From a distance, the grave appeared freshly dug and empty. To the birds overhead though, vision sharp enough to spot the briefest wiggle of worm or skitter of insect, an older coffin was visible in the depths of the hole. Time had rotted the wooden lid. Time, and the pressure of another coffin stacked on top of it. A family grave stores both more memories and more bodies than a single resting place.

This hole in the ground, if earth could tell tales, would be fit to burst with stories. Of bodies come and gone. Of hope and disappointment. Of dirt disturbed more often than any resting place should ever have to bear. Few visitors attended that sombre space, and those who did had not ventured to the far edge for many years. The cemetery was ancient and unused to new requests for burials. It stood beyond the outer limits of the city, in a circle of trees that kept prying eyes out and the spirits of the dead in.

One man came and went as needed. He visited a grave there – and sometimes brought others with him. He would sit in the grass and talk to a gravestone, listening intently, as if waiting for a response. Sometimes he would dig a coffin up, and sometimes he would bury it. Always the same one. Half the time, there was a soul to inter. Sometimes, more than one. Months later he would reappear. Then he would clear out the coffin. Place new flowers at the gravestone. Put away the remains in the boot of his car, after careful stripping and cleaning. Drag the coffin into the bushes and fill the hole in the earth.

The birds did not sing on the days he appeared there. No rodent ran through the grounds or hopped from tree branch to tree branch. The sun hid behind clouds. The world seemed to know more tears were to be shed. Now, the uppermost section of the family grave stood empty again. Merely a matter of waiting for the space to be occupied. Time stood still here, the same ritual repeated, until the grave was little more than a revolving door between one world and the next.

Chapter One

A sleeping woman watched over by the stranger who had hidden for hours in the shadowed bay of her bedroom curtains. That’s all there was to the scene. He was a spider, patient and unmoving, poised to drop and stun his prey. There was no malice to it. Only need. The white sheet covering her body rose and fell with each breath in the oblivion of slumber. Three steps forwards and he could reach out and touch her, run his hands through her long dark hair, press the half moon of his fingernail into the dimple that punctuated her right cheek as she smiled. His arms would wrap around her frame perfectly.