The sunroom’s mishmash of frosted and clear louvered windows give a patchwork view of the night. The mostly full moon has sent the stars into hiding and the world is a silvered landscape, giving enough light to see almost every shape but no detail. Enough to hint at things moving in the shadows. With a shake, I banish the image of a charging bird.

A slight breeze shifts the trees and cools my clammy body. A car drives past out the front and from the sound of the engine I can tell it’s the Brown boys doing their usual lapping around town into the late hours. Like it’s the biggest place where there’s something to see. Then again, they always have the best gossip, those boys.

It’s quiet but it’s never still here. Remembering the dead silence in the dream, I shiver.

The weird nightmare keeps trying to play through my head in full technicolour. I hold off most of it but bits keep sneaking in, like the scariest moments in a horror movie. Nan would probably have called it a special dream, one I should listen to. School says it is my subconscious telling me something about myself. Although why the hell I’d dream I’m Laney was anyone’s guess. I can pinpoint the second I started to believe science more than my own mob. The day we lost Nan was the worst of my life but I’d kept the faith. I’d looked for the signs, waited to feel her close by, to come visit. If Nan visited anyone it was gonna be me. I’d been so sure.

I’d spent the most time with her listening to the old stories, learning the things that Nan always said would keep me safe. There were things she promised to tell me when I was older that I’d never get to hear now, and some she’d close her lips tight about, like with Mad May Miller. I love Pop and he’s told me some great stories too, but not the ones Nan did. As I got older I realised men don’t sit down like that with girls, and neither do the women with boys. Just like there are some things that you would never say to your uncle that you could to your aunty.

Losing Nan was bad – we all knew we’d lost so much more. But I knew she’d come see me again. Weeks went past, nothing happened, but I trusted in our bond. Then other cousins claimed to have seen her, felt her. The longer I waited the angrier I got, and one day I got done waiting. I turned my back on Nan’s beliefs like she had done to me. Part of me knows it isn’t logical to be angry with a dead woman, the rest of me doesn’t care.