Walking back to her mother’s house later, Heather found herself thinking of Michael Reave’s unpleasant fairy story again. It was true that her mother had been strict over her television and reading habits, to the point where Heather had often stayed late round friend’s houses, watching all sorts of horrors on VHS tape—the fact that her mum had banned them only made her more determined, obviously—and there had been an entire box in her wardrobe, carefully hidden under old shoes, containing books and comics her mum definitely wouldn’t have approved of. The idea that she had once collected especially ghastly stories, sharing them with a future serial killer, seemed impossible; a piece of a puzzle that would not fit together. Yet … there was something familiar about the story, even so.

It’s just Red Riding Hood, she told herself. Whether you had an overprotective mum or not, all children become familiar with stories about little kids being eaten by wolves, and maybe you never really forget that first little thrill of horror you felt when you realized that the Big Bad Wolf has eaten Grandma and, ghoulishly, is wearing her nightie. That feeling of wolfishness, that creeping fear of the beast, sinks its teeth into all the old tales.

“It’s all one story,” she muttered to herself. “Fear the beast, for the beast is hungry.”

Inside the gate, Heather stopped. She had left the living room light on so it wouldn’t seem so spooky when she came back, but somehow that blazing square of yellow light, fuzzy and indistinct through the net curtains, only made her feel worse, like it was a portal onto something she didn’t want to look at. The pieces of one of Michael Reave’s victims scattered on the grass of a remote field perhaps, or her mum sitting at the kitchen table with her head all crushed in by rocks, dutifully scratching out another letter to a murderer while bits of her brain dripped onto the paper.

Shaking her head at herself, Heather went to the door and let herself in. The house was quiet and still, and she made a note to leave the radio on when she went out next time; the silence was too expectant somehow, too eager for her to fill it. She went upstairs to the spare room and changed into her pajamas and then went across the landing to the bathroom. In the seconds before she opened the door, her hand on the handle, she had a flicker of something wrong—a smell, a tiny noise—but it was too late. The door opened and something quick and dark flew at her face.

Crying out, she jumped back, but the thing was already out in the landing, flying hectic circles around the light fitting and crashing repeatedly into walls. It was a bird of some sort. Heather bit down on the shriek that was building in her chest and thumped a fist angrily into the bannister.

“Fucking bastard thing!”

Her heart still racing, Heather went to the airing cupboard and extracted one of her mother’s old brooms. With some difficulty she attempted to push the bird toward one of the bedrooms, or back into the bathroom, but it just flew more frantically, making sharp, panicked calls as it hit the ceiling, the lampshade, the walls. Heather swore at it repeatedly, feeling her own fright simmer and ignite into a quickly growing rage. The thing was moving too fast to see it properly, but it was brown, with speckled wings and a slightly oily cast to its feathers.