Ghost Wall

by Sarah Moss

Bats flashed through the space between branches, mapping depth into the flat sky, their calls brushing the upper range of my hearing.

He wanted his own ancestry, a claim on something, some tribe sprung from English soil like mushrooms in the night.

happen they couldn’t have put up much fight anyroad.

Is "anyroad" a real word people say in Northumberland?

It’s just bones, Silvie, we all have them, you wouldn’t be out here walking, else. I didn’t then like the thought of my own bones, waiting inside me for their own eventual exposure.