Not even Jess can resist a rare smile tonight. More reassured that Izzy is not in danger and can be trusted, she slips to the stairs, carrying her small stepladder and calling out another warning as she moves. ‘Don’t get no closer, Izz.’

‘I won’t.’

* * *

After refreshing the first bulb on the landing, Jess steps down from the ladder to better see the curious line drawing that she glanced at yesterday. Under better light it draws the eye.

Using a duster she wipes away the film of dross and unveils a detailed depiction of a small lake or pond that shines beneath a full moon. Along a straight track, a wooden cart is pulled towards the water by a hunched and dishevelled beggar with one hand. The other extremity ends in a dark, gruesome stump. Now that more of the illustration is exposed, she can see also that the abject figure’s head is turned and an appalling face with black, empty eye sockets is revealed. The tatty figure is blind and has been tasked with towing the large sphere inside the cart. A vessel that appears to have been constructed intricately with hawthorn sticks.

A naked woman follows the cart, holding a scythe. Her face is obscured by a cascade of straight hair and a tiara woven from flowers and briar. A maiden, youthful and lithe, her shoulders proudly thrown back as if with resolve or purpose. And towards the pond they go, and from the black water a powerful light leaps.

At the furthest edge of the pond’s dark surface rises a suggestion of a third figure. This one is too long and thin to be human and appears as a black silhouette more than a fully rendered form. It partially blends into the surrounding trees and stands knee-deep in the murky water. Into where the moonlight shafts from on high, it extends two spindly arms, the limbs fashioned from sticks.

A human female shape is also suggested by the body of the thing in the pool, though the height of the form would be several times that of a woman. Other than these details, the bulk of the inky silhouette remains indistinct save for a cruel beak, jutting from the creature’s sleek head and the surrounding shadow that capes the rear of the water. Perhaps with some sense of expectation, or eagerness, even greed, the entity watches the progression of the cart as it draws nearer to the water.

Bemused, Jess wipes more dust from the bottom of the glass and squints to read the curving script at the foot of the picture: ‘Mother. Creator. Destroyer.’

She pulls a face and turns away only to have her vision snag upon the rusted scythe, wall-mounted, across the landing. Averting her eyes, she shakes loose the keys on the old brass ring shaped like the sun. And tries a key in the lock of the closed bedroom door next to Flo’s master bedroom.