Cunning Folk

by Adam L.G. Nevill

A house of halves. The present and past huddled together.

One foot simply followed the other before caution and restraint fired the first warning shots.

His first boot prods out further and plants its weight upon empty space, pulling the second boot into the very last stride these legs will ever take.

His wife and daughter are present inside the van, sitting alongside him. But they are akin to passengers standing on a station platform, blurred into the background by a train of fast-moving thoughts, divided into multiple carriages.

Just to get here, maybe he’d burned through wires that can never be replaced.

When Fiona’s smile slips, Tom feels he is losing her in some small way that causes an anguish that is almost a chest pain.

Tom is sure he hears a sharp intake of breath from beyond the hedge; the kind of sudden inhalation that is sparked by outrage.

passing from a gardening glove to alabaster fingers with nails clotted burgundy,

Fiona’s gaze soon returns to the plethora of latches once used to secure this bedroom door from the inside.

empty screw holes in the chipped woodwork indicate where wooden boards were fixed over the windows from the inside.

If he didn’t know better, those are footsteps downstairs and something is definitely scratching behind one of the ceilings.

He soon wishes that he could turn over without disturbing Gracey, because he doesn’t like having his back facing the open door.

They stare and stare with their piercing blue eyes, pinning him in place, where he silently writhes in a discomfort that is physical. His neighbours have the same eyes.

he feels a delinquency sidle into his emotions.

He has dug three holes. No one knows why he digs them. Whenever the back door is opened to let in some fresh air, because the kitchen stinks, Archie bursts through people’s legs to speed into the garden.

‘Not in the circle. Never go inside the circle, my dear,’

Tom pushes his face closer to the window but sees little outdoors and too much of the reflection of the kitchen behind him, funnelling his vision back to the open door and the hallway beyond; an image, burrowing like a corridor in a nightmare to the white cable hanging from the ceiling, under-lit by a new bulb.

He’s wasted so much time and energy compulsively depicting imaginary future scenes of domestic bliss; remedies for the persistent dread he feels at being a trespasser in an unfeeling place.

Around the old, dim house, a great hush smothers the land.

a heavy black swaddling of a night without light pollution drapes the building as if it is a birdcage. Time itself seems to slow, while far away the world they knew before pursues a faster trajectory.

Between two loud beats of his heart, a drunken electricity courses through his nervous system.

‘Then you better keep your stay short. Or they will.’

his mind is opaque.

Against the darkness, two grim faces probe forward:

his wife’s features carved from consternation.

‘Children are so attuned. Their imaginations. They get all kinds of odd fancies in old woods. And that one is twelve thousand years old.’

The wood is strange and tense like an empty room in a game of hide and seek, waiting to be searched.

A few steps from the garden gate and she is swallowed, the wood closing its scaly lips behind her heels. She’s crossed over, is inside now.

In no time at all, she’s much closer to the kind lady, whose song flows around the huge legs of the trees and calls her to the hill and the standing stones.

He stops. Turns, his fire of rage transforming into a hoarfrost of terror, growing from the pores of his scalp and icing the steps of his spine. So deep does this rupture of fear tear that his testicles clench, then shrink.

This house will never stop taking what they have. She can smell its terminal illness, the constant need of the sickness in the mildewed plaster, in the dusty air currents she hears like wheezes, dragging the dead skin of ages from beneath the floorboards and into their lungs. And this is just the start. They’re not nurses, they’re undertakers.

his spirit is a seafront wrecked by a storm, his thoughts splintered deckchairs and beach huts.

Instead, it glows luminous; a celestial aura visible to passing aircraft.

once filled her with a love too painful to recall.

Retreating into the distance, the open shed gapes blackly, a silent mouth wide with the horror of what it’s unleashed.

I am man. But he pants like a thirsty hound.

Around him, an unfinished room glimmers, softening to dusk in the corners.

He looks past his reflection and watches the moon instead; three quarters full, illumined as if from within. The sky around its pitted face is pitch.

Only sleep can save him now and put him out of this misery. For a while.

So potent is the air he inhales so deeply that the tight grip of his fear becomes feeble, loosens, is blown away along with all the pressing concerns that shape and direct his thoughts, and engage him in frantic races that have no finishing-lines. Dry leaves scattering behind his heels.

If this is the passage to death then he will take it without so much as a glance over his shoulder.

But the merest suggestion of the origins and purpose of this space belittles him to an insignificance that is exquisitely terrifying.

If awareness dared to quest and grow here, oblivion would put a welcome end to comprehension.

Unto the dim smudge of light he strives, close to tears in his haste to greet the power of the promise that awaits.

Suffocating dread is mere preparation for what sits upon the stone. More than a glimpse might destroy his eyes and mind, smash them flat like birds’ eggs pressed underfoot. Inhaling sharply, he covers his face in its presence. Naked, reduced, his wits ransacked by panic, he sinks to his knees, abject, begging not to see, or be seen.

But to what does he plead for mercy? What other god could be more powerful and fearful than this?

As it silently passes through the light, there is an insubstantial, tenuous quality to the silhouette’s movement. Through the incorporeality of the atmosphere, the emerging chalky form seems to glide across the white sheets, the tread silent.

An arm delicately unfolds from the woman’s bony side and stretches outwards. A hand uncurls. Upon the end of that extremity, a single finger is stained darker than the limb. The discoloured digit solemnly points across the border, over the devastated lawn, to pick out Tom’s house.

If he hears much more of this voice, he suspects his mind will unravel. He clamps his hands over his ears. But that hardly stays the horror.

Regret feels like a breastplate made of lead.