Mercy by Rebecca Lim

an act on my part. I don’t even like the taste of beer, but I’d downed a truckload of the stuff and it had still done nothing for me. ‘It must be love,’ I’d replied at the time, puzzled. ‘Or beer goggles, Bernie.’
    He’d laughed and forgotten all about it in the harsh light of morning; and I’d left soon afterwards, left the tentative courtship, the rest of her life, to her. The strange comment had completely slipped my mind. But now I saw it for myself.
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    For a moment, I’m grateful for the memory, it’s a beautiful memory and I’ll hold onto it for as long as I can.
    But I’m also angry. It’s just another stupid complication for me to deal with. Right now, it’s not supposed to be about me, although some day soon I hope it will be.
    I let my glowing hand fall gently to my side.
    ‘Oh, that,’ I say casually. ‘Well, I guess I won’t be needing to borrow a torch from you, after all.’
    Perversely, as we approach the back door of the manse and absolute silence is what the situation calls for, all Ryan wants to do is talk.
    ‘How do you do that?’ he hisses. ‘It wasn’t my eyes playing tricks then, back at home. It’s really faint, but noticeable. Like you’re made of it.’
    He runs a finger quickly down one of my arms and it’s electric, his touch. I shake him off quickly, though a big part of me doesn’t want to.
    ‘Shut up and focus,’ I snap.
    I scout the barren backyard for any signs of a trapdoor, a basement; see nothing but withering lawn and concrete. These are not green-fingered people. Their concerns are clearly not of this earth. The house is low to the ground, ugly and functional. There are no suspicious 70

    outbuildings, no other structures at all. If there is any kind of hidden cavity or chamber to this place, it will have to be hewn into the ground itself and accessed from somewhere inside that house.
    Ryan won’t leave it alone. ‘Are you a ghost?’ he demands. ‘You feel pretty real. Has Lauren “crossed over”, is that it? Is she trying to tell me something? Is that why you’re here?’
    I put my hand on the unlatched screen door and say icily, ‘ No , no, no and no as far as I’m aware. If I was a ghost with omniscient powers, you think I’d need to be breaking into some stranger’s house with you? You think I’d even be here? I’d just walk through the walls, wouldn’t I? I’m just a freak with freaky skin, okay?’
    Out of ideas, I show him the unhealed eczema scars on both wrists and he frowns rebelliously.
    ‘I’m not stupid,’ he growls after a moment.
    ‘And I’m not saying you are,’ I reply fiercely under my breath. ‘But I don’t have all the answers, and that’s the truth. Now either you start digging up the whole backyard like you tried to do around the church today, or we figure out whether this place has a basement from the inside. And I know which option I’m liking better, so get in there, hero boy. We don’t have much time.’
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    Ryan’s mouth compresses into a straight line. I know we will be having this talk later. He pulls a pair of gloves from a side pocket of his pack, takes the screen-door latch out of my hand, and pushes me out of the way.
    Of course, being Paradise, the back door is unlocked.
    Shooting me a hard look, Ryan removes a torch from his pack and opens the door silently.
    We comb the house on sneakered feet, from room to room. Study the joints in the floorboards, lift up the rugs and bath mats, play the beam of the torch along the skirting that hugs the intersection between walls and floor, the single manhole cover in the bathroom ceiling, doing everything together, me watching his back, him watching mine.
    The wind begins to build outside, rattling the windows of the little house, masking Ryan’s careless stumble against the television in the front room, the squeak of the pantry door being opened, the sound the cabinet door under the sink makes when it’s pushed shut, of Ryan forcing aside the