He left the woods, stepping into the downpour that the trees had been sheltering him from, and ran toward the big house. On the way there, he saw two figures hurrying away down the hill, and he moved to intercept them. It was both the Bickerstaff sisters, looking oddly similar to how they had on the first day he had seen them; their heads touching, walking with their sides pressed together, although now one of them held a shawl over their heads, and the other was clasping some small bundle to her chest. When they saw it was him, she gathered the little shape closer to her so he could not see it. One of them—Lizbet, he thought—levelled her cold gray gaze at him, but did not speak. The rain picked up, and Michael realized that the path beneath their feet was pinkish with watery blood, blood that was washing off of them.

‘What’s happening?’

They drew closer together. Beyond them, the fields and hedgerows looked hazy and indistinct as the rain blurred their edges.

‘He wanted to see it,’ said Beryl, as if that explained anything. ‘When it came into the world.’

“What is it?”

Michael took a step forward to get a look at the thing they were carrying, but the two sisters exchanged a look of disgust between them, as though he was a dirty child at their feet.

“You’ll see it again soon enough,” said Lizbet.

“Who was screaming?”

“Anna isn’t feeling herself. Go on up and have a look, if you’re so worried.”

“Where’s Colleen?”

The two women smiled identical, icy smiles. “She’s a good one, isn’t she? Too good for the likes of you.”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“You didn’t think you could keep her, did you, Michael?” Despite the shawl, Beryl’s face was wet, shining unhealthily. “What a fool you are.”

With that they hurried away from him, heading down the hill and back toward the commune, leaving a trail of watery blood behind them. Michael looked up at the big house. There were lamps burning in the living room windows, casting squares of brash yellow light out onto the gravel drive. The house had always seemed like a haven, a place where he could exist fully. He had slept with the lights on all night; had eaten dinners in a silence that wasn’t challenged; had washed blood from his hands and clothes, over and over and over. Yet tonight it did not feel safe. Tonight, he looked at it and saw what Colleen saw—an empty place that housed a monster, perhaps several monsters. He knew suddenly that if he went back there, if he went and opened the door now, his sister would be waiting for him with her kindly smile and her red coat. She wasn’t dead at all—none of the hearts buried in the woods belonged to her, not really, and she could still have him, if she wanted him.

He turned and ran back down the hill. The Bickerstaff sisters were already out of sight, vanishing into the cluster of tents, cars, and vans that littered the commune, but it wasn’t them he was looking for. There were a few people about, despite the rain. He caught glimpses of pale, uncertain faces, some of them slack from drugs and drink, others looking alarmingly sharp, their eyes going again and again to the big house, where the screaming had come from. Once or twice he thought he saw the big black dog running alongside him, a shape flitting across the spaces between caravans.