The Vessel
Chapters (53)
- Free Download
- Title Page
- Dedication
- ‘I believe that something unseen is also here’
- Contents
- 1
- 2
- 3
- 4
- 5
- 6
- 7
- 8
- 9
- 10
- 11
- 12
- 13
- 14
- 15
- 16
- 17
- 18
- 19
- 20
- 21
- 22
- 23
- 24
- 25
- 26
- 27
- 28
- 29
- 30
- 31
- 32
- 33
- 34
- 35
- 36
- Story Notes:
- Acknowledgements
- Copyright
- About the Author
- Books by Adam L. G. Nevill
- More Horror Fiction from Adam L. G. Nevill and Ritual Limited.
- Cunning Folk
- The Reddening
- Some Will Not Sleep
- Hasty for the Dark
- Wyrd and Other Derelictions
- Free eBook
Free Download
Free Download
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Title Page
The Vessel
Adam L. G. Nevill
Dedication
For Julie Crisp, who rolled the dice.
‘I believe that something unseen is also here’
‘I believe that something unseen is also here’
Walt Whitman, ‘Song of the Open Road’
Contents
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Story Notes:
Acknowledgements
About the Author
Books by Adam L. G. Nevill
Cunning Folk
The Reddening
Some Will Not Sleep
Hasty for the Dark
Wyrd and Other Derelictions
Free eBook
1
A stillness profound enough to be uncanny hushes a woodland glade. Trees encircle the placid water of a circular pond therein, the surface a black mirror reflecting a sombre sky.
Glimpsed between the columns of trunks and downy birch branches that ring the water, white blossom and vivid flowers erupt along the borders of a distant lawn. Beyond this mown pelt of grass, a weathered vicarage stands sentinel. An outcrop of dour stone with windows as impenetrable as the pond’s untroubled surface.
The atmosphere of mournful tranquillity is only disturbed when a cat appears upon the lawn to stalk a thrush. As it closes upon its prey, the cries of the other birds at a safer height grow shrill.
Behind a French window in the vicarage, the pale smudge of a face peers out. The surrounding void of the unlit room offers vague definition to a withered head. A woman, her white hair thinning, whose face appears disembodied, suspended in darkness. Morose yet expectant, she watches the confrontation on the lawn.
Reflected upon the pupils of her rheumy eyes, the thrush explodes from the lawn. A sudden flight inciting a fresh orchestra of avian shrieks from the wings of this outdoor theatre. The pupils of the watcher at the window quickly become busier with more black shapes, swooping upon the hunter, until a cat’s scream of rage and terror tears the air. The hunted bird’s wings flap-crack in a soaring escape.
Vicarage, garden, wood and pond grow smaller below the reprieved thrush. It sees the land become a patchwork in which the suggestion of a circular village, with the vicarage forming the hub of an indistinct wheel, assumes shape.
Black clouds cover the world.