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Back Gallows Hill Save as PDF
Chapters (45)
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The choice was already made for her, Margot realized. The nightmare had made her tense. She wouldn’t be sleeping anytime soon, and reaching a well-lit kitchen would at least be better than lying there, wide-eyed, as the hours ticked by.

She lowered her feet over the bed’s edge and slipped her shoes back on, then dropped her mobile into her jacket pocket. She hadn’t felt cold when she’d woken, but as she exhaled, a wisp of condensation rose ahead of her.

Margot opened the curtains across her window, inviting the moonlight in, then turned her bedroom light on for good measure. At that moment, she didn’t care what the power bill came to. She would turn on every light she passed.

Her phone, fully charged, still did very little to reveal the hallway outside her room. Margot traced her path carefully. Even without the bells, she didn’t like the idea of becoming lost in the labyrinth again.

She found a light switch at the end of the hall and pressed it. A bulb shot to life at her back, sending her shadow stretching long and corrupt ahead of her, splashing up the paneling on the opposite wall. The stairs to the main hallway were just around the corner.

Margot found herself hesitating. Her shadow didn’t seem right. The hips and chest and shoulders wound in and out according to what surface they fell across—the floor, the skirting, and the wall—but the head was turned at a sharp angle. Pulled to the left. As though her neck had been broken.

It could have come from anything—a distortion in the wall, a quirk of the bulb behind her. Margot raised her hand, watching its mirror flit across the surfaces until it was at the same height as her head. It did not distort.

I don’t understand.

She tried turning her head to the right, seeing if she could correct the angle enough to get the shadow’s head to stand upright. For a second, it seemed to work. The head rose on the violently twisted neck, reaching a point where it was nearly straight, and then it twisted over, dropping to the other side. Something protruded from the edge of the shadow’s neck. A broken bone through skin.

Margot gasped, straightening her head and clamping her hands to either side of her own throat. She felt her pulse leap under her fingertips as they ran across the soft flesh, searching for irregularities. The shadow’s fingers mimicked her movements. The head remained violently bent.

A soft noise echoed from behind her. Margot turned fast, her shoulder bumping the wall, but the hall behind her was empty for as far as she could see.

She thought she’d heard the scuff of a shoe. The exhale of a breath. Or maybe it was just the wood sighing. It was hard to be certain with a house that old.