Night Shift

There was only one rule: don’t open the door. Tricky, when you’re five, and scared, and your bed is wet again. It had been better, when Nana was alive. Then an amber glow crept around the door, and Kamali had listened to TV laughter and known that when she woke, her mum would be in the kitchen, fixing breakfast for Kamali, dinner for herself. Now it was always dark and cold and strange.

She wasn’t sure how long she’d been asleep. She was thirsty and her thighs were cold where pee had soaked her pyjamas. She didn’t used to wet the bed. Only since Nana died.

Kamali listened hard. There wasn’t much to hear. A drip, a groan. House noises, her mum said. Just house noises. “A house breathes at night, baby” she said, and Kamali listened to the breaths. The metallic twang of the pipes, the moan of the wooden frame, tightening in the chill, the creak of the stairs under shuffling feet. The sigh outside her door. House noises, just house noises. A house breathes at night.

“Nana will watch over the house, baby” her mum had said. “She won’t let no-one in.” Kamali was afraid to be alone. Easy, when you’re five, and its dark, and the house breathes at night. “Nana never let no-one come in her house uninvited this side of the grave, she aint gonna start just ‘cause she passed over.”

“So why I gotta keep the door shut?”

“Dead folk don’t think like the living, baby. If they waiting for you, they like to hurry you along.”

Nana had never hurried her, not when she wasn’t dead.

Kamali was so cold now, and the house was breathing loud in shifting shadows and rasping whispers.

“Kamali, child, open the door.”

Kamali stood, shivering.

“Mummy?”