The Crows

4:2 [The Grande Dame]

It was getting dark. Carrie couldn't shake the feeling of being watched the whole way back, although there was no one around and Redditch Lane was deserted. She kept looking over her shoulder for traffic or cyclists, or any other living soul, but only the bus passed her, half empty. Red brake-lights flashed as it slowed but didn't stop.

Carrie tried not to think of them as glowing eyes.

A prickle on the nape of her neck made her turn and stare over the fence into a field. It was deserted, the cropped grass stirred by the breeze. People disappeared on this road, the locals said. Cars and all. Gone.

Carrie shivered, clutching her keys in one hand. She pushed the sharp edges between her fingers and made a tight, hard fist. The breeze died, the grass was still. She carried on walking, following the distant glow of the bus's lights as it trundled through The Chase up ahead.

The great wrought-iron gates of Fairwood greeted her as she cleared the field and came to the high stone wall ringing her property, twisted metal birds in the arched tops aping the real crows coming home to roost. Carrie pushed the gate and set off up the gravel driveway, the sense of an invisible watcher disappearing with the beating of strong black wings.

The house had an expectant air about it.

As soon as the front door swung shut behind her, she knew she was safe. The ominous feeling left her. The hall enveloped her in the smell of dry wood and dusty tiles like an invisible embrace, drawing her into the living room.

The Green Man was warm to the touch when she pulled it from her pocket and placed it on her own mantelpiece. The ceiling beams settled above her in a long, contented creak, the chandelier swaying in a draught Carrie couldn't feel.

"I was right," Carrie mused, looking at the painted tile, its eyes softer, mouth agape in a slight smile. "You do belong here."

...You belong here.

The thought slid into her mind like an echo, fatigue washing through every joint and muscle. She dismissed it as a product of her own exhaustion.

"I'm so tired," she whispered to it, overwhelmed by a yawn.

...Sleep.

The tile smiled at her.

Foot-sore, she clicked off the light and trudged up the stairs, trailing weary fingers up the smooth bannister rail. There was too much to think about.

What was going on with the Pendles? What was wrong with the town?

Carrie fell into bed without eating anything else, her alarm set for the morning, and was asleep before ten o'clock.

***

In her dream, she was standing in the attics all alone. The part she was standing in was kitted out like a Victorian study, complete with a fireplace – the living-room fireplace – that shouldn't be up there. Book spines of hunter green and dusky blue filled the shelves, and on the desk was a music box and a posed, taxidermy cat wearing a child's waistcoat and little leather boots. It was Toffee. Someone had sewn antlers on his head, too big for the little skull. His forepaws had been replaced with the tiny hands of a human child.

He was posed above the box as if pouncing on it or trying to keep the lid closed. Carrie moved the box away from those creepy little cat-fingers, and taxidermy-Toffee mraowled angrily and toppled over.

She leaned into the cold fireplace with her hands on the mantel, waiting.

He was behind her.

It was impossible to fix him in her mind, but there was a new presence in the room that had not been there before. She never heard him enter, but he always came.

She was wearing some kind of old-fashioned beige garment with buttons down the front: the buttons sprang open but she couldn't see his hands. His heat warmed her, reassuringly real as sun-warmed bricks and copper piping, but she only felt his touch when she closed her eyes. His hand was smooth as the bannisters down the stairs, like polished wood gliding over her skin. The invisible cheek against hers was rough like unfinished stone, gritty as granite. He smelled like a library in summer with undertones of a loamy, overgrown garden, filled with night blossoms and flowering weeds.

She knew that smell.

Mine, he whispered in her ear in a deeper register of her own voice, guttural, sharp, the way it had sounded in Mrs Wend's cottage.

Carrie closed her eyes, pressing into him, feeling him there as fragile as a pane of glass. She wanted him badly, an ache of longing glowing through her thighs, but as she pushed herself back against him, he crumbled into plaster dust and chimney soot, leaving her alone in a cloud of chalky air.