“Hello?” I don’t recognize my voice, cracked and small. Fear grips like a hand squeezing my throat. I’m about to push Meg’s door but it opens wide at the slightest touch, as if eager to give its secrets away.

I see the bluebottle flies first. They circle above her like tiny vultures. Meg is twisted around the bedsheets, her body brittle and too still to be resting. Her face is gray, her gaze clouded, but fixed on something living eyes can never see. Her mouth is a rictus of fear. Her forehead has collapsed in on itself, no longer a shape, just a dark mass of sticky pulp. Blood stains the sheets, halo-like behind her. Her bruised leg and arm hang over the edge of the bed and from her pink-painted fingertips her blood drip-drips.

2

Jon

As I stand in the middle of a field, looking down at a dead sheep and wondering for the fifty-third time that day what the hell has happened to my life, my phone buzzes with a text. As the farmer, Mr. Leeson, nudges the bloodied sheep with his foot, as though prompting the poor dead animal to confirm that it was definitely “those bloody travellers and their bloody dogs” that ripped her esophagus from her throat, I remind myself this is my second chance. That I’m lucky to have this job, and a way to keep my son Jacob in my life. Not everyone gets a second chance. Mr. Leeson bends low into the mud towards the dead sheep, allowing me to surreptitiously check my phone. I hope it’s a text from Jacob—Jakey—but the screen says Ben.

Six months ago, a text from Ben wouldn’t have been anything remarkable. But then I wouldn’t have been standing in a boggy field looking at a dead sheep because just six months ago I was busy doing real investigative journalism. The last time I saw Ben was the last time I wrote anything of my choosing. A personable freelance photographer, Ben took the photos that accompanied the article which, in a roundabout way, led me here, to this field, on this dank early June day with Mr. Leeson and his dead sheep.

“So, are yer going to talk to them then?” the farmer asks, showing me blackened gums that look like their own crime scene.

I shove the phone back down into my pocket. “Sorry, Mr. Leeson. Who is it you want me to talk to?”

“Them gypsies . . . them travellers, what yer call them. Are you going ter talk ter them or is it up ter me and my shotgun?” Mr. Leeson lifts his flat cap off his head and wipes his greasy hair with a mucky hand. I have the impression he’s hoping I’ll choose the latter option.

“How about I go and talk to my editor about a story and we’ll—”

“All the story you bloody need is right ’ere.” His heavy boot is back on the sheep’s head. I wish he’d stop. I know she’s dead but her eyes are still open, and it’s muddy. It starts to rain again.