If Liz hadn’t read this wrong – if this didn’t all begin and end with Tony – perhaps she should’ve brought Keira with her, to see the truth for herself. Someone’d have to keep the Bible in the future – watch for the signs, know what to do. Liz couldn’t trust Paul with that, and Frank had no more gumption than Dom or Jess.

Her boots thumped on through the snow. The earth sounded hollow, like a drum. Imagination, that was all. Would she never reach the woods?

At last she stepped across the treeline. She puffed for breath. Her cheeks burned from the frost. The piglet kicked feebly. The path through the woods lay ahead; the old holloway, beaten out through time. She followed it easily, even in the snow.

Further on, the path forked. The right-hand track carried on ahead, to the end of Thursdale and then up to the higher ground of Fendmoor Heath, where they said the old town of Kirk Flockton had stood till the earth one day swallowed it up. Liz smirked to herself: oh, she could tell folk a tale or two about that, though not one they’d want to hear. The other, almost overgrown path led towards the North Road and Wakeman’s Edge, through the densest part of the woods.

Liz took the left-hand fork, using the walking-stick to snap off protruding twigs. Even in winter, the trees tried to grow across the path, as if it was a wound the world wanted closed.

Soon she reached a clearing. A few yards into it was a steep grassy embankment, a little higher than Liz’s head, that Nature – never one for straight lines or corners – had clearly had no part in shaping.

There was a gap in the embankment, cut or broken long ago, and Liz went through it, to the Hollows.

Behind the embankment on either side, sinkholes dotted the ground. Two had filled with water, now frozen over so they shone like eyes. Their exact depth remained unknown, not least because no-one trying to plumb them had ever been known to survive the attempt. Beyond the sinkholes was a second embankment, crusted with snow, set into which was a slab of pinkish rock unlike any stone Liz had seen in these parts. Below the slab was another hole, about two feet across.

The pig kicked and squealed in earnest, thrashing its bound trotters. Liz shook it, irritated, and thought of Jess’ brat – that’d please Them more than any pig. She shook her head. Idiot though its mother was, however it’d been conceived and born, it was still blood; still a Harper. But if certain stories were true, They might want more than piglets now; the family might have to give up one or two to save the rest. Maybe she should have let Jess name the kid after all, ‘stead of making her name it after Grandpa Steve.