Julian Wakeling
The Loughlin Place
‘He’s gone,’ Brendan said, staring at the note.
‘If you can believe him,’ I replied doubtfully.
But then I remembered the power cut just about when he’d have been switching on his time machine. Too much of a coincidence.
With any luck I’ll be back before I left! the note said. But if I need your help I’ll write letters to the old Loughlin place. I’ll use the names we agreed on.
‘We’d better get down there,’ Brendan said.
It made sense. The Loughlin bungalow had been abandoned for as long as we could remember. Mail still got delivered but nobody ever came for it. It piled up behind the door. When we were kids we used to break in and play. It wasn’t so bad then.
We tramped sombrely up the lane and pushed open the rusted gate with its melancholy squeal. The grass was waist-high. We got in through an open window at the back. The dereliction inside was heartbreaking: peeling wallpaper, faded religious pictures in frames with broken glass, old clothes and personal effects strewn about. A crumpled shop receipt spoke as eloquently of absence and the fragility of life as any poem I’d ever read.
Time is a cruel thing but worse was that the relatives hadn’t cared. Somewhere a pipe was leaking. We sat on the hall carpet that stank of mould and went through the mountain of post till the light faded. Nothing.
‘He might still make it back. What could we have done anyway?’
Then Brendan said: ‘Hey: when we were kids, didn’t we find some letters from America here once with weird names on? Whatever happened to them?’
‘Yes. We took them for the stamps,’ I replied, ‘and threw the letters away. I remember. The rain made the ink run.’
Julian Wakeling was born in Sunderland. He attended Central Saint Martins School of Art in London and has worked for two art galleries, the post office and as a cycle courier. He is also a street photographer. He was long-listed last year in the Fish, Reflex and Storgy flash fiction contests and was invited to read at the Allingham Festival in Ballyshannon, Co. Donegal, Ireland. He has been published in the Nottingham Review and Ellipsis Zine. He currently lives near Lincoln.
Twitter: @WakelingFiction
Instagram: @julianwakeling
