Kindle Notes & Highlights
Some people had a way with words: Carrie was coming to appreciate that what Ricky had was more of a spaghetti junction.
“Didn’t say that. Said ‘energies’, didn’t I? If I meant magic, I’d have said magic.” Ricky sipped his tea. “It’s the difference between poison and venom, know what I mean? Two different types of toxin.” “But they can both kill you,” Carrie remarked. Ricky rolled his eyes. “In certain doses. Alright, I’m just being accurate. Said I’d be honest. Doing my best.”
“And, it’s fading. The farsight. Does that sometimes, natural cycles, but it’s inconvenient when it goes. Asceticism helps, keeps my head clear, but—” He shovelled another handful in, chewed and swallowed. “—if I can use the Pendle Stone, I can get it back up to scratch wi’out having to resort to the more, let’s say, drastic methods to boost my abilities, since they’re labour-intensive and a right pain in the arse.”
“Fine, alright. If you must know, I do rituals to channel forces from, well, let’s call it Outside, as in, not of this reality. Sometimes I kill people and eat bits of ‘em.”
“I ain’t praying to benevolent deities, here. None of that ‘blessed be’ bullshit.”
“No, see, you’re doing it wrong. You don’t admit you kill people if you want to make me like you.” Ricky frowned. “Honesty’s the best policy, that’s what they say, right? Read that somewhere.” He reached for the mince and she didn’t stop him. “The thing is,” he said, tapping the table, “The thing is, if I lied to you, said it was all herblore and starlight and all that airy-fairy crap, you’d find out eventually. I could spend my time tip-toeing around cleaning up the corpses and pretending to be vegan, but to tell the truth, love, I really can’t be arsed. It’s a lot easier for me if we all
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The kind of dark that leads to subtle madness, that sort of thing.”
i mean, ricky's terrible, but i appreciate the honesty
“Police won’t do shit. I’ve lived here my whole life. They’re an inconvenience, not a threat.”
“What about her? What kind of rite was she part of? Was that to see the future, too?” Ricky shook his head. “Nah, a kid’s not much good for that. Best guess is, some sort of bastardised youth rite that went a bit wrong. Kid got found too soon, something like that. You need to hang ‘em up for a while to get all the juice out of ‘em, it’s time-consuming.
You’ve been asking me nothing but questions since the moment I introduced myself.” That was a fair point.
“Phil always said I asked too many questions. I can’t help it.” “Who’s this?” “My ex.” She dropped her focus to the table. “He’d have a right go at me if he could hear me. Say it served me right.” “Yeah, well. Fuck him, hey,”
you know it's bad & obvious when creepy cannibal boy is right
“Don’t laugh at me like that, it’s... you can’t laugh like that, I just told you I kill and eat people.”
he is kinda oddly precious?
“He really thinks I’ll let him in again,” she murmured. The empty mince packet was the only proof he had been there at all. “He eats people. Ha, he eats people, of course he does. My neighbour’s a chavvy Hannibal Lecter.” She frowned. “Don’t tell him I said that.” ...He doesn’t lie.
with the petulance of the master bedroom and the patience of a stone.
broken panes and empty frames expressing grief it had no words for, a house full of stories but no one to tell.
this is weirdly mayfair witches, i swear
“People are pain,” Fairwood murmured, reasserting its experience. “But Ricky Porter isn’t a thief. Not a vandal. Not a disfigurer. He never touched me. Never broke a window.”
Fairwood pressed a palm to her forehead. Carrie gasped, flooded with a series of images, static lines zipping through her vision like flies, swarming with energy.
His rage boiled with her aura of pain, she felt it as he circled the perimeter and got the stone-thrower alone, heard the scream and snap of bone.
She could see in all directions from the broken shards of her eyes lying on the ground, the reflections bouncing and light dazzling her, a thousand eyes in all directions.
telling her it was his fifteenth birthday. She couldn’t reply, but the gaping wound in her kitchen mourned the absence of cake.
She closed her eyes, and for a moment she felt the same excitement as in her dream, the same thrill of knowing her desire was made flesh and in the room with her.
a warm library and a summer garden.
“A psychic block. Someone cleaned up after themselves pretty thoroughly.”
In the box... ...They couldn’t get rid of her, she’s still here...
His earnestness grated on her, as if sincerity was something he’d picked up with his weekly shop and brought along with the flowers.
bomb-disposal delicacy.
Liar, vandal, thief! ...Says he cares, he doesn’t care ...Send him out, get him out ...people are pain
She didn’t trust the living room to be hospitable, but she thought she could trust the kitchen.
“Do you believe in destiny?” Guy asked, staring at the table. “Destiny?” He picked at a stray thread in his sleeve. “The Anglo-Saxons called it your wyrd, you know. Your wyrd is unchangeable, but not unknowable, and that’s a curse as much as a blessing, you see.”
Ricky was creepy, unhygienic, and had more than a touch of the dark and arcane about him, but at least he was honest.
“But – supposing wyrd is like elastic, no matter how you try and change it, it just... pings back into shape.” “Eloquent.” Guy missed the sarcasm. “Like this house. It went to wrack and ruin, but it always knew what it wanted to be, and... here it is. Like nothing happened.”
Fairwood’s upper rooms were particularly vicious where it came to past sins.
“The Eleusinians. All about fertility rites, the goddesses, you know. Classical education that went a bit awry, I think. Sir Peter... well, he wasn’t the leader, I think there was a ‘priestess’, you know.” Guy’s face lit up as he warmed to his theme, chasing away his unease. “I mean, no idea who it was, no idea who any of them were. But the dead started walking not long after the society or cult or whatever you like to call it, after that disbanded. And there’s... well, newspaper articles, I mean, Dad didn’t put them all in the book because they weren’t relevant to the history of the house,
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You don’t want people dying around here in the spring or summer, it gets, well, I mean, you’ve seen the films, right?”
“The graves all had iron grids across them, not just to deter body snatchers, but more so the dead couldn’t get out,”
They – well, there’s lots of stories about why, but all the witnesses either went mad, catatonic, or became alcoholics, so I mean... who knows.”
As he turned to wave, he pointed at the porch. “Glad you managed to get the graffiti off alright. See you.” Carrie watched his car crunching down her drive and came out, puzzled, looking up at the stone. He was right: the red letters were gone, and the stone was wet.
oh, ricky, you creepy darling you
The eyes were still window-grey, clear, questioning.
“Oh!” She swallowed. “Is that a – a gargoyle, you’ve put there?” “Drainage,” the house’s most recent avatar corrected, in her voice. “You don’t like it?” “It’s, it’s, it’s... nice,” Carrie said, not sure what else to say. The open-jawed lion gaped at her from between the gouges running down both slim thighs, custom-made sandstone. “It’s just... my, um, my ‘drainage’ is, is on the inside.”
but you’re – you’re alive, aren’t you?” Carrie faltered. “Living things generally... belong to themselves.”
The hair was still floating, Carrie realised, floating in water that wasn’t there. It shone in the light like a halo, insulation foam-yellow, fibre-fine.
“Because everything belonged to the lord, and what didn’t belong to the lord belonged to god and the king. And they had to sign for the new small lives and keep their contracts safe.”
tracing her shape with possessive curiosity. ...Mine, they thought in unison, reflected in each other’s eyes.
Jealous type of place, it felt like to me.”
AS THE MOON WAXED, Fairwood fell into a quiet stupor.
a gnawing in her bones.
wondering who the hell needed six litres of bleach, a roll of duct tape, a box of matches and seven refills of lighter fluid.
Primary colours flared in her vision. Too many, too bright.
Ricky Porter was clearly a well-known figure in town for all the wrong reasons.
a flower of colour flashing in her peripheral vision. The headache blossomed back.
