The Witch Elm

by Tana French

But even when the fear receded for a while, it was always there: dark, misshapen, taloned, hanging somewhere above and behind me, waiting for its next moment to drop onto my back and dig in deep.

“The thing is, I suppose,” he said, “that one gets into the habit of being oneself. It takes some great upheaval to crack that shell and force us to discover what else might be underneath.”

but even without any of that I would have known, because the air around us had split open and whirled and re-formed itself and there was one less person in the room.

I think my luck was built into me, the keystone that cohered my bones, the golden thread that stitched together the secret tapestries

of my DNA; I think it was the gem glittering at the fount of me, coloring everything I did and every word I said. And