THE VISION IS A PLACE | ✓ {complete}

Chapter 58 : hit

"Brandon."

Brandon lifts his head from his hand. His heavy eyelids follow.

"You have to eat," Heath says, tiredly.

"Not hungry," he says, his fingers still tangled in his ratty hair.

Anna takes a seat and spoons the serving onto her own plate instead.

We're around the dining table in the kitchen. Aurora's flower bouquet is still in the centre, dried and brittle, surrounded by rusty cutlery and sunburnt forearms. A small lamp next to the herb cabinet is helping two beeswax candles light the room. The flames of the candles are weak; every dinner Brandon picks at them, trying to melt their tall edges so they don't tunnel, but it only makes the wicks drown.

Outside, the horizon is glowing a deep tangerine colour. The mercury in the thermometer hanging in the window at the sink reads just above room temperature. The storm cooled things down, but it won't last.

Scrambled eggs are on the menu tonight. We only got a chance to sell a few cartons today; the rest will spoil if we don't eat them. Anna did them up with some unsold greens and a few cloves of garlic. The still warm cast iron pan is in the middle of the table, resting on an old, crumbling cork pad. Heath stares at it for a long while, before reaching across and forcing a serving onto Brandon's plate for him, desperate for everything to just seem normal again.

I'm sure Brandon wants that too, but he's not as good at pretending. Heath's had more practice.

"I keep thinking I'm hearing sirens," Anna says, quietly.

I keep thinking I'm hearing them too, but I know it's not realistic. The van didn't stick around, and neither did we. The sheriffs in Petersburg have nothing to go on, and no real reason to care. By now, I'm sure something else has come up to take their focus off what happened. Maybe a drunken brawl between two old guys at the tavern, or another Ginseng theft out by Winston Creek...

"...Does he think we're all crazy or something?" Brandon asks, his eyes fixed on his now full plate.

Anna sips her water, and Heath forces in a mouthful, against an expression that suggests his stomach is turning.

Brandon tries again, but with a different question, not seeming to care that the first one didn't get an answer. "Do you have to believe in Kent's story to be happy here do you think?"

"...Noah always believed in it," Jai says. "We'd talk about it. Just the other day, he came to me asking if I believed in ghosts—"

"Jai, not now," Anna cuts in, not seeing how ghosts could have anything to do with it.

"Let me finish. We were talking about how, after the suicides, this place should feel haunted. It's strange that it doesn't. It's like a paranormal flatline here. I was telling him that it's proof: Sarah Lacey, Cynthia, Harry, Sandy, Stryker...they made it away from here. If they didn't, then we'd feel them. That, alone, is a reason to stay open to the idea. Maybe Noah didn't believe in The Vision exactly the way Kent talks about it, but he believed in something like it. He hadn't shut it out yet."

I should stay quiet. I know that, but the question comes anyway: "Why was he asking you about ghosts?"

He shrugs, defensively, because it's me asking. "How am I supposed to know?"

"You didn't ask? He just randomly started asking about them?"

Addison knocks my knee with his, under the table.