Kindle Notes & Highlights
People are pain.
“Dwelling on the past can get unhealthy ‘round here.
“I think that’s up to the house, not me.”
The front door slammed with a suck of air through the hall, as if The Crows had breathed a sigh of relief.
We’re alone.
They each bore their life-scars behind a restored veneer, keeping their losses to themselves.
I am yours,
I am yours ...and you ...are ...MINE.
The house gave a gentle creak as the pain eased.
Carrie Rickard.
high street.
breathing in the smell of the fresh dawn on the cold tiles.
Now it sat under the new trapdoor, pristine, and – she faltered over the thought – awake. Angry. Rage shot through her out of nowhere, incendiary and dry. ...Those bastards will get what’s coming to them
Soon, she would have to leave the house and become a curiosity, open to the scrutiny of a thousand eyes.
Bad luck of the catastrophic, apocalyptic, hellfire-and-damnation variety would beset the inhabitants of Fairwood House if they crossed the Pendles after all their years of service, old Mr Pendle had sworn, and his wife had made something to seal it with, some charm for good luck written backwards to reverse the intent. Scratched into the limestone slab, barely visible now under all the dust and the shadow of the range, were symbols and initials, especially the letter ‘P’, over and over. Roy had refused to touch it.
to prove to herself it was only a bird and nothing eldritch or frightening,
“Have you ever heard people say, ‘Don’t put in the ground what you don’t want to grow’?”
It was like a superpower, a place to hide in plain sight and be paid for it.
Carrie’s bubbling resentment towards this blunt, pixie-like person simmered down in a cold jolt. Under the platinum-blonde bob that looked like a unicorn had thrown up over it, there was fresh, crusting blood in Mercy’s hairline and – now that Carrie was paying attention – the shape of a livid bruise spreading under the creamy layers of foundation and concealer.
Anxiety and hunger turned her inner voice into an inner snarl.
a fellow curiosophile.
the Bermuda Triangle of Sussex, where people went missing. The town seemed more furtive than before, the huddles of its buildings conspiring against her and all those who fell through the social cracks.
mullioned
The chimney loomed in her mind and something whispered, ...they’ll get what’s coming... A faceless child tumbled out of it, hair matted with blood.
On cue, their burgers arrived to rescue the conversation like tasty, steaming saviours.
“Never.” The vehemence in her tone surprised her. It almost came from somewhere else.
“There were three Pendle sisters who all married and there’s only Mrs Wend left now out of the three of them. She’s the matriarch, I guess. There’s a few branches now but I wouldn’t get mixed up with any them, if I were you. There’s the Wends, the Wend-McVeys, the Porters, the Shaws and the Foremans.
priest hole
the smuggler’s tunnel was the old escape route for the Catholics.”
He had the gaunt, grizzled appearance of the perpetually overworked, but even so she judged him to be older than Mercy by a good decade.
The colours leached out of the Ram as the sunlight faded behind a bank of twilight cloud, her mood cooling just as fast.
Maybe it’s not my house that’s cursed, she thought, dazzled by the headlights as they rushed by. Maybe it’s this bloody town.
Someone stared at her through the misty window as the bus pulled off, unsettling her further, but she told her dancing butterflies to stop being paranoid. That didn’t help. The passenger’s blurry face smudged across her brain, accusing her of some mystery offence.
You’re fine. Nearly home.
That must be Bramble Cottage, the ‘new’ gamekeeper’s cottage, built after the original was torn down and Mr Pendle uttered his infamous (but most likely fictitious) curse.
Unlike Fairwood House, Bramble Cottage had a sinister aspect, as if it wanted to be left alone.
Something grey flashed between the trees, in her peripheral vision.
People go missing on this road.
IT HAD BEEN A BLOODY awful day. His farsight was on the wane, as it usually was this time of year, and Gran had withheld access to the family shrine for the boost he needed.
His fever-flushes came and went in waves.
He was in the grip of one now, skin twisting under his clothes, iron-hard bulges pushing against his stretchmarks like writhing hernias. When he Changed for good, he would be a thing of beautiful monstrosity. He would bathe naked in the wintry sunlight on the Weald, drink in the whiplash-sweet salt of the sea and live a blissfully solitary existence.
reminding him he was never alone, spoiling everything.
His mother wouldn’t be coming downstairs. She was too weak. He had seen to that.
He inhaled greedily, knowing he was too old for this now, but nostalgic visits to his childhood friend relaxed him.
(Burn it, his father said, what if it’s found, who knows what it eats?)
his needle collection: stainless steel, half-curved, double-curved, straight Glovers and famili...
This highlight has been truncated due to consecutive passage length restrictions.
Eighteen was antique in stuffed toy years.
The rip in Gerald’s side was quite bad this time, curled brown leaves sticking to the stitches. Ricky fingered these thoughtfully. Gerald never left the cellar. Where did the leaves come from?
she’d yank the strings of others’ wyrds about like Punch ‘n’ bloody Judy, even mine, Gerald, even bleedin’ mine. It’s my skill, it’s for me to know. I’m the farsighted, I’m the soothsayer, I’m this fam’ly’s One and Only, they’re all mole-blind like the regulars of the world, were not for me.”
and worn smooth and bald in places, but Gerald had had this skin for a long time now, and he liked it.
gerald likes it or ricky likes it?
or, both?
both is good?
