The Hounding

by Xenobe Purvis

What lay before Joseph was unknowable, a gape. It scared him. Yet lying here, on this summer afternoon, he soothed himself with a question: How bad could it be to be buried in the warm earth and listen to the world conduct itself around you? That didn’t seem so dreadful. He breathed in deeply. No, not so dreadful. For a moment, the simmering fear subsided. He had waves like this, waves of worry, that approached—lapping, threatening—then receded. Sometimes they were about death; often they were about his granddaughters. About their fortunes, their security, the money that seemed to come and abruptly go. There was always something to worry about. He tried to picture a worryless life, but his mind couldn’t summon it. He breathed out, listening to the bees.

Anxiety

It struck Robin, listening to Richard reel off these questions, that the villagers were more afraid of the girls themselves than they were of the dogs. Girls—normal human girls—people could contend with; they were weak and small. And dogs too could be trained. But girls who became dogs, or who let the world believe they were dogs, were either powerful or mad: both monstrous possibilities.

Martha Heathcote shot her a look of disgust, and Temperance felt momentarily wounded, before remembering that Martha Heathcote was a haughty bitch and always had been. She was just about to gesture something to this effect when she saw her husband striding towards her.

Hahahahahaha