slowly turning back and forth, she heard the scream again. They were always so difficult to locate, the earth muffling their cries. She spent another hour snaking her way back and forth through the forest. All the usual spots turned up nothing but worms and mulch. Head swivelling like a satellite dish, ears constantly pricked, she worked her way deeper under the canopy, back where the elders grew, Ancient oaks, once the hiding place of kings, great pines, the ancestral homes of dryads, and none sheltering the screamer amongst their sprawling roots. Pausing to drink deeply from the clear waters of a stream which flowed in tumbling delight from the mountains, she caught the scream once more. So close she felt she could reach out and touch it. Ah, of course, the willows. Long had they deserved their reputation as often playful, occasionally sp...

Sam thrashed awake, but the grinding pain did not dissolve in the face of fluorescent brilliance. The claws tearing at his eyes resolved into his fingernails, shreds of bloodied bandage clinging, entangled. A door banged open followed by brisk tutting. Hands appeared in his pink-tinged vision adeptly wrapping fresh bandages into place, removing sight but not sensation. The howling screams continued in the depths of his brain and the urge to rip at his eyes was overwhelming. Even as his hands rose once more there was a sharp snick in his arm, fluid flowing, oblivion following. He didn’t feel the reassuring pat on his arm, the quiet words of Nurse Clarke; “Dr Arthur says it’ll be a couple more days before those can come off, hon. Patience now.” Sam slipped in and out of the next few days. He pain was constant, the urge to scratch his eyes so insistent they had to keep him fully sedated. When he tried to gouge in his sleep he woke to find his arms restrained, a nurse on ...

Amy skipped happily down the street, her rope making a satisfying whirr as it turned over her head and under her feet. The taps on her toes clicked merrily and she giggled in delight at the thought of defying her mother who had clearly stated Amy was not to wear her tap shoes out to play. There would be consequences, she’d warned with her trademark ‘Don’t you defy me, lady’ frown. Consequences were for later. Now it was summer, school was out and Amy was as free as a bird. Turning onto Rever Street, Amy grinned. Beneath her alternating feet passed a hopscotch grid. Another child, probably a girl in her limited world experience, had also enjoyed a happy afternoon. The colours sprang off the dull grey pavement in reds and yellows with green and blue hits here and there. Her skipping feet scuffed up minute dust storms in cloudy pastels. The grid seemed to stretch on forever, wending its way down Rever and turning the bend onto Somiar Avenue. About halfway down Amy began to...

Wind sang through the branches of the willows lining the drive. It whistled through holes in crumbling brickwork and shattered, glass panes. It rattled doors in their frames, set rotting wood to creaking and popping, and yet Rachel felt she was coming home. Her measured pace took her up the weed-strewn gravel drive, allowed her a slow circle of the decrepit statue of the founder before she turned to face what remained of Willowbrook Girls School – Established 1875. The sign above the vast double entrance doors hung yet, albeit by a single nail, but it clung. Rachel rose slowly up the sweep of cracked steps and placed her hand on the ornate brass handle of the left door. Another sign, newer, of less presence, hung to the right, warning of the unsafe structure, of danger to life and limb. The words circled a stern hand, held up, palm out; Stop!   Smiling, she turned the handle and shoved. The door proved awkward, clearly undisturbed for many years. A heap of general d...

Jinny woke with a start, flashing into fully alert. Her instincts told her something was awry in the house, something involving David. She fled from her bed, along the upstairs hall and noted his bedroom door was open. His nightlight rotated serenely, visions of unicorns and rainbow stars dancing across the ceiling and walls. His miniature race–car bed lay empty and cold to her touch. How long had he been gone? Where did a three year-old go at four in the morning? About to hurtle down the stairs, glimpsing the closed stairgate below, Jinny changed tack and headed to the end of the hall, turned the kooky l-shape which had been one of the things to endear her to the house and skidded to a halt at the bottom of the attic steps. David stood, apparently unharmed, on the bottom step, chattering and giggling. Jinny looked up, frowning at the open attic door and the light within. Caught between fear for her son and frustration at these increasingly frequent midnight excursio...