Ben kept his smile intact. Be nice. Please, be nice. They needed this grump on their side until they reached the village. The man hocked up something foul from the back of his throat, swallowed it, and then proceeded to walk away.

‘Come on so,’ he said, without looking back. ‘Follow me, if you must.’

Ben turned to Chloe, expecting her face to mirror his own concern, but instead she was barely containing her laughter. She wasn’t the one who had to sit down and talk to these people.

He had to mentally reorganise his expectations. Their arrival had gone off like a dud firework. Where was the sizzle and excitement? Sparling’s theories were lifting like a fog, revealing just another village; the same simple minds reciting the same simple stories.

4

‘We really appreciate it,’ Ben called after the man.

Not surprisingly, no response came.

‘I don’t think he likes you,’ Chloe whispered with a smirk.

He had the gangliest strides Ben had ever seen. Nothing about him was in proportion. And so hunched was his back that only the tip of his head was on show.

The man led them through a breach in the wall, onto a narrow dirt track. They skirted alongside the field, walking single file back in the direction where Ben guessed the village to be. The trail was tight and tinted overall with shade, and it wasn’t long before the sun’s cool absence was felt.

Eventually the lofty briars to his right fell away, revealing a dismal, lightless hollow with a slab of stone in its pit. Days had passed without any rainfall, and yet pools of moisture oozed through its soil like a leaky septic tank. Everything – from the lowest root worming through the black to the highest branch straining to steal some light – glistered with a sickly dampness, like sweat drawn from diseased skin.

‘Jesus,’ Chloe whispered, ‘this place is grim, isn’t it?’

‘Check that out,’ Ben replied, leaning back to her and pointing ahead. ‘Can you imagine living there?’

A cottage stood atop a low knoll, set apart from the trees that had drawn their branches away from it, as though the sorry thing was infectious. The black soil – raised like a sore – had been smoothed by the elements and bore no tracks, be they from man or beast.

Fire had scorched this building. No more than a single room and surely too small to have once sheltered a family. To imagine such a death was to succumb to its spell.

Planks of wood, discoloured from decay, barricaded its doorframe shut. And it was capped with timber boards upon which stones had been laid like a pauper’s burial. A sense of tragedy haunted the air around this tomb, sealed on all sides and abandoned.

‘What happened there?’ Chloe asked, shouting over Ben’s shoulder towards their guide.