I imagine the city under water: only a few church spires, silo pipes and the City Hall clock tower reach the surface. The roofs continue into the sea in broken lines, mirror images seen from below. On the other side of the brewery the mountainside disappears into the water’s surface, and the silo organ pipes gurgle, barely above the salt water. The ocean floor is covered in white, a layer of matte limestone made from billions of white spiders – no – bones and skeletons from forest animals and tenants – or is it beer foam?

Inside the house there’s still air, but the walls are dark, soaked with water like a treasure chest. Water drips through the keyhole. And slowly, so slowly that I almost don’t notice, the sea covers the grass tufts on the floor like a glittering salt carpet and starts rising while it whispers:

Full fathom five thy father lies;

Of his bones are coral made;

Those are pearls that were his eyes;

Nothing of him that doth fade,

But doth suffer a sea-change

Into something rich and strange.

The same was whispered to me about Carral, about her skin, which will become apple peel, and about Pym, who melted into cotton candy on her lips.

At the same time I imagine the tide ebbing and flowing over us, and the foamy waves breaking against the silo pipes. Through the night the words Carral wrote in Pym’s book fade in and out of my mind. The lines write and then erase themselves in front of me. I sit and listen to the waves. I brush away barnacles from the window. Maybe the sea is already within this house, as it covered all of Aybourne millions of years ago. Perhaps that’s why it’s so hard to breathe, and my body feels light, as though it’s floating. Maybe we have been living among ghosts all this time, the shipwrecked and the brewery workers. I never saw them, only Carral.

Carral sleeps in the bathtub. Her eyes are closed, mouth open. Under her white skin I can still see Pym’s freckles and Pym’s cheekbones. Pym’s red eyes flicker behind her eyelids. Inside her mouth I see the honey fungus, like a rotting black tongue. She lifts a hand, grabs my jumper and pulls me down towards her, and I pull back. Tide, tide, don’t come here!

Carral? I’ll finish your fairy tale. You forgot to mention the snake. In the story the apple poisons the snake, and Eve packs her books and moves out of paradise. The End.

This is how it has to end, so I carefully pick the honey fungus out of her mouth. Then I bend over and put my lips on her lips:

first I draw Pym out of her,

the scene from the mezzanine,

and the kiss in the bar

I draw out the night by the kitchen table.