Bunny

About BunnyFor fans of Stephen King and Stranger Things.Two eyes bore into him from across the room. They’re not her eyes. They’re the same colour and shape, but they’re not her eyes.‘I see you.’Silas didn’t have a happy childhood. Aunt Bunny made sure of that. But out of money and almost out of time, Silas and his girlfriend Rose are forced to return to his childhood home.Back to the darkness, back to the woods, where addiction and hedonism are disguising something much more sinister . . .Plagued by strange, unnerving events, Silas is drawn back into the family by an ancient presence deep in the woods. It will not let him go, and neither will Bunny.A haunting psychological-supernatural thriller that delves into the role that addiction plays in family dysfunction, and how it inevitably changes everyone around it. A chilling, page-turning tale about love conquering most . . . but not all. ContentsAbout BunnyTitle pageContentsDedicationEpigraph1994PROLOGUE2018JERRY LEAVES A VOICEMAILTHE ROAD HOMEWELCOME HOME, SILAS1994THE VISITOR2018SPINACH1994MISSING TIME2018FATHER AND SON AND GHOSTS1995THE ROOTS IN THE ROCK2018PURE MORNINGCOLD COFFEEROSE IS RIGHT1995THE SEAT OF THE OTHER2018AND PUPPY DOGS’ TALESARTISAN BAKERIES & PRETTIER TOWNSWORK DAYSTHE LAKENOT YET1995THE JOINING2018PLASTIC HEARTS & FRAGILE CENTRES2017NOT YET2018A MEETING IN THE DARK – PART IHAMNER – BY DAYA MEETING IN THE DARK – PART IIVISIT MESTRAIGHT TO VOICEMAILI LOVE MOMDADHAIR OF THE DOGAFTERNOONEVENINGNIGHTCHAMPAGNE BREAKFASTSHE’S FIXING ITIT’S TIMEEPILOGUE GLADIATOR, YOU’RE HOMETAP, TAP, TAPI WILL WALK WITH YOUACKNOWLEDGEMENTSAbout S. E. TolsenImprint pageNewsletter In memory of Dr Vernon Naidu, Leon Hampson-Tindale and Lucy Olsen. Thank you for everything. To a drinker the sensation is real and pure and akin to something spiritual: you seek; in the bottle, you find. – Caroline Knapp 1994 PROLOGUEA doorbell rings. Silas scampers to the front door. Lou Lou inhales deeply. She is all too aware of his incessant pacing from the master bedroom, but she’s at her vanity mirror and eyeliner doesn’t apply itself. Polished floorboards creak as small feet thump over them. Lou Lou flicks her wrist upwards – the perfect cat eye again. It may not bring in any income, but if Lou Lou knows anything, it’s how to look fuckable. She stares at herself in the mirror and exhales. If she’d been more ambitious, she could have been a movie star. She takes a moment to enjoy herself, to enjoy how beautiful she feels. Let him wait.Adjusting an oversized melamine bangle and holding on to a gin and soda that’s already taking effect, Lou Lou strides down the hallway like a woman who knows how to walk in six-inch heels, knowing that it’s going to be the same shit with Silas again. Being a single mother in her late twenties is a fate Lou Lou can almost not bear to endure – if it hadn’t been for Bunny, she’s sure she would have strangled Silas with the cord of her beloved Conair hairdryer by now.As she approaches the front door, a spindly child’s body covered in happy dinosaur–print pyjamas tries in vain to block her departure. His six-year-old arms reach out towards the walls on either side of him as if to brace himself, but they’re too short to touch both sides.Lou Lou is momentarily struck by the endearing, almost amusing quality of a child assuming such a dramatic pose.And it is endearing.Except for the child’s eyes, clearer and more piercing than normal. Anger and guilt twist in Lou Lou’s gin-filled gut.‘Mom, please don’t go tonight,’ he says with quiet urgency. ‘Please.’Silas looks at his mother, dressed again for a night out with men. Lou Lou drains her highball glass and deposits it on a side table as she sashays towards him. She sighs heavily and purses her lips. For her, this whole motherhood game has already had too many innings.‘Sweetheart, Mommy deserves her playtime too sometimes, and tonight is Mommy’s playtime. Okay?’ Her tone is warm, but there’s a brittle quality to it.‘But Mom . . .’ Silas’s eyes dart towards the hallway behind Lou Lou, checking for her. ‘I’ll be alone.’‘Silas, darling, you’re not alone. Your Aunt Bunny is here. Okay?’ Lou Lou ends the conversation with syrupy finality. He’s a child with an imagination that finds monsters in the most serene of surroundings. She knows that life will knock her sensitive boy sideways more than a few times and because of that she wants to provide comfort when he needs it. She also wants to get to the fucking door. Her jaw tightens as she watches his eyes slip to the wooden floorboards between her feet.‘But Momma, she’s sad tonight, and she acts different when she’s sad and nobody’s looking.’‘Enough, Silas!’ Lou Lou’s voice flashes like a cold white thunderclap.Silas drops his arms to his sides. His fingers squeeze his thumbs into his fists as his shoulders hike up protectively. His gaze is frozen on a knot of wood in the floorboards. He’s stared at this same knot many times before when Lou Lou has left for one of her ‘dates’ (sometimes she’d come back in the middle of the night, sometimes she’d come back two days later). If he stares at the knot long enough and softens his gaze, its swirling imperfections morph into a rosebud.‘Jesus, Silas, you wanna pull this shit every time I go out?’ Lou Lou doesn’t wait for an answer from him. ‘Go to your room. Go to bed. Get!’Silas stays put, gauging the right time to move; too early or late and there might be consequences, especially after Lou Lou puts down a few too many empty glasses.A softly slurred voice from down the hall caresses the tension. ‘Relax, Lou. It’s fine.’ Out of a doorway drifts the owner of the soft voice – Farrah Fawcett’s doppelgänger cradles her own gin and tonic in a coffee mug while her fingers lightly rub a delicate gold crucifix around her neck. The voice soothes Lou Lou like a magic incantation.‘Let me take him,’ she says as she steps forward to end Lou Lou’s frustration.Silas, defeated, allows his mother to