Derelict

Siân’s Road after dark is an eerie, echoing place. Trees overhang, old branches that sweep the road making a dark, green tunnel that ends in an ancient wall. Nobody walks up Siân’s Road at night, strange symbols were found painted on the cracked concrete. Right at the far end, if you venture past the wall, there is a rickety old barn that looks lost among the gorse bushes; even the yellow flowers can’t manage to bring cheer to the dirty building. Fallen down bricks. Ivy choking burnt floorboards and the charred a-frames of the roof. A dinosaur skeleton clothed in rags. Stars wink through the missing slates; dust, feathers and burnt wood falls slowly as dark snow through the rafters. Deeds done here have soaked into the bricks on the ground, been absorbed by the three remaining walls. If I was to stay here all night, how many ghosts would bleed out from between the cracks in the mortar? I imagine myself floating in a sea of pale faces and bodies, as transparent as the water they imitate. Their movement gusts fallen leaves up into the threadbare roof, scatters sleepy crows like buttons into the blanket sky. The air is cold, and my breath sends clouds of vapour up to mingle with the falling motes of the old building. I look up to the first and second floors, at what remains of the fire-blackened chimneys and mantelpieces; try to imagine the house as a place full of life and laughter.