The Crows

2:1 A Town with Dark Secrets

• In which Carrie gets a job •

14 April

Carrie's lucky break was a zero-hour contract at SupaPrice, the supermarket on the high street. On the morning of her first shift, the dreaded message, you are in your unarranged overdraft – charges are due to be applied to this account, greeted her in text message form. Not the best start to her day.

She stumbled downstairs to the kitchen but even in her groggy, pre-caffeinated state she couldn't resist running her hand over the new bannisters, breathing in the smell of the fresh dawn on the cold tiles. This morning Fairwood seemed less friendly than usual, as if it knew she was going out and resented her impending absence.

Carrie glanced at the grandfather clock, its mournful mother-of-pearl face beautiful but lifeless. She contemplated selling it. It belonged to the house, but she needed the money.

Around the corner from the kitchen steps was the narrow servant's corridor, now partitioned into the utility and boiler room, the narrow spiralling servants' stairs leading up to the first floor, and trapdoor access to the coal cellar. Carrie's attention was drawn to the utility room door with a sense of foreboding thickening in her gut.

It was ajar.

She was sure it hadn't been the night before.

Instead of closing it, something drew her through it towards the disused back stairs and the trapdoor guarding the coal cellar steps. It was still closed, but Carrie had a strange urge to haul it open. She stood on the edge, dazed, staring at it.

The old trapdoor had been rotted right through, a gaping hole where, Roy had told her, some adventurous local kid had gone straight through while exploring the ruin and broken both their legs. She hoped he'd been exaggerating.

The coal cellar had been thoroughly cleaned by a team of burly suited-up men in masks with power hoses, blaring classic rock and dispelling the shadows. She'd had a go. It had been fun. 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

Her own anger, at Phil, at her so-called backstabbing 'friends', at the gaslighting and the lies and the smug, cocky smirk on his face, boiled fresh and raw. But it was a picture of the town – the cold-shoulders, the refusal of locals to talk to her, the local builders not answering her calls, that was worse. It mingled with a host of imagined faces she didn't recognise, grinding into a throbbing headache.

Carrie backed away from the coal cellar and back into the soothing warmth of the kitchen, slamming the utility door.

I'm nervous about this job, going into town, being stared at.

That was all it was.

"At least it's a job," Carrie said aloud to the kitchen, her own voice reassuring as it broke the silence. She dumped instant granules into a chipped mug and the rich, bitter aroma hit her frontal lobe like a bolt from heaven.

The kitchen didn't judge.

She turned to face the hearth, nibbling a fingernail. Soon, she would have to leave the house and become a curiosity, open to the scrutiny of a thousand eyes.

"I hope the curse isn't a real thing. I already feel cursed enough."

The original chimney breast had been preserved, a different stone to the rest of the walls, startling in the change of colour and texture from the brick and tile around it. Its yawn was stoppered by the black range sitting in its gaping mouth.

Thinking about Joe Lin's story, Carrie wandered up to it and pressed her palm against the stone.

The hearthstone was original to the old gamekeeper's cottage, knocked down in the era of a particularly energetic lord of Fairwood, and the stone recycled for the kitchen extension. Roy had, grudgingly, told her that old Mr Pendle, the gamekeeper of the time, had 'taken on something terrible' over it, even though a new cottage was built for his family in The Chase. 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.

Carrie leaned over the range and peered up at the flue. She had it for show, not for use, and now she knew the story of the cook's daughter, she was glad of her decision. A crow on the top of the chimney called down, startling her with the uncanny acoustic effect.

She jerked away. "Shit!"

Another of the large black birds swooped onto the path between the overgrown flowerbeds and hopped forwards towards the kitchen wall. As she came to the window to watch, mainly to prove to herself it was only a bird and nothing eldritch or frightening, it came close, beady eyed. A little green caterpillar crawled across the broken stones, unconscious of any risk. Carrie watched with morbid fascination as it inched towards its own doom.

The kettle boiled and clicked itself off, distracting her. Carrie got on with breakfast, giving herself a pep talk in the process.

"I'm going to make friends here," she told the kitchen, popping bread into the toaster. "There must be someone who isn't scared of this place. Or me, for buying it."

Her 'new' good luck charm, a corner from one of the broken tiles on the living-room fireplace bearing a tiny four-leaf clover design, sat in a pot of odds and ends on the kitchen table. She fished it out and popped it into her pocket, then buttered her toast.

When she turned back to the window, both the crow and the caterpillar had gone.