Entry 7 – Under The Skin

Journal of Isla Loren — March 23

 

Location: the kitchen counter 

Weather: cool white-grey sky, like static, making everything feel flattened, like I’m inside something sealed 

 

 

~

 

 

My mother used to say our house, my childhood home, was haunted. 

 

She said it started after the snow melted one year, when the damp got in deep.

 

My father called her crazy. Told her she was getting old and losing her hearing. That maybe she should see someone about it. 

 

I remember the way her face went still after that. Brittle, like a window pane you know not to push too hard.

 

I told her I heard it, too.

 

But now… I don’t know if I really did.

 

Maybe I just wanted to stop the way he looked at her. 

 

Maybe I just didn’t want to be the reason she gave up believing herself.

 

 

~

 

 

To break my cleaning frenzy, I decided to leave the house, to reset myself. Just a walk — nothing grand, nothing far. 

 

Before I left, I filled the kettle and set it on the stove. 

 

The flame ticked into place — blue and sharp, like something too alive for the hour. 

 

While the water heated, I reached for the tin tucked behind the canisters. 

 

When I cracked the tin open, a soft breath of dried chamomile and lavender rose.

 

Dusty-sweet. Like the corner of a nursery that hasn’t been entered in years.

 

I never had kids, but I can imagine the scent: sun-warmed blankets, stale with time, lotion gone slightly sour, the quiet weight of memory pressed into the air.

 

I spooned the flowers into the steeping basket, careful not to spill. 

 

Some part of me wanted this to be perfect. Like a ritual. Like proof that I still knew how to care for something. 

 

The flowers drifted down like pale moths, wings curled inward. My hands moved slow, as if I were trying not to wake something.

 

When the kettle screamed, I poured the water and watched the petals bloom, color bleeding from them in slow tendrils. 

 

A ghost of purple in the gold. The steam coiled, fogging my glasses, then my throat.

 

I stood there, waiting. Breathing it in.

 

 

~

 

 

The mug had moved around earlier that day, might I add — from the windowsill to the bookshelf. 

 

So I started carrying it from room to room like a tether, clutching its warm ceramic belly like it might otherwise slip through my fingers. 

 

 

~

 

 

As I passed the front window to leave, I noticed a smudge — like a thumbprint. 

 

Bigger than mine, and low on the glass. I raised my own hand to compare. It didn’t match. It wasn’t mine.

 

 

~
 

Outside, a cold-thin breeze blew, as if a storm loomed. 

 

The garden looked… off. 

 

One of the plants I’ve been trying to keep alive — something with soft white blossoms — had collapsed. 

 

The soil around it was soaked, darker than the rest. 

 

Too much water, or something else disturbing the roots. I knelt to touch the dirt, and my fingertips came away wet and shaking.

 

 

~

 

 

I looked up. The power lines drooped above the road, humming faintly. 

 

Against the static sky, they looked like something drawn in charcoal. Crooked and vibrating. 

 

I had the sudden thought that if I touched one, I’d wake up.

 

 

~

 

 

The neighbor’s house was dead-quiet. No sign of the man from the field. The one who stared. 

 

The bench near the cliff was still there, splintering along the grain. I didn’t sit.

 

Instead, I started down the path toward the shore. 

 

The tide’s been inching closer each day, swallowing more of the trail. It used to leave a gap — a safe distance between house and sea. Not anymore. 

 

The water rolled in slow, silver pulses, like someone dragging a sheet over something they didn’t want found.

 

 

~
 

I didn’t get far. Maybe twenty steps down the path when I got the feeling — too sudden, too sharp — that I was being watched. 

 

I turned. 

 

Nothing. 

 

The house behind me sat still. But a thought slipped in anyway:

 

Someone else is anchoring me here.

 

I don’t know what that means.

 

I don’t like that I wrote it... 

 

For a long moment, I stood.
 

Watching the waves shush me, again and again.
 

Unable to drift closer to them — or further away. 

 

The gulls overhead circled without sound.
 

Then I heard it — the door. 

 

The front door of my home slammed shut behind me.

 

 

~

 

 

When I got back, I found it locked. From the inside.

 

I had to fumble with my key. 
 

~
 

 

The air inside was wrong. Too still. 

 

No kettle noise. No ticking clock. 

 

Wait. I didn’t have a ticking clock then. 

 

I set my tea down to check each room. Slowly.

 

I didn’t go upstairs. 

 

Except — when I came back to the kitchen, the daisy mug was gone again. 

 

By then, I should have expected it. But, for some reason, I remember the shock — dread, even — that swam through me. 
 

~
 

 

I found it… later. 

 

Sitting just outside the second bedroom door upstairs. 

 

Like someone had left it there for me to find. I stood at the foot of the stairs for a long time.

 

I left the mug right where I found it. 

 

 

~

 

 

I didn’t plan to call my mother shortly after. My thumb just hovered over her name too long and the call went through.

 

She picked up after the third ring, her voice low and half-listening. I could hear dishes clinking softly in the background.

 

We talked about nothing for a minute. The weather. A show she liked. The usual scaffolding.

 

Then I asked her, “Do you remember the tapping sounds? In the house?”

 

A pause.

 

Then: “What, mice?”

 

“No. In the walls. You said it was like someone was trying to get out.”

 

She went quiet. Not in a tense way—more like the quiet of putting something back on a shelf.

 

“Oh, that. Yes. That was just the plumbing, Isla. Pipes shift when the seasons change. Your father told me a thousand times.” She huffed, quick and thin. “I was probably overtired. You know how I used to get.”

 

I do.

 

But I remember the way her face looked when she said it back then — tight and alert, not tired.

 

I remember how she kept unplugging the microwave at night, just in case something was coming through.

 

I said, “Well, I think I heard it, too. Do you remember me telling you that?”

 

She didn’t respond.

 

I waited, then asked, “Did I ever… was there a time when I wasn’t sleeping? Back then?”

 

That got her attention.

 

“You always had a wild imagination,” she said.

 

Then added, gentler: “You had trouble settling, even as a baby. You just felt… too much. It’s not a bad thing. You just had a different way of being in the world.”

 

I wanted to ask more.

 

About the time she took me out of school for two weeks without telling anyone. The way she so expertly covered it up. 

 

About the man I swore I saw standing in the hallway, who she said was just a shadow.

 

About the way the doctor scribbled something into a folder as we left.

 

But she said, “You’re not slipping again, are you?”

 

Softly. Not accusing. But not really asking, either.

 

“No,” I said, letting the word drag a little, like a thoughtful question, a little offended she’d asked at all. 

 

 

~

 

 

We hung up soon after.

 

I sat with the silence a long time.

 

 

…

 

 

—Isla 

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